Mayor Chu attended Water Splashing Festival
The biggest water-splashing celebration in Taiwan – 2012 New Taipei City Water Splashing Festival – kicked off at Zhonghe Huaxin Street today, attracting tens of thousands of people to join the event. Mayor Chu explained that Songkran is a traditional New Year festival in Indo-China peninsula where people splash water at each other to “purify bad luck in the past and welcome the New Year in hope for peace and happiness”. At the event he wished that through carrying out the Songkran Water Festival more people can get to know the different culture and realize that New Taipei City is a multi-cultural community.
Mayor Chu then joined the water fight with the citizens, becoming an easy target for children holding water guns and water buckets. In the end of the day he wished for all 4 million citizens in New Taipei City to remain healthy and happy.
According to Education Department, New Taipei City Water Festival is the biggest water splashing festival in Taiwan. In addition to many themed water pools and water sprinklers, the event site also hosted exotic dance performances such as “Burmese water splashing dance”, “royal palace dance”, “Yunnan traditional dance”, and “Tahitian dance” for citizens to enjoy.
There was even a raffle where entrants can enter by first accomplishing special challenges. Guaranteed to win a free gourmet food tickets and a water gun, each entrant also had a chance to win a souvenir T-shirt, a tablet computer, round-trip flight tickets to Thailand and Burma, etc. Citizens can also enter the raffle by visiting the official facebook page for 2012 New Taipei City Water Splashing Festival.