With the Taiwan Lantern Festival just around the corner, Yunlin County — the host of this year’s official event — has suggested several travel itineraries in the county, including bicycle tours, in an effort to attract more people to explore the area.
This year’s lantern festival is to be staged in two areas, with the main area in Huwei Township (虎尾) from Saturday next week to Feb. 19 and the other in Beigang Township (北港) from Tuesday next week to Feb. 19, organizers said.
Covering a combined area of 50 hectares, the event is to be the largest since the festival was launched in 1990, organizers said.
Photo: Chan Shih-hung, Taipei Times
It will also mark the first time a section featuring the culture of new immigrants in Taiwan is included, they said.
Taking the opportunity to promote local tourism, the Yunlin County Government suggested various travel itineraries designed to allow wider exploration of the county.
Among them are three bicycle tours that allow poeple to experience different aspects of Yunlin in a two-day itinerary.
One itinerary suggests that visitors start with Siluo Township (西螺), where they can taste local specialty dishes such as bean sprout noodles, followed by a visit to Cihtong Township (莿桐) to enjoy blooming flowers.
They can then travel to Huashan Village (華山) in Yunlin County’s Gukeng Township (古坑) to see the night view of the county and spend the night.
On the second day, people can visit a facility that introduces one of Taiwan’s signature snacks — pineapple cakes — and a winery, and end the tour at the festival in Huwei.
Another itinerary focuses on an exploration of the coffee industry in Gukeng and the natural scenery in Dounan Township’s (斗南) Caoling Village (草嶺) on the first day, followed on the second day by a visit to the winery, Gukeng Green Tunnel and Douliu City (斗六), where they can visit a village promoting the cultural and creative industry before biking to Huwei.
The third itinerary features a tour to explore Hakka culture and try local signature dishes in Erlun Township (二崙), as well as a visit to Mailiao Township (麥寮) to learn more about “green energy” development there.
Visitors are to finish the tour in Beigang, where they can explore the town and enjoy the lantern festival.
The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts yesterday apologized for forbidding children from copying paintings by freehand drawing, saying it welcomes visitors to make sketches of paintings on drawing tablets or sketchpads. The museum issued the remark after a museumgoer nicknamed “Mickeyelk Gesner” on Thursday posted on Facebook that her son had been sketching a painting by Pablo Picasso on a tablet computer at the exhibition “Capturing the Moment” on Wednesday when a museum worker told him to stop drawing. “The staff told us, ‘Only taking photos is allowed. No copying. This is a rule,’” she quoted the worker as saying. Physician Lee Chia-yan
ACCESS DENIAL: Beijing would likely take formation in the Philippine Sea, outside Taipei’s missile range, while its forces on the east would be a deterrent to foreign aid China is increasingly likely to employ a strategy of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) around Taiwan, which would use three carrier groups, a report from the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. When China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is completed next year, China would have three carriers, which would likely be used to surround Taiwan and implement an A2/AD strategy, it said, adding that efforts to strengthen China’s two other carriers — the Liaoning and the Shandong — appear to corroborate this. In the quarterly report, the council cited declassified documents from the Ministry of National Defense that categorized China’s carriers as
Two German warships are awaiting orders from Berlin to determine whether they would be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait next month, at the risk of stoking tensions with Beijing, a German commander said. While the US and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the narrow strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the Strait since 2002. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, and says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180km waterway that divides the two sides. Taiwan strongly objects to these claims, saying only its people
Former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley yesterday called for more international backing for Taiwan and a coordinated pushback against China’s claims over the nation. “The United States should elevate Taiwan on the world stage. You should no longer be silenced in global affairs,” Haley told an audience at the Ketagalan Forum, a Taipei conference focused on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. She called for Taiwan to become a full member of the UN, even though it is being blocked by China from representation in international bodies. While the US does not formally recognize Taiwan, it is the nation's strongest