Urinating Chinese and hamburgers light up Taiwan poll ads

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Grinning Chinese peasants, urinatingmen, hamburgers and fried chicken -- with Taiwan's presidentialelection on Saturday, both candidates are blanketing newspaperswith increasingly creative, even odd, adverts.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whosecandidate Frank Hsieh has trailed in the polls, is appealing toelectors not to vote for the opposition Nationalists, lest itopen the floodgates to what it has depicted as dirty anduncultured mainland Chinese coming to Taiwan.

Nationalist candidate Ma Ying-jeou has proposed a "commonmarket" with China, but the DPP has attacked this by saying itwould let hordes of Chinese into Taiwan, bringing down wagesand making it harder for Taiwanese to find jobs.

"After the common market, parks become public toilets,speaking becomes spitting," reads one DPP newspaper advert,featuring a picture of three men urinating in public.

"In Italy, many Chinese tourists have been sent to thepolice for urinating on the side of the street," it adds."People of Taiwan, are you ready?"

Though Taiwanese can easily go to China, it is hard forChinese to get to Taiwan, a legacy of decades of mutualmistrust.

While sharing a common language and culture, politicalrelations are tense. The two sides have been ruled separatelysince defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island at the endof a civil war with the Communists in 1949. But China stillclaims Taiwan as its own.

Another DPP advert opposes the recognition of Chinesescholastic qualifications in Taiwan, saying China has too manyunemployed graduates who would flood into the island. In anycase, it adds, forged documents are easily available in China.

"I'm also a Peking University graduate!" it shows agrinning Chinese peasant, poorly dressed and holding up agraduation certificate, as saying.

The Nationalists, by contrast, have gone for a fast-foodtheme to push their economic platform, calling the friedchicken and hamburgers in their adverts "a happy economic meal"and "a happy social welfare meal", among other things.

"The best quality beef," one advert reads, next to apicture of an enormous hamburger stacked six patties high, witheach featuring a bullet point outlining one part of theNationalists' economic manifesto.

Another shows a large bucket of fried chicken, with apicture on the side of a smiling cartoon version of Ma, andmore promises of a brighter future, each using a play on theChinese word for "chicken".

"Bye bye to hunger," it says. "A free or subsidisednutritional lunch for disadvantaged schoolchildren."

(Editing by Nick Macfie and David Fox)