Dear John, I have sent this request to the BBC.
On your web page, at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2229208.stm in an article by Damian Grammaticas you have the line, 'How much is a pound of cabbage?' Is this true? Has Taiwan decided to change back to the old British Imperial measures? As I understand it, they changed to metric in 1954 and confirmed this in the last year or two with laws that included prison terms for using old measures. As you can see I was quite surprised to see that the garbage trucks are now teaching these old measures. As I asked, ' Has Taiwan decided to change back to the old British Imperial measures?' Cheers, Pat Naughtin on 2002-09-02 10.52, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 2002-09-01 > > > I see nothing in the article that indicates Taiwan is reverting to old > measures. There is the phrase about the cost of cabbage using pounds, but > that could have been an example put forth by the BBC correspondent as you > suggested. And, we have to remember that Taiwan never used pounds or any > other FFU unit. They had their own Chinese units. If there was a reversion, > it would be to Chinese units, not British. > > I'm sure that in Taiwan it is permissible to ask for amounts in old units, but > they have to be weighed in metric units. When I was in Taiwan in the mid-90s, > all I saw, even in the street markets, were scales in kilograms only. Not > knowing the language, I could not tell what the people were ordering in. Nor > do I know if traditional Chinese units have been set to rational values in SI. > A reversion to old units would serve no purpose at this time. > > John > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Pat Naughtin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Sunday, 2002-09-01 17:05 > Subject: [USMA:22010] Pound of cabbage > > >> Dear All, >> >> Through the night, I heard this news item on the BBC World Service. I didn't >> believe what I was hearing so I looked up the item and found it at: >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2229208.stm >> >> As you can see, either the Mayor of Tainan has decided that his city will >> revert to old measures such as pounds for trade, or the BBC reporter, Damian >> Grammaticas, has translated from kilogram to pound for his own purposes. I >> suspect the latter. >> >> Dear Joe, >> >> Do you know when Taiwan and Korea adopted metric measures. I seem to recall >> that these two nations now have the most severe laws about using old >> measures. This is one of the reasons that I don't think that the Mayor of >> Tainan would be training his citizens to use pounds. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Pat Naughtin >> >> >
