Visitors to Keelung City Harbor were flabbergasted yesterday afternoon, when the giant Rubber Duck installation suddenly burst and deflated, just 11 days after it went on display.
While Keelung City Council Speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰), who is in charge of the event, and the company that manufactured the Rubber Duck were still investigating what caused the mishap, a female tourist at the scene said she saw what looked like an eagle scratch the 18m tall Rubber Duck with its talons.
Local residents confirmed that eagles were seen flocking around the harbor in the past few days, with some officials saying that it was possible that an eagle’s talons had scraped the duck’s surface and made a small tear, which led to the burst.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of Lai Hui-chen
However, Central Weather Bureau meteorologist Cheng Ming-tien (鄭明典) said that yesterday’s warm sunshine might have caused it.
Yesterday’s blazing sun, after weeks of cold, rainy conditions, heated up the air inside the duck to become hotter than the exterior, and the sudden change in temperature and pressure probably caused it to rupture, he said.
“We want to apologize to the fans of the yellow rubber duck. ... the weather is fine today and we haven’t found the cause of the burst. We will carefully examine the duck to determine the cause,” Huang said.
Keelung City officials initially said they would borrow a giant duck replacement from Greater Kaohsiung, which was the first local government to host the giant duck.
The officials later retracted the decision and announced that they would borrow another copy of the floating art installation that is under production by a company authorized by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, creator of the giant Rubber Duck, for its next showing in another country.
The replacement is to be installed in Keelung Harbor by Saturday at the earliest, the city officials said.
Keelung’s Rubber Duck is not the first one to rupture while on display in northern Taiwan.
In early November, another near-identical sculpture from the same series burst in Taoyuan County and had to be replaced by another Rubber Duck on loan from Greater Kaohsiung.
In the industrial and busy Keelung Port, the recently deceased duck has endured controversy since it was unveiled to the public on Dec. 21.
A dispute over copyrights involving merchandise sold by local vendors erupted even before that, leading Hofman to decry the Keelung event as a “commercial circus.”
Hofman, who had enthusiastically attended the premieres in Greater Kaohsiung and Taoyuan, was absent from the duck’s opening day in Keelung.
The duck was later noticeably blackened by pollution from ships passing through the industrial area, leaving organizers scratching their heads for several days as to how to clean it.
Additional reporting by Yu Shao-fu and AFP
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS