Hau Lung-pin

Hau Lung-pin (Chinese: 郝龍斌; pinyin: Hǎo Lóngbīn; born August 22, 1952) is a politician in the Republic of China. He was the Mayor of Taipei in 2006-2014. Hau is a member of the Kuomintang (KMT) and was the Vice Chairman of the party in April-November 2014.

Early life

Hau Lung-pin is the son of former premier and general, Hau Pei-tsun. He was born in Taiwan with ancestral roots in Yancheng, Jiangsu, China. He attended the National Taiwan University and graduated in 1975 with a B.S. in Agricultural Chemistry. He then earned a PhD in Food Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 1983.

When Hau returned to Taiwan after his doctoral studies, he taught as a professor (1983–88, Associate Professor; 1988–96, Professor) at the Graduate Institute of Food Science and Technology at National Taiwan University. As an educator, Hau won numerous awards including awards for excellence in teaching and in research.

Hau left the Kuomintang in the early 1990s to join the New Party. He was elected as a legislator in 1995, and served until his appointment as chief of the central government's Environmental Protection Administration in 2001 under President Chen Shui-bian. He resigned from that position in 2003.

Mayor of Taipei

The Mayor of Taipei is the head of the Taipei City Government and is elected to a four-year term. Presidents Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou have all held this position prior to being elected President of the Republic of China.

Taipei was elevated as a special municipality from 1967. The mayor was a position appointed by the central government from 1967 to 1994, and the first public election for Mayor of Taipei was held in 1994.

The incumbent mayor is Ko Wen-je.

List of Mayors

      Independent       Kuomintang       Democratic Progressive

Taipei

Taipei (/ˌtaɪˈpeɪ/, literally means "North of Tai(wan)"), officially known as Taipei City (Chinese: 臺北市 or 台北市; pinyin: Táiběi Shì; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-pak Chhī), is the capital city and a special municipality of Taiwan. Sitting at the northern tip of Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City. It is about 25 km (16 mi) southwest of the northern port city Keelung. The city is mostly located on the Taipei Basin, an ancient lakebed bounded by the two relatively narrow valleys of the Keelung and Xindian rivers, which join to form the Tamsui River along the city's western border.

The city proper is home to an estimated population of 2,693,672 in 2009, forming the core part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area which includes the nearby cities of New Taipei and Keelung with a population of 6,900,273, the 40th most-populous urban area in the world. The name "Taipei" can refer either to the whole metropolitan area or the city proper.

Taipei is the political, economic, educational, and cultural center of Taiwan, and one of the major hubs of the Chinese-speaking world. Considered to be a global city, Taipei is part of a major high-tech industrial area.Railways, high-speed rail, highways, airports, and bus lines connect Taipei with all parts of the island. The city is served by two airports – Taipei Songshan and Taiwan Taoyuan. Taipei is home to various world-famous architectural or cultural landmarks which include Taipei 101, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Dalongdong Baoan Temple, Hsing Tian Kong, Mengjia Longshan Temple, National Palace Museum, Presidential Office Building, Taipei Guest House, Ximending, and several night markets dispersing over the city. Its natural features such as Maokong, Yangmingshan, and hot springs are also well known to international visitors.

Ko Wen-je

Ko Wen-je (Chinese: 柯文哲; pinyin: Kē Wénzhé; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Koa Bûn-tiat; born 6 August 1959 in Hsinchu City, Taiwan) is the current mayor of Taipei, the capital city of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Before becoming the mayor, he was a doctor at the National Taiwan University Hospital. He was also a professor at National Taiwan University College of Medicine and specializes in trauma, intensive care, organ transplant, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), and artificial organs among others. Due to his profession, he has been nicknamed Ko P or KP (which stands for Professor Ko, and is how he is customarily referred to within National Taiwan University (NTU). Ko was responsible for standardising organ transplant procedures in Taiwan, and was the first physician to bring ECMO to Taiwan. Apart from his practice, Ko is known for his numerous media appearances and interviews as a social and political commentator.

In 2014 Taipei Mayoral Election, Ko ran as an independent candidate. He beat Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Pasuya Yao in the unofficial primary, gaining support from the DPP and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). Ko won the election with 853,983 votes to become the first doctoral mayor of the city since the introduction of direct election of the office.

Keelung

Keelung, officially known as Keelung City (Chinese: 基隆市; also Jilong or Chilung), is a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan. It borders New Taipei with which it forms the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, along with Taipei itself. Nicknamed the Rainy Port for its frequent rain and maritime role, the city is Taiwan's second largest seaport (after Kaohsiung).

Name

According to early Chinese accounts, this northern coastal area was originally called Pak-kang (北港). By the early 20th century, the city was known to the Western world as Kelung, as well as the variants Kiloung, Kilang and Keelung. In his 1903 general history of Taiwan, US Consul to Formosa (1898–1904) James W. Davidson related that "Kelung" was among the few well-known names, thus warranting no alternate Japanese romanization.

However, the Taiwanese people have long called the city Kelang (Chinese: 雞籠; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ke-lâng/Koe-lâng; literally: "rooster cage" or "hencoop"). It has been proposed that this name was derived from the local mountain that took the shape of a rooster cage. However, it is more probable that the name was derived from the first inhabitants of the region, as are the names of many other Taiwanese cities. In this case, the Ketagalan people were the first inhabitants, and early Han settlers probably approximated "Ketagalan" with "Ke-lâng" (Hokkien phonetics).