Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators invited the public yesterday to come up with “Taiwanese” nicknames for the pair of giant pandas presented by China, which bear names that the lawmakers contend are suggestive of Beijing’s efforts to suppress Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Submissions and voting for the new names are being accepted on the personal blog of DPP Legislator Twu Shiing-jer, with results to be announced next Wednesday.
Among the names that have received the most support so far are “Chih-ming, Chun-chiao, [志明,春嬌]” “one China, one Taiwan” and “Wang-yao, Wang-shih [罔腰,罔市].”
PHOTO: AP
The pandas, which arrived at the Taipei Zoo on Tuesday, are called Tuan-tuan (團團) and Yuan-yuan (圓圓), which together mean “reunion,” a term that implies the unification of Taiwan and China.
The lawmakers, including Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲), Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) and Chen Chi-yu (陳啟昱), said the pandas are a “political tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and asked the public to keep the meaning of the animals’ presence in Taiwan in mind.
“The DPP isn’t trying to make things difficult for these two pandas. But when people are visiting the pandas, they should not be ignorant of the hidden meaning behind them,” Kuan said.
Kuan said the use of pandas by China as a tool to build relations with other countries began in the late 1950s when a pair of pandas was given to the Soviet Union.
In addition to giving five pandas to North Korea in the 1960s, Beijing presented the rare animals to the US, Japan, France, the UK, Germany, Mexico and Spain between 1972 and 1978, Kuan said.
The exporting of pandas had been dormant for more than 20 years when China gave a pair to Hong Kong in 1999 to celebrate the second anniversary of the handover of the former British colony to China.
Another pair of pandas was presented to Hong Kong last year to mark the 10th anniversary of the handover, Kuan said.
The two pandas were offered to Taiwan in 2005 after a visit to China by then-KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰).
The Council of Agriculture, then under the DPP administration, however, rejected the offer on the grounds that Taiwan did not have adequate conditions to care for the animals.
The council approved the Taipei Zoo’s application to house the animals in August, three months after the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Now, Kuan said, the acceptance of the gift by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration was a prelude to Taiwan’s unification with China and the end of the Republic of China.
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