Urinating men, hamburgers light up poll ads

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Grinning Chinese peasants, urinating men, hamburgers and fried chicken -- with Taiwan's presidential election Saturday, both candidates are blanketing newspapers with increasingly creative, even odd, adverts.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose candidate Frank Hsieh has trailed in the polls, is appealing to electors not to vote for the opposition Nationalists, lest it open the floodgates to what it has depicted as dirty and uncultured mainland Chinese coming to Taiwan.

Nationalist candidate Ma Ying-jeou has proposed a "common market" with China, but the DPP has attacked this by saying it would let hordes of Chinese into Taiwan, bringing down wages and 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 the police 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 for Chinese to get to Taiwan, a legacy of decades of mutual mistrust.

While sharing a common language and culture, political relations are tense. The two sides have been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949. But China still claims Taiwan as its own.

Another DPP advert opposes the recognition of Chinese scholastic qualifications in Taiwan, saying China has too many unemployed graduates who would flood into the island. In any case, it adds, forged documents are easily available in China.

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

The Nationalists, by contrast, have gone for a fast-food theme to push their economic platform, calling the fried chicken 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 a picture of an enormous hamburger stacked six patties high, with each featuring a bullet point outlining one part of the Nationalists' economic manifesto.

Another shows a large bucket of fried chicken, with a picture on the side of a smiling cartoon version of Ma, and more promises of a brighter future, each using a play on the Chinese word for "chicken."

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

(Editing by Nick Macfie and David Fox)

Sum up the text and give your opinion about how far one should go to promote their own political party.