Local gangsters will rent you KTV gear for big $$

Wow, these are some hardcore gangsters. I guess the cops have to bust these little gangs in order to look like they are fighting crime (and leave the real gangs alone).

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2010/05/20/257254/Police-arrest.htm

More random facts and reporting from the China Post here. Of course, they have to paint the image of the gangster as a drug user who swings by the motel for some K before heading over to his girlfriend’s house (who probably still lives with her parents).

What’s “issue paper”? :s

I was wondering what that was too!

perhaps ‘Tissue paper’…aka…butt-wipe paper.

Pretty important stuff when ya need it.

Issue paper = Ghost money. :idunno: No matter what life throws at you, the correct Taiwanese approach is to burn some paper at it. At least as far as I can tell.

Thank you Plas for clearing that up, I was figuring it was another one of the many typos in the China Post that happens daily.

If it is indeed ‘issue paper’, he is also right that if there is some reason to burn it the locals will. I think it is a good tradition on the face of it, however in a city like Taipei that is already filled with smog and pollutants the last thing they need to do is burn stuff.

My solution to the problem, is make the ‘issue paper’ larger denominations, so you burn one your great grandfather is a billionaire, million wishes or a thousand whatever it is to symbolize, eliminating the need to burn piles of it to show respect to your ancestors.

I respect the ways of the culture, and find it fascinating however times are changing and so must the way you show respect to the ancestors.

Case and point in a way, there is not a lot of virgin sacrifices into volcanoes anymore, or is there?

That’ll just lead to hyperinflation in the underworld…

touché

I think a while back the EPA tried to get people to burn paper credit cards instead, but the idea didn’t really take off.

I should point out that I was just talking sh*t about that issue paper definition, I’m sure it’s just a typo.

The solution to the ghost money burning idiocy is to announce that it’s been discovered only real money gets through to the underworld when burned. Do that and I’d wager you’d be amazed how little these currently money hungry ‘ghosts’ are suddenly able to get by on.

In Singapore, they burn little paper copies of Mercedes Benz, and BMW, and Rolex, and mansions, and just about anything a wordly person would want but can’t use in the afterlife.

So do they do in Taiwan, at funerals at least…