Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-04
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Former President Lee Teng-hui was highly likely to attend the May 20 inauguration of President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, a top aide to the former head of state said Wednesday.

Lee, who governed Taiwan from 1988 to 2000 as he became the island’s first-ever directly elected president in 1996, is already 93 and has been struggling with occasional bouts of bad health, though he has also visited Japan several times.

Lee’s office manager, Wang Yen-chun, said Wednesday that the former president would wait until he received the official invitation before making a decision, but at the moment he was “leaning toward going.”

Even though Lee chaired the Kuomintang in the 1990s, Tsai at the time was credited with helping him draft the “special state-to-state relations” doctrine about relations between Taiwan and China.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/04
By: Rita Cheng and Christie Chen

Washington, May 3 (CNA) The United States hopes to hear President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英

文) speak of her vision for Taiwan-China relations and her plans to further develop the U.S.-Taiwan partnership when she gives her inaugural speech on May 20, a senior U.S. State Department official said Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with CNA at the State Department, Susan A. Thornton, U.S. principal deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in response to a question about the United States’ expectations of the inaugural speech that while she would not presume to tell Tsai what to say, there were certain hopes.

“Of course, we hope that President Tsai would talk about how she sees Taiwan’s development potential going forward, what kinds of positive vision she has for developing cross-strait ties, and also how to further develop the U.S.-Taiwan partnership,” Thornton said in the first exclusive interview by the Taiwan media with a high-level U.S. official since Tsai was elected president in January.

Thornton, who is responsible for policy related to China and Taiwan and has a deep understanding of cross-strait affairs, said she had met Taiwan’s president-elect a few times before she was elected.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: May 3, 2016

Dazhi Market in central Taipei’s Zhongshan District recently saw the signs of its stands

renovated, reflecting ongoing efforts in the city to give new vigor to traditional community spaces through the input of designers and graphic artists as Taipei hosts the 2016 World Design Capital events.

Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs announced April 28 the completion of sign reinstallation projects at Dazhi as part of The Taipei Design, Action! initiative, which seeks to explore street aesthetics. On eight older street blocks in Taipei, 52 stores were selected to have their signs redesigned, with Dazhi having the first nine cases in the stalls selling such items as dumplings, pork and vegetables.

Aaron Nieh, designer of three new store signs, views it as a great experience to discuss and cooperate with store operators to create something different from his past works. “My style is usually quite cold and now I’ve learned to work on more relaxed, cheerful designs,” he said, recalling his childhood habits of accompanying his mother to traditional markets full of food materials and with a warm human touch, which characterize many other such places all around Taiwan.

DCA head Beatrice Hsieh considers the renovated Dazhi stores a brilliant example of infusing design creativity in everyday activities. “In the past, urban development or marketing projects were mostly focused on larger scales and bigger cases, with designers usually working for elite groups,” she said. “Now top designers, illustrators and architects are invited to contribute their creative ideas to a common community scene, too.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-03
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Former premiers Hau Pei-tsun and Mao Chi-kuo will visit disputed Taiping Island in the South China Sea on Thursday, according to media reports.

The trip has been planned in order to underscore Taiwanese claims of sovereignty over the island, also known as Itu Aba, and several others in the area, where China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan have issued conflicting sovereignty claims. Last January, President Ma Ying-jeou himself visited Taiping Island, and in March the government organized a special trip for the international media to show that it is not just an atoll, but a real island, with an airport, a harbor and buildings.

In addition to Hau and Mao, the Coast Guard Administration was also inviting ex-Foreign Minister Jason Hu and former National Security Council secretary-generals Ding Mou-shih, Su Chi, Hu Wei-jen and Jason Yuan, reports said Tuesday.

The Coast Guard said it wanted to rely on advice from the experienced government members and security experts to help provide ideas for the strategy to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty over the island.      [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/03
By: Hsu Chih-wei and Christie Chen

Taipei, May 3 (CNA) Mothers in Taiwan are mostly happy, but many are burdened by child-rearing duties and do not have someone to turn to when they face difficulties in raising their children, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The poll, conducted by the Child Welfare League Foundation ahead of Mother’s Day, showed that 69.2 percent of the respondents “highly agree” or “agree” that they are happy mothers, while 12.7 percent “somewhat agree” with that statement.

A total of 14.1 percent of the respondents “highly disagree,” “disagree” or “somewhat disagree” that they are happy mothers, while 4.1 percent had no opinion on the subject, according to the poll.

Meanwhile, 46.6 percent of mothers always or often think that they are not competent enough to handle the task of child-rearing, while 16.7 percent occasionally felt this way and 36.7 percent never had this feeling, poll results showed.

The poll also showed that 31 percent of mothers feel a high level of stress in raising their children; 43.2 percent feel a moderate level of stress; and 25.9 percent experience a low level of stress.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-02
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Some farmers in a mango producing area in Tainan City on Monday predicted a severe decrease of local mango fruit this year as many mango trees are not fruiting well. A legislator has promised to seek help from the central government.

Tainan’s Yujing and Nanhua districts are one of few main mango producing areas in Taiwan. Local mango fruit matures around June and July every year. The mango season usually attracts many tourists to the area to buy fresh mango and taste the popular mango ice, and the income is an important part of the local economy.

However, this year local farmers have complained that their mango trees have not flowered well and that many of the scanty fruits on the trees are thin and almost “empty.” Now is about time to put a paper bag around each grown mango fruit on the tree to prevent pests from harming the fruit, but there are just a few fruits on each tree, farmers said.

A member of a local farmers’ association surnamed Lai said local mango trees flower around November, and the ideal weather for the flowering season is cool and dry. But November last year saw warmer weather and more rainfall than previous years, and the situation got worse after severe cold fronts and the ensuing heavy rainfall hit early this year, which resulted in poor flowering and fruiting, Lai said.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/02
By: Chiu Po-sheng and Frances Huang

Taipei, May 2 (CNA) More than 87 percent of employees here said they are planning to celebrate Mother’s Day to express their gratitude to their moms, a survey showed Monday.

Citing the survey, online recruiting agency yes123 indicated that 87.4 percent of respondents said they will spend Mother’s Day with their mothers on May 8, slightly lower than 88.2 percent recorded in a similar survey last year.

The job agency said that despite the slightly lower figure this year, the percentage was still above 80 percent, a threshold it has always exceeded since the annual survey was launched in 2014.

The figure is about 10 percentage points higher than the ratio of polled employees who said they would celebrate Father’s Day, largely because Mother’s Day is always on Sunday while Father’s Day is always on Aug. 8.     [FULL  STORY]