The squabble over Taoyuan County's betel-nut beauties and the scantiness of their apparel continues. Some good common sense has been uttered on this topic; unfortunately little of it from those in either local or central government, whose reasoning seems based on nothing more than outraged bourgeois sensibilities. Taoyuan Deputy Commissioner Liao Cheng-ching (
For a start there is the question of whether betel nut should be sold at all. This crop is usually grown illegally, often on highly unsuitable slopeland. It is a major contributor to land erosion in central and southern Taiwan -- a good reason for banning or restricting its cultivation. Has anything been done? Only a year ago, after Typhoon Toraji, the government was huffing and puffing about closing the betel-nut industry down. It no more lived up to its promises than did KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), who made the same vow as premier in 1996 after Typhoon Herb.
And don't forget that betel nut is harmful -- Taiwan's oral cancer rates are four times those of Japan and 80 percent of those affected are betel-nut chewers, according to the Department of Health. Yet where is the effort to convince people of betel's dangers? At least, where is the "sin tax" on the product that would pay for the damage that it does?
Liao might defend himself by saying that he has no power to stop people growing betel in Taiwan. But surely Taoyuan County, of which he is the second-highest official, has the power to stop it being sold by the side of Taoyuan's highways. It seems no more difficult -- in fact, rather easier -- to simply forbid the sale of betel and demolish the booths, many of which are illegally sited, from which it is sold, than to expect the county's police force to enforce a dress code. But nothing so radical as trying to shut down the business is proposed.
We can only conclude that Liao's concern is that Taoyuan County's young women should not be able to improve their earnings by dressing immodestly. To which we can only say: Get real! Female sexuality is used to sell everything in Taiwan from news magazines to mobile phones. The gratuitous display of female bodies is OK for the advertising industry, why is it forbidden to young women selling betel nut?
Some have argued of course that betel-nut selling is just the start of a downward spiral into prostitution and the like. But let us ask two questions: Who would sit by a roadside selling betel nuts, baked in the summer, cold and damp in the winter, if they were willing to work as a hooker instead? And given that many of the betel-nut beauties are school dropouts, what else in overqualified Taiwan are they able to do? Work on a factory production line for NT$20,000 month? Hardly an attractive prospect. Go back to school? And where is the money for that to come from?
The whole thrust of the great Taoyuan coverup is misdirected. It attacks a symptom rather than the problem behind it and does so in a way that fundamentally violates civil liberties. The women should be allowed to wear whatever they choose. "My body, my job, my own business" read signs from protesting betel-nut beauties last week. Quite. If Liao can't accept this then Minster of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (
So next time Hong Kong pop diva Karen Mok (
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