Word: taipei
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Whether the product being sold is beer, cars or Italian parliamentary candidates, skin sells. Just ask the betel-nut girls of Taipei. For years, scantily clad women have been used as fleshy sign-boards to attract customers to roadside stalls selling betel nuts, aka "Taiwanese chewing gum," from shops with names like "Erotic Bitches" and "Moulin Rouge." But on October 15, the county government, embarrassed by the display of public erotica, began enforcing laws prohibiting 1,600 hawkers from unduly exposing certain parts of the female anatomy, specifically breasts, bellies and buttocks. Vendors, of course, claim the restrictions will shrink...
Sure, magazines love reader feedback. But staffers at press magnate Jimmy Lai's Next Magazine were caught mid-sentence last week when 40 club-wielding thugs broke into the offices of the muckraking weekly's Taipei edition. The assailants, arriving in a small caravan of four motorcycles, eight cars and an RV, wore black jackets embroidered with the characters of the Taiwanese gang Heavenly Way. The triad troupe smashed computer monitors, glass doors and windows?and five security guards?before swiping the motherboard from the surveillance system and making their escape. Lai can't seem to stay out of trouble...
...image of an impossibly wealthy and influential organization was one the KMT tried to foster even through its Central Headquarters building. Opened in 1998 on a prime piece of downtown Taipei real estate, the $144 million, 12-story edifice glistens with floors and walls tiled in marble imported from Spain and India. In one of the most cramped and densely populated cities in Asia, the headquarters presides over a wide, leafy boulevard, overshadowing the brick Taiwan presidential offices situated across the street?a building that was once virtually an annex of the party anyway, since a Kuomintang chairman occupied...
...Party members are scrambling to undo some of the more recent damage. Lien, the chairman, told reporters in Taipei recently, "we hope to begin building a new image." Step one is to blunt President Chen's latest attack. On Sept. 25, Lien pledged to put the party's assets into a foreign-managed trust fund. In addition, he said the KMT would be willing to hand over to the government 110 parcels of land and 42 buildings, worth a total of $23 millionthat it says were "gifts" from generous benefactors. Lien dismissed allegations that the assets were illegally acquired...
...Still, party officials have reason to rue their high-profile headquarters in the heart of Taipei, in full view each morning of Chen as he goes to work at his presidential offices. "I think the President may consider our building an eyesore," says KMT spokesman Tsai Cheng-yuan. Some members say publicly that they should return all questionable assets to the government, rather than face the humiliation of being forced to divest. Coming clean would, says KMT parliamentarian Wu Den-yi, "relieve the party of a historical burden." Even if the cost is its showcase headquarters, the KMT may find...