Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Republic of Corruption

Photo by Lee Ying, Taipei Times

KMT Legislator Hong Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) is very angry that someone defaced her service center in Yonghe (永和), Taipei County. According to the China Post a male aged 40-50 wrote ‘whore,’ on her sign when her real nickname is ‘Little Chili.' I was confused because the Taipei Times reported that the offensive characters written were biaozi (bitch, ). The Times also states that Hong’s center received several obscene or threatening telephone calls. It is believed that the incidents are linked to clashes between Hung and Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Pasuya Yao (姚文智) on Monday where Hung called Yao a pizi (ruffian, 痞子). So I went to Zhongwen.com to find the answer.

I must admit I was disappointed to find out that whore and bitch are essentially the same words in Chinese.

I don’t know much about Legislator Hong Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) but found this bit interesting from the China Post article.
I demand the police to crack the case within 24 hours." said Hong in the morning. She said that, since law enforcement agencies took only a day to uncover Tu Shih-san, a disgruntled poet and writer who phone the Executive Yuan to deliver a death threat to Premier Frank Hsieh and his family, she is entitled to the same treatment.
I can’t believe that Hong actually believes that being called a bitch/whore is the same offence as threatening to kill someone. I am not sure about Taiwan law but I doubt you do serious jail time for calling someone a bitch/whore. I would argue that being called a bitch/whore is worse than being called a ruffian but not as bad as having the nickname 'Little Chili.'

6 comments:

Red A said...

Methinks Lil' Chilli must watch too much CSI. While it's easy to trace phone calls, I doubt it's so easy to analyze Sharpie ink residude and handwriting analysis to catch that drunk dude in Taipei last night.

Say....since T.O. isn't playing ball, would he be a suspect?

Big Ell said...

Shit I never even thought of T.O.

Anonymous said...

Check out the self-satisfied smile on the face of the assistant in that photo ... she seems rather pleased with the graffiti don't you think? My guess is that she's the culprit :)

Bread said...

haven't i told you to purge the british roots from your writing? the word is defenSe. monarchist.

Anonymous said...

I am curious why you entitled "Republic of Curruption" to three blog entries, but failed to report or comment on the curruption related to the current government (thus the ruling party)?
Coincident? or intentional?

Big Ell said...

I did talk about Chen Che-nan (陳哲男) formerly of the DPP in a prior post I am working on some others. I try to post about things not covered in other Taiwan blogs which are chock full of information on the various DPP scandals. To be honest I am not a very fast typist.