While the days when people could pan for gold along the banks of Keelung River (基隆河) are long gone, residents in the former gold mining towns of Jiufen (九份) and Jinguashih (金瓜石) in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Ruifang District (瑞芳) said they have recently spotted “gold prospectors” in the area.
Locals said these people came fully equipped with water pumps, pipes, air compressors and filters that they used for pumping water from the river and filtering sand and rocks from the river.
They included both Taiwanese and foreigners, who declined to talk about what they were doing when asked, the residents said.
Local residents said they have seen too many people come to the area dreaming of finding gold. Some are said to have found what they were looking for, but many are just rumors, they added.
“If you want to pan for gold, you need to know how to distinguish it from sand,” said Chen Shih-cheng (陳石成), a former miner with more than 40 years of experience in the field.
Heavy rainfall can sometimes wash down parts from a gold mine high in the mountains. These particles, which end up getting mixed with sand in a riverbed, are what locals call gold dust, Chen said.
Gold dust is slightly larger than sand and may be easier to spot in gaps between rocks, he said, adding that those found in Keelung River are about 80 percent pure gold.
“I’ve heard that someone found 50g of gold dust in the river, which cost about NT$60,000 at the time,” Chen said, but added that finding gold dust in the river these days is rare.
He added that he has never heard of anyone getting rich by panning for gold.
Hard rock mining takes a lot of manpower, time and money, he said.
Asked if there is still gold in the shuttered mines in Jiufen and Jinguashih, Chen said: “I’ve heard about it, but who knows?”
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