Officials from Kinmen and Matsu expressed hope that residents of China’s Fujian Province, who will soon be allowed to visit the islands through existing channels, will help prevent their marginalization after Taiwan opens fully to independent Chinese tourists.
Guu Yung-yuan (古永源), director of the Matsu National Scenic Area Administration, said the extension of the “small three links” framework established in 2001 that has allowed limited postal, transport and trade links between several Chinese cities and the Taiwanese islands of Kinmen and Matsu could help boost local tourism.
CATCHING UP
With the imminent implementation of a free independent travelers (FIT) program that will allow Chinese tourists to individually visit Taiwan, Guu said the government should help outlying islands like Matsu to catch up so they are not treated as stopovers for Chinese tourists en route to Taiwan proper.
To achieve that goal, he said, current regulations that allow Fujian tourists to travel to Taiwan’s outlying islands only in groups should be lifted soon so -independent travelers from the province can also visit.
“We should take advantage of the existing ‘small three links’ model and encourage those who want to visit Taiwan proper to also go sightseeing and shopping in Matsu,” he said.
TAIWANESE PRODUCTS
He added that the island appeals to individual tourists from China’s Fujian Province because made-in-Taiwan products such as soaps, facial masks and even electric rice cookers are popular in China’s coastal cities.
Guu’s opinion was shared by Kinmen County Commissioner Li Wo-shi (李沃士), who said Kinmen has launched various campaigns — including designating new tour bus routes and providing free bike rentals — to prepare for FIT tourists.
As Xiamen, in China’s Fujian Province, hosted more than 30 million tourists from other Chinese cities and towns last year, Li said, the tourism market for extended travel based on the “small three links” looks good.
If just 1 percent of those tourists had extended their tours to Kinmen, he said, it would have equaled 300,000 Chinese tourists coming to the island.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the