The Taichung City Government is to install colorful LED lights in and around Rihyue Lake (日月湖) and activate them on Aug. 17, in time for Lovers’ Day, the Taichung Construction Bureau said.
Last year, the city government finished cleaning Rihyuehu, the city park’s lake, and with the lake now cleaned, the city has set its sights on further beautifying the park with lights, which cost NT$5.66 million (US$186,270), the bureau said.
The lights are being installed on the shore, in the lake’s central pavilion, the park’s fountain, and the Jhongshan (中山) and Jhongjheng (中正) bridges, it said.
Photo: Chang Ching-ya, Taipei Times
The project highlights the park’s main attractions while improving illumination, it added.
The additional LED lamps in the pavilion are being installed in a way that preserves the contours of the historic structure and make the nighttime scene more eye-catching, the bureau said.
Red, blue and green lights are being installed at the bottom of the lake, with “smart” controls that change the number of lights activated according to the time of day, while the fountain’s lights would be activated all day, it said.
Different types of lighting schemes are being installed at Jhongshan and Jhongjheng bridges to highlight their distinct aesthetics, with the former being a Japanese-style timber structure and the latter a Chinese-style brick structure, the bureau said.
Lights are also being installed on the footpaths around the lake, including some on trees, the bureau said, adding that the wiring is being carefully wound around tree trunks to avoid harming the trees.
Taichung Construction Bureau Director-General Huang Yu-lin (黃玉霖) said the lights would be automatically turned on at night, but some, except those providing illumination on footpaths and bridges, would be switched off in rotation to preserve energy.
Different lighting patterns would be used at special events, activities and festivals, she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the