NTHU president caught jobhunting in Hawaii three days into new term

NTHU president caught jobhunting in Hawaii three days into new term

2026-09-10

Can you imagine applying for a new job three days after arriving at your position? That’s exactly what the President of National Tsing Hua University did back in May. John Kao traveled to the US to support his candidacy to lead the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, just three days into his new term in Taiwan. After he was found out this summer, Kao sent out an email downplaying the situation, and on Thursday he made his first public appearance. Taking a more conciliatory stance, he apologized to faculty and students and also announced that his bid in Hawaii had not progressed further. Let’s hear more.

John Kao
National Tsing Hua University President
This incident has given rise to concerns and unease. I would like to once again offer my sincerest apologies to everyone, and I am open to criticism. For the rest of my term, I will donate my salary for the month of May. In exploring possibilities for myself, I let down everyone at NTHU. The purpose of taking part in the selection process was to bring about exchanges between the schools and the candidates. But after the process ended, there was no further development from either side. If the board wishes to investigate the situation, I will cooperate fully, as long as it follows university procedures.

Lin Burn-keng
NTHU College of Semiconductor Research
Besides the concerns regarding honesty, we are concerned how this will impact NTHU’s development over the next four years.

Alum
Graduated from NTHU
President Kao, I strongly urge you to consider stepping down.

Kao assumed his position on May 1, and was found to be taking part in the selection process in Hawai’i just three days later. Accused of using his job as a stepping stone to the US, the incident has drawn criticism from many sides. In an internal survey, 80% of students said the incident had negatively affected NTHU’s image. It took 40 days for Kao to finally face the music, but it remains to be seen whether faculty and students are willing to buy his apologies.

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#nthu #hawaii #清華大學 #job #semiconductor

"帶職赴美遴選"引發爭議清大校長高為元出面道歉.宣布捐薪

2026-09-10

清華大學校長"高為元"，續任後三天，帶職赴美參選校長，引發爭議，先前曾發校內信道歉，卻被認為是避重就輕，週四他首度出面，選在校內舉辦全校說明會，擺低姿態，對全校師生公開道歉說，美國校長後續沒有進一步發展，更宣布每年五月都要捐出月薪，強調已深刻反省。

[[清華大學校長高為元]]
“這件事情引發大家的疑慮與不安，在這裡我要再一次跟所有人致上我最誠懇的歉意，我願意接受批評，在我任期內，每一年的5月份的薪水都會捐出來。探索我個人的可能性，辜負了清華人對我的期待，美國大學校長遴選的目的，是讓學校與候選人進一步互相了解，過程結束後，兩邊都沒有進一步的發展。校監會想要針對這件事情，開啟詢問與調查，只要合乎校內的程序，我絕對配合”

[[清華大學半導體研究學院院長林本堅]]
“我們除了誠信之外，我們還擔心將來，這四年對清大，各方面的進展的影響”

[[校友]]
“請求高校長，你能審慎的考慮，走下清華的主舞台”

風波的起點，就是因為今年5月1號，高為元續任後第3天，竟帶職參加美國夏威夷大學校長遴選，騎驢找馬的行為，被各方抨擊，校內有教授進行問券調查，有近8成學生認為，對清大是負面觀感。遲來40天的超慢直球對決，高為元對清大還有依戀，就看全校師生，接不接受。

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As National Sun Yat-sen University sits at the base of Shoushan in Kaohsiung, Formosan macaques can be seen everywhere. Some even call it Monkey University. With the school year newly underway, a huge 20-plus troop of macaques recently descended the mountain to raid a student dormitory. They were even seen scaling the outside of the building to get to the food inside. A video of it online left people wondering if it was AI-generated, with some calling it the “real-life Planet of the Apes.”

A special forces team of over 20 macaques rappel down the side of this dormitory as the students look on in disbelief.

It seems like one of them discovered an open window and called his buddies over for a snack, turning the entire side of the structure into a wall of cascading creatures.

- It went straight into the dorm room! Crazy.
- That room is done for. It’s done for. There’s probably more inside.
- That’s wild.

As expected, the room looked like a bomb had gone off. Everything was wrecked after the macaque home invasion. This is National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, where macaques allegedly outnumber students due to its proximity to Shoushan. But seeing so many scaling a wall at once is still a rare sight.

Student
Wasn’t scared
I wasn’t really scared. I thought it was pretty spectacular. I’m not afraid of that kind of thing, I just thought it was pretty cool.

Lin Mei-yin
Taiwan Macaque Coexistence Promotion Association
A group of 20 to 30 is an entire troop. They rushed down the building together because one of them dropped food onto the ground. Seeing the food, the rest of them charged down as a group.

This real-life Planet of the Apes featured such a huge cast of characters that people thought it must be AI-generated. Other said it’s even scarier than AI.

As the new semester begins, macaques have been wandering into laboratories and storage rooms, snatching Kuai Kuai off of equipment, and even grabbing a drink to enjoy in the hallway. Since they have to share their campus with these capricious classmates, incoming students should stay alert.

#NSYSU #Kaohsiung #macaques #monkeys #wildlife #Shoushan #MonkeyMountain #notAI #backtoschool

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Tue to Sat at 1 am on Channel 53

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Nonstop rains bring booming business to Kaohsiung shoe, bag cleaners

Weeks of torrential rain in southern Taiwan have been a boon for businesses specializing in cleaning shoes and bags. One shop in Kaohsiung has seen their daily intake increase by over 30%, packing the shop to bursting with moldy leather jackets, shoes, and even expensive designer handbags. The owners have to work into the night every day to keep up, but they appreciate the business this “mold boom” is bringing in.

Nonstop customers file into the shop, asking to wash their bag, their shoes, even piles of leather clothing and hats. Countless items await cleaning, the consequence of weeks of nonstop rain.

Customer
Bags got moldy
I’m dropping off my bag for cleaning. It’s been super humid with all the rain recently. My bags are all moldy. So I came by to get it cleaned.

Customer
Sneakers got smelly
I dropped off my sneakers. They got soaked in the rain and never fully dried, so the inside is smelly now.

A cleaner pulls out luxury handbags, leather jackets, hats, shoes, and more from an intake bag and lines them up in a row. This jacket is in the worst condition. It’s covered in white mold spots, almost like it’s been in the snow. To get through this mountain, he’ll have to stay late into the night.

Hsu Yu-cheng
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I stay overtime every day. Moldy items can’t stay untreated for too long, so we try to handle them as quickly as possible. These days, I’ve been staying until 1 or 2 in the morning.

Kaohsiung is known for having sunny weather, but weeks of nonstop rain have triggered a major mold outbreak. The shop has seen twice as many customers as usual, with income soaring 30 to 50%.

Hsu Han-chung
Cleaner
We first clean, sanitize, and disinfect the items. If it’s particularly bad, maybe with mold spots, we recommend re-dyeing it and ask if the customer wants an additional anti-mold treatment.

The owners advise their customers that if they don’t keepthe humidity down in their storage areas, their bags will turn back into “fungal Petri dishes” before long. But it’s good to see that the rains have been good for at least some businesses.

#mold #rain #leathercare #Kaohsiung #moldremoval #cleaning #luxurybags

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Taichung woman gets stitches after falling into rusted drain

A woman in Taichung’s Nantun District needed three stitches after falling into a rusted, broken drain cover while taking a detour to avoid construction, injuring her left leg. Considering the damaged drain is in a residential area frequented by schoolchildren, authorities placed traffic cones around it and arranged repairs to prevent more accidents.

- I stepped onto it and fell right in.

This young woman stepped off the sidewalk and fell right through a rusted drain, getting scrapped badly.

Her left leg fell through a hole in the drain about the size of an adult’s foot, scraping on the rusted metal. She needed three stitches.

Injured pedestrian
Fell into drain
There was a large car parked here, and the drain cover was between the car and the curb, so I fell in. It was so painful when I pulled my foot out. I felt my leg bleeding.

The incident happened at a busy intersection in Taichung’s Nantun District. The covered sidewalk was under construction, forcing the woman to step down onto the road. Considering the height difference between the sidewalk and road, and an illegally parked car blocking her view, she didn’t notice that the drain cover was rusted and broken.

Injured pedestrian
Fell into drain
I usually walk on the covered sidewalk, but it’s been closed for renovations recently. Lots of people park here temporarily, so I worry that children or seniors might get hurt.

Witness
Saw woman fall into train
She was sitting there, and her sandal was on the ground below. She probably couldn’t bend down herself, so I picked it up for her. There’s a risk of tetanus with rust injuries, which could be very serious.

Lots of rust falls off the drain when it’s touched. It can barely hold any weight anymore.

Voice of Wu Ming-hsiu
Maintenance office official
We put safety warnings at the site right away, and a contractor will complete repairs as soon as possible.

The city’s maintenance office has blocked off the drain by putting traffic cones around it to prevent anyone else from hurting themselves.

#drain #injury #dangerous #pedestrian #rust #Taichung #stitches

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Taipei is a big city with few trashcans. And, for street strollers in the districts of Xinyi and Da’an, the bins now have lids that are difficult to push open, meaning throwing out the trash could result in dirty hands, and, in the worst scenario, injured fingers. Let’s take a look at some trashcans that are known to bite.

In Taipei, the slow burn epidemic of disappearing trashcans has plagued the city for years. And now, to make matters worse, once you find a trashcan it’s essentially impossibly to open.

Member of public
Finds trashcans hard to open
It’s too tight; I thought the trashcan was sealed, because just a second ago I couldn’t get it to open.

Member of public
Scared of getting fingers pinched
It’s a little too tight, which makes it difficult to put trash inside. And then your hand will likely get dirty, which is another inconvenience in itself. It’s also easy to get pinched.

A long umbrella might seem like a smart life hack, if you’re trying to keep your hands clean. But if you take a close look, you’ll find this lid is vicious, so vicious that it’ll slice up an umbrella. Zooming in on its canopy, one can see the aftermath of throwing away trash like this.

Lin Li
Reporter
Typically, when you’re going for a stroll down a street, you might have a bag and be carrying an umbrella. Then you buy a drink, which you’ll probably end up wanting to throw away eventually, but you have your cellphone in one hand. In the past, throwing out trash was a one-hand process, yet after trashcans got these lids with tight screws, you need to react quickly, like this, in order to get the trash to drop inside.

The purpose of replacing old trashcans with these new ones was to control the rat population, because the opening of the trashcans was so large, making it easy to throw trash inside. But the open-top cans were great for rats looking to feast on the offerings inside. A city councilor suggested using trashcans with push-open lids, thereby preventing trash from falling out and stopping rodents from getting inside. But the downside is these trashcans could hurt human hands. The government is tracking the performance of these 24 trashcans posted in the districts of Xinyi and Da’an.

Hsu Kai-chun
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We considered that these areas are closer to downtown, so there might be more people walking around. We thought that by putting the trashcans in these areas we could see how much people use them. Compared with the cans of the past, the trashcans now have these lids, which do, indeed, cause some inconvenience to people. We’ll continue to evaluate the situation.

Taipei’s Department of Environmental Protection said that if these new trashcans don’t actually make the city’s environment any cleaner, then after three months they’ll get rid of them. The lids’ screws have been loosened up a bit, making the trashcans themselves easier to use, and hopefully, less likely to bite down on the fingers of people opposed to littering.

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Mayday lead singer Ashin holds an iPhone Duo as a special VIP at Apple’s launch event on Sept. 10. Besides taking pics with Apple’s new CEO John Ternus, he also had an awkward encounter with a huge American livestreamer.

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- Pardon?
- Ashin from China.
- Ashin from China?
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It was none other than IShowSpeed, who was livestreaming the launch event to his 61 million YouTube subscribers. An excited member of staff had seen the influencer, and excitedly rushed to take him to meet Ashin, who she claimed was from China.

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- Ashin from China?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Wait…
- Don’t mention he’s from China,
he doesn’t like to talk about that.

Barely a moment later, the staff member was leading him to Ashin when a man in a white shirt intervened, warning IShowSpeed to not mention China, explaining that Ashin wouldn’t like to talk about that. Just a few seconds later…

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- Taipei
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Well, he didn’t mention China straight up, as if trying to clarify where Ashin was from to his devoted viewers.

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The UK is around 10,000 kilometers from Taiwan, but a variety of Taiwanese books can be found at the Book Hive, an independent bookshop in Norwich. And now the Culture Ministry is seeking to increase the international presence of literature from Taiwan by establishing an MOU between the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and the UK’s National Centre for Writing, who’ll train a young generation of translators.

- This is Terao Tetsuya, who’s part of the youngest generation of Taiwanese writers.

Culture Minister Li Yuan is in the Book Hive, one of the most famous independent bookstores in Norwich, England. There’s more than a few books by Taiwanese writers on display, such as the Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi and Wu Ming-yi’s The Stolen Bicycle. Showing off his wry sense of humor, Minister Li pointed out that the store was missing one Taiwanese writer.

- I’m just wondering why is it that my book can’t be in this shop?
- Oh, no, you’ll have to ask the translators about that. We just sell what we get.
- In all honesty, it’s hard to get your work into a bookstore in the UK.

This bit of chit-chat between Li Yuan and the bookseller reveals the importance of translation, especially in places like the UK, where competition is fierce; Taiwanese works are greatly outnumbered by books written by Japanese and Korean authors.

Henry Layte
Bookstore owner
Taiwanese culture is lesser known than, you know, Japan, so it’s unparticular with books like this suddenly becoming successful. It means there’s lots of interest from us.

The Taiwan Travelogue has helped the world’s readers become more interested in Taiwan’s literature. The Ministry of Culture is trying to capitalize on this attention by getting the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and the UK’s National Centre for Writing to sign an MOU that will train up-and-coming literary translators.

Alan Waters
Chair of National Centre for Writing
The National Centre for Writing wants to celebrate Taiwanese literature for this year’s International Booker Prize success. We are thrilled as an organization to continue the partnership with Taiwan for the 2026-2027 mentorship for emerging translators.

Li Yuan
Minister of Culture
I hope that there can be more collaboration that’ll allow for our works written in Chinese to be able to come to the UK, where they’ll introduce the stories of Taiwan.

Lin Yung-chi
FTV reporter
For decades, the UK’s National Centre for Writing has invested in training writers and translators. The goal of this bilateral agreement between Taiwan and the UK is to help more people get to know literature from Taiwan.

The National Centre for Writing, for the first time, has created a section called Literature from Taiwan, which will provide mentorship and allow learners to interact with professionals. Literature from Taiwan will cultivate translators from any part of the world who want to get involved in translating Taiwan literature, which, if they’re fast enough, they might just see their work at next spring’s Taiwan Literature Festival.

For more Taiwan news, tune in:
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#BookerPrize #literature #Norwich #independentbookseller #LiteraturefromTaiwan #NationalCentreforWriting

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