This year's Taipei Lantern Festival opens today, with several locations in Xinyi District having been turned into lantern display areas for the week-long festival.
The festival, which runs through Feb. 24, features various kinds of lanterns designed according to the Year of Rat theme in the Xinyi business district, including the Sun Yat-sen Memorial, Taipei City Hall and several parks and plazas in the area.
Rather than simply having a mascot this year, the department invited architect Liu Kuo-chan (
A five-minute light show featuring the main lantern will be presented every hour from 6pm to 11pm until Tuesday.
In addition to the main lantern display area at the memorial hall, more traditional lanterns and ones with religious themes can be found near Taipei City Hall. International lanterns from Macau, the Philippines, Malaysia and other places are on display at the Xinyi 21 Plaza in front of Taipei 101.
Taipei City's Civil Affairs Department said residents can pick up free mini-lanterns at the Renai Road entrance of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial from Saturday to Thursday, and at the main entrance of Taipei City Hall on Saturday and Sunday. A limited number of free lanterns will be given away at these locations starting at 2pm during the festival.
To ease the heavy traffic expected during the festival, the city's Department of Transportation is providing a lantern bus service between the Zhongxiao-Fuxing and Taipei City Hall MRT stations.
The department encouraged festival participants to take advantage of public transportation, as Renai, Songgao, Shifu and Yixian roads will be partly closed to traffic during the festival.
For more information on this year's Taipei Lantern Festival, visit www.taipei-festival2008.com.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS