The Tourism Bureau yesterday officially launched the Formosa Summer Festival in Taipei, encouraging people to begin their summer by tasting the nation’s frozen desserts.
Bureau Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said the festival is to highlight seven famous frozen treats: aiyu jelly with ice from Chiayi County, mango shaved ice from Tainan, big bowl shaved ice from Kaohsiung, cactus ice cream from Penghu County, shaved ice with sakura shrimp from Pingtung County, sugar apple ice from Taitung County and popsicles produced by the Hualien Sugar Factory.
The bureau has retained local celebrities as dessert ambassadors, including travel program hosts Gigi Lin (林如琦) and her husband, Stanley Lai (賴宥銘), who are to promote aiyu jelly with ice and mango shaved ice respectively.
Photo: Hsiao Yu-hsin, Taipei Times
Fitness trainer Eddie Pan (潘若迪) is to promote big bowl shaved ice, while Shanny Tu (涂珊), also known as A Nuo (阿諾), is to promote shaved ice with sakura shrimp.
Ultramarathoner Kevin Lin (林義傑) has been entrusted with promoting cactus ice cream, while radio disc jockey Dennis Au (區耕祥) is to promote sugar apple ice and Hualien Sugar Factory’s popsicles.
While people travel around the nation to taste the desserts, they can visit tourist attractions and attend other summer events in the areas, Chou said.
For example, visitors to Taitung could sample the sugar apple ice and visit the Wuling Green Tunnel (武嶺綠色隧道) in Luye Township (鹿野), he said.
“Taiwan has a wide variety of colorful frozen desserts. We hope that this festival will show people that eating frozen desserts is a must-do when traveling in Taiwan in the summer, and that they would surely regret leaving the nation without tasting some of them,” Chou said.
The bureau had previously organized Summer Solstice 235, a campaign that featured tourism events in communities on the Tropic of Cancer.
“Although Summer Solstice 235 generated a lot of publicity and proved to be a productive and effective campaign, it only focused on tourism events in cities and counties on the Tropic of Cancer,” Domestic Tourism Division section chief Tsai Tsung-sheng (蔡宗昇) said. “As we are seeking to enlarge the scale of tourism campaigns overseas, the question we should be asking is: What can tourists see in Taiwan when they come in summer?”
The new festival includes Summer Solstice 235 events, as well as events in other areas of the nation, Tsai said.
The bureau said it has also ensured that the frozen desserts are marketed in tourist attractions and events in their native regions.
It cited as examples visitors to the Tropic of Cancer Museum in Chiayi trying aiyu jelly with ice while they are there and attendees at a black sand arts festival in Kaohsiung’s Cijin District (旗津) enjoying big bowl shaved ice.
The bureau said it has worked with firms including Taiwan FamilyMart Co, Taisun Enterprise Co and Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp to create Formosa Summer Festival-themed products.
It has also worked with travel agencies to incorporate events into tour packages, it said.
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