Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien: Hakka Tung Blossom Festival Forest Tung Music Party Kicks Off on the 23rd

It's the season of tung blossoms once more. This year, the Hsinchu City Hakka Tung Blossom Festival takes "Forest Tung Music Party" as its theme for the first time, and will kick off on Saturday (the 23rd) from 1 pm to 5 pm at the Gaofeng Botanical Garden and Tung Blossom Plaza, where the tung blossoms are blooming in snowy white. On the day of the event there will be a cute and amusing Hakka children's theater performance, an insect costume party, fun persimmon dyeing DIY, and a tung blossom hike. Mayor Lin Chih-chien invites parents and children to enjoy the flowers together and get close to nature.

The tung blossoms around Tung Blossom Plaza are currently in bud and ready to bloom. Mayor Lin Chih-chien said: "The weather has turned clear, and the tung blossoms will bloom one after another over the next few days. We welcome the public to come and enjoy the romantic scenery of April snow on Saturday." He also said that Hsinchu City is truly a children's city, with children under 14 accounting for 17.69% of the city's population. During this visit to Japan, whenever the city's high birth rate was mentioned, it always drew envious exclamations from the Japanese side. Therefore, this year's Hakka Tung Blossom Festival is different from previous ones, with a special "parent-child" element added so that parents and children can interact more, and through participation in activities that combine education with entertainment, children can get to know the Hakka, fall in love with the Hakka, and carry on Hakka culture.

In particular, the event venue, Gaofeng Botanical Garden, not only has tung blossoms but also rich animal and plant ecology, making it the most suitable place for children to experience nature. Mayor Lin Chih-chien emphasized that friends from the Hakka community in Hsinchu City make up about 1/3 of the city's population. The city government values the inheritance of Hakka culture and actively promotes various Hakka affairs, including transferring Hakka affairs to the Cultural Affairs Bureau and establishing an independent section, as well as seeking funding from the Hakka Affairs Council to build a "Hakka Performance Center" next to the Hsinchu City Museum, so that Hakka culture, mother tongue, cuisine, and architecture can be carried forward. In addition, through the annual Tung Blossom Festival, the charming Hakka culture is showcased.