The Yunlin County Government is inviting the public to a flower festival that will be held in Cihtong Township’s (莿桐) 50 hectare flower field — which is roughly the size of 1,145 basketball courts.
A field of colorful flowers greeted Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) as she rode on a wagon pulled by oxen to preside over the festival’s opening ceremony on Monday.
The festival was first held last year, and has been selected as one of the 10 most beautiful flower festivals in the nation.
To promote the event, the county government worked with the Cihtong Township Farmer’s Association to expand the field.
Association chief executive Chang Yu-hsuan (張鈺萱) said that different colored flowers were used to form shapes such as a heart, or the Chinese ligature xi (囍), made up of two xi (喜) characters, which means “double happiness.”
Chang added that the association had used straw to make effigies of mammoths, cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants and dinosaurs, and put them in the field to complement the flowers.
Visitors can find Cihtong Township by following Provincial Highway No. 1 after exiting at Siluo (西螺) junction, Chang said, adding that visitors should take a left turn on the outskirts of town onto the town’s ring road.
On taking a left turn after seeing the Yun 156 stretch of road, visitors will be able to see the flowers, Chang said, adding that as no special parking areas have been set up, visitors would have to park at the side of the road.
The county government has not yet made a plan to deal with a potential spike in tourist numbers during the festival, Chang said, adding that further information could be found on the county government’s Web site or on the Cihtong Township Farmers’ Association Web site.
The festival opens to the public on Saturday, and runs through the Lunar New Year holiday.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and
RSS