After assisting a destitute and sick Philippine-Taiwanese man who was homeless for a decade, a benevolent Taiwanese family recently helped the man return home to the Philippines for a family reunion.
The family, surnamed Huang (黃), from Greater Taichung, looked after the 56-year-old man, surnamed Shih (施), for more than a decade.
Shih, a Republic of China (ROC) passport holder, arrived in Taiwan from the Philippines in 1998 to work.
Despite holding an ROC passport, Shih did not have a national identification card or a registered permanent residence. After his passport went missing, Shih overstayed his original visa.
He was later hospitalized following a heart attack, adding further misfortune to his predicament.
After his discharge from hospital, Shih met Huang’s mother through an acquaintance and she rented him a place to stay.
However, Shih’s precarious physical health meant he could not work full-time. Instead he could only do odd jobs to make ends meet. Given his reduced circumstances, Huang’s mother waived the rent on his room.
Then misfortune struck again: Shih was diagnosed with occlusion of the cerebral arteries, or a stroke, triggered by overwork. For the next few years he was bedridden.
Although Huang’s mother passed away while Shih was recovering, Huang continued to help Shih, who only recently regained his ability to walk after undergoing a rigorous rehabilitation program.
About a month ago, Huang contacted the National Immigration Agency’s First Specialized Operations Brigade in Greater Taichung, and asked the agency to help Shih reunite with his family in the Philippines.
Huang made the request after learning of Shih’s yearning for his family back home, having lived apart for so many years and losing contact with them.
Shih had long wanted to return home to visit, but his lack of money and his visa status prevented him from doing so.
Taichung City First Specialized Operations Brigade head Hsu Ching-ju (徐靜儒) said that although Shih’s poor health had greatly decreased his employment opportunities, Huang and his mother had helped him going through the darkest moments of his life.
After a month-long effort, Hsu said the agency had managed to make contact with Shih’s family in the Philippines, adding that Shih left Taiwan on March 14, with Huang contributing to the cost of his ticket
“Prior to his departure, Shih burst into tears while giving Huang a hug, expressing his sincere gratitude to those who had helped him so much in Taiwan,” Hsu said.
Translated by Stacy Hsu, staff writer
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