The unexpected popularity of the film Cape No. 7 (海角七號) has drawn thousands of tourists to Hengchun (恆春), the town in Pingtung County where the main setting of the film is located.
Directed by Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), the homegrown comedy has taken in nearly NT$400 million (US$12.3 million) at the box office as of yesterday, potentially making it the highest-grossing Chinese-language film produced in Taiwan.
The house of the film’s main character “Aga” (阿嘉), portrayed by Taiwanese pop singer Van Fan (范逸臣), has also become a must-see tourist attraction for out-of-town visitors.
PHOTO: CHIU SHAO-WEN, TAIPEI TIMES
“In the past, people would skip Hengchun and go straight to Kenting (墾丁),” said Chang Yung-yuan (張永源), the real owner of the house. “Now they make a detour for Hengchun before they head south to Kenting.”
Chang said in an interview with the Taipei Times yesterday that tourists swarmed through the city’s four old gates during the National Day holiday, and most of the hostels in town were full as well. The fact that his old house has been packed with visitors also took Chang by surprise.
Chang said that he was born in the house, which is about 80 years old.
After the Hengchun earthquake two years ago, Chang and his family moved to another house nearby. His wife, however, still uses the kitchen to cook everyday.
“They told my wife they wanted to use the house for a movie and may have to do some renovation,” he said. “I said ‘go ahead’ and let them do whatever they needed to do,” without knowing what the movie was really about.
Chang’s house started getting dozens of visitors a day after the film became a huge success.
“At first, we simply invited them in and let them check out what Aga’s house looks like, but later we just could not take it anymore,” he said.
Chang said the family decided to charge visitors a small fee to help keep the house neat and tidy.
The house is also a hostel now for fans of the movie who want to spend the night in Aga’s bedroom.
The film’s other settings in Pingtung, including the house of the character Kojima Tomoko in Manjhou Township (滿州鄉) and the Chateau Beach Resort in Kenting (墾丁夏都飯店), have become tourist destinations as well.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching