More than 200 owners of vintage automobiles and enthusiasts from Japan are scheduled to embark on a four-day journey around the nation tomorrow to thank Taiwan for its generous donations to Japan in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The owners of the vintage cars are participants in Rally Nippon, an annual event that has been held in Japan since 2008.
Four of the cars were on display in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) yesterday.
The road trip is slated to begin tomorrow at 9:30am in front of the Presidential Office Building. They are to make stops at Old City Hall Plaza in Greater Taichung, Wushantou (烏山頭) Reservoir in Greater Tainan and the World Trade Plaza in Greater Kaohsiung, before arriving at Liberty Square at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall on Sunday, after covering a distance of more than 1,000km.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said this would be the first time that the rally has been held in a foreign country.
He said the oldest vintage car arriving in Taiwan is a Bentley 3 Liter Speed Model Four-Seater Tourer produced in 1926. The newest one was produced in 1974. Yeh said the event means a great deal in terms of the relationship between Taiwan and Japan.
Rally Nippon board of directors representative Yusuke Kobayashi said he started planning for the tour around Taiwan about a year-and-a-half ago, when he visited Taiwan for the first time.
“We are not here only for an around-the-island tour, we also want to express our gratitude to the Taiwanese,” he said. “We should say thank you for your donation. Participants of the rally know the purpose of this trip, so they hope that they can interact with the people in Taiwan during this time, if possible.”
Among the 60 vintage cars, 58 were imported from Japan, he said.
The Tourism Bureau said that nine of the vintage cars have been around for more than 70 years, with five of the cars more than 80 years old. The total value of the cars tops ¥1 billion (US$9.86 million). The cars are insured for ¥10 million each.
To allow the cars to be driven around the nation, Yeh said the Directorate-General of Highways has given each car a temporary license plate.
The National Freeway Bureau will also help regulate the traffic while the cars are traveling on freeways.
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
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
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