The small three links between Taiwan and China recorded a passenger flow of 187,000 between January and July this year, up 13.8 percent over the same period last year, according to tallies released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
In the first seven months of this year, 2,350 ferry trips operated between the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu and the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou.
Of these, 1,093 trips were operated by Taiwanese shipping companies and 1,257 trips by Chinese shipping companies, the tallies showed.
During the period, Taiwanese made a total of 165,000 trips across the Taiwan Strait via the small three links, compared with just 22,000 trips by Chinese citizens.
The Chinese passenger flow, however, represented a significant increase of 111 percent over the same period last year.
Meanwhile, a total of 400 million phone calls were made across the strait in the first seven months of this year, up 15.3 percent from the previous year's level.
Looking at the calls in terms of time spent talking, 1.39 billion minutes were used, up 10.9 percent year on year.
Owing to the rapid development of cross-strait telecommunication services and the popularity of e-mail, the volume of cross-strait mail decreased 25.9 percent year on year in the first seven months of this year.
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
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