The Yushan National Park Administration is considering amending regulations to ban people from exposing their bodies on the peak of Yushan (玉山), a park official said on Saturday.
People have over the past few months been posting online nude photographs of themselves on the summit, apparently to express the joy of making it to the top, park administration Deputy Director Lin Wen-ho (林文和) said.
About one-third of the nation’s mountains above 3,000m are in Yushan National Park, of which Yushan’s main peak — the nation’s tallest mountain at 3,952m — is the most popular, with about 500,000 people filing applications to climb it each year, Lin said.
Photo courtesy of the Yushan National Park Administration
The list of activities prohibited in the national park originally included 16 items and was last year amended to cover political or controversial activities, after members of pro-unification groups took photos of themselves displaying the People’s Republic of China flag on the summit, Lin said.
The park administration hopes to ban nudity on the summit in the spirit of last year’s amendment, he added.
Some climbers took photos of themselves naked after summiting Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia, which is considered a holy mountain in the nation, Lin said.
A large earthquake later hit the region, sparking speculation that the climbers had angered the spirits of people killed by past rockfalls on the mountain, he said.
Lu Tien-teng (盧添登), a volunteer working in the park, once captured images of a cloud formation that resembled a mountain god, which was part of the reason why the park administration has encouraged people to keep mountains clean and respect them, Lin said, adding that the park administration together with the public hopes to foster environmental protection.
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