Visitors to the Taipei Zoo who want to see the panda cub Yuan Zai (圓仔) from Monday, when she is scheduled to make her first public appearance, should pick up numbered slips at the zoo entrance and follow the designated route to the Panda Hall, the Taipei City Government said yesterday as it unveiled details for Yuan Zai’s debut.
Taipei Zoo director Jason Chin (金仕謙) said numbered slips will be available at all eight entrance counters. Each slip will have a time printed on the back.
Visitors should arrive at the Panda Hall 10 minutes before the designated time on their slips to ensure they are allowed into the premises at that time. Time spent inside the hall will be limited to 10 minutes per group.
Photo: CNA
Chin said the groups could have up to 400 people and a maximum of 20,000 visitors would be allowed entry to the Panda House per day.
Zoo officials said they expected each day’s allocation of numbered slips to be given out by 12:30pm.
The six-month old cub will be in the same enclosure as her mother, Yuan Yuan (圓圓), while her father, Tuan Tuan (團團), will be in a separate enclosure due to the territorial nature of pandas.
Schools or other groups with more than 30 members can book group visits three days in advance, Chin said.
Although Yuan Zai has not been on display, she has not only become the most popular animal in the zoo, but its most-viewed animal after a realtime online streaming service was launched in October last year to record her daily life.
The service has been greeted enthusiastically by the public, Chin said.
The city government has also stepped up its efforts to promote the cub, using trademarked Yuan Zai logos in almost all its activities. The city’s Department of Economic Development is to release at least 30 authorized Yuan Zai products today.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday lauded Yuan Zai for bringing a sense of happiness to the public. He said the zoo has invited panda experts to evaluate the cub’s health and development before her first public appearance.
“Panda experts said she has become used to the environment in the exhibition area. We request visitors to refrain from using a flash when taking photographs or tapping the glass [separating the pandas from the public], which will scare the pandas,” he said.
The zoo is open from 9am to 5pm Monday to Sunday. During the Lunar New Year holidays it will be open from 8:40am to 5:10pm.
A free bus service between Taipei City Hall and the zoo will run daily between 7:30am and 6pm, the Department of Transportation said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS