Chunghwa Post Co yesterday said that it will not immediately move a pair of “crooked” mailboxes on Longjiang Road in Taipei, adding that it would discuss with experts an appropriate location to display the typhoon-affected oddities.
The mailboxes drew crowds after a sign fell on them when Typhoon Soudelor hit the nation last week, causing the pair to tilt to the side.
The decision to postpone the relocation of the mailboxes came one day after the company said they would be moved to Beimen Post Office near the Taipei Railway Station.
People lining up to see the mailboxes had caused traffic chaos on the street, the company said.
However, the plan to move the mailboxes drew criticisms from officials and netizens.
Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said on Facebook that relocating the mailboxes would be “real stupidity,” turning the mailboxes from a display that could “generate memories and smiles” into a pair of “damaged, meaningless steel cans.”
Chunghwa Post chairman Philip Ong (翁文祺) yesterday afternoon convened a meeting to discuss whether the mailboxes were to stay or to go.
Chunghwa Post chief secretary Wang Shu-ming (王淑敏) said that the company decided to not move the mailboxes for now because they have become a cultural asset.
“People in Taipei like them very much, so we would like to confer further with experts to determine whether they should be moved,” Wang said.
Wang did not say whether the decision to halt the relocation had anything do with Lung’s post.
According to Chunghwa Post, the mailboxes have been tilted further after being pushed by so many visitors over the past few days, adding that their supports would need reinforcing.
The company advised visitors to take care when visiting the site and try to preserve the mailboxes.
The company had asked postal workers to help maintain order at the site, but yesterday said that it would hire private security personnel to ensure order is maintained at the site.
“As the mailboxes are now a tourist attraction, we would like to work with the Taipei City Government to maintain order at the site and ensure public safety,” the company said.
People posting mail in either of the tilted mailboxes will have a seal featuring the mailboxes stamped on the envelopes, the company said, adding that the promotion would run until a final decision is made on where mailboxes are to be displayed.
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