With more than a million members and a decades-long history, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has played host to a multitude of unconventional visitors at its Taipei headquarters who have left lasting — albeit amusing — impressions with the reception staff.
Talking about their most memorable experience working at the KMT front desk, a group of receptionists recounted the story of the man who came in, looking perfectly normal and sober, only to tell them: “I am an alien, and on behalf of my people I request that the KMT grant us membership, and these are our party membership applications.”
The man left immediately after finishing what he had to say, leaving behind a stack of newspapers — the so-called membership application forms — and a group of people roaring with laughter, they said.
The party used to have a mainland affairs committee whose staff were stationed in China to gather intelligence, but most of the “secret agents” have returned following the detente between Taiwan and China, they said.
A man who calls himself “Agent 501” usually drops by for a chat at about noon — when there are “free lunchboxes,” they said.
Another party member who claimed the committee had sent him to Nepal in 1969 often came in intoxicated, with a copy of the Koran in hand, which he described as a copy of Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) Three Principles of the People (三民主義) with Sun’s signature on it, they said.
There was also the senior citizen nicknamed “Mr Gold Mountain” who visited the party headquarters from time to time. Showing off an “antique jade pendant,” the man said he had been entrusted to return the pendant, which he said was worth hundreds of million of New Taiwan dollars, to the KMT. A party official actually entertained the man one time, only to find out that the jade was a fake, they said.
As the ruling party, the KMT is never short of “excited” petitioners at its headquarters, they said.
Some visitors would kneel down and request a meeting with the president, they added.
Aside from on-site visitors, the receptionists also have to deal with a wide array of phone calls from members of the public, mostly complaints ranging from criticism of politicians to a “murderous” neighbor or some “money-grabbing” relative.
Regular complainers usually call in at a certain time, they said, adding that they once heard someone in the background telling them to ignore the caller because he was not in his right mind.
The KMT receptionists said they can only patiently and nicely talk to the callers and consider such ordeals an opportunity to act more charitably toward others.
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