The nation’s highest peak, Yushan (玉山), was not chosen as one of the new seven wonders of nature, a worldwide competition that began three years ago, the New7Wonders Foundation announced on Friday, based on provisional results.
In alphabetical order, the new wonders are: the Amazon in South America; Halong Bay in Vietnam; Iguazu Falls in Argentina and Brazil; Jeju Island in South Korea; Komodo in Indonesia; the Puerto Princesa Underground River in the Philippines; and Table Mountain in South Africa.
The list threw up some surprises, as some of the top 10 finalists announced earlier this week — including the Dead Sea in Israel and the Grand Canyon in the US — fell out of the final seven, while others that were not originally in the top 10 made it at the last minute, such as the Amazon and Iguazu Falls.
Although Yushan, which stands at a height of 3,952m and is the tallest peak in northeast Asia, failed to make it to the new seven wonders of nature’s final list, the Ministry of the Interior said the campaign for Yushan was very successful for the country as a whole from an advertising perspective.
“From the 440 contestants for the new seven wonders in 2009, Yushan went through online voting and expert selection and made it to a list of 28 finalists,” the Planning and Construction Agency, which is in charge of administrating Taiwan’s national parks, said in a release yesterday.
After a massive campaign for Yushan through different media outlets, private e-mails and online messages, however, “hundreds of millions of people who voted online have seen Taiwan and Yushan’s participation in the selection for the new seven wonders has been a successful campaign for Taiwan,” it added.
The poll identified Yushan as being located in “Chinese Taipei.”
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