Although the true identity of a Taiwanese woman who was reportedly taken to the US as an indentured servant remains unknown, Taiwanese compatriots in Los Angeles say they know her by the name Hsiao-feng (曉鳳), a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official said yesterday.
Some Taiwanese have provided clues regarding the identity of the woman to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Los Angeles, but those have yet to be verified, Bruce Linghu (令狐榮達), director-general of the Department of North American Affairs, told a media briefing in Taipei.
Linghu said TECO officials had met representatives from the Community Service Program, the US organization that is taking care of the woman — known by the pseudonym “Isabel” in a CNN report — adding that the ministry wished to help her reunite with her family.
Photo: Chen Hsien-i, Taipei Times
TECO officials have yet to contact Isabel because the social worker who handles her case is on leave for a few days, Linghu said, adding that they hope to meet her by next week.
CNN reported earlier this month that Isabel had been sold by her impoverished parents to a wealthy Taiwanese family at the age of seven, and the family later moved to California.
Isabel said she was forced to live in a garage and often fed spoiled food, as well as suffering physical abuse, before she eventually managed to escape the family, CNN reported.
In the report, Isabel said she would like to find her mother.
Two families in Taiwan have claimed Isabel as a member since her story made headlines.
Ho Hsiao-ying (何曉英), a Paiwan resident in Taitung County, said Isabel was her sister, named Hsiao-feng. Another woman, Chi Mei-chou (紀美周), in Hsinchu City, claims Isabel is her daughter.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS