Taipei International Flora Expo will kick off a 20-day trial operation today, opening its 91.8 hectare exhibition sites to 500,000 volunteers, students, disabled groups and local residents to help the expo organizing committee test traffic capacity and determine whether current plans can be improved in any way.
The trial run will be divided into four phases, the first being held at Yuanshan Park, which houses the Pavilion of Culture, the Pavilion of New Fashion, the Expo Dome, the Expo Theater and Celebrity House.
A total of 5,000 volunteers and local residents in Zhongshan (中山) and Datong (大同) districts will be the first to take part at Yuanshan Park today.
Director of the expo organizing committee, Ting Hsi-yung (丁錫鏞), said the trial will focus on Xinsheng Park, the Fine Arts Park and Dajjia Riverside Park in later phases and increase the number of daily visitors to 70,000 in the final four days to test the expo’s capacity.
The expo will formally begin on Nov. 6 and Taipei City Government expects the six-month event to attract more than 8 million visitors. The trial run will only be open to Taipei residents, who can register with borough chiefs to apply for free passes to the exhibition.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) instructed the city’s Department of Economic Development and other related departments to collect visitors’ comments during the trial run and resolve all problems before the formal opening, which is just three weeks before the Taipei mayoral election.
Hau, who has been plagued by challenges and criticism surrounding overpriced flowers and other materials used for the expo, announced the launch of the trial operation at a press conference yesterday.
“We are hoping that local borough chiefs will take local residents to visit the expo sites during the trial run and let us know about any problems and flaws they find. When the expo formally opens next month, we want the world to see the strength of Taiwan’s horticultural industry,” Hau said at Yuanshan Park.
Local supermodel Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), a spokesperson for the event, attended the press conference to make public a theme song she has written for the expo. She and other celebrities, including pop band Mayday (五月天) and Wu Bai (伍佰), will participate in a concert on Oct. 17 in front of Taipei City Hall to promote the expo.
Meanwhile, Kung Sing Engineering Corp (工信工程公司), at the heart of allegations concerning the bidding process for the Xinsheng Overpass reconstruction project, yesterday placed advertisements in major Chinese-language newspapers to declare its innocence of all wrongdoing.
Hau yesterday said the case is under investigation and he hoped the prosecutors would complete their work as soon as possible to end all speculation. The company was the main contractor for the reconstruction project. Prosecutors raided its offices earlier this week, searching for evidence that the firm conspired with top city officials to boost the prices of flower purchases for the project.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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