Aiyu jelly (愛玉) was voted as the most popular summer snack in a food competition organized by the Tourism Bureau.
The bureau will encourage the consumption of this indigenous snack during the summer travel season among domestic and international tourists, Tourism Bureau Director-General David Hsieh (謝謂君) said yesterday.
“We eat zongzi [粽子, glutinous rice dumplings] during the Dragon Boat Festival, mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival and tang yuan [湯圓, glutinous rice balls] during the winter solstice. What do we eat for the summer solstice? Well, aiyu jelly,” Hsieh said.
Photo: CNA
The food competition, titled “Using the taste buds to travel along the Tropic of Cancer (味蕾遊北回),” was part of the bureau’s Summer Solstice 235 travel campaign.
Taiwan is the easternmost nation among the 16 countries along the Tropic of Cancer, which is located 23.5° north. The northern tropical line runs through Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Kaohsiung, Yunlin and Penghu.
For the competition, the bureau first chose 10 popular summer snacks from these administrative regions, including mango shaved ice, aiyu jelly, green grass jelly, cactus ice cream, watermelon, fresh milk from Ruisui Farm (瑞穗牧場), tomatoes dipped in ginger sauce, cold noodles, sweet and sour plum juice, and star fruit juice.
The bureau then launched an online competition, with food critics and travel writers accounting for 80 percent of the final vote. Though mango shaved ice was chosen as the favorite summer dessert by netizens, aiyu jelly emerged as the final winner of the competition.
Aiyu jelly is made of the fruit of an indigenous fig tree grown in the high mountains of Taiwan, which the judges say make it representative of the nation.
Moreover, people can buy aiyu jelly anywhere in the country, which also makes it easier for the government to promote, the bureau said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuaug-shih (葉匡時) said the campaign was the brainchild of Deputy Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), the former minister of transportation, who was inspired when he saw a program by British Broadcasting Corporation introduce the countries along the Northern Tropics, with Taiwan being one of them.
Hsieh said the Summer Solstice 235 campaign is scheduled to begin on Friday next week, which is the summer solstice. Celebrations that day would begin with the first sunrise of summer in the nation’s east coast.
Travelers can join a carnival of the Aborigines in the East Rift Valley, tour around the forestry culture park in Chiayi City, play golf in Alishan (阿里山) and the Siraya National Scenic Area, or observe the astronomical wonders at the Solar Exploration Center in Chiayi County in the morning.
They can also attend the sunset or the starlit concerts on the west coast or Penghu on that day, he added.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not