The main road leading to the Alishan Forest Recreation Area will be partially reopened to small vehicles on Oct. 20, the Tourism Bureau said.
Alishan highway, which was heavily damaged during Typhoon Morakot in August, will be opened to nine-seater minivans, but they will only be permitted to go as far as Fenchihu (奮起湖) — a popular tourist spot — the bureau said.
This will allow tour agencies to take tourists in small groups to the mountain, which is a popular destination among Chinese sightseers, helping the recovery of tourism in the area, Tourism Bureau officials said.
Alishan highway, formally known as Highway 18, was washed out in dozens of places by the storm and has been closed for repairs.
The section of the highway that will reopen cannot accommodate large buses, the Tourism Bureau said. The road between Fenchihu and the Alishan Forest Recreation Area will remain closed to traffic, it said.
The bureau’s statistics show that about 12,000 Chinese visited Taiwan during China’s eight-day National Day holiday from Oct. 1, bringing in NT$760 million (US$23 million) in tourism revenues.
Although the number of Chinese visitors during the holiday period doubled from last year, visitor arrivals from China in general were still low compared with the peak number of 3,000 to 4,000 per day in the first six months of the year, the bureau said.
After the long Chinese holiday, the number of visitors from China dropped to below 1,000 a day, it said, adding that Alishan’s closure and the outbreak of A(H1N1) influenza were contributing factors.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods