The Taipei City Government will dispatch envoys to Beijing this week to convey its desire to allow a pair of China's giant pandas to be brought here, but the city first needs to gauge whether Chinese authorities are acting out of genuine friendliness in offering the animals, officials said yesterday.
City government spokesman Yang Hsiao-tung (羊曉東) told a news conference that a delegation would depart for Beijing today to discuss China's offer of a pair of giant pandas.
Giant pandas are listed as grade-one protected species by the Chinese government. There are only 1,590 pandas living in the wild. China has another 239 in captivity, with 27 living outside the country, on loan from the Chinese government.
After winning a landslide victory in Saturday's presidential election, president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said he would welcome a pair of pandas.
Beijing offered Taiwan a pair of pandas in 2005, while Ma was Taipei mayor, following former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan's (
However opposition from pro-independence supporters who branded the offer a propaganda ploy scuttled the chances of the pandas coming to Taipei, with the administration of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) eventually rejecting the offer.
The Council of Agriculture (COA) had also rejected the zoo's application for a permit to import the pandas, citing environmental concerns and misgivings about the zoo's ability to properly care for the endangered species.
The zoo then filed an appeal with the Administrative Court in Taipei, which is scheduled to deliver its verdict tomorrow.
Yang said that the zoo would deliver a revised import proposal to the council in a renewed bid to acquire the pandas.
Yang said that a three-story panda exhibition hall under construction at the zoo would be completed in June.
The facility is planned with the possibility that the pandas might breed. The hall is equipped with a panda nursery on the first floor.
The zoo has also planted bamboo -- the pandas' staple diet -- on six hectares in the zoo's park, and has dispatched a group of 20 zookeepers to the US for training on how to take care of pandas, Yang said.
"Taipei is ready" for the pandas, Yang said, adding that if the animals did come, the city government would launch panda-themed tour packages to attract more tourists.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS