More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today.
The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016.
The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night.
Photo courtesy of Tourism Administration
Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government.
The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT line.
The festival features a main lantern — which is shaped as the symbol of infinity and has patterns of cobra, mountains and sea — as well as two auxiliary lanterns and 11 theme lanterns.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Railway Corp
The display of the lanterns at the exhibition near the HSR station was inspired by the Rakuten Taoyuan Baseball Stadium, with the main lantern and three other lanterns being placed in ways that resemble the home base, first base, second base and third base of the ballpark. Another lantern that features baseball players is the pitching mound in the design.
The platform used in the inauguration ceremony resembles aircraft wings, as Taoyuan is known for its Taoyuan Aerotropolis — a large urban development project, said Martin Yang (楊佳璋), the festival’s project manager.
A three-minute lighting show would be played on the main lantern every 30 minutes.
In the “Creating Technology Trend” area, the organizer uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create an interactive space, where visitors could practice how to play baseball with AI representations of World Baseball Softball Confederation’s Premier12 champion national team players Chen Chieh-hsien (陳傑憲), Pan Chieh-kai (潘傑楷) and Lin An-ko (林安可).
The city government oversaw the designing of lanterns installed in Rakuten Taoyuan Baseball Stadium and four other locations around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station. The planning of the festival highlights Taoyuan as a city known as “the city of a thousand ponds.”
The 12-day event is estimated to attract 15 million visitors from home and overseas, Tourism Administration Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Railway Corp said it is to introduce a new boxed lunch featuring basil chili pork, which would be only available during the festival.
The boxed lunch is inspired by Taoyuan being home to Hoklo, Hakka, indigenous people as well as Chinese, the railway company said, adding that immigrants from Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia also have roots in the city.
Aside from chili pork, thelunches have Thai jasmine rice, shrimp cake, shrimp sauce-flavored cabbage, bell peppers, stir-fried mushrooms and bean sprouts.
Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp said it would schedule 95 additional trains during the festival and dispatch a train every 20 minutes on weekdays and every 15 minutes on weekends.
During the festival, the Taoyuan HSR Station would implement measures to ensure passengers enter and exit in an orderly fashion, the company said.
Passengers who are scheduled to travel to the airport are encouraged to leave home early to avoid crowds, it said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service