Thousands of young Taiwanese will descend on the southern beach town of Kenting today for a weekend of concerts and raves.
The excuse is spring break, which for most colleges around the country began yesterday and extends through the weekend.
"I just want to get out of town and relax and have some fun," said Bryant Kao (
Last year, Hengchun police estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 young people flooded into the town during spring break. Event promoters' attendance figures however put the total much higher, around 7,000 or 8,000.
Parties, and there are at least seven of them, have names such as Passion, Spring Love and Moonlight Make a Wish. Most are put on by night-club owners and promoters from Taiwan's largest cities -- ?one has even rented out an entire 67 room hotel for his event -- ?and for the first year ever they've drawn big-name sponsors such as HBO, MTV and Coors Light.
"The profile of the target audience is very close to the profile of our target consumer -- ?that's basically young people," said Gary Yeh, who markets Coors Light beer.
But even though it's spring break, the template is not so much an American collegiate beer orgy as it is a European music festival.
When asked if he'd be imbibing, Kao replied, "Maybe a couple, but not that much. For most people, I think it's more about dancing to some really `high' music."
Rave promoter David Jr. likens his Moonlight party to the Ibiza scene, which ushers in summer with techno in Spain, or Koh Phangan, which draws a large Euro crowd to full-moon raves in Thailand.
Spring Scream, the rock concert that started it all in 1995, finds parallels in summer mega-concerts such as Glastonbury in England and Fuji Rock in Japan.
But the scale is smaller. At only 150 bands and 3,000 annual visitors, Spring Scream can't really compare to big parties in the West or Japan, but it has still developed a reputation among rockers in Asia.
"It's not that famous in Japan, but people are getting to know it, especially if they travel," said Yutaka Ozawa, guitarist for the Tokyo-based band Mimie Chan, which will make its fourth Kenting appearance on Saturday.
"We just come every time because it's fun," he said.
Police, meanwhile, worry about drugs, especially Ecstasy. Last year one rave was closed down after the presence of drugs was verified.
Out of more than 500 party goers, 110 were tested for Ecstasy at a local police station and more than 100 of them tested positive, according to local police.
Also last year, one man drowned at another rave on Kenting's Dawan beach.
"Kids party, so we can't sleep," said Hengchun Police Chief Kuo Chih-yu (
"We welcome young people coming to these activities in Kenting, but we want to warn them we will be looking for drugs," he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the