These young entrepreneurs want travelers to go deep and really get to know their destination.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/09/02
By: ZiQing Low

A group of young entrepreneurs from National Chengchi University (NCCU) in Taiwan is looking to

create a new kind of holiday experience that combines recreational activities with local issues.

Their startup is called Blind Tour, and the company organizes tours within Taiwan for their customers. The catch? Travelers on a blind tour do not know where they are going and what they will be doing when they get there.

“There are no tour guides, just our ‘Blind Tour Book,’ a booklet with instructions on what to do at a given time while you are on the trip,” Kuma Ku (古佳玉), CEO of Blind Tour, told The News Lens International.

The idea for Blind Tour came about as part of Ku and her team’s graduation production, a requirement for graduation at NCCU’s major in advertising.     [FULL  STORY]

A famous Chinese dissident takes a foreign journalist to account over a recent article giving China several advantages over Taiwan.

 

The News Lens
Date: 2016/09/02
By: Wu’er Kaixi

Forbes contributor Ralph Jennings has whipped up a social media storm with a brief, apparently off-

the-cuff, article on three areas in which mainland China outdoes Taiwan. What are they? Pinyin, Chinese culture, and easy-stroll sidewalks courtesy of China’s chengguan — city law enforcement officers.

To be sure, Pinyin is a good Romanization system  —  easy to learn and easy to input Chinese with  —  but other Romanization systems work equally well when they’re implemented properly. Wade-Giles is a case in point. It was used by foreign learners of Chinese before the development of Hanyu Pinyin in the 1950s, and is the basis of Taiwan’s poorly implemented Romanization system. Unfortunately, the latter has arguably has been worsened by successive government-led policy moves to impose uniformity without caving in and adopting the mainland-developed system. It is indeed an area in which there is room for improvement.

Jennings’ two other arguments for mainland China are, however, dismal fails.

Taking the issue of Chinese culture first, I was born and raised in China, lived there for 21 years, and I have lived in Taiwan for an equal length of time. I can confidently report to the world that Chinese culture has been systematically destroyed in the People’s Republic. I think even the most diehard “motherland-loving fifty-cent loyalist” would agree that Taiwan has done a much better job of preserving Chinese culture than the mainland has. This can be seen in the way people here treat their families, the way they treat each other, the respect with which they interact with their peers, the tomb sweeping and Chinese New Year traditions, and even superstitions that date back thousands of years.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-09-02
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Presidential Office has approved an application by former Vice President Wu Den-yih to travel to the United States later this month, reports said Friday.

Earlier, the government sank a plan by former President Ma Ying-jeou to deliver a speech about cross-straits relations at a media conference in Hong Kong last June.

Wu, who was Ma’s vice president from 2012 until last May, will visit Boston, Massachusetts, from September 23 to September 25 and present a speech at the annual meeting of the Taiwan Benevolent Association of America.

Top former government officials involved in the handling of classified materials need official approval before leaving the country within three years after their retirement, according to the Classified National Security Information Protection Act. The approval needs to come from the government department where they used to work, in Wu’s case the Presidential Office.     [FULL  STORY]

The four could join the more than 40 individuals who could be executed by the end of 2017.

The News Lens
DateL 2016/08/31
By: TNL Staff

Media reports yesterday revealed that four more Taiwanese charged with drug trafficking were sentenced to death in Indonesia on Aug 24.
The four men were found in possession of 26 kg of methamphetamine, also known as “ice” or crystal meth, in November 2015. The men can still appeal the sentence in a higher court.

In late January, three Taiwanese men were also sentenced to death for drug trafficking. This was a final verdict and the men are looking to make an extraordinary appeal.

Five Taiwanese nationals were arrested on Aug. 18 in northern Jakarta in connection with the discovery of 60 kg of methamphetamine, and three other Taiwanese men were charged with drug trafficking on May 20. Both cases have yet to be decided in court.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-08-31
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – For the first time since she took office last May, President Tsai Ing-wen was shown to have more detractors than supporters, according to an opinion poll released Wednesday, her 60th birthday.

Previous surveys revealed a fall in popularity for her premier, Lin Chuan, who was also sworn in on May 20, but the latest Taiwan Indicators Survey Research poll said that while 42.8 percent of respondents were satisfied with Tsai, 45 percent were not. The situation where the line representing the negative overtakes the positive on a survey graphic is known as a “death cross.”

As in similar recent surveys by other organizations, it was not so much the president’s popularity rating which fell, as the number of people dissatisfied which rose. Compared to a TISR poll conducted one month earlier, Tsai’s support had slipped by 5 percent, but the dissatisfaction rate rose by more than 10 percent.

When the pollsters asked whether the public trusted Tsai, the figures came out markedly different, with 53.4 percent trusting her while only 32.9 percent gave the opposite answer.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/31
By: Sophia Yeh, Chang Ming-hsun and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Aug. 31 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Wednesday reiterated the government’s commitment to reform of the country’s retirement pension system.

Although there are difficulties involved in implementing pension system reform, “it’s the things we don’t do that we will regret,” Tsai said, after receiving a report from Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), head of the national pension reform committee.

The main goal of the reform plan is to protect the rights of citizens to retirement pensions, regardless of their occupation, Tsai said.

In his report, Chen said the government is aiming to establish a sustainable pension system to ensure that retirees can be financially comfortable, have a good standard of living, and be less reliant on their children for care.     [FULL  STORY]