Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-08-03

The Presidential Office in Taipei hosted a massive kids’ party on Friday, as the president

celebrated an annual bring your kids to work day for her staff.

The usually somber atmosphere of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei was enlivened by the patter of small feet and children’s laughter on Friday. That’s as President Tsai Ing-wen marked the annual families’ day, inviting staffers at the Presidential Office to bring their partners and kids to work.

Some 932 staffers and family members turned out this year to be welcomed by the president, as well as Vice President Chen Chien-jen, Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu, and the head of the National Security Council, David Lee. Kids were entertained with theater performances and food, with an exhibition of Taiwan’s agricultural produce.    [FULL  STORY]

Writers Joshua Samuel Brown and Stephanie Huffman on a tranquil Sun Moon Lake holiday.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/08/03
By: Joshua Samuel Brown

The sound of gongs and chanting were already pronounced as we turned the corner and approached our hotel at the alley’s end. Though we’d come to Sun Moon Lake for its legendary peace and quiet, so had Shi Ah-gong though in a markedly different way. Grandfather Shi had passed away at the age of 97, and his relatives had booked the entire street in the normally sedate village of Ita Thao to hold his three-day funeral.

Taiwanese funerals are in many ways the opposite of their Western counterparts. Both are solemn affairs, but the Taiwanese have a different take on what constitutes solemn. A Taiwanese funeral will sometimes employ the services of paid mourners, women hired to behave as if they’re torn with grief at the deceased’s passing (despite never having actually met the person).

Electric Flower Cars are another distinctly Taiwanese funeral custom. In addition to being a great name for a 1970’s prog rock band, Electric Flower Cars are covered flatbed trucks bedecked with flowers on which comely young ladies dance, sing, gyrate libidinously – and occasionally pole-dance – to honor the passing of the deceased. Though still seen occasionally, this type of overtly risqué funeral ceremony seems to be going the way of betel nut girls in Taiwan – that is to say, still found on occasion but considered mostly passé.    [FULL  STORY]

The encounter took place in July in Warsaw, as the city has drawn more and more tourists from around the world for its great value and world heritage.

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/08/03
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A Taiwanese couple were randomly selected on the street in Warsaw this July to Poland’s Presidential Palace to have a cup of tea and a pleasant chat with Polish President Andrzej Duda, leaving them unforgettable memories.

The Presidential Palace is located in Warsaw, the economic and political capital of the young democracy in Europe. The city has drawn more and more tourists from around the world for its great value and world heritage, including two Taiwanese tourists.

A group of patriotic Polish people volunteered to film a two-minute short video to promote Poland worldwide, in which four international tourists strolling past the Presidential Palace on July 12 were randomly selected and invited to have a tea and a chat with Duda inside the beautiful and elegant neoclassical building.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/08/03
By: Chen Chao-fu and William Yen

Kaohsiung, Aug. 3 (CNA) A 23-year-old Filipino has been reunited with his

Taiwanese biological father after coming to Taiwan to search for a man he had never seen, according to the Kaohsiung police.

With only an old wedding photo of his parents in hand, the Filipino, identified as Michael and the Chinese name Huang Chun-hao (黃俊豪), showed up at the Renwu Precinct’s Dashu Police Station on July 28 asking for help, police said.

Dashu Police Station Chief Kao Tsuan (高鑽) said Michael and the two friends from the Philippines who accompanied him showed signs of distress because they could not speak Chinese, but police officers on duty spoke English and were able to help the visitors.

The officers learned that Michael, who was raised by his mother in the Philippines, was in Taiwan for the first time and was in Kaohsiung searching for his biological father.    [FULL  STORY]

Cast of Korean movie ‘Along With The Gods: The Last 49 Days’ cast coming to Taiwan to promote film before August 8 release

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/08/02
By: Jessica Adriana,Taiwan News

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The director and the cast of the Korean film “Along With The

Gods: The Last 49 Days,” are coming to Taiwan and will walk the red carpet on August 5.

This long-awaited Korean movie is the sequel of “Along With The Gods: The Two Worlds.” The first movie topped the box office in Taiwan in December 2017 and when it became the top-grossing Asian film of all time in Taiwan. The sequel, “Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days,” will be released in Taiwan on August 8 following its premiere in South Korea on August 1.

According to Lotte Entertainment, Director Kim Yong Hwa and actors Ha Jung Woo, Ju Ji Hoon, Kim Hyang Gi, Ma Dong Seok, Kim Dong Wook and Lee Jung Jae will arrive in Taiwan on August 5 and will participate in promotional activities in Taiwan for four days, until the day of the movie release in Taiwan, which is August 8. In addition to the red carpet event, they will also conduct a press conference, and separate promotional activities for film reporters and media representatives from a total of 10 Asian countries, including Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

In the movie’s sequel, the story continues with the first film’s three grim reapers who are given the chance to gain a new life if they succeed in reincarnating one more deceased soul, their 49th, thus the title of the film. While the secrets and memories of their past life from a thousand years back will also be revealed.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/08/02
By: Shih Hsiu-chuan 

Taipei, Aug. 2 (CNA) An internationally renowned energy and climate advisor suggested Thursday that Taiwan should introduce more policies to accelerate and scale up its energy transition, with the goal of achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

“Transiting to 100 percent renewable is not a far away target. It is the main strategy in many nations,” Hans-Josef Fell, founder and president of the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group, said in a keynote speech at an international forum on new energy in Taipei.

Fell said he was happy to see Taiwan embark on it own energy transition toward a nuclear-free homeland seven years after he discussed related issues with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) when she led an opposition Democratic Progressive Party delegation to Berlin in 2011.

Tsai has pledged to decommission Taiwan’s nuclear power plants, which now generate 9.3 percent of the nations electricity, by 2025, and switch to a mix of 50 percent liquefied natural gas, 30 percent coal and 20 percent renewable energy, which currently accounts for 4.9 percent.    [FULL  STORY]

The New York Times
Date: Aug. 1, 2018
By: Chris Horton

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan has had a rough time of it lately.

Just last week, international airlines stopped using its name; it lost hosting rights to a youth sports festival; and even a local children’s choir took a blow, prevented from singing at a United Nations building in Vienna.

Amid those and other recent setbacks — blamed on pressure from China, which claims the self-governing island as its territory — has come a welcome bit of recognition. Taiwan has been chosen as the first Asian host for the Oslo Freedom Forum, an international human rights conference.

The forum hosts rights campaigners, dissidents, philanthropists and tech entrepreneurs from around the world. Speakers at the Nov. 10 event in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, are scheduled to include Mu Sochua, a Cambodian opposition politician living in exile, and Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector.

For Taiwan, which China has used its clout to keep out of many global organizations, it amounts to a kind of international validation — from the world’s dissidents, if not its governments. Jason Hsu, a lawmaker with the opposition Kuomintang party, said the event would underscore Taiwan’s growing role as a democratic model in the region, while contrasting it with authoritarian China.    [FULL  STORY]