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Many homeless do not use the services provided by the government. This article discusses the reasons for this phenomenon based on a survey conducted in 2016. After receiving training, students interviewed 150 homeless in Taichung City with a structured questionnaire. The questions asked the homeless if they had used 14 different services provided by the local government. Many homeless expressed their desire for other services that were not provided by the government. Together with the reasons for not using the services, we suggest a better design of the government services for the Taiwanese homeless, such as improved accessibility, awareness of services, and housing which have been implemented in many countries since the 1990s.

This paper reviews the flexible notion of Chinese citizenship and compares the teaching and learning of citizenship in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in recent decades. Collectively called the “three Chinas,” each of the societies has its own political history and ruling ideology, even if they all are identified as Confucius-heritage societies. Each society, however, has also endured significant social, economic, and/or political changes in the past three decades or so and they currently represent three distinct stages of democratization and corresponding phases of educational reforms. In what ways does the present-day citizenship education in each of the societies reflect her political history and identity and differ from each other in curriculum priorities and pedagogical practices? In what sense is there commonness in the conceptualization and teaching of citizenship across these Chinese societies? After a review of literature, we present preliminary findings of a primary survey conducted in December 2013 of secondary school teachers who teach the subject of political and citizenship education, as well as college students in-training to teach the subject. In the analysis, we also compare current findings to similar empirical research done in the recent past, both in China as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan, to gauge the degree of continuity and change in the meanings of “good” citizenship, and practice of citizenship education in each society as viewed by subject teachers.