The Taipei City Government yesterday introduced four new hiking trails in Xinyi (信義), Shilin (士林) and Beitou (北投) districts, bringing the total number of hiking trails to 129 amid plans to develop a different “personality” for each trail to attract more hikers.
The four hiking trails, the Tiger Mountain (虎山) ecology trail in Xinyi, the green mountain trail in Shilin, and the wind’s tail and waterwheel hut trails in Beitou, are loop trails with gentle gradients and recently established observation decks, and are perfect for families and the elderly, Lin Yu-i (林裕益), director of Taipei City’s Geotechnical Engineering Office said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday joined members of a local hiking group to experience the Tiger Mountain ecology trail and said he expected the paths to promote outdoor sports and recreational activities.
Photo: Lin Hsiang-mei, Taipei Times
“Many of the hiking trails are designed for families and the elderly, who account for a large percentage of the hiking population. Hiking is a good way to enjoy the city’s landscape and we hope to encourage more people to join the hiking fraternity with these well-designed trails,” he said.
The city government started promoting hiking trails in 2005 with easy public transport access and lower gradients, and there is a total of 100km of trails so far.
Lin said the city would budget NT$60 million (US$2 million) this year to maintain trails and link existing paths to form loop trails.
In Wenshan District (文山), for example, the city government will connect three trails in the popular Maokong (貓空) area to let visitors combine a hike with a ride on the Maokong Gondola.
Lin said the city government also offers a free app on trail information for smartphone users to download, as it seeks to attract a younger crowd to join outdoor activities.
The app “GoHikingTaipei” is available for Android and Windows phones and it will be available for iPhone users by the end of this month, he added.
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