In celebration of the opening of the MRT Xinyi Line, Taipei City’s Department of Information and Tourism is offering free guided tours of Xinyi District (信義) on weekends until Dec. 29.
The line, which opened on Nov. 23, runs past major city attractions in the district including Taipei 101, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
Department Commissioner Sun Ting-lung (孫廷龍) said the department is offering free tours starting this weekend to introduce the district to local and foreign visitors.
The department has set up a visitor information center at Exit 5 of the line’s Taipei 101/World Trade Center Station.
Weekend tours will take place between 10am and 2pm, with each outing lasting about 90 minutes.
The free tours are available in Chinese and English and introduce the district’s architectural specialties, public art and design works. People can try out the YouBike public bicycle rental program, and tour the veterans’ villages and handcraft fairs around the area, Sun said.
Each session is limited to 30 participants, who will receive a gift at the end of the tour, he added.
People interested in taking the tour can call the 1999 Citizen Hotline, ext. 3378, or the MRT Taipei 101/World Trade Center Station Visitor Information Center on 02-2758-6593.
The line, which has seven stations — Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Dongmen, Daan Park, Daan Station, Xinyi Anhe, Taipei 101-World Trade Center and Elephant Mountain — integrates with the Tamsui Line and allows passengers to travel directly between Beitou and Elephant Mountain stations in about 35 minutes. Passengers who use an EasyCard can get free rides until Dec. 23.
According to Ling Chi-yao (凌啟堯), director of Taipei Rapid Transit Corp’s public relations division, ridership on the line was about 180,000 yesterday.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS