The ROC system for dating years, the source of Taiwan’s approaching Y1C problem, is in the news.
Premier Su Tseng-chang on Friday told lawmakers that he supported Taiwan fully adopting the almost universal practice of dating years. Currently, the year 2006 is referred to in Taiwan as the year 95.
Sources:
- Taiwan may drop idiosyncratic Republican calendar, Taipei Times, February 25, 2006
- Premier backs replacing ROC dating system, China Post, February 25, 2006 (This is a good example of why the China Post is such a bad newspaper: It features mainly poor translations of poorly written, non-objective stories from none-too-good local Mandarin newspapers. I’m including the link, though, because the story provides more information than the one in the Taipei Times, a paper that sometimes has problems of its own.)
Good. And tell them to stop writing on buildings backward too. By the way, surprize: …the North Korean “Juche” dating system (dates start from the year Kim Il Sung, founder of North Korea, was born). ZUCHEI91(2002) denotes Juche 91 (which is 2002)…
Left-to-right forms on buildings were officially ended about ten years ago, though the order probably covered just government entities. (At least that’s what I remember seeing in an article many years ago.) But I still see such signs from time to time.