《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 Hong Konger wins Taiwan tourism award

By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

Hong Kong tourist Andy Kong （江俊賢） yesterday won the top prize in a competition for the best video that promotes Taiwan as a tourist destination.

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The competition, titled Any Time for Taiwan: Film Taiwan, Action! was hosted by the Tourism Bureau and Google Taiwan.

According to the bureau, 150 videos produced by participants from around the globe entered the competition since August last year, with the entries drawing more than 1.37 million views.

The bureau said Kong won because he found an innovative way to introduce scenic spots as well as Taiwanese culture, and he was active in generating views for his video.

Kong won a flight ticket enabling him to travel around the world.

Kong said he made the entry after filming a trip as a way to assure his parents of his safety. He later found out about the competition and decided to spend one month filming in Taiwan.

“I thought if I win the ticket to travel around the world, I could be away from home longer,” Kong said.

To produce the three-minute film, Kong visited nearly all the major tourist attractions in the nation, including on the outlying islands.

Aside from flying sky lanterns in New Taipei City’s Pingxi District （平溪） and seeing Taroko Gorge （太魯閣） in Hualien County, he also went scuba diving off Green Island （綠島） to see tropical fish and coral reefs, and to see the Yuwongdao （漁翁島） lighthouse in Penghu, which has been in use since 1778.

He said he met three local people on his way to Nantou’s Puli Township （埔里） to film people paragliding. They gave him a ride, shared a hotpot meal with him and invited him to spend the night at Nantou County’s Cingjing Farm （清境農場）.

Bureau deputy director-general Wayne Liu （劉喜臨） said a bureau survey shows that 60 percent of international tourists said that they had watched tourism films or read travel stories about Taiwan before they arrived, and 63 percent of them did so via the Internet, adding the competition drew viewers from the US, Malaysia and Japan.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES