Three Taiwanese climbers who scaled Mount Everest last week returned home from Bangkok yesterday, with all three ready for their next challenge.
Chiang Hsiu-chen (江秀真) and her fellow mountaineers received a hero’s welcome at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Their success made Chiang the first Taiwanese woman to conquer the highest peaks on seven continents. It also marked the first time in 13 years that Taiwanese alpinists made it to the top of the 8,848m Mt Everest, said the Atunas Group, which organized the latest expedition.
Chiang, 39, has scaled the highest mountain in the world from both the north side and the south side of the peak, after completing the assault on Mt Everest’s summit last week from the south side, the more conventional route. She climbed the more treacherous north side 14 years ago.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
MISSION
Chiang, a mountain ranger at Yushan National Park, and the two male climbers — Wu Yu-lung (伍玉龍), a 49-year-old Bunun tribesman who is the leader of a rescue team, and 33-year-old Huang Chih-hao (黃致豪), who is doing postdoctorate research in electronic engineering at Colorado State University — reached the top of Mt Everest at 12:52pm on May 19.
In a brief interview with the Central News Agency at the airport, Chiang said she was looking forward to her next mission — developing a system to teach mountain climbing in Taiwan.
“Teaching and training [people] about mountain climbing is even more challenging than scaling Mt Everest,” she said. “I will try my best in the next 20 years to contribute to mountain-climbing in Taiwan, an island that boasts a number of high peaks.”
Wu said he would work two or three more years to save enough money to challenge the world’s third-highest peak in India.
Huang said his next challenge would be climbing one of the world’s highest mountains without the aid of bottled oxygen and Sherpa guides, and making a documentary about it.
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
TEMPORAL/SPIRITUAL: Beijing’s claim that the next Buddhist leader must come from China is a heavy-handed political maneuver that will fall flat-faced, experts said China’s requirement that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation to be born in China and approved by Beijing has drawn criticism, with experts at a forum in Taipei yesterday saying that if Beijing were to put forth its own Dalai Lama, the person would not be recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community. The experts made a remarks at the two-day forum hosted by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama titled: “The Snow Land Forum: Finding Common Ground on Tibet.” China says it has the right to determine the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it claims sovereignty over Tibet since ancient times,
Temperatures in some parts of Taiwan are expected to fall sharply to lows of 15°C later this week as seasonal northeasterly winds strengthen, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. It is to be the strongest cold wave to affect northern Taiwan this autumn, while Chiayi County in the southwest and some parts of central Taiwan are likely to also see lower temperatures due to radiational cooling, which occurs under conditions of clear skies, light winds and dry weather, the CWA said. Across Taiwan, temperatures are to fall gradually this week, dropping to 15°C to 16°C in the early hours of Wednesday
RSS