In an effort to bring joy to children in remote southern and eastern communities, retired garment tycoon Ho Mao-cheng (何茂成) has over the past three years spent tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars building 40 inflatable amusement parks.
Ho, 70, on Monday accompanied one of his inflatable castles on a tour of Yunlin County’s Gukeng Township (古坑), where it was installed, with the assistance of the Taiwan Rolling Bodhisattva Association, at Gukeng Elementary and Junior High School for the amusement of local children.
Ho said he has over the past three years toured Kaohsiung and Pingtung and Taitung counties, but it was the first time one of his mobile parks visited Yunlin.
Photo: Huang Shu-li, Taipei Times
He accumulated a fortune in the US garment industry and has been involved in charitable causes in Taiwan through his church for more than a decade, Ho said, adding that he has been retired since returning to the nation seven years ago to take care of his elderly mother.
He was inspired to buy inflatable amusement equipment in January 2014, when he funded English-language summer camps for children in Pingtung’s remote communities, Ho said, adding that he has read a number of research papers from the US and Japan suggesting that inflatable amusement facilities have a positive effect on the physical and mental health of children.
The large inflatable castles and slides were custom ordered from the US and are moved around the nation for the benefit of children, who use them for free, he said.
“Seeing the smiles on children’s faces and hearing their laughter makes me happy and feel that what I do is worthwhile,” Ho said.
As a show of gratitude for his contribution, school principal Chen Yu-lin (陳育琳) presented Ho with a letter of commendation.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift