A record number of visitors descended on the Taipei International Flora Expo yesterday, thronging various venues and taking the event one step closer to an estimated 8.9 million as it concludes this evening.
By 8pm yesterday, 182,481 people had visited the expo during the day, breaking an earlier record of 153,833 set on Feb. 27.
This brought the total number of visitors to the expo to 8.8 million.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Expo spokesperson Ma Chien-hui (馬千惠) said the final day of the event, which would feature a full day of celebrations with carnivals and a fireworks show, was expected to attract more than 100,000 visitors.
Hoping for a last chance to visit the expo, visitors started lining up for tickets at 2am. About two hours later, all 3,000 appointment slips for the most popular pavilion, the Pavilion of Dreams, were gone.
High temperatures and overcrowded exhibition sites drew some complaints from visitors, who said the quality of the exhibition had suffered as a result of the large number of visitors.
“It’s so crowded that me and my family decided to leave early. It’s impossible to enter any pavilions or enjoy the floral decorations at outdoor areas because all you can see is people,” 34-year-old Taipei resident Chiu Fang-lin (邱芳琳) said.
Wu Chi-kai (吳啟凱), a resident of Greater Kaohsiung who also defied the crowd, said he expected a lot of people, but still decided to come -because he did not want to waste the advanced ticket he purchased.
As of yesterday, a total of 1.1 million advanced tickets remained unused, Ma said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said advanced tickets were not refundable because the refund period ended on Nov. 13 last year. He said the sale of advance tickets was done in accordance with regulations on charges and fees, and that expo organizers had informed advance ticket holders about the refund policy on its Web site.
Attending closing ceremonies for several pavilions, Hau thanked expo staff and volunteers for their dedication and said he expected the expo, which opened on Nov. 6 last year, would leave a wonderful memory for the public.
“We’ve been through the ups and downs for the hosting of the expo and I thank all of you for helping mark a perfect end to the event,” he said.
Today’s closing festivities will begin at 3pm with a parade at Dajia Riverside Park, followed by a series of performances featuring Aboriginal dancers and a theater show at 5pm.
A food festival featuring 160 vendors selling all kinds of Taiwanese snacks will be held at the park from 4pm to 9pm and a three-minute fireworks show will mark the official end of the expo at 10pm.
Expo organizers said the most popular pavilions would be reopened to the public as early as July after renovations.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater