Buck Showalter, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, has slammed the use of “Chinese Taipei” as a name for the Taiwanese national baseball team and has given his support to the use of “Taiwan” at international tournaments.
Watching the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games, Showalter told Taiwanese media to call the team “Taiwan.”
“Don’t use ‘Chinese Taipei’ anymore,” he said.
Showalter has a strong connection with Taiwan after guiding Taiwanese pitcher Chen Wei-yin (陳偉殷) to a winning 12-11 record in Chen’s rookie season in Major League Baseball last year.
Given his outstanding performance as a regular starting pitcher for the Orioles last year, the lefty pitcher has replaced Wang Chien-ming (王建民) as the nation’s biggest star in the US major leagues, and has become a focus of local fans’ adulation.
Many Taiwanese sports journalists and TV networks went to Baltimore last year to cover Chen and have become familiar with Showalter.
While watching the WBC games, Showalter was impressed by the Taiwanese squad, as well as other national teams.
In a team practice session at the Orioles’ spring training ballpark in Sarasota, Florida, on Monday, Showalter met with Tim Lin (林為鼎), an interpreter for Chen Wei-yin, and asked: “Are you ‘Taiwanese’ or are you ‘Chinese Taipeinese?’”
“Of course, I’m Taiwanese,” Lin replied without hesitation.
“Very good, that’s what I thought. Taiwanese are Taiwanese. From now on, your baseball team jersey should show the word ‘Taiwan.’ Don’t use ‘Chinese Taipei’ anymore. Your guys did well in the WBC, and advanced into the second round,” he said.
A former manager for the New York Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers, Showalter does not like confusion on nationality issues.
Last season, several journalists mistook Chen Wei-yin to be a Chinese national. Showalter was quick to rectify that.
“I know this very clearly. China is China and Taiwan is Taiwan. They are different countries,” he said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS