Children in Taipei were found to be better informed on global issues -- such as the Kyoto agreement and Hurricane Katrina -- than their counterparts in Shang-hai, according to a survey re-leased yesterday.
The survey, conducted by the Child Welfare League in conjunction with Fudan University in Shanghai, compared children in Taipei and in Shanghai using a range of criteria. It sampled 1240 children in Shanghai and 1753 in Taipei aged 11 and 12.
According to the survey, Taiwanese children scored 10 points higher than their Shanghai counterparts on the "worldview" section of the survey and were roughly twice as likely to be top scorers.
Other aspects covered by the survey included body and fitness, daily habits, lifestyle, future aspirations and self-perception.
Children in Taipei and Shang-hai were found to be similar in height and weight.
When it comes to eyesight, however, Taipei kids don't fare nearly as well -- over 60 percent wear glasses, compared to just 30 percent of children from Shanghai.
Children from Shanghai also tend to go to bed and wake up earlier -- Taipei kids are more likely to be night owls, with bedtimes after 11pm for 32.6 percent of the respondents, the survey said.
For both sets of children, the biggest source of anxiety in their lives came from family and peer pressure to do well at school -- 36 percent in Taipei and 29 percent in Shanghai.
However, Shanghai kids are more likely than Taipei kids to report that they don't worry about anything at all -- 24 percent in Taipei and 30 percent in Shanghai.
When it comes to animals, both sets of children are most likely to admire dogs for their loyalty -- 57 percent in Taipei and 51 percent in Shanghai. For children in Taipei, the leopard comes in second with 31 percent admiring the big cat for its agility. Thirty nine percent of children in Shanghai admire bees for being so hardworking.
Summing up the findings, Vice Chairman of the Child Welfare League Feng Yen (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching