Calculated by the lunar calendar and filtered through Taiwanese tradition, President Lee Teng-hui (
In fact, Lee is only 79 this year, but as Taiwanese custom holds that the number nine is an inauspicious sign, every birthday containing the unlucky number as the second digit is automatically skipped over.
As KMT heavyweights gathered yesterday for the party's weekly Central Standing Committee, they greeted the president heartily as they filed into the party's headquarters.
Later, as Council for Economic Planning and Development chairman Chiang Pin-kung (
"May chairman Lee be healthy and strong on his birthday!" Chiang declared.
In fact, high-ranking party officials said later that they had arranged to have a five-layer cake delivered to mark the occasion, as the 80th is considered a particularly significant birthday.
Lee, however, refused to have any of it, and was quoted as saying that there should be a distinction between public and private occasions.
The party officials had no choice but to make other arrangements, relying on symbolism instead of words. A party official managed to get the president to accept something at the end of the meeting: a "birthday peach."
Two sets of triplets born at Linkou hospital
Two women gave birth to triplets at the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (
In the first delivery, Yeh Lih-ling (
Chung and her husband told reporters that they were especially pleased with the arrival of their three "millennium babies" because the pregnancy was the result of a fifth try at artificial insemination. Four of the six newborns are doing fine, doctors said, although two of them are in the intensive care unit because they had low birth-weights.
E-mail news tips and stories to:
offthebeat@taipeitimes.com
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
STRAIT OF HORMUZ: In the case of a prolonged blockade by Iran, Taiwan would look to sources of LNG outside the Middle East, including Australia and the US Taiwan would not have to ration power due to a shortage of natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, after reports that the Strait of Hormuz was closed amid the conflict in the Middle East. The government has secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for this month and contingency measures are in place if the conflict extends into next month, Kung told lawmakers. Saying that 25 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas supplies are from Qatar, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) asked about the situation in light of the conflict. There would be “no problems” with
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS