As she spoke about the possibility of her family home being torn down on Friday, Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春), a resident of Dapu (大埔) in Miaoli County’s Jhunan Township (竹南), burst into tears as she called on the public to help her save her home from being demolished to make way for an industrial park.
“I love my home, it may only be 6 ping [19.8m2], but my husband and I worked hard and saved every penny we earned to buy it,” Peng said during an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times. “We bought the house with our hard-earned cash and I put a lot of energy into making it a home. My three children were born and raised here — these memories aren’t something that money can buy.”
Peng said she and her husband, Chang Sen-wen (張森文), have lived in Dapu since getting married in 1980.
“At first, we rented, but after landlords made us move several times, I decided we had to buy a house because only then could our family lead a stable life, without constantly moving around,” she said.
The house was originally 11 ping, but about half of it was torn down to make way for a road that was being widened.
“We had to stay in the house while the demolition took place. Many of our neighbors asked us why we were still living in the house as half of it was being torn down, but we had no other place to stay,” Peng said. “After the demolition, it maybe didn’t look like a house anymore, but it is still our home.”
“We’ve been protesting for the past three years to save what’s left of our home, it’s mentally and physically exhausting. I feel justified in saying said that I’ve been mentally tortured and bullied by the government for those three years,” she said. “We need all the help we can get to save our home and even though we may not stop the demolition, I would like the world to know how brutal this government is and how ruthlessly it treats its people.”
Despite Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) promising in 2010 when he was premier that the 24 families in Dapu would keep their homes, the Ministry of the Interior later decided to demolish them.
The Miaoli County Government has set Friday as the deadline for the residents to demolish their homes.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,