The New Rankings Are Out!

As has been our tradition since the early '90s, we once again present the rankings for the best English-language newspapers in Taiwan.

Best sports section with complete TV schedules, local and international. They also provide standings for all we could hope for and some we could hope not for. Best bilingual section with words and terms from the actual stories. The crossword is more like a primer for Trivial Pursuit - Fetus Edition. Opinion page is the opposite of The News. If you've read one, don't bother reading the other - just imagine the exact opposite. The Post's forte is local news. Read anything headlined The China Post staff. Today's confusing allegory concerns an admiral and politician who don't see eye-to-eye about flying bomb things. But that's okay, because our fabulist is right there to clear things up for us with printed asides such as That's no answer and What he meant to say was: No can do. The concluding And the rare badinage came to and end with nobody losing face left me happy and relieved, wanting to ask for just one more story. Please!

Decent sports section, also inclusive of local sports but lacking listings of local stations' sports broadcasts. Sometimes will provide limited standings. They too have a good bilingual section, though they don't offer as much as The Post. Easily the best crossword. I've actually been forced to think while doing it. They have two opinion pages. One in English, one in Chinese and neither talk about the same thing. Local news tends to be national news with fewer What are the Changs up to? stories like The Post. However, they did alert us to the fact that the Formosan landlocked (nearly dead) salmon got fifth place in an online poll to decide which images best represent the country (puppetry was number 1, but you knew that).

" Yer sure purty, but what are ya good fer?" pretty much sums up The Times. A newly revised broke-ass bilingual section fills a lot a space - as well as my charcoal starter. The crossword is popular because people can then say I did The Times crossword this morning in 3 minutes while defibrillating myself. Taiwan-related editorials tend to be Pan-Green. International-related ones tend to be Pan-Blue. Judgement.....Pan-Suck. They are unaware that Taiwan has ah, ummm, "professional" leagues for the two most popular sports in the country: baseball and basketball. They also wrongly assume that the country watches reenactments of games from traveling troupes of sports bards because they sure as hell won't tell us who's going to play or on what channel. The most interesting part of the paper is the business section, which I think, is the best of the three. There. The Times doesn't completely suck. They just suc.