Taiwan

Yahoo! says sorry for hiring lap dancers at geek contest

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:48:50 +0200

Yahoo! has apologised for hiring lap dancers to entertain at a "Hack Day" public IT contest in Taiwan where geek members of the public compete to create web applications and hack into them. After posting photos of the go-go dancers "rewarding" the winners on stage, a chorus of outrage began to grow online. In a blog post on Monday, the company said its choice was "regrettable" and that it wouldn't happen again. The following images were posted on the blog of a disgruntled "Hack Day" fan.

And the rest by "CocaChou" on Flickr.

Taiwanese serial kisser stalks the streets of Paris

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:53:13 +0200

At the Sacré Coeur basilica, Montmartre.

In just two months, she's claimed 54 victims. A Taiwanese student has decided to immortalise her stay in Paris by photographing herself kissing 100 strangers and posting the evidence on her blog. Romantic? Far from it, according to some of her fellow countrymen.

Yang Ya-ching is studying music in Paris. She began her "Kiss 100 men in Paris project" in mid-July, and only half way through her challenge, has so far attracted two million visitors to her blog and hundreds of comments. Some of them supportive, others, a little outraged...

The "betel nut beauties" of Taiwan

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:01:35 +0200

Daylight prostitution in Taipei? Nope. Just some scantily clad Taiwanese girls selling drinks, cigarettes and nuts to passing car drivers.

Corsets, cleavages, and skirts shorter than a belt; "betel nut beauties" stop at nothing to get the attention of passing cars. Largely from underprivileged backgrounds, this unusual workforce, sat in their brightly coloured neon-lit stalls, are dressed as such in order to sell nuts, not sex. A prized stimulant in Taiwan, betel nuts are highly popular... and so are the "betel beauties".

The Taiwanese authorities did attempt to get the vendors to soften their look after blaming them for an increase in traffic accidents. But the law, passed in parliament in 2002, fell flat after it was barely enforced. It was not received warmly by the Taiwanese population.

Photos: Tobie Openshaw.

Flood victims swept away in “a year’s worth of rainfall”

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:03:03 +0200

Taiwan has been hit hard by Typhoon Morakot. Fourteen are dead, 51 officially missing, and hundreds more unaccounted for. Bridges and even damns have been swept away by "unseen" amounts of rainfall, displacing over a million people. A meteorologist visiting the country filmed the following footage on his digital camera.

Typhoon Morakot swept into Taiwan on Friday after leaving over 20 people dead in the Philippines. The result of 2.5m rainfall and wind speeds of 85 mph, the typhoon toppled a six storey hotel, left cars submerged under water and sparked huge landslides, leaving the whereabouts of one entire village unknown. It moved on to China's east coast on Sunday afternoon, where over a million people have been evacuated in face of 120 mph gales.

Taiwan’s deserted "UFO houses"

Ségolène Team Observers — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:51:57 +0200

Built in the early eighties, these extraordinary sea-view homes are known as the "UFO houses" by the Taiwanese. Just 15 kilometres from the capital, the deserted residences have been left abandoned for the past three decades. Now they face imminent demolition.

The constructors who launched the project, which was never completed, announced two months ago that the structures would be bulldozed in order to build a "more normal" hotel complex. This, however, didn't go down well with the Taiwanese blogosphere. A debate over why the decision had been taken so suddenly spiralled into an excited dispute over paranormal activity. The more rational web users pointed out that high winds and large windows led to shattered glass and over-heating, while others said that the project had in fact been abandoned because ghosts haunted the grounded spaceships.