After six years, “Yong Bao An Kang” (永保安康), one of the most popular memorial train ticket sets among collectors, is to be issued again, this time with the theme of “Love Forever,” Yongkang Railway Station master Hsieh Po-wen (謝博文) said.
Some people in Taiwan like to collect “good luck” train tickets, which bear auspicious-sounding combinations of station names, with tickets for the route between Tainan’s Yongkang (永康) and Baoan (保安) being one of the most well-known collectibles.
When read counterclockwise, the four Chinese characters printed on the tickets mean “peace and health forever.”
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Railways Administration
Each set contains two tickets for the route dated Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, as a combination of the dates — “20201314” — is a word play on “love you forever” (愛戀愛你一生一世) in Mandarin, Hsieh said.
Feb. 14 is also Valentine’s Day in the Western tradition, he said.
Designed as a greeting card, the commemorative set can be placed vertically for users to write messages and paste a picture to express their affection for loved ones, he added.
When the Taiwan Railways Administration introduced the Yong Bao An Kang memorial ticket set in 2010, it became a huge success, with 300,000 sets sold, Hsieh said, adding that a memorial set featuring the same route issued on Lunar Valentine’s Day in 2014 also won the hearts of railway fans.
Sales of the new memorial ticket set are to begin at Yongkang Railway Station at 8:30am on Saturday, Hsieh said.
There would only be 7,000 sets, priced NT$100 each, and only five can be sold per purchase, he said.
An exhibition at the station would display previous commemorative ticket sets and the history of the development of the nation’s railway system, he added.
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