Taiwan's Green Expo Sparks Civic Education Concerns: A No-Show Dilemma

Online Reservations Sold Out, Yet Zero Attendees: What's Going Wrong with Citizen Engagement at the Yilan Green Expo?

The highly anticipated "2025 Yilan Green Expo," a flagship spring tourism event in Yilan, Taiwan, recently opened to the public. However, the event organizers are facing a perplexing issue: despite the popularity of online reservations, some workshops experienced zero attendees. This has prompted the organizers to question the state of civic engagement.

The Facebook page for the "Yilan Green Expo" announced that the situation has led to a new policy: individuals who fail to attend reserved sessions three times consecutively will be disqualified from registering for the remainder of the year. This change reflects the organizers' frustration with the no-show issue.

The event featured a program by the 灃食文化教育基金會 (Fung Shi Cultural Education Foundation), which brought two sets of food education board games to the Green Expo. This initiative, inspired by last year's "Nutrition 5 Meals Plan," aimed to educate children about food knowledge, aesthetics, taste innovation, spatial experience, and creative interaction. The workshops, offering 18 spots each, were immediately fully booked online. Both the foundation and the Green Expo were excited by the response. However, the workshops went ahead with no one attending.