The China Post
Date: August 21, 2016
By: Amber Wang, AFP

TAIPEI — Cheap instant “bubble tea” has become one of Taiwan’s best-known culinary exports — now a new wave of entrepreneurs hopes a high-end modern take on traditional brews will also be sipped worldwide.

Taiwan has been producing tea for more than 200 years and a cup of the island’s famous oolong is obligatory for many visitors, but exports have been knocked by rising labor costs and bubble tea has been eclipsed by a carefully crafted cuppa.

Often artificially flavored and loaded with milk, sugar and tapioca pearls, bubble tea has in recent years gained a global following, from Southeast Asia to the United States and Europe.

Ultra-modern tea shop “Xie Xie” is one business trying to turn the tide back to sophistication.

Founder Xie Yu-tung, 30, comes from a family of tea producers and uses leaves grown on their plantations in Taiwan’s mountainous Dayuling and Lishan areas.     [FULL STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/15
By: Wu Jhe-hao and Kay Liu

Lungshan Temple in Taipei may be one of the city’s most famous attractions, but it is actually one of five bearing the same name in Taiwan, with the largest among them located in Lukang Township in the central county of Changhua.

Built in 1776, the Lungshan Temple in Lukang covers an area of more than 5,280 square meters, and the main deity, like the four others, is Guanyin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy.

Following a seven-year, NT$200 million (US$6.39 million) project to restore damage caused during the Sept. 21 earthquake in 1999 that hit central Taiwan, the Bureau of Cultural Heritage is now working on restoring paintings by late local master Kuo Hsin-lin (郭新林) completed after the Second World War.

Replica of one of the five paris of door gods.
Highlights of Kuo’s works are five pairs of door gods painted on the doors of the forehall, which had seen the paint peeling and cracks forming in doors themselves.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 20, 2016
By: Jason I-je Hsieh, Special to The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Formosat-2, Taiwan’s first Earth observation satellite, has been

decommissioned after 12 years of service — seven years longer than it was designed to survive.

The satellite, which lost the ability to adjust its camera’s angle and position after a malfunction in June, completed its final communication with the control center Friday.

Launched in May 2004, the satellite took roughly 2.55 million pictures during its lifetime, according to the National Space Organization (NSO).

The group made contact with the satellite twice a day throughout the 12 years, NSO Director Chang Guey-shin (張桂祥) said.

Can a more than 100-year-old dog learn new tricks? A young party official’s take on the future of Taiwan’s Kuomintang.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/08/18
By: Edward White

The Kuomintang (KMT) was hammered in Taiwan’s general election in January, losing the presidency and its long-held majority in the legislature. Despite the historic results, and the hopeful anticipation of political bloodletting among many commentators and presumably pro-reform KMT members, heads have, for the most part, yet to roll.

In its first few months in the opposition, KMT legislators have resorted to filibustering and the party has threatened legal challenges to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) popular move to investigate the assets the KMT illegally acquired during its decades of at-times brutal authoritarian rule over the nation.

As Taiwanese writer Lee Min-yung (李敏勇) said in the Taipei Times this month, the party has been an “unwilling participant in the process of its own political cleansing.”
At least one KMT politician, however, knows the party’s reaction is bad for business.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/18
By: Lu Hsin-hui and S.C. Chang

Taipei, Aug. 18 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Thursday called for regular

senior-level exchanges between Taiwan and South Korea which she said share a common interest in maintaining stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

Meeting a group of Korean parliamentarians at the Presidential Office, Tsai also urged the Koreans to support Taiwan’s bid to join the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to ensure air travel safety, as nearly 200 flights serve different destinations in the two countries weekly.

Taiwan and Korea share experiences in fighting for freedom and human rights as well as similar models of economic development, she told the Korean VIP’s including Hong Moon-jong, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee of the Korean National Assembly.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 19, 2016
By: Yuan-Ming Chiao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A top Cabinet official Thursday defended the compensation deal for

laid-off highway toll collectors, saying it was necessary due to the “negligence” of previous agreements.

“The government and Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co. (FETN) misjudged the process of finding jobs for the workers,” minister without portfolio Lin Wan-i (林萬億) said during a Cabinet press conference.

The comments came after some media reports painted the deal as overly kind to toll booth operators, who protested for more than two years to secure Wednesday’s agreement.

Earlier agreements between previous Transportation Ministry officials and FETN were “inadequate” to address the difficulties in transferring the toll collectors to new jobs, Lin said.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: August 17, 2016

Guidelines for the New Southbound Policy were approved by the Office of the President

Aug. 16 during a meeting on foreign trade strategy convened by President Tsai Ing-wen, setting out a path for Taiwan to forge closer ties with countries in South and Southeast Asia as well as Oceania.

According to Office of the President spokesman Alex Huang, the guidelines state that the long-term goals of the policy are to strengthen Taiwan’s economic, technological and cultural links with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand so as to promote the sharing of resources, talent and markets. They also indicate that the initiative aims to create a comprehensive mechanism for negotiations and dialogue in order to effectively resolve differences and build trust and consensus.

The short and medium-term goals of the New .Southbound Policy are to facilitate increased exchanges with the targeted nations on investment, tourism, culture and human resources, encourage Taiwan companies to explore opportunities in these countries in line with the government’s new economic development model, develop the local talent pool to facilitate the growth in interactions with these regions, and expand bilateral and multilateral dialogue to enhance economic cooperation and tackle disputes.     [FULL  STORY]