The Tourism Bureau yesterday rebutted reports that China would eliminate package tours to Taiwan by not issuing licenses for tour leaders to Taiwan.
The bureau made the remarks after a travel association reportedly said the Chinese government has stopped issuing licenses to Chinese tour leaders to Taiwan and that there would be no more qualified tour leaders by late summer at the earliest.
Taipei Association of Travel Agents deputy chairman Ko Mu-chou (柯牧洲) was quoted in a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily as saying that before the Lunar New Year holiday, about 8,500 Chinese tourists visited Taiwan per day — 4,500 traveling with tour groups and 4,000 as independent travelers.
This number has dropped to about 6,500 per day — with 1,900 to 2,100 joining package tours and about 4,000 traveling independently, Ko was quoted as saying.
The report quoted Taiwan Tourism Development Association secretary-general Tien Yi-hsiu (田一修) as saying that Chinese regulations stipulate that tour leaders must renew their licenses every year and that the Chinese government has stopped renewing licenses for some tour leaders to Taiwan.
Tien said that the Chinese government has stopped renewing licenses this year and said there would be no more package tours to Taiwan after a year, it reported.
Bureau official Liu Shih-ming (劉士銘) yesterday said the Chinese government amended its travel laws in 2016: Under the new law, the government would only issue licenses for tour guides — which would qualify holders to work as tour leaders as well — instead of issuing two separate licenses.
The decision to combine the two licenses was not aimed at Taiwan, as it applies to all package tours in general, he said.
As for reports that the Chinese government has refused to renew licenses for tour leaders to Taiwan, Liu said that Chinese regulations stipulate that tour leaders must have special tour leader licenses to conduct tours to Taiwan.
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
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
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