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.
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