er Tu Cheng-sheng yesterday was besieged by reporters concerning his only son's wild birthday party while serving as a private in the army. Tu Ming-yi, Minister Tu's son, hosted a birthday party Tuesday evening that lasted until 3 a.m. at a cost of more than NT$30,000, although he draws a monthly salary of NT$6,435, according to local media reports.
More than half a dozen scantily-clad waitresses were on hand to accompany Tu and his friends at the private club named "Joyce" on Section 4 of Renai Road in Taipei, said an Apple Daily report.
The young Tu, 27, was on leave from a his psychological warfare team in Taipei to hold the party.
He has became a focus of attention partly due to his father's position.
He was questioned for an alleged attempt to evade mandatory service to go to Britain to earn a master's degree in literature after graduating from the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at the National Chiao Tung University in 2005.
To dispel public doubts, Minister Tu vowed that his son will fulfill his obligation like all other able-bodied young men in Taiwan.
But the young man's assignment to a laid-back position in the military sparked allegations that the young Tu had much better luck than all other 160,000 conscripts because he is a minister's son.
Last year, he was reported to have held a wild party at his father's official residence and the noise drew strong protests from neighbors.
When confronted with the question about his son's latest wild party, Minister Tu declined to comment, saying only that his son's activities have nothing to do with him.
He suggested the reporters dogging him pay more attention to educational issues.
A colonel in the Ministry of National Defense said the military has started an impartial investigation into whether Pvt. Tu had set foot on "improper locations" as reported in the press.
Meanwhile, Minister Tu's recent comments that using Chinese-language idioms "represents the failure of education" in Taiwan continue drawing criticisms from local scholars. They said that idioms play a key role in all major languages because they are gems of wisdom passed down through generations. Idioms should be regarded as valuable components adding sparkle to a language, just as well-polished diamonds do to elegant clothes or lightening in the eyes of a dragon, they said. One of them noted that even the Taiwanese dialect, which originated from southern Fujian Province in China, has countless idioms and no one should criticize the language for its idioms
Minister Tu, a historian, should refrain from making reckless comments on something he is not familiar with, the scholar said.
Some suggested on the Internet that the education minister spend more time on educating his own son instead of making improper public comments.
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