President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) handshake jokingly dubbed by netizens as a “death-grip” handshake inspired a high-school student to create a fantasy short story that won him third place in a national student writing competition.
Netizens, known for their sarcastic commentary focused on politicians, have described shaking hands with Ma as bringing bad luck, citing a number of famous athletes who lost crucial games following a handshake with the president.
In the fiction piece authored by Chung Chih-hsuan (鍾智軒), a second-year student at Yunlin County Huwei Senior High School, Ma is portrayed as someone whose soul is possessed by Death after suffering several car and near-drowning accidents as a child.
The possession allows Ma’s right hand to take on Death’s power to bring misfortune to whoever shakes it.
The magical power of Ma’s handshakes then draws the attention of a religious cult, the New Religion of Taiwan (台灣新教), which kidnaps Ma and brainwashes him into helping it dominate the world.
The plot of Chung’s fiction piece, includes the story of how Ma became the president and a description of him traveling to the Vatican where an attempt to take down the pope with a handshake fails, with the religious leader managing to withstand Ma’s “kiss of death.”
Chung’s work stood out among the more than 100 entries in the fifth National Student Fantasy Writing Competition held at Chang Hua Senior High School.
The competition is the only student-writing contest in the nation that centers on the fantasy genre. It requires contestants to pick a real-life Taiwanese figure as the lead character of their works.
The award presentation ceremony for the contest is to be held on Thursday next week.
Chung said while reading science fiction had been his childhood passion, he found much more joy in writing.
“I learned about the competition on the Internet. The reason I chose Ma as my story’s main character was because both my friend and I found the president’s handshake curse to be intriguing,” he said.
Asked if he was worried about the “possible repercussions” of writing about a politically sensitive figure, Chung said: “Not at all. We are living in an open society and I doubt the school will put me on special watch just because of my story.”
Chung added that his story was meant to amuse readers and not to belittle the president.
Taiwanese author Chen Su-hsien (陳思嫻), who served as one of the judges for the contest, said Chung’s creativity and writing skills were commendable and that the judges took into account nothing other than the quality of the submitted works.
Other judges said that students’ freedom of writing should be respected and that nothing should prevent Chung from being awarded for his fine work.
The Presidential Office has declined to comment on the matter.
Additional Reporting by Peng Hsien-chun
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is to launch a new program to encourage international students to stay in Taiwan and explore job opportunities here after graduation, Deputy Minister of Education Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said on Friday. The government would provide full scholarships for international students to further their studies for two years in Taiwan, so those who want to pursue a master’s degree can consider applying for the program, he said. The fields included are science, technology, engineering, mathematics, semiconductors and finance, Yeh added. The program, called “Intense 2+2,” would also assist international students who completed the two years of further studies in
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) departed for Europe on Friday night, with planned stops in Lithuania and Denmark. Tsai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday night, but did not speak to reporters before departing. Tsai wrote on social media later that the purpose of the trip was to reaffirm the commitment of Taiwanese to working with democratic allies to promote regional security and stability, upholding freedom and democracy, and defending their homeland. She also expressed hope that through joint efforts, Taiwan and Europe would continue to be partners building up economic resilience on the global stage. The former president was to first
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
MORE NEEDED: Recall drives against legislators in Miaoli’s two districts and Hsinchu’s second district were still a few thousand signatures short of the second-stage threshold Campaigners aiming to recall Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday said they expect success in 30 out of 35 districts where drives have passed the second-stage threshold, which would mark a record number of recall votes held at once. Hsinchu County recall campaigners yesterday announced that they reached the second-stage threshold in the recall effort against Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘). A total of 26,414 signatures have been gathered over the past two months, surpassing the 10 percent threshold of 23,287 in Hsinchu County’s second electoral district, chief campaigner Hsieh Ting-ting (謝婷婷) said. “Our target is to gather an additional 1,500 signatures to reach
RSS