Welcome to our country! Here's a javelina!

The hottest news in Taiwan right now is the Opposition leader's visit to China, since the KMT quarreled with the communists some sixty years ago.

To show their warmest welcome, Mr Lien will be received in the most respected and and honoured manner. It is beyond red carpet and 90 degree bows: He gets to bring home a pair of panda.

Only a handful of countries are advantaged this way. They have rare, adorable cuddly animals to be their ambassadors. Australia is another one, the late Pope John Paul II for example, was thrusted with a koala the second he stepped out of the plane when he visited in the late 1980s. (In the photo, both looked dumbfound)

Not very fair is it? I bet other countries would love to have animal ambassadors to replace out of date politicians. (Taiwan, for one, is in very bad need for an animal foreign minister whose worst public behaviour will only be scratching itself in the private areas) The cruel truth is, some country's native animal is just not cute enough.

I mean, I don't think millions of Americans will want to queue up to greet the extremely rare living fossil tuatara from New Zealand as they did when President Nixon brought them the Pandas Ling-ling and Sin-sin after his trip to China.


Or bathing monkeys from Japan.

Or Javelina from Mexico.....you get the drift.

Oh but don't you worry about the tuatara's feelings. Coming from the dinasour's generation, I think they rather be feared than to be cuddled.