taiwan tiger 台灣的老虎

Instant Karma!

In a very satisfying piece of business today, someone out there learned about The Payback.  My girlfriend and I were standing by our scooters waiting to start them up.  An older man, about 60, was talking on the public phone nearby.  After he finished, he picked up two bottles from his scooter basket and just threw them on the ground.  Argh.  Damn litterbug.  So as he tried to back his scooter past me, I said (in Chinese) "Sir, your garbage!  Don't forget your garbage!"  He glared at me and said nothing.  For about 5 rather long seconds.  Then he continued to walk his scooter backwards past me.  (He could have gone forward, yet decided to go back--through me.)  Being rather cramped quarters, his mirror was hiitting me and he couldn't move.  Yet I refused to move an inch.  Not blocking his path, but not making it easy.  My girlfriend then reiterated to him that "You can't throw out your garbage like that!"  After he managed to squeeze past us--never saying a word--his scooter died.  Yes!  So he got off it and began to kick-start it to get it going.  And kicked and kicked and kicked til he was tired and had to rest.  He was still trying to kick-start it as I waved a pleasant and smarmy goodbye.  Instant karma--it's a bitch!

The Incomparable Grace Chang

I first heard Grace Chang's (葛蘭) songs as they were featured in Tsai Ming-liang's film "The Hole."  I somehow remembered her name incorrectly as Grace Chao, and unsuccessfully searched for her music and films for a long time.  Now, by a most happy coincidence, I have stumbled across Grace Chang's movies in my local store, and am spending a lot of time watching early 1960s Hong Kong musicals.  these Cathay Studies films feature great songs, decent plots, and a certain 60s appeal.   Nothing quite like a qi pao (traditional Chinese dress), a cocktail, and a beehive hairdo.  Certainly those of you who love Wang Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love" will recognize these elements as fundamental to setting the feeling of that film, too. 

I went to the video store today and picked up a few more titles, priced reasonably at about US$6.  I had to wade through a queue of 14-year-olds waiting for autographs from S.H.E. (I think), but it was worth it. 

View of Kaohsiung harbor 高雄港

Kaohsiung essentially has one large harbor with a northern and southern section.  Flying in to the airport, this is the view of the northern half.  The mountain is Wan Shou Shan, or Longevity Mountain.  Don't bother with the English, though, as no one knows it.  Over that mountain is 中山大學 National Sun Yat-sen University.  The entrance to the harbor is to the left of that mountain, but is not entirely visible in this photo.  On the left is ChiJin island, with ferry service across the waterway to the ferry terminal in front of the mountain.  The land in the center of the two waterways is the main part of the northern harbor, the Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone.  The southern harbor of Xiao Gang 小港 is off to the right of the photo, closer to the airport. Basically, what you can see here is only about half or one third of the whole harbor.

Wonderful weekend in Kin Men

After a generally crappy week, we took off for a weekend in Kin Men.  This Taiwanese island is formerly known as Quemoy, and you can see just how tucked under China it is from this 1955 illustration (from US News, April 15, 1955).  All those army men and cannons facing Formosa (Taiwan) are practically sitting on Quemoy or Kinmen or Jin Men 金門.  There's quite an interesting history of the conflict between the Kuo Min Dang and People's Republic of China that got played out in Kinmen.  In August of 1958, the P.R.C. began a barrage of bombs on Kinmen that lasted 44 days and delivered some 400,000 artillery shells here.  After a period, however, the shelling returned in more of a propaganda role.  Communist China and The Republic of China (Taiwan) shelled each other on alternate days, the shells containing not bombs, but leaflets.  The Communist China advertising usually featured happily reunified families under Mao.  Needless to say, there was--and still is--a heavy military presence there, though less than in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  In the past, families cried when their sons were stationed at Kinmen or Matsu.  It was dangerous indeed.  Frogmen from the P.R.C. would slip in at night and behead unwitting Taiwanese guards.  During the day, bombs would fall continually. 

Surprisingly, there are many beautiful houses of Fukkien style there, completely undamaged.  The bombing really isn't evident, whereas the beautiful architecture and clear skies are easy to find.   We had a wonderful trip, off to a slow start due to the fact that I fell asleep without setting my alarm and woke up late.  But Taiwan being Taiwan, we just took the next flight off the waiting list.  (In a odd reversal of this, F. got the wrong time for our return flight, and we would have missed it had I not discovered her error.   So we're even.)  Getting there on Friday morning, we rented a scooter for NT$400/day and tooled around the island, just doing whatever we wanted.  I really liked the pace and architecture of the island, which is similar to Penghu's.  While Penghu has few trees, however, Kinmen has forests and a few small mountains.  I took lots of pictures, which can all be found in this new photo album. 

Another typhoon is headed our way again tonight.  The last two have been relatively minor ones, but we will see what this one brings.

One Day in Taipei

Tomorrow I make a short jaunt up to Taipei on business, although the "business" is quite vague.  As often happens in Taiwan, someone who has made a lot of money in business--a self-made man, if you will--starts a college.  Next comes the business of self-promotion.  Somewhere on the campus of the college is a museum of the business accomplishments of the self-made tycoon that allowed for the building of such a fine campus and a school with rigorous ideals.  Maybe there is even a book that details the rise of said tycoon.  And maybe it all needs translation into English.   Who knows at this point?  At any event, it's a little not-so-quick cash and a chance to wear a suit. 

Another rainy weekend

A good day to sit inside and watch it rain...

Links to Other Interesting Reading

The heavy rain pummelling Taiwan last weekend was just so soothing.  I slept late.  I stared at the puddles on the ground for a while.  I was under the misapprehension that I could fiddle around on the web rather than do my work.  Which is why I found a few interesting articles such as these.   

Augieland discusses, intelligently and passionately, the connection between FoodTV and the American diet.  And the erosion of both.  Augieland notes:

What this channel used to offer was a glimpse into the method of thinking of good chefs. By watching them work and listening to their thought processes you were learning to think like the chefs rather then mimic them. When you worked in your own kitchen, what you had picked up was a technique rather then a recipe. Not only has all this been lost, they have gone backwards; they now have food talking-heads with no comprehension of process looking for an easy way out of the chore of cooking.

There are a number of good thoughts packed into the article, which is delicious reading for those whose idea of a good Saturday is getting inspiration from 4 hours of morning FoodTV and cooking the hell out of it at night.

Another site proposes a National Novel Writing Month.   A few years ago, I took part in a Novel Writing Contest over one weekend, put on by Stone Press in Vancouver, so this seems a little patsy.  But looking at the...uh...novella that I wrote over the course of 72 hours, I can't say a month wouldn't have done it more justice.  Their limit for a "novel" is only 50,000 words, so it is quite a feasable goal.  Blue Spruce, the novella I wrote in a weekend, was only 13,513, so that gives me plenty of room for improvement.  The only problem I have with the website is that they use the word novel as a verb.  Are you still "noveling"?  Can I trust anything led by such liberal grammarians?

Speaking of grammarians and linguists, the unabashed Linguist features lots of excellent relationship, love and sex advice.  Mostly sex advice.  Particularly inspiring was the Advice for Young Lovers, a realistic look at the skills/risks necessary to have a rewarding love life.  There is plenty of other instructional advice that makes for interesting reading, if you are into that stuff.

Now that's illegal parking!

So these photographs speak volumes for a few reasons.  I should mention that every time I walk by this building near my house, it looks about like this, with a car parked, sprawling over many spaces designated for scooters.  In the back of the building, the same thing occurs.  While this is some pretty standard illegal parking, the thing about it is...this is at the Police Station.  Yes, that's right.  These are the cars belonging to those who enforce the parking rules. 

Girls on my scooter seat

The amount of paper used in adversting here is extraordinary.  Every day, my mailbox is full of advertisements for new housing developments featuring happy smiing people relaxing in what look like nearly identical new housing developements and pizza delivery adverts featuring...pizza.  Some of it is relatively normal, but others look creepy--the pizza with a hot dog rolled up in the crust, for example. 

Another unique form of advertising--and I have yet to capture this on film--is when a scooter carrying two people drives slowly along the side of the street.  The job of the person on the back of the scooter is to slide something the size of a business card in between the window and the seal of the driver's side window.  As the scooter is moving.  This is done by slapping the card on the window at just the right time as the scooter moves past.  Car after car after car. Most of the time it works pretty well, but an emormous amount of the cards just end up littering the street.

Here's another form of advertising that produces only slightly less waste.  The little stickies that you find decorating your scooter are usually for prostitutes.  Maybe some are for loan sharks, but i think most just list a sexy girl's name and a phone number.  This one says mysteriously, 學生工作室.  Student workshop?  Working student virgin? (from 室女, unmarried girl, virgin).  Student "working girl"?  Housing for either a student or a worker?  Help would be appreciated!

Exam time

A few pictures celebrating the end of the school year.  During exams, all students must put their bags out in the hall.  Some classes have a very orderly and neat area, with identical bags.  Other classes are messier, with papers strewn on top, but all in all it's an interesting image.

There are a few dogs that wander around the campus.  In true Taiwanese tradition, they are what are sometimes called community dogs.  That is, they get taken care of by people in the community, none of whom "own" the dogs.  That is one thing that seems so much more logical here--letting strays be stray.  In the U.S., stray dogs are problems because they do things like pull garbage out of cans and spread it all over.  Because they are hungry.  Taiwan combats this by...feeding them.  Wow.  Simple, really.  Certainly it's not all happy news, but I think most incidents of animal abuse are by their owners rather than strays.  (I'm not really sure about the somewhat rare instances of 香肉 or dog meat, but I would suspect that strays do in fact make up the small market for dog meat.) Combined with Animal Control's policy of CNR--Catch, Neuter, Release--the community taking care of stray animals seems like a more humane way to deal with the problem rather than starving them and putting them down.  What was it William Blake said? “A dog starved at his master's gate, Predicts the ruin of the state.”

Anyway, it's getting pretty hot here, and the community dogs on our campus decided to beat the heat by hanging out at the entrance to the girl's bathroom.   No one really seems to mind them.  Since they get fed, they don't cause any trouble.  Hmmm.  Makes sense.  They aren't too dumb either--I sometimes see them hanging out in my deputy chair's nicely air-conditioned office.