orwellian Taiwanese schools, what's chinese, funny notebooks

right click the icon and "save link as" to download the mp3,
or click it to listen right away (9.7mb audio)
topics:
1. a Kaohsiung high school/ vocational school principal who checks
Yahoo! Knowledge (Y! Taiwan's equivalent of Yahoo! Answers)and
other websites for negative mentions of his chool. he'll then
summon teachers to hunt for which student posted those offending
(to him) items to punish (lower grades, etc).

2. teachers at that school have to eat at the same table in the
cafeteria with students during lunch time. they're also not allowed
to bring their own food from home or buy from outside.

3. sunburned badly for the love of art-- photographing sand crabs
at the beach.



4. notebooks with funny Engrish blurbs on the cover-- more
photos



5. Masons inviting people to tour their lodges to drum up
publicity-- NYTimes article link (since this is an archive
article, you'll have to pay to read the article in full. luckily,
the NY Masons reproduced this article here click to
read.)

6. taiwanese split over identity as "chinese" or "taiwanese". big
news a few weeks ago when people discovered that many major
government offices changed all instances of "china" or "chinese" in
their english names to "taiwan" or other words (like "Overseas
Chinese Affairs Council renamed to overseas Compatriot Affairs
Council) original chinese names were retained, though.
other news links for this topic in Chinese:
慶雙十僑委會去中國化 華僑深感被棄-Yahoo!奇摩新聞 and 機關英文名　悄悄改「Taiwan」

OCAC renamed Overseas Compatriot Affairs Council
2006/10/9
The China Post staff

Few may have noticed this, but the Overseas Chinese Affairs Council
(OCAC), Taiwan's highest authority serving citizens living abroad,
has been renamed as the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Council.
While officials with the council said the name change was meant to
make a clearer distinction between Chinese and Taiwanese, opponents
said the move was yet another indication that the government wants
to "de-sinicize," or get rid of all words of phrases associated
with China.
........
This time the council only changed its English name -- its Chinese
name remains the same. The move was criticized as a way to bypass
review of the Legislature.
"What we want to do is to achieve the biggest denominator for all
overseas Taiwanese compatriots," said Cheng Tung-hsing, OCAC vice
chairman and spokesperson. "There are Taiwanese independence groups
who simply can't stand the word Chinese, and there are others who
can't accept the name Overseas Taiwanese Affairs Council."
In fact, the government has already changed the English names of
various overseas offices as part of its de-sinicization campaign.
What used to be the Chinese Cultural Center in places throughout
the United States are now the Cultural Center of TECO (Taipei
Economic and Cultural Office).
Here in Taiwan, the government has also changed names of agencies
in which it has a stake, without telling the public about it.
Chinese Television System, for example, is now part of the Taiwan
Broadcasting System group.
"The Legislature didn't even know about the name change," said
Kuomintang lawmaker Hung Hsiu-chu, member of the Legislature's
Education Committee. "We'll ask for a clear explanation from these
people when we review their budget next time."