Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) plans to publish a new book next month, recounting her journeys, physically and mentally, since the last election.
In Ing’s Clique: The Last Mile to Light Up Taiwan (英派 — 點亮台灣的一哩路, tentative translation), Tsai writes that she has been traveling across the nation since she lost the 2012 presidential election, trying to find out what the public needs and what she can do for them as a politician.
“I have fallen, and tried to get up,” she said. “In the past few years, I have traveled around, trying to observe and understand the problems that people are facing. A politician must think from the public’s perspective, to find whether a policy would bring convenience or burden to the public when it is implemented in the lives of the ordinary.”
The book records changes in the society, as well as what Tsai has seen in the past three years from seven perspectives, which she calls “the seven Ings.”
“If the seven Ings could attract a group of people belonging to the ‘Ing’s clique’ to change the nation, then what I have done in the past three years is worth it,” Tsai wrote.
She said the term “Ing’s clique,” which has the same pronunciation as “hawk faction” in Mandarin, does not mean it is a small political faction loyal to her personally. She said the term came to her when she was speaking at a rally in Keelung earlier in the year, and was touched by the passion of the crowd.
“I felt I needed to give a powerful name for ‘us,’ the group of people who want to change the destiny of the nation, and therefore ‘we are all Ing’s clique’ popped out from my mouth,” Tsai wrote. “I expect ‘Ing’s clique’ to be a large crowd, and I expect ‘Ing’s clique’ to be a group of people to be remembered in Taiwan’s history, and to be remembered as a group of reformers.”
The book is Tsai’s third. Her first, an autobiography titled From Scrambled Eggs with Onions to Little Ing Lunchboxes — The Life Experiences of Tsai Ing-wen (洋蔥炒蛋到小英便當: 蔡英文的人生滋味) was published during the 2012 presidential campaign, while a collection of photographs from the campaign trail titled Together and Forever: Our Journeys with Tsai Ing-wen (一直同在 Together & Forever: 我們和小英一起走過的旅程) was published later that year.
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