There are two main English-language newspapers in Taiwan, the China Post and the Taipei Times. By far, the better of the two is the Taipei Times, at least in terms of its political viewpoint. The China Post is too pro-Kuomintang (Guomindang) 国民党 and too anti-Japanese for my liking, though I do read it sometimes because it has better coverage of Major League baseball games, and a decent travel section on Thursdays. The China Post also suffers from poor translation work at times.
Occasionally, however, the Taipei Times also slips up. In an article last weekend on the Suao Cold Springs 蘇澳観光冷泉, it was written that the springs were discovered by a Japanese soldier. The problem was the name given in the story was the Chinese reading of the characters in the soldier's name 竹中信景. One of my (many) pet peeves about life in Taiwan is the fact that many people here either don't know or can't be bothered to learn the real names of Japanese and Korean people, and instead seem content with using the Mandarin readings of the characters. In a fit of pique, I fired off a letter to the editor complaining about this matter as it related to the Suao article.
To my surprise, 24 hours later I received a very polite email from an editor with the Taipei Times, assuring me that it was an editorial oversight. Furthermore, I looked up the article on-line this evening, and noticed that a correction has been made with regards to the soldier's Japanese name.
Yet another example why the Taipei Times is the best English-language newspaper in Taiwan.
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