In the second such incident reported in one week, a member of the pro-unification Patriot Association (愛國同心會) allegedly berated Japanese students and their tour guide outside Taipei 101 on Thursday, insulting them in both Chinese and Japanese.
A Taiwanese tour guide working with a group of Japanese tourists subsequently dialled 110 to summon emergency services after the high-school-aged tourists were verbally attacked by a member of the Patriot Association who is said to be a regular outside the building handing out brochures.
The tourists were making their way to Taipei 101 at about 1pm when the incident occurred.
According to a tour guide surnamed Fan (范), when the group arrived at the building, he and three Japanese teachers encountered the man associated with the Patriot Association.
Fan said he explained that the group was from Japan and politely refused the pamphlets, after which the man in his 60s allegedly began calling Fan a “Japanese running dog” and the teachers “Japanese devils.”
Fan said he then immediately led the group away, wanting to avoid any trouble.
At about 4pm, Fan said he returned to the square to meet with another group of Japanese tourists at which time the same man allegedly began swearing at tour group members in Japanese.
Not willing to be humiliated, some of the students attempted to defend themselves, but were urged onto the waiting bus, Fan said.
Another tour guide, surnamed Lin (林), said he called the police and filed a report.
The police said a similar incident had occurred a week earlier involving another group of Japanese tourists, Lin said.
Commenting on the case, Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Yen sheng-kuan (顏聖冠) strongly criticized the actions of association members as greatly harmful to Taipei, adding that police should have given a more active response.
Taipei City Government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said the city would attempt to speak with the association to better understand its members’ actions.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
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
RSS