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:
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Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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