Taipei’s annual Eid al-Fitr celebrations yesterday returned to Daan Forest Park after a two-year hiatus, with about 10,000 attendees enjoying an array of attractions, including a halal bazaar, outdoor cinema and interactive cultural exchange booths.
Festivalgoers were required to wear masks and observe social distancing amid rising COVID-19 cases nationwide.
They were also required to show proof that they had received at least two doses of an approved COVID-19 vaccine to enter venues such as the main stage, outdoor cinema and cultural experience area, organizers said, adding that attendees were also not allowed to eat or drink at the festival.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Indonesian festivalgoers Adi Putri, Dew and Tini said that despite high COVID-19 case numbers, their employers had still encouraged them to attend, asking only that they wear a mask and stay vigilant in avoiding close physical contact.
Ani, who is also Indonesian and said she has lived in Taiwan for eight years, said that although she had come with friends from her home country, they decided to stay out of the festival’s main venues as there was “too much hustle and bustle.”
However, she said some of her friends, many of whom work as caregivers for older people, were unable to attend because their employers had asked them not to go to events with large crowds amid the current outbreak.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in his speech at the opening of the festival that after a two-year pandemic-imposed hiatus, the city had resolved to celebrate Eid al-Fitr in Taipei this year despite the challenges.
Eid al-Fitr, also known as the Festival of Breaking the Fast, marks the end of the month-long dawn-to-dusk fasting of Ramadan.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching