A Chinese company is planning to send 9,500 of its employees and their family members to Taiwan on a sightseeing tour later this month, but they will not visit southern Taiwan, Taiwanese officials said.
Officials from the National Immigration Agency (NIA) and the Tourism Bureau said yesterday that the tourists from Beijing’s Pro-Health company would be divided into seven groups, the first of which would arrive in Taiwan via Hong Kong on Oct. 30.
The groups will have a choice of two tours during their seven-day visit, the itinerary Pro-Health sent to the Tourism Bureau and NIA said.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
One tour would take the visitors to central Taiwan immediately after arriving at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. They would then travel to Taipei before heading home.
The second choice would allow the tourists to first visit Taipei, then drive to central Taiwan where they would visit Sun Moon Lake and other tourist attractions.
The travel plans do not include southern Taiwan, the officials said without giving a reason for the exclusion. In March, when more than 10,000 employees and sales representatives of the Chinese branch of the international marketing company Amway came to Taiwan on a cruise, they did not visit southern Taiwan either.
At the time, the company said the groups only had only three days to tour Taiwan, so it would be impractical to include Kaohsiung Harbor in the itinerary.
Southern Taiwan is known to be a stronghold of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS