For 10 years, Tsui Mama Rental Service (
And yesterday, members of Taipei's first and only non-profit rent referral service, celebrating its 10-year birthday, said it is interested in playing a more active role as a grass-roots community organizer.
"We are like a big family and we're always happy to help," said Lu Chia-han (
People like Lu have kept the non-profit organization going for 10 years, said chairman Lin Te-fu (
With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the group has introduced 150,000 flat-owners to 300,000 tenants. Its volunteer team of attorneys has mediated in 4,000 landlord-tenant disputes.
Over the past three years, the group has expanded its activities to revitalization projects in its neighborhood, including the reconstruction of Wenchou Park (
In the wake of the "Snails without Shells" movement against skyrocketing housing prices in 1989, a group of activists called their movement "Tsui Mama" in memory of Tsui Chen Shue-jin (
The housing service group was determined to serve as a long-term base for the social movement on affordable housing.
"Tsui Mama is a little giant in the big city. It's a great philanthropist and a great business," said Pan Yun-chin (
Angered at skyrocketing housing prices, Shen Ping-wu (
"I've always wanted to volunteer for society," he said.
Shen met his wife Esther Li (
"The reason? Because she is a very devoted volunteer!" he said.
Four couples have met and married while working as volunteers at Tsui Mama during the past ten years.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has