A mock survey to identify the nation’s prettiest and ugliest county or city emblems was recently launched on Professional Technology Temple (PTT) — the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board.
The survey was posted by a netizen who used the pseudonym “mindocean,” and said that the post was made for coursework purposes.
While there was no consensus on the prettiest emblem, PTT users were quick to mock ugly emblems and a perceived failure of the nation’s art education.
Photo: CNA, screegrab from the Globalflag Web site
The emblem of Taichung, which features the Chinese characters for “tai” and “chung” in bright red on a yellow background, was particularly disliked by PTT users, many of whom called the design “lazy” or “sloppy,” with one characterizing it as being “way too direct.”
Another user, likely making a reference to Taichung’s history of organized crime and the blood-stained color scheme of its emblem said: “The Taichung flag is so badass, it was made with gunshots.”
Accoring to a Taichung official, the city was previously a provincial municipality, and in 2003 the Taichung City Council held a vote to consider a new city flag and emblem, but it decided to “provisionally retain” the old ones, which are still used.
Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) on Sunday linked to the PTT thread on his Facebook page with a comment that read: “Really? What should be done about it?”
Meanwhile, although a number of netizens said they liked Hsinchu’s emblem, others said that it bore an unfortunate resemblance to a recycling symbol used on aluminum cans, and one user later photoshopped the recycling symbol onto the emblem.
Some PTT users said that they disliked all of the emblems.
One comment read: “The font type, size and colors hurt the eyes.”
Another read: “They all look like pesticide or fertilizer trademarks to me.”
Several users criticized the nation’s appreciation of aesthetics, arguing that the ugly emblems reflect a general lack of appreciation of beauty.
“Oh God, our art education is a total failure,” one commentator said.
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