Taiwan Lantern Festival Kicks Off on February 16 in Chiayi
This year's (2018) lantern festival was held in the southern Taiwanese county of Chiayi, where on February 16, William Lai, Premier of the Republic of China, officially pulled the curtain up on the event. The namesake of the event, the lantern depicting this year's zodiacal animal, was lit up on March 2, while the other 17 lantern areas will be active on the 16th. The recent holiday over Chinese New Year drew crowds of people to the event to see the colorful lights. According to the numbers, 1.7 million people visited the lantern area from the first day to the fifth of the new lunar year. But lanterns were not the only point of interest for visitors: the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA) planned a cashless market to coincide with the event. They invited vendors from all over Taiwan to set up stalls and sell their wares, from souvenirs, local produce, to innovative and traditional crafts. But what was most unique about this setup was that a buyer didn't need cash to buy any of these products. They could use a number of cashless payment services to pay for anything they wished to buy. All they had to do was just scan their mobile device and go.
Digital business is a big deal. Mobile payment is both attractive and a perfect match for the Taiwanese government's economic policy focusing on digitization and innovation. The SMEA's Digital Popularization Plan and Digital and Broadband Application Promotion Plan for SMEs has brought together many rural vendors in digital vendor groups. Twenty such vendor groups, including close to 100 businesses, set up shop at the cashless market at this year's lantern festival. The SME also helped to bring in digital payment platforms, such as AllPay, iPASS, and Pi Mobile Wallet, for the vendors. The overall effect was a high-quality, high-tech, digital market that made payment easier than ever.
The long holiday for Chinese New Year also brought many visitors to the lantern festival. Visitors were impressed with the convenience of the cashless market: "You can just swipe your cellphone to make a payment instead of having to worry about all the cash and loose change. Mobile payment is so much easier." "After just a few days, we've already sold two mattress sets at the lantern festival. And the special shaped steamed buns we're selling with another vendor group are really hot right now, too. We never would have thought that mobile payment would be that lucrative," said deputy head of the Shopping Easy group Xu Zi-shan.
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If the opening day of the 24-day-long lantern festival was abnormally hot, the vendors were that much more passionate for the sales. They brought with them many wonderful products to the market, many of which were so in-demand that they required online pre-orders. This included many government-approved souvenirs, natural and pesticide free produce, cultural-creative handmade crafts, and traditional wood carvings. The sheer variety was awe-inspiring; and for many visitors, who shopped until they nearly literally dropped, the on-site rest station was a welcome addition to the market.
Kung Ming-hsin, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs, and Wu Ming-ji, Director of the SMEA were also impressed by the passion of both buyers and sellers at the lantern festival. Both attended the opening ceremony and strolled through the cashless market, a perfect example of the active promotion of the government's push for cashless payment, where they gave words of encouragement and wishes for a prosperous new year to each of the vendors present.