Queen Elizabeth II on Monday visited Taiwan’s orchid booth at the Chelsea Flower Show in London and appeared intrigued by the display, which included an “orchid tree” and a golden dragon surrounded by thousands of fresh orchids from Taiwan.
The booth was decorated with several sky lanterns made of Hakka-style cotton print fabric, which caught the eye of the queen, who was visiting Taiwan’s orchid display for the third year in a row.
She asked Taiwanese Representative to the UK Shen Lyu-shun (沈呂巡) about the significance of the lanterns, which are usually made of paper and are lit for release into the sky.
Photo: CNA
Shen said people use the lanterns to pray for luck, while the dragon was a traditional symbol of royalty.
Many of the flowers at the base of the dragon were organized in five rings to represent the five Olympic rings, as London prepares for the Summer Games, Shen said.
The display’s general design was also conceived to congratulate the queen on her diamond jubilee, Shen added.
The “orchid tree” at the center of the exhibit was made of 20,000 fresh premium orchids of 50 different species, all of which were transported from Taiwan by air, according to its creator, the Taiwan Orchid Growers Association.
Association secretary-general Tseng Chun-pi (曾俊弼) said it was the first time his organization had “built an orchid tree” at the annual flower show.
“All the flowers on the tree were preserved using Taiwan’s own freshness-preserving technique before being shipped to Britain,” he said. “Although they have been here for nearly a week, they still look very fresh. I believe they will continue to look as beautiful until the end of the show.”
The 2012 Chelsea Flower Show, which formally opened yesterday and runs through Saturday, has more than 500 participating groups from Taiwan, Thailand, Slovenia, Japan, Australia, France, the Netherlands and Jamaica, among other countries. It is expected to attract 160,000 visitors.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,