The first post-COVID-19 pandemic tour group from China’s Xiamen City arrived in Kinmen County yesterday for a two-day trip.
The 22-member group reached Shuishe Pier at about 10am via the “mini-three links,” which are direct ferries connecting Kinmen and Matsu with Chinese-controlled Fujian Province, and was greeted by a lion dance performance organized by the Kinmen County Government.
The visit came after a group of seven travel industry representatives from Xiamen arrived in Kinmen County on Wednesday for a three-day familiarization tour.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
The Kinmen trips made by the two groups were the result of joint efforts across multiple sectors, the county government said in a statement yesterday, adding that it and the local travel industry held several meetings to enhance the quality of tourism services.
Ferry services between Taiwan and China had been suspended since February 2020 due to COVID-19, with cross-strait ferry travel partially reopened for one month in January last year.
The tour group’s arrival came after the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Aug. 30 that Beijing would soon lift restrictions on group and independent travel for residents in Fujian Province to Kinmen.
China halted independent travel to Taiwan on Aug. 1, 2019, citing the poor state of cross-strait relations. It then suspended group travel in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The group’s first stop was Shuitou (水頭) in Jincheng Township (金城), famous for its traditional Southern Fukienese-style architecture. They also visited sites such as Chen Jing-lan Western-style House and Southern Stone Tidal Weir Park yesterday.
They are set to visit Mingyi Old Street and the historic Mofan Street today before returning to Xiamen via the direct ferry route in the afternoon.
The Kinmen County Government said it has also approved the applications of 27 independent Chinese travelers to visit the county on Wednesday for a two-day tour.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS