The Taiwan Design Expo in Hsinchu on Friday attracted a record 640,000 visitors, most of whom were younger than 29 years old, the city government said yesterday.
The exposition opened on Thursday last week and closes today, with Hsinchu Park and the old town area on either side of the Hsinchu Railway Station serving as the main venues.
The city government has worked with Chunghwa Telecom to track the numbers of visitors through big data tools and found that visitors to the show on Friday exceeded 640,000 people, a record since the show’s opening, Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) said.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
Visitors have been increasing daily since its opening, while the railway station on Friday, the first day of the Double Ten National Day holiday weekend, recorded more than 56,000 passengers passing through the station, he said.
People from Taipei, Taoyuan, New Taipei City and Hsinchu city and county made up more than 70 percent of the attendees, while Japanese were among the largest group of foreign visitors, he said.
Additionally, more than 40 percent of visitors to the show were younger than 29, while the old town area attracted more people younger than 19, the Hsinchu Department of Transportation and Tourism said.
The average age of visitors might be even younger, as many people younger than 14 do not have cellphones and therefore were not included in the telecom’s data, it said, adding that the number of female visitors was slightly higher than males.
From 2:30pm to 3pm was the peak time for visitors, while there were fewer people in the morning, Lin said, advising people to arrive early to avoid crowds.
Big data tools allow the city to optimize shuttle bus schedules and evaluate if the event attracts its target audience as planned, he added.
A total of 400 foreign “high- level” professionals have been naturalized as Republic of China (Taiwan) citizens over the past decade as the government has eased nationality rules to attract talent from a wider range of fields, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The 400th high-level professional, who works in the electronics industry, was approved for ROC citizenship on Aug. 26, the MOI said. The MOI quoted the newly naturalized citizen as saying that Taiwan is a leader in fields such as semiconductors, electronics manufacturing, artificial intelligence development and energy technology. He also said
China has warned that it could cancel a planned US-China leaders’ summit if Washington approves new arms sales to Taiwan, a Japanese media outlet quoted sources as saying yesterday. US President Donald Trump, “apparently eager to showcase some diplomatic achievements ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections, places great importance on holding the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Japan’s Kyodo News reported. “While preparing for Xi’s upcoming trip, China has restated its position that the Taiwan issue is a ‘red line’ in bilateral relations,” the report said. The report said that when Xi met with Trump in Beijing in May, Xi said
RARE PEEK: The footage released showed one of the bears staying in a cave for as long as 70 days, providing the first record of Formosan black bear’s overwintering The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released tracking records of released Formosan black bears for the first time, showing that they get much closer to human settlements than previously thought. The agency said it had captured two bears, Da Qu-ali (達古阿里) and Aziman (阿里曼), in indigenous villages in Hualien County and began to track them with a camera-mounted satellite collar after releasing them back into the wild. The results confirmed that the bears have moved from deep mountain areas into lowland hills closer to human communities, leading to an increase in human-bear conflicts, it said. The agency has introduced artificial intelligence-assisted early
DIPLOMATIC TOUR: Chinese President Xi Jinping began a series of overseas visits last month to Kyrgyzstan, Egypt and India, aimed at securing leverage, an official said Recent Chinese diplomatic and military moves are aimed at creating pressure ahead of a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump, National Security Council adviser Huang Chung-yen (黃重諺) said. Trump when visiting China in May extended an invitation to Xi to visit Washington on Sept. 24. China is yet to officially announce plans for Xi’s visit to the US. In an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Thursday, Huang said Xi’s overseas visits, China’s “gray zone” activities along the First Island Chain and efforts to expand its trade surplus with the
RSS