Japan retained its position as Taiwan's No. 1 source of foreign visitors in the first five months of this year, with nearly 470,000 Japanese coming to the country during the period, according to statistics released this week by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
During the January-May period, foreign travelers paid a total of 1.43 million visits to Taiwan, up 5.9 percent over the year-earlier level, ministry figures show.
Japanese visitors made more than 469,000 visits to Taiwan, leading tourists from all other countries.
Visitors from Hong Kong and Macau were next on the list, making more than 170,800 visits to Taiwan during the same period. That was followed by more than 150,000 visits by US citizens, some 82,000 visits by South Korean travelers and 68,000 visits by Singaporeans.
Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Canada ranked sixth to 10th in terms of traveler numbers visiting Taiwan in the first five months of this year, ranging from 46,000 visits to around 22,000, according to the ministry's tallies.
Compared with the previous year's level, the number of tourists from Indonesia posted the largest growth at 80.5 percent.
Ministry officials attributed the substantial rise to Taiwan's re-opening to Indonesian workers in 2003.
At the same time, the numbers of visitors from the US, Canada and the Philippines registered declines year-on-year, the ministry said.
According to the ministry's tallies, Taiwan ranked 14th among the 44 Asia-Pacific countries and areas in terms of tourist arrivals last year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching