A View from the 'Hill

Fish of the day

2011-12-29T00:13:00.000-08:00

well, two days ago

New Poem: Time is not on our side

2011-12-21T02:09:00.000-08:00

Time is not on our side,
our subconsciouses know this
so they try to hammer love
out of like
or lust
and sometimes even hate,
striking metal against metal late into the night,
we no longer see what we are doing

the blind leading the blind,
teacherless,
like infants discovering themselves in playschool
wanting to share our uncovery with the world,
we are in LOVE,
cynics sneer:
yes, love, that one-letter word,
frown down on us,

but we don't care,
won't heed these inner voices,
look at US,
we are in LOVE,
repeated and repeating,
hammering hammered late into the night,
like a distant clanging bell,
love ... love ... love ... love ... love ... love ...

fish of the day

2011-11-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

well, fish of last month actually.

New Verse - Things Known

2011-11-14T18:45:00.000-08:00

Things Known

Before he sits to eat, Jesus knows he will be betrayed.
....Copernicus knows the earth is round,
....Darwin knows there is no God,
....Marx knows the working class must liberate itself,
and, eating their TV dinners ten thousand miles apart, Brezhnev and Nixon know the people will believe their lies.

I only know that today
....before dusk
....you will come
....to watch the dying sun’s rose rays light up the swaying willow leaves
and the rising moon cast long shadows across the river.

I also know that on seeing me, you will smile,
....we will walk,
....talk of music and art,
....religion, science and philosophy,
and enjoy the silence.

I know we will build our home beside the river,
....near the ocean,
....or in the mountain forests,
....where will have two children, one girl and one boy,
who we will call Jasmine and Fred (or maybe Charlie and Nicholas after our idols).

They will go to the local school to learn to read and write and arithmatise,
....that the earth is roundish, that godliness can be found within their own hearts,
....that women, like everyone, must liberate themselves,
....and to recognize that politicians are lying every time their lips move,
but above all, they will learn from cicadas in the trees and birds on the air, from the wind and the rain and the waves.

Furthermore, I know that if we are lucky,
....we will share many more sunsets,
....cuddling close on the shore against the cool evening breeze,
....smiling knowingly to each other,
as we watch our children make the same mistakes we did before.

I know you will hold me close,
....protect me against myself
....as madness claims the last dance.
....Or you will go first,
quietly, peacefully, nodding to sleep in my embrace.

And although it is sometimes hard to believe, I do know that the earth is round,
....that it circles the sun as the moon circles the earth,
....thus the seasons progress and night follows day follows night,
....just as now, among the still willow trees beside the river,
I know that tomorrow you will come.

call me Makgeolli Mark

2011-10-21T04:52:00.000-07:00

recipe: steam rice, allow to cool;
boil water, allow to cool;
steriise container;
add rice, yeast, water and cover with cloth;
(one week later add sugar for more kick if desired)

what could be simpler?

cycling in Kaohsiung

2011-06-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

article in Taiwan Today (GIO online newspaper) about cycling in Kaohsiung (http://www.taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=167358&ctNode=427):

On a warm spring Sunday afternoon, Hsu Ching-jan, his wife and 8-year-old daughter make their way towards downtown Kaohsiung City to go shopping and eat snacks before heading home. All are riding newish-looking bicycles and are wearing regulation helmets and brightly colored cycle jerseys. They are just three of a great many cyclists thronging the car-free bike paths running along both sides of the Love River near the city’s harbor.

“We come here once or twice a month,” said Hsu. “Actually, it was my daughter Cindy’s idea originally. She’d heard about it from her classmates.”

This is typical of the way the pleasures of cycling spread by word of mouth. The Internet is similarly abuzz with recommendations.

“After many years of avoiding Taiwan’s second largest city [Kaohsiung], I recently went back,” Andrew Kerslake, a U.S. citizen residing in Taichung, wrote on his blog Taiwan in Cycles last fall. “The place had totally been transformed into a large friendly metropole with a small town feel.”

“It was gorgeous,” he concluded. “Most of all I felt safe.”

This final point is a key consideration. When asked why they do not cycle regularly, many Taiwanese cite safety as a major concern, along with pollution and—especially among women—getting sunburned.

Local cyclists have their own solution to this last problem: covering every inch of their flesh with layers of clothing. Regarding the first two, they have to rely on drivers’ etiquette and government administrations’ pursuit of antipollution policies.

“In order to make cycling more convenient and safer for citizens, bike paths are constructed as part of the sidewalk, so as to avoid bikes having to compete for road space with cars and motorbikes,” Kent T. Wang, director-general of Kaohsiung’s Department of Transport, said by e-mail.

Furthermore, to encourage cyclists to use the paths, he stressed that “they are built in coordination with road construction projects and in accordance with the same principles of signage, signaling and road marking.”

This will be good news to many cyclists visiting Kaohsiung from other cities—around the world and not just in Taiwan—who often feel themselves to be second-class road users. Taipei’s bike paths, for example, have few signs directing cyclists to destinations and no distance indicators other than those relating to the section of path being used.

“According to statistics from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Kaohsiung’s rate of cycle use in 2009 was 6.7 percent. This compares with a 2005 figure from my own department of 4.3 percent before the bicycling system was constructed,” Wang said. “This shows the gradual increase in bicycle use among Kaohsiung’s citizens.”

Wang explained that motivation for the city’s investment in cycling infrastructure was two-fold. “Our administration decided to promote the use of bicycles as an alternative to motorbikes for short journeys because they are better both for individual health and for protection of the environment. As such, it is part of our efforts to meet Kaohsiung’s low-carbon target.”

Due to its strategic location, from early in the period of Japanese rule, Kaohsiung was developed as the island’s major industrial region, a process that only intensified after postwar retrocession as it became the engine powering the Taiwan economic miracle. As the center of heavy industry—particularly steel, energy and petrochemical production—with thousands of factories, the city also recorded some of the nation’s worst air, water and land pollution indices, and one of the worst per capita carbon dioxide emission rates in the world.

It was against this background that incumbent two-term Mayor Chen Chu was elected. Two key items on her campaign manifesto were the improvement of transportation and emphasizing of environmental protection.

Not merely words with which to get elected, these policies have remained central to her efforts to transform Kaohsiung into a low-carbon and environmentally sustainable metropolis.

While most of the cuts in per capita emissions targeted—30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050—will have to come from the industrial, commercial and residential sectors, transportation policy can also play a role in a city notoriously addicted to car and motorbike use. Chen’s administration has expanded the city’s bus system, acquired hundreds of new, energy-efficient buses, and doubled MRT shuttle bus connectivity. It has also expressed its commitment to the embattled MRT system despite poor usage rates by citizens.

Folding bikes can be taken on buses and the MRT for free, and regular bikes on the MRT for a flat bike-and-passenger ticket of NT$60 (US$2.32), said Wang.

Alternatively, citizens can take public transport to one of 50 kiosks around the city to rent one of 4,500 bikes at a subsidized rate starting at NT$30. This C-Bike scheme, Taiwan’s first urban bike rental program, was what particularly caught CNN’s attention.

“NT$75 million of the costs for the C-Bike project came from the central government,” Lee Mu-sheng, director-general of the city’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said, also by e-mail. “With NT$15 million from the city budget, this made a total of NT$90 million in 2008.”

As for the 230 kilometers of bike paths, Wu Ming-chang, director of the Maintenance Office in the Public Works Bureau, estimated they had cost around NT$40 million for upkeep in the period 2010-11.

So do riders feel these investments have made Kaohsiung a cycling paradise?

Hans Chen, a Kaohsiung native who now lives in Taipei and commutes by bicycle from Guandu to the city center, said he prefers the Kaohsiung system, “because it is less abused by motorcyclists who illegally take shortcuts on the capital’s bike paths.”

American consultant Michael Cannon recently made the opposite move, from Linkou in New Taipei City to be near his wife’s family in Kaohsiung. “Riding around Kaohsiung itself with the flow of traffic is easier and more comfortable in comparison to riding in Taipei,” he said. “Due to the prevalence of scooters here, drivers are quite conscientious about cyclists and don’t push them off the roadway.”

But Michael Turton, an American educator based in Taichung, said he preferred Taichung or Taipei, not because the facilities were better, but because “the mountains are right outside your door, whereas in Kaohsiung there are many kilometers of terrible traffic between you and the beautiful hills.”

All three cyclists had suggestions for further improvements in Kaohsiung, from the removal of stray dogs to the provision of access ramps and extension of the system.

Moreover, there needs to be a change in perception of cycling from a twice-per month hobby to a transportation system if people like the Hsus and their daughter are going to commute daily to work or school by bike, and thus really contribute to hitting Kaohsiung’s CO2-emission targets

fish of the day

2011-06-19T04:34:00.000-07:00

In the morning after dropping off my daughters at nursery school, I went to the pool and swam my usual two thousand meters. I imagined I was a fish. Just a fish, with no need to think, not even about swimming. Next I showered, changed into a T-shirt and shots, and started pumping iron.

(South of the Border, West of the Sun; by Haruki Murakami)

fish of the day - Daegu, S. Korea

2011-06-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

MRT station in Daegu

fish of the day

2011-05-02T19:42:00.001-07:00

fish art at Sun Moon Lake yesterday afternoon

fish of the day

2011-04-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

From "Book of Odes"

(translated by James Legge, 1898)

豈其食魚、必河之魴。
豈其取妻、必齊之姜。

Why, in eating fish;
Must we have bream from the He?
Why, in taking a wife,
Must we have a Jiang of Qi?

new verse: no more jeans

2011-02-19T00:40:00.000-08:00

No More Jeans

No more jeans, or, at least,
no more jeans-and-trainers combination,
well, definitely no more jeans, trainers, t-shirt and baseball cap,
no more 1,000cc-motorbike dreams,
or cruising a convertible down country roads,
an MG, VW or even a Saab,
no more indecision about choosing a career:
athlete, scientist, poet or explorer.

No more staying up through the night staring into girls’ eyes,
no sore arm or sore neck from the back row at movies,
no more public kissing at all,
at least not tonguey ones,
no more inappropriate erections,
all the way from Edinburgh to London,
no more fumbling in the dark with bra fasteners,
bootstraps, belts and buckles.

No more crushes on cousins,
babysitters, teachers or friends’ sisters and mothers,
no more beer-fueled dances,
sauvignon-inspired romances,
whisky-powered philosophies
or gin-induced tear-filled soliloquies,
no more bud, bongs, buckets,
acid, E or H.

But, with luck,
many more glasses of OJ,
cups of cinnamon-flavoured coffee and home-cooked breakfasts,
like this morning, here with you.

Three New Year hikes (three pictures)

2011-02-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

a fairly hard walk from Xiongkong (熊空) in Sanxia Township to Wulai (烏來) with lots of river crossings and a 1000m peak

then a gentle romp to the hotspring and a zen-style paddy field on Yangmingshan

and finally the "Buddhist" temple at Silver River Cave also in Taipei County (now New Taipei City)

new (light) verse

2011-02-08T06:15:00.002-08:00

If dogs wrote poetry

If we dogs wrote poetry,
no meandering iambic trot,
but galloping dactylic pace,
or else, we’ll do the spondee strut;
no host of golden daffodils,
but oak or elm each forty feet,
or lamppost, hydrant or park seat;
no odes to nightingales
but rather odes to rubbish dumps
or as we call them, the long free lunch;

ah, if dogs wrote epicurean poetry,
please, no blackbirds in a pie
but raw, still warm, beside the road,
though as familiaris we’ll acquiesce
to eulogize freeze-dried, chicken-flavoured lumps
or beef or lamb,
or liver, turkey, rabbit, venison,
however made and marketed,
we’ll wolf it down,
swallow it whole,
then lie all day before the fire
dreaming of composing couplets.

If dogs wrote epic poetry they would not
tell of Norway’s Amundson versus England’s Scott,
but rather would recall the victory
of Greenland Dog over Siberian Pony.

If dogs were meant to write love poems,
then why the hell do you have us done?
“done” – what an idiotic euphemism
for nothing short of castration,
just one more sign of your slave-owning mentality,
like the kennel and collar and leash,
or words like “down” and “sit” and “fetch”,
without ever so much as a “please”.

If dogs wrote modern poetry,
in more abstract lines we might debate
the merits of silent movies versus talkies
but only to set up a rhyme for walkies,
and likewise, Gysinesquely sample
the boundless imagery of Keats,
soulful fugues of Ms. Simone,
religious thoughts of Apostle Paul,
and communism espoused by Marx,
but only so we might make mention
of treats and bone and ball and parks.

But we dogs do not write poetry
because nothing rhymes with grughh.

Grughh grughh, grughh grughh grughh, grughh ...

Eating in the New Year

2011-02-03T17:52:00.001-08:00

GT (http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/travel/themed-tours/2011-01/618482.html):

"In operation for 26 years," one sign reads; "Family-run for 35 years," another states, while yet another proclaims they've been "Selling the best foodstuffs for more than half-a-century." In Taipei's Dihua Street, tradition is everything, and this is never truer than during the annual "Southern and Northern Product Fair" that runs for two weeks leading up to the Lunar Calendar New Year's Eve (falling on February 2 this year).

Families get together, neighbors and friends visit, and since Taiwanese are nothing if not hospitable, a good supply of food is essential for the holiday.

Street Life

Supermarkets and department stores do a roaring trade in specially packaged lihe (gift boxes), and bottles of wine or whisky with free customized glasses. But most people, even if they normally buy their groceries at supermarkets, like to go to a street market to get in some traditional xiaochi (snacks) in the days or weeks before New Year. In Taipei, this means a trip to Dihua Street, in the Dadaocheng district to the north of the city center.

New Year's Eve kicks off with the traditional family weilu ("get-together around the stove"), for which hot pot is a popular dish. To perk up the usual meat and vegetables, this will contain a variety of dumplings, mushrooms, tofu and seafood, all of which are on sale.

On New Year's Day itself, cooking is taboo, so pre-cooked meat and preserved vegetables are in great abundance. Most traditional are the larou (cured pork) and lachang (sausages), since la means both "curing" and is also an alternative name for the last month of the lunar calendar. Also seen in giant heaps are beef, pork and cuttlefish jerky, rousong (shredded pork), smoked duck - a specialty of Taiwan's northeastern Yilan County - dried fish, shrimps, scallops, shark's fin and abalone.

Vendors compete vigorously: some wear costumes - either traditional Chinese apparel or eye-catching animal suits - many shout, and all offer free samples to tempt shoppers.

"Around three-quarters of a million people will visit the market between January 15 and February 1," Chen Shih-Che of Original Creativity, a privately run marketing company, told the Global Times. "This is significantly more than in previous years," he added.

Original Creativity helps Taipei City organize the annual event, including bringing contemporary pop, dance and even rap acts to a small stage in the middle of the market.

But this is really just a new face for a long-established tradition that existed for decades before the government got involved. Nanbei huo, that is, the best "produce from South to North [China]," has been sold in Dadaocheng to the north of Taipei Railway Station since before the Japanese colonial authorities instructed local shopkeepers to build porticoed brick buildings in the 1920s, and even before the railway was built in the late 19th century.

Temple Fair

One of the oldest areas of the city, it dates from the migration from the even-older district of Mangka (now Wanhua), slightly further south along the Danshui River. This influx of population was perhaps the result of fighting between rival Fujian immigrants or maybe due to silting up of the river, but whatever the reason, Dadaocheng's wharf became a key northern Taiwan center of import/export, and the local streets boasted many of the island's finest houses and company buildings.

Indeed, several of these still stand, as does the Xiahai Temple at 61 Dihua Street. Dedicated to the Lord of Walls and Moats - more commonly known as City God - and with half-a-dozen altars bearing statues of several dozen different Daoist and Buddhist deities, at other times of the year the temple organizes walking tours of the historic neighborhood.

During the two-week fair, however, it concentrates on offering free "blessed tea" to flagging shoppers, while conducting its usual business of marshalling the services of The Old Man Under the Moon - a Daoist deity - who is said to help find prospective mates for single worshipers.
Most shoppers bypass the temple, however, as there is still much shopping to be done. Having bought hot-pot ingredients and dried meat, they perhaps focus next on the fruit, nuts and candies that relatives and friends will pick at between meals over the coming days.

Once more seen in great piles, and as always available to taste, are quantities of peanuts, pistachio, almonds, variously flavored pumpkin seeds, dates, figs, sun-dried persimmons, chestnuts from Tianjin, and the Taiwanese people's beloved pineapple cakes. One stall even sells Chilean cherries, showing that "North-South produce" now applies to all over the world. Most traditional, and still most popular, are ju (small oranges), since their name sounding like zhu (to offer good wishes) in Mandarin and ji (auspicious) is prized in Minnan Taiwanese - and also they are tasty, nutritious and symbolic of good fortune over the year to come.

In a similar vein, Taiwanese like to give gifts of pineapples, since its Minnan name onglai is homonymous with "prosperity has come." At one meal during the New Year celebrations, a fish will be eaten, since niannian you yu (every year have a fish) means "every year have a surplus," another auspicious saying. Naturally, both are on sale in the Dihua Street market.

Everybody's talking

Minnan is the language of the street, though of course everyone speaks Mandarin, and, since the stalls are staffed with temporary student workers, they are happy to practice English on foreigners. "Try one, it's free," is the usual opening phrase.

Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin spent two hours at the market on January 21, not to shop but to enjoy the atmosphere. "It's great to see events like this revitalizing the oldest parts of our city," he told the crowd, before handing out thousands of spring couplets for people to hang at home.

For those not lucky enough to receive the mayor's gift, there are stalls selling couplets, lanterns, paper cuts and other traditional New Year ornaments, most of them red and many bearing rabbit images, in keeping with this year's Chinese horoscope animal.

Several parcel companies run stalls and promise to deliver fresh produce in temperature-controlled bags to relatives and friends anywhere on the island within 24 hours, as does the local branch of the post office. Even the police get in on the act, with the local precinct taking advantage of the large number of visitors to promote anti-corruption and other public-service campaigns.

Somewhat incongruously, there are one or two shops selling objects such as belts and needlework supplies, not because these have any connection with the upcoming festivities, but because their stores are here year round.

In fact, Dadaocheng is a fascinating area to visit any time of year, such as at City God's birthday in the fifth lunar month, or when the district's puppet museum and theater has a new exhibition or show. At all times, the stores will still be selling the "best from the South to the North," and visitors are guaranteed a taste of Taiwan from times gone by.

riddle No. 6

2011-01-29T03:39:00.000-08:00

The "Lord" and "Lady" of riddles:

What is the connection between the Taiwanese word for 麵包 and the English word for 夥伴?
And what do both of these words have to do with "Lady" and "Lord"?

RIDDLE No.5

2011-01-29T03:28:00.000-08:00

Vegetarianism Riddle

吃素的人吃/喝什麼牛, 什麼雞, 什麼羊, 什麼馬, 什麼魚, 什麼猴, 什麼鼠, 什麼豬? …
(8 answers, each 2 or 3 characters, though other variations perhaps possible.)

[p.s. this is "environmental vegetarianism", therefore not 牛奶 or 雞蛋, i.e. no animal products]
[p.p.s. no 素雞 or anything like that]

for an example of what is sought:
if it asked for “dragon”, the answer might be 龍眼or龍鬚菜

recent food pics

2011-01-27T21:36:00.000-08:00

out and about for cycle trips, and amcham (here) and Global Times articles (here)
so lots of food photos for JBB recently

such as this possible chapter title page for Taipei City:

grilled tofu stall in Sanchong Night Market:

and baked sweet potoato vendor, outside Liuzhangli MRT Station, Taipei City:

a pig-ear chef in Dihua Street "south-north provisions market":

a peanut vendor in Taipei's Wanhua District:

and while looking for New Year delicacies at Luzhou Market, some women buying "lucky red underwear":

new verse

2011-01-27T00:21:00.000-08:00

As night falls

I am disturbed by your screaming
as night falls,
but more by the silences
that punctuate your sleep-lapped, mare-tipped dreams, and
seeking congress with your wide-eyed wisdom,
I whisper that you must believe
the sun will rise on yet another day.
You ask “What if you were I and I were you?”,

but there are no simple questions
only easy answers,
no black or white,
just merging shades of orange, red and violet
and black; a baby knows more than this dying man
of truth and love and freedom, with each birth you further figure out,
each time the night falls quickly from horizon
up, you see the moon’s as high as sun will ever get.

I know you’re hurting, screaming,
waiting in your cave
for the invention of love;
’til then, I’ll tread water in your tears
and whisper that you must believe,
I’ll write “with fondest feelings” in my will,
signed and post-dated once my sanity’s returned.
’Til then, I’ll gently rock you into sleep.

Saisiyat aboriginal dancing

2011-01-17T02:41:00.001-08:00

Dancing the Nights Away
– Joining Taiwan’s Saisiyat ethnic minority for a three-day religious festival

my second piece for GT (http://life.globaltimes.cn/life/2011-01/612864.html), though it used a different headline and, indeed a different photo of a different ethnicity dancing in a different location at a different time of the day

According to the legend of the Saisiyat people living in the mountains of Taiwan's Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, their ancestors accidentally exterminated a tribe of dwarf people from whom they had learned hunting, farming, brewing and other skills. To atone for this deed, at the full moon in the tenth lunar month every second year, they invite the spirits of this lost tribe to a three-day festival of singing, dancing, traditional foods and drinking their home-brewed millet wine. The Global Times recently went to find out more.
The 14 extant ethnic groups of Taiwan Aborigines comprise less than 2 percent of the island's total population, yet over four centuries' migration of Han-Chinese and the resulting social and political dominance, each has managed to preserve its identity, language and traditions.
One such tradition is the Pasta'ai (Dwarf Spirit Festival) of the approximately 5,000 Saisiyat people. It is held biennially in their home villages in the Nanzhuang Township of Miaoli County and Wufeng Township of Hsinchu County in the Xueshan Mountain Range of northwest Taiwan.
For decades it was a little-known, almost secretive event, but recently it has opened up to the outside world. And although at times this might look like just a booze-up, visitors are reminded that it is a religious rite and are asked to be respectful and well behaved. Immediately after having arrived, for example, locals and outsiders alike must call at a makeshift altar. Here, for a small cash donation, a sacred silver leaf is tied around their forehead or upper arm (and another around any camera or recording equipment).
Visitors may then enter the festival ground, but, for now, only Saisiyat tribe members may join in the dancing. Wearing self-made hand-stitched vests and other garments in the tribe's distinctive red-and-white colors, dancers link arms in long lines and perform a swaying backward-and-forward movement. This is designed to accentuate the movement of the rear, thereby creating a percussive rhythm on the "buttock bells" hung on the small of their backs. All the time the performers sing of their sorrow and gratitude to the spirits, and appeal for forgiveness.
Wiping out the dwarf people – said to measure just three feet tall – was not intentional, they chant. According to oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation in this three-day event, the tragedy occurred after just such a party as this.
Originally invited in gratitude for teaching the Saisiyat to hunt and farm, the Ta'ai, as the dwarves were known, had to cross a rushing river to attend their neighbors' annual harvest festival. Renowned for their singing and dancing as well as their warfare and magic arts, the Ta'ai were also infamous for their womanizing. Pregnancies often followed their visit, but the Saisiyat were too afraid to do anything about it.
Except on one occasion, when a young Saisiyat warrior, seeking revenge for the sullied reputation of his sister, sawed a notch from the log bridge used by the Ta'ai when returning home. His plan was too successful, and all but an elderly couple of dwarves were killed; the Saisiyat have been singing and dancing in atonement since.

For the first few hours each evening as the local Aborigines dance, outsiders watch, listen, take photos, purchase snacks and, above all, toast – and are toasted – with xiao-mi jiu (millet wine).
This fermented millet drink is of low strength (usually around 4 percent to 5 percent alcohol) but may be pepped up with grain alcohol. It is produced by the locals and bears no government-approved label denoting ingredients and strength, so visitors are advised to be cautious. Purchasing a bottle or two is recommended, however, as the hospitable Saisiyat constantly share from their own, and not to return the favor would be seen as rude. Many of the stalls selling the home brew provide free samples, so it is possible to choose a pleasantly fragrant version that is hopefully not too strong.
Foods are sold at the same stalls that surround the dance field, and at impromptu restaurants erected in one or two side alleys. Slate-roasted "boar" – likely just pork but possibly locally reared – and more exotic meats such pigeon or other small birds, plus a range of unusual high-altitude vegetables not found in city markets, attract particular attention. Sampling mountain fare has become popular with Taiwan's largely urban population over the last decade or two.
Indeed, the interest of the majority Han Chinese community in all things Aboriginal has mushroomed since the end of martial law in 1987 ushered in a new era of pluralist culture.
Moreover, when the island moved to a five-day working week in the late 1990s, citizens suddenly had the opportunity on long weekends to explore places and cultures they had hitherto only seen in television documentaries and travel programs.
Perhaps the opening up of the Pasta'ai to non-Saisiyat visitors should be seen in this context. And for those with sufficient time, participation in the event can be combined with walking in the nearby hills, visiting the Buddhist cave temples on neighboring Shitoushan (Lion's Head Mountain), or browsing the historic Hakka community of Beipu.
Staying in a local minsu (homestay) is a good way to learn more about the traditional community and Taiwan's Aboriginal culture. In particular, one can learn about the original anito spirit worship of the Saisiyat people, and how they view these traditions today after conversion, like most of Taiwan's Aborigines, to Christianity by Western missionaries.
Many younger revelers bring tents, however, or simply crash out on spare ground within walking distance of the festival site. This is mainly because the hours of dancing and drinking (alcohol is served by cup and ladle to the performers so they don't even need to break step) have taken their toll. At daylight, those still on their feet may stop dancing and find a place to sleep. But only until night falls again, when the Ta'ai spirits reappear and must, once again, be appeased – with more wine, dance and song.

new verse

2011-01-11T18:09:00.001-08:00

last night i broke open an egg and found a double yolk,
which hasn't happened in a long time (if ever)

broke open the egg and found a poem too:

雙黃房

很晚
很累
但是肚子有點餓
想炒個蛋炒飯
沒有米
但有馬鈴薯
好
炒個蛋炒馬鈴薯
蒸薯
爆香
破蛋
哇妳說
就像我們
雙黃蛋在雙黃房

new (light) verse

2011-01-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

Being marked Mark, I am eponymous,
with Mark Anthony, I'm homonymous,
Marc Chagall and I are paronymous,
with check off, I'm just synonymous.

Unrecorded makes me antonymous,
unremarkable, and hence anonymous,
Yours sincerely, The Shark,
I sign off, pseudonymous.

on all things floral (except perhaps flowers)

2010-12-22T18:32:00.000-08:00

first piece for global times (http://life.globaltimes.cn/art/2010-12/603746_2.html):

A child scans her bracelet in front of a sensor and a "flower" appears. It moves quickly onto a large screen, and is "planted" in a virtual "garden" with hundreds of others. Thus ends her visit to the Pavilion of Dreams, to the most popular exhibit at the Taipei International Flora Expo.

Set to use several million real plants (and countless such virtual ones) over its six-month run, the expo introduces visitors to the science, economics and aesthetics of various things botanical. Jointly sponsored by Taipei City and Taiwan's central government, it uses 91.8 hectares of public facilities - including the Dajia Riverside Park, the Children's Recreation Center, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (the city's top cultural body), the long-disused Zhongshan Soccer Stadium, and historic buildings such as the Lin An-tai Historical Residence.

Expected to draw nearly 8 million people, the expo is the biggest event ever organized by Taiwan, with a population of just 23 million.

Most visitors enter at the western Yuanshan Park, and first pass the Floral Rainbow in the outside grandstand of the transformed soccer stadium. Inside, there would be held a series of six one-month-long competitions between nations, counties and private companies. Across the road in the Fine Arts Park, 22 countries will keep their exhibitions on for the entire six months in the Global Garden Area.

"This is one of my favorite parts of the Expo," the man in charge, General Producer Ting His-yung, told the Global Times. "In a small space I can see the designs of different cultures and understand the different ways in which different people think."

Another favorite exhibit is located on the stairway between the first and second floors in the Pavilion of Future in the expo's third area, the Xinsheng Park. This starts with flora from the shores of the Penghu Islands, and leads visitors through the vegetation common at increasing altitudes, until one reaches Taiwan's highest mountain, Yushan, standing 3952 meters above sea level and sparsely covered with alpine plants.

Ting also spoke of Taiwan's changing climate during the expo's half-year run, when temperatures will rise from -15 C to around 25. Combined with Taiwan's humidity and spring rains, such weather conditions are good for growing a wide variety of plants, he said.

Opportunities to take boats in Taiwan are surprisingly few considering no place is far from the sea. So, the highlight of the Dajia Riverside Park, the expo's fourth and final area, for many visitors is a boat ride along the Keelung River. This - as well as the Monet exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum - is the only attraction not included in the NT$300 ($10) combined ticket to the expo; and, at NT$80-250, it is not cheap. The trick is to chat up others queuing for tickets, since group tickets start at NT$40 per person.

Another idea is to start one's visit here, the most easterly point of the expo, as visitors are fewer and the queues shorter, taking less than the 1-2 hours for getting into some of the more popular pavilions. Shuttle buses run to six points within the expo, while free buses ply the outside gates.

The most important "local knowledge," however, is that the expo operates a reservation-ticket system, by which ordinary ticket holders must re-apply to visit the five most popular attractions. These secondary tickets are limited to a total of about 25,000 per day, meaning that at least half of all visitors will see none of the key pavilions. Early media reports focused on complaints by disgruntled ticket holders who were denied access to various pavilions. Ting dismissed these as a case of his fellow Taiwanese not grasping the workings of a world-class event of this sort.

It is essential, therefore, to read up on the expo and plan one's visit in advance, arrive before the gates open at 9 am, and get in line for the one or two top priority sights.

The five reservation-required pavilions are the Taipei Story House, a mock-Tudor building dating from Taiwan's trade with the West in the late 19th century; the Celebrity's House, dedicated to singer Teresa Teng; the Pavilion of Regimen, with its collection of bonsai; the Expo Theater, which shows a short 3D animated film about human impact on Taiwan's fragile natural environment; and the Pavilion of Dreams, with its display of the latest innovations loosely linked to botanical themes.

The expo has almost 7,000 artistic performances, ranging from community troupes to some of Taiwan's leading international-standard dance and musical ensembles. If seeing one or more of these is on one's list, then finding their times and locations and getting a seat in advance will also be necessary.

Many of the pavilions have been designed using cutting-edge technology in keeping with the expo's commitment to "3G" (green buildings, green transportation and green technology) and "3R" (reduce, recycle and re-use).

The highpoint of this is perhaps the FE EcoARK, appearing at the expo as the Pavilion of Fashion, constructed largely of bamboo and recycled PET bottles, which its creator claims set seven world records, including as the first wide-span exhibition hall with a zero-carbon footprint.

It is the only pavilion that will not remain on site after the expo. The other 13 will all remain - though their future uses are yet undecided - in what Ting refers to as "the expo's legacy for the city of Taipei".

As for the reason for holding the event at all, Ting, an academic with a 25-year passion for expos, said it was designed to showcase four of Taiwan's strengths: "Our technological power, agricultural power - including horticultural - cultural power and environmental protection power."

change in the weather

2010-12-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

When the seasons change, and I put on trousers and jackets I haven't worn since last year...

I keep finding old keys
and out-of-date coins
and banknotes for places I'll again never visit
and train and plane tickets for places I've seen
and write-ups for restaurants I'm sure I've not been to
and tissues for colds I thought I'd caught
and ointments and pills for aches I have suffered
and photos of women I once thought I loved

and unfinished novels I couldn't get into
and unstarted poems I can't understand
and bits of string and rubber bands
and rings for parts of my body once pierced
and scarves and hats for fashions once followed
and badges and buttons for isms once hallowed
and ball after ball of odd-smelling fluff
and oh, how heavy my pockets with all this stuff

new verse

2010-11-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

and here's the second poem this week [first here]

the Muse(s) provided the last line;
the title derives from the passage in the Confucian “Analects”: 三人行必有我師 (“[when] three men are walking, there is sure to be my teacher”);
the optimist/pessimist bit came from a BBC report last week;
and the rest I got from the “heavenly” and “earthly” behaviour of my dog, Hutian/Hudi(胡天/胡地)

[title] When walking with my dogs,
There is always something new to learn:

From Hutian’s naïve gregariousness,
I’ve learnt to meet strangers with an open heart;
from Hudi’s incessant sniffing,
I’ve learnt not to stick my nose into strangers’ groins.

From Hutian’s adventurous spirit,
I’ve gained my own wanderlust;
from Hudi’s defense of the realm,
I’ve learnt that after a while away, it is always good to return home.

From Hutian,
I’ve learnt that every tree can be my toilet;
from Hudi,
I’ve learnt not to roll in other people’s shit,
and NEVER to eat it.

From Hutian the optimist,
I’ve learnt that my lover going out of the door
does not mean she is leaving me for ever;
from Hudi the pessimist,
I’ve learnt that it probably means she is.

From Hutian’s passion for the simple things in life,
I’ve learnt to enjoy driving a car with my head out the window
or running through knee-deep water after a storm;
from Hudi,
I now know I must not lick my balls when I meet a nice girl.

From Hutian,
I’ve learnt never to bite the hand that feeds me;
from Hudi,
I’ve realised there is a little Oedipus in all of us.

From Hutian,
I’ve learnt to be satisfied with what God puts on the table in front of me;
from Hudi,
I’ve learnt THIS IS NOT ENOUGH.

from both Hutian and Hudi,
I’ve learnt that, within our hectic lives,
we should still take time to stop and smell the piss on the flowers.

new verse

2010-10-31T08:02:00.000-07:00

a two-poem week, big news in these parts

[ok, not a big deal for my mate MC (http://www.peimic.com/; read the Thursday postings for his poetry) who manages at least two per day]

here's the first (second started, first finished):
(the second is here)

[title] Twelve seconds from Las Vegas

If I'd shaved off all the hairs from my legs,
or not paused to enjoy the sunrise;
If only I’d swum a little bit faster,
I’d be on my way to Las Vegas.

If I’d taken the spanner out of my bag,
or pumped more air in my tires;
If I’d crouched lower cycling into the wind,
I might be going to Las Vegas.

If I’d eaten just one more energy bar,
or maybe eaten one less;
If I’d tucked in tight behind runner seven twenty one,
I wouldn’t be twelve seconds short of Las Vegas.

fish of the day

2010-10-24T19:26:00.000-07:00

cartoon in the Taipei Times:

new poem

2010-10-14T07:01:00.000-07:00

(from poetry workshop in Didsbury Arts Festival)

Visitors must think you always wore trunks:
Pat's thin, young, athletic husband,
but you didn't of course, just on holiday,
and you weren't athletic and you weren't young
but you were thin,
so when the wasting disease came calling
you had nothing to give but yourself.

Married at 34 and a father at 37, 38 and 40,
you hardly played football with your sons
and never walked the Pennine Way
just swam from rocks once a year
your thin, white limbs dangling from the bright red trunks,
that elicit comments from Pat's fellow residents

She doesn't tell them these were working holidays:
one day of beach for six spent photographing
Northumberland churches
Welsh castles
or Ironbridge's iron bridge
black-and-white slides for your history students
who never saw the trunk-wearing you.

Photo after photo, coast after coast, year after year,
the same red trunks
the same black towel
with red, yellow and blue stripes
getting thinner and thinner
but never replaced.

Women in Taiwan Politics

2010-09-24T01:35:00.006-07:00

sadly, my comment piece commissioned by Taiwan Today was heavily censored by GIO editors to become a fluff piece stating how good things are in taiwan and how well the ruling party is doing:

State of play: Women’s political representation in Taiwan
•Publication Date：09/24/2010
•Source： Taiwan Today
•By Mark Caltonhill

Taiwan’s upcoming year-end three-in-one municipal elections are poised to show the world that when it comes to integrating gender equality with democracy building, the country stands shoulder to shoulder with other progressive nations on this important issue.

With three female candidates having a strong chance of success in the contests, which are set to take place Nov. 27 in Taipei City and four other newly upgraded special municipalities—Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan and Xinbei— now is a good time to examine the political representation of women and, through that, to take a look at Taiwan’s overall democratic health.

Of the candidates, Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu of the Democratic Progressive Party is the most likely to succeed. Chen’s political career goes back to Taiwan’s martial law era and includes a six-year jail stint for participation in the Kaohsiung Incident.

In comparison, Tsai Ing-wen, DPP mayoral candidate for Xinbei City, is a relative newcomer. She only joined the party in 2004, having served in the DPP-led government since 2000 and advising the Kuomintang administration as early as 1993. Nevertheless, in 2008 she was elected as DPP chairperson, the first woman to lead a major political party. Previously, Tsai followed an academic career after studying law.

Former Vice President Annette Lu, Taiwan’s highest-ranking female politician to date, has a background that combines features of those of Chen and Tsai. The daughter of a small businessman, she progressed from an academic and legal background to found Taiwan’s modern feminist movement in the 1970s.

This accomplishment is noteworthy as Lu’s efforts came at a time when women’s organizations were largely a matter of patronage of former first lady Soong May-ling and the KMT. Not surprisingly, this brought her into conflict with the authorities, drew her into opposition politics, and put her in prison alongside Chen.

But of greater relevance to the current overview of Taiwan’s democratic health is that Chen, Tsai and Lu have risen to the top of the political heap, occupying positions of power and influence that are felt in many sections of society. Their achievements are a testament to the strength of Taiwanese culture that tends to acknowledge and reward competency and performance irrespective of gender.

But the success of women in Taiwan’s political circles is not limited to the DPP. Politicians from the KMT such as Christina Y. Liu, who joined the Cabinet in July as head of the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development, and Janice Seh-jen Lai, director-general of the Tourism Brureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, have garnered headlines for all the right reasons while performing their duties both at home and abroad.

Huang Chao-shun, the KMT candidate in Kaohsiung, is said to be another star in the making, and like Liu, has politics in her blood. Huang is the daughter of Huang Tsun-chiu, a former Control Yuan president, while Liu is the daughter of Kuo Wan-jung, Taiwan’s first female minister of finance.

Another female KMT politician making headlines over the past year is Lee Yong-ping, who recently resigned as Taipei City Deputy Mayor. Her background is unusual in having been a member of the DPP, People First Party and KMT.

With a record number of women currently serving in the Cabinet, statistics reveal the ROC ahead of the international curve. Eight women, or 20 percent, currently serve in the Cabinet, and 34 female legislators, or 30 percent, were elected in 2008. This compares with the worldwide average of 16 percent and close to 17 percent and 22 percent for the U.S. Congress and U.K. Parliament, respectively.

This above-average performance is due in part to provision in the ROC Constitution for quotas of female representatives. Following an amendment in 2005, women are guaranteed at least 50 percent of each party’s legislator-at-large positions, of which there are 34 out of a total 113 seats.

Hopefully, as the 2012 legislative and presidential elections draw nearer, the KMT and DPP will broaden their nets to promote more female politicians. This will enrich the electoral process and continue transforming relations between men and women by promoting the equal distribution of power and influence between the sexes.

Finally, with regard to women’s participation, perhaps some initiatives for family-friendly practices in the Legislature—such as sitting during school semesters and office hours—will allow women to have political careers without sacrificing the right to marriage and children. Such a change will undoubtedly be a boon to Taiwan’s overall democratic health.

Mark Caltonhill is a U.K.-based freelance writer. These views are the author’s and not necessarily those of Taiwan Today. Copyright  2010 by Mark Caltonhill

new poem

2010-09-24T01:33:00.001-07:00

非知天命

記得我在十歲的時候:
長得像十歲
行為像十歲
愛玩像十歲
跟人相處也像十歲

從那時候開始我仔細地數:
所以我今年應該算五十

[Chinese is 'original'; but here is an English version

On Being Fifty

I remember being ten
looking ten
acting ten
playing ten
relating to people as a ten year old.

I have carefully counted the years since then
which must make me 50 now.

religion vs wider society

2010-07-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:
(the last with a VftH connection for some time)

This Buddhist tradition does animals more harm than good

Earlier this month, some non-indigenous birds were discovered in Miaoli County and, after successful capture, were transferred to a local zoo. By coincidental timing, also this month, the Executive Yuan released for public discussion the pre-draft version of a proposed law covering the release of animals into Taiwan's aquatic environments.

Although this legislation will cover academic researchers and commercial enterprises, its primary target is without a doubt Buddhist practitioners, some of whom practice the “release of living beings.”

This religious activity started in earlier times as a benevolent deed by which devotees went to local markets, bought wild animals, fish and birds that had been caught and were destined for human consumption, and returned them to their forest, river or lake homes.

This is in line with Buddhists' belief that all animals, from the lowest bug to the smartest mammal, are part of the same cycle of endless life-death-rebirth, and therefore are capable of eventual enlightenment. Saving them from the pot was thus considered an act of compassion to another living creature and so, like vegetarianism, was said to earn its practitioner karmic merit.

Unfortunately, somewhere over the intervening centuries, the reason behind this well-intentioned act has become largely forgotten, and today's “release of life” is at best an ossified part of religious ritual. At worst, it is concerned more with seeking personal merit and enhanced karmic standing than with any benefit to the animals involved.

On the contrary, environmentalists and academics argue that such indiscriminate release is detrimental to animals. Many of the species used in such rituals today are captured for release and not for consumption, or are reared specifically for this purpose. Unavoidably, these processes result in the mistreatment and even the unintentional death of many creatures. Moreover, once for-profit commercial interests are involved, animals' living conditions become even less of a priority.

Most worryingly, species have been too-frequently released into alien or inappropriate environments in which they have little or no chance of survival, and even less chance of meeting their own kind for companionship and reproduction. (It should be noted, however, that there is no indication that the above-mentioned birds came to be in Miaoli as the result of Buddhists' actions.)

Such mistreatment of and disregard for the lives of animals are the inevitable results when religious rituals become divorced from the ideas behind them, or are exaggerated following social and economic changes over the centuries.

The proposed legislation will require all individuals and organizations, whether academic, commercial or religious, to apply for permission before releasing animals into the wild. They must state the species to be released, as well as the location and time.

Of course, progressive Buddhist organizations are among those taking a lead in this regard, and others are quick to respond to social and media criticism. Dharma Drum Mountain, whose late founder Master Sheng Yen put environmental protection at the core of his teachings and practice, initially instructed its followers to be careful only to release animals into their natural environments. More recently DDM further advanced its policy to recommend abandoning the practice of “releasing life” altogether.

Not all Buddhist groups are so forward-looking, however, and some go so far as to misrepresent environmentalists — criticisms including other issues such as pollution from burning incense and joss paper or noise pollution from religious parades and festivals at all hours of the day and night — as attacks on their religious traditions.

But this is to divorce religions from the societies that gave birth to and nurture them. Taiwan's religions thrive because they provide for a variety of social needs. Certainly, some of these are related to their rich traditions and claims to continuous transmission through countless generations of sacred teachings and ancient wisdoms.

But in fact, many so-called traditions are not actually very traditional. There is no mention of this current issue of “release of life” in the teachings and life of the historical Sakyamuni Buddha around 500 B.C., for example. In fact, the practice is an interpretation “in the spirit of the Buddha” which seems to have really taken off only in the Ming dynasty around two millennia later.

Appeals to traditional precedent without any attempt to take on board new knowledge sometimes merely represent a clinging to ignorance and even an attempt to use the name of religion to resist change.

But all Taiwan's main religious organizations have prospered because, in addition to meeting people's needs for tradition and ancient wisdom, they have also developed and adapted as social conditions have changed.

Indeed, like Dharma Drum Mountain, they are often at the forefront of change, and represent the ideal marriage of thousands of years of humankind's learning with the latest discoveries of science and humanitarian philosophy. And when it comes to “release of life,” science and humanitarianism clearly indicate it is now time to act.

does this work

2010-07-26T15:36:00.001-07:00

another chapter heading photo
but is it too close

and a farmer watering her crop in Kinmen's afternoon heat:

jbb progress

2010-07-26T07:25:00.001-07:00

another couple of county-by-county title pages for JBB

one small step forward; food-wise

2010-07-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

ok
well that's a whole week and what did i get?
frankly; not one photo per day for "Jia Ba Bwey"
here's a possible title page photo for Yunlin County

I will finish

2010-07-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

back on bicycle tour ("of the hilly bits")
hoping for some (is one per day too much to ask?) photos for JBB book
(which i WILL finish next year; though i say this every year)
here's the best from today:
rice harvesting in Taoyuan County

fish of the day

2010-07-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

and over at the taipei times:

Fish rallies when the chips are down to grab title

Mardy Fish captured the Hall of Fame Championship on Sunday, rallying for a 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 victory over fourth-seeded Olivier Rochus of Belgium.

Fish overcame his frustration at a close line call at the end of the first set to win his fourth career title. The fifth-seeded American entered the week ranked 79th.

On the final point of the first set, Rochus hit a return to the back corner. Fish appeared ready to play the ball and let it go. The chair umpire said Rochus won the game and set. Fish argued and waved his racket to the chair.

Fish took control in the best game of the match, breaking in the ninth game of the third set to go up 5-4. He squandered three break-points, before closing it out with a forehand cross at the net.

“I wanted to play this match on my terms. I wanted to win it or lose it on my racket,” he said of the key game. “I’ve certainly lost a lot of heartbreak finals. It certainly feels great to win one.”

In the final game, Rochus failed on a pair of break-point chances. On the final point, Rochus lunged on a wide serve, barely getting a backhand over the net, before Fish put an easy forehand cross in to end it.

The 29-year old Rochus entered the week ranked 65th. He hadn’t lost a set this week until the final.

“I can’t say I did play a bad final, didn’t go for it,” Rochus said. “I went for it. The last two games were so close. Mardy was pushing hard at the end.”

read all about it

2010-07-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Enjoy the final soccer game and enjoy reading about it too

When this paper went to print last night, the outcome of the soccer World Cup Final between The Netherlands and Spain in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium was still not known. And given the contrasting styles of the two teams, predicting the result would be courageous for anyone with a brain larger than that of an octopus.

One thing that can be said with a fair measure of confidence, however, is that record numbers of television viewers in both countries — and in many non-partisan nations around the world — will have watched the game. In Taiwan, where the final kicked off at 2:30 a.m., this will have led to some bleary eyes at work this morning, or perhaps even higher-than-average rates of sick leave as soccer fans nurse their hangovers.

Holland's semifinal game against Uruguay already set television history in the low-lying country best known in Taiwan for its clogs, windmills, tulips and Heineken Beer. Around 12.3 million viewers, slightly more than three-quarters of the total Dutch population of 16.8 million people, are said to have tuned in. Indeed, the all-time 10 most viewed television programs in Holland all featured the national soccer team, so it is safe to say last night's game will have set yet another record.

While this is understandable, it is also slightly sad. Television is a great invention that, at least until emergence of the Internet, provided a unique blend of information, education, entertainment and leisure content.

Over the last decade, a wide range of news and current affairs could have stimulated mass interest from Dutch television viewers. These might have included social issues such as the 2001 world's first same-sex marriage, glamour-by-proxy issues such as the 2002 marriage of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander to Argentine Maxima Zorreguieta, international issues such as the 2003 establishment of the International Criminal Court in the Dutch capital of The Hague, domestic political issues such as the 2004 killing of director Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street after his making of a film critical of Muslims, or even odd items such as the televised 2005 world record of a 4,002,146-domino chain, though this event was upstaged by a sparrow which entered the studio and knocked down 23,000 dominos before being shot.

Probably Holland's biggest contribution to television history, however, was creation of the Big Brother reality TV show. This went on to be a big hit in more than 70 countries worldwide and made its original producer, John de Mol, into one of the 500 richest people in the world.

Taiwanese television watchers are among a minority that resisted the Big Brother bug. Indeed, the whole genre of reality TV, which is rapidly dumbing down programming in many Western nations, is largely eschewed here.

We should not be too complacent, however, for Taiwan's scheduling is mainly filled with its own many genres of lowest-common-denominator shows, and informational and educational content is becoming increasingly lowbrow.

This evidently gives people what they want, however, as audience figures are rising, as is the proportion of leisure time spent watching television. One recent survey found that Taiwanese watch an average of 17 hours of television each week. In addition they surf the Internet for another 7 hours 30 minutes, and spend just 2 hours 40 minutes per week reading.

The figures for young people were even more marked, with those aged between 18 and 24 spending around 19 hours 30 minutes watching television, 17 hours surfing, and 3 hours 30 minutes reading. That is more than 5 hours per day looking at a screen compared to about 30 minutes looking at printed words.

Perhaps this is not a cause for concern and merely evidences a historical shift in the sources from which people obtain their information and enjoy their leisure time. But perhaps we should be concerned. Research indicates that watching television tends to be a passive activity, while reading is more active. The latter thus stimulates imagination rather than providing visual gratification, and enables the readers to maintain, rather than surrender, their objectivity and critical judgment (hence advertisers' preference for TV slots). Reading requires more focus, but rewards by paying greater attention to detail and enriching readers' vocabularies.

Nevertheless, there is one area in which reading will never compete with television, and that is in the coverage of live sporting events. However good The China Post's coverage of the Holland-Spain game is, reading it on Tuesday morning will pale hugely compared to cheering one side or the other in a local bar or in one's living room in the small hours of last night.

So if you watched, we hope you enjoyed the final match, will enjoy reading our analysis of the game tomorrow, and will think about picking up a novel or other book for more than 3 hours 30 minutes over the coming week.

fish of the day

2010-07-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

Want Daily's front cover:

not my blog

2010-07-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

unlike those of most Mondays over the last year, today's China Post editorial: "The ECFA makes rapprochement irreversible" is not connected to this blog

(as might be clear from its content; or indeed verb use)-->

Cross-strait relations entered a new era last week with the signing of an economic cooperation pact that would liberalize trade and investment between the two erstwhile adversaries and would make the ongoing cross-strait rapprochement an irreversible process...

... Though controversial, the agreement is seen by many pundits at home and abroad as a plus for Taiwan, given the island's urgent need to break its economic isolation that has made it a regional pariah, like North Korea, which has been excluded from any free trade arrangements in the region...

... As if by a quirk of history, the signing of the historic document took place in Chongqing, ... the place where Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chairman Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held a historic meeting right after the war ended in 1945...

... The agreement was one of President Ma Ying-jeou's biggest achievements since he assumed office two years ago...

(and so forth)

i don't eat chicken, but if i did, it wouldn't be this chicken

2010-06-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Fast-food firms need to be pushed to help consumers

As of July 5, fast-food outlet KFC will no longer be giving away toys with children's meals, the corporation announced last week. This is to be commended, because parents, lawmakers, government agencies and NGOs have long been concerned about the way in which KFC, as well as its various competitors, intensively target children in the promotion of their products.

In addition to the small plastic toys typically included in the decorated, boxed meals, KFC, McDonald's and others spend around 50 percent of their advertising budgets targeting children, as well as placing their products in Hollywood films and cartoons made for young viewers.

In the United States, where NGOs and legislators are also locking horns with the big fast-food providers on a number of issues, the targeting of children through free toys has been described as undercutting parental authority and exploiting children's developmental immaturity to induce them to prefer foods that damage their health. One U.S. mother wrote to McDonald's CEO that his company's marketing had the effect of conscripting children into an “unpaid drone army of word-of-mouth marketers,” causing them to pester their parents to take them to its outlets. “I try my best to educate my kids about healthy eating,” she wrote, “but they always want to go to McDonald's because of the toys.”

This is something every parent in Taiwan can relate to. At the end of a hard day's work, or when tired after taking the kids out to the park, museum or shopping, the last thing anyone wants is a battle over steamed fish and green vegetables as opposed to a burger, fries and a carbonated, sugar-laden drink. The latter packs anything from one-third to more than one-half of a child's recommended daily caloric intake, and can easily contain more than half a day's salt allowance and more than a whole day's sugar allowance. Getting children habituated to eating such food is correlated to increased risks of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other disorders later in life, campaigners argue.

The good news, however, is that these companies are not impervious to public opinion. Trans fats, which are widely used because they are cheap and convenient but which are now known to increase the risk of heart disease, have largely been phased out of use in the fast-food industry due to pressure from NGOs and legislators in the United States, the home country of many of the fast-food corporations operating in Taiwan.

this photo is a travesty of the truth

2010-06-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

the joke of this photo is that the run section of today's race in Taoyuan let me down
or i should say i let myself down
"run"? i mean "walk"
must do better

(results here)

oh, sunny days

2010-06-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

it seems to have rained for the last three months
so i have hardly a photo for the guidebook i have been commissioned to contribute to
so i have to dig back in my own files
<--such as this sunny-day shot of Taipei (Dadaocheng) from Taipei County (Sanchong)

and here is the view back the other way -->

high-rent neighbourhood

2010-06-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

people living in taipei city often say "you can see Taipei 101 from my house"
well, this was the view from my rooftop garden at dawn recently

new verse

2010-06-23T17:42:00.001-07:00

Wasting Time

Yesterday was Tuesday
last week 1975
I seem to remember someone warning
that time would fly by
I want to warn someone too
but no one’s listening
I’m just wasting my time.

cycling for photos

2010-06-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Michelin needed some cycle photos AND Wulai photos,
so i needed no further excuse:

after a puncture-repair stop-->

<-- and another one for ices

then into the hills proper

(I rode my KHS fold-up today as the weather forecast was for afternoon showers and i wanted to be ready to jump on the bus/underground) (photo by Tonyshy)

past some Aboriginal art -->we finally made it up to Tonghou (桶后) for swim and watermelon (photo by 阿廣伯)-->

but still got caught in the rain coming down (photo by 蘇淇)

photo of the day

2010-06-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

snake on a rock where i swam in river up from Wulai

fish of the day

2010-06-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

fried shrimp and fish in Wulai (烏來), Taipei County

sport for all (III)

2010-06-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Taiwan's World Cup fans unfazed by lack of representation

The 2010 FIFA World Cup of soccer kicked off in South Africa just over a week ago, and by Saturday, roughly half of the first-round group-phase matches had been played. Although Taiwan's “Chinese Taipei” team has never qualified for the quadrennial competition, and although most people do not know whether the sweeper is a player or someone who cleans up after the match, nor that the off-side rule even exists never mind being able to define it, soccer is suddenly the hottest topic around the office hot water machine and evening meal table..

With games scheduled for 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., sports bars around the island are filled to overflowing and extra staff members are needed to keep fans supplied with food and drink. Punters debate the merits of the 4-3-3 formation as opposed to the 3-5-2 line up, or the attraction of South American individualism rather than Central European team ethic, while South Africa, the first country in the continent to host the event, is compared to Germany, which hosted in 2006, and Japan and South Korea, the joint-hosts of the 2002 event. Perhaps because it was held in East Asia, that year's cup also sparked especial interest in soccer in Taiwan.

Taiwanese fans are not handicapped by their lack of national representation, but in a strange form of nationalism-by-proxy, they enthusiastically dedicate themselves to supporting other countries' teams. In keeping with their “Chicago Bulls phenomenon” (which subsequently became the “L.A. Lakers phenomenon”), this support tends to focus on teams with a good chance of winning. Thus support for pre-tournament favorite Spain quickly waned following its 0-1 loss to Switzerland, then Germany's 4-0 win over Australia helped cement it as a good return on emotional investment, but this quickly fizzled after its 0-1 defeat by Serbia on Friday. Current favorites, at least among Taiwan's soccer-crazies, are Argentina, following its two wins out of two games played, and perennial-favorite Brazil.

Bars and other public venues remain the top choices to watch games in a sociable atmosphere. Moreover, since the 26 games to date have produced just 49 goals (in other words, one moment of sporting success every 48 minutes of viewing time), it is good to have friends around to stimulate other lines of conversation.

But the World Cup games are also being broadcast live on cable television. This means that the “beautiful game,” as soccer is affectionately known, is also gaining increased attention from Taiwan's youngsters.

Perhaps the only slight cause for concern is the types of products that advertise themselves in conjunction with such sporting events. Given that various Taiwanese doctors and health officials voiced concern over the consumption of high-calorie zongzi during last week's Duanwu Festival and the associated dragon boat races, they might want to make similar warnings in relation to Coca Cola's sugared and caffeinated drinks, McDonald's burgers and Budweiser's beer (which are all major sponsors of the FIFA world cup), not to mention all the alcoholic drinks and various fried foods typically provided at sports bars.

In fact, passion for soccer among Taiwan's youth will only be beneficial if it leads to increased sporting participation rather than sporting observation. In this respect, soccer can make a great contribution in building confidence and teaching leadership and team-membership skills in addition to the health benefits of improving bone and muscle development, decreasing weight-associated and cardiovascular illnesses, and encouraging better sleep patterns. Soccer offers a more strenuous physical workout than either basketball or baseball (two of Taiwan's more popular sports), and builds better team spirit and better teaches the concept of fair play than do individual sports such as running and swimming.

Nevertheless, given that Taiwan currently languishes at 167th out of 207 teams on the FIFA/Coca Cola world rankings, even with massively increased organization of soccer events, it might be sometime before the country makes it to the top flight of this sport.

At least in a competitive sense, that is. In commercial, environmental and innovative-technological senses, Taiwan is already represented in South Africa. Nine of the 32 national teams participating are kitted out in “100-percent made-in-Taiwan” uniforms. This might be contribution enough, but better still, the outfits have been made using state-of-the-art recycling technology. A total of 13 million polyethylene terphthalate (PET) bottles were collected and melted down, the polyester fibers were woven into fabric, dyed and constructed into the national uniforms for use by the teams. About another 1.5 million outfits were manufactured for sale to supporters around the world.

So maybe Taiwanese soccer fans have an extra reason to cheer the Brazilian national team. Or Germany-defeating Serbia. Or the United States, the Netherlands, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Portugal or Slovenia, all of which play in M-I-T shirts.

Now if only consumers can be weaned off their bottled-drink habit, Taiwan can go even further in its contribution to improving the environment. That's something everyone can cheer on.

photo of last month

2010-06-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

after lunch read at a Hakka restaurant in Sanyi (三義), Miaoli Co.

soon back on my own book

2010-06-19T03:03:00.000-07:00

"pounding tea" in Hakka restaurant, Shengxing (勝興) in Miaoli County

fish of the day

2010-06-18T08:31:00.001-07:00

unloading jianyu (鰹魚) at Nanfang-ao (南方澳), Yilan Co.

fish of the day

2010-06-17T01:30:00.000-07:00

article in China Post:

Temple operator chooses industry over 'Matsu's fish'

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Despite calls to save Chinese white dolphins living in the water off Taiwan's west coast, several lawmakers from the region asked environmental protection activists yesterday not to interfere with economic development.

“Although environmental protection is crucial, it is more important to carry out a policy that helps local development,” Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator Yen Ching-piao said.

Yen — who doubles as president of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple in Taichung County, one of the most important Matsu temples in Taiwan — voiced support for the construction of the Kuo Kuang Petrochemical Park on the mouth of the Jhuoshuei River in Changhua County, central Taiwan. Ignoring activists who say the over NT$400-billion (US$12.4-billion) project will destroy the habitat of the white dolphins — locally called “Matsu's fish,” Yen criticized an Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) plan to build a marine “ecological corridor” for the endangered species.

Rather than spending NT$20 billion to NT$30 billion on the corridor, Yen said the money should be used to help underprivileged people, he said.

The dolphins, also known as Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, were listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as “critically endangered” in 2008 after their number was estimated to have fallen below 100 off Taiwan's western coast. Local fishermen call them “Matsu's fish” because they are seen most frequently between March and April, when the birthday of Matsu — the widely worshipped goddess of the sea — is celebrated.

In addition to Yen, legislators from Changhua County, including Cheng Ru-fen, Hsiao Ching-tien and Lin Tsang min, have also said that local economic development should be the priority.

Knowing the project could create 20,000 to 30,000 jobs, 98 percent of residents in coastal Dacheng Township support the construction of the industrial park, Cheng said.

read the book first, Malarkey

2010-06-15T02:59:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Warnings of war diminished but still relevant 3 years on

Former American Institute in Taiwan chairman Richard Bush arrived in Taipei last week with fellow author and Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlan to promote the Chinese-language version of their 2007 book “A War Like No Other — The Truth About China's Challenge to America.”

That they received relatively little coverage by local media was perhaps not due to a perception that their findings are no longer pertinent since cross-Strait relations thawed significantly since Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008. More likely it was because their key conclusion — that war in the Taiwan Strait, although unlikely, would be so costly to all concerned that specific precautions needed to be taken — was so serious, that every politician, academic, pundit and concerned citizen, whether in Taipei, Beijing, Washington or elsewhere around the world, would have long ago read the English original or had it translated for their personal use.

When introducing the book, Bush had said they reached an “optimistic conclusion with a pessimistic sub-conclusion.” In most areas, he said, the relationship between the United States and China — which the book characterized as “close cooperation and friendly rivalry”— was pretty good. The one place where the U.S. and China might come into conflict, they had predicted, was over the issue of Taiwan.

If war did erupt across the Taiwan Strait, Bush and O'Hanlan thought armed invasion of Taiwan would be too costly in terms of losses to the People's Liberation Army. Rather, they envisaged a military-backed blockade coupled with missile and cyber attacks. These, they said, would be far harder for Taipei and Washington to deal with than a conventional attack. Moreover, Taiwan's increased economic dependence on China would make a blockade that much easier to enforce.

Whether the United States came to Taiwan's aid would depend on various factors, they said, but hinged on interpretation of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, and which side was deemed to have provoked the conflict. In their absolute worst-of-the-worst scenario, the authors imagined China might attack U.S. Navy ships to inflict a few thousand casualties in the hope of deterring further U.S. participation. Bush and O'Hanlan imagined this having a contrary effect, however, with Washington launching military strikes against Chinese territories, including pre-emptive attacks on nuclear installations. This might then be followed by Beijing using its nuclear weapons before they were wiped out.

Fortunately this “unlikely but extremely costly” war has not erupted. Indeed, three years on, and China's patient cold-shouldering of Chen Shui-bian through the two terms of his Democratic Progressive Party administration has finally paid off. Even before Ma's election, the Chinese Communist Party was entertaining members of his Kuomintang, its erstwhile enemy, at functions in China in preparation for regime change in Taiwan.

In fact, it is U.S.-Chinese relations which have deteriorated during this period. Rather than “close cooperation,” they are now more frequently characterized by rivalry, and rivalry of a decreasingly “friendly” nature.

This is hardly unexpected, of course, and the Brookings authors' were long ago criticized by some as being too optimistic, if not naive, in imagining that relations between China, as it metamorphoses into a major power on the world stage, and the United States, as it struggles to maintain its position as the only remaining superpower, could ever be anything other than fractious.

China's scramble for resources to feed the appetite of its developing manufacturing sector (and its concomitant neo-colonial economic and diplomatic endeavors) set it on collision course with similar needs in the already developed nations. Though these conflicts have been temporarily eased due to the global economic downturn, the downturn has also brought into focus other areas of contention, such as the sizable amount of U.S. national debt held by China and China's intransigence with regard to revaluing the yuan.

In former times, such a cooling in U.S.-China relations would have been to Taiwan's advantage. Perhaps due to President Ma's cross-Strait initiatives, however, or perhaps because Washington needs Beijing's help in dealing with North Korea, or perhaps in line with previous Democrat pro-China policies during Bill Clinton's administration, U.S. President Obama is choosing to play a waiting game with China.

So publication of a Chinese-language edition of Bush and O'Hanlan's book is timely and relevant after all. Certainly, their key concern — the improved management of interactions between the U.S. and China during the latter's rise on the world stage — is as pertinent as ever.

Similarly, their key observations about Taiwan's role in that broader scenario — that the PRC's lack of substantial experience of democracy could easily lead it to misinterpret political developments in Taiwan, in particular its leaders' inability to distinguish actions and words that Taiwan's politicians make for political gain rather than those that truly reflect policy intentions — are things that politicians on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should constantly bear in mind.

if we can ...

2010-06-10T19:40:00.001-07:00

WEDNESDAY 09 June 2010Went cycling in Yilan County with the Yu-feng cycling group

Michael worked on his gears in Sanxing (三星) -->

<-- met up with more members in Tuchang (土場)

and finally made it up to Taipingshan (太平山) at around 2000m elevation in mid-afternoon

what can we learn from anybody?

2010-06-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:
What can Taiwan learn from the Inuit?

Taiwan's 40 death row inmates will not be executed simultaneously in a mass display of public wrath and vengeance, Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu said on Friday, in response to just such a request by some victims' families at a meeting in his office. Nevertheless, he reiterated that even though his ministry had the eventual goal of abolishing the death penalty, those who had already been sentenced to death would be executed as required by the law.

The question of abolition has caused heated debate nationwide following the ending by President Ma Ying-jeou's administration of a five year moratorium on executions earlier this year. Unlike Taiwan's number-one divisive issue — the question of unification with or independence from China — this topic cuts across party lines, and has already taken its first political scalp, that of Tseng's predecessor, Wang Ching-feng.

And it is a subject that will resurface again and again over coming months, as either alone or in small groups, the remaining 40 criminals meet their fates. Those demanding an end to what they see as barbaric vengeance will claim the moral high ground and mount increasingly vitriolic attacks on their ideological opponents and the state officials charged with carrying out these unpalatable acts. Meanwhile, those supporting the death penalty will continue to claim a popular mandate, and argue for implementation of tough laws in the face of liberal ideology and soul-searching. There is even talk of holding a national referendum to decide the issue, if not once and for all then at least for the foreseeable future.

But the issue is immensely complex and should not be decided by emotions or political considerations. It hinges on the fundamental relationship between a society and the laws it draws up to promote its good functioning.

Underlining his resolve to carry out the death penalties, Tseng also said Friday that “Law is meant to bring justice to the world.” But law and laws are designed to do much more than that. They are promulgated to persuade wrongdoers to mend their ways, to persuade would-be wrongdoers not to go down that path, to remove offenders from society and thus prevent them causing any more trouble (either temporarily or permanently), to provide victims or their families with a feeling of retribution, to provide society with a feeling of retribution, to protect people's basic rights but prevent them from infringing on other's rights and interests, to codify social and religious taboos, but above all, they are designed to continue the smooth running of society.

And different societies at different times need different sets of laws. Just about as far removed as possible from Taiwan's subtropical and largely urban and industrial environment is the arctic, nomadic, fishing and hunting culture of the Inuit. It is hard to imagine a more hostile environment for human beings to eke out an existence, and the Inuit traditionally formed communities that were strongly interdependent.

This reliance on each other was represented in their legal customs, which prioritized peace and social order, and made sure that responses to an offence would not cause further problems for the community. First violations or minor infractions were often seen as society's failure to take care of the offender, either materially or socially, and so went unpunished. Transgressors' behavior was simply ignored, in the hope that it would stop.

Repeat offenders or those committing more serious crimes became the subject of gossip, public ridicule and social criticism intended to curb greedy, selfish or unconstructive habits. Beyond this, disputes could be settled by song duels (which sound like an ancient form of rapping, with antagonists singing about each other's faults), fist fights and wrestling matches.

If these less subtle pressures were ineffective, social ostracism was used and, in extreme cases, physical ostracism from the community. In such a harsh environment where mutual aid was imperative, this latter punishment was equivalent to a death sentence. If all else failed, Inuit communities might occasionally resort to killing a repeat murderer or similar offender in order to ensure the survival of the group.

In all these measures, the needs of the community were paramount, and punishments were designed to impact material and social well-being as little as possible. Moreover, in a culture that traditionally had little excess wealth to spend individually on fines or collectively on imprisonment, social pressures and ostracism were cheap as well as effective.

Quite clearly, traditional Inuit legal practices are not suited to Taiwan in the 21st century (indeed, as the Inuit have moved from nomadic lifestyle to semi-permanent settlements, they are no longer entirely suited to contemporary Inuit communities). Their emphasis on maintaining peace, order and social harmony are worth bearing in mind, however, as Taiwan struggles to balance its conscience and utilitarian needs and re-assess its criminal code over the coming months and years.

new vese

2010-06-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Wine is Red
(or Love’s Four Seasons)

The wine was red
in the glass you gave me
beneath the Chinese lantern
that leap spring
lips
curtains
carpet
fish on Japanese breast in candle-flicker
as steak’s open wound silently bled.

The summer sunset’s red
hung eternally
over Mrs. Williams’ strawberries
kept alive by your single-handed green-fingering
roses
peonies
the bike I bought you propped against the shed.

The wall is red
where Ms. Mosquito, having pricked me, paused
too long
within my vengeful palm-reach
book
clock
peony-patterned bed

The snow-covered earth is red
colour draining from your face
dripping from five iron
my hands
my shoes
across my wintry lips a smile slowly spreads.

[apologies to Astrid Tollefsen whose poem "Toulouse Lautrec" (in translation) set this in motion]

hard cheese (the Taoyuan way)

2010-06-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

Visit to a hard ("dried"?) beancurd (豆干) factory in Daxi (大溪), Taoyuan County,
where they hand make "soft" hard beancurd,
<--wrapping it in cheese cloth

then later marinating it

-->

sport for all (II)

2010-06-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

"My First Triathlon"

(article in June's Amcham magazine: Taiwan Business Topics)

Two years ago I weighed 106 kilograms (about 233 pounds). The nearest I came to any sporting activity was when one friend cruelly asked if I had a basketball hidden under my shirt. Though I was athletic in my youth, over the years I’d spent too much time behind a desk, and consumed too many bottles of beer and bags of chips.

Still, high on my “bucket list” (things I want to do before kicking the bucket) was to compete in a triathlon – 1.5 kilometers of swimming and 40km of cycling, followed by 10km of running. Now I can check off that item, and while I haven’t won a race, I’ve lost weight, improved my fitness, and met a lot of friendly triathletes, many of them AmCham members.

Getting started was the biggest challenge, since for the life of me I couldn’t find where to sign up for a triathlon. Finally I found the Taiwan Racing website (www.taiwanracing.com ), subtitled “Follow Craig Johns & friends as they compete in triathlon, cycle and multisport events in Taiwan and around the world” and showing a picture of a blond curly-haired man standing beside a bike.

I fired off an email asking if Taiwan had any triathlons, and if so, were there any suitable for fatties like myself, and did he know of any ex-fatties with whom I could train. Johns replied that I would be welcome at any of the events listed at www.taipeimarathon.org.tw/contest.aspx (Chinese only). He said that some Taiwanese athletes participated, even though they couldn’t even swim, paddling around using a flotation device. He also recommended contacting a chap named Bill Bryson who helps organize regular training runs leaving the Taipei American School (TAS) campus at around 5 a.m. three times a week.

The next triathlon was in Kaohsiung in December, but I was too late to sign up. There was nothing then until April. Disappointed but excited, I signed up for two smaller events: Miaoli on April 11 and Hualien on May 29. I also signed up for a half-marathon in March, and then, since I’d already run that distance in training, changed my mind: “Heck, I might be ready for the full 42 kilometers,” I thought.

I emailed Bryson. He was very friendly, and invited me to any of the 30-kilometer Tuesday, 60-km Thursday, or 100-km Saturday runs.

“Just how fast do you go?” I inquired.

“22-23kph for the hills, 28-29kph for the others – sometimes a little over 30kph.”

Gee, I thought, that’s fast. Just how ex-fat was he? Bryson, a lawyer with Jones Day, said that having lost about 45 kilograms, he weighed in around 100. He quickly added that he was now a top-5 triathlete in his age-group in Taiwan, and had qualified for the world half-Ironman championship (1.9-km swimming, 90-km cycling, 21-km running) held in Clearwater, Florida last year. Unfortunately he’d injured himself while training and missed the event. As compensation, he’d crossed a different item of his bucket list by entering and finishing the Taipei marathon in December last year.

I decided to put in a month or two of hard cycling, then see about joining Bryson’s group.

Leading expats

Johns, it turned out, wasn’t just a guy with a blog. Not only is he the top triathlete in Taiwan, but he’s also a coach of the Kaohsiung-based national triathlon team. Previously he had been aquatics director at TAS, and before that a member of the New Zealand national triathlon squad.

Bryson met Johns at TAS about six years ago while getting back to swimming after a long lay-off. He had done a few triathlons in the United States after graduating law school in 1984, as well as the 28-km round-Manhattan swim. But since arriving in Taiwan in 1988, his weight had steadily increased. “Taiwan’s work ethic didn’t help, nor the country’s good food,” he says. Then two of his friends – both younger than him – had heart attacks, and Bryson knew it was time to get back in shape. Swimming and a Nordic trainer were the first steps, then cycling and eventually running. With Johns’ encouragement, he signed up for his first triathlon, Hualien in 2005, in which he came in around 16th in his age group, having taken more than an hour for the run.

Now in the 50-55 age bracket, Bryson has his own twist on the Taiwan work ethic, getting up at 4 a.m. for three sessions each week of cycling, three of swimming, and a number of runs. His bucket list now includes again qualifying for but this time making it to Clearwater, and doing a full Ironman. “Only one,” he stresses, “unless I qualify for Kona [the Hawaii site of the Ironman world championship]. In that case I’ll do two.”

Meanwhile, I pressed on with my preparations: 2,000 kilometers of cycling in January and another 1,250 in February, by which time I was down to a tidy 78.5 kilograms. But it didn’t last, as I spent the next three weeks bouncing between illnesses, only managing 196 kilometers for the whole of March. On March 21, I could complete only the first 21-km lap of the freeway marathon. I didn’t get an official time or even a souvenir towel; what I did get was sore and bleeding nipples for the next few days.

With a week to go before the Miaoli event, I called a few of Taiwan’s expatriate triathletes for some advice. Revital Golan, managing director of consulting firm Anemone Ventures, has herself only recently started to compete in cycle events and triathlons. “Don’t worry about your physical ability, just believe you can do it,” she told me. “It’s about your mental strength and will.”

Nor should I worry about the gear, she said. “All you really need is a reasonable bike, running shoes, and a swim suit and goggles. After your first race, you'll probably want to upgrade your bike and buy a tri-suit.” Also, although it was too late for this event, she recommended finding a training partner of similar ability or stronger, to encourage me to push harder.

“You won’t be first and you won’t be last, I can guarantee that,” said Simon Moore, a business manager with Air Products who has competed in triathlons throughout his six years in Taiwan and in the United States before that. “And hey, since it’s your first event, you’re guaranteed a personal best time.” He forgot to add: “If you finish.”

Acknowledging his growing passion for the sport, Moore finally bought a specialist time-trial bike last year after almost 20 seasons of competing on a regular road bike with clip-on TT bars. He took that to Hainan Island for the China half-Ironman, where he qualified for this year’s Clearwater event. But he emphasizes that the sport is about participating, not winning.

I called Bryson, apologized for not having made it to his pre-dawn rides despite his warm invitation, and asked for some last-minute advice. It was too late for any physical improvement, he said, but there was lots I could do in terms of nutritional preparation and race-day tactics.

Although for a “short” event like Miaoli, I wouldn’t be “hitting the wall” (marathon runners’ term for when the body runs out of available sugars after about 30 kilometers), he nevertheless recommended “carbo-loading” – that is, eating plenty of carbohydrates in the several days before a race. He also tries to avoid fresh fruit and vegetables over the last three days, since “you don’t want to be carrying all that roughage and be looking for a toilet as soon as you get going.”

“A couple of days before the race, check all your equipment, and go through your T1 and T2 procedures,” Bryson suggested, referring to the two transitions – from swim to cycle, and cycle to run.

“On the morning, three hours before the race, I drink some water and eat some salted rice crackers to replace calories lost during the night,” he continued. “One to two hours before the race is the ‘black-out period’ when you shouldn’t take any sugars. Your blood-sugar level rises, so your body produces insulin, which actually leads to a lower blood-sugar level and a feeling of drowsiness. In the last hour, I drink some more and take an FRS [free radical scrounger] gel. Before the race, I put on Body Glide.”

“Body Glide?”

“To stop chaffing, especially in the groin and nipples. You’ve heard of runner’s nipple?”

Unfortunately, I had not only heard of it, I’d experienced it. “I wish I’d called you a month ago,” I said.

“I put my towel on the ground to stand on, and put my helmet on the handlebars, and my sunglasses and race belt in the helmet. My spare tube, patch kit, and CO2 capsule are on the bike. I clip the bike shoes to the pedals. I have bike shoes that don’t need socks; getting socks over wet feet takes a lot of time. My running shoes don’t need socks either. For T2 I also have a water-bottle belt in which I put two bottles of water and two of sport drink, and it has a pocket for salt capsules and gels.”

“Gels?”

“Energy gels. But you need to train with them beforehand to get used to them. And drink water before and after you swallow them. Drink lots of water anyway. You have to stay ahead of dehydration. Drink small amounts, but don’t wait till you’re thirsty.”

“T2 is the toughest part of the triathlon. For 90 minutes during the swim and bike, your legs have been doing no weight bearing. Now you suddenly expect your legs to carry you. Not surprisingly, they object. The first kilometer of the run always sucks. One trick is to match your cycling cadence with your running cadence just before transition. And never stop for cramps.”

“Sockless shoes, race belt, drinks belt, gels, body glide, FRS…it sounds like a lot of equipment,” I said.

“Go see Howard,” Bryson answered.

Howard, I learned, is Howard Chen, a leading triathlete and cyclist, and owner of Howard’s Bike Co. (No. 27, Lane 22, Guangfu S. Rd.). I headed over to the store, and Howard turned up in person about 20 minutes after his assistant called to tell him there was an English-speaking person in the shop. I asked him what I needed to get started.

Entry-level aluminum time-trial bikes start at around NT$50,000, he said, and go as high as you want. NT$150,000-$200,000 would get me something nice – lightweight and aerodynamically fast, and equipped with carbon-fiber frame, forks, and wheels. Eighty percent of triathletes in Taiwan use road bikes, however, and entry level for one of those could be as low as NT$30,000.

What else would I need? Howard went through the list: helmet NT$1,500-$7,000; one-piece tri-suit NT$4,000 and up; shoes NT$2,500 and up; race belt NT$350; water/supply belt NT$1,500; and those mysterious gels at NT$60-$80. “Take one ten minutes before the swim, one before the bike, and then a couple more during the run,” he advised.

Howard also organizes Saturday morning training sessions leaving his shop around 7 a.m., permitting considerably more sleep than “work-ethic” Bryson up in Tianmu.

Also worth checking out is iRun (31 Minchuan W. Rd., Sec 3), run by Bruce Lee. He stocks a few bikes, but is better for clothing, shoes, accessories, and good honest advice. Off-the-shelf or customized TT and road bikes are available in all price brackets from many local stores such as Giant, Merida, Fuji, Kuota, and Louis Garneau.

Race day

I don’t know if it helped my energy level during the race, but my attempt at carbo-loading put on a kilogram or two and I weighed a pudgy 83kg on race morning. Similarly my attempt to avoid Bryson’s “black-out period” went awry when our 50-55 age group set off 38 minutes after the official start time. The delay was partly to allow the elite athletes to complete the first lap of the lake without any slow-moving obstructions. Another part, we were told, was because someone in the 45-50 group had caught his leg in the steps to the water and almost drowned.

“I didn’t ‘almost drown,’” Lee Wood insisted later, since he was the person involved. “But it was pretty nasty, with everyone clambering over me. I had to wait till they’d all gone, then pull myself out.” Wood, who heads HSBC Life Insurance, has been doing triathlons since the 1980s, and was in Miaoli because his 14-year-old daughter had signed up for her first competition, the half-distance event the day before.

Finally, after months of preparation, I was set to go. Seventy swimmers all leapt for the same four square meters of water, and the result was “people soup.” For the next 30 minutes I was hit, kicked, and mauled around the pond. Who in his right mind would ever do this twice, I thought. Some cheeky fellow decided to “draft” me [referring to a situation where one competitor benefits by being shielded by another from the wind or water] and save his energy for the bike, and for 10 minutes he hit my feet with every stroke.

“Drafting is illegal on bikes, though it is rarely enforced in Taiwan,” Bryson told me later, “but quite legal in the water. He shouldn’t have been touching you, though. Give him a good up-kick next time, and he’ll back off.”

T1 was okay, though I was disappointed to see so few bikes remaining after what I though was a reasonable swim. Also I couldn’t find my Vaseline, which I’d left in my bag.

The cycle section wove through a village and then onto the highway, half of which was closed to cars. We hurtled downhill, with even my 20-inch wheeler exceeding 50kph. After a 180-degree turn at the bottom, we climbed back the way we came. Another down, another climb, and it was suddenly time for T2. My odometer showed just 28.5 kilometers.

Bill’s comment that the first kilometer of the run is particularly difficult was probably the most helpful advice I received. Without that knowledge, I might well have given up right then. That the run did get worse was due only to the course design: after about two kilometers the path turned sharply uphill as we passed among rows of tea bushes where tea-leaf pickers were busy at work. One part of my mind (the part not dealing with the various pains and stresses my body was suffering, resisting the urge to stop and lie down) observed that this was quite picturesque.

I ran the first third of the hill, then walked – as fast as I could. The hill was so steep that everyone around me was walking as well. I resumed running after the sponge/drink tables at the top of the hill. Then, after four more hills and four more walks, the race was abruptly over.

I felt more anticlimax than sense of achievement. After all those early mornings and long days of training, it had been too easy. All my life waiting to tick this off my bucket list and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d feared.

Packing my things and heading away from the course, I caught sight of a big head of curly hair. It was Johns. I asked him later whether he had been in the race.

“No, I retired in February. I have severe osteoarthritis and bone-on-bone phenomenon in my right hip. I’ve been in pain on every run and cycle for the past two years. It was at a point where I couldn't sleep or walk properly, and the doctors finally said we have to do surgery now.

“I wish I had been racing – that’s probably the toughest run course I’ve ever seen,” he added, which made me feel a bit prouder of my achievement. I asked how the triathlon scene in Taiwan compares to overseas.

“Triathlon in Taiwan is evolving at a very quick rate. The number of events has doubled to 10 in 2009, though this is well behind countries such as New Zealand and the U.S. The number of competitors is growing at a faster rate than most sports in Taiwan, the quality of events is improving, and the level of the top competitors is getting a lot faster, but there’s still a gap to world-class level. There aren't enough females, events, funding, and most importantly coaches in Taiwan.

“Triathlon is a very expensive sport and the demographics tend to wealthy middle-aged people. Race organizers are focused on making money rather than providing events. This means that a large percentage of the population can’t afford to do these races, which really affects the development of the sport.”

He mentioned that Taiwan will have its first ever ITU- [International Triathlon Union] sanctioned race in September in Yilan, and its first official “half-Ironman” 70.3-km event on October 30 in Kenting. The country will also host the 2012 World University Champs.

I asked Johns to let me know when registration starts for the Kenting event. I have a new item on my bucket list – if I can keep my weight down for another five months.

Many middle-class people in Taiwan can and often do take a relaxed attitude towards short periods without work

2010-05-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Jobless rate fall is welcome but caution is still needed

Last week the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released the unemployment figures for the previous month showing that April had the biggest single-month fall in 15 years. At a press conference held to announce the good news, the Cabinet-level directorate attributed the 0.28-percentage-point decline to the nation's growing economic recovery which caused local companies to take on additional workers.

And although 5.39 percent, around 593,000 people, of Taiwan's workforce is still officially out of work, this ongoing trend — April represents the eighth consecutive month of decline in the jobless rate — is good news indeed.

Two particularly sensitive markers — the numbers of unemployed people aged 45-60 and of people unemployed for over one year — both showed good downward movement, falling around 10,000 to 129,000 and around 1,000 to 114,000 respectively.

The government, as well as both public and private employers, should not rest on their laurels, however, and it is these last two DGBAS statistics that should be a focus of their attention. That just 1 percent of Taiwan's workforce have failed to find jobs for over 12 months might be relatively insignificant to the nation's macro-economic agenda, particularly as President Ma Ying-jeou's administration seeks to finalize a cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement that it hopes will bring long-term prosperity to the majority of citizens. But on the micro-economic scale, in human terms, the day-by-day effects on the 114,000 people who have been without jobs for a year or more, and on their families, can be heartbreaking.

Many middle-class people in Taiwan can and often do take a relaxed attitude towards short periods without work, usually relying on extended-family support or helping out around the home. But for poorer people and over longer periods, unemployment can lead to health problems and malnutrition, is correlated to reduced life expectancy, causes lowered self-esteem and depression, as well as other mental-health issues and even suicide. It can also result in the accumulation of debt and the erosion of professional skills.

For society at large, it can lead to the deskilling of the workforce, to xenophobia towards foreign workers and protectionism in international trade, to the loss of taxation revenues and reduced consumption precipitating a cycle of yet more layoffs and further economic downturn, to a shift in the balance of power between employers and employees, thus negatively affecting workers' salaries and conditions, and even to social and political unrest.

Politicians and public officials neglect this phenomenon at their peril. Thus in the United States, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke went on record last month specifically expressing his concern that more than 40 percent of the unemployed have now been out of work for six months or longer, nearly double the share of a year ago. Similarly in Europe, as their economies move toward full employment, governments expect general post-recession improvements to take care of the majority of would-be workers. It is with regard to the long-term unemployed that they pursue policy solutions. But such solutions are often seen as expensive and, due to often being branded as socialist or “a tax on success,” as politically sensitive.

But such rhetoric is unhelpful, and having a large pool of decreasingly employable people is not just a blemish on the face of any civilized society but also hinders its efficient functioning, perhaps even becoming a factor hindering the nation's recovery from the current downturn or even causing future recession.

Unfortunately certain sectors of the workforce are particularly susceptible to long-term unemployment, and getting them back into work will take efforts by the government and open-mindedness among employers.

Especially at risk are less-educated and lower-skilled workers, the middle-aged, single parents, disabled people and those in rural areas, all of who are represented by higher percentages of long-term unemployed than of unemployed in general.

So employers need to overcome their bias towards youth, and opt equally for experience instead. They should also consider investing in the retraining and the provision of facilities that assist people with special needs in re-entering the workforce. But this is primarily the role of government agencies, led by executive policy and legislative initiative.

Thus the government has subsidized firms taking on newly graduated students, which targets the most inexperienced members of the workforce. There are also payments made to workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

But these are usually viewed as temporary measures — band-aid policies to help the worst off. The most dangerous attitude, with the economy improving, unemployment figures falling, and the carrot of increased cross-strait trade dangling, is complacency. It is precisely at this time, with a major shift in the nation's balance of trade expected, that susceptible sectors of the workforce — as well as employers — will become excluded from the macro-economic benefits.

So while celebrating the latest DGBAS figures, let a close eye be kept on those key indicators, and let preparations be made for the inevitable changes ahead.

fish of the day

2010-05-29T17:43:00.000-07:00

Bill Bryson (my "coach" see here)
with his fish-shaped plaque for a podium finish in the Hualien Triathlon
(i finished too!, but only just -- i went too fast on the bike and had nothing left for the run, utterly utterly awful)

life on the edge of tormorrow

2010-05-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Is life in Taipei really as intolerable as they say?

Taipei might be the nation's political, economic and cultural capital, and have hundreds of kilometers of riverside bicycle paths and a highly popular mass-transportation system. It might have historical sites, museums, hot springs, world-class shops, and restaurants offering cuisines from around Taiwan, as well as from every region of China and every continent on the planet. But last week it was voted the second-worst place to live in Taiwan, only beating out Keelung, long portrayed as being damp, dreary and deprived.

The same public opinion survey, carried out on the behest of a national Chinese-language newspaper, found Hualien and Yilan counties, followed by Taichung City, to be the most popular choices.

Over the next few days, despite the knowledge that opinion polls can accidentally or intentionally be worded to produce all manner of results, and the fact that this survey simply asked about desire and not intent or reason, not to mention that similar recent surveys have placed Taipei at the top, rather than the bottom, of such rankings (and international surveys have selected Taipei as one of the top places to live in Asia), other media outlets spent much of the week wheeling out academic* “expert” witnesses to speculate about Taipei's shortcomings.

Their collective wisdom focused largely on the issue of housing costs. Also at center stage was the perception that the“simple life”led on Taiwan's east coast was“like a perpetual holiday”compared to the drudgery experienced by most of Taipei's office workers who often work from dawn-to-long-after-dusk.

This is a revealing interpretation, because Hualien and Yilan, both conveniently accessible from Taipei following the construction of the Syueshan Tunnel, top the ratings, whereas Taitung, further down the same coast and equally, if not more, idyllic but less accessible, does not score so highly.

So what this survey really showed was that people are dissatisfied with their lifestyles, not with their location. Compared to certain authoritarian states, where people do not have the right to live wherever they want, Taiwan is a free society, and the government does not restrict people's right to make their home anywhere. There is no need to conduct a poll asking people where they would like to live, therefore, since this can simply be ascertained from official population statistics. Thus 2.6 million people choose to live in Taipei City. Combined with the further 3.8 million of Taipei County, this represents more than one quarter of all Taiwan's citizens expressing and acting upon the desire to live in the greater Taipei area.

In comparison, just 340,000 live in Hualien County, despite it being almost 20 times the size of Taipei City, and 460,000 in Yilan County, despite its much lower house prices and 40-minute commute to Taipei. Add on the 230,000 who live in Taitung County, and the whole of Taiwan's east coast, with its clean air and simple lifestyle, still attracts less than 5 percent of the nation's population.

And while each year some professionals who are able to do their jobs online relocate to the countryside, and a few others give up their jobs, turning their backs on urban noise and pollution, and head off to Dulan or some other east-coast Shangri-La, they are far outnumbered by the droves of ambitious youths heading in the opposite direction as soon as they receive their high-school diplomas. Even after retirement, when many elderly (or not so elderly) people are in a position to cash in on the huge increase in the values of their properties, then buy something cheaper in a pleasant location and live comfortably off the chunk of change generated, most still opt to stay in the cities where they have spent their working lives.

So was last week's newspaper survey simply an attempt to generate a sensational headline, or a well-intentioned attempt to understand present-day society that merely asked the wrong question, or does it tell us something useful about people's changing priorities and their wishes for a better life?

The last two decades have already seen a significant shift from a drive to make money above all else, to a healthier work-play balance, which has witnessed a blossoming of hobbies, increased concern for the environment, and an explosion of domestic and overseas travel.

It is perhaps against this background, therefore, that the survey's results should be viewed. Taipei's citizens would like the same clear skies and pollution-free air they experience on weekend trips to the coast, they'd like to drive freely down the road not sit idling their time at traffic lights, they'd like to go to work at nine and leave at six so they can spend time with their families or on their hobbies, and they'd love to experience those cheap property prices.

In short, Taipei's citizens do not really want to move to Hualien (otherwise they would), but they would like to move a little bit of Hualien into Taipei.

*The original text read: "... associate professor expert witnesses ...", and the first draft actually said: "... associate professor expert witnesses who supplement their earnings and attempt to garner their reputations by speculating on such issues ..." (or something like that)

-- I have nothing against associate professors, but i do have something against media organisations that over-rely on their limited (sometimes non-existent) expertise on issues, meanwhile misleading readers--their main purpose--into believing these commentators' opinions are trustworthy, presumably on the strength of the word "professor".

fish of the day

2010-05-23T21:40:00.002-07:00

Keelung (基隆) has a city fish:

Black porgy is chosen to be the city fish of Keelung, its scientific name is Acanthopagrus schlegelii, inhabit at the depth in 3 - 50 meters, distributes in the west Pacific Ocean, including the coast of Japan, Korean, Taiwan and mainland China. It distributes island wide of Taiwan and Penghu Islands waters.The black porgy belongs to warm, tropics coastal omnivorous benthic fish. It can be caught year-round, but with specially good taste by the autumn to the next year spring. It can be found in many fish market as high-quality table fish, because of its good flavor.

It likes the habitat of inlets with sandy or muddy bottom, sometimes enter the river mouth. It is euryhaline and eurythermal, may be raised in any salinity. It can tolerate the water temperature ranging between l0 ~ 32℃. During the juvenile period all was the male, sex transformation progress until 3-4 year old.

photo

2010-05-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

do you have more money than you need?

2010-05-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Drinking fountain beside the bike path in Taipei's Shezi (社子) district.

The sign says it was donated by a Mr. Chen Wen-cun.

What a nice gesture.

Producing bottled water is bad for the environment in many ways, as is keeping it chilled in 7-Eleven's fridges.

If you have a little cash to spare, how about following Mr. Chen's example.

fish of the day

2010-05-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

woman inspecting (turning?) drying fish (bulahee?) at Guihou (龜吼) Fishing Harbor

fish of the day

2010-05-19T06:06:00.001-07:00

restaurant advert near Yeliu (野柳) Fishing Harbor in Taipei County's Wanli (萬里) Township

fish of the day

2010-05-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

the bottom-right photo yesterday from Huang Yun-ju's trip around Taiwan,
showing fish and a sailing boat,
reminded me of the fish on top of the huge Wang Ye boats that are burnt at religious festivals in Taiwan, such as the one below from Jiali (佳里) in Tainan County.

[it probably isn't, however, since Huang says the temple is the Sheng Mu Gong (聖母宮; "Sacred Mother Temple") in Luermen (鹿耳門) and so will be dedicated to seafarers' deity Matsu, which would also explain the boat and fish]

fish of the day

2010-05-18T18:44:00.001-07:00

reader ("blog follower"?) Huang Yun-ju from Taipei sent these fish pics from her recent round-Taiwan trip

many thanks

(p.s. not my dog, though it does look a bit like Flounder)

fish of the day

2010-05-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

"Like trying to pick a lock with a wet herring."
"Are you lately humbled in the act of love?"

from the film “Shakespeare in Love”

murdered children

2010-05-17T02:09:00.001-07:00

China Post editorial:

Taiwanese families are not as close-knit as they should be

Last week's news included the tragic story of a man's suicide in Chiayi, which apparently followed his murder of both his parents and the attempted murder of his wife and children. They were found just in time, with charcoal still burning in the room in which they lay unconscious.

Similarly saved was the daughter of a Tainan man, though his wife was not so lucky as he managed to kill both her and himself by driving their car into Jiangjun Harbor. Also unfortunate was a 13-year-old girl from Taichung County who was killed by her mother last month, despite having asked police and social workers for help after learning of her mother's plans.

While every murder represents the breakdown of social order, cases of parricide, and in particular filicide, are especially disturbing. They represent a failure not just of society but of our genetic programming to care for our offspring.

But whether this spate of murders of family members — some relating to financial troubles and others to mental-health issues — represents a worrying trend caused by changes in Taiwan society and culture, or represents the worst of past practices and attitudes, is far from clear.

Children's rights were almost non-existent under China's traditional Confucian ethics, as they were considered the property of their fathers. Thus in Cao Xue-qin's 18th-century story “Dream of the Red Chamber,” Jia Bao-yu's father is described as almost beating him to death, as he had every right to do. Similarly in Lu Xun's “Diary of a Madman,” the narrator mentions children being sold as food in times of famine, or even being consumed by their own parents.

While these examples might be fictional, this was sometimes the reality. Even in modern times, children's wishes are often subservient to those of their parents, and filial obedience is still demanded and received. While this may not always be bad, because it cannot be assumed that children know what is best for themselves or act in their own best interests, it is also not always good. One glaringly negative example is the number of prostitutes who entered the profession at their fathers' instructions in order to pay off their debts.

In contrast to such traditional attitudes that have been carried through to the 20th and 21st centuries are the rapid changes in family life that have occurred in Taiwan over the recent decades. These include an increased role of central and local governments in welfare provision, and hence a diminished reliance on family structures. There has also been a reduction of the traditional “three generations under one roof” living arrangement to a more nuclear-family set up. And yet conversely, many children are raised by their grandparents as both parents have fulltime jobs. Women in the workforce have increased their status in society and their economic independence within the family, which, although a positive development, can cause friction for men used to wielding purse-string power over their dependents.

But with both parents often subject to the nation's overtime culture, Taiwan is increasingly experiencing a latchkey-kid phenomenon. Observations of this condition in the United States suggest it can lead to loneliness, boredom and fear in elementary schoolchildren, and depression, lower self-esteem and academic problems for teenagers. Also found is an increased susceptibility to peer pressure in teenagers, possibly leading to alcohol and drug abuse, or criminal behavior.

A similar situation in Taiwan came under media scrutiny earlier this year following the arrest of Chen Jui for gang-related gambling offenses in Taipei high schools, and the tearful public breakdown of his father, TV celebrity Chen Kai-lun, who confessed to putting his career ahead of spending time with his family.

Hopefully, Chen's anguish has alerted parents nationwide to the situation, and their pursuit of career, money or other success will be tempered by domestic concerns. Having children may be a universal right, but it also brings with it a multitude of responsibilities, something that is often overlooked. Happy, close-knit families can also be a greater source of satisfaction, pride and sense of achievement than financial wealth or career success.

In a related news item, a survey released by the Ministry of Education on Friday indicated that almost 80 percent of respondents said they rarely or never hugged their parents or siblings, 62 percent rarely or never thanked or praised their relatives, and 20 percent spent 30 minutes or less with family members each day. Adult males and high-school students interacted the least with their families.

While hugging might not be a traditional Taiwanese habit (though the MOE recommended it for its soothing and calming influence, and role in building better social relationships), the other figures perhaps show a breakdown in the strong family cohesion traditionally claimed by Taiwanese, Chinese and Asian societies.

On the contrary, this lack of familial interaction renders families incapable of dealing with major personal, family or social crises, the MOE suggested. This became tragically apparent in Chiayi, Tainan and Taichung.

new verse

2010-05-16T01:50:00.001-07:00

我愛我的狗

你很像我的狗

雖然我愛我的狗

但是狗的好處在人的身上

卻不一定討喜

and here is an English-language version (not exactly "translation")

I love my dog

You remind me of my dog

I love my dog

but what is a desirable trait in a dog

is not necessarily attractive in a human being.

fish of the day

2010-05-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

In the morning I sat quietly for some time. Old Chen brought lunch in: one bowl of vegetables, one bowl of steamed fish. The eyes of the fish were white and hard, and its mouth was open just like those people who want to eat human beings. After a few mouthfuls I could not tell whether the slippery morsels were fish or human flesh, so I brought it all up.

早上，我靜坐了一會兒。陳老五送進飯來，一碗菜，一碗蒸魚；這魚的眼睛，白而且硬，張著嘴，同那一夥想吃人的人一樣。吃了幾筷，滑溜溜的不知是魚是人，便把他兜肚連腸的吐出。

from Lu Xun's (魯迅) "Diary of a Madman" (狂人日記)

new (additional) stanza for alternative version of "To Dancing Girl"

2010-05-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

additional stanza "To Dancing Girl"

once
in my Hongkong hotel room
then Italy and South America
with just a hit on the icon clicker
you helped dispel my gloom

UK Green Party MP elected

2010-05-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Small parties — important, irrelevant or dangerous?

As The China Post went to press last night, the United Kingdom was still without a new government, despite polls closing last Thursday evening. Normally the new prime minister would visit the queen the following morning to get her assent, and then begin his new term of office, which can last for up to five years.

For the first time in almost half a century, however, Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system, which tends to give exaggerated power to the two main parties, has produced a hung parliament. With the third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, holding the balance of power and demanding electoral reform so that its habitual 20-25 percent of the vote is never again translated into less than 10 percent of legislators, negotiations are still taking place.

One result that is clear, however, is that after decades of trying, the Green Party has its first member of the national parliament, Caroline Lucas, who was elected in Brighton. Without having improved its share of support, which remained consistent at about 1 percent, the party has perhaps come of age through its adoption of some of the strategies of its more established competitors. For example, it focused a disproportionate amount of party resources on its two most winnable seats, Brighton and Norwich. Furthermore, having eschewed the concept of party leader for ideological reasons throughout most of its history, it recently adopted such a figurehead, with Lucas being elected to the post.

Perhaps it was the growing specter of climate change that provided the final nudge to persuade voters of the Green Party's relevance.

But although the Green Party might sound nice, middle-class and cuddly, behind its voter-friendly name it has a radical agenda by no means limited to environmental protection, preventing climate change, or even opposing nuclear power stations.

The party's mission statement begins: “Life on Earth is under immense pressure. It is human activity, more than anything else, which is threatening the well-being of the environment on which we depend. Conventional politics has failed us because its values are fundamentally flawed.”

From this plausible beginning, the Green Party of England and Wales is led down an increasingly left-wing path. Encouraging more sustainable transportation not only means advocacy of buses and trains, but is also translated into re-nationalization of the train network and punitive taxes on fuel.

Without using the word socialism, the Greens also campaign for increased levels of income tax on richer people, increased corporation tax on big businesses, and “eco taxes” on polluters. They seek to reduce drug companies' influence on Britain's health service, and community self-reliance to treat and prevent a growing mental health crisis they claim is caused by the market-driven culture.

Greens see economic growth and mass consumption of the capitalist lifestyle as incompatible with the planet's finite resources, and so promote a sustainable economy.

The only sense in which the Green Party is “republican” is in seeking an end to the constitutional role of the British monarchy.

Given these left-wing standpoints of the UK and other green parties, it is ironic that their most influential moment was probably in helping George W. Bush into office in 2000. U.S. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received 2.74 percent of the popular vote, almost 3 million in total, making the party third-largest nationwide. But it was in Florida, where Bush defeated Al Gore by just 537 votes, that the almost 100,000 votes cast for Nader led many supporters to accuse the Green Party of spoiling the election for the Democratic Party. A decade on, there is still much bad blood between the two sides.

But what, if anything, has all of this to do with Taiwan? Not much perhaps. Taiwan's Green Party is minute, even by comparison with the UK's, and musters only handfuls of supporters to its events.

More importantly, Taiwanese political parties have surely learned the danger of third-party politics. The KMT learned the hardest way, with incumbent Huang Ta-chou losing the 1994 Taipei City mayoral election to the Democratic Progressive Party's Chen Shui-bian, when what is now called the pan-Blue vote was split by Chao Shao-kong of the New Party. This was followed in the 2000 presidential election with James Soong, who left the KMT to stand as an independent, spoiling the election for the KMT's Lien Chan, once again allowing Chen to slip in the back door with less than 40 percent of the total vote.

Now it is the opposition DPP that is in danger of learning this lesson through defeat, as it tries to maintain discipline in its own ranks in advance of the yearend elections.

So while neither the UK nor Taiwan Green Party has anything like enough influence to cause an electoral upset, the issues of democracy, hung parliaments and third-party politics should not be ignored by our political combatants.

fish of the day

2010-05-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

fishing boat moored at Zhuwei (竹圍)

new verse

2010-05-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

To Dancing Girl

(inspired by “To Mary Pickford” by Vachel Lindsay)

Oh,
Dancing Girl with face divine,
not year by year but ’most every day
I summon your spirit by clicking play
to be my valentine

There is an alternative version of this poem,
<--which has an additional stanza here [click here];
the original is still the "correct" version, however.

so
I will call you my Mary
though you answer to “naked_teen_stripper”
"we’ll be together forever"
you spin to Set Me Free
and
I know you’re not dancing to get me down
it was your gift to someone other
perhaps your high-school lover
now a freshman in a distant town
or
were you drunk on tequila and did it for a dare
or a junkie forced to strip for your joy
or did some guy lie that he worked for Playboy
just to trick you out of your underwear?
no
I’m sure I can see from the way your eyes shine
that it was done for love all right
and for two or three minutes each morning or night
I’ll believe that you're my valentine

2010-05-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Lessons to be learned from the UK election

The British electorate will go to the ballots on Thursday to choose its next national government. Following the economic downturn, a corruption scandal involving members of parliament, poor ratings and an infamous “bigoted”gaff by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, pre-election polls strongly suggest that there will be a change of administration after 13 years of rule by the center-left Labour Party.

This could give the Conservative Party its first chance at government since 1997, or the Liberals (now rebranded as Liberal Democrats) its first since 1915. The most likely result, however, may be a hung parliament, resulting in a coalition of Labour and Liberals or of Conservatives and Liberals.

Given that there is no difference of policy regarding Taiwan between any of the main parties, and since the UK has no “Taiwan Relations Act” offering protection against a belligerent and possibly dangerous neighbor, is this of any relevance to Taiwan?

Perhaps there are two or three lessons the British learned during this spring's election campaign that the Taiwanese electorate and their would-be representatives can share, and maybe another they can draw for themselves.

The first lesson is that despite having one of the oldest and longest-established legislatures and having been the model for many emerging democracies around the world — hence Britain's epithet the Mother of Parliaments — its own democracy is far from perfect.

Its first-past-the-post system, in which the victor is selected from a multi-candidate single-member electoral district, without any transfer of votes, means that the Labour Party could conceivably receive the third-largest share of the ballot but gain, not just enough parliamentary seats to be the largest party, but even have more than half, and therefore be able to continue its single-party rule.

The Liberal Party has historically suffered from this situation, with its share of the votes not translated into an equivalent number of MPs. People are less willing to “waste” their votes on a third party, it argues, and so cast their ballots for one of the big two. Not surprisingly, the Liberals have long been proponents of electoral reform, advocating some form of proportional representation (PR).

This move has been resisted by the Labour and Conservative parties, which have dominated Britain's political landscape for the last century. They argue that while PR might appear more democratic, it actually gives exaggerated influence to centrist parties that hold a balance of power. Moreover, Britain's experience with coalition governments has not been positive.

Democracy is not one single thing. Thus Taiwan did not become democratic with the popular election of its president, it became more democratic. Moreover, democratic systems must be defended against reversals, but equally they must be re-evaluated and, where necessary, updated.

Taiwan is experiencing just such a re-evaluation at present as the main opposition parties push for a referendum on the issue of signing an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China. While referendums — as a limited form of direct democracy — appear to be more democratic, they can give exaggerated influence to well-funded and well-organized pressure groups. And in theory at least, they are inconsistent with the role of a parliament in a representative democracy.

In Britain, for example, despite repeated calls for and promises of referendums, they are rarely used. The last national one — on whether to join the European Economic Community — was held in 1975.

The second lesson learned by British parliamentarians was that public tolerance of corrupt or merely self-serving representatives has a limit. The fact that the Liberal Party has gained significant ground over the last few weeks, so that there is now a more-or-less three-way split between the main parties, has little to do with politics and is largely due to fallout from the MPs' expenses scandal. That elected representatives were siphoning off tens of thousands of pounds (millions of NT dollars) under claims for second homes or “secretarial services” by family members while calling for the public to tighten their belts to aid economic recovery was clearly too much for many to stomach.

The Liberals' leap up the polls also resulted from the performance of their leader, Nick Clegg, in the UK's first public presidential-style public debate, which was shown live on primetime television.

One final observation Taiwan's parties might make of the British electoral landscape is that the historically left-wing Labour Party moved step-after-step towards the center through the 18 years of Conservative rule from 1979 to 1997. Similarly over the last decade, the Conservative Party has drifted from the right toward the center to make itself electable.

Although such left-right analysis is not so relevant to Taiwan's political scene, the confrontational stances and scare tactics adopted by the political parties here could be toned down. Perhaps a similar shift toward a common middle ground could help to heal the mutual antipathy and social conflict in Taiwan.

back on the hill

2010-05-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

most temples on Shitoushan (獅頭山) only open to the public on Sundays

so I went back for a second look

(still not awed, I have to admit)

this one is nice, the baroque Ling Xia Cave (靈霞洞 )

fish of the day

2010-04-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

this bus in Shilin (士林) caught my eye

turned out it was some kind of advertisement
(of course. why would anyone put fish on a bus otherwise?)

2010-04-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

and while on the subject of China Post editorials

my "What children need is not more classes, but their childhood back"

[not my comma, by the way]

has initiated a little debate on the comments board:

Comments
April 20, 2010 stephan97b@
Reply
"let the public outcry be loud"You wish....Most parents see cram schools and extra-curricular classes as a solution rather as a problem: they don't have to take care of their children + they believe their offspring can become "more competitive" in Taiwan's highly materialistic/low creativity environment.Your criticism of Taiwan's 'education authorities' doesn't even come half close to offering any real solution. You refer to the only hint of a feasible solution as: . Legislature is heavily KMT dominated, isn't it? So go tell you good buddies there. Don't waste cyberspace and people's time on your pseudo-moralistic rambling.
April 21, 2010 danny2987@
Reply
Cram school and extra curricular class is not the whole solution, it's one of the options.
April 21, 2010 Skyhermit77@
Reply
To stephan97b: Not everything is political! Kids deserve a childhood...this article has nothing to do with the Blue/Green divide. One of the "solutions" to this problem is that Taiwanese society needs to start talking about the issue...something this piece is trying to do. You need to seek help for your bitterness and illogical worldview.
April 22, 2010 stephan97b@
Reply
Skyhermit77,If you can't spot the direct political references in this article, I'm afraid it's you who's in need of help. Problems with English reading comprehension, maybe?
April 23, 2010 beatles009@
Reply
I don't try to argue but just want to point out something else. If the teaching of Chinese history takes precedence over Taiwanese history at our high schools, does it serve the purpose of education or politics?
April 27, 2010 Skyhermit77@
Reply
Stephen...my English is rather fluent...It doesn't matter if a kid's parents are KMT or DPP supporters....they all believe excessive hours at cram schools are the way to develop a child's mind -- this mindset is harmful. Think over your own educational history...did all that calculus make you a better employee in the modern workforce? Hours spent running around outside in nature as a kid might have made you a happier person than you are today. Life is visceral! Life is dirty! Life is touching, feeling and experiencing! Do you have kids? LET THEM BE KIDS! Skip the cram school and go catch fireflies together! Taiwan needs to reassess the meaning of the word "education."

Is the China Post becoming liberal?

2010-04-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

In addition to my own pinko ramblings (see CPE),
there seems to be a spate of liberal social (but not political) editorials lately
in the last fortnight alone, the following have appeared:

treat drunk driving as "premeditated murder" http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/28/254191/Penalties-are.htm

animal welfare, protection needs strengthening: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/26/253933/Animal-protection.htm

suicide ... more social workers needed:http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/25/253853/Suicide-tragedy.htm

protect PRC sailors working for ROC boats: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/24/253715/Govt-should.htm

(more) animal protection: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/19/253040/Use-warning.htm

increase water rate: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/18/252955/Increasing-water.htm

attack on rogue doctors (without attacking the Health Insurance system): http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/16/252710/p2/Hospitals-need.htm

government should build some low-cost housing: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/04/14/252410/Govt-should.htm

fish of the day

2010-04-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

CNA reports:

Tilapia farmers face stiff competition

Tilapia growers in Liuchia, in southern Taiwan's Tainan County, threw a banquet Sunday to promote their product in the domestic market amid falling exports and strong competition from China.
With more and more Taiwan's tilapia farmers relocating their investments to China, the island's tilapia business has seen a steep decline in exports, while China's exports of the fish have jumped.
According to the United Evening News, China's frozen tilapia exports to the U.S. totaled 29,672 metric tons in 2009, while Taiwan's were 13,180 metric tons. China's frozen tilapia fillet sales to the U.S. last year hit 10,691 metric tons, far in excess of Taiwan's 2,333 metric tons.
China is now the largest tilapia exporter to the U.S., the newspaper said.
In an effort to mitigate the effects of weakening exports, local tilapia farmers are giving more attention to the domestic market. However, an increase in local supply has dragged down domestic prices by 29 percent to 34 percent.
About 90 percent of Taiwan's tilapia species are being grown in China as the industry is moving more and more of its capital there. In addition, Taiwan investors have taken Taiwan's advanced breeding technologies to China, which is now producing a better quality product than Taiwan. ...

... Su said he is worried that Taiwan's tilapia growers will suffer even more once an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China is signed as it will require Taiwan to eventually open its market wider to Chinese products. ...

read the whole article [here]

yawn yawn

2010-04-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

Perhaps Tsai, DPP will think twice about more public debates

Taiwan's groundbreaking first public debate between the president and the leader of the main opposition party concerning government policy went ahead yesterday afternoon as planned. Early indications are that it gained a significant international audience online, in addition to domestic viewers and listeners.

Those expecting high drama will have been disappointed, however, as the two participants, President Ma Ying-jeou and Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen, managed to remain polite and adhere to the rules of debate. This was in stark contrast to their foot soldiers, partisan experts and media supporters, who over recent weeks have engaged in increasingly vitriolic disputes over the rights and wrongs, benefits and weaknesses, and economic and/or political dimensions to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement that Ma's administration plans to sign with China, perhaps as early as June.

Unfortunately, those expecting incisive intellectual jousting would similarly have been disappointed. The two party leaders spent almost every minute of the 150-minute televised debate playing to the camera and wider audience, and merely restating the positions with which anyone interested in this issue would already have been well aware of.

Thus Ma stressed the urgency faced by his government, claiming that eight years of waiting, worrying and time-wasting by the previous DPP administration meant that time was now short for Taiwan to catch up with regional and world economic developments, particularly the latest advances between ASEAN nations and China.

The three prongs of an ECFA signed with the mainland—reducing tariffs, increasing exports and protecting intellectual property rights—would lead to the creation of more than a quarter million jobs. Moreover, Taiwanese businesses that had moved to China would return, and the increased exports to China would attract foreign investment that would naturally lead to further job increases.

Signing the ECFA would open Taiwan's doors to FTAs with other countries, Ma said, and responding to accusations of helping big business at the expense of small and medium-sized firms, the president said that the economies of all such companies were intertwined and helping some would help the others. The ECFA was not for anyone's personal benefit but for the national good. Regarding those industries that would suffer through their inability to compete with Chinese goods, Ma repeated that NT$95 billion would be set aside over 10 years for assistance to domestic industries that experienced any negative impact.

The key difference between the two sides was his administration's open and international approach compared with the closed attitude of the DPP. This latter would lead to Taiwan's marginalization on the world stage.

Regarding fears of a threat to Taiwan's sovereignty, which the ruling Kuomintang had accused the DPP of whipping up, Ma stressed that after signing the ECFA it would be submitted to the Legislative Yuan for scrutiny, and he reaffirmed his commitment to no unification, no independence and no war.”

The DPP's Tsai Ing-wen was similarly unoriginal, merely restating her party's accusations that ECFA negotiations were being undertaken with unnecessary haste and undue secrecy, were not under Taiwan's control, would affect the regional strategic balance, and were of great concern to many laborers, farmers and white-collar workers.

She said Ma only talked about benefits and not about negative impacts, and claimed that within just 10 years 90 percent of domestic agricultural products would be open to tariff-free imports.

If the legislature did not pass the ECFA after it had been signed, would the government resort to stating it was too late to make changes, as it had with the U.S.-beef-import issue, Tsai asked.

In short, she said, it was not her party's incitement but the government's lack of transparency that was causing the public anxiety, she said, repeating her call for a referendum on the ECFA issue.

So, was the debate a disappointing anticlimax and a waste of a pleasant Sunday afternoon after the recent poor weather?

No. The fact that the audience included many from outside the “chattering classes” who may not be so familiar with the ECFA issue, gave President Ma an opportunity to fill the void of understanding that he has often blamed for causing the opposition from much of the public to the agreement.

For the KMT, it showed that the party has moved on from the days when Taiwan's government made decisions behind closed doors, which it then informed the people afterwards. And on a personal level, it showed that Ma is more than capable of holding his own in one-on-one political sparring with the best the opposition can produce.

It also gave him a stage, with the nation watching, to make one final surprise announcement. With the nation's television cameras whirring and in almost his last paragraph before the microphone went dead, President Ma announced that the status of the cross-Strait ECFA discussions was being upgraded, and that he would personally be leading the negotiating team from now on.

Perhaps Tsai and the DPP will not push so hard for televised public debates in the future.

photo of (another) day

2010-04-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

too many words, not enough pictures
here's the monastery at Shitoushan
NT$1000 per night for a double room

nice gate to mountains too

what children want

2010-04-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

China Post editorial:

What children need is not more classes, but their childhood back

Three additional classes of English per week will be taught in elementary schools starting in September, Taipei County's government has announced. Despite claiming that more than 80 percent of parents support the changes, the educational department tried to smuggle these hours onto the curriculum under the titles of “international cultural learning,” “advanced reading” and “flexible usage.”

This last was particularly pernicious since these courses will be held in time that is currently allocated for “flexible classes.” This is time that is intended for the provision of special activities tailored to children's broader learning and individual needs.

Young people already spend far too much time in formal learning and too little in organized play. Or disorganized play, for that matter.

Fearing their children will fall behind and get stuck in dead-end jobs, many parents feel pressured into joining the educational arms race and send their offspring to after-school classes and cram schools in ever increasing numbers and for ever increasing numbers of hours.

This word — numbers — is a clue to the problem. Since quality is so difficult to assess, the world increasingly resorts to the seemingly simple notion of quantity, not just in education but in many areas of life. If parents cannot know their children's teachers' true worth or quality, they solve the problem by sticking their children in front of more teachers for more learning time. If officials in education departments cannot impress parents with the quality of teaching given to pupils, they certainly can force them to swallow more hours of rote learning at the expense of trips to museums, art classes, sports or, heaven forbid, play.

Play can definitely be fun, but it is more important than that. It is where human beings — and many other mammals - undergo intellectual and emotional development, rehearse life situations, and learn interactive skills. Children will not learn these nearly so well by watching television, playing online games or social networking on their cell phones and bedroom computers.

The great irony is that the primary concern of most parents is their children. When asked why they work so hard in jobs they don't like, many say it is so their children won't have to. They also say it is to pay for university tuition, school fees, cram schools and even nursery provision. In this vicious cycle, they end up working extra hours to pay people to care for their children while they work.

But this is not what children want. A survey released on Children's Day this month showed that they would like to spend more time with their parents. A whopping 30 percent of children do not regularly eat dinner with their parents. This flies in the face of the common-sense view (as well as academic research) that children learn almost all their values and life skills at home and not in the classroom.

So parents should leave work at a reasonable time (which might require legislative assistance), cancel most if not all their children's after-school classes, eat dinner with them, develop shared hobbies and play with them, put them to bed at a sensible time (going to bed early wouldn't hurt adults either), and send them off to school after an energizing breakfast (one thing guaranteed to disrupt pupils' attention is poor nutrition).

None of this is rocket science, of course, and none of it is new. Many parents have felt trapped by the cram school culture since it started with the hiring of private tutors. The reforms of 1968 aimed, in part, to end this by providing compulsory nine-year education for all children, but things continued apace. Similarly, the education minister of Taiwan's first democratically elected administration took office in 1996 with a slogan of “giving students back to their families, giving youth back to students.” But nothing changed for the better, as things just got worse.

Being a child is not only not being an adult; childhood is not only waiting for the clock to tick until adulthood begins. It is a process during which important lessons are learned and skills are acquired. Lessons and skills that are needed to function in adult society, and which society needs people to have for its own smooth running.

But these things are not readily quantifiable, so their quality is difficult to assess. No wonder government departments are tempted to resort to simplistic measures that can be counted on the fingers of one hand. “Three more hours” — it sounds positive, but it is not. It is yet another attack on childhood.

Let us hope Taipei County's announcement was an example of the widespread technique, practiced at all levels of local and national government, of announcing “changes” well in advance of implementation so that, should there be significant pubic opposition, they are quickly canceled as merely announcements of “policy options under consideration.”

So, let them be policy options, but let the public outcry be loud, and let us set about giving children back their childhood.

defence of the realm (a kind of ancient cosplay?)

2010-04-17T23:47:00.009-07:00

student groups compete in Song Jiang Battle Array (宋江陣) in front of the ShunXian Temple (順賢宮) in Neimen Township (內門) in Kaohsiung County

supposedly a tradition dating back hundreds of years to when local people had to defend themselves from gangs of thugs who would descend from the hills

now more dance, chanting and a little bit cosplay

fish of the day

2010-04-17T23:47:00.005-07:00

incense holder on wall of house in Meinong (美濃), Kaohsiung County

original lamp posts?

2010-04-17T23:47:00.001-07:00

amazing row of shops in Qishan (旗山) Township ("The Banana Kingdom"), in Kaohsiung County

fish of the day

2010-04-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

Yu-dong (漁東) were the entrepreneurs who operated the fishing boats, hiring and overseeing the crew (漁夥) and making the gear (or buying them on credit) from the wholesaler with whom he dealt or sometimes from independent shipowners. The 漁東 sold his catch to middlemen (鮮客), stationed offshore near the fishing grounds, receiving a sealed receipt (賣鮮摺) rather than cash. The middlemen then shipped the catches of several boats to wholesalers (鮮魚行[fresh-fish guild] and 鹹魚行[salted-fish guild]) in Ningpo, from whom he received a commission. The wholesaler bulked, processed, and delivered the fish and either shipped them to importers in other cities, or delivered them to local or nearby retailers (鮮貨鋪[fresh-fish retailer] and 鹹貨鋪[salted-fish retailer]) on twenty days’ credit. Itinerant retailers (行販) normally got their supplies from retail shopkeepers but occasionally got them directly from a wholesale firm. The漁東entrepreneurs periodically took their sealed receipts to their wholesaler in Ningpo, either collecting cash or receiving a bill of exchange (鹹單), which they converted to cash a the ch’ien-chuang 錢莊bank that financed the wholesaler. Payments both ways were such that middlemen in effect received a commission from the 漁東 as well as the wholesaler. It goes without saying that the wholesaler exercised decisive control over 漁東 through setting prices, renting out the factors of production, and issuing bills. Wholesalers in turn were dependent for credit on the kuo-chang 過帳 system of the ch’en-chuang 錢莊 banks.

discussion of fish trade in Ningbo (寧波) in Qing(?) dynasty from "Ningpo and its hinterland" p413 by Yoshinobu Shiba in “The City in Late Imperial China” ed. Skinner

romanization replaced with characters

fish of the day

2010-04-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

Guardian reports prize-winning author feels like a fish:

Guest was as surprised as Dasgupta to have won the £5,000 First Novel award. "I'm standing here like a stunned mullet," she said.

elephants, torture and tirathlons

2010-04-12T07:38:00.001-07:00

down in Sanyi (三義) in Miaoli County over the weekend

so naturally woodcarving came to mind

nice people in Miaoli, or so i thought

see the torture equipment they keep in the hotel bedrooms:

come on, Obama

2010-04-12T04:32:00.002-07:00

China Post editorial:

It was a majestic performance, if your head is buried in sand

Members of Sweden's Nobel Peace Prize committee will have slept well in their beds this weekend following signing of last week's agreement to make significant cuts to the global stockpile of nuclear weapons by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. If the treaty is ratified by both countries' legislatures and implemented, this will see the Cold War adversaries' arsenals reduced to the lowest levels since the arms race of the 1960s.

In any case, the fanfare that accompanied the signing ceremony held in Prague's baroque castle will have been music to Swedish ears. Last year, in what was widely criticized as a partisan political gesture, it awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama just a few months after he entered the White House simply for promising to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

So maybe the committee got it right, and maybe the world will be a safer place in the future thanks to Obama and Medvedev's actions. But there was something bizarre about the whole event, or rather, something was missing.

It was not that nuclear weapons have not claimed a single life in over six decades, or that the greatest threat to citizens of the United States and Russia comes from terrorists with rucksacks, vests and even shoes loaded with bombs (though in Russia's case, insurgents might be a fairer word).

Nor was it that the United States and Russia are essentially now on the same side after spending most of the 20th century with daggers drawn, and both countries' chief concern with regard to nuclear weapons are the so-called rogue states (now to be known as “outliers,” apparently) of North Korea and Iran. The cost to people in the former country is lives of unimaginable poverty, while those in the latter are about to get clobbered by serious sanctions if Obama, Medvedev and the leaders of around four dozen countries can focus their animosity (whereas Israel joined the “nuclear club” and introduced nuclear weapons into the unstable environment of the Middle East almost without censure).

No, the most bizarre aspect of last week's baroque love fest was its anachronism. It was like watching two dinosaurs arm wrestle on television then kiss and make up. Nice spectacle, but hardly relevant to today's more evolved world. Russia may possess thousands of nuclear warheads — which once upon a time gave some backing to its claim of superpower status — but its empire fell apart two decades ago. Moreover, the world very quickly learned that the bombs were little more than the emperor's new clothes, and that the cost to the Soviet Union of possessing them was far beyond the means of what, in reality, was not a superpower at all.

So the pantomime went ahead, and the world applauded, and the pundits discussed the Obama-Medvedev contribution to world peace, and almost no one mentioned China, which, as a growing global power, should merit more attention.

Whether China already is a superpower, will become one sooner or later, or will never exceed its role as regional heavyweight are questions that normally generate many column inches. There can be little doubt that this is China's aim, however, and if any existed, it was surely dispelled by the recent book by PLA colonel and academic Liu Mingfu, in which he made no bones about China's goal of replacing the United States as world leader. Perhaps being modest, Liu said this would take 90 years: 30 to match its GDP, 30 to equal its military and cultural strength, and 30 to surpass its per capita GDP.

Or perhaps he was trying to reduce anxiety. Liu did make it clear, however, that this goal required not just building its economy into the world's largest, but also creating armed forces of equal stature. But he said armed conflict was not inevitable, and described the forthcoming competition as neither world war nor cold war, but more like a track-and-field event or a protracted marathon.

Perhaps the greatest doubt about China's ability to transform into a world force comes not from outside but from within as it undergoes the growing pains necessary for this maturation. All its economic and military clout will count for nothing if it cannot overcome numerous and varied challenges. These include people's demands for rule of law and freedom of expression; government corruption and organized crime; intergenerational conflict as the old elite clings to power and socio-economic imbalances between geographic regions of the vast country; horrendous pollution and growing health problems, as well as a population time bomb that could explode at any time.

But the United States and rest of the world cannot just bury their heads in the sands of the past as the Prague performance suggests they would like. Obama and his colleagues must do more to deal with today's reality, and if he really is worthy of the Nobel prize, China's nuclear weapons should be on his agenda, too.

who said Tsai Ing-wen is "like Hitler"?

2010-04-12T04:32:00.001-07:00

China Post editorial in "today's" online version includes:

Like Adolf Hitler endlessly chanting Nazi mantras to mesmerize the Germans into following him, the DPP chairwoman simply has to drone on Ma's conspiracy to consolidate the party's power base in central and southern Taiwan.

which clearly (hopefully) is not something VftH would say. Nor the following sentence of dizzifying logic:

But that public debate is totally and absolutely unnecessary, if she is reported to have readied herself to voice objection by equating the pact with an act of selling out Taiwan.

Confusion might arise because the Sunday editorial goes online on Monday, and the Monday editorial goes online on Tuesday, but gets posted on VftH on Monday. Got it?

fish of the day

2010-04-09T04:44:00.002-07:00

飯店活煮雞遭罰，活煮魚是否也違法，引發爭議。農委會畜牧處 8日表示，遭罰飯店是因為公開表演，傳統市場及海產店並非公開屠宰或活煮，不違法。中央社記者孫仲達攝 99年4月8日

China Post ran this story today, but i cannot find the photo&text on CP's website,
the above is from the CNA original.

Whether it is legal to cook live fish at seafood restaurants becomes a controversial issue after a hotel was fined for a cooking performance where a live chicken was slaughtered and boiled last month. The Council of Agriculture said yesterday the hotel in Taipei County was fined because the chicken was slaughtered and cooked during a public demonstration. It is lawful to slaughter livestock at traditional markets or cook live fish at seafood restaurants, because the acts are not done in public to attract crowds of spectators.

lost? ... don't ask at 7-Eleven

2010-04-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the hills
this time in northern Miaoli County (苗栗縣), in Nanzhuang Township (南庄鄉) south of Shitoushan (獅頭山)
lovely area, and to be honest, I'm not lost
but if i were, here is the map provided by 7-Eleven
and i couldn't figure out where the heck i was and then i realized that east is to the top (west bottom, north left, south right)
which is fair enough, but kind of goes against convention
so they might want to make it clear

this is a close-up of the compass

which doesn't actually say north is to the top

but

well, heck it does

Nanzhuang and Shitoushan are lovely, by the way, well worth a visit

(in summer when it's not raining)

photo of the day

2010-04-07T06:36:00.000-07:00

rows of unwanted gods, hundreds of them

in long sheds by the road in Hsinchu

fish of the day

2010-04-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

fish weather vane Zhudong (竹東), Hsinchu

and here's what someone thought of me taking the pic:

2010-04-05T08:12:00.003-07:00

today's China Post editorial:

For our global health make Mondays meat-free

Meat was very much in the news last week.

First, the chairman of the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy called on citizens to eat less meat. Citing Council of Agriculture statistics, Eugene Chien told the Council for Economic Planning and Development that, in consuming an average of 77.1 kilograms of meat each year--more than 200g per day--the Taiwanese ate the most meat in East Asia. This is 27 percent more than that eaten in China, almost double that eaten by Japanese and Koreans, and very similar to the figures for Germany and the United States.

This bad for our health: Taiwan's average life expectancy has risen to around 78.6 years, similar to that of Germans and Americans, but is still far behind the 82.6 of Japanese. Moreover, since producing one kilogram of beef causes emissions of 36 kilograms of carbon dioxide as well as more than 100 other air pollutants, Chien said, it is bad for the planet too.

A 2006 report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization surprised many people with its findings that animal food production was responsible for 18 percent of climate-change emissions, more than those of all forms of transportation combined. It is now thought even that figure was too low, and that production of meat, milk, eggs, cheese and so forth contributes as much as half the effects of all such emissions, largely because the methane and nitrous oxide produced are far more potent global-warming gases than carbon dioxide.

It was less of a surprise, therefore, when Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel-prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, called on people around the world to eat less meat. He described becoming vegetarian as the single most significant action an individual person can take to reduce carbon emissions.

While some meat-eaters responded directly to this challenge, others felt it was too great a cultural leap. As a first step towards this goal, therefore, some advocate eating no meat one or two days a week. In Taiwan, this was taken up by, among others, the Meatless Mondays movement.

Part of an international campaign initiated in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, this group admits that cutting meat consumption by 15 percent would only be a first step. It targets therefore Mondays for abstention since this is typically the first day of the working week and psychologically acts as a new start. It hopes that the vegetarian habit will thus encroach further into people's lives.

The second meat-related report in these pages last week came from Taiwan's own Nobel laureate, chemist Lee Yuan-tseh. The former president of Academia Sinica said that global warming would be much more serious than scientists previously thought, and that Taiwanese people needed to cut their per-capita carbon emissions from the current 12 tons per year to just three.

This, he said, would take more than a few slogans, turning off the lights for one hour, or cutting meat consumption. In fact, Lee claimed, “We will have to learn to live the simple lives of our ancestors.” Without such efforts, he said, Taiwanese will be unable to face the next generation.

Be that as it may, a third report, reproduced from a scientific publication, presented more reasons for giving up meat. The craving for junk-food that can drive some people to overeat operates through the same molecular pathways that cause addiction to drugs, researchers found. As the body became less sensitive to the “feel-good” brain chemical dopamine, there was a progressive worsening of the reward response, and more frequent stimulation was needed, they said. Hence the slippery slope from casual drug use to addiction and the similar transition from over-eating to compulsive indulgence.

As Meatless Mondays campaigners point out, the case against meat, and not just fast food, is convincing. Taiwanese people's 200-plus grams of meat is almost half more than the recommended daily maximum, and meat typically contains more saturated fats than plant foods. These saturated fats are responsible for numerous preventable illnesses, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancers. Consumption of red and processed meats is particularly correlated to lower life expectancy. This is an issue which affects everybody, since treating these chronic illnesses costs the Bureau of Health Insurance billions of dollars a year. Consequently, some more radical campaigners are demanding a tax on meat.

Finally, since meat production requires around 10 times more water than equivalent quantities of soy and around 20 times as much fossil-fuel energy per calorie of protein produced, with the earth's finite water and energy resources coming under increasingly bitter dispute, these are concerns that will not go away.

So, whether one agrees with Pachauri that eating less meat might save the planet, or with Lee that we need to head back toward the Stone Age, perhaps a meatless Monday would be a good start. Perhaps today is that Monday.

another step towards "Jia Ba Bwey" (2)

2010-04-04T18:19:00.001-07:00

people queuing for onion pancakes in Sanxing (三星), Yilan County

fish of the day

2010-04-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

fish-shaped alcohol bottle, Yilan distillery

photo of the day

2010-04-04T18:12:00.001-07:00

tea mural (and woman peeling eggs), Yulan (玉蘭) community, Yilan County