The giant Rubber Duck that charmed crowds in Greater Kaohsiung over the past month is about to land in Taoyuan, where the government has already begun offering tours to promote the unique pond-dotted landscape of Sinwu Township (新屋) ahead of its arrival.
The immense sculpture in the shape of a bath toy will be a central part of a landscape festival in the county, where it will greet visitors from a pond starting on Saturday through Nov. 10 before moving on for the winter.
Taoyuan’s Rubber Duck will build its temporary nest in a more rural setting than Greater Kaohsiung’s, which attracted about 3.9 million visitors to the southern city’s port from Sept. 19 through Sunday.
As a result, duck fans can expect a different kind of viewing experience as they enjoy the floating sculpture, including coastal bike rides, tourist farms, fresh seafood restaurants and sunsets over the Taiwan Strait, Taoyuan’s Tourism Promotion Bureau said.
The duck itself is also a different sculpture from the one exhibited in Greater Kaohsiung, though they share the same size and weight.
The brainchild of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, each duck measures 18m-high and weighs about 1,000kg, making them the second biggest of his Rubber Duck series exhibited anywhere in the world.
Taoyuan expects Sinwu to attract up to 1.5 million visitors during the duck’s 15-day stay in the county, officials from the Tourism Promotion Bureau said.
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:
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