Sales at the National Palace Museum’s souvenir shop grew 10 percent in the first week of this month compared with the same periods in August and last month, the general manager of the museum’s souvenir department said yesterday.
Ho Chun-huan (何春寰) said that although there did not appear to be an obvious rise from the previous two months in the number of Chinese tourists who visited the museum in the period between Oct. 1 and Thursday — the long national day holiday called “golden week” in China — souvenir sales were up.
Most of the tourists spent between NT$1,400 and NT$1,500 on souvenirs at the museum during the period, higher than the NT$1,000-NT$1,200 they spent in August and last month, she said.
One of the tourists spent a whopping NT$1.06 million (US$34,248) in a single day, making him the biggest spender the store has seen since Taiwan opened its doors in 2008 to Chinese tourists, Ho said.
The National Palace Museum was one of the five most popular tourist destinations in Taiwan among Chinese visitors during the weeklong holiday, behind Sun Moon Lake (日月潭) in Nantou County, Taipei 101 and Sizihwan Bay (西子灣) in Kaohsiung City, according to the Tourism Bureau.
However, shops and vendors at the Sun Moon Lake scenic area said nothing had changed during the week, with no discernible increase in the number of Chinese visitors.
Tea egg vendor Chou Chin-pen complained of low business throughout the holiday, especially in the last three days.
“We were so idle we could fall asleep in the daytime,” she said.
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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