The government has launched an international tendering competition to solicit designs for the planned Tamkang Bridge (淡江大橋) in New Taipei City, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
Following the first competition conference in Hamburg, Germany, last month, a second was held yesterday in Tokyo and a third is scheduled to be held in San Francisco on Wednesday, according to the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH).
The submissions will undergo first-stage screening in May and the finalists will be announced in August, the DGH said.
The government said it hopes that the Tamkang Bridge will be a new landmark — on a par with the Golden Gate Bridge in California and the Sydney Harbour Bridge — when it is completed in 2020.
The Tamkang Bridge will span the estuary of the Tamsui River (淡水河), connecting Tamsui (淡水) and Bali (八里) districts, which are popular tourist destinations particularly famous for views of the sunset over the Taiwan Strait.
At 6km long and 44m wide, the bridge is to later accommodate a light-rail track between Tamsui and Bali.
At present, the two districts are linked mainly by the Guandu Bridge (關渡橋), which is about 10km upstream.
When the new bridge is completed, the driving distance between Tamsui and Bali will be shortened by 15km, with travel time reduced by 25 minutes during peak hours, according to New Taipei City’s transportation department.
Overall, it will improve Tamsui’s transportation network and help ease traffic congestion, the department added.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
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