The beer flowed, acrobats flipped and traditional Chinese instruments sang out as Beijing tried to boost its SARS-battered tourism industry with a bash for foreign visitors at the Great Hall of the People.
More than 500 tourists from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea were treated to a banquet and show Friday -- a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted a travel advisory on Beijing that had devastated the Chinese capital's economy.
Beijing tourism officials said they hoped publicity from the banquets would spread the word that the city is a safe place to visit. They said they planned to offer banquets to a total of 1,500 tourists.
Meanwhile, health officials in Taiwan -- the last area on the WHO list of SARS-affected areas -- expressed hope that the island would soon be removed from the list.
Yesterday, Taiwan reported no new infections for the 20th straight day since its last patient was hospitalized -- making it eligible to be dropped from the WHO list.
"Beijing can guarantee you a wonderful, safe visit, and unforgettable memories," Tourism Bureau Director Yu Changjiang said in a speech to diners.
Waiters in black tie served course after course of Chinese delicacies in an enormous third-floor hall in building where China's legislature meets beside Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing.
Camera crews and photographers milled among diners at red-draped tables, while musicians performed folk songs on the erhu, pipa and other traditional stringed instruments.
Beijing offered the banquets to the first tour groups to arrive on Friday.
"I was gobsmacked when they told us about it," said Jan Lokan, from Australia, part of a 30-member tour group who arrived Friday. The group received a police escort from the airport and were greeted with musicians and dancers at their hotel, she said.
Another member of the group, Jean Christie, said she booked the tour months ago, before the outbreak of SARS, which killed 348 people in China and sickened more than 5,300.
About half of all cases and deaths were in Beijing, the hardest hit place in the global outbreak, which is believed to have originated last November in southern China.
"We were just hoping that SARS would be over by the time we came," Christie said.
Hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists heeded the WHO advisory and stayed away from China during the outbreak.
Millions of Chinese tourists also kept away due to travel restrictions. aimed at containing the flu-like illness.
No newly isolated cases of the disease have been announced in Beijing in about one month.
Tourism earned Beijing 118 billion yuan (US$14 billion) last year, but revenues this year are expected to be 45 billion yuan (US$5.4 billion) below that.
In addition to the banquet, Beijing is conducting promotions in major tourist markets such as Japan, Korea, France and Germany and will sell tickets to attractions at off-season prices.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by