People in Taiwan's small town help a street person seen eating leftovers

不忍看街友吃剩菜，台灣小鎮的人們提供協助

A person in a small town in northern Taiwan saw a street person dredging up foods from a dirty kitchen leftovers bin on the street, and his strong sympathy for the street person has prompted a wave of support from netizens and police.


TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—A person in a small town in northern Taiwan saw a street person dredging up foods from a dirty kitchen leftovers bin on the street and his strong sympathy for the street person had prompted a wave of support from netizens and police. Now the street person surnamed Chan has been brought home by his family after they were alerted by the story on social media.

A man of Tongsiao Township, Miaoli County surnamed Yang said he saw a street person dredging up foods from a leftovers bin on the street to eat in cold weather on December 8. As he couldn’t bear to see somebody living in such a wretched condition as eating dirty leftovers, he went to buy a box of braised pork rice, miso soup and soybean drink and gave the foods to him for free, hoping him not to eat leftovers again.

Yang even went as far as to take it to Tongsiao townspeople’s Facebook fan club to urge townspeople to give the street person a helping hand if they see him on the street. Yang’s post has gone so viral that thousands of people clicked the Like button and that some people brought over noodles, bread and drinks they bought and gave the foods to Chan in relay fashion so he could have three meals a day.

Bakery owner Wu Chieh-hung (吳杰紘) said that he saw the post on the internet and learned that Chan seemed to be physically handicapped and was also not good at expressing himself, so he sent Chan bread and cakes the store made so he could have something to eat at any time.

Tongsiao police chief Chou Kuo-ping (周國平) said on Monday that besides the crowdsourcing, police officers were worried about him living on the street, so they went to look for him and brought him back to the police station. It happened that Chan’s family were alerted by the messages on Facebook, so they came from Changhua and brought him back home, Chou added.

Chan’s family told police that Chan was unsociable and ran away very often, which made the family members very concerned about him. However, Chan’s family expressed their gratitude to Tongsiao’s police and people for their great help.

The local police chief praised the help of the internet as well as the warm local community, saying that in less than 36 hours, Chan not only got great help from sympathetic townspeople but also went home safely.