A museum dedicated to Taiwanese bubble tea could open in Greater Taichung by the end of the year to promote bubble tea culture and local tourism, the project’s organizer said.
The Chun Shui Tang Cultural Tea House, a bubble tea maker, said it hopes the museum will help introduce tourists to the quintessentially Taiwanese product, which is unique in being served with black tapioca balls in the bottom of the cup.
“We hope to take this opportunity to promote Taiwanese bubble tea to tourists,” the tea house’s project manager Angela Liu said.
More than 10 percent of the tea house’s customers are foreign visitors, most of whom come from Japan, Hong Kong and other Asian countries, Liu said.
Liu said the museum is planning to provide information on how the product is manufactured, as well as offering courses that would allow visitors to hand-shake their own beverages.
The idea of offering a hands-on tea-making experience came from a successful promotional program the tea house is already running, which it developed with the Tourism Bureau two years ago amid a government bid to diversify tourism through offering more alternative travel options.
About 600 foreigners have participated in the English-language courses so far, Liu said, adding that the response has been positive.
The tea house is also planning to open its first overseas branch in Tokyo later this year as part of plans to tap into the global market where bubble tea has been proving increasingly popular.
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