The Tourism Administration brought back an award-winning train livery used in Japan last year and painted it on a Taiwan Railway Corp EMU700 commuter train, which entered service yesterday for a six-month run to promote local tourism in the northeast.
Taiwan Railway’s EMU700 train, repainted with what was first called the “BiBiBiBi! Taiwan” livery when it was used for a tourism promotion campaign in Greater Tokyo from June 7 to Sept. 28 last year, was inaugurated for service at Shulin Station in New Taipei City.
The EMU700 train’s silver carriage was covered in the classic red used for the Keikyu 1000 series model along with specially designed kanji for Taiwan, which shows popular Taiwanese products, including orchids, tea and pineapples.
Photo courtesy of the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration via CNA
Tourism Administration Director-General Chen Yu-hsiu (陳玉秀), who took up the post on Friday last week, said she proposed to her predecessor the idea of bringing the special train’s look back to Taiwan after it won an award from the Tokyo Outdoor Advertising Association in March.
The Tourism Administration is working on getting more Japanese visitors to Taiwan, she said, adding that she hoped the tourism train between Yilan and destinations in Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan can draw more visitors to the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area.
Taiwan Railway chairman James Jeng (鄭光遠) said at the ceremony that he had decided to extend the run of the train, now called “Beep Beep Taiwan,” from the originally planned three months to six months.
The goal is to promote tourism in New Taipei City’s Ruifang (瑞芳) and Gongliao (貢寮) districts, as well as in Yilan County, Jeng said.
Meanwhile, the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Headquarters highlighted in a statement the ongoing Fulong International Sand Sculpture Arts Festival that runs until Sept. 30 and other attractions related to the former mining town of Jioufen (九份) in New Taipei City.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
RSS