A series of Lunar New Year celebrations planned by the Yilan County Government will begin on the eve of the Lunar New Year and continue until the Lantern Festival, which falls on Feb. 17 this year.
“Since the completion of the freeway connecting Taipei and Yilan, it has become more and more popular for people from Taipei to have their Lunar New Year Eve dinner in Yilan,” Chen Shin-yi (陳鑫益), secretary-general of the Yilan County Government, said on the sidelines of an inaugural press conference for an event in Taipei yesterday showcasing the county’s agricultural specialties.
“To welcome visitors to our county during the Lunar New Year holidays, we’ve worked with farmers’ associations and the food and beverage industry across the county to come up with a Lunar New Year Eve menu featuring purely local specialties and farm produce,” Chen said.
The event at Huashan Creative Park that opened yesterday morning and will close at 6pm today showed just what visitors to Yilan could see.
In addition to many booths selling food items manufactured with local agricultural produce, such as egg rolls with scallions grown in Sansing Township (三星), kumquat, tea and orchids, there were also Taiwanese opera performances, as Taiwanese opera originated in the county.
“During the Lunar New Year holidays, there will be a series of Taiwanese opera performances in Yuanshan Township (員山), which is actually the ‘hometown’ of Taiwanese opera, followed by a lantern festival also in the township,” Chen said. “On the Lunar New Year Eve, there will be a countdown party at Jhongshan Park (中山) in Yilan City, featuring different types of performances, a 20m tall ‘New Year tree’ constructed with recycled plastic bottles and a 15-tonne giant bronze urn filled with burning charcoal.”
For more information, visit j7.lanyangnet.com.tw/ilanyear.
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