The Tourism Bureau yesterday unveiled the main lantern and handheld lantern that will be on display at the Taiwan Lantern Festival to be held in Ilan next month.
The next lunar year will be the year of the Ox in the Chinese Zodiac. Thus the main lantern design is based on the image of a Taiwan Water Buffalo (台灣水牛).
The golden water buffalo is about 14m high and stands on a 4.3m high pedestal. The entire lantern is placed on a platform surrounded by rice paddies and a water mill.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
The bureau said the image of the water buffalo plowing the land symbolizes the down-to-earth and hard-working Taiwanese. The rice paddies symbolize a good harvest and prosperity, while the water mill symbolizes a turning point for change.
The designers have put engines on the joints of the water buffalo to portray the image of an energized Taiwan ready to move. Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信) is in charge of lighting the main lantern.
The handheld lantern is called starlight ox (星光牛). The ox, which features golden horns and hooves, is lit by a small light-emitting diode bulb inside its body.
Bureau director-general Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) said 130,000 hand-held lanterns will be distributed at the festival.
The festival will open on Feb. 9 and end on Feb. 22 and will be the first lantern festival to be held on the East Coast.
As the festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary, the bureau will host an activity encouraging collectors of the handheld lanterns to come and show their collections. Those with more than six different handheld lanterns will be eligible for a prize draw, the top prize being a foldable bike.
Lai responded to recent speculation by saying the bureau will not suspend the festival. She said the bureau has promoted the festival for 20 years and that it is one of the most important festivals in the world.
In related news, Association of Taiwan Tour Souvenir chairman Lin Chien-jung (林建榮) said Pouchong Tea (包種茶), manufactured in Pinglin Township (坪林) in Ilan County — which on Monday won the Golden Award as the best tourist souvenir — would be collectively marketed under the brand of “Taiwan Best 100” and will be presented at the Taiwan Lantern Festival.
Silver Award-winner Dragonfly Glazed Beads — which became popular after being featured in the hit film Cape No.7 (海角七號) — and Special Award-winner Chiate Pineapple Cakes (佳德鳳梨酥) will also be marketed under the brand and presented at the lantern festival.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS