Word: huang
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They were big, mean-looking thugs, the corners of their down-turned mouths frothing with betel-nut juice. And the message they delivered to Huang Mei-shu that day last August was almost too horrible to contemplate. "We have your sister," they said. "She stinks. Pay $5,000 if you want her back in one piece." Huang's first instinct was to avoid trouble and fork over the cash. But times were tough for the Taipei slum-dweller, and the most she could rustle up was $500?a sum the kidnappers gruffly rejected. Scared and desperate, she went...
...Huang did what few other Taiwanese in her position had ever done: she fought back. In an emotional press conference, she berated the goons and demanded the authorities take swift, merciless action. The move made her an instant celebrity, with newspapers printing running accounts of her ordeal. The public huffed. Politicians puffed. And, after some delay, a posse of high-ranking police officers was dispatched to tackle the case. The hostage-takers fled and on Sept. 4, more than four weeks into her nightmare, Huang was able to retrieve her sister...
...already dead, of course. That sad news had been known from the beginning. Huang's tormentors, you see, were not members of some professional kidnapping-for-ransom gang. They were morticians?employees of one of the hundreds of companies that compete for market share in Taiwan's bizarre and unruly funeral industry. In Europe and the U.S., "death care" is a multibillion-dollar business, dominated by colossal corporations with stock-market listings, ISO ratings, and executives recruited from leading business schools. It's a big industry in Taiwan too (residents spend around $3 billion a year on funerals...
...such an example to his friends,” says Huang. “People that go to Harvard are achievement oriented, but he makes sure that day-to-day relationships with people are more important. High profile people obviously have an important place in our society, but there are a lot of people like Leo who are down in the trenches of real life just living...
...William Edwards, Alison F. Egan, Alexander J. Eilhauer, Michal Engelman, Lukasz Fidkowski, Kyle R. Freeny, Rachel S.C. Friedman, Kimberlee R. Garris, Jamie H. Ginott, Rebecca P. Gogel, Jennifer L. Gooden, Alexander H. Gourevitch, Elizabeth A. Greenwood, Nicholas R. Guydosh, Bilqis B. Hijjas, Susannah L. Hollister, Justin E. Howell, Katherine Huang, Inga-britt C. Hunter, Radu P. Iovita, Sarah E. Kennedy, Humayun Khalid, Hoon-Jung Kim, Joshua N. Lambert, Robert A. Lauridsen, Courtney H. Leimkuhler, Paula R. Levy, Sarah E. Lewis, Jie Li, Jennifer L. Liu, Patrick P. Liu, James B. Lounsbury, Rochelle K. Mackey, Luba T. Mandzy, Adam G.W. Matthews...