TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two vloggers who have stirred up controversy by mistakenly collecting wine bottles of historic significance as trash from a trail in Hsinchu County during a recent mountain clean-up activity issued a statement on Sunday night (Feb. 12) to apologize for their mistake and say they had sifted through a pile of bottles and returned those dating back to the Japanese colonial era to their original place.
Vloggers Celine and Cynthia’s YouTube channel is dedicated to mountain climbing and outdoor activities. On Feb. 2, they released a video titled “How dirty are Taiwan’s mountains and forests? We’ve picked up over 100 kilograms of trash from the mountains!”
The video was about a mountain clean-up activity organized by Celine, Cynthia, and a mountain climbing group and showed participants picking up garbage from the Xiakelo Historic Trail in Hsinchu County, CNA reported.
They collected a total of 130 kg of garbage, which they carried down the mountain. Amidst the trash were many wine bottles they picked up from the ruins of the Ma'an Police Station, per CNA.
However, the removal of the bottles caused some backlash since some view them as Japanese colonial era relics, which are of interest to those fond of early culture.
The history of the wine bottles has been confirmed and recorded by the Ministry of Culture’s Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank, CNA said.
However, some netizens argued the bottles are not necessarily cultural relics, and insisted that the government erect a sign to proclaim that, if they indeed are.
In response, Celine and Cynthia posted an apology to Facebook, saying that they did not study the history of the trail enough and then made the YouTube video private.
