Thank You Taiwan!

A while back I shared with you an episode on the megaquake in Kumamoto, Kyushu, touching little on the damages and stressing how it is to live afloat a sea of lava.

Believe you me, the area is still shaking - almost daily, if not hourly, as often as 1000 times since the outbreak of the earthquake. I still say one can't help pondering the agony of living on an ever-quaking land.

That said, I have here a touching episode of warm thoughts extended to the victims of Kumamoto megaquake by Taiwan. Of course, helping hands arrived from the US, the UK, Russia, Thailand, etc. but most of all Japan-friendly Taiwan was quick to react.

You might recall Taiwan rushed a huge sum of donation after the megaquake up in northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. A week after the quake, a help-Japan TV program in Taiwan brought home a massive donation aggregating 890 million Taiwan dollars or 2.43 billion yen. In a matter of days, it zoomed to 1.5 billion Taiwan dollars or 4.1 billion yen. By April 1, the total amount of donation soared to 10 billion yen surpassing the US donation through US Red Cross.

That was not enough, folks. The total amount rose over 14 billion yen on April 15, the highest among the nations of goodwill from all over the world. It finally ended way over 20 billion yen.

Taiwan's friendship knows no bounds. The Ma Ying-jeou　administration proposed a donation of 10 million yen after the initial shake. The follow-up quake came and the people clamored that's not enough; the administration quickly raised it to 64 million yen.

Meanwhile, the president-elect Tsai Ing-wen had offered her feelings of condolence sooner than Ma Ying-jeou and expended 10 billion yen from the party expenses of her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and her compatriot Kiku Chen of Kaohsiung City put up his two-shot photo with Kumamon (Kumamoto's costumed mascot character) and donated his month's pay.

Mayor Kiku's gesture spread among his counterparts elsewhere in Taiwan. Lai Ching-te of Tainan, Lin Chia-lungn of Taichung , Cheng Wen-tsan of Taoyua, and Ko Wen-je of Taipei each offered a month's pay for donation. A touching chain reaction.

Thank you, Taiwan! More power to its Japan-frendly people.