An Internet celebrity from Taipei known for taking photographs of herself in a bikini after hiking up mountain peaks nationwide died on Monday from suspected hypothermia after a fall in central Taiwan, the Nantou County Fire Department said.
The body of the woman, identified as Gigi Wu (吳季芸), was found in a gorge in Penjushan (盆駒山) at about noon, but rescuers detected no signs of life by the time they reached her, Third Squadron head Lin Cheng-yi (林正宜) said.
Wu on Saturday called for assistance on her satellite phone, indicating that she was in distress and unable to move after falling into a 30m gorge at Penjushan.
Photo: Hsieh Chieh-yu, Taipei Times
However, weather conditions prevented the rescue team deployed to find Wu from using a helicopter, so they set out on foot.
Wu was found dead 43 hours after she made the distress call.
Rescuers were to transport her body to an open area for an airlift, the department said.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported that Wu entered Dongpu (東埔) in Nantou County on Jan. 11 and planned to hike the Batongguan Historic Trail (八通關古道) in Yushan National Park until tomorrow.
She apparently did not have a permit to hike the Yushan mountain range, the department said.
Wu, 36, gained fame online for hiking mountains nationwide and posting pictures on Facebook of herself in a bikini after completing a hike.
She had accumulated more than 14,000 followers.
In a televised interview in July last year, Wu said that the bikini shots came about a few years ago when she lost a bet to a friend and the punishment was to take pictures in a bikini after hiking up a mountain.
Wu said that she had completed 100 hikes and worn at least 97 bikinis over the past four years.
As news of her death spread, hundreds of followers began posting condolence messages on Wu’s Facebook page on Monday.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS