The 'pucker-up' factor?

I'm amused to read that a Taiwanese woman's ambitions are provoking mixed reactions in her homeland. According to France 24:

A Taiwanese woman's ambition to kiss 100 men in Paris has become an overnight web sensation after she provided details of the quest on her much-visited blog.

Yang Ya-ching, a 27-year-old music major living in the French capital, has so far notched up 54 smooches, she said on her blog, which features photos of some of the encounters.




Collaborators in her project included a factory worker, a model, an Italian tourist and even a soldier visiting the capital of romance for Bastille Day.

"I came up with the idea three years ago," she said on her blog.

"Three of my four friends who were aware of the plan warned me that I might wind up getting slapped rather than kissed."

Yang, who plans to write a book about her kissing experiences, has attracted 1.97 million visitors to her blog, including more than 224,000 on Monday alone.

"Aren't you afraid of catching a disease?" one of her followers asked.

"No," she replied. "The more you're afraid of, the less you accomplish."

(For an English translation of her blog, courtesy of Google Translate, click here.)

Asian Offbeat recounts:

On July 13, she succeeded in soliciting a kiss from the first man, a worker installing an outdoor advertisement board. After hearing her explanation, the man granted her wish, and the kiss was like "an autumn leaf falling into my pocket by accident," she wrote in her blog.

Since then, Yang has kissed 54 men across Paris, including a street sweeper, a model and a foreign tourist.

Kiss number 3 [was] with a French man who taught French in Africa. He liked Yang and invited her to visit him in Africa.

The man who gave her kiss number 48 bit Yang's lip. "It was an interesting experience," she wrote.

. . .

Some praised her courage and envied her, while others criticized her, calling her a slut and saying her project was just an excuse to kiss handsome young men.

Other comments: "You could catch AIDS!," "Why don't you return to Taiwan and kiss Taiwan men?," "Kiss a stranger and then Goodbye. I don't see why it is worth writing a book!"

One woman wrote that she had fallen in love by seeing Yang's photos. "Even a Paris street sweeper is so handsome. I want to go to Paris too."

I can see the Taiwanese street sweepers getting really hot under the collar about that comparison!



Peter