A botanical garden celebrating biodiversity and Tao cultural heritage is to be built on Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), officials said on Monday, as the Lanyu Junior High School and Taiwan Forestry Research Institute formalized the collaboration.
The school is to see its campus rebuilt as the Tao People Botanical Garden as part of the national botanical garden program, officials said at the signing of a memorandum of understanding.
The 48km2 island is home to 140 species of rare plants, or 14 percent of the 989 rare plant species in the nation, making it among the most diverse regions in Taiwan, institute director-general Chang Bin (張彬) said.
Photo copied by Chen Hsien-yi, Taipei Times
Lanyu is threatened by development, a problem that conservation and education authorities should confront together, Chang said, adding that the garden would help protect Tao culture by showing the Tao names and stories of indigenous plants.
School principal Yang Jui-liang (楊瑞良) said that the garden would help preserve plant species and allow students to experience the Tao way of life, such as foraging for seasonal fruits, making traditional foods and utilizing plants for crafts.
The garden would also serve as an educational zone showcasing eco-friendly practices such as carbon footprint reduction, and energy and water conservation, he said, adding that it would raise public awareness of the effects of global climate change on the biodiversity of the island.
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
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
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
RSS