The Taiwan Lantern Festival would return to Taipei next year following a 23-year hiatus, the Tourism Bureau said.
It would be the first major event held in the capital after Taiwan on Thursday last week ended mandatory COVID-19 quarantine for international arrivals, the bureau said.
The annual festival is to be held from Feb. 5 to 19.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang,Taipei Times
Hopefully, the event will bring tourists to Taiwan, Tourism Bureau Deputy Director-General Trust Lin (林信任) said.
Next year’s iteration is expected to be the biggest in the festival’s more than 30-year history, featuring four exhibition areas, one central installation and six major installations as part of a 300-lantern collection spread across 168 hectares, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said in a statement.
The festival’s central exhibition area would be at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and would house the main lantern, as well as three of the major lanterns and a number of theme-based lantern display areas, the department said.
Innovative content combined with traditional lantern art and cross-discipline lighting art is expected to attract works by local and foreign artists, providing visitors with an interactive experience, it said.
The lantern exhibition area would be located in East District (東區), where lanterns would be installed along alleyways in the commercial and business area, using the city as a stage, the department said.
The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park would house the “innovation exhibition area,” featuring a fusion of the old and new so that visitors could experience the diverse cultures of Taipei, it said.
The “future exhibition area” would be in Xinyi District (信義), and would integrate fashionable culture and digital technology to turn buildings into works of art and transport visitors to a luminous Taipei, the festival’s Web site says.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said the festival was last held in Taipei in 2000 and next year’s version would be different from those held in other places.
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