I went to Maokong today to try the gondola for the first time. Lo and behold, a sign that Taipei citizens only get a discount. My local friend paid $50, I paid $120.
Foreigners who are registered in Taipei are out of luck.
I am a Taichungian so I wouldn’t qualify anyway and I think it’s fair to discriminate based on where you live since non residents shouldn’t be benefiting from subsidized services of another city.
But I got there email and will put them on blast tomorrow for the obvious discrimination against legal foreign Taipei residents. Not that it will do any good.
Well you probably need a hukou in Taipei city, so that leaves huge sections of local population out of luck also.
Seems to be an unfortunate trend at most tourist sites around Taiwan, prob related to rise in foreign tourists so they they think they can charge more (but they hit the Taiwanese who are local with the same higher prices too).
Another example is the gold mine jinguashan which gives discount to Taipei county official residents only.
Haven’t been to alishan or the national palace museum (and wouldn’t expect a discount in either really), but have always had free entry to all sites around Tainan, Anping, Chimei museum etc.
I am on a marriage visa with household registration etc, but other foreigners here on regular ARCs get the same. Was even one of them who pointed out to me that I could get free entry.
Obviously there’s work to be done across the country, just to point out that down here it’s fine.
Visited the revamped tea “museum” in Pinglin yesterday. New Taipei City residents are stated to have free entry, gave it a go with my APRC and the lady (somewhat reluctantly) allowed me to enter for free, my wife had to pay 80NT as she had no ID with her.
On a side note, I’ve been to the old museum previously and it was just OK, nothing amazing, however I have no idea what market the new version is aimed at, I certainly won’t bother going back even with free admission. There are a few plates of tea that in a room, supposedly something interactive however most displays have do not touch signs. There are a few pictures of birds and frogs with sound bites and that’s about it. Wander around if you get in for free, definitely don’t bother paying 80NT, you’ll get much better value spending it at the excellent food stand just down the road.
On a side note, I’ve been to the old museum previously and it was just OK,
nothing amazing, however I have no idea what market the new version
is aimed at, I certainly won’t bother going back even with free admission.
Sadly, I’ve seen a couple of other examples of this deterioration of museums and other tourist sites after they’ve been “improved” and admission fees hiked. Free or not, I’d like to see these tourist attractions getting better, not worse. Not long ago, I visited the so-called “Hakka Museum” in Chihsiang (Taitung County) - it’s still free, but those really colorful handmade traditional Hakka clothing and handbags have been removed and replace with some boring black & white photos of Hakka people. It was never much of a museum to begin with, but now even less so - just Googling “Hakka people” will get you a better collection of photos.
Taiwan needs to seriously study tourism in neighboring countries like Vietnam and Thailand.
Something of a bump, it’s not been a year yet so the grave is still fresh.
Emailed the National Palace Museum quite some time ago through a link on their site querying the discount policy, just got a reply today although they don’t answer the question as I pointed out in my reply to them.
Feel free and let them know your thoughts on any of the email addresses below or through their website feedback.
Dear Mr. SuperS54,
Thank you for your inquiry to the National Palace Museum. The museum currently offers discounted tickets only to those holding R.O.C ID’s and other proof of R.O.C citizenship.
The National Palace Museum welcomes your visit.
**From: service01 [mailto:service01@npm.gov.tw] ** Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2017 10:02 AM To: 秘書室-npm108 Subject: FW: Admission Fees
**From: National Palace Museum [mailto:service@ms.npm.edu.tw] ** Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 6:51 PM To: service01@npm.gov.tw Subject: Admission Fees
Admission Fees
寄件者：SuperS54 email： (請回此信箱) 語言版本：en 內容：Why are foreigner resident tax payers with resident permits charged more than Taiwanese citizens?
I am writing to express my disappointment that as a foreigner who has been in Taiwan for over 5 years and paying taxes, I cannot get the same discounted rate as local Taiwanese.
I can understand visitors paying more, but not legal residents that pay taxes.
I have been in Taiwan for 5 years and until today I have not visited your museum becaue of this and I refuse to pay more for no reason other then being a foreigner.
Another possibility (as I think has been pointed out) is to simply forget about this temple to Chinese colonialism on Taiwan and instead enjoy the million other possible things to do here.
An update on this but still no real explanation so have replied with further questions! Feel free to jump in and email them, the more the merrier!
Dear Mr. SuperS54,
Thank you for your message. The National Palace Museum ticket prices are bound to certain regulations. At the moment, according to regulation, discount ticket prices can only be enjoyed by those who can display R.O.C citizenship identification cards and ISIC student identification.
Sincerely,
The National Palace Museum
**From: ** Sent: Friday, December 29, 2017 1:32 PM To: npm108 Subject: Re: RE:Admission Fees
**I do not intend to visit and also advise any other foreign residents not to visit whilst your racist policy is in place. **
**I ask the question again as you have not answered, why are foreign resident tax payers with resident permits charged more than Taiwanese citizens? **
Why are discount tickets not offered to all tax payers?
Thank you for your inquiry to the National Palace Museum. The museum currently offers discounted tickets only to those holding R.O.C ID’s and other proof of R.O.C citizenship.
Your reply just reminded me. My email to them bounced back last week, quite conveniently, after 2 days as undeliverable.
I just used their web form and copied and pasted the same message again.
As an aside, did you know that foreigners that have a disability also cannot get the disability discount card from the government? Only ROC ID holders can be disabled i guess
You guys are doing it wrong. Taiwanese organizations (be it private companies or government bureaucracies) are designed to have all decisions made top down. Sending emails to the public email address won’t help because the person reading your email is a low level employee of the museum who is only capable of producing form respondes (hence, the useless reply you got). Nothing will get kicked upstairs unless there is a direct order from upstairs to bring it up, and in most cases, no such order exists because that would be against the top-down culture of Taiwanese organizations. I work for a gigantic organization with a famous leader - so at least this is what happens at my company.
So what you need to do is to directly address someone high ranking who can influence the policy. Even if the high ranking person never reads your letter, at least someone in his office (i.e. a secretary) will, and having the letter sent from the top of the organization (e.g. someone with direct access to someone high ranking) will mean it will have more clout when received by the lower ranking person in charge of responding to it.
So a few options:
Email the director directly and make your case. At least the Ma-era director read my email and forwarded it to another employee to give me a decent response. Now there is a new director (Lin Jeng-yi 林正儀 and his email address according to the website seems to be jasperlin0520 at npm dot gov dot tw.
Emails are easier to create and easier to ignore. To be taken more seriously, send properly formatted snail mail addressed to the director or other official at the museum. And offer your email address for them to respond.
Have someone more important to send the message instead. Someone they would definitely not ignore. A good place to start is the membership of the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee. You can either pick up the phone or send a letter to see if one of those people will take your case. Legislators are only assigned 8 or so staff, so whoever you talk to will have direct access to the legislator. Here’s the list: https://www.ly.gov.tw/Pages/List.aspx?nodeid=109 Or try another, possibly sympathetic, government agency such as the National Development Council.
I’ve used your methods before when the bank turned me down for credit cards many years ago as I’m a foreigner. The low levels refused to let me speak to their boss so I wrote a letter to the CEO registered mail. In some cases the CEO actually called me to let me know he would look into it and miraculously I got a call the next day telling me it was all a big misunderstanding, your card is approved. The lower levels are scared of angering the upper echelon so they dont pass along any message. You gotta reach the top dogs but they are usually hard to get to.
That said I don’t want to go to this museum that bad so an email to annoy them is a far as i will go.
However thanks for the write-up, it helps for people to understand the power play that is in Taiwan government and business.
I believe this is not just a matter of going to the museum. If by law for example APRC holders have teh same rights as local ROC citizens, then why are we not granted free entry? Not doing so is against teh law, if it is written somewhere that we do have equal rights except voting.
If we can look for a reasonable legal support, I think we can reason with the top brass. We residents do not go to the museum that often, unless there is a visitor. That means we are contributing to Taiwan’s welfare by bringing expending tourists. It is not as if we all are going to clout the exhibits.
I think there is not a law that such thing is written. Instead, they write on APRC holders as a special case in respective law, when they need to treat them no as foreigners but in the same way with citizens.
