The country’s opening to solo Chinese tourists under the free independent traveler (FIT) program has made two sisters’ dream come true.
Ye Suzhi (葉素枝) and Ye Suzhen (葉素貞) broke down in tears in front of their grandmother’s columbarium as they set foot in Greater Tainan on Thursday for the first time in 64 years.
The two sisters, both in their late sixties, were among the first group of nearly 300 FITs to arrive on Tuesday.
Photo: CNA
“Grandma, we are back with father’s spirit,” said the sisters, after placing offerings and incense outside the columbarium holding their grandmother’s ashes.
During a trip to China in 1947, the sisters and their parents, who originally lived in Tainan, were trapped in Xiamen because of the Chinese Civil War, and they were never able to return home. The sisters said they were aged only three and five when they left Taiwan.
Ye Suzhi, the elder sister, said the trip was bittersweet for her as her family has been unable to return to Taiwan to visit their hometown and relatives for over 60 years. Ye Suzhi said her grandmother has always been on their minds and that they told their father about the trip at his grave before they left.
Ye Suzhen said she felt like weeping when she saw her grandmother’s ancestral plot and that she felt content after the trip because she and her sister were finally able to get closure.
The sisters thanked Tainan City Government officials and an old friend for helping them to find their grandmother’s final resting place.
Shortly after their visit to the columbarium, the sisters went looking for their old home in the city, accompanied by city officials who tried to help the sisters locate it through the city’s old household registration data.
Despite failing to find their former home, the sisters were able to spot their aunt’s old house.
“We can remember playing in this very courtyard,” they 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
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
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
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,