27 Japanese Lawmakers Among 228 Foreign Guests in Taipei for National Day Celebrations
Taipei — A Japanese parliamentary delegation led by lawmaker Keiji Furuya arrived in Taiwan on October 9 for a two-day visit to attend the 115th National Day celebrations of the Republic of China, the Central News Agency reported. The group comprises 27 lawmakers and seven staff members. In total, 228 foreign guests are in Taiwan for National Day — 156 visiting delegation members plus 72 resident foreign officials and their spouses. The National Day reception will be held on the evening of October 10 at the Taipei Guest House, and the ceremony plus reception form the twin anchors of the guests' programs.
Other prominent guests also arrived on Friday. King Mswati III of Eswatini, Taiwan's only diplomatic ally in Africa, landed early Friday, and Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith is leading a delegation from the United States. The Overseas Community Affairs Council counts more than 4,000 overseas Taiwanese from 51 countries returning for the holiday, so together the foreign delegations and the homecoming diaspora set the diplomatic stage for two days of celebrations in Taipei.
The main National Day ceremony begins at 10 a.m. on October 10 outside the Presidential Office, featuring military flyovers, a helicopter rescue demonstration and a parade of more than 2,500 disaster-preparedness volunteers showcasing Taiwan's disaster-response capacity. The Thunder Tiger aerobatic team will close the show with five Brave Eagle jets trailing colored smoke. Fireworks follow that evening in Taitung. The National Day holiday runs three days, from October 9 to 11.
Furuya has long been active in parliamentary exchanges between Japan and Taiwan, and leading a delegation to the National Day celebrations has become a fixture of recent years; each October, heads of state from Taiwan's diplomatic allies and senior figures from like-minded countries are invited to Taipei, and the size of the foreign guest list is watched as one gauge of Taiwan's external relations. The October 10 reception will be held at the Taipei Guest House — originally the Japanese-era governor-general's residence, now a national historic monument and Taiwan's principal venue for receiving foreign leaders — which, together with the nearby Presidential Office, forms the geographic core of this year's guest program.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 台北宾馆外观，othree 摄，CC BY 2.0（Wikimedia Commons）
