The China Post
Date: October 15, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI–A unique post office built in the shape of a shipping box opened Friday in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County, with the aim of banishing the traditional perception of post offices as rigid places, officials from the Chunghwa Post Co. said that day.

The Fangshan Post Office (枋山郵局) in rural Fangshan Township is the first post office in Taiwan to be constructed in the shape of a shipping box.

The green and white exterior of the building features the image of a shrike, the bird that appears on the corrugated shipping boxes of the Chunghwa Post, the official postal service of Taiwan. It also features images of mangoes and onions, which are local agricultural products.

Large screens on the roof also open up every hour, making the building look like an opened box.     [FULL  STORY]

One of the British royal family’s official photographers once said that the bamboos of Taiwan were a ‘remarkable feature.’

The News Lens
Date: 2016/10/15
By: Steven Crook

If you visit Taiwan, you will notice bamboo is used in countless different ways. Bamboo scaffolding is put up when houses are being repaired or repainted. Alongside highways, bamboo poles hold up advertisements. On the southwestern coast, oysters are raised on bamboo frames. Effigies of gods, carried through the streets during folk-religion processions, are held aloft on bamboo palanquins.

In the Taiwan of yore, this type of grass was used to make farmers’ hats; panniers and baskets; pushchairs and babies’ cribs; toys for children; cages for keeping pet birds and taking chickens to market; the yokes attached to water buffalo when they ploughed fields; ladles, cups and other utensils; and even musical instruments such as flutes and xylophones. Even now, the large disks used during marriage rites to shade the bride’s head are invariably made of bamboo.

Bamboo buildings

Many countryside houses built before the 1960s have wattle-and-daub walls. The wattle consists of bamboo slats; the daub is a mix of mud, rice husks and pig dung.

Bamboo furniture is still popular. Workshops that make and sell bamboo stools and chairs can be found throughout Taiwan, even in small towns like Zhushan in Nantou County. Zhushan literally means “bamboo mountain,” so it’s hardly surprising that manufacturing things out of this material used to be a major industry in that part of Taiwan.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-10-15
By: Central News Agency

Several cities in Taiwan announced Saturday the establishment of public altars for Thai workers and immigrants to mourn the death of Thailand’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died on Thursday at the age of 88.

Public altars have so far been set up in Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, Taichung and Tainan cities.

Those wishing to mourn the king can visit these altars from Oct. 16-30 in the main concourse of the old Taoyuan Railway Station; from Saturday to Oct. 21 at the Labor Recreation Center in Tainan City; from Saturday to Nov. 14 at ASEAN Square near Taichung Railway Station and from Saturday at No.191, Baotai Road, Qianzhen District in Kaohsiung City, officials said.

Chang Pei-ling, a section chief with the Taoyuan City Department of Labor, noted that her city has the largest Thai population in the country, with over 15,900 Thai migrant workers and over 2,200 Thai immigrants.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/10/15
By: Chang Che-fon and Lilian Wu

Taipei, Oct. 15 (CNA) Penghu residents voted a resounding “no” to allowing casinos in the outlying

county in a referendum Saturday.

The referendum was held between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. at 114 polling stations around the county. Forty minutes into vote-counting, there were 10,336 ballots for and 2,843 against.

The gap then widened even further with “no” votes

reaching 18,000 shortly after 5 p.m., a higher level of support for the “no” camp than in the first referendum on the opening of casinos held on Sept. 26, 2009.    [SOURCE]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-10-14
By: Wendy Lee, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

China’s censorship effort has gone so far as to tear out pages that bear entries for Taiwan from dictionaries, as several photos posted on Twitter show.
Twitter user Taylor Wang posted a picture this week of a Merriam-Webster dictionary, with the Taiwan page torn out. He said he bought the dictionary in a state-run bookstore in Shanghai, and had noticed the plastic wrappings on all the copies had been removed.

The bookstore assistant told him that there were some problems and they had to remove the wrappings to deal with them.

“I bought the dictionary and carefully examined it, only to find that two pages have been torn out. I wonder what could be the words that irritate the authorities,” he said in the tweet.     [FULL  STORY]

GOOD COMMUNICATION:Minister Katharine Chang said there have always been viable channels of cross-strait communication, which should be used to solve issues

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 15, 2016
By: Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter, with CNA

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday issued a news release reiterating the government’s

cross-strait policy after former grand justice Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) on Thursday said that Taiwan-China relations are a “special state-to-state” relationship.

Hsu made the remarks during a confirmation hearing at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei for his nomination as Judicial Yuan president.

Hsu said his interpretation is “friendly” to China, similar to the relationship between West and East Germany, and is different from the Republic of China (ROC) that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has envisioned, which claims sovereignty over China and “Outer Mongolia,” which is an independent nation.

In the news release, the council highlighted that Hsu himself said at the session that the opinions he voiced concerning the cross-strait relationship were solely his own.     [FULL  STORY]

Gov’t to accelerate reforms that the public expects: spokesman

The China Post
Date: October 15, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — President Tsai Ing-wen’s approval ratings have hit their lowest level since she

took office in May, a new survey shows.

Tsai’s approval rating dropped to 37.6 percent in a public opinion poll released by the Taiwan Indicators Research Survey (TISR).

The TISR said that the president’s approval rating peaked at 54 percent in mid-June and has been falling since then.

Results of another survey conducted by TVBS after Tsai’s National Day address showed that the president’s approval rating had fallen to 35 percent, down from 39 percent registered during her first 100 days in office.

Presidential spokesman Alex Huang responded to the latest findings by saying that results varied across public opinion polls, but that the government would still take a look at them.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 14, 2016
By: Wu Hsin-tien and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Two National Fire Agency rescue dogs that were detained at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport

on Tuesday were yesterday allowed to pass through customs on the condition that they are to be kept in quarantine for 21 days, the Council of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said.

According to the agency, the dogs and their handlers were returning to Taiwan from a cooperative training program in Germany, but the dogs were detained because the handlers failed to obtain quarantine papers at their point of departure.

“We reminded the handlers to obtain the papers, but the handlers said that the dogs’ cages did not comply with the local regulations and were changed, during which time they forgot to obtain the documents,” the agency said.

The bureau’s Hsinchu branch said that the handlers had shouted at bureau personnel, saying they were “too busy” to obtain the correct documentation.     [FULL  STORY]