English Language Stories

One of the best activities for me in Taiwan is reading the Taipei Times and the China Post, the 2 English Language daily newspapers.  The local human interest stories are the best. But they are a day or more late because the stories first appears in their  Chinese Language sister newspapers and it takes at least a day to have them translated into English. Sometimes the same story appears in both papers on the same day. Reading both versions carefully, I can see that the translation and reporting sometimes differ. I can't tell which is correct because I can't read the original Chinese versions.

Here is a story that I don't think made the World News but was a big story in Taiwan maybe 2 weeks ago.


Taipei woman kills herself while on Facebook: police


TAIPEI--Police in Taiwan said yesterday that a 31-year-old woman has killed 
herself by inhaling poisonous fumes while chatting with friends on Facebook 
and that none of her friends alerted authorities.


Taipei police officer Hsieh Ku-ming said Claire Lin killed herself on her 
birthday, March 18. Hsieh said family members reported the suicide soon after 
her death but were unaware of the Facebook conversations that accompanied it.


Lin's last Facebook entries show her chatting with nine friends, alerting them 
to her gradual asphyxiation. One picture uploaded from her mobile phone depicts a charcoal barbecue burning next to two stuffed animals. Another shows the room filled with fumes.


One friend identified as Chung Hsin, told Lin, “Be calm, open the window, put 
out the charcoal fire, please, I beg you.”


Lin replied: “The fumes are suffocating. They fill my eyes with tears. Don't 
write me anymore.”


Her last words, in Chinese, were: “Too late. My room is filled with fumes. I 
just posted another picture. Even while I'm dying, I still want FB (Facebook). 
Must be FB poison. Haha.”


Lin's Facebook postings indicated she was unhappy because her boyfriend was 
ignoring her, and had failed to return home to be with her on her birthday. It 
was her boyfriend who found her body the following morning and alerted her 
family, Hsieh said.


Hsieh said he regretted that none of her friends called the police for help 
during the 67-minute episode.


But he added that it could have been difficult for them to pinpoint her 
whereabouts because of the nature of social media.

The 2 versions in the Taipei Times and China Post differed on whether it was her boyfriend or her family that said there was little that could have been to find her because of the nature of social media.