Green Party Taiwan Taoyuan City Councilor Xavier Wang has posted a picture of a dirty pillow on Facebook, saying that it was a military pillow shot by a friend of his when he was serving his short-term reserve training duty at the Armor Training Command And Armor School in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township. The picture has provoked heated discussions among netizens. Having just offered help in a case involving Jian Chih-lung, a rookie soldier in a military police training center in Taoyuan who was infected with Leptospirosis and died as a result of sepsis, Wang asked, “How can rookie soldiers avoid getting sick in an environments of this sanitary standard? What’s the matter with the military?”
A netizen commented that, “when I did my military service in the past it was this filthy.” Others said that, “Items for the short-term reserve training are kept for years in a warehouse” and that “Filthy is normal. If they give you brand new stuff, then something really is wrong.” Someone else asked, “Do you expect to be welcome as if you were at a five star hotel? You are here to fulfill your military duty, not to take a vacation.” However, one also said, “Pathetic. So many people take it for granted and think that it is normal for soldiers to use filthy and defective things.” They think the public should stop regarding abnormalities as the normal state of affairs and stop taking unreasonable things for granted if they want the military to make improvements.
(Liberty Times, translated by Ethan Zhan)
Photo from Xavier Wang’s Facebook profile
照片取材自王浩宇臉書
綠黨桃園市議員王浩宇在臉書貼出一張髒枕頭的照片，指出是朋友到新竹湖口裝甲兵學校教召時所拍下的國軍枕頭，引起網友熱議。才剛協助處理桃園市憲兵訓練中心新兵簡志龍感染「細鉤端螺旋體病」導致敗血症不治的案例，他感慨質疑：「如此衛生環境，新兵怎麼可能不生病？國軍，你怎麼了？」
有網友留言「以前當兵都這樣髒髒臭臭的」，「教召的物品都是長年放在倉庫的」， 「有髒兮兮這正常的，全新的給你才有鬼」，「不然要像住五星級飯店歡迎住宿嗎？進來當兵不是進來度假的」。不過也有網友認為「好慘，大家都把軍人使用髒東西、爛東西視為理所當然和正常。」他們認為不應該把不正常視為正常，也不該把不合理視為理所當然，才能夠慢慢地改進讓軍隊更好。
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
照片：自由時報記者簡榮豐攝
（自由時報記者李容萍）
A: Which team do you think will win the championship in the 2026 World Baseball Classic? B: The previous champion Japan and runner-up the US are exceptionally strong. A: The Taiwan team was captained by Chen Chieh-hsien with a roster of 16 pitchers, 3 catchers and 11 fielders, and was quite strong, too. B: Yeah, players like Hu Chih-wei, Lin Tzu-wei, Yu Chang and Cheng Tsung-che all played in Major League Baseball. And this tournament marked the first call-up of mixed-race talent: MLB’s Stuart Fairchild. A: There are also some Taiwanese stars playing in Japan, including
Candles were made from animal fats in ancient times. As knowledge and materials improved, people began making them with beeswax and vegetable wax, which burned more cleanly and produced less odor. Before __1__ lighting, candles were considered highly valuable. In many religions, they came to symbolize life and wisdom. Even today, candles are frequently used in religious rituals and for cultural celebrations. The __2__ toward industrial candle making began in 1834, when Joseph Morgan patented a machine that could produce molded candles without interruption. His __3__ marked the start of mechanized production, though for many decades, candles were still
Every few years, the World Baseball Classic (WBC) offers sports fans a real World Series. At its finest, as in the shocking upset on Tuesday last week of the US team by Italy, the games generate the kind of electricity fans feel at the FIFA World Cup. That’s exactly how Major League Baseball (MLB), which owns the WBC, wants it. The tournament, first played in 2006, was designed to boost the league’s profile beyond North America and help it become a global game. In most respects, it’s done better than expected. Yet as the WBC grows, the structure, timing and staging of
Jane Goodall, the pioneering scientist whose groundbreaking research changed our understanding of chimpanzees and reshaped the study of animal behavior, has died at the age of 91. The Jane Goodall Institute confirmed that she passed away from natural causes in California in October 2025 while on a speaking tour. Born in England, Goodall gained international fame in the 1960s after traveling to Tanzania to study wild chimpanzees under the guidance of anthropologist Louis Leakey. At the time, she had no formal scientific training, yet she lived among the animals and recorded their behavior in remarkable detail. Her discovery that
RSS