Dragon boat fans or junkyard alchemists can earn up to NT$100,000 by making a green dragon boat from recycled materials such as empty drink bottles and discarded cardboard, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
The National Green Dragon Boat Competition, in which contestants spend weeks or even months collecting used or recycled materials ranging from aluminum cans and plastic bottles to real estate flyers and Styrofoam to make their dragon boats — such as used DVD “dragon scales” or colorful straw dragon whiskers — is in its 10th year this year.
Originating in Hualien County, the competition spread to Taichung City, becoming an annual event two years ago, said EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏), who dressed up as the Dragon Emperor while sitting in a green dragon boat at the press conference yesterday.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
“We wish to promote this event to people around Taiwan, because this is an event that combines the spirit of traditional dragon boats with the innovative idea of environmental protection,” Shen said.
The boats must sport impressive exteriors, but also be able to float from one end of a standard-length swimming pool to the other with at least two people in them. Winners will be eligible for prizes.
Though the mission is not easy, the number of boats at this year’s competition is expected to be high.
“This year’s top prize in the Hualien competition will be increased from last year’s NT$50,000 to NT$100,000,” Shen said.
Interested parties must sign up for the Hualien competition by this Thursday, or the Taichung competition by May 12, Shen said, adding that the races would occur at Hualien’s Parkview Hotel on May 16 and in Taichung on May 23.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS