Hsuan-hsuan (萱萱) would have been adopted out were it not for Li Wen-kang (李文剛), 97, a Kaohsiung garbage collector who is more saint than recycler of rubbish.
Sixteen years ago, Li heard about a struggling single mother in Kaohsiung, down on her luck and ready to give up her daughter -- Hsuan-hsuan -- for adoption.
Li intervened, offering to pay for the child's upkeep with his meager income from collecting cardboard on the streets.
PHOTO: KUO YUNG-HSIANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Hsuan-hsuan is now a Taipei college student ranked third in her class.
Li continues to pay her way, recycling soda bottles and cardboard into books, pencils and a university education for her. Despite his advanced years, Li still hits the streets every night, trolling for trash that he can sell to help Hsuan-hsuan and other disadvantaged children.
"Keep your money for yourselves," Li tells his beneficiaries when they offer to pay their own way or help him.
"I have more money than I need, so why not help some folks out?" he says.
Li is frugal to a fault, eating just once a day and living on a shoestring. This explains why, despite a monthly income of just NT$1,000 to NT$2,000 plus a scant pension, the spry nonagenarian has cash to spare for poor children.
Li's virtuousness is also apparent in the fact that giving comes much more easily to him than receiving.
Although he has given Hsuan-hsuan and her mother tens of thousands of NT dollars yearly since Hsuan-hsuan was three, Li refuses to accept their invitation to go and live with them in Taipei. He also brushes off suggestions that he scale back his nightly garbage runs or accept others' charity.
Since Hsuan-hsuan and her mother moved to Taipei from Kaohsiung recently, Hsuan-hsuan calls her benefactor every two or three days.
"I've never asked Hsuan-hsuan to call me, but I'm very happy whenever I hear her voice. I just want her to study hard and listen to her mother," Li said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai