Visitors can experience an innovative Lantern Festival in Yunlin County this year, held annually on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, as the Yunlin County Government prepares to celebrate the event with life-like virtual lanterns using new 3D technology.
Instead of using giant lanterns made of multi-colored paper or electric lanterns featuring animated characters, the county government decided to try something new for the upcoming Year of the Snake and use virtual lanterns.
The lanterns’ designs will revolve around three major themes and feature items such as a Ferris wheel, a faucet and a corsair. They are to be showcased at the Head of Waterways Cultural Park and a road near the Beigang River (北港溪) embankment in Beigang District (北港).
The projection show, which will cost the county government nearly NT$7 million (US$240,000), also aims to draw more visitors to the area at a time when the district’s renowned Chaotien Temple (朝天宮) is preparing for an influx of flock to the temple to pray for good luck and prosperity after the Lunar New Year, the festival organizers said.
Hung Jen-sheng (洪仁聲), the interim director of the county’s Cultural Affairs Department, said the county government converted the park from the Beigang Levee No. 1, which housed a unique decagon-shaped water tower and a generator room constructed during the Japanese colonial era.
“The decagon water tower was built in 1930 and is particularly well-known, making the cultural park — which is only 600m away from Chaotien Temple — an ideal spot for worshipers and tourists to visit,” Hung said.
Hung said district residents could expect large crowds in the area to see the virtual lanterns during the Lunar New Year holiday, which runs from Feb. 9 to Feb. 17.
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