Local writer and women’s rights advocate Shih Chi-ching (施寄青) died on Tuesday of a heart attack at the age of 68, police and prosecutors confirmed on Wednesday.
Shih was found by her godson at about 10pm on Tuesday on the bathroom floor in her home in Miaoli’s Nanjhuang Township (南庄), they said. There were no signs indicating a struggle.
Shih died before an ambulance arrived and no attempts to resuscitate her were performed to respect the writer’s wishes as stated in her will, they said.
Photo courtesy of Public Television Service
A longtime sufferer of heart disease, Shih underwent heart surgery more than a decade ago.
Born in 1947 in China, Shih and her family relocated to Taiwan in 1949.
Shih graduated from the Chinese literature department at National Chengchi University and taught at Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School, the top boys’ senior high school in Taipei.
She was well known for advocating women’s rights. In 1988, she founded the women’s association Warm Life (晚晴協會) and served as its head, and she also served as a consultant and board member for local women’s rights group the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會).
Her earlier works focused on women’s rights and gender education, while her later works emphasized religion and the supernatural.
In 1989, her book Zou Guo Hun Yin (走過婚姻, “Having been married”) about her marriage, divorce and her path to becoming a women’s rights advocate became a bestseller, earning her the title “Divorce Guru.”
She famously said that if she had not gotten a divorce, she would have led a dull life.
Shih also translated books such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India into Chinese.
In 1996, the writer decided to run in the first-ever direct presidential election, coming up with the campaign slogans “Let women run the country” and “Liberate domestic slaves,” but she failed to garner enough signatures to qualify as a candidate.
Before her death, she was scheduled to attend a talk about her new book Dang Tou Bang He (當頭棒喝, “A strike and a shout to the face”) at the Taipei International Book Exhibition next month.
The book is a collaboration between Shih and a psychic about their attempts to help people resolve their issues in the present by recalling their experiences in past lives.
Representatives of local women’s rights groups were in mourning on Wednesday, praising Shih’s contribution to the local women’s rights movement.
Awakening Foundation chairwoman Chen Yi-chien (陳宜倩) said she was shocked to hear the news and expressed her admiration for the writer.
Shih made many contributions to reforms of the nation’s divorce laws, which have historically favored men, Chen said.
Shih was not afraid to write about her own experiences of marriage and divorce, and she educated many Taiwanese women about how to fight for custody of their children and to protect themselves under the law, National Alliance of Taiwan Women’s Associations vice president Chen Hsiu-hui (陳秀惠) said.
Society was not as open at that time as it is now and many divorced women suffered discrimination, she said, stressing that Warm Life has helped many divorced women.
Garden of Hope Foundation chief executive Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said Shih would be remembered as a charismatic speaker and women’s rights advocate.
Even though she had withdrawn from the spotlight in recent years, Shih still frequently donated her royalties and fees from making speeches to women’s rights groups, Chi said, praising the late writer for turning her own struggles into a strength.
“I am very, very sad. May she rest in peace,” said Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), a longtime friend of Shih.
Shih was known for her sharp wit and humor, and for encouraging women to leave unhappy marriages.
One of her most famous sayings was: “There will be affairs as long as there are marriages. Affairs and marriages coexist, but when facing affairs we must know what to accept and reject.”
She also once said that “the beauty of the body is transient. It is the most unreliable aspect of us. We can only survive in society with solid ability.”
Rather than put their marriages as the first priority, Shih advised women to love themselves and accomplish their own goals.
“Whether to have an affair or not is his problem, but if you don’t take care of yourself it’s your problem,” she once said.
She had also once joked that children are the “killers who destroy women’s movements” and that if her sons end up getting divorced, her only wish is that they “don’t leave me my grandchildren.”
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said. Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death. The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday. Lee was questioned three
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
RSS