The Chiayi County Police Bureau yesterday said it would start restricting the number of small passenger cars going to Alishan on the weekends and on national holidays, in a bid to regulate traffic during the Alishan cherry blossom season, which begins today.
The season has become one of the most popular tourist attractions on mountain, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
However, most visitors choose to visit on weekends or holidays, which often leads to congestion on the highway leading to Alishan Forest Park.
The bureau’s branch in Jhuci Township (竹崎) said that the restriction is scheduled to be implemented on the following three weekends of this month and during the Tomb-Sweeping holiday this year, which lasts from April 3 to April 6.
Small passenger vehicles would be prohibited from going up the mountain between 6am and 11am on those days.
To facilitate touring the park during cherry blossom season, travelers are to be asked to leave their cars at the Nioupuzih (牛埔仔) bus station parking lot and at two other parking lots located at Highway No. 18’s 61.5km and 66km markers.
They can then take a shuttle bus to Alishan Forest Park, with the bus ticket available for purchase in advance.
Meanwhile, temporary parking spaces are set to be established on the side of the highway between the 89km and 95km markers. Shuttle buses are planned to be available to pick up passengers at 10 designated stops in this section.
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
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
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