A top executive of EVA Airways, Taiwan’s second-largest airline, apologized to rice growers in Taitung County’s Chihshang Township (池上) on Monday for the adverse impact a TV commercial for the airline that was shot there has caused.
EVA Air chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) told Taitung County Commissioner Justin Huang (黃健庭) during a visit to the county that he felt remorse after seeing the commercial causing damage and inconveniencing the farmers, whose agricultural activities were disrupted by a constant flow of tourist vehicles.
“It’s not right that we borrowed the landscape, but caused inconvenience [to the locals],” Chang said as he called for travelers to treat Chihshang with love.
Photo: Wang Hsiu-ting, Taipei Times
The popular commercial, featuring Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武), a Japanese actor whose mother is Taiwanese, highlights the township’s landscape of extensive green rice paddies.
A road along the fields, which Kaneshiro tours by bicycle in the advertisement before coming to a stop under a tree, has become a big hit with tourists since the commercial was released last year.
Tourists have swarmed to Brown’s Road — now nicknamed Takeshi Kaneshiro Road — that was described as a “green road of paradise” in the advertisement.
The surging number of visitors have forced local farmers to fight tourists for use of the road during harvest season.
Some tourists have even been seen walking into paddies close to the “Takeshi Kaneshiro tree” to take photographs.
Following complaints by local farmers, the county government banned nonagricultural vehicles from accessing the road during harvest season from July 1 to Aug. 31. The ban marks the first traffic restriction the county has ever placed on a road in the countryside.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck Kaohsiung at 1pm today, the Central Weather Administration said. The epicenter was in Jiasian District (甲仙), 72.1km north-northeast of Kaohsiung City Hall, at a depth of 7.8km, agency data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Kaohsiung and Tainan, where it measured a 4 on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale. It also measured a 3 in parts of Chiayi City, as well as Pingtung, Yunlin and Hualien counties, data showed.
Nearly 5 million people have signed up to receive the government’s NT$10,000 (US$322) universal cash handout since registration opened on Wednesday last week, with deposits expected to begin tomorrow, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. After a staggered sign-up last week — based on the final digit of the applicant’s national ID or Alien Resident Certificate number — online registration is open to all eligible Taiwanese nationals, foreign permanent residents and spouses of Taiwanese nationals. Banks are expected to start issuing deposits from 6pm today, the ministry said. Those who completed registration by yesterday are expected to receive their NT$10,000 tomorrow, National Treasury
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