What use is investigation?
I found Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang’s (羅智強) statements about the missing documents that compelled 34 interested global citizens to issue a group statement calling the KMT’s handling of the case a “political ploy” quite interesting (“Official hits back at academics’ letter,” April 12, page 1).
According to the article Lo said that “they [the current government] were not aware of any missing documents” at the time of the handover from the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to the incoming administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
So, if they were not aware at the time of the handover, doesn’t that possibly mean that the documents became “missing” after the handover, instead of before it? If the Ma administration was unaware at the time, as they seem to be pretty much all the time, then what can an investigation discover?
ERIC MOORE
Greater Kaohsiung
Taiwan needs to go green
One lesson we can learn from the recent disasters in Japan is that humans, no matter how sophisticated their civilization, still live at the mercy of nature.
The enormous force of earthquakes, tsunamis or nuclear power are simply too overwhelming for humans to rein in. What happened at Fukushima and Chernobyl are apocalyptic signs. They remind us that man cannot and should not play God and tinker with forces of that magnitude.
Unlike earthquakes and tsunamis, which unleash their power instantly and cause tremendous visible damage right away, the release of radiation is slow and invisible and could harm people for thousands of years to come.
Like Japan, Taiwan is situated on geological fault lines. Its nuclear reactors are considered to be some of the most dangerous in the world. A disaster on the scale of that at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant would cripple Taiwan, a price the 23 million people of Taiwan cannot afford.
Taiwan’s best bet is to decommission its nuclear plants and use alternative energy sources. Likewise, the proposed petrochemical plant in central Taiwan would only aggravate environmental deterioration, polluting air and water and, in the long run, increasing the toll on the nation’s health.
The choice for Taiwan is clear — a green island, sustainable for future generations.
YANG JI-CHARNG
Ohio
Appreciating Hoklo
The Taiwanese language (also known as Hoklo) has been used in Taiwan for hundreds of years. It has many unique and interesting features.
A syllable can be used without a vowel (ng, “yellow”). The letter “n” has two sounds, n and nn (tsin, “true” and tsinn, “money”). The tone for the word “mister” (siansinn) is changed when a surname is added. Taiwanese songs are composites of musical and linguistic tones.
Guan, lin and yin are the plural forms of gua (“I”), li (“you”) and yi (“he”), formed by adding “n.” In Taiwanese, “a” is used in front and/or at the end of a noun to represent “lovely” or “little” (Ama, “Grandma,” kaua, “little dog”). It might indicate contempt instead, depending on the context.
An adjective is emphasized by repeating itself (sng, “sour”; sngsng, “very sour”; sngsngsng, “extremely sour”) or by using a repeated adverb (sui tangtang, “very beautiful”; ling, kiki, “very cold”). “Not a half” is used to emphasize “none” (bo puann lang, “not a half person”). Eyes are counted in “lui” like flowers, indicating the beauty of eyes.
Taiwanese has local accents, such as northern and southern. In Yilan and Lotong, rice and egg are pronounced as puinn and nuinn instead of penn and nenn, respectively.
As in English, “have” (u) plus a past participle is used to express a present perfect tense (u lai, “have come”). Taiwanese living in the US often say no car is like no feet — “feet” is pronounced “car” in Taiwanese.
The English “here” means “there” (hia) in Taiwanese. Santa Claus greets people in Taiwanese “Ho, Ho, Ho!” (Good, Good, Good!), and his beard is extremely beardy (hohoho in Taiwanese).
CHARLES HONG
Columbus, Ohio
They did it again. For the whole world to see: an image of a Taiwan flag crushed by an industrial press, and the horrifying warning that “it’s closer than you think.” All with the seal of authenticity that only a reputable international media outlet can give. The Economist turned what looks like a pastiche of a poster for a grim horror movie into a truth everyone can digest, accept, and use to support exactly the opinion China wants you to have: It is over and done, Taiwan is doomed. Four years after inaccurately naming Taiwan the most dangerous place on
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
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