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.
READY: The CGA said it closely monitored China’s maritime exercise, deployed vessels to shadow the Chinese ships one-on-one and set up emergency response centers Chinese navy and coast guard ships have returned to China, signaling the end of a massive maritime exercise, authorities said yesterday. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) released images it said showed Chinese vessels sailing north in rough seas past Taiwan on Thursday, on their way to China. “All the Chinese coast guard went back to China yesterday, so although they have not officially made any announcement, we consider it over,” CGA Deputy Director-General Hsieh Ching-chin (謝慶欽) said. Beijing has not confirmed the drills and the Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not say whether the maneuvers had taken place when asked at a
People can take the Taipei MRT free of charge if they access it at Nanjing Sanmin Station or Taipei Arena Station on the Green Line between 12am and 6am on Jan. 1, the Taipei Department of Transportation said on Friday, outlining its plans to ease crowding during New Year’s events in the capital. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend New Year’s Eve events in Taipei, with singer A-mei (張惠妹) performing at the Taipei Dome and the city government’s New Year’s Eve party at Taipei City Hall Plaza, the department said. As people have tended to use the MRT’s Blue or
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: As some roads would be fully or partially closed, people are advised to take the MRT, with services expanded to accommodate more riders This year’s Taipei Marathon, which has obtained its first gold label certification from World Athletics, is to be held from 5am to 1pm tomorrow and would have 28,000 participants. The race is to start from the Taipei City Plaza and would go through major roads throughout the city, with traffic control implemented from 6am to 2pm, officials said. The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system and New Taipei City MRT Circle line would start operating at 5am on the day of the race, they said. The race would cover Renai Road, Xinyi Road, Hangzhou S Road, Aiguo east and west roads,
Upon its completion next year, the new Tamkang Bridge (淡江大橋) in New Taipei City is to be an important landmark in Taiwan, alongside Taipei 101, Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shi-kai (陳世凱) said today. The bridge is scheduled to be completed in December next year and open to the public in the first half of 2026, connecting New Taipei City’s Tamsui (淡水) and Bali (八里) districts. It is an asymmetric single-tower suspension bridge, nearly 70 stories tall, designed by world-famous architect Zaha Hadid. The bridge aims to alleviate traffic in Tamsui and on the Guandu Bridge (關渡大橋), in addition to increasing the
RSS