The annual Taipei Dadaocheng Fireworks Festival is to be held at Dadaocheng Wharf and Yanping Riverside Park this Saturday with a concert and a 20-minute fireworks show, organizers said yesterday.
Combining both traditional and modern styles, the event this year will start at 4:30pm with booths highlighting local artists’ work and performances of Taiwanese folk songs.
The festival is also set to celebrate the upcoming Lovers’ Day (also known as the Qixi Festival, 七夕情人節) next week. The Taipei City Government is to join forces with Taipei Xia Hai City God Temple (霞海城隍廟) and send out 2,999 roses tied with red lines which symbolize happiness, according to Hsiao Chun-chieh (蕭君杰), division chief at Taipei City’s Department of Information and Tourism.
Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
“The free roses are to be tied with red lines prepared by the temple and hopefully spectators will feel love and happiness on Lovers’ Day when they come to the festival,” Hsiao said.
The festival, which the Taipei City Government is hoping will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from Taiwan and abroad, is to end with a 20-minute display starting at 8:30pm.
Hsiao said the department budgeted NT$4.5 million (US$150,000) to organize the festival which is to include a firework show along the Zhongxiao Bridge.
As Typhoon Kai-Tak approaches, the department said it does not have immediate plans to cancel the festival, but it will closely monitor the situation.
Taipei’s Traffic Police Division are to enforce traffic control measures around Yanping N Road, Kaifeng Street and Huanghe N Road from 6:30pm to 11pm on Saturday. The division advises those planning to attend the event to use public transport.
Shuttle buses are to be available at Taipei Main Station East Exit 3 and Shuanglian MRT Station Exit 2.
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:
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