The Taipei Lantern Festival begins on Saturday next week, with a 2.9km-long “lantern tunnel” to be lit along the Zhongshan N Road with a “four seasons “theme.
The decorations along the “light tunnel” will highlight some of Taipei’s popular attractions, such as xiaolungbao (小籠包), beef noodle soup and the Taipei Zoo’s panda cub Yuan Zai (圓仔).
Department of Civil Affairs Commissioner Huang Lu Ching-ju (黃呂錦茹) said the light tunnel would allow viewers to celebrate the festival while appreciating the historical buildings and markets in the Zhongshan N Road area.
“The community along the Zhongshan North Road is an area full of history and culture, and we encourage residents and visitors to walk along the street to experience history and lantern art at the same time,” she said.
Various shops in the Qing Guang Market (晴光商圈) on Zhongshan N Road and the Yuanshan Market (圓山商圈) near Taipei Flora Expo Park will offer discounts during the festival.
Qing Guang Market Development Association secretary-general Larry Yang (楊為榮), said a light tunnel boosted business for shops in the area by 20 percent last year, and the market expects a 30 percent growth in business this year.
The Taipei Lantern Festival will run until Feb. 16.
The main lantern display areas at the expo dome and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum on will be lit up on Feb. 6, with lanterns featuring Yuan Zai as one of the main attractions even though the new lunar year is the Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac calendar.
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:
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