The neighbor of a 96-year-old veteran in Kaohsiung has bought back the man’s home after it went into foreclosure, saving the man and his visually impaired wife from homelessness.
The man, surnamed Chang (張), said his 42-year-old daughter does not work regularly due to her drug addiction and that he and his wife barely see her. Chang said his daughter took out a mortgage without his knowledge and did not make the payments, which he only found out about when the bank delivered a foreclosure notice to his house.
Fearing Chang and his wife would be left homeless, neighbors collected more than NT$3 million (US$94,589) from friends and relatives to buy back the house.
Photo: Tsai Ching-hua, Taipei Times
Lu Wei-jun (呂緯濬) of the Kaohsiung Police Department’s Fongshan Precinct said he received a report from the local branch of KGI Bank saying that an elderly man was looking to withdraw his savings to buy back a foreclosed home. Lu said that at the time he believed it was a case of attempted fraud.
An investigation revealed that the local community came to the elderly couple’s aid, Lu said, adding that “the warmth of the people is the most beautiful aspect of Taiwan.”
Chang, a former soldier, said he moved to Taiwan in his 20s when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled China.
He said his life in Kaohsiung’s Fongshan District (鳳山) is barely sustained by a small monthly pension and social welfare, adding that things have been particularly difficult since his wife began to lose her eyesight three years ago.
Chang’s long-time neighbor in the military dependents’ village, surnamed Yang (楊), is known in the community due to the fruit stand he runs and he became particularly close to the Changs about 10 years ago.
At that time, the elderly couple, recovering from a bad fall, relied on Yang to care for them and bring them medicine.
Chang said that since then Yang has regularly stopped by to check up on them.
Yang said he became worried after the Changs found out about the foreclosure on their home and started talking about suicide.
Yang attended the auction for the Changs’ home, but was outbid. He approached the other bidder, who was reluctant to relinquish the property until Yang told him about the Changs’ talk of suicide. The bidder then agreed to sell the property to Yang for the original auction amount.
Yang’s wife said she hoped the Changs would now be able to stay in the house they are familiar with.
“We really are not the angels you make us out to be, we just worried that Mr Chang would be up all night worrying — that would leave us feeling sorry for the rest of our lives,” she said.
Chang refused to accept their charity and it was only when Yang agreed to take a NT$500,000 deposit from his neighbor that he agreed to stay in the house, the neighbors said.
“I know they are kind people, but rent that should be paid must be paid. You cannot take advantage of people,” Chang said.
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,