Saturday night saw the lighting of Taiwan’s first Christmas tree on water by Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) on the waterfront of his city’s Willow River (柳川).
The city this year moved its annual Christmas festival, which was previously held on the New City Hall Plaza, to the riverside.
A popular attraction in Taichung, the river was reopened on Christmas Eve last year after the completion of a renewal project.
Photo: Huang Chung-shan, Taipei Times
The Willow River used to be severely polluted with industrial waste, became a dirty ditch and was often criticized by local residents, Lin said.
After improvements by the city, the river has taken on a brand new look and become the city’s most popular check-in location on Facebook, Lin said.
The Christmas tree is 9m high, the city government said, adding that the tree’s design was based on the imagery of an overflowing river and incorporates images from the World Flora Exposition, which is to be held in Taichung next year.
The waterfront also features interactive art, including shadow play and 3D “flower seas.”
The lighting exhibition, which also opened on Saturday, uses LED lights to decorate the waterfront with different shapes — including a large gift box, tulips and roses — and a light-tunnel under a bridge.
The lighting exhibition will be on view until March 4, the city government said.
At the lighting ceremony, Lin also made two announcements.
Lin said the city has received funding from the central government for the second phase of the Willow River renewal project, which is to begin next year and would preserve the beauty of the waterfront.
Lin also said the renovation of the 800m Green River (綠川) is to be completed by February.
The rivers will make Taichung beautiful again and the old town area will shine like never before, Lin said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS