Throughout her life, she never managed to balance her checkbook. Yet she couldn't care less, because she had an amazing talent for borrowing money. In fact, she thrived on high-interest loans. While she was not indulging in all the joys a consumer society had to offer, she was most likely at work extracting cash from the people around her in order to fuel her unquenchable desire for material goods. Not a great beauty, she nonetheless learned to attract men's lust and became a lap dancer at 18. In her middle age, she operated one escort service after another, and got herself thrown into jail several times. Attracted to her worldly savvy, men fell for her easily, especially the squeaky-clean, middle-aged public-servant type. Needless to say, every one of her six marriages failed.
Remembering Mother (多桑與紅玫瑰), the puzzle of a book National Chengchi University professor Chen Wen-lin (陳文玲) pieces together for her deceased mother, is probably the nearest thing Taiwan has produced to a non-fictionalized depiction of a woman of pleasure. Chen grew up with her father and spent time with her mother only when the latter cared to show up for appointments in her orgasmic outbursts of maternal love. Yet once the lavish gifts had been given, and the expensive meal eaten, the elusive mother would again vanish into air.
Even at the book's most hilarious moments, one wonders if one should feel pity for this woman, for she couldn't help but ruin so many lives around her, including that of her own daughter, or the author's elder sister, who grew up in the world of drugs and killed herself soon after turning 30. However, it just doesn't feel right to pity a woman so full of life. She shopped till she dropped. She got whatever she desired, and threw away whatever she got soon after.
Through first-hand accounts, supplemental research and background interviews, the author presents a portrait of a woman who defies judgment.
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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