To usher in the New Year during the New Year’s Eve Fireworks Show, Taipei 101 will have the word “Taiwan” and an image of four colored hearts shown on each side of the building, the nation’s Tourism Bureau announced yesterday.
Designer Chen Chun-liang (陳俊良) said the image created by colored lights is meant to encourage people to embrace Taiwan with a bigger, more loving heart.
Based on Chen’s design, the hearts will be red, blue, green and yellow, facing the north, west, south and east respectively. “2009” will be displayed on top of each heart.
“Red symbolizes courage and happiness, blue symbolizes a broad international vision, green symbolizes nature and sustainable development and yellow symbolizes passion and friendliness,” Chen said.
“The placement of each color involves a lot of technical issues and does not have any political implication,” he said. “In 2009, the nation needs more than just blue and green.”
Chen said the fireworks show would last for 188 seconds. First “2009” will first appear, followed by the Chinese characters for Taiwan and then the hearts.
The display, which is costing NT$21 million (US$636,000), is sponsored by the Tourism Bureau, Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
As Taipei 101 has become one of the nation’s must-see tourist attractions and its annual fireworks show attracts coverage by overseas news media, the bureau started working with the building’s management last year to co-organize the New Year’s Eve event as a way to help promote tourism to the nation.
Chen was also the designer of last year’s display on the building, an image featuring a small red heart being used as a dot for the letter “i” in the word Taiwan.
The bureau said last year’s display was covered by a total of 75 news media in 26 nations around the world, which was equivalent to NT$100 million in promotional costs.
Wayne Liu (劉喜臨), director of the bureau’s international affairs division, said the bureau would shoot the annual New Year’s Eve Fireworks Show and produce a high-resolution film. It will be distributed to the nation’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and to flat panel manufacturers to be used as a sample film on TVs.
Liu said the fireworks show mainly attracts tourists from Southeast Asia and Japan.
“More are coming from Hong Kong in recent years to see the fireworks as well,” he said.
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