Lu Dat!!

Whatever "Lu Dat" means, regardless, everyone in Taiwan is cheering for Lu right now. Andy Roddick was just defeated by Lu Yen-Hsun of Taiwan (not TPE (Taipei)) who will now move onto the quarterfinals. Great day for Taiwanese tennis, as Lu was not shy to promote Taiwan before this match as well as in the post-match interview. Here's a snippet of what he said last week:

The result wrote Lu's name in the Asian tennis history books and he expressed his pride about putting Taiwanese tennis on the map.

He added: "There is probably a lot of news coming out right now in Taiwan. I am happy to have done it for my country, for my family, for my friends and for all the people that have supported me.

"But I don't want them to call me the Pride of Taiwan or anything - I am the same as I was before."

Recaps are just starting to come out, but for the most part I have not seen any refer to him as from Chinese Taipei or some ridiculous name like that. Edit: Just saw one out of the LA Times that states "Lu of Taipei." Oh well... as long as international sports organizations keep allowing China to dictate what Taiwan can be called, you can't really expect much from the media.

ECFA News: With the ECFA likely to be signed within the next 24 hours (one of the saddest moments in Taiwan history), I remain quite bearish on the TAIEX. Take a look at the leading indicator for the TAIEX that I have been using (the Shanghai Composite) and tell me that is not a negative divergence showing on the TAIEX. But of course there is the possibility that the indices are decoupling from this previous correlation.

Ma on Taiwan Province, Part II

It would be hard to find Taiwanese who support Taiwan that would shrug off the meaning of the president & leader of Taiwan using "Taiwan Province." Indeed President Ma did that this past week (see previous post here), showing his true colors, mainly red. Well, there's many places you can find this type of error where someone or something incorrectly states that Taiwan is a part of China.

The latest one I've found on a large website? Wikipedia! It's pretty bad to see the main encyclopedia resource that kids and students use these days stating that Ma Ying-jeou is the president of Taiwan Province of the P.R.C.

Not sure how to work Wiki cause I've heard it's quite a mess to edit it, especially if you aren't one of the "super editors" or something like that, but I hope someone sets that right. Edit: Thanks to thegreensquirre1 for taking care of that - it now correctly states that he's the "president of the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan."

In other news, being a tennis player myself, I will have to report that a Taiwanese (Lu Yen-hsun) has made it into the round of 16 at Wimbledon. Awesome!

Taiwan's Tennis Star, "Chang," Prevails over No.1 Seed

Congratulations to the latest Taiwan tennis star, Chang Kai-chen, not to be confused with Taiwan's first tennis star (albeit played under the U.S. nationality), Michael Chang, for defeating the currently No.1 ranked woman's player, Dinara Safina of Russia.

As always with news surrounding Taiwan, there's controversy over whether Safina should even be considered being ranked #1 in the world. Safina has not won a single grand slam this year, and yet has held onto the #1 ranking due to consistent wins in the non-slam tournaments.

Also some weird commenting on this victory, as seen in this monstersandcritics.com article:

Taiwan's Broadcasting Corp of China lauded 18-year-old Chang for 're-writing history (of tennis).'

Rewriting history of tennis? I can hardly see how that is so. Anyway you look at it, it's just another upset of the number one seed, one of the many that have occurred in the past.

Furthermore, absent in many of the match wrap-ups, is the mention of Chang's nationality. Readers and listeners of tennis matches know that the country is almost always mentioned. Such as, "The only American players left in this tournament after Round 2..." Or, "Nadal of Spain defeated..." etc. In this CNN.com article, nationalities are mentioned of every single player, except for Taiwan's Chang. It's hard to believe this is just a slip-up/typo.

With that said, it is still a great accomplishment for her nonetheless.

台灣加油!