More than 1 million people on Saturday visited the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taipei, the highest single-day figure for this year’s edition of the annual event, the Tourism Bureau said in a statement on Sunday.
However, safety measures were not required, as the crowd did not hit the 90 percent capacity threshold required for their implementation, it said.
The mild and dry weather over the weekend attracted large numbers of visitors to lantern festivals across Taipei’s 12 districts, it said, adding that the weekend being the last of the winter school holidays was an added factor.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The number of passengers using the five Taipei MRT stations near major displays set up in the city reached more than 300,000 on Saturday, an increase of about 130,000 from a year earlier, the Taipei City Department of Information and Tourism said in a separate statement on Sunday.
The five stations comprised Taipei 101/World Trade Center on the Red Line, and four on the Blue Line along Zhongxiao East Road.
Access to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Station was controlled to limit crowding after the displays were turned off at 10pm, the department said, adding that measures were not necessary at other stations.
The northern part of the hall features the largest lantern and light installations, and is the location most likely to reach 90 percent capacity, which would be about 189,000 visitors, the bureau said.
The festival’s main attraction this year, an exhibition titled Brilliant Light of the Jade Hare, features a 22m-tall “robot” displayed at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
If the site reaches 90 percent capacity, festival staff would advise arrivals of safety concerns and direct them to other display sites nearby, the bureau said.
Scheduled light shows would be suspended and staff would guide visitors into the memorial hall building to avoid a crush, while safety text messages would be sent to mobile phones in the area, the bureau said.
This year’s lantern festival is open to the public free of charge from 5pm to 10pm daily until Sunday.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS