Glory Pier (光榮碼頭) led an online poll conducted by Internet portal Yam.com for the top 10 tourist hotspots in Greater Kaohsiung.
The poll was voted on by 110,000 netizens, with Glory Pier receiving 7,431 votes, the Pier 2 Arts Center (高雄駁二藝術特區) coming in second with 7,231 and the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Center coming in third with nearly 7,000 votes, Yam.com said.
Originally named Pier No. 13, the Glory Pier was renamed when the military started using it as supply post for soldiers stationed on Kinmen and Matsu.
After its retirement from military use in 2005, the city government built a 500m-long path along the pier, turning it into a new scenic site with a view of the bay.
The pier rocketed to renewed fame after the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s giant yellow Rubber Duck was unveiled at the pier during the Mid-Autumn Festival last month.
Meanwhile, the Pier 2 Arts Center, just a short distance from the Glory Pier, was originally an old warehouse the city government decided to remodel into a center for artistic creativity.
In recent years it has been a important site for artists in southern Taiwan to show their works.
The E-Da World Mall, known for its New Year’s firework displays, which some say rivals the annual display put by Taipei 101, ranked fourth, while the Chiahsien District (甲仙), which was ravaged by Typhoon Morakot in 2009, came in at fifth place after the release of a documentary film — A Bridge over Troubled Water (拔一條河).
The district has recently experienced an influx of tourists who have been touched by the film about the area and how it coped with the ravages of Morakot.
Kaohsiung Metro’s Formosa Boulevard Station, which houses the world’s largest public glass art work — the Dome of Light — ranked sixth, according to the poll.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is