A museum with a collection of 3,000 teddy bears in Hsinchu County held a grand opening on Thursday in what used to be an illegal property.
The building housing the One Bear Museum, situated in Guansi Township (關西), was initially an illegal structure and Hsinchu County has since 2013 spent NT$20 million (US$654,643) to make it a productive and legal property, Hsinchu County Commissioner Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳) said.
After making improvements, the county in July last year awarded the contract to operate the museum to a private entity, he said.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
One stuffed bear, the first of 25 prototypes made of Duffy the Disney Bear and estimated to be worth US$250,000 to US$3 million in open auction, is among the collection’s most valuable, the museum said.
Another rare item is a black teddy made by Steiff in 1912, part of a limited run that became associated with the sinking of the RMS Titanic the same year, the museum said.
Christie’s reportedly sold one for US$4 million, it added.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
There are also stuffed bears styled after celebrities including Albert Einstein, Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe in the basement, and one 3.5m giant teddy, the museum said.
The first floor of the museum is themed “cultures of the world,” with teddies featuring in displays about Hsinchu’s Hakka cultural heritage, with sanheyuan (三合院) houses and floral-cloth making.
The second floor has digital interactive displays and a special zone for miniature stuffed bears, including one that is believed to be the world’s smallest, at 1cm tall, and a teddy-themed recreation of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Entry fee for the One Bear Museum is NT$280 per adult and NT$180 per child of 12 or younger.
Accompanied children under 3 years of age or 90cm can enter free of charge, while residents of Guansi qualify for a 50 percent discount upon presenting their national ID card.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS