Why are you so excited about such a crisis?

Yeah. How?

Messaging cues and donations from china.

Yeah. There’s also been some research that a lot of these pundits are also receiving messages.

You have to understand, we have, what, five or six 24-hours news channels that have to create content all the time. They very rarely report on international news. Domestically, we’re an island of 24 million people. Realistically…

Do journalists lack journalistic integrity?

[plays clip] It sounds very soothing at midnight.

Shenanigans is a good word to describe our media, frankly.

I would say that the migration started around the pandemic. China started making it very difficult to renew and apply for j visas. So a lot of journalists who are supposed to go to Shanghai or Beijing to replace an existing correspondent, end up coming to Taipei instead.

Yeah.

Beijing, shanghai.

Yes. A lot of journalists have come to taiwan.

I have kept myself with the international media all these years. The Reporter has been one organization that’s given me some hope in recent years. But other than that, there is TFCC. Taiwan FactCheck Center and The Reporter are my two Chinese news sources. I don’t even stay in the ...

I mean, I’m a journalist. I am part of the Taiwan foreign Correspondents club. I was part of the Shanghai foreign Correspondents Club for many years. I have a lot of journalist friends who work in that space, who work very hard. But I have grown up being very disappointed ...

So I’ve been joking with Madeleine since we started this research that I am really afraid that they’re going to walk away from this research and their conclusion is that Taiwan has a thriving democracy, but its kryptonite is its journalism.

They’re community-funded, right?

But also, oftentimes people are very understandably suspicious of me if I say something that’s a little bit out of character.

Or it could be a Taiwanese person who spent ten years in china.

They’re also like, I can’t think of any, for example, 地道 and 道地. In taiwan we say 道地. Something is very authentic. But in mainland china is 地道.

Does that make sense?

It tries, but I still have a job, so that tells you.

So when they do a simple conversion on your computer from simplified to traditional, the converter doesn’t understand that you need to pick a different character in Traditional Chinese. That’s accurate. So that’s something like I sometimes see in converted text that’s converted from simplified to traditional where the character ...

But in simplified Chinese it’s the same character.

Yeah. In taiwan we use a super complicated one that is distinct from the character we use for 發.

Not a direct example. So for example, I lived in shanghai for ten years and read simplify the word 头发, the 髮. The word for hair. The 髮 that’s used.

We just have to composite new Chinese characters and make it work.

男 radical.

Yeah. If you’re older or younger than my father or mother, there are different words for it. That page in the chinese textbook is usually when my friends are like, I’m giving up on chinese. [laughter] Why are you so complicated?

So it’s a paternal sibling, or is it a maternal sibling? Yeah, exactly. With one phrase, how I address you. Yeah. It’s really a great analogy that we want to, in our language, we want to immediately be able to identify, are you a relation by blood on my father’s ...

So a little context on that. So in english, it’s just aunt, uncle. In chinese, if I say 阿姨, I know it is a sister on my. Sorry. So, for example, 姑姑. I would know it’s a sister on my father’s side.

Rather than going like, oh, no, now you’re incorporated into the entire family tree. Just focusing on the two people connecting makes the argument easier.

So in Chinese, a lot of times you have two words come together to mean something, and then when you connect, you switch out one of the words and it means something else. 婚姻, the two characters that make up the phrase. One is marriage, one is referring more to ...

Academia sinica.

I didn’t know they started before martial law was lifted.

Of caring for others.

For them it’s never about recruiting you to their religion, it’s just about practicing the religion.

Yeah, if anything, I’ve never really thought about Tzu Chi, the foundation, in a non-taiwanese context. To me, growing up in Taiwan is such a natural part of who we are. Like, oh, there’s a natural disaster crisis. Of course, Tzu Chi is on site and they always wear these, ...

Yeah, they’re usually one of the first at any natural disaster or international natural disaster. Very well organized, very well respected.

Tzu Chi is a buddhist nonprofit organization.

Not yet, no.

The best apology is changed behavior.