Some 30,000 Taiwanese, angry at the chaos in the nation last year, have selected the Chinese word for "blind" (瞎) as their word of the year for last year, two online search engines said yesterday.
Following the example of Japan, which has been selecting its word of the year every year since 1995, yam.com and Taiwan hinet.net launched a competition to select their own word of the year for last year.
"Xia (瞎, the character meaning blind in Mandarin Chinese) beat sha (殺, kill), men (悶, frustration) and xian (鮮, fresh or weird) as the word of the year for 2005," Liang Hsiang-yi (連祥一), deputy manager of yam.com, told a news conference.
Heavy and frequent use of the word "xia" to mean "reckless" by Taiwanese pop singer and teen idol Jay Chou's (周杰倫) has meant the word "xia" has come to mean more than just "blind" among the nation's young people.
"This shows many people are dissatisfied with the social and political chaos in Taiwan last year," Liang said.
Some 30,000 people took part in the selection of the Chinese character for last year. They voted cai (
The selection of the word of the year began in Japan in 1995 when Japan's association for testing the ability of kanji (Chinese characters) launched the competition to select the word of the year.
The selected word is announced by the head priest of the Kiyomizudera Buddhist temple in Kyoto in mid-December.
Japan's word of the year for last year was ai (愛, love).
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
RSS