Revelers have a range of New Year’s Eve events to choose from in the countdown to next year, with the Taipei 101 party expected to be the biggest show in the country.
A slew of celebrities will take to the stage at the various events that include a countdown at Taipei Civic Square. Taiwanese music group S.H.E, electropop diva Jeannie Hsieh (謝金燕), singer Yoga Lin (林宥嘉) and singer-songwriter William Wei (韋禮安) will be among the artists to entertain the crowd at that party.
For the first time, the Taipei Civic Square countdown will feature a live link with the Red and White Year-end Song Festival in Japan and a concert by Japanese singer Masaharu Fukuyama in Yokohama, the Taipei City Government said.
Photo: courtesy of the Greater Tainan Government Tourism Bureau
A fireworks display of more than three minutes is to be held at Taipei 101, one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers.
About 800,000 to 1 million people are expected to flock to the Taipei 101 area for the celebrations, which are to be streamed live on the Internet on www.viki.com, the city government said.
In southern Taiwan, Greater Kaohsiung is to host two main countdown parties, one at the Dream Mall and the other at E-Da World. Taiwanese rock band Mayday (五月天), singer Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) and Singaporean singer J.J. Lin (林俊傑) are among the celebrities scheduled to perform at those events. Fireworks shows are also planned at the two venues.
The celebrations in central Taiwan include two major events in Greater Taichung, at Da Jia Stadium and National Taiwan University of Physical Education and Sport, featuring Taiwanese singers Jam Hsiao (蕭敬騰) and Lin Yu-chun (林育群), and Eric Suen (孫耀威) from Hong Kong, among other entertainers.
A variety of options are also available for people who are hoping to spend the New Year in a more natural setting, the Tourism Bureau said.
Ten out of 13 national scenic sites have planned celebrations to greet the New Year, including countdown parties, concerts, and sunrise and sunset watching events, the bureau said.
In the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area, where its “salt mountains” — large piles of salt drying in the sun — attract large crowds year-round, visitors can bid farewell to the last sunset of this year with music, dance and a ritual that involves the sprinkling of salt for good luck.
Those who prefer to see next year’s first sunrise from a higher vantage point can visit central Taiwan’s Alishan National Scenic Area, one of the nation’s most popular scenic areas, to watch a classical music concert, which it has been hosting since 2003.
A countdown party has also been planned in the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area, featuring popular music from 3:30am to 7:30am on Wednesday.
For wildlife lovers, the Maolin National Scenic Area in the south offers an ideal destination to welcome the New Year.
A campfire party is scheduled to run overnight in the area on Tuesday, while visitors are invited to a butterfly-watching event on the morning of New Year’s Day.
The park prides itself on a large population of purple crow butterflies, which tend to overwinter there.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater