A missing person report has not been received from the family of Liao Meng-yen (廖孟彥), a Taiwanese writer allegedly imprisoned in China on charges related to publishing unauthorized material, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said yesterday.
The statement was released after a post on the Professional Technology Temple (PTT) online bulletin board said that the author, who uses the nom de plume Ronson (羅森) and writes erotic material, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The writer’s China-based Web site has been inaccessible since September last year and the most recent post on his Chinese social media account was in November last year, the PTT post said.
Photo: Reuters
Social media posts showed that Liao moved to China following the collapse of the Taiwanese adult book market in the early 2000s, but ran afoul of local authorities, the PTT post said.
The foundation said that Liao’s family had not asked for help, but officials would do all they could to retrieve a person in such a situation if aid was requested.
Liao was known to publish content for He Tu Culture, a Web site run by Taiwan-based Tai Gu He Tu Culture Publishing, which lists him as a representative.
The writer’s content mainly revolves around sadomasochism and sexual violence against women.
Chinese state-owned Xinhua news agency — citing the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Bureau of Network Security Protection — on Feb. 7 reported that Chinese police arrested a man surnamed Liao for “propagating obscene messages in the guise of fantasy novels.”
The man was part of a “well-organized and profit-sharing crime group” that published e-books containing banned materials via an app named “He X Novels” targeting underaged readers, it said, using a censored version of the app’s name.
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)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
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