This year’s Hohaiyan Gongliao Rock Festival is back on after the New Taipei City Government late on Thursday made a policy U-turn on an earlier decision to cancel the event.
In a statement, the city’s Department of Tourism said the rock festival at Fulong Beach (福隆海灘) is to be held concurrently with the River and Ocean Musical Festival over three consecutive weekends in August.
The reversal comes after the tourism department’s earlier announcement, that it was scrapping the Hohaiyan Gongliao Rock Festival and replacing it with four weeks of beach and mountain activities due to a lack of space was panned by music fans.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
The decision sparked outrage and complaints by music fans, local residents and elected representatives, prompting the department to reverse the decision 48 hours later.
Residents and local politicians also condemned the city government over the opaque process and lack of consultation in making the decision. They questioned the motive behind the reversal, asking if it was a trick to lure young people, as New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) is widely expected to run in next year’s presidential election.
“The Hohaiyan Rock Festival is a well-known brand with more than two decades of history. It has turned many of Taiwan’s unknown bands into headline acts, which is good for promoting music and tourism in the city,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) New Taipei City Councilor Chiu Ting-wei (邱婷蔚) said.
DPP Councilor Lee Yu-dien (李余典) said Hou is deceiving the public by claiming that he has reinstated the Gongliao festival when in reality it has been scaled back, with the main themes changed and the event itself becoming a small feature of the River and Ocean Music Festival.
“When the sudden decision was met with a public outcry, [city authorities] said it would still be held, which indicates that the decision was made haphazardly, without consultation,” DPP Legislator Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) said. “The new version is lacking in indie music spirit and has no links to local residents’ will to safeguard the beach and the marine environment.”
The Hohaiyan festival is usually held each summer for two to three days. Since its launch in 2000, it has featured popular Taiwanese musicians such as Mayday and pop singer A-mei (張惠妹), as well as performers from elsewhere in Asia and from Europe and North America.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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