The Nantou County Government has earmarked a sum of NT$29 million (US$914,740) from this fiscal year’s budget to relocate graves from the Second Public Cemetery in the county’s Caotun Township (草屯).
The cemetery covers 21 hectares, but has seen no new burials in more than 30 years, and has fallen into a state of disrepair and many people have illegally dumped trash there, Nantou County Commissioner Lin Ming-chen (林明溱) said.
The cemetery is close to the town and the land could be better used, Lin said, adding that the burial site is easily accessible from Provincial Highway No. 14, which is the main route between Caotun and Puli Township (埔里).
The township has been receiving funds from the Construction and Planning Agency’s Townscape Renaissance project since 2012 and has already turned 5 hectares of the land into parks, Lin said.
The county government has also built a series of footpaths, flood detention ponds and lighting facilities, Lin said, adding that to encourage further use of the land, the township government has also set up a camping ground and hosted events where campers slept on former cemetery grounds.
The county government is now setting its sights on the remaining 16 hectares and has earmarked NT$29 million for its development, beginning with the relocation of the remaining 1,500 graves in the cemetery.
The county government earlier last month organized a ceremony to propitiate disturbed spirits and ensure that the relocation of the graves is successful.
The ceremony also marked the commencement of the relocation process.
The county government is planning to use the land to hold tourist workshops and establish other tourism-related attractions in the hopes of stimulating the local economy, Lin said.
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