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27/08/2004: "Taipei Beggars ........competition tough"
I saw this guy twice or more every day for a couple of weeks. He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. No Centrelink in Taiwan so what do you do when your luck has run out? Become a beggar. Now there are plenty of beggars, some more genuine in their plight than others.
This beggar's ploy was to position himself on an overhead footbridge, north side of Taipei Main Station, lay on a piece of cardboard, and nod his head quite furiously up and down, for hours ALL DAY.
It was mid-summer, 35 degrees in the shade, this guy is out in the sun. The sweat may have kept him cool. I gave him a coin or two every day. It made me feel good; I wonder why? There is more to it than meets the eye.
One day I gave him a NT$100 note (about AUD$4.40) before he had begun work. Then I took this single picture after walking away and then returning on second thoughts.
Before this he'd had opposition from a guy with half his left arm missing. I'd seen this fellow elsewhere. A bit lazy, he'd simply lay in the centre of a busy footpath with a hat to collect coins, but has since developed the head-nodding stunt, setting up 'shop' on the same footbridge. Competition everywhere and it's fierce.
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Article Highlight: The KMT in China and Taiwan
The year 2000 marked a turning point for politics and government in Taiwan, as the KMT lost its monopoly over the island it had enjoyed since its arrival in 1949. And of course the KMT's removal to Taiwan in the first place was due to its failure to effectively govern China.
In a series of articles published this summer on Taiwan Ho!, Jerry Keating examines the history of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT). In the first article Keating describes how the KMT had in its first fifty years lost the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. In the second, we learn how in its next fifty years the KMT would come to lose the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese. The third article examines more closely the Kaohsiung Incident, the birth of Taiwan's modern democracy movement, and sheds some light on the author's initial experiences in Taiwan.
The story continues to be written, as the KMT, despite its authoritarian roots as an "alien regime" in Taiwan, still manages to draw support from a large segment of the population. Only time will tell if it can reform itself in a multi- or dual-party system.
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Cross-Straits Highlight: China & Taiwan
A lot was made this summer in the local and international media about the proposed gift of two giant pandas from China to Taiwan. Following the opposition KMT and PFP visits to mainland Chinese cities this past spring and summer, and relative thawing of the icy relations between the two countries, Beijing offered the pandas to Taiwan. Controversy ensued over the pandas, and whether they would represent a diplomatic gift from one state to another, as the Taiwanese government desired, or a domestic matter, as Beijing sought. The issue has yet to be resolved, and despite ever-closer economic ties, Taiwan and China are still far apart on some fundamental issues.
Taking a closer look at China and Taiwan this summer were two esteemed contributors. First, writer William Stimson recalls his days as a graduate student in the U.S. and the smarts, promise, and talent showed by his Chinese classmates. In China's Snag, he asks how the bright and talented of China could be so fundamentally wrong when it comes to government and imposing tyranny. Next, Professor Keating examines the question faced by the cross-Strait opponents, who really needs whom? Who Needs Pandas? China Needs Taiwan. Source: newsletter@taiwanho.com
