A student at National Municipal Taichung First Senior High School has been commended for raising environmental awareness with his drawings on a large blackboard on school grounds.
The blackboard, filled with chalk drawings of animal species endemic to Taiwan, last week became a hot topic at the school and captured the attention of principal Chen Mu-chu (陳木柱), who asked who drew the art.
After two hours, the school identified Lin Ching-feng (林敬峰), a 12th-grader, as the artist.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
Lin said he hoped to raise awareness about how people should use less plastic.
As the school is located next to Yijhong Street, one of the busiest shopping areas in Taichung, students often generate a large amount of trash, especially plastic bags, after they buy food or drinks from street vendors, Lin said.
The school’s food store hands out plastic bags, too, he said.
Lin said that he thought the blackboard outside the school store would be an effective platform for his message, adding that the proposal was well-received by campus cooperative president Chen Hsin-hung (陳信宏), who manages the store.
Lin said he spent three days during the extended winter vacation drawing on the blackboard.
Raised in Nantou County’s Puli Township, Lin said he often rode his bicycle around the county’s mountainous areas, where he encountered the wildlife endemic to the nation, such as the mikado pheasant.
As an environmental advocate, he never uses an air-conditioner, buys drinks from tea shops or eats with disposable eating utensils, Lin said, adding that he hopes to major in animation at university so that he can convey eco-friendly ideas through visuals.
To support Lin’s idea, the school’s food store switched to paper bags.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically