A 112-year-old lighthouse on one of the outlying islands of Matsu has been upgraded to a national historical monument, with a ceremony marking the event to be held on July 1, Lienchiang County Cultural Affairs Department Director-General Wu Hsiao-yun (吳曉雲) said.
Dongyong Lighthouse in Lienchiang County’s Dongyin Township (東引) was first designated a national historical landmark by the Council of Cultural Affairs in 1988, but it was later downgraded to a county heritage site following changes to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法).
Lienchiang County had been fighting for the lighthouse to reattain its status as a national landmark since 2008, Wu said.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
The county’s appeal gained ground after a restructuring of the Executive Yuan, which transferred management of the lighthouse from the Ministry of Finance’s Customs Administration to the Ministry of Transportation and Communication’s Maritime and Port Bureau, whose director-general, Chi Wen-jong (祁文中), supported the application, Wu said.
The European-style lighthouse situated on the slope of Shih Wei Mountain (世尾山) was built with financing from the British government a year after the British steamer SS Sobraon ran aground and sank near Dongyin Island in 1901, the Matsu National Scenic Area office said.
Although all passengers and crew survived the shipwreck, the shipping firm suffered heavy losses, and with the opening of maritime traffic to the Port of Sandu, it was decided that a lighthouse was necessary to mitigate navigational risks.
The lighthouse used to be a strictly restricted facility and lighthouse workers lived with their families in an adjacent dormitory, and raised their own chicken and pigs for meat.
The materiel and comforts provided by the lighthouse was said to be the envy of local residents, who nicknamed the facility “the Dongying Mansion,” which has stuck to this day.
The elegant structure has become a major attraction for tourists — including South Korean, Chinese and Western visitors.
Lienchiang County Commissioner Liu Tseng-ying (劉增應) said he was glad to see the lighthouse’s designation as a national historic monument, adding that he hoped the Maritime and Port Bureau and the Department of Cultural Affairs would invest resources in the lighthouse to promote tourism on Matsu.
The lighthouse could become a third attraction in addition to Matsu’s famed rare Chinese crested tern and bioluminescent blue tide, Liu said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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