Border control officers process Taiwan residents' travel permits in a special channel on Wednesday at Pingtan's Aoqian Port. Zhang Yi/China Daily Pingtan, an island situated off the east coast of Fujian offers easy entry for Taiwan residents who take ships to the mainland. The local public security department and border control patrol jointly opened up a special channel on Wednesday for Taiwan residents to get travel permits at Pingtan's Aoqian Port. Since 2011, when a direct sea route between Pingtan and Taiwan was opened, two ships - CSF and Natchan Rera Cruise - regularly make ferry runs from Pingtan to Taipei and Taichung, Taiwan. Taiwan residents who take the ships and enter the mainland through the port need travel permits issued by mainland public security officials, and they can apply for the permits at the port. Before, they had to line up twice - first for the certificate application and then for identification checks. When there are many passengers, the waiting time is longer, said Yuan Tao, a border inspector. As more residents from Taiwan come to the mainland through this port, the service will be needed more. To reduce wait times, the two departments launched a special channel for Taiwan residents, combining the procedures of application, fee payment, permit issuance and inspection at a single window. They only need to wait in line once, which saves about 20 minutes for those applying for permits at the port, he said. On Thursday night, a ship with more than 200 passengers left Taichung for Pingtan, including 30 passengers from Taiwan who were visiting the mainland for the first time. All of them planned to apply for travel permits at the port. Among them was Yeh Chen-li from Yunlin county, who planned to stay for four days. I finished the application form on board and handed it in at the border control window when I arrived at the terminal, Yeh said. It took about 10 minutes to get my permit, much faster than I expected. Yuan Hsiung-wei, a tour guide who took a group to the mainland from Taipei, said, There is a bigger chance for more tours as more exchanges take place. The trip takes only about three hours by ship, so many people will want to have a look of the mainland. Wei Li is a frequent visitor. She said she will open a shop in Pingtan to sell products from Taiwan. The transportation for people and goods is convenient from Taiwan to Pingtan, and there have been more mainland tourists visiting Pingtan in recent years, she said. Since the beginning of April, direct service by ship between the two sides have increased from seven to nine round trips a week to meet increasing demand, according to border officials. More than 35,000 people, including more than 20,000 Taiwan residents, entered the mainland at the port from January to April, up 77 percent year-on-year. cool rubber braceletscustom id braceletsblue rubber bracelet meaningwristbands online coupon codepersonalized light up bracelets
Han Min-ja and Yang Won-ju dance at the New Hyundai Core colatec in Seoul, South Korea, on April 10. The dance halls are increasingly providing a lifeline for the country's seniors. Kim Hongji/Reuters SEOUL - A discotheque hidden among the back alleys of eastern Seoul is packed with hundreds of grey-haired couples on a Monday afternoon, dancing to local hits from the 1960s in a basketball court-sized hall. Kim Sa-gyu, 85, calls it his playground. What else would I do all day? My family is busy with work. I hate going to senior centers cause all they do there is smoking, said Kim, wearing a beret as he sat on a bench at the edge of a dance floor decorated with fairy lights and mirror balls. Seven days a week, he gets up at 5 am, has breakfast with his son and two grandchildren, gets an hour of massage therapy to relieve knee pain, then hops on a bus. His destination is the daytime disco for the elderly in New Hyundai Core. Kim, who has been jobless since retiring as a hospital administer 20 years ago, is among about 1,000 customers each weekday at the disco, called a colatec. It is one of nearly 1,000 such facilities around the country. Almost 2,000 people visit on a weekend day, said owner Choi Jung-eun. Colatecs, a portmanteau of cola and discotheque, have arisen to serve South Korea's rapidly aging population, as a growing number of lonely, impoverished and ailing people rediscover ways to entertain themselves after decades of hard work. Some are here because they simply don't feel welcome at home. My wife yaps at me for breathing if I stay home. I love this music and no one minds me here, a grey-haired man who identified himself only as 'white boots' said, after paying an entrance fee of 1,000 won (90 cents) - a fraction of what clubs in Seoul's affluent Gangnam charge their youthful clientele. The generation that helped rebuild Asia's fourth-largest economy after the 1950-53 Korean War is now the poorest and most depressed among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The relative poverty rate of South Korea's elderly stood at 49.6 percent in 2013, four times the OECD average, according to the latest available data. The elderly suicide rate rose from 35 per 100,000 persons in 2000 to 82 in 2010, also far above the OECD average of 22. South Korea is aging faster than any other developed country, yet there are few post-retirement jobs, or even cheap leisure, available for the elderly. At the New Hyundai Core colatec, a dance instructor walked around the hall searching for dancers who looked lost or lonely. Three full-time matchmakers helped dancers who were too shy to find a partner. But Song-ah, a dance instructor, said she is always on the lookout for dating-related fraud at colatecs. Sometimes I see young cougars in their 50s asking really old grandpas out for a dance. I report them to the owner and separate them, she said, adding that lonely seniors can be taken advantage of by strangers. But for the most part, colatecs do more good than harm, said Joo Won, an economist at the Hyundai Research Institute. We have one unhappy aging society that needs support both from the public and the government. Places like colatecs need to be nurtured, Joo said. Reuters custom bracelets torontorubber bracelet bandsrubber wrist bandsbob marley rubber braceletembossed wristband<%2fcenter>
