With an eye on the nation’s waning passion for insects, 38 year-old Lin Cheng-yi (林正誼) took a gamble and sold his house in Yilan City to start a nature classroom in Erjie Village (二結) in Yilan County’s Jiaosi Township (礁溪), in an attempt to revive interest in insects of all types.
Lin said he started breeding and selling insects in 2004, when a craze for the diminutive stars swept the nation.
Apart from taking orders from companies in the same trade, Lin said that he also used to sell his insects from a stall on the street.
Photo: Wang Yang-yu, Taipei Times
“It was hard going at first,” he said, adding that breeding insects was not as fun and easy as it seemed in his childhood, and he did not realize the difficulties he would run into while mass-breeding the creatures.
“I had a hard time getting them to maturity,” Lin said, adding that mice had also gobbled down several of his prized insects — each valued at about NT$2,000.
Lin said he knew he had to find other ways to support himself when the craze started blowing over. After discussions with his family, he decided to sell his house to pursue his dream of introducing the beauty of life to the rest of society.
“It was a big gamble, but it had to be made,” Lin said, adding that he had not had an income for more than four years since he started pursuing his dream.
The building that became the nature classroom was finished in March last year after four years of construction, Lin said.
He added that the classroom has become the home of thousands of preserved insects, as well as numerous live specimens, and also features more than 30 kinds of fish that are only found in the Yilan River (宜蘭河) and its tributaries.
Erjie Village has an ecologically rich environment because of its low building density and the advantages brought by the natural landscape, which includes plains, hills and several rivers. More than 107 butterfly species have been discovered in the area in the past year, Lin said.
Lin hopes to work with the community to transform the village into a preservation site for butterflies, as well as a place where visitors can relax and enjoy the beautiful natural scenery.
He said he had worked for more than a decade to realize his dream and he is finally at the stage where he can pursue his hobby, as well as use and broaden his professional knowledge.
“Cooperating with local residents, we hope to prove a beneficial influence on local tourism and industry,” he said.
Lin added that he is going to keep following his chosen path and work hard to create a better environment for the conservation of more insects.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,