|
Archive-name: Taiwan-faq/general
URL: http://www.geocities.com/~tyang/sct_general.html Last-modified: 1997/07/01 See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge
_________________________________________________________________
"SOC.CULTURE.TAIWAN" SURVIVAL GUIDE AND FREQUENTLY-ASKED QUESTIONS
by
Tung-chiang Yang (tcyang@netcom.com)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to "soc.culture.taiwan", the Usenet newsgroup for discussions
about things Taiwanese. On "soc.culture.taiwan" we discuss Taiwanese
culture, including the customs, food, language aspects, political
discussions and related topics. For historical reasons, a lot of
messages about things Chinese and Taiwanese are crossposted in
"soc.culture.china" and "soc.culture.taiwan" too. For simplicity's
sake, "soc.culture.taiwan" will be abbreviated as SCT henceforth.
Please keep in mind that SCT is for "discussing things Taiwanese", not
necessarily for people from Taiwan, though people from Taiwan should
form the majority of the subscribers of SCT. Therefore, please try to
keep your postings in SCT on topic. A lot of friends from countries
all over the world learn what Taiwan is through SCT, and most people
are not interested to wade through off-topic postings before reaching
what they are really looking for.
You might also want to check out another Usenet newsgroup
"alt.taiwan.republic", which your newsgroup file describes in this way
"Like soc.culture.taiwan, only different". However, it seems that lots
of postings there are also crossposted in SCT. Besides, it is much
less active than SCT.
If you have access to some Chinese character software, you can also
try the newsgroup "alt.chinese.text.big5", in which people post their
ideas in Chinese characters as SCT is designed in ordinary unencoded
text. Because of this reason, messages had better not be crossposted
in SCT and "alt.chinese.text.big5".
This guide might be able to help you avoid being flamed (insulted and
abused) by the other users of this newsgroup. Nevertheless, you will
be flamed or insulted occasionally for no reason at all after some
posting. This happens to everyone who posts. Some newsgroup readers
will misread your eloquent post and rant about your idiocy and lies
from just one sentence out of your 400 lines of posting. If this is
the case, keep cool for some time, and briefly explain what you really
meant in the previous post by personal E-mails, or a follow-up to
his/her rant if you consider most of the other SCT readers might also
misunderstand you.
When posting to SCT, there are many previously unwritten rules you
must follow in order to receive an answer instead of a long round of
abuse and name-calling, like "liar", "idiot" or "moron". Don't be
surprised if you see occasionally outrageous flames here at SCT.
The most intelligent thing you can do to avoid being flamed on SCT
when posting is to post things, including inquiries and discussions,
which are related to Taiwan culture, or things people interested in
Taiwan might care only. Because of the complicated political situation
Taiwan faces, if you want to initiate a political thread in SCT, you
are advised to read this newsgroup for approximately ONE MONTH
before you begin posting. This will give you a good feeling for the
social climate existing in the newsgroup.
When you do post, either a new topic or a follow-up to an existing
topic, try to make your post meaningful by including some useful
information. If you are following up another thread, please quote the
previous text appropriately. It should contain enough information so
that a new lurker can understand what you try to describe, but not
necessarily the whole message you are following up, which is an
obvious waste of Internet bandwidth. You should keep in mind that for
some sites your follow-up might arrive there before the original
article, which makes appropriate quotation even more important. When
following up political threads, you should pay special attention as
mistakes in the quotation might attract the flames from the original
poster.
When you read news items and feel like following up, maybe you want to
finish reading all the follow-ups along that thread first. It is very
likely that someone has already said what you want to tell others.
Following up is not a voting process. More people speaking in favor of
some concept along a thread does not mean anything at all.
Commercial advertisings are not welcome in SCT, as readers here are
interested in two-way discussions about things Taiwanese but not the
rate for the long-distance carriers or the premium for health
insurance policy, which are one-way announcements and not specific to
SCT. If you post ads here, SOMEONE WILL FLAME YOU. On the other hand,
posting personal ads like "Apartment for Rent" and "Used Car for Sale"
are not encouraged for the same reason. Readers of SCT are all over
the world, and SCT is not a good medium for such messages which are
supposed to attract local attentions. If you still prefer to post
personal ads in SCT, please be sure that you can master the
"Distribution" feature in the newsheader so people in Taipei won't
read your "Apartment for Rent" in New York City.
Before you create a new topic, read the topic names of each and every
thread in SCT. If you create a topic that duplicates an existing one
(say, you can follow up that topic but you post a new topic instead),
it might waste the time of every participant in that topic.
_________________________________________________________________
***** FAQ'S OF SCT *****
GENERAL
* (G. 1) Where can I get the FAQ of SCT?
* (G. 2) What is Taiwan, after all?
* (G. 3) I am quite a newbie in Usenet. Where should I start?
* (G. 4) Anyone there knows Xxxx's E-mail address and phone number?
* (G. 5) Is there any other FAQ in SCT?
* (G. 6) SCT is unmoderated. Why some people like to play net-cops?
* (G. 7) Someone just posted an offensive stuff. What can I do?
* (G. 8) The discussion along this thread is now off-topic. What can
I do to attract the attention from the correct audience?
* (G. 9) Are there any short wave radio station from Taiwan?
* (G.10) Is there any on-line map for Taiwan?
* (G.11) Where can I get on-line information about Taiwan stock
market?
* (G.12) Where can I get the information about teaching English in
Taiwan?
* (G.13) Is there any on-line information about libraries in Taiwan?
* (G.14) Is there any on-line "newspaper" in Taiwan?
* (G.15) Is there any on-line information about jobs in Taiwan?
* (G.16) Credits
_________________________________________________________________
(G. 1) Where can I get the FAQ of SCT?
You are reading it now, aren't you? Save them for further reference.
In this case you can find the information you want when you need them.
For anonymous ftp, you can try to use the following URL sites:
Africa
ftp://ftp.is.co.za/usenet/news.answers/Taiwan-faq/
North America
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/Taiwan-faq/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/soc.culture.taiwan/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/soc/culture/taiwan/
ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/Taiwan-faq/
ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/rtfm/usenet-by-group/soc.culture.taiwan/
ftp://www.cdrom.com/pub/internet/rtfm/soc/answers/Taiwan-faq/
Latin America
Asia
ftp://nctuccca.edu.tw/USENET/FAQ/soc/culture/taiwan/
ftp://ftp.hk.super.net/mirror/faqs/Taiwan-faq/
Europe
ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/FAQ/soc/culture/taiwan/
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS/Taiwan-faq/
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/usenet/rtfm.mit.edu/usenet-by-hierarchy/soc/culture/taiwan/
In fact, this also implies the way how you can find FAQ's for other
newsgroups. Some of the archive files are compressed and you need to
"uncompress" them before reading.
If you want to include this version of SCT FAQ in your homepage, you
can point your links to
http://www.geocities.com/~tyang/Taiwan_faq.html
In this way you don't need to keep the FAQ at your own memory quota,
and you don't need to spend time updating them. With some appropriate
Web browser, you can also download these files.
Some of the above HTML documents include images linked to sites in
Taiwan, and for some readers and browsers viewing them could be quite
slow. If this is a problem for you, you can try the URL at
Africa:
North America:
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/Taiwan-faq/
http://www.uwo.ca/its/news/FAQ/Taiwan-faq/
Latin America:
Asia:
http://www.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/Taiwan-faq/
http://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/faq/Taiwan-faq/
Europe:
http://ftp.tuwien.ac.at/newfaqs/soc.culture.taiwan/
http://www.bwl.uni-passau.de/archive/faq/soc.answers/Taiwan-faq/
http://www.pasteur.fr/other/computer/FAQ/Taiwan-faq/
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-bng/soc.culture.taiwan.html
http://www.math.uio.no/faq/Taiwan-faq/
http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/faq/soc.culture.taiwan.html
The FAQ files there are obtained directly from Usenet posting and
cover fewer links, but they are fast for reading since they include no
images. By changing the directories "soc/culture/taiwan" you might
also obtain FAQ's for other newsgroups. Please check the
"Last-modified" date at these sites as some of them might not update
their archives quite often.
If you only have E-mail access, you can send an E-mail to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu
with the following line in the body of the message:
send usenet/news.answers/Taiwan-faq/*
You will receive all five parts of this FAQ. You can replace the
asterisk by the part names like "politics" or "culture" so you will
receive one part only.
For SCT FAQ by other authors (refer to (G. 6) Is there any other FAQ
in SCT?), you can contact their authors for a copy, or wait for its
postings in SCT.
(G. 2) What is Taiwan, after all?
Geographically Taiwan refers to an island around 250 miles (400 km)
long and 60-80 miles (100-130 km) wide in eastern Asia, roughly lying
between Japan and Philippines. It is separated from Mainland China by
Taiwan Strait, which is around 160 km (100 miles) wide in average,
from Philippines by Bashi Channel, and from Japan by Ryukyu Islands.
There are larger plains in the western Taiwan as Chungyang Shanmo
(Central Range) lies closer to the east. Taiwan was named "Ihla
Formosa", which means "the beautiful island" in Portuguese, by those
Portuguese traders and sailors in the 16th century.
Taipei, the largest city in this island with population around
5,913,033 (including the suburb area as of 11/30/94), is the political
and economical center and it lies in northern Taiwan. Kaohsiung, the
second largest city with population 2,596,891, is the industrial and
transportation center and it lies in the southern part. Agricultures,
especially for its fruit production owing to the warm climate, are
evenly distributed in the western part of Taiwan, where there are
larger plains for farming.
With an area of 36,002 square kms (13,900 sq. miles) and 21,118,903
population (as of 11/30/94), there are 587 people per square kms
(1,519 people per sq. miles), which makes Taiwan one of the crowdest
places in the world.
The summer might be considered the rainy season as typhoons strike
this island often and bring abundant rainwater to Taiwan. For Taipei
and Keelung, the major harbor in northern Taiwan, it also rains a lot
in winter because of the northeast seasonal wind which brings a lot of
moisture. As the Tropic of Cancer passes through Chia-yi, the climate
in Taiwan may be considered subtropical. Being located at the adjacent
point of Eurasian plate and Pacific plate, earthquakes in Taiwan are
quite common like in Japan and California.
Politically Taiwan is almost identical to Republic of China (ROC), as
the latter effectively controls Taiwan, in addition to the Penghu
islands which lie in Taiwan Strait, Kinmen (also known as Quemoy) and
Matsu, which are two groups of islands lying very close to Xiamen and
Fuzhou, two cities currently controled by PRC. Troops from Taiwan, ROC
are also stationed in some of the larger islands in the South China
Sea like Tungsha Tao among the Spratly Islands.
In 1971, Taiwan, ROC lost its seat in the General Assembly, together
with the membership for the Permanent Security Council of the United
Nations. In 1979, the United States switched diplomatic recognition
from ROC to PRC, which were two strong blows for Taiwan. Right now,
only a few countries in the world have diplomatic relationships with
Taiwan, ROC; among these countries only South Africa and Vatican can
be considered major players in the world stage. On the other hand, PRC
claims that "there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of China" and
asks most countries to agree to this condition when they set up
diplomatic relationships with PRC. In spite of this, Taiwan still
keeps some unofficial agencies in foreign countries to serve functions
as embassies and councils.
Historically Taiwan belonged to China in the Ching (Manchu) Dynasty.
Originally Taiwan was inhabitated by Malayo-Polynesian aboriginies and
in late 16th century Chinese traders, bandits and peasants arrived and
settled. In 1683, Ching Dynasty defeated troops of Cheng-kung Cheng
(also known as Koxinga) and his son who used Taiwan as a base for
restoring the Ming Dynasty, and put Taiwan under control of the Fukien
Province. Some people from Fukien and Guangdong began to relocate
themselves to Taiwan for a better living. Because of the increasing
importance of Taiwan, Ching Dynasty set up the provincial status for
Taiwan in 1887.
In 1895, after losing the first Sino-Japanese war to Japan, China was
forced to cede Taiwan to Japanese control, and it did not come back to
Chinese control until the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II.
In 1949, after the defeat in the Chinese Civil War to CCP Mao, CKS and
a lot of residents in Mainland China relocated themselves and the ROC
government to Taiwan.
Culturally Taiwan is closely related to China, though the Japanese
occupation has some certain effects in Taiwan, say, some word usage in
ordinary lives. The official language used in Taiwan is Mandarin.
However, in the countryside, Taiwanese (Hoklo, Minnan or Southern
Fujian dialect) is more popular. Hakka is also used in Taiwan by some
people whose ancestors came from Mei (Plum) County in Canton, and
their origin can even be traced back to Henan province in Northern
China (in Chinese "Hakka" means "guest"). Tainan, a city which is
around 50 km apart from Kaohsiung, might be the most historical city
in Taiwan.
Economically Taiwan is proud of its dynamic export-oriented economy.
Decades ago low-technology exports are the mainstream, like clothes
and cheap toys. Nowadays they have already been replaced by high
quality TV sets and computers. Taiwan now holds one of the largest
reserves in foreign currency in the world and it exports US$ 83
billions in 1992. Due to the extraordinary achievements, Taiwan,
together with South Korea, Singapore and Hongkong, are also known as
"the four little dragons" in Asia.
(G. 3) I am quite a newbie in Usenet. Where should I start?
Well, this should not be a FAQ in SCT, but it might be better to be
included here. For starters, you can subscribe to the newsgroup
"news.announce.newusers". The following postings are recommended: (all
these were written by Mark Moraes unless otherwise mentioned)
"How to find the right place to post (FAQ)" by Aliza R. Panitz.
"Rules for posting to Usenet".
"Hints on writing style for Usenet".
all the above three items are musts if you might want to post in SCT
instead of being a lurker.
"Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette" (Note: this is a
satirical text)
"A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community".
"What is Usenet?"
Some of the basic netiquettes can be found in the magazine "TIME",
Special issue in Spring 1995 on page 42:
1. Do not Shout -- don't type all the message in ALL CAPS.
2. But Speak Up -- typing everything in lower case might be equally
bad.
3. Stick to the FAQs -- Don't repeat unnecessary questions.
4. "Smile" Discreetly -- Make use of the flame retardant :)
5. No Parrots, Please -- Only quote what you need.
6. Please, No Commercials -- Unless they are on-topic in SCT.
7. Lurk Before You Leap -- Read for a while before you post.
8. Don't Blow Smoke -- Know whereof you speak.
9. Don't Be the Skunk at the Picnic -- If you don't like SCT, just go
away.
10. Think Twice, Write Once -- A careless posting has much stronger
staying power than something slipped out of your lips.
11. Apply the Golden Rule -- Do to others what you want them to do to
you.
The moderated newsgroup "news.answers" includes all archived FAQ's for
miscellaneous groups. It is a good starting point.
If you want to test your newsreader program to see if you can post,
please use "*.test" newsgroups, like "misc.test" or "alt.test". Don't
forgot to include the word "ignore" in the subject of your test
posting.
(G. 5) Anyone there knows Xxxx's E-mail address and phone number?
In SCT we can usually find questions like this, asking other
subscribers of SCT to help locating another person, say, asking for
his/her address and/or phone numbers, and/or E-mail addresses.
However, this is not encouraged in SCT unless the one you are looking
for is indeed famous either in the world or in Taiwan for the
following reasons:
1. There are a lot of people who share almost the same names in
English when translated from Chinese, not to mention people using
the same English names like Joe or Josephine.
2. Some additional information might be of help, say, where he/she
lives, where he/she works/studies, and so on. However, in this way
more or less his/her privacy might be compromised.
3. Last but never least, we have lots of reasons to believe people in
SCT are well-behaved. However, we never know if one day a harasser
will try to find his/her prey by posting a message in SCT.
To sum up, you are advised not to help people in this way unless the
person he/she is looking for is indeed famous and the corresponding
information is easily obtained in the public domain. On the other
hand, if you do want to help a guy posting "Xxxx Wanted" and you
happen to know Xxxx, you can notify Xxxx about this and let him/her
decide if he/she wants to respond to this guy or not.
You can try to use the "netfind" feature of Internet to find the
E-mail address of your friend. You can use the following servers with
login name "netfind":
telnet bruno.cs.colorado.edu (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
telnet netfind.sjsu.edu(San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA)
telnet netfind.mgt.ncu.edu.tw ( National Central University, Taiwan )
If you are not in the U.S., you can try the above two netfind servers
first. Upon entry a list of netfind servers all over the world will
show up and you can choose one which is closer to you netwise.
For phone numbers in Taiwan, you might try the Directory Assistance
(English speaking) provided by International Telecommunications
Administration, Ministry of Transportation and Communications at
(2)311-6796.
(G. 6) Is there any other FAQ in SCT?
The answer is "yes". There is no rule which says there must be one and
only one FAQ made by one person in each Usenet newsgroup. As long as
people are willing to contribute their time to collect information for
others, theoretically, the more FAQ's we have in SCT, the better for
all its subscribers. People will make the most of the FAQ's on their
own.
Before the creation of this FAQ, Po-han Lin "plin@phakt.usc.edu" from
University of Southern California, U.S.A. also worked on another FAQ,
which more or less concentrates on the political issue, though it is
not regularly posted. Check out Lin's work at
http://langevin.usc.edu/~plin/FAQ/taiwan.5.html
if you cannot find here the answers you are looking for.
(G. 7) SCT is unmoderated. Why some people like to play netcops?
In an unmoderated newsgroup like SCT, people can post whatever they
want, which of course includes complaints on some other people's
postings. Everything is within the "freedom of speech" domain if
people argue, discuss or debate on something in speech means, that is,
postings, followups and E-mails in the reasonable extent.
The fact is, if some people like to play netcops, we don't have
netcop-cops to "moderate" these netcops. Probably the best thing we
can do is ignoring them. If they did the right thing, they will win
the respect from other subscribers and people appreciate their
existence. On the other hand, if they keep harassing innocent people,
they will receive enough flames, and they stop when they feel bored,
or get stopped by their system administrators if they did attack
innocent people.
If these people just don't stop, and you don't want to put them in
your kill file, you can try something on the license frames for some
cars, "Pray, it works." :)
(G. 8) Someone just posted an offensive stuff. What can I do?
First of all, if it is a political offense, the best policy is stop.
During a heated debate, especially around the TI/U issue, people do
lose their control. Using personal E-mails to exchange some ideas with
the "offending" poster, you will usually find how nice and reasonable
he/she actually is, and actually you might get a friend holding
different political views from you do.
On the other hand, if the post offends you in some other way, like
using derogatory words and/or sex-related stories, things might be
different. The best solution is ignoring it. Eventually the thread
will die away naturally as it expires and get purged everywhere around
the world.
If you find the same person posted a lot of such flamebaits in SCT,
you believe they are not forged, and you feel like doing something,
you might want to read the followings:
1. Check the news header to see when they are posted. If they were
posted within a short amount of time, say, 10 minutes or 15
minutes, it is likely that he/she forgot to logout and some
naughty boy taught him/her a lesson.
2. The second possibility is that his/her account is hacked by some
intruder because he/she failed to use a good password.
3. For some reason the offender felt desperate and he/she would like
to shout out his/her anger, revenging on some people (like
Taiwanese) and release his/her internal pressure, and try to get
the attention from all other people.
For the first, you can send the "offender" a polite reminder about
his/her posting. In that case, he/she usually will learn to log out or
lock the screen when he/she leaves, he/she will send you a thank note
and apologize in SCT for what he/she "posted", and even try to cancel
the offending post. SCT is back to a nice forum for us.
If you do not receive any response from the "offender", and he/she
even replied back harshly, then the latter two cases are more likely.
In this case, if you choose not to ignore his/her offense, you can
file a POLITE complaint to his/her system administrator by E-mails
(you can replace his/her login ID with "postmaster" to get the address
for his/her administrator, say, "badguy@department.school.edu" becomes
"postmaster@department.school.edu"). The administrators will take
whatever actions they consider necessary. Usually the offender's
account will be temporarily suspended in case his/her offense is
serious enough. If his/her account was hacked, he/she might receive
another new account and be advised to use a good password, just like
what happens when credit cards numbers are illegally used.
It might be another option to follow up his/her posting and make fun
of him/her. However, this is not encouraged as it in fact makes the
thread to survive longer. Usually such a flamebait is crossposted to
several completely different newsgroups, like SCT, a sex newsgroup and
a religious newsgroup. Once ignited, people from different newsgroups
with different interests, belief and background just keep flaming the
offender and/or each other and the offending thread never dies, and
this is exactly what the offender likes to have. If you do choose to
follow up his/her posting and laugh at him, please edit the header
appropriately, refering to (G. 9), "The discussion along this thread
is now off-topic. What can I do to attract the attention from the
correct audience?"
(G. 9) The discussion along this thread is now off-topic. What can I do to
attract the attention from the correct audience?
The discussions along a thread is quite dynamic. As people join and
leave the discussion, the topic might also change significantly. At
first dinosaur existence in Taiwan might be discussed, but later it
might become the molecular structure of DNA and RNA, and later it
becomes biochemistry, and then goes to organic chemistry, and
eventually it becomes the structure of urea. SCT is unmoderated and
nobody have the ability to correct this, but people attracted by the
subject "Dinosaurs in Taiwan" will feel disappointed if they learn
that actually biochemistry instead of dinosaurs is discussed, and
people who do know urea and biochemistry but not interested in
dinosaurs will not join the discussion.
You might do the followings on the newsheader to improve this and get
a better discussion.
1. Change the "Subject:" into an appropriate one which is not
misleading. For instance, change it from "Dinosaurs in Taiwan"
into "DNA and RNA for dinosaurs" once the focus turns to DNA and
RNA. It would be better if you can use "DNA and RNA for dinosaurs
(Was: Dinosaurs in Taiwan)".
2. The line "Newsgroups:" shows the newsgroups your followup will be
crossposted. All the entries are separated by commas (without
space) and at least one blank away from "Newsgroups:". For
instance, if originally "Dinosaurs in Taiwan" was crossposted in
SCT and SCC, later when the discussions concentrate on DNA and
RNA, maybe you want to add "sci.chem" in this list so people
interested in and good at chemistry can join the discussion. As
the discussion deviates from Taiwan, you can remove
"soc.culture.taiwan" from this list.
3. The line "Followup-To:" shows the newsgroups other people's
following up to your followup will be posted to. If it is missing,
by default it is the same as "Newsgroups:".
Suppose now a message posted by Joe Bruin along the thread "DNA
and RNA for dinosaurs" is crossposted in SCT, SCC and "sci.chem",
while you consider it off-topic in SCC and SCT. You can remove SCT
and SCC from "Followup-To:" in the header when you follow up Joe's
post. In this way, the "Newsgroups:" line shows SCT, SCC and
"sci.chem" while the "Followup-To:" line shows "sci.chem" only.
Your followup to Joe's will still be crossposted in SCT, SCC and
"sci.chem", but "Newsgroups:" in its newsheader shows only
"sci.chem". Therefore when people follow up your message, by
default the posting will go to "sci.chem" only. They can override
your decision by editing "Newsgroups:" when they follow up your
postings.
Such a modification only affects the followup you post and other
people's followups to yours. It has no effect on following up to
other previous messages in the thread.
It is a netiquette to mention the modification on "Followup-To:"
in the message body so the interested people know which newsgroup
to follow. In the previous example, SCT and SCC readers also
interested in biochemistry know that the followups to your posting
will disappear in SCT and SCC and they will go to "sci.chem" if
they are really interested.
When you edit the "Newsgroups:" information, be careful not to create
a "velveeta" by crossposting it to too many newsgroup at a time. It is
very rare for a message to be crossposted in more than 4 newsgroups if
it is on-topic in each newsgroup. In this way you help reduce the
signal-to-noise ratio in Usenet and benefit everyone.
(G.10) Are there any short wave radio station from Taiwan?
Yes. You can listen to "The Voice of Free China" in Mandarin,
Cantonese, English and Taiwanese. You can try 5950, 7130, 9680, 9850,
9955, 11740, 11745, 11825, 15215, and 17845 KHz. Write to "The Voice
of Free China, P.O.Box 24-38, Taipei, Taiwan" for a detailed schedule.
(Thanks for Dan Jacobson at "jacobson@fcusqnt.fcu.edu.tw" for
contributing the information here)
(G.11) Is there any on-line map for Taiwan?
Yes. Try the home Web page at
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/Map_collection.html
clicks at the entry "Maps of Asia" and then the entry "Taiwan (283K)",
or simply click here. This CIA prepared map includes the names of
major cities, a rough topology, rivers, railroads, freeways and county
boundaries. It might be the most detailed map of Taiwan currently
available in Internet.
You can find another on-line map at
http://peacock.tnjc.edu.tw/ADD/maps/taiwanmap.html
which provides an interactive mechanism so you can zoom into details
of different part of Taiwan, though information about the central
mountainous area might be limited.
Geosystems Global Corp. provides an on-line street map for Taipei at
http://www.mapquest.com/
where you can dig out the street map for Taipei with zooming
capability, though not all streets are shown in details for this map.
You can also directly click here to jump to the Taipei Street Map.
(G.12) Where can I get on-line information about Taiwan stock market?
You can try the Web page of Taiwan Stock Exchange at
http://www.tse.com.tw/mi/mi_stockE.html
This page shows the trade volume, trade value, transactions, open
price, highest price, lowest price and close price together with the
capitalization weighted stock index for the market closing. The URL
for this page changes often. If what you see above becomes obsolete,
please start with
http://www.tse.com.tw/.
For some companies in the list, general information like address and
phone number, and financial information like turnover, operating
profit and earnings per share are also available for the past three
years.
(G.13) Where can I get the information about teaching English in Taiwan?
You can try the Web page at
http://www.u-net.com/eflweb/taiwan0.htm
The author Hall Houston himself spent a few years in Taipei and taught
English there. You can ask him some questions not covered in the above
Web page (or you don't have access to WWW) by sending E-mails to him
at "hhouston@mail.utexas.edu".
(Thanks for Hall Houston, "hhouston@mail.utexas.edu" for providing the
information here)
(G.14) Is there any on-line information about libraries in Taiwan?
You can try to telnet the following IP addresses: "opac.ncl.edu.tw"
(National Central Library. Login and password: "ncl")
"pyd.ksml.edu.tw" (Kaohsiung Municipal Library. Login: "library") To
make full use of these facilities, you need to have a Chinese system
installed.
(Thanks for Ling Yang, "L.H.Yang@sussex.ac.uk" for contributing the
information here)
(G.15) Is there any on-line "newspaper" in Taiwan?
Yes. You can read Taiwan Headline News provided by Central News Agency
at the URL of SinaNet
http://ww3.sinanet.com/news/index_taiwan.html
http://ww3.sinanet.com/news/MMDDnews/index_C.html
The former refers to the news today while you can change MMDD in the
latter URL to choose the date on which you want to read the news. For
instance, replace "MMDD" with 0624 to read news on June 24. The
advantage of this site is that all Chinese text are represented by
"gif" file format, so you can read news in Chinese even if your Web
browser cannot decode Big-5. English and Big-5 texts are also
available.
Quintet Inc. also provides a similar on-line news service at
http://w3.ttnn.com/cna/index.html
for which you don't need a Chinese environment to read news in
Chinese. Besides, a longer expiration is used. For the testing
conducted on Apr. 3, 1996, the expiration for news items at this site
is about four months.
China Times set up its homepage, whose URL is at
http://www.chinatimes.com.tw/
and
http://chinatimes.nsysu.edu.tw/
works equally well. You can also try the US mirror site at
http://www.chinatimes.com/.
If you want to read the "real-time" news, you can go to the URL at
http://www.tol.com.tw/rtnews/html/rtnews.html
directly.
Ming-shen Daily News cooperates with Department of Education, Taiwan
Provincial Government and set up its WWW at
http://msdn.aide.gov.tw/
Commercial Times has its WWW with Taiwan-on-Line at
http://www.tol.com.tw/READING/HTML/reading.htm
which is also related to China Times.
New Asian Weekly also provides its WWW site in the cyberspace. You can
go to
http://www.newasian.com/naw.htm
and then go to NAW site. Nevertheless, a Big-5 environment is needed.
Liberty Times set up her WWW site at
http://libertytimes.nsysu.edu.tw/
while its US edition, Chinese Los Angeles Daily News is at
http://www.chinesedaily.com/
and both GIF and Big5 are provided.
China Economic News Service claimed to be the largest business news
service provider in Taiwan. You can visit their WWW site at
http://www.cens.com/
For the political magazine "The Journalist" (New News), you can try
http://journalist.cybereye.net.tw/
You will need Big-5 environment to read most of the materials at this
site.
(G.16) Is there any on-line information about jobs in Taiwan?
Yes. For gopher, you can use "gopher.nyc.gov.tw" to browse some
information about job conditions and information about starting a new
business in Taiwan. Chinese environments are required for this
database which is provided by National Youth Commission under the
Executive Yuan. You can also use telnet to access the information.
You might also use the BBS' set up in New York and Atlanta to obtain
the most recent job opportunities in Taiwan. Their phone numbers are
(212)373-1879, (212)373-1881 and (404)457-4538.
The following Web sites provide some links to job related ads in
Taiwan. Individuals can leave their resumes there and companies can
also post their requirements for potential employees. Some fees might
be accessed.
http://www.job.com.tw/
http://www.104.com.tw/
(G.17) Credits
This FAQ for "soc.culture.taiwan" is an improved version from the
drafted FAQ for SCT by Tung-chiang Yang, "tcyang@netcom.com", which
was first posted on January 16, 1995, though FAQ's by other authors
also exist. The structure of the survival guide is based on that for
newsgroup "alt.2600" under the consent by its author Will Spencer.
Both the survival guide and the FAQ will be regularly posted in SCT.
Thanks for the following friends who contributed some precious
comments to this work, in addition to some others who chose to remain
anonymous. However, their contributions do not necessarily represent
the endorsement of the full contents of this work.
"alan@cs.ucla.edu", WANG, Yih-jih;
"chen@cc.nctu.edu.tw", CHEN, Chang-sheng;
"hlin@c4.hinet.net", LIN, Heng-yi;
"jacobson@fcusqnt.fcu.edu.tw", JACOBSON, Dan;
"kevinfish@delphi.com";
"yu@pyramid.com", CHANG, Yu,
The following reference books are used in writing the FAQ part:
"TAIWAN - a travel survival kit" by Robert Storey, 3rd edition by
Lonely Planet (ISBN 0-86442-228-8);
"Rand McNally World Atlas" by Rand McNally, 1994 edition;
"Directory of Taiwan" by China News, 1995 edition.
In addition to what is included here, if you have some comments, like
suggesting other useful questions or correcting some mistakes, please
send your previous ideas to Tung-chiang Yang, "tcyang@netcom.com".
This article is provided as is without any expressed or implied
warranties. While every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy
of the information contained in this article, the author assumes no
responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
the use of the information contained herein.
(Permission to repost the finished document or make copies of it in
electronic, mechanical, photocopied, or other form as appropriate will
be granted provided it is not modified in any way whatsoever, and it
is not used for profit purposes without prior explicit consent from
the author. Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 by Tung-chiang Yang).
--
Tung-chiang Yang tcyang@netcom.com
User Contributions:
[ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ]
Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: tcyang@netcom.com
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
|
soc.culture.taiwan FAQ (part 1/6) -- General
Search the FAQ Archives
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z
soc.culture.taiwan FAQ (part 1/6) -- General
[ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index | Restaurant inspections ]
Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: