My Life as Adoga

The Mind that Trade Made

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 May 2026 10:15:00 +0000

A good friend of mine recently shared with me a painting he had made, a composite of several images that intrigued me and led me to thinking about the way Taiwanese have come to develop an identity of themselves, both individually and at the national communal level, that is based on International Trade.

Through these contemplations I achieved yet another degree of nuance in my understanding of the psychic ecology of Taiwan, this wonderful land that has welcomed me as a naturalized citizen. It was a delight to be so impacted by an artwork and to see that our artists are among the most important members of our community, for they have the ability to see and share with us those parts of the human experience that we might otherwise never have taken the time to think about.

My contemplations divided into two directions, one of which headed directly into the realm of Speculative Fiction (available at the Hu Reads Horror blog). The other direction took me here, to a very personal dive into how Taiwanese identity is shaped by larger forces outside of the individual.

The artwork (shared here) features an amalgam of images, though the most prominent of these at the center of the work are suggestions of data computation and storage: from the earliest floppy drives to modern flash drives. Also dominating the center of the photo is a head being submerged by the pressure wave of an approaching container vessel.

Also depicted, at the top of the frame, are bags that suggest sacks of foodstuffs like rice, beans, or potatoes, and beneath these is a shelf with items that look like apartment buildings but which could just as easily be boxed goods for sale. The square structures on the right of the picture are unquestionably city buildings.

Beneath the grocery bags or sacks is a bottle (as would be used for alcohol or rice wine), to the left of which are yams or other tubers. At the extreme left of the picture is a cabinet with what might be receipts or notes pinned to its inner wall. At the picture’s bottom are three desk drawers, within which are what seem to be logs that are forming into books or ledgers, audio speakers, what seems to be a straight-line ruler and what is either a calligraphy brush or a pen — maybe a chopstick. At the lower right of the drawing is another drawing. The above-mentioned computer storage devices — the old floppy hard drives and current flash drive — are depicted in midair, as if they are in the process of tumbling down.

The data storage devices, the head, and the ship draw the viewer’s focus in a bottom-upward sweep, though it is the disembodied head that demands the most attention. Curiously and confusingly, the bow of the cargo ship is drawn as if it has a face, somewhat in the style of a Jack-O-Lantern or the now-iconic Guy Fawkes masks from “V for Vendetta.”

Without offering any critical opinion of the artwork itself, I want to make note of how this black-and-white oil painting sent my mind spiraling into contemplations of contemporary Taiwan and the idea of “islandness” as an identity. More specifically, the artwork encouraged me to see Taiwan as supporting and expanding the notion of an “island mentality” touted by social scientists across a diversity of academic disciplines, from psychologists to economists.

Put simply, the “island mentality” argument states that people born and raised on an island territory develop a psychological state of mind that is peculiar to them and different from the psychic identities of non-islanders.

Among the standard assumptions about the islander psychology is that the reality of geographical isolation encourages in people the characteristics of independence or self-reliance (upon the individual and the community) and a stronger sense of “tradition” or “inheritance.”

Added to this is the idea that living on an island naturally encourages psychic qualities such as innovativeness and resourcefulness.

Do these apply to Taiwanese?

Any answer I give would mean taking a dive into contemplation, conversation, and solid research — none of which is available to me at this moment.

However, I do believe quite firmly that Taiwan goes unrecognized in the world as a site of technological, cultural, and artistic innovation. And given the current economic environment and demographic changes being wrought upon Taiwan’s younger generation, I can say with confidence that Taiwanese are resourceful.

My focus here is upon the relationship between island geography and international trade, and how these combine to influence self-identification.

When You Look at Me, I See Myself …
Throughout its history, Taiwan has been a site of exploitation by outside forces. Perhaps the only true islanders were the prehistoric Austronesian inhabitants, the ancestors of today’s indigenous tribal people. The aborigines were later thrown into competition with the settler colonists of Hakka and Hoklo descent who started arriving as farmers in the 1600s. These agriculturalists from the impoverished regions of the Chinese mainland maintained a notion of themselves as being “from China,” but through intermarriage with indigenous communities and the maintaining of farmland for ongoing generations, they came to identify with the island as their home.

My curiosity about “trade and identity” is focused on the changes brought to the island psyche by the “traders” who imposed themselves upon Taiwan as colonizers, but never actually “settled.” They used their military strength to exploit the island’s rich natural resources, quite literally using Taiwan as a golden goose. For the Europeans and Japanese colonists, and to some degree the pirates of the fallen Ming Empire, Taiwan was little more than a source of animal skins, timber, coal, and gold. With a longer-term mindset, the Japanese colonizers helped develop Taiwan’s agricultural output, especially the sugar and rice industries. But even so, for the Japanese the island was a property to be exploited, not adopted.

Throughout the three centuries of Taiwan’s colonized existence, what was at the heart of the “island character” of Taiwanese? Again, I would not know without doing a great deal of study, the kind of scholarly investigation that I am far from able to do. And yet I would feel comfortable saying that the Taiwanese of those centuries identified themselves with the land, both the local home community and the islandwide area bordered by salt waters.

I can speak with greater confidence about the “island identity” of today’s Taiwanese, and how it seems to differ from so many other historical examples of “islandness.”

What is that difference?

Global realpolitik forces have imposed upon contemporary Taiwanese the need for a dual self-identification. The first of these may be somewhat similar to what W.E.B. Du Bois called “double consciousness,” the psychic sense of identifying oneself as part of but not part of a national identity. For Taiwan, this means maintaining an awareness of and respecting ancestral connections to China, while also refusing to directly identify as part of the modern nation state that is the People’s Republic of China.

This double consciousness is at this very moment playing out as political drama.

The other aspect of Taiwan’s contemporary “island identity” is more unique, and it is this that comes to mind as I ponder my friend’s work of art.

Taiwanese — whether by choice or by force, I can’t say — identify themselves with the one thing that the industrial world needs the most beside fossil fuels: the silicon chip.

Through the innovation and ingenuity of Taiwan’s TSMC, the island is now a supplier of some 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors, but is a source of more than 90 percent of the most valuable kinds of silicon chips.

This has led to the idea that Taiwan is protected by a “silicon shield” from the martial ambitions of the Communist Party leadership in Beijing who understand that colonizing Taiwan would not only conclude the feud that started when the fascist Nationalist government fled to the island in 1949, but give China a potential chokehold over the shipping lanes so vital to all of Asia and the Pacific.

A 2023 public survey released by Academia Sinica found that fewer than 10 percent of those polled in Taiwan expressed “trust” in Beijing’s leaders, with the great majority feeling quite the opposite about the promises made by the superpower next door.

The same survey saw a decrease in trust for the United States’ leadership, as well. (That lack of faith could only have worsened once the second Trump Administration kicked in and started threatening its ally Taiwan with high tariffs.)

Both of these findings suggest an islander mindset dominated by self-reliance and determination.

Let me re-shift the focus to the “silicon shield.”

Perhaps unlike any other island state’s people, Taiwan citizens identify themselves with the economy’s most important export product.

This means they no longer identify with “the land” as their agricultural forebears did, nor with some larger cultural traits. Instead, Taiwanese think of themselves as belonging to Taiwan, and Taiwan as the world’s sole source of the high-quality semiconductors that keep computers and smart phones functioning.

Here is where the artwork seems to be so spot-on in its depiction of a head (mind or consciousness) being in the wash of a grinning cargo ship (the great symbol of global trade). The head is itself laid upon a desk overflowing with “information,” as represented by the audio speakers and the books, but more dramatically portrayed by the mid-air icons of data storage (the flash drive and old-fashioned floppy disks).

Notably, almost falling from the frame, is a corner of a painting of a pastoral scene, a suggestion of tree, cliff, and cloud.

The overall impression I glean from this is our psychic relationship with “trade.” Not very long ago we viewed groceries as essential for our biological survival. Local grocers and traditional wet markets provided the staples we needed to stock our pantries and maintain bodily health.

Perhaps three or four decades earlier Taiwanese experienced the first twinges of self-identifying with the national economy’s primary export product, which in the 1970s was cheaply produced textiles and electronic goods. This was the beginning of the “Taiwan miracle economy,” when the island was one of Asia’s four important “tigers.”

It says a great deal about the Taiwanese character, its “islandness,” that the strongest driver toward this economic shift into export overdrive was brought about through the production capabilities of small and medium-sized private enterprises. Indeed, the islander’s development of a healthy degree of resourcefulness (as well as inherited cultural traditions such as respect for the extended family, education, ambition, and frugality) led to the development of a lively system of subcontracting assembly tasks to “living room factories.”

A great deal of the small tech products for consumer markets was quite literally assembled in the living rooms of family homes, where multiple generations of a family — often women — spent their days putting together components that were delivered and picked up by supplier. Author Ping-Chun Hsiung called this the “satellite factory system.”

From morning to evening, family members would sit at home snapping together components of cheap plastic toys, or cables and jacks. These homes would be easily identified by the number of cardboard boxes that built up outside the front door every day until the supplier would send a pickup truck (the iconic “little blue truck”) to pick up the merchandise.

I recall seeing one of the last of these living room factories about 15 years ago in a small alley somewhere being the Kunyang MRT station in the Nankang District of Taipei City. It filled me with a strong sense of nostalgia for what used to be a very common site.

Perhaps this was when Taiwanese first started to associate their self-identities with “industry,” especially given the deep connection between “home” and “production.” That sociopsychological closeness would energize the later “Made in Taiwan” movement that was designed to invest a stronger degree of pride in the island’s economy.

As established by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the “MIT” campaign was part of a drive to improve production quality through a certification system, with the overall goal being to raise the international image of Taiwan as more than a maker of plastic toys and dinky electronics. With this encouragement, Taiwanese companies transitioned away from being the cheap overseas maker of goods for Western companies, and towards original product design. (China became the place where Taiwanese developers shifted the burden of manufacturing.)

The push has certainly encouraged the rise of Taiwan’s computer production market, a move that prepared the soil in which the island’s semiconductor culture would flourish.

Fascinatingly, an online platform dedicated to science fiction has recently posted an informative essay on the “Made in Taiwan” movement. The author of the essay, Warren Boutin, correctly points out that label has become “a subtle but powerful statement of distinct identity and economic independence. It represents a refusal to be subsumed or overshadowed.”

Boutin further identifies a quality of “islandness” in Taiwan’s national character: “From natural disasters to political challenges, the Taiwanese people have consistently demonstrated their ability to adapt, innovate, and overcome obstacles. The ‘Made in Taiwan’ label is a testament to this resilience, embodying the spirit of hard work, determination, and perseverance.”

He hit the nail on the head, though we can only hope that nail was made in Taiwan.

Handicapping the Home Team?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 06:17:00 +0000

Every global competition is a big deal for Taiwan, an island democracy forever facing existential crises. And so it was that Taiwan’s ability to put forward a national team for the 2026 World Baseball Classic meant more than just playing a game.

The tournament was, for Taiwan, bigger than merely winning and losing. Each runner on Taiwan’s national team who made his way to homebase was playing against a global political order that would rather see the island democracy and its 23 million people vanish into irrelevance. Just being on the field is already a achievement, but making a good showing while up at bat is an astounding success.

On such an uneven field it might seem easier to leave the game and let the ball fall where it will, accepting whatever the umpire of empire decides. But that’s not playing to win, and if the history of baseball says anything, Taiwan has always been in the game to win.

Sure, some could scoff that this is “reading too much” into what is for all the nations that sent teams into the baseball tournament just an exaggerated pre-season exhibition event aimed at rousing the passions of spectators back home. But, they’d be wrong.

An herbivore within ecology of carnivorous political powers, Taiwan is a democratic mouse within a world that seems to be growing increasingly populated with anti-democratic authoritarian, totalitarian, and oligarchic cats.

In this landscape Taiwan’s people struggle to survive and maybe even stay one step ahead of the predations directed at them by forces far beyond their control. One of the ways they can do that is through international sports tournaments, of which the World Baseball Classic is among the most challenging of global competitions.

Taiwan put forward a national team to compete in this year’s games, and though they performed well on the field, they did not make it beyond the opening level of the multilevel competition. But these players achieved a much greater success merely by being there, being recognized, and being credited as worthy opponents within the sport of baseball.

They brought visibility to Taiwan, a state that many have mourned as an “invisible” nation due in large part to the relentless efforts of “gray zone” strategists whose goal is to maintain the shroud of invisibility. The larger game plan may be to make Taiwan seem irrelevant to the majority of voters in powerful nations where public opinion affects the foreign policy decisions of their leaders.

Given the larger importance of Taiwan’s participation in the World Baseball Classic tournament, it is strange to discover that the national team actually drew some meanspirited feedback from anonymous online commentators. There was even a short-lived scandal when one person suggested online that inside information about each of Taiwan’s players had been sold to a competitor team, and that may have helped them win a match over “Chinese Taipei.”

The idea that anyone in Taiwan would want to go online and “trash talk” their own national team is a bit astounding, especially considering the importance of the island democracy maintaining a positive global profile. How can shooting yourself in the foot help you across the finish line?

(It is important to note that I never actually saw any of the malicious and slanderous words thrown at Team Taiwan, and was inspired to write this only after a friend spoke to me of his own disappointment that the national team was getting insulted by some among Taiwan’s active netizens.)

Trolling the home team feels like an insult to the people whose ancestors experienced centuries of colonization, political oppression, and misfortune only to become a decent, democratic land where diversity and community walked hand-in-hand.

Community and Resistance have long been the dominant values associated with baseball throughout the sport’s history in Taiwan. Certainly, in its current incarnation professional baseball in displays the ideals of community and the importance of diversity within unity.

Much of the negativity apparently arose when Team Taiwan lost in its match against Australia and won against the Czech team. Turning the focus inward, I confess to having the same sort of bewilderment that Taiwan’s strong lineup could lose to a team from a nation where baseball is not the national pastime, and how a massive win against a team from a European nation that doesn’t even have a professional league could be celebrated without irony.

Here is alink to a longer blog post looking at some of the reasons why this way of thinking waswrong. The blog post includes other contemplations on the social and cultural importance of Taiwan’s participation in the World Baseball Classic 2026 tournament.

Kneedful Things

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:10:00 +0000

The first and second rules of Fight Club ought to be applied to having knee replacement surgery:

“You DO NOT talk about knee replacement surgery. With anybody.”

Failure to follow the rules will result in confusion.

Dangerous, tremendous confusion.

That is especially true if you are an American expat living in Taiwan with contacts in both nations who have undergone the surgical procedure and are eager to talk about it. Add to that the ubiquity of YouTube videos from therapists and patients alike, and you have a child’s recipe for muddle pies.

You see …

The adventure that is a full knee replacement begins many years before the surgery itself. It starts with the grudging admission that a knee, or both knees, have completely lost their youthful vigor. I’m talking about that time when walking a mere 4,000 steps — what was once a friendly half-hour stroll — becomes a two-hour trudge through discomfort. The feet get blamed, and they step forward to point a finger — er, a toe — at the shoes. The shoes blame the socks, and they in turn are unraveled by the indignities of impugnment.

When foot massages, custom-made shoes, and high-quality socks fail to up the pace, everybody blames the “bad” back. A local hospital bone doctor looks at the X-rays and pounces upon the favored “lose weight” mantra. Om. My. God.

Then comes the day when one of those expensive full-body checkups gives you the suggestion that your knees, both of them, are truly fucked. A doctor you trust in a hospital you trust passes you along to an orthopedic surgeon who turns out to be greatly admired by patients and medical professionals alike. He orders another set of X-rays and confirms: Yes, your knees are sincerely fucked, forever and ever, Amen. Then he pulls out his New Year’s Eve Party regalia and exclaims: “Out with the old, in with the new!”

As the world’s most well-feathered chicken, you say thanks and refuse to commit. You’ve already been forced into operating rooms by run-ins with cancers, and none of these surgery experiences has been at all pleasant.

So, you stumble and sometimes tumble face-first into another year. You walk. Slowly. You even go to Tokyo, twice, managing some 14,000 steps daily upon blistered, bloodied feet. And so it goes.

Then you start talking to others.

You tell another doctor you’re considering knee replacement surgery. “That’s great!” he says. “My mother-in-law had it done three times!” He sees the look of confusion on your face and rushes to explain: “She’s very active.”

You tell your expat friend who’s had two surgeries.

You tell your best friend in Taiwan whose mother in the island’s rice-growing region knows plenty of old women who replaced their knees through surgeries.

You tell your brother “back home” who over the course of three months has undergone two knee replacement surgeries.

You tell those Facebook friends you trust the most, and they speak of their own family members who stood taller after knee replacement surgeries.

Everybody says: Do it!

Rule One and Two. Remember?

Silence is Golden?

The consensus on knee replacement surgery is that the procedure can only end well.

(The only exception being a British neighbor in Taipei who developed a post-surgical bone infection that his doctor said was incurable — “Bad Luck, Mate — but which he claims to have self-cured through a four-hour daily regimen of walking his dog outdoors. …A year later he would be gone, a victim of pancreatic cancer. The dog lives on. What a fucking travesty of misfortune.)

Rule One and Two kick in when you get to the recovery stage. That’s exactly when you should talk to nobody but your surgeon and the hospital’s physical therapist.

You see, post-operative recovery and therapy experiences seem to differ for everyone. Asking others about their post-surgical recoveries and therapeutic methods will only sow confusion into your mind during the weeks that follow the removal of your stitches. That’s especially true if your contacts are from different backgrounds, ages, and nations. You’re not really going to know what to expect. It’s better that you expect the unknowing.

The confusion will be … unhelpful.

For me the confusion actually kicked in a month or so before surgery. My brother in the United States had both knees replaced, and he couldn’t stop singing the praises of a mechanical device that wrapped around his knee and delivered a steady flow of cooling ice water. You see, ice packing is still the most effective aid for reducing post-surgical inflammation, the inevitable but unhelpful swelling that hampers healing and recovery.

The device is quite affordable when purchased in the United States, but the price pretty much triples on the local Taiwan market. Naturally, I tried to buy it from the United States. What I didn’t know is that this simple therapeutic machine is listed as a “medical device” in Taiwan, and can only be imported if you have a valid certificate to do so from the Ministry of Health. Having one shipment turned away and trapped in Customs with no explanation why, I naturally tried a second time. On that second go-around, however, I used a better shipping company, and they explained the snafu. I was able to give them authority to deal with Customs and have the package returned to the United States, enabling me to get a refund on the product (but not the shipping charges). God Bless Transparency. Lesson learned: don’t use the “free shipping” option and swallow the extra expense of hiring the shipping agent yourself. You won’t regret it.

In the end, using old-fashioned ice packs was good enough for my recovery. But the cold water machine would have been really cool. Pun intended.

Continuing on in the spirit of wickedness, let me share my own experience of recovery and therapy after having a full-knee replacement using a combination of metal and plastic inserts.

The recovery actually began three months before the surgery, when the hospital phoned to confirm the surgery date had been set for mid-October, as per my request. I had hoped for seasonal weather that would be cooler and less-conducive to a sweaty leg, a soppy bandage, and the discomfort of swinging between a room that is either too hot or too cold. In this choice, I was right.

The three-month head start also allowed me to strengthen my leg through a series of simple, but sometimes challenging, exercises recommended by a therapist at the hospital. Another doctor at the hospital also met me, and suggested I “lose at least 3 kg” and ride the stationary exercise bike about 20 minutes per day. I ended up doing about 40 minutes each day, and losing about 6 kg through the combination of exercise (daily walking plus the bike) and drastically cutting back on white rice consumption.

The Experience

My surgery took place in the early morning. Waking through the amnesia afterward was difficult. Somehow I heard the recovery room nurse trying to rouse me from my sleep, but it felt like a dream and I fought against waking. I recall thinking, “I don’t want to wake up.” That was weird.

Having a nurse’s aid in the hospital from surgery to release was required, and the woman chosen to care for me demonstrated a “strong” character. Strong as in forceful, easily infuriated, and short on patience. She was perfect for an indecisive wuss like me.

There is always a degree of indignity associated with helplessness, and under doctor’s orders I was not allowed to leave the bed in the remainder of the day following the operation. Unlike previous surgeries, however, I was not as weak as a newborn kitten. Nor was I undone by pain, as an insert allowed the injection of a painkiller directly into the knee twice a day in addition to the painkiller dosed into me through the IV line in my arm.

In my journal I wrote of that post-op afternoon: “The doctor came and showed me the ‘before’ and ‘after’ X rays of my knee, and only through the comparison did I finally understand just how amazing it was that I could walk as much as I did over the previous year.”

Over the course of that afternoon separate nurses and a doctor came in, each with advice on how to recover more swiftly. Unfortunately, some confusion existed, and that threatened my working relationship with my private nurse’s aide.

You see, the hospital had given me a massage device to encourage blood flow in the leg. This device is potentially life-saving, as I’ll explain later.

The problem arose when someone suggested I wear this mechanical device overnight.

This therapeutic medical device seemed to be some sort of perverse combination between a Scottish bagpipe and an Alien facehugger. It wrapped around my leg and hissed air into successive bags with enough compression to push the blood flow through the entire limb, working in stages as if three different blood pressure devices had been set off one after the other.

On top of this I told my nurse’s aide to wrap the blue ice packs that are important for the reduction of swelling. The private aide said these two items together, overnight, would be a bad idea.

She was right.

What I didn’t know is that every nurse’s aide is required to quit the patient if they are unable to achieve a good overnight sleep for two consecutive days. My aide got very little sleep that first night, and it was entirely my fault.

My eventual discomfort in having both the squeezing massage device and the heavy ice packs wrapped around my leg led to me waking her up so she could help me unwrap all that stuff from me. At 3am I woke her again because, well, I’d had a bit of an accident when using the plastic urinal jar. My cup overfloweth, if you know what I mean.

Indignity.

My aide achieved a special degree of grumpiness the next day, and reveled in saying, “I told you so.” Nothing infuriates me quite as much as, “I told you so.” She managed to say it many times.

This wasn’t going to be a good day.

My surgeon visited again in the morning, and found me seated, enjoying my breakfast. He told me I could aim for a total of two hours, broken up into manageable segments throughout the day. Sitting up is actually good for the digestive tract, he said.

He also said I should begin using the knee-bending machine, the “CPM” or “Continuous Passive Motion” device. This device could also be rented for home use after discharge from the hospital, but medical research suggested that it was relatively unhelpful in achieving the degree of motion or flexibility recommended by doctors. To get a full range of movement in my leg, I would have to rely upon old-fashioned “hands on” physical therapy.

For the days of hospitalization, however, the CPM was perfect in loosening the knee. It could flex the leg to at least 110 degrees, and did so very slowly. The aide said that on the first day, most patients could handle 90 degrees. Anyway, it wasn’t a terrible experience and I had to do it four times each day, with ice packing for a half hour before and after each session.

My notes in the journal that morning: “Exhausted and lonely.” I was feeling sorry for myself, even though physically everything was going well. And then, that first afternoon after surgery, the painkiller being fed into my arm was stopped. A slight tug of discomfort settled in. The doctor later confirmed that the second day after surgery would likely be the most uncomfortable for me. Who ever imagined I’d miss the IV drip?

That morning, and again in the afternoon, my aide took me for a stroll in the hallway. I wanted to do more, but she wisely held me back. I was too ambitious, a common error among patients. While we were strolling a physical therapist came along, and she led me back into the room to teach me the exercises I should perform four times every day. Here again I was glad I had delayed the surgery for so long, as the exercises she asked me to perform were the same I’d been practicing daily over the previous three months to strengthen my muscles (while also losing weight).

That evening, I obeyed my nurse’s aide and slept without the squeegee device or the ice packs wrapped around my knee. She in turn allowed me to keep two urinal jars next to the bed, and I promised to stop sipping water after 9pm. Our compact worked, and she got a good night’s sleep.

On the second day after the operation, my surgeon came and found me walking. I asked him why everyone was worried about deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and he said that coagulant drugs had been administered during the surgery to make the operation less messy. On top of that, the wound was very close to a major artery. This explained the massage device and the DVT Compression socks on each leg, as well as the knee-bend exercises I should be doing throughout the day.

I learned something.

Three days after surgery the doctor said I could be discharged the next morning. The DVT sock was removed from my non-surgical leg.

The therapist arrived to show me how to climb stairs. If this had been a test, I would’ve aced it. You see, grabbing the banister and hauling myself up using only my “good” leg was my normal way of ascension and descension for a couple of years already. Yeah, my “bad” leg was really that bad.

From the hospital I went straight into a hotel.

Mistake.

My home is almost entirely stairs. When I’d had a major surgery a few years earlier, I was not allowed to climb stair for at least a week, so upon my discharge from the hospital I went to a decent hotel near my home. A friend arranged for me to have three meals delivered daily. The room had a comfortable sofa upon which I reclined while composing PowerPoint lectures that were forwarded to the professor who was substituting for me in the final weeks of the semester while I recovered.

Assuming that my heavenly staircase of a home would not be conducive to recovering from knee replacement surgery, I’d booked (non-refundable) a room in the same hotel for five days. Foolish move.

What I didn’t know was that the hotel was under new ownership, and the room I reserved had very little furniture — certainly no comfy chair. The new décor was uncomfortably sterile, almost industrial: a bed, a wicker chair, and a thin desklike structure built into the wall. No carpeting, which I guess was good for a guy who had to practice going back and forth with a four-legged walker. I was wrong in assuming that I would have trouble with stairs.

The hotel stay passed quickly enough, albeit somewhat uncomfortably. It was not always easy getting someone to bring me bags of ice, and the in-room refrigerator had no freezer compartment. Keeping my knee cool was too much of a challenge.

A good friend came by once or twice a day to help me do the recommended knee-stretching exercise that the doctor demanded. This was the only exercise that was not part of my previously taught routine.

Basically, my friend had to hoist my leg up and push the lower half — the calf — toward my thigh. The knee inflammation made this nearly impossible, and the pain was terrifying. The problem was that I was distinctly warned not to use my leg or knee muscles to either raise the leg or bend it at the knee. It all had to be external force.

Eventually I found a way to pull my thigh up using a towel, and weighing down the lower part of the leg with my other leg. I could judge how far to push into the agonizing pain until it felt like I would be doing damage if I went any further.

It was “therapy,” but I called it “torture.”

Two weeks after surgery I returned to the hospital for a checkup. The surgeon lay me down and grabbed my leg, hoisting my leg up and shoving the bent knee toward my face. Of course, I screamed. From my own “torture” sessions I’d thought I was doing quite well, but he thought I was nowhere near the goal he’d set for me.

“After surgery, when you were still under anesthesia, I bent your leg all the way. I know you can do it.” Then he said the adage I hate the most: “No pain, no gain!”

Back at home I discovered a new way to bend my knee without assistance from anybody. Grabbing my ankle with a long cloth that had no resistance in it, I pulled my lower leg toward my thigh, allowing the foot to slide along the mattress. Ten times for each session, four sessions per day. Still “torture,” but somehow I increased the ability to endure more stretching over longer periods of time. My friend would visit each evening, photograph the “bend,” and measure the angle. (He actually went so far as to consult an engineer about how to measure the angle of the bend.)

Final result: I could bend the knee about 146 degrees after almost two months, with only limited pain at the extreme bend.

The First and Second Rule!

Early on in this recollection I warned that talking to others about full knee replacement surgery would only encourage unhelpful confusion. Here’s what I mean:

1.) Unhelpful Expectations. When I told a friend about my upcoming surgery, he sent me a video of an elder woman in his village cycling away on a regular bicycle self-rigged into a stationary exercise bike. The accompanying test assured me she was just a week out of her own knee replacement surgery, and that other older women were tootling through the streets on their motor scooters within a week of having undergone the procedure.

And so I assumed that within a week of my surgery I’d be able to walk the 3,000 steps from my hotel room to the local cinema where I so desperately wanted to see a new Horror film that opened the same week that my knee was opened up to the surgeon’s expert hammer and saw. Once I was situated in the hotel, however, I realized the futility of my expectation. The reports from my friend had to be exaggerations or misunderstandings.

Cue the music for my heartbrokenness.

2.) Therapeutic Confusions. An acquaintance of mine had a serious cycling accident a couple of years ago, and our mutual friend failed to understand that his injury was far more serious than even the massive violence of the surgery I would be undertaking. My friend spoke of the brace that was worn by this acquaintance for many months, and on multiple occasions encouraged me to purchase one in advance.

I knew the brace would be unnecessary, but worse was the secret regret I felt. Many years earlier a fellow “foreigner” had given me his discarded brace after his own recovery from a heavy motorcycling accident. Like me, he had no idea what to do with the expensive leg brace and was leaving Taiwan for other shores. I held onto it for a few years, but left it behind when I cleared retired from my teaching job. I asked a colleague if she might be able to donate it to a charity organization, but I have no idea if that actually happened. All I know is that I was embarrassed for having given away such an expensive piece of medical hardware. Oh, guilt. Superfluous guilt, but there it is.

The challenge of buying unnecessary equipment occurred again when I spoke to my brother in the United States, hoping to learn from his experience. Aside from encouraging me toward the cooling pad, he also advised I purchase something to make using the toilet easier. He showed a device he had used in his home, something that looked like a reversed walker that offered bars on either side of the toilet to help the handicapped patient sit and stand. You might see them in the “handicapped” facilities in public spaces like department stores.

I looked locally for such a piece of hardware, and mistakenly purchased a rather expensive thing that turned out to be ill-adjusted for my home. It was a stand-alone “throne” for patients who cannot ambulate to a bathroom. It now sits in storage. The day will come, no doubt, when someone I know — or, Gods forbid, I — will find this portable toilet invaluable.

Once my surgery was over and I had deposited myself in the hotel room, I videophoned my brother to bemoan my therapeutic torture. My brother was surprised by my doctor’s imposed goal of being able to squat like a youthful monk.

In the same conversation I discovered the huge gap in recovery therapy procedures. My brother was delivered by van to a therapy center at least three days a week, where he was led through an hour’s worth of motions that included an exercise bicycle. No tortured screaming at all though he did tell me it “hurt like hell.”

And then there was the observation of a fellow American expatriate who had her surgery in a different Taipei City hospital some years ago. She taxied her way to the therapy center, and was never told about pain and gain. “They approach it really differently at your hospital,” she said.

Making matters worse, I turned to YouTube. Googling “therapy exercises two weeks after knee replacement surgery,” I landed upon a bevvy of videos from “Hi, I’m a professional therapist” therapists. I noticed in these videos some of the “do it yourself” methods that my brother spoke of — approaches that he practiced under the practiced hands of professional recovery practitioners. (It took a lot of practice to write that impractical sentence.)

These videos and my brother’s suggestions eventually resulted in the method I used to bend my knee: the rope-around-the-ankle trick. Of course, the American therapists displayed a specially designed rubber device that cupped the patient’s foot, but my improvised long cloth worked just as well. Thankfully, it also relieved my good friend of the daily burden of hoisting my leg up in the air like Sisyphus and his punishment stone. Now I could scream in agony on my own.

What disturbed me most at the time was the pungent disquiet of not knowing if I was getting “enough” therapy or if the leg-flexing I was doing was damaging my new knee. Also, at the two-week mark I wondered if, as the YouTube videos suggested, I should be doing “more” activity like squats, bike riding, and stair stepping.

I was overcome with uncertainty, with confusion.

A phone call to the hospital case worker reassured me: “Don’t push too much too soon.” I was told just to keep walking in circles at home, continue doing my leg exercises (including crucial ankle bending) and flexions, and keeping the bandages clean. “When can I drive?” I asked. “Drive?” the case worker asked: “Where do you need to drive to?” End of that line of inquiry.

Most helpful was the good luck that my closest friend, who was visiting me in hospital after my surgery, made video of the instructions given to me by the therapist and doctor when they came to my room. If not for reviewing those videos that he shared with me, I would likely have forgotten how to do even the least of the knee-bending exercises. In looking at the videos now, I see that I was actually offered a few different routines, including pushing my ankle back while sitting in a tall chair.

Appreciated Encouragement

Writing this at the end of four months after surgery, I look back once again with a tremendous sense of appreciation for those words of encouragement from a couple of highly cherished friends overseas. One of these dear friends told me her elder brother had undergone surgery for both knees, and while the recovery was painful, months later he was extremely grateful for having done it. He stood taller and walked more easily just a couple of months after the second knee was done.

Another wonderful word of encouragement came from a physician in Britain who responded to my text from the hospital the night before my own operation. “Just remember,” she wrote, “this is not the first such surgery your doctor has performed.” My surgeon “knows what he’s doing,” she said. In truth, my doctor was clearly among the best in this field in Taiwan, and perhaps globally. My anxiety was natural, but ultimately unnecessary.

And besides, no pain no gain.

What did I have to lose?

____

Graphic:
James Ward (1769-1859)
“A Human Skeleton” (Open Access, Google Art Project)

When Publishers Define "Classic"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 08:05:00 +0000

A good book is a work of amazing depth.

Perhaps that should be the qualification that defines "classic" literature?

In 2016 the popular magazine Taiwan Panorama published an article about the Eslite Bookstore's "Reading Classics Together" project. The heart of that story was a survey of participating publishers' definitions of what a "classic" text was and the factors they considered when choosing books from their catalogues for the project.

In a second article, the magazine intereviewed writers and scholars about their understanding of what characteristics define a "classic" work of literature. That report considers "the expert reader" and questions of what raises a text to the status of "classic" despite changes in the social environment of readers.

Among those characteristics most valued by the scholars and writers of Taiwan who were interviewed for the "Classic Works: Reading Together, Thinking Together" piece was the notion of great literature representing and transcending cultural identifications. "Classic works are endlessly thought-provoking, perhaps not only because of their abstraction, universality, and openness, but because they are lights that continually shine on the road ahead."

They are also aesthetically beautiful for any reader who takes the time to appreciate the power of words and ideas.

Importantly, one of the writers interviewed for the article warns that so far the understanding of a "classic" text is imposed from the top-down, with scholars and communities of writers often deciding what gets included and excluded.

The writer suggests that the term "classic" can be interpreted widely and may be adaptable to the changing times across human history. "Anything that is meaningful to a group of people and around which a reading public takes shap can be a 'classic'--even a comic book, not to mention books that happen to be out of favor at a given time, such as Marx's Capital."

With that in mind, it is fascinating to see how the many publishing houses of Taiwan's Chinese-language market responded to the challenge of defining which of the works from their own catalogues could be qualified as "classics."

Those publishers' criteria is outlined in a short blog post at the Grandfather Hu Reviews blog site. It's worth checking out, if only for the ways in which these business entities that straddle the line between Art and Marketing rise to the challenge of deciding how to define the notion of "classic" writing.

---

Graphic by Chuang Kung-ju in Taiwan Panorama magazine, used here without permission.

Baseball: Love at First Strike!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 07:18:00 +0000

Late in April (2025) I had my first experience of attending a baseball game in Taiwan in a stadium — at the glamorous Taipei Dome, no less. It was a matchup between two of Taiwan’s strongest professional baseball clubs: the Wei Chuan Dragons and the Chinatrust Brothers.

It has already been some five days out from that event, but I still feel awed by the encounter.

This was actually only the second time in my life I have ever attended a stadium game. My first took place when I was maybe 10 years old and my best friend’s dad took me along with their family to see a game at the now-demolished Shea Stadium. That one time was enough to make me a lifelong fan of the New York Mets.

But baseball fandom is a variant expression of love, and love adopts many forms that embrace different people differently. And thanks to the friend who gifted me the ticket to last week’s game in Taipei, I am now a dedicated fan of yet another team. Well, two other teams. OK, maybe three other teams in addition to the Mets. (I’m allowed to cheer for more than one, right? Like any New Yorker, I’ll stand up for the Yankees when they’re doing well. And now, as a longtime citizen of Taipei City, I see nothing wrong with my favoring two Taiwanese teams.)

Guess which two.

Yeah, I’m entirely THAT obvious.

I am incredibly grateful to my friend who treated me to the game, although as one of the Dragons’ marketing agents he wasn’t actually able to sit with me because he had work to attend to. He’s been in this job for some time already, and over the past few years I’ve enjoyed following his social media posts about his job. Eventually my curiosity developed to the point of me requesting an interview with him for my “other” blog, which he graciously agreed to.

Our discussion developed, for me, into a yearlong occasional writing project that resulted in a four-part look[i] at the history of baseball in Taiwan. That writing project was eye-opening, and I was amazed to discover that in many ways baseball carries itself forward as a representative of the Taiwanese characteristics of stubborn survival, comradery in the face of extreme challenge, and a spirit of relentless resistance.

When we met at the Taipei Dome, my friend handed me the ticket and teased me by saying: “Go do your fieldwork!”

Well, here’s my report.

The Home Team?
While I knew I would be seeing the Dragons play, I was unaware that they would be facing off against the Brothers. The revelation came about only when I found myself at the MRT station in the midst of so many others wearing golden-yellow Brothers club jerseys. Realizing that I would be seeing these teams face off against each other encouraged within me competing emotions of delight and guilt, for I consider myself a fan of both clubs. My divided loyalty stems, in part, from entirely irrational origins.

You see, I live within walking distance of the Chinatrust headquarters in the Nankang District of Taipei City, where there is actually a baseball-themed coffee shop that has been on my radar for quite some time. This “locality” of the corporation that owns the Brothers baseball team contributed to my private sense of the baseball club as representing my own community. They were my hometown team.

Of course, the fact that the club’s home stadium is in Taichung puts the lie to my identifying with the Brothers as “the neighborhood bros.” But the beginnings of my identification go back more than 20 years when the team was still owned by the Brother Hotel and called the Brother Elephants. The driver of the team’s shuttle bus lived just a few houses from me, and on most mornings I would find the minibus parked in front of my home. That’s when the first sense of “community” identification with the team began.

Yeah, I know. I know. Anyway…

And then along came the Dragons, a relatively new clubhouse that got its start as the baseball team of the university that towers over the neighborhood from its mountaintop perch. The Dragons’ home stadium is in Tianmu, a district of Taipei that pretty much every “white dude” who has lived long-term in Taiwan is familiar with.

Tianmu used to be nicknamed “Little America.”

For that we can lay much of the blame on the Taipei American School being located in Tianmu and drawing Western white collar (and wealthy Taiwanese) families into the district. With so many “waiguoren” grouped in one place, it didn’t take long for the neighborhood’s grocers and restaurants to cater to “Western” preferences.

Tianmu no longer bears that identification as a “foreign zone,” due largely to the arrival of the MRT (allowing for a cultural dispersal) and Taiwan’s entry into the WTO (expanding availability of cultural products) completely re-shaping the demographics of Taipei’s “international” community realty decisions. But really, once upon a time Tianmu was the place where you could close your eyes, throw a stone, and feel pretty sure that you’d end up hitting “a foreigner.”[ii] Heck, I even lived in the district for a few months.

Of course, it also helps that I think “dragons” are way cooler than “elephants,” and the official team color — red — is a personal favorite. And so, the Dragons are my new team.

The Unexpected Experience
Here’s another important admission: I am not necessarily a sports spectator, though I am a fan of baseball above all other games. I don’t “follow” baseball stats, or even make an effort to stay up to date on the teams I like. I don’t know who’s on first, and I don’t necessarily care.

If I am in a restaurant and see a game on a television screen, I’ll watch. If it happens to be a team or a tournament that means anything to me, I’ll quietly cheer or silently moan, depending on the place or space. But I don’t go out of my way to watch a game, and I won’t pay for a subscription to watch online. Don’t get me wrong: I would love to be able to sit and watch a game on the screen, but somehow I cannot promise myself to any sort of schedule or appointment that’s not crucial to my life.

Having tried to argue that I am not a devoted spectator, I will confess to having a wildly Romantic idea about baseball. Among all spectator sports, baseball is the only one that completely appeals to me. Mine is a childhood inheritance, a memory of those rare moments when friends and I would set up a game on the school playground on a summer afternoon. More often we played “stickball” on the street, moving aside for passing cars. Maybe there is more inside my unconscious, memories of older brothers or friends watching baseball games on television, or talking baseball all around us. Honestly, that feels right, but the actual memories are not there.

Of course, there are entire swaths of childhood that I seem to have forgotten or blotted out. I don’t question those blank spaces anymore.

But for whatever reason, baseball remains for me an almost magical game. It asks of the players no wild exertion, runs on its own never-predictable timetable, and seems to express a carefully plotted strategy that is alien to me only because in a big way I just don’t care. What I do notice is that the game plays out slowly, and remains almost entirely unpredictable. A team can start out strong, then Fortune can turn away and they will end up losing. Most of a match can roll forward scoreless, only to end in the final innings with unexpected excitement. A legendary batter of seemingly infinite strength and talent can strike out, and a prized pitcher can end up giving away the game.

I love that unpredictability.

Despite all this, I never went out of my way to actually attend a game in Taiwan. For decades the only image I held of baseball was that of my one adolescent memory. And across those years stories have filtered into my awareness through the media, all of which suggested that the stadium experience in Taiwan was in some ways very different from that remembered from my adolescence.

What follows, then, is a quick rundown of some of the observations I took note of during the game on Saturday. I’m betting that if a Taiwanese baseball fan sees this, she will wonder at my own sense of wonder and think I am probably an oddball for thinking these aspects of the stadium experience are anything but mundane. But remember, pretty much everything about the encounter was new to me: in the baseball stadium I am still just a tourist.

Preparing the Field of Dreams
Somehow or other it never occurred to me that before the game the field needed to be so meticulously attended to. On television I’ve only ever seen groundskeepers at work rolling a tarp over the turf during a heavy rain storm. I was completely unaware that just prior to gameplay, the groundskeepers will hose down the home plate, the pitcher’s mound, and the infield bases. They do this to soften and compact the dirt, thereby reducing injury to the players and providing a greater predictability to the way a ground ball will bounce. It also reduces the chance of dust whipping up.

Most surprising to me was the fastidious attention to re-drawing the infield lines. This isn’t the job of some random schmo, but demands the attention of a whole crew of workers armed with measures and chalk cords. They’re out there, getting down on the ground to measure the level of the pitcher’s mound and making sure the foul and base lines are perfectly straight while the fellow pushing the line striping machine draws a fresh white line slowly and carefully. Fascinating.

And while that’s going on, the home team — in this case the red-uniformed Dragons — take to the side of the outfield and begin their warmup exercises. They form two parallel lines, the men closer to the audience stretching and practically dancing to limber themselves up while their teammates closer to the field divide themselves between pitchers and catchers.

It is then that a bad omen occurs. One of the players fubs the catch, and the ball slams directly into one of the teammates limbering up. The impact puts him down, and he lays there trying to let the pain dissipate. I am floored by this, having never imagined that such an accident could injure a player during warmup, a pure act of clumsiness on the part of the practicing catcher.

It turns out to be something of an omen, for one of the Dragon’s batters would be struck by the pitch and grimacing in pain as he stumbles toward first base.

Later in the game, with the Dragons on the field, the pitcher would come frighteningly close to hitting Hsu Chi-hung (No. 74). Hsu dodged the ball, a movement that resembled something like a dance step that he continued doing even after he was out of danger. It was an unexpected display of dance, both celebratory and accusatory.

Making Connections
In pretty much every baseball game I’ve watched on television (and that’s not a lot), I have never seen an interaction on the field between the players on opposing teams. The runner would always have a backup coach at the plate, of course, and they would be chatting away (I assume they are strategizing). It always felt odd that in every televised game, the runners and basemen seemed to barely acknowledge each other’s presence on the field. For a fool like me who cannot resist a grin or a greeting in public spaces (you would hate me in an elevator), maintaining that kind of professional distance would be impossible.

Imagine my delight in seeing that these walls don’t have to exist between the opponents. In an accident, a runner from first base collided with the second baseman who had just caught the ball forwarded by the pitcher. It must have been a mighty impact, because both men fell to the ground and neither seemed eager to get up too quickly.

But within a minute, after being checked on by teammates and umpires, both men stood up. And to my surprise, they grinned at each other with what seemed almost like embarrassment and swiftly embraced before the play was called. (I cannot remember if the runner was allowed to advance, sent back to first base, or called out.)

There was at least one other swift moment of opponents acknowledging each other, as when a second base defender offered a very swift nod to the runner waiting there. I assume these guys knew each other personally, which seems very likely when you consider how small Taiwan’s professional baseball league actually is, with just six teams recruiting from pretty much the same school zones.

Of course, I can understand how opposing players would be reluctant to seem too familiar on the field given the relatively recent history of game-fixing that almost destroyed the sport. But even so, I have to wonder at what seems to be the ability to socially ignore the presence of another person, even if it is an opponent.

My mind flips back to a scene from a Singaporean novel I read last year (the title is long forgotten) set in the first year of Japan’s invasion of the island territory. From across a river a fleeing Australian contingent faced the Japanese enemy, a first visual encounter. One of the Australian soldiers waved hello to the Japanese, and in an unguarded automatic response a Japanese soldier waved back. The Australian was mortified to see how the Japanese squad leader proceeded to mercilessly beat the Japanese soldier. The Australian felt guilty for having so innocently inflicted such pain upon the young man across the river.

Another interesting moment occurred when a runner tried to steal second base, but the defending base man was swift in tagging him. It was one of those close calls, and for some reason it amused me to see the runner and his coaching teammate standing at second base, both of them with their eyes glued on the big television screen where separate angles of the “instant replay” video was being broadcast for the stadium to see. It just felt fun to see these players on the field engaging in the same activity as the 20,000 people in the stands: focusing on the big screen.

Also curious about that incident was the crowd response to the taped replay. When from two angles it seemed clear that the defender had tagged the runner before his slide into second base was achieved, the home team supporters let out a small explosion of celebration. In the other angles on screen, the result was less apparent and the audience stayed quiet.

The Hush and Huff
Fan response to gameplay was another interesting aspect of being in attendance at a live event. When watching on television, the sport announcers are in a constant state of banter so there is little opportunity to aurally focus on the sound of the crowd.

In the game I witnessed two interesting phenomena. The first was the absolute silence that goes with a fly ball. (Incidentally, once the ball goes too high, it was lost from my sight because of the stadium lighting. On television you can always see where that little bit of rubber and cork is going. In the stadium you quickly learn to just look down and watch the outfield for the ball’s descent.) If the visiting team’s outfielder makes the catch, there is a subtle groan of disgruntled or disappointed acceptance of the out for the home team. If it is the home team making the catch, the audience momentarily lets out a single sound of relief.

I hear pretty much none of this in televised games.

One aspect of the Taiwanese baseball stadium experience is the “cheerleader” influence. I am not necessarily speaking about the cheerleaders who were on a platform almost out of my sight range, but their male vocal leader certainly dominated the audio environment of the stadium. He seemed to be almost constantly on mic, encouraging the Dragons fans and introducing the batters — though he respectfully maintained silence when the Away team was up at bat. I can only imagine that after a game he must feel almost as exhausted as the players.

I wonder how much of his vocal exhortations was heard by the fans in the seating reserved for the Brothers fans? We could hear their own male cheerleader, but his amplification system was not the massive stadium-delivery system of the Home team whose fans occupied a majority of the seating.

Another element of the fan experience that caught my interest was what seemed to be a sense of magic possibility. This is probably common to every game in every nation, but it seemed especially amplified in the Taipei Dome because of the cheerleader’s steady engagement with the audience.

It was sometime in the seventh inning when the Dragons were on the losing side, and with two outs and bases filled there was hope for a turnaround. Here’s where the moment of magical thinking came into play. Everyone in the stands stood up, this being the only time they did. Somehow the act of standing up seemed like a symbolic or ritualistic act. The team song (well, a song) played over the speakers, and the cheering vocalist led the Dragons fans in both a chant and the song. I was clueless, and could only watch. The fans around me who had thunder sticks and rattles sounded them in time with the chant-song.

The magic wasn’t powerful enough.

When that third strike happened, the Dragon fans went almost silent and only the celebration from the Brothers fan section could be heard.

No kidding, it seemed like the attendees in the seating reserved for the Brothers possessed a more powerful kind of wizardry: live percussion and horn. At least it sounded live from across the field, and that somehow felt more authentic and even potent.

Watching them across the field I wondered at their unamplified sound. It just felt right.

Somehow the extra amplification of the Home team—including the prerecorded music — felt overwhelming, quite possibly bordering on bullying. Nor did the jets of steam contribute to the sense of the game as, well, a game. It seemed too self-laudatory, and less natural.

But what the heck do I know? Like John Snow, I know nothing.

Before I shut this down, let me drop in one more observation concerning the Brothers fans seated at the far end of the outfield. They were settled into what seemed like three distinct sections, two of which were adjacent while the third was separated by an expanse of black space (light and machinery controls, or a structural and storage space, maybe?). That separated third section was far quieter and less responsive than the two connected spaces, where the drum and horn were located.

All this leaves me wondering about the power of the audience to actually give strong, empowering energies to the players. (How much of the audience sound can the players hear? I noticed at a couple of points the players with the Brothers team were actually staying limber by almost dancing on the field in time with the music on the loudspeakers.)

That’s a romantic notion, but not one that the game organizers seem eager to dispel. I am actually drawn to the belief that fans, by giving out good and supportive vibes to the players on the field, are contributing to the development of comradery, of a community that includes both players and fans. In the end, of course, that’s good for business, and like every other professional spectator sport, baseball is a business.

And it’s a business I would gladly partake of again.

[i] (The first two posts in this 65,000-word blog post can be found here (Part 1) and here (Part 2), with the remaining segments being rationed out at a slower pace in appreciation of the current season of Taiwan’s favorite spectator sport.)

[ii] For that we can lay much of the blame on the Taipei American School being located in Tianmu. The school drew Western white collar (and wealthy Taiwanese) families into the district, and it didn’t take long for the neighborhood grocers and restaurants to cater to “Western” preferences. Tianmu is also the home of Taipei Japanese School, a siting that added another community of “foreigners” into the district’s identity as a zone of cultural interest.

"Invisible Nation" and the Indivisibility Difference

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 06:09:00 +0000

Invisible Nation will probably disappoint Taiwan audiences, largely because the documentary was produced for is intended for international audiences, though the film is pragmatically “for Taiwan.”

Completed in 2023 and made available to the global documentary film circuit last year, Invisible Nation finally found its way to movie screens throughout Taiwan on June 13, 2025 — a Friday the 13^threlease, to be precise.

Produced and directed by Vanessa Hope, Invisible Nation was filmed with the cooperation and encouragement of Taiwan’s first democratically elected female president, Tsai Ying-wen (whose Administration of the Republic of China spanned two terms, 2016-2024). Hope could easily be understood as something of a “China hand,” though she would probably not be comfortable with the label. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Hope had been a scholar of international studies for the Council on Foreign Relations in her hometown of New York City. She also earned a doctorate from Columbia University.

Fluent in both French and Mandarin, Hope went on to live for a number of years in China, teaching law and learning the ropes as a film producer. Her first major documentary feature film was All Eyes and Ears, which premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. The year she spent living in Taipei as part of Stanford University’s Taiwan Studies program probably encouraged her toward what would become Invisible Nation.

Living in Taiwan can have that effect on you.

So, what do you want first: the good reviews or the bad reviews?

Yeah, I’m that way as well. I always eat the least enticing veggies first, saving the delicious stuff for the end of the meal so I can leave the table with an ongoing good flavor lingering in my mouth. Maybe that’s why dessert always goes at the end of a meal? Anyway …

The Negatives …
A couple of online reviewers have already chimed in with descriptors of Invisible Nation such as “primer” and “propaganda,” including Leslie Felperin of The Guardian newspaper and Jay Liu of The Asian Cut website. They are not wrong, but neither are their assessments meant to be overtly negative.

One Letterboxed commentator also appropriately expressed (in English) being somewhat disenchanted by the documentary’s manipulative strengths, going so far as to push audiences (myself included, I confess) to the brink of tears through its use of “swelling music.” The Letterboxed reviewer fails to point out that the documentary film’s soundtrack is effective largely because it combines with visually beautiful imagery — hats off to cinematographer Laura Hudock and her team.

Some also noted that the film’s marketing promised “unprecedented access” to President Tsai but only delivered snippets of her “private” life or personality. And yet, what is revealed to the English-speaking world about Taiwan’s (now former) president is delightful, such as Tsai’s confession that at heart she is quite shy and that as an adolescent she despised politics. What is visually seen of Tsai at home with her feline and canine pets is too-obviously “staged,” but for the moment (which is provided in the trailer) of Tsai being interrupted by one of her cat’s eagerness to be heard. Cat owners around the world will know how it feels.

More surprising is Tsai’s statement that “most people” in Taiwan view her as “cold,” though she believes herself to be quite emotional while having to stifle that side of herself in public. This is an aspect of Tsai’s public persona I was never aware of, and yet it is entirely believable. Tsai is highly intelligent and has always displayed the self-awareness and discipline that benefitted her as a political leader and diplomat. She tells the director that she can only speak in English when discussing personal affairs, and must legally, and sensibly, revert to Mandarin when addressing official matters of state.

(I recall a YouTube video in which the host [speaking in English] asked her a politically sensitive question, to which Tsai smiled, wagged a finger, and said, “They warned me about you.” It was a beautiful moment of diplomatic humor.)

Online criticisms that Invisible Nation is a pro-DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) piece are surprising, considering how director Hope seemingly went out of her way to try to offer positive images of the Nationalist KMT (Kuomingtang) Party, including comments from Nationalist Party legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁). The film even offers quotes from former president Ma Ying-jeou that seem to support the ideals of the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan) as separate in every way possible from neighboring PRC (the People’s Republic of China). (Of late, “Mr. Ma” has turned himself into something of a sock puppet for Beijing.)

The film even paints a portrait of the KMT’s Chiang Ching-kuo (1910-1988) as a saint of democracy, a true “Taiwanese,” when he could just as easily be portrayed as the dictator who lifted martial law (and ended the White Terror Period that his father had overseen with murderous efficiency for over four decades) only in response to ongoing waves of popular resistance. Indeed, Chaing Ching-kuo was in charge during the infamous “Meilidao Incident” (alternatively known as the Kaohsiung Incident, the Formosa Incident, and the Formosa Magazine Incident) of December 1979 that is given some attention in the film.[i]

When I bought my ticket to a morning showing of Invisible Nation, I asked how many others would be in the auditorium with me. Over the past few years, I’ve become used to being the only one in the room for a morning showing, but I did worry that a local high school history teacher might be using the film for a class field trip. The ticket seller told me only seven others had thus far purchased seats. That was a good turnout for a Monday morning.

When they finally arrived to see the film, I took note that none of them was of my “older” generation. All seven were possibly in their late 20s.

It is important that they were all young adults, as the historical events depicted in the film might still be somewhat “fresh” to them. Certainly, the period of transition from dictatorship to democracy would be the stuff of history to them, while the “Sunflower Student Movement” (2014) might still feel like a nostalgic memory from adolescence.[ii]

As it was, my fellow moviegoers stayed in the auditorium with me while the credits rolled. There must have been something about this documentary that caught their interest and held them there to the end. Had the audience been older, they might have been far less absorbed by the film. The older viewer, especially someone who has a strong interest in Taiwan’s “current events,” would probably have walked out muttering, “Tell me something I didn’t already know.”

And that’s where director Vanessa Hope’s Invisible Nation most spectacularly displays itself as a work for a global audience. It says nothing that a Taiwanese citizen doesn’t already know from direct experience. Citizens of Taiwan live every day with the weight of existential anxieties, knowing that China’s military leaders are practicing for a full-out assault upon the island. China’s leadership, voicing its plans for a conquered Taiwan through various outlets, has already promised concentration camps and plenty of executions.

Invisible Nation is designed for audiences around the world who, let’s be honest, are in all likelihood already grossly ignorant of their own national histories and current news, to say nothing of how little they might know about Taiwan. Offering a source of information about Taiwan’s present existential crisis — made so much more interesting by the dramatic soundtrack, the amazing cinematography (better than any tourism video, I suspect), and the steady contrasts between “democracy” and “totalitarianism” — is important to Taiwan … and the world (though most of “the world” probably isn’t aware of it yet).

Unfortunately, Invisible Nation also comes up short as an “educational” vehicle bearing a message of tremendous importance. The main shortcoming is that the modern history of Taiwan is complicated — far too complex for the abbreviated attention spans of contemporary audiences in the industrial world where Neoliberal ideals and socioeconomic inequalities have handicapped public education. Neither is the film’s 85-minute format long enough to include proper or in-depth explanations for uninformed global audiences.

(Warning: Curmudgeonly Rant Ahead!)

Technologies of entertainment combined with the inherited shackles of anti-intellectualism seem to be driving entire societies toward ignorance, apathy, cynicism, and corrupt conspiratorial thinking. It is happening in Taiwan as well, leaving otherwise intelligent citizens increasingly open to being gulled by malicious political actors who don’t mind lying to the people.

Invisible Nation does its best to cover most of the bases, but cramming all that complexity into less than an hour and a half for a distracted audience who on a good day confuse “Taiwan” with “Thailand” does more harm than good — even if the documentary viewing filmgoer is already a few steps ahead of the general moviegoer in terms of curiosity, intellectual maturity, and overall “engagement” with current issues (though that may be changing).

Put simply, the film’s bullet-point approach will confuse anyone who is not already somewhat aware of the modern histories of China and Taiwan.

Just look at all the film touches upon!

Ø The Name Game

Sports: Taiwan’s sports teams are not allowed to compete internationally as representatives of “The Republic of China” (Taiwan), but must stand as members of “Chinese Taipei” — even when they see themselves as racially, culturally, or politically as “not China.” Invisible Nation

Entertainment: Taiwan’s cultural artists are not allowed to publicly identify as citizens of Taiwan, or even show the flag of the ROC. Invisible Nation highlights the experience of Chou Tzu-yu, a Taiwanese member of a K-Pop band who in 2021 was forced into apologizing for waving a ROC flag in one of the group’s videos. All those “hurt feelings” rushing out of China’s marketplace forced the young singer into making a video apologizing for her, gulp, indiscretion. In one of the most powerful moments of Invisible Nation, Chou’s videotaped apology is followed by a commentator who quite correctly says: “Her video looks like a hostage video.”

Travel: The film points out that the obeisance to Beijing’s demands by corporate organizations such as airlines gives Taiwanese travelers an actual psychic shock when they’ve grown up thinking of themselves as “Taiwan” (or ROC) nationals, only to see that Taiwan is not listed as a nation on ticket purchase websites. Suddenly they have become citizens of a province of China.

Ø World Participation

Diplomatic Recognition: Because of pressure (and economic enticements), countries with diplomatic relations to Taiwan have officially cut those ties and pulled their embassies from Taipei to Beijing.

State Participation: Taiwan was forced out of the United Nations in 1971, despite the Republic of China having been a founding member of the organization. The ROC is not even allowed “observer status” in the crucial global organization.[iii] And while Taiwan effectively functions as a nation, it is as of this writing recognized as a nation state by all but a tiny number of national governments such as Belize, Guatemala, Paraguay, Haiti, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Holy See (Vatican City). At least the Pope is on Taiwan’s side. So far. (The Tsai Administration has worked hard to maintain strong non-state connections with important world powers, usually through “economic and cultural affairs” organizations.)

Observer Status: With the rising military and diplomatic strength of Beijing, even a number of non-state organizations have refused to allow representatives from Taiwan to “observe,” no less participate or contribute to the organization’s professed projects of improving the welfare of all humans on the planet. Invisible Nation includes the very sad incident — it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious —of a Canadian epidemiologist with the WHO pretending to “not hear” a journalist’s question about a possible membership for Taipei in the global organization. (Watch a news report of the incident.)

The amazing irony that Invisible Nation points out is that the Tsai Administration smartly oversaw the healthcare and social structures of Taiwan, avoiding infections and preventing mass deaths while the pandemic razed the economies of other nations, killed millions, and crashed entire healthcare systems — all without the help of the WHO (though to its credit, Taipei’s CDC never stopped submitting data to the organization). A commentator in Hope’s film notes the hypocrisy of the WHO with its signature “leave no one behind” principle, while purposely abandoning the 24 million people of Taiwan.

Ø Oppression

The Punch: Invisible Nation, with the appropriate dose of overtly ominous musical accompaniment, strives to emphasize that Taiwan is a small island next to a colossal land mass intent on subduing and subsuming it. Despite all its domestic crises, the totalitarian state that is the proudly proclaimed “dictatorship of the Party” continues to plan and practice a martial takeover of the island and the complete annihilation of the democratic system and the values of human liberty that have allowed Taiwan to prosper. China’s great leader is quoted as warning of bloodied, bashed heads for anyone (assumedly in the West) who resists the “will” of China). The film parallels these threats with the Tsai Administration’s first steps toward militarily preparing for that inevitable day of invasion. Hsiao Bi-khim, who in 2020 left the Legislature to serve as the Tsai Administration’s official (unofficial) representative to Washington D.C., makes a comparison between Taiwan and Ukraine. She emphasizes “the commonality of being close to an oppressive state” while arguing that the goal of good leadership in Taipei is “to prevent the atrocities” unfolding in Ukraine. Hsiao Bi-khim currently serves as the Vice President of the ROC alongside President Lai Ching-te.

The Puncture: One of those interviewed for Invisible Nation[iv] addressed the increasing strength of China’s “messaging” engine, noting that “propaganda” flows into Taiwan at such a rate that even Taiwanese are becoming overwhelmed and unable to critically recognize “falsehood” from “truth.” One such result is that “even Taiwanese are starting to blame Ukraine” for being invaded by Russia.

The Positives …
Though the film is somewhat flawed, Vanessa Hope’s Invisible Nation nevertheless provides some powerful lessons for citizens of democratic nations around the world. Hopefully everyone who sees this documentary film is able to catch these aspects and apply them not only to their own experiences as citizens of democratic, free states. The first of these is the ability to have a free press that responsibly covers current events and disseminates that information to the larger public.

Invisible Nation highlights this by focusing on the protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019-2020, and the savage way these demonstrations were crushed by the police with full backing from Beijing and the newly imposed (2020) “national security law” that made any form of protest — including social media posts — highly illegal and punishable by long terms of imprisonment.

The “One Country Two Systems” structure of governance agreed upon in 1997 should have guaranteed the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region greater autonomy in both legislative affairs and the judicial or penal structures of judgement and punishment. However, the violent police suppression of the 2019-2020 protests, the arrests that followed in the months after, and the harsh prison sentences effectively broadcast to Taiwan the message that Hong Kong no longer enjoyed the autonomy it had been promised by Beijing.

“The Hong Kong reaction to protest put to bed the idea of ‘One Country Two Systems’ for us in Taiwan,” President Tsai told the documentary filmmakers. No longer would Taiwan’s citizens be so willing to expect any degree of autonomy after watching so many Hong Kongers get swept into the prison system.

The impact of the Hong Kong experience found emphasis in the news coverage of China’s military exercises that encircled Taiwan and even sent missiles sailing directly over the island. No longer was Beijing able to claim comradery between the two sides of the Strait, especially as eight years of Nationalist rule (the Ma Administration) had provided nothing toward China’s goal of taking full control of Taiwan. When Tsai was elected twice (and again when Lai won the Executive branch), Beijing put away the poet’s pen and pulled out the phallic authority of the big gun.

Invisible Nation points out that in her first term, Tsai responsibly tried to extend a hand of friendly cooperation to China’s leadership, only to have it slapped back. There would be no cooperation or conversation.

For this challenge, Taiwan has an arsenal that it shares with many other modern democratic states the world over: its people.

The most surprising quote in Hope’s documentary came from Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first Minister of Digital Affairs (2022-2024). Already a hero to many for her influence in overseeing the government’s pandemic response and helping to prevent both the spread of misinformation and the calls for a full lockdown. In her too-brief appearance in Invisible Nation, Tang quotes from the chorus of Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” saying: “There is a crack/ A crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”

It is the people of Taiwan whose unity and determination are the light that will shine through the cracks of every tyrannical system, refusing to allow the darkness to achieve its goal of complete deadness. If anything, the history of Taiwan’s shift from demagoguery to democracy proves the rightness of believing in “people power.” That message comes through most emotionally from Chen Chu, the former mayor of Kaohsiung who is interviewed as the chair of the National Human Rights Commission. Chen had been imprisoned for her political activity during the White Terror Period, and guides the filmmakers through a visit to her old cell where she spent much of her time in solitude.

Chen comes close to crying before the camera as she caresses the names of people she knew that are carved upon the Green Island Human Rights Monument. “Every name in this memorial” represents someone who stood in resistance to fascism and authoritarianism. “Many generations in Taiwan gave their lives to achieve freedom,” Chen says. “We all paid an enormous price.”

“Our democracy is our most valuable asset,” President Tsai says somewhat earlier in the documentary. But the remembrance and appreciation of that precious freedom is too easily lost in the tumult of life within capitalist structures of survival.[v]

With that in mind, Invisible Nation moves to yet another poignant interview comment — this time from Freddy Lim (林昶佐), the lead singer of the internationally popular heavy metal band Chthonic.

An aurally and visually potent excerpt from a Chthonic concert shows how Lim used music as a megaphone to remind Taiwan’s youth of the preciousness of their freedoms. His performance demonstrates the wild power of younger Taiwanese who, we can only hope, are able to harness their passions into intelligent political choices.

In an interview, Lim speaks of his own days as a student when the educational system still broadcast a general devaluation of the “local” cultures of Taiwan while advocating a Sinocentric cultural vision. “School taught us that Taiwanese culture is trash,” Lim says. He shaped his career as a performer, and later as a politician, upon the belief that one of Taiwan’s greatest strengths is its diversity. (Lim is currently, as of this writing in 2025, serving as the representative of the Republic of China in Finland, a nation where the band Chthonic is incredibly popular.)

Inarguably, Taiwan is a multicultural society — a result of historical realities that saw separate waves of colonization washing over the island for more than two centuries.[vi] This is part of the powerful history of Taiwan that very few audiences overseas may be aware of, and which the brevity of Invisible Nation cannot properly address.

Nevertheless, the presence of “diversity” in Taiwan is highlighted as a crucial strength for the democratic future. “Diversity is our highest value,” Tsai says in the film. This message is emphasized throughout Invisible Nation, and highlighted by contrasting it with the official (as perceived) state viewpoint of Beijing’s leadership. The film strives to paint China’s (and the Nationalist) vision of “Chinese” as “all consuming,” with the “policy” of Sinicization being incapable of stomaching “difference.”

One aspect of Taiwan’s diversity is connected to issues of gender and sexual equality.

During her brief visit to Taiwan, the now-retired House Speaker spoke out favorably about the role of women in government. For Pelosi, having women in positions of leadership is “wholesome and transformative.” And while Tsai was not the first female president in all of Asia, she was one of the most “successful” in terms of policymaking and development.

During her time in office, Tsai’s government also allowed for the ground-up marriage equality movement to achieve its goal of marriage equality. In 2019, Tsai signed into law a bill allowing same-sex couples to permanently marry and claim the same rights and legal protections as heterosexual partners. Inarguably, the Tsai Administration did not at first act forcefully in endorsing the law. The Nationalist Party even successfully ushered through public referendums attempting to quash marriage equality, but the Constitutional Court opened the door for Tsai’s political party and its legislative majority to push through a bill that the president signed the next day. The public announcement of that signing, which made Taiwan the first Asian nation to officially recognize same-sex marriage, is another of the emotionally engaging moments displayed in Invisible Nation.

Vanessa Hope’s documentary film ends on a note of positive anxiety, quoting Tsai as warning viewers that “our existence is daily threatened” by hegemonic ambitions. But Taiwan’s diversity and the historical experience of the people coming together despite their cultural, communal, or personal differences is a guide toward resistance. “We must always stand together,” Tsai says.

Watch the Official Trailer

Endnotes

[i] I am very surprised the director did not reach out to Linda Arrigo for an interview, as her experience and eloquence would have fit in perfectly alongside the Western journalists and academics whose insights were included. Linda was there alongside Chen Chu [陳菊], the former mayor of Kaohsiung [2006 to 2018] who was imprisoned for her role in the Meilidao Incident while and whose participation in Invisible Nation provided one of the film’s most emotional expressions of the pain experienced by the political prisoners who survived the White Terror Period.

[ii] Personally, I cannot believe over a decade has gone by since the students took over the Legislature in protest, one of the most effective examples of “people power” and resistance to anti-democratic leaders. It still feels like only “yesterday” that I was taking photos both outside of and inside the occupied legislative chambers.

[iii] In 2016, the UN reportedly even turned Taiwanese tourists away from its New York City headquarters (Wikipedia).

[iv] Forgive me for not knowing who said this. I knew I should have studied shorthand in high school. The speaker was possibly Hsiao Bi-khim.

[v] If anything, it is the very nature of unbridled Neoliberalism — a form of capitalist ideology that raises “greed” as one of the highest of human values — that gives support to anti-democratic systems of governance. This is the message taken from former U.S. House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose visit to Taiwan in August 2022 led to Beijing throwing yet another martial hissy fit of encirclement. Pelosi is quoted in Invisible Nation as saying, “The business community always kowtows to China, and that’s why we’re in this crisis.” Nationalist Party legislator Jason Hsu says something similar: “We made China rich.”

[vi] The first “Taiwanese” were the many aboriginal tribes who warred with and ceded territory to successive arrivals of settler colonists from China (and Europe). Those settlers themselves represented different cultural origins, and all were forced to submit to official Japanese colonization and later the ethnically dissimilar refugees who accompanied the remnants of the Nationalist government after the fall of Beijing to the Communist revolutionaries.

Trauma, Silence, and "Woman Islands"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 10:24:00 +0000

Here’s a selection of excerpts from the 2011 English translation (by C.J. Anderson-Wu) of Chung Wenyin’s 1998 novel, Woman Islands (女島紀行). I provide it here in the hope that it might entice students and scholars, especially those with an interest in Women’s Studies and Feminist Literature, to consider taking up this book as a subject for literary criticism.

I have straightened up the grammatical style of the original translation that had attempted to portray the “untranslatable” style of the Chinese text and the author’s insistence upon “maintaining the awkwardness of her writing instead of smoothing it out for English readers.”

Although I can appreciate that desire, I chose instead to alter some of the sentence constructions that might come across as more a result of poor proofreading than of conscious choice by the translator. I’m going to hope this won’t be a problem, and I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by my editing choices. But then again, if you want to see what has been "changed" you ought to visit your favorite bookseller and get yourself a copy of this novel.

In another blog I have offered there merest handful of thoughts about this novel and how it displays the phenomenon of Silence as a response to Historical Trauma.

-----

Excerpts:

And in the daytime? In the daytime this village was women’s territory. They survived their husbands, their children lived in cities, their long lives were bitter rather than sweet. They farmed small parcels of land to support themselves, and visiting each other was the only entertainment for them. …In the chaos of diseases and poverty, their lives proceeded without missing a beat.

The day Ahmam was born, Mom had to cut the umbilical cord herself. …Maybe in the full moon night of Ahmam’s birth, her mother’s shouts out of the tearing pain had provided their neighbors with the best materials for their dreams. And as the life in this village had finally stabilized, all the men raced to their graves like the fastest one was the winner. Ahmam’s Dad died at fifty-four, compared to other men in this village, he had a relatively long life....

When Granduncle San was executed, Ahmam’s mother had just married her father. She was shocked by the incident and for a long time had not recovered from the horror. It was a deep scar for the whole village. At this time many of them were killed or disappeared after secret arrests…. Ahmam had only discovered the whole thing in recent years because no one in her village wanted to talk about it. But Ahmam always knew there must be something happening to Grandaunt San: her life story couldn’t be as plain as that of an ordinary countryside woman.…

“At that time, the lives of others could be traded for your own. Survival was the only thing anybody fought for. Every survivor deserves respect. Jinju, whether we are suffering or not depends on how we look at ourselves. No matter what happened, I am grateful.” Grandaunt San peeled a tangerine carefully while speaking.….

“In this village, women of my generation were mostly widows. When our husbands died we couldn’t raise enough money to bury their bodies. Even our tears were exhausted. Your uncle has had a long life because he only had to sell his farm to support his family. People in this village were either murdered by the government, died of hard work or were killed in merciless natural disasters. Your Dad, though, he died because of his unrestrained drinking, so compared to the situations of others I guess we really don’t have much to complain about.”

Looking around this bleak village of women, each woman was an island wafting in the waves. Over the past millions of years, these islands had nourished insects, reptiles and the female mammals living in them.

All of a sudden, Ahmam felt herself finally see the light through the thick fog that had blinded her before, she read her name to the earth: “Chun-Mam!”

Self Isolation is All I Can Do to Help

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 03:44:00 +0000

Once we figured out how to order vegetables, fruit, and other supplies using online delivery services, life under self-imposed “isolation” has become far less anxious. Indeed, I have long been partial to staying at home and avoiding public spaces, though I confess that I miss the bookstore. Just yesterday I was wishing I could go out to see if any new titles have come in.

It actually feels good to avoid going out (shopping, or even strolling the neighborhood) because I can tell myself I’m contributing to the nation’s struggle against the ongoing pandemic. Even though I am just one person, I’ve removed myself from any possible chains of transmission. Meanwhile, the days continue to fly by.

The government this week extended the “Level 3” pandemic containment measures to July 12, meaning we must wear a mask when outdoors, restaurants cannot offer indoor seating, movie theaters and other recreational places are closed, and there are limits on the number of people who can enter supermarkets or events.

The most frightening news this week is that the “Delta Variant” which caused so much suffering in India is trying to make its way into Taiwan. The strain was found in a Taiwanese citizen who was returning to Taiwan after living in India for four months, the period through which this highly transmissible version of the Wuhan Coronavirus began ravaging India.

The traveler had to take a test in Macau, and it was there he was diagnosed. In response the government may now require testing for all arriving passengers, whereas prior to this incident only those who displayed symptoms before and during their two-week quarantine were required to be tested.

Apparently the airport sees a daily average of about 1,000 citizens coming home. The real worry we all face is the “domestic spread,” which in mid-May began to spread from a red light (ahem, “tea house”) district of Taipei City has seen over 13,000 “local” infections and almost 600 deaths. Those are not massive numbers in comparison to global figures, but Taiwan doesn't have an enormous population, so every loss is a sadness felt by all.

Grateful for the Rain

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 23:27:00 +0000

The average annual rainfall in Taiwan varies by region, with Taipei famous for cold and wet winters while Kaohsiung enjoys cool and dry winters. Summers give the south more rainfall, while the north usually enjoys one month of afternoon thunderstorms. But for the entire island the precious system of dams relies upon typhoons to get filled for use all year. With climate change, however, we have been experiencing fewer such storms. This year we've had none at all. The dam in Tainan has become a grassy green playground. Fortunately for the north we have had over a month of almost daily downpour, so our dam is forced to release overflow. Always in terror of drought, I will not complain about the constant rain. I just wish my landlord would allow me to collect it in buckets and barrels on the roof, if only for keeping my garden going during the dry months that climate change threatens us with. We already were facing threats of water rationing before this current wet season began.

Pondering on a Train Platform

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 02:12:00 +0000

With his usual insight my friend and poet Jaya posted these questions to his Facebook page. Synchronicity once again, as I read this after having concluded a discussion about Paris as a tourist destination--a discussion that took place in a train station coffee shop prior to boarding. I was arguing against a recent newspaper article that said Paris was a disappointing tourist venue. My experience was that if you are a romantic in the classical sense, then Paris is a city of awe in which past and present line, and the ghosts of history mingle with the living.

But Jaya's post hit my heart in another way, reminding me of my own status as a "permanent immigrant," the grandson of migrants who was to answer Destiny's call to continue their journey away from the heart of Europe.

Spiritually, and we are all migrant souls, destined to move on when these bodies fail us. I wonder if you also can feel in your blood that there is another part of the journey beyond this seemingly solid reality? Have you, like me, always held onto a sense, a suspicion, that this physical corporeal life is temporary and also therefore amazing?

Firmly trapped in middle age I now reject the value of "progress," and embrace a positive nihilistic view of life. We are animal. We need to live our lives as animals. That gives a new sense of the word "survival." Survival is certainly the basic scrabbling to stay alive. But "survival" can also suggest satisfaction: the basic joy of being alive and seeing beauty in everything around us. It can be an appreciation of the impermanence of everything and everyone. That adds to the joy of recognizing the shine of life in a friends eyes, the smile on a good person's face, the laughter of strangers around us. It sharpens the mind to allow us to recognize the bird flitting among the tall grasses next to a litter-strewn sidewalk, or the humming song of insects in the rustling leaves of a tree surrounded by the concrete city.

Without completely abandoning ambition, I desire to live these closing years in a sensibility of "survival." Finances may never be a solid ground of security for me, but concepts such as professional recognition or fame within "academia" are now of little value to me. More important as I see a diminished future is love, loyalty, and commitment to friends, students, and the world of the mind & spirit (art).

Jaya's questions, posed upon his return from travel, now become mine to contemplate as I begin my journey southward to visit people I love but too-rarely see, to hear the warmth in their voices, to see the encouragement in their smiles, and to feel once again the strength of spirit shared with me through their confident embraces. I travel through this land that is home yet not home.

July Driving Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 00:10:00 +0000

I am enjoying another East Coast Driving Holiday with Joe. Yesterday we drove from Hualien to Taitung between the mountain ranges. Today we will drive the Coastal road until reaching highway 30 that goes West through the mountains and meets up again with the valley highway back to Hualien. Tomorrow morning we have an early morning train back to Taipei.

The scenery is beautiful, but the highway has been re-designed so that the emergency lanes are now motorcycle lanes, and stopping to take photos is discouraged. And though Joe promised not to gripe when I want to stop or explore someplace, he still managed to slip in a passive aggressive complaint: "I don't like to take too many photos, myself," or "The way back to the highway is if you turn right here."

That's OK. If I was allowed to explore as much as I liked, we'd be heading West instead of South, and end up on the West Coast! But I do miss being in the mountains.

This trip has forced me to accept the concept of "taking a break." I guess I need that sometimes.

Summer Considerations

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 09:30:00 +0000

With that ever-present goal of achieving productivity over the summer break, I spent some time this afternoon on the HSR to Kaohsiung composing an essay I want to send to the Taipei Times. Joe further encouraged me to organize a forum of important business leaders to speak about the relationship between reading fiction and success in business & life. But where to begin. Joe says I should start with David's wife, whose boss is a major public advocate for the arts. This sounds very doable. How to begin?

Who Suffers?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:55:00 +0000

One of the curses of university life here seems to be that you can never just focus on your teaching more research. There always has to be some sort of contest or competition which requires tons of paperwork, or there's a report to be written and documentation to be gathered. Careers seem to be built upon publication, called "research." True success in this requires time, lots of time, for reading. But even basic responsibility of class preparation makes it difficult or impossible to find enough time to read as much as you need for a truly successful research endeavor. Those who succeed seem to do so on the backs of their teaching assistants. I wonder who suffers in this case. The teaching assistants who are forced into so much extra work, or the students who must do without an experienced and highly motivated professor?

The Hello Harrassment Harangue

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 08:09:00 +0000

Even after two decades I can't get used to the Hello Harrassment that still happens, albeit less frequently. J can't understand my anger, and probably never will. "They're just saying 'hello.'" No, they are not. A greeting is an extension of one's private self to at least momentarily encompass another. Delivered by a gang of hoodlum teens or construction workers on the roof of a far off building site, or even a truck driver passing at high speed, it is an assault of sorts. It is a hello thrown out for the entertainment of others, a hoot hoot aimed at a caged monkey with the added attraction of knowing this monkey understands. There is no desire to share the world, only the distracting pleasure of making a noise at a person who you do not view as an equal. It is a noise that says "outsider" and "freak," that reminds all listening that this passerby is not one of us.

An Affectionate Macaw

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 02:57:00 +0000

While visiting Taipei's "Bird Street" this weekend I came across this very young Macaw, a bird badly in need of some affection. Such a beautiful creature, but I can neither afford to own a parrot nor would I want to have a pet that would outlive me by so many years.

The Invisible Pingpu

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:56:00 +0000

The Pingpu aborigines keep running up against hard brick walls in their attempts at becoming an officially recognized tribe. But hats off to them as they keep trying anyway.

The first official snub came in June 2009, when the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) rejected their application. Currently, the Taiwan government-level council only recognizes 14 "indigenous groups," or tribes.

The council said that the Pingpu do not meet the criteria to be officially recognized as Aborigines according to the Aboriginal Identity Act (原住民身分法), and that the then-Provincial Government of Taiwan did not make any mistakes in its call for Aborigines to register their identity in the 1950s and 1960s, “so, the Pingpu cannot legally be granted Aboriginal status.”

The Pingpu claim they never heard about the registration at the time; they had either failed to be notified by mail, or did not understand that the call for registration applied to them because the government at the time used the racist term "mountain people" to refer to aborigines. The Pingpu, who have historically inhabited the lowlands near Tainan, did not think this applied to them. The Pingpu were recognized as Aborigines until the 1950s, when their failure to register their ethnic status led to the removal of recognition of aboriginal status.

“In fact, throughout the course of history from the Qing Dynasty up until now, the Pingpu chose to live with the Han people, making them different from other Aborigines,” the Council of Aboriginal People’s statement said. “If they want to become part of the family now, they should respect other Aborigines and not act like the ‘homeless beggar who kicked out the temple administrator.’”

The “homeless beggar” analogy is commonly used in Taiwanese to refer to a situation in which a person tries to get rid of and take the place of someone who once helped them.

“The Pingpu claim to be Aborigines, but they do not share the same historical legacy and lack interaction with Aborigines,” the statement said. “If the Pingpu are doing so in order to gain access to resources, we would like to ask a question: Did you, the Pingpu, stand with Aborigines when the Aborigines resisted Han domination?”

The statement said the CIP was created to serve all Aborigines, but not the Pingpu.

The official snub was met with a legal challenge. On behalf of the Pingpu, activist Uma Tavalan, of the Siraya tribe in southern Taiwan, filed a suit in early April 2010 with the district administrative court in Tainan City demanding official status as indigenous peoples for the nine tribes that make up the Pingpu.

Taiwan's nine groups of lowland Ping Pu indigenous peoples are the Babuza, Hoanya, Kahabu, Ketagalan, Makatao, Papora, Pazeh, Siraya, and the Taokas.

Tavalan's lawsuit challenges the Taiwan central government's denial of both ethnic group status and indigenous peoples status for the lowland inhabitants.

Tavalan said: "This legal challenge is the beginning, it may be a long road. If needed, we will take it all the way to the Court of Grand Justices and demand for a Constitutional interpretation. We are carrying the burden of the past painful history. Many Ping Pu peoples are backing my effort. We must fight on to the end. Maybe we might fail or we can succeed, but we must never give up this fight."

A month later, another Pingpu rights activist tried a different route toward recognition. In late May 2010, Pazeh tribal member Jason Pan (潘紀揚), acting as president of the Taiwan Association for Rights Advancement of Pingpu Plain Aborigine Peoples, filed a complaint with the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples on May 24. The petition accused Taiwan's government of refusing official recognition of the Pingpu peoples and denying their rights.

Pan’s group said that the UN special rapporteur James Anaya accepted its request for an international probe of the Pingpu's claims, and promised the request would be given "close and careful consideration," and that the UN could initiate communications with the Taiwanese government on the issue.

Council Minister Sun then told the press that informal sources had informed him that the U.N Special Rapporteur had rejected the complaint.

Trying to quell the sounds of protest, the CIP issued a more supportive statement. The July 6, 2010, announcement from CIP Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) included a vow to further enhance the rights of the Pingpu plain aboriginal tribes of Taiwan.

"The era during which the existence of Pingpu tribes was ignored or even denied has come to an end, as the CIP has established a task force to take care of Pingpu-related affairs, " Sun said at a press conference.

He said that it is undeniable that Pingpu plain tribes share a common culture and history with the "mountain" indigenous tribes, but that recognizing the status of the Pingpu plain tribes should not result in any damage to the rights and interests of the indigenous tribes already officially recognized. In other words, the council was trying a typical maneuver to quiet the voices of angry Pingpu activists. Basically, by saying "we'll look into this," the council could lessen tension by having finally shown a more positive response.

The attempt did not satisfy the die-hard Pingpu activists, who the next month tried yet another step toward further official rejection. In early August 2010, about 30 Pingpu tribal people gathered in front of the Presidential Office on the United Nations' International Day of the World's Indigenous People, calling for official recognition by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Nationalist Party (KMT), a party that for decades has garnered aboriginal support in the voting booth. Escorted by police officers, 10 of the protesters entered the Presidential Office to deliver a petition to President Ma Ying-jeou after participating in an ancestor worship ceremony at Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the presidential building.

Historian Lin Sheng-yi (林勝義), who heads the Ketagalan of Taiwan Indigenous Culture Alliance, said that in addition to petitioning for official recognition of the tribes, they also demanded: 1.) the restoration of a 4,400-year-old Ketagalan historical site in Gongliao in Taipei County, 2.) an investigation into the destruction of the site, and 3.) a halt to land expropriation and development in the northeast coastal area and a wetlands area in Tianliaoyang in Taipei County to ensure conservation and biodiversity.

The presidential office replied to the petition in a September 3, 2010 letter addressed to Lin. The written statement expressed the president's full support for the Pingpu "in the area of culture and history," but chose to leave the ethnic recognition issue to one side because it is "very complicated and needs to be dealt with very carefully."

"We Pingpu are an indigenous people, and that is a fact that was recorded by the Spanish, the Dutch, the Qing Chinese and the Japanese, who all ruled over Taiwan," Lin said. "We're Aborigines, we're born with that identity. I don’t know why it’s a complicated issue that needs to be dealt with very carefully."

"How do you administratively decide someone’s ethnicity?" he asked.

Jason Pan echoed Lin’s ideas. "The government had no problem recognizing the ethnic identities of other Aborigines, of Tibetans, Mongolians and Hakka, but when it comes to Pingpu Aborigines, it becomes a 'complicated issue' that needs to be further researched, and that requires social consensus." Pan said sarcastically. "If If we Pingpu do not fight for our own rights, we will eventually become culturally extinct."

Lin said that the Presidential Office called them "Pingpu" in the letter and admitted that they had their own culture and history, "so how can you say that these people do not exist?"

[This post was put together from various online news items, including excerpts from the Taipei Times and China Post.]

Food Shortages and Short Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:27:00 +0000

Professor Lei Li-fen wrote an opinion piece worth reading. His essay arises from the recent scandal in Miaoli County, where the local nationalist government is dispossessing farmers so more land can be given to industrial expansion. People have short memories of the food shortages that hit many parts of Asia a couple of years ago. Read Lei's essay: "Agriculture Deserves More Support." (Taipei Times, July 24, 2010, pg. 8.)

Political Arrogance

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:31:00 +0000

What have they got against the Mexicans? Two years ago the unfolding H1N1 epidemic revealed a streak of anti-Mexican racism within the Beijing foreign policy bureaucracy, but it takes much less to encourage Taiwan's politicians to show themselves as arrogant haters of things Mexican.

All the politicians needed was a survey in Foreign Policy magazine that ranked Taipei City as No. 34 among the world's most favorable urban sites, a fall of six point from last year's No. 39 slot. A mayoral election is coming up, so the out-of-power (and likely to remain that way: Taipei citizens vote the party, not the policy) DPP blamed the slide on the current mayor's performance. "The ranking of Taipei City fell from 34th to 39th," he said. "Mexico City, on the other hand, was ranked 30th," he quickly added. What does he have against Mexico City that he seems to naturally expect it to rank lower than it did, and certainly far lower than Taipei City? There's an unavoidable hint of anti-Mexican bias, wouldn't you agree?

But wait, there's more! The current KMT mayor, Bu-Hau Lung-been (himself a member of an elite class), responded to these horrendous charges with fury at having Taipei compared with Mexico City. He identified as "ignorant" his opponent's campaign tactic of "belittling Taipei City's performance as inferior to other cities (ahem, Mexico City)." He went on to point out that Taipei ranked higher than Shanghai, Seoul and Beijing. Why would he assume that surpassing these three Asian cities would be better than surpassing Mexico City?

The only answer, beside the obvious that the "we're not racist" Chinese/Taiwanese truly are racist, is that our local politicians are at best guilty of unfounded arrogance.

News Source: "Presidential Office's Lo Slams DPP Candidates" in Taipei Times, August 20, 2010; p. 3.

German Icons in Taiwanese Eyes: BMW & Adolf

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:53:00 +0000

The octopus with the ability to predict World Cup winners has become a news sensation in Taiwan. The octopus' predictions have apparently irked the German sports audience as well. This afternoon on Taiwan television the satirical program "The Big Party" 全民最大黨 offered a skit featuring a Hitler lookalike speaking his own imaginary German and suggesting what should be done with the octopus. Of course, his suggestion was to mix up a platter of sashimi to enjoy after buying a new BMW.

If any German citizens ever saw the skit, they would be both insulted and disheartened. How sad they would feel to see that BMW and Hitler remain the most obvious icons, in the mind of Taiwanese and perhaps the world, of Germany.

Warding off the Evil Eye

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:21:00 +0000

My colleague posted this video of a ceremony to "heal" her child, whom she worries was being plagued by rogue spirits or ghosts. My colleague sent me this video because she remembers my stories of how my Slavic-influenced mother would perform a ceremony to ward off "the evil eye." Of odd interest to the international viewer: notice how the street sounds permeate the home, and the music in the start of the video... the garbage truck has arrived outside.

Fascist Ghosts Must be Dancing in Glee

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:34:00 +0000

I have only just seen the official news report that former President Chen Shui-bian and his wife have been sentenced to life in prison for corruption during his eight years in office. Life imprisonment? For theft? And it wasn't even the kind of Bernie Madoff or Enron corruption that emptied the bank accounts of innocent people and left them bereft of financial security in their retirement years.

A lifetime in prison?

And this while the torturers and murderers who shot the victims of fascist Nationalist execution squads, who dragged people from their homes in the dead of night, remain unpunished to live out the remainder of their lives in comfort and the security of knowing that the machine will protect them? And this while those who supported the murder machines under the two Chiang regimes--the Squirrel and his archenemy the Incompetent--remain respected and free? Not a single person was sentenced to prison for their role in the executions and tortures of the White Terror years, even though many of them surely still live. Thousands dead, and not a single executioner or torturer is in jail.

Sure, the Incompetent "apologized" for "mistakes" made by his predecessors, including his former boss Chiang the Younger. There were plenty of families torn apart by the gunshot under the Younger's reign of terror. It wasn't his Mini Mao father who had all the pleasure of spilling the blood of innocent Taiwanese who wanted nothing more than democratic elections, a free press, and the right to speak their minds without fear of a bullet in the back of the head.

A lifetime in prison? The ghost is the machine.

From the Seattle Times
(partial and edited story below)
Friday, September 11, 2009:

Taiwan court convicts Chen, imposes life sentence

By PETER ENAV, Associated Press Writer

A three-judge Taiwan court imposed a life sentence on former President Chen Shui-bian after convicting him of corruption Friday, marking a watershed in the island's turbulent political history.

Chen's wife Wu Shu-chen was also convicted of corruption and received the same life sentence, said court spokesman Huang Chun-ming.

"Chen Shui-bian and Wu Shu-chen were sentenced to life in prison because Chen has done grave damage to the country, and Wu, because she was involved in corruption deals as the first lady," Huang said. The two had also been fined a total of NT$500 million ($US 15.2 million).

The 58-year-old Chen was charged with embezzling $3.15 million during his 2000-2008 presidency from a special presidential fund, receiving bribes worth at least $9 million in connection with a government land deal, laundering some of the money through Swiss bank accounts, and forging documents.

The verdicts came as hundreds Chen supporters demonstrated outside a downtown Taipei court, holding flags and banners saying "free him" and "Chen's innocent."

Indeed, most Taiwanese were convinced that Chen was guilty of at least some of the charges against him, though some of his supporters believed his anti-China views played a role in his prosecution, and that he was unfairly confined to jail during his trial. Chen had been confined to a suburban Taipei jail since late December, after prosecutors convinced judges not to free him following his indictment. One judge who ruled to release Chen during his trial was suddenly replaced and his verdict overturned, with the former president being once again marshaled into jail.

Typhoon Shock Doctrine

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Michael Turton has a very perceptive article that fits well with my previous posting, although he's a bit more professional than I.

His blog, which is really worth visiting, can be found at: http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Ma Administration Typhoon Shock Doctrine

In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein writes extensively on how governments use economic, natural, and social shocks to carry out social engineering that benefits elites while leaving ordinary individuals amid wrecked societies with decaying infrastructure, a smaller share of wealth, and diminished future prospects.*

I've made this point before, but it is worth making again: the Ma government's response to the typhoon disaster in the south is identical to its response to the economic crisis last year. The only difference is in the speed of events. As I noted then, the crisis had been used by the Ma Administration in a classic shock doctrine way, as leverage to get the shellshocked public to accept an accelerated approach to the ECFA ~~sell-out~~ agreement with China. Now, argues Taiwan News in today's editorial, the current typhoon disaster is being used to force through new legislation that would enable widespread social engineering in disaster-hit areas. After comparing the new legislation to the 921 Earthquake recovery laws, the editorial observes:

Article 12 would give central government and local governments the power to compulsorily order the removal of villages, naturally almost exclusively of indigenous peoples, from designated areas with no provisions for consultation with village assemblies or communities.

Article 13 would permit the resettlement of disaster victims without regard to laws or regulations concerned with urban or rural planning, national park management, environmental impact assessment, water or soil conservancy or "other related laws," including the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law.

While Liu has stated that the principles of national land recovery will guide the effort, the fact that the KMT-controlled legislature boycotted the draft national land planning law and the draft national land recovery statute proposed by the former DPP government for over four years gives scant cause for optimism that the Liu Cabinet will promote this principle. In addition, the absence of city and county mayors and disaster victim or indigenous peoples representatives on the proposed national reconstruction commission has given rise to suspicions that the KMT government will bypass DPP city and county mayors and directly disburse funds and projects without hindrance from any civic monitoring, to township governments, most of which are run by KMT commissioners, in the run-up to year-end county elections.

Liu's declaration Sunday that donating conglomerates and businesses should participate directly in the process of deciding the utilization of reconstruction funds has sparked fears of a replication in southern Taiwan of the disastrous "reconstruction" of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina which witnessed the massive privatization of public services through top-down "shock capitalism" instead of bottom-up community based rebuilding....

The law allows for compulsory resettlement of indigenous people, and permits resettlement without regard for any other considerations -- environmental, water management, or the aboriginal basic law. Conglomerates and corporations are to determine how reconstruction funds are to be used, while the proposed Morakot Reconstruction Committee excludes (DPP) city mayors and county chiefs. Stripped of the fine verbiage, the legislation basically gives the funds directly to the construction-industrial state, with the added proviso that it can now move whole villages around without concern for what anyone says, and without concern for environment regulations or local culture. Disaster capitalism at its finest. The Committee...

.....which will be chaired by Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), will have 30 officials from different government agencies, plus the heads of Delta Electronics, Uni-President Enterprises Corp, Taiwan High Speed Rail, China Steel and one university president and four professors.

In other words, the national-level Typhoon Reconstruction Committee will be composed of the central government and powerful corporations.

The Taipei Times report notes that the legislation was not reviewed by the Executive Yuan and was being accelerated through the process for a vote tomorrow. The paper also has an extensive collection of comments from aboriginal groups in this piece, in which one aboriginal representative points out that the survey work has long been done and safe areas for resettlement in the mountains have already been identified.

The green light to forced resettlement without aboriginal participation has obvious implications for expansion of the construction-industrial state. In many areas local indigenous peoples are strongly against local public works projects even though they trickle down some funds to the community. As I wrote last week, there is much opposition to the massive Tsengwen Reservoir Diversion in the area, and the project is blamed for flooding that began even before this one -- after typhoon Kalmaegi last year many of the houses in Siaolin were mildly inundated with mud and water. Forced resettlement of indigenes will also removed one claimant to area resources such as land and timber. There will be fewer objections to illegal use of forest resources by Han farmers. Of course, removal of aboriginals will simply create an even larger pool of landless laborers living in marginal areas to help hold down local labor costs.

The Taipei Times drives home this point in an editorial today:

Mountain-dwelling Aboriginal people are likely to be the biggest losers. For more than 100 years, Japanese and Chinese governments have moved these villages closer to plains areas so that they could be better governed and controlled; in many cases these people were moved into the plains while still being administratively defined as “mountain Aborigines.” All throughout, Han officials took over management of most of the land for forestry, agricultural and tourism purposes, among others, frequently to the environment’s detriment.

Supporting this line of thinking are racists and speculators who want Aboriginal reservation laws repealed so that the land can be bought up, developed and sold; and Buddhist charity officials, whose otherwise faultless conduct has been stained by asking the largely Christian Aboriginal community to “return the mountains and forests to Mother Nature.”

Sadly, the present crop of Aboriginal legislators cannot be trusted to defend the interests of affected Aboriginal communities on matters of this gravity — and certainly not Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), who is essentially an ambassador for Beijing — and even in the unlikely event that they mobilize to defend their constitutents, in all probability they will be ignored by party bosses.

May Chin took a $3 million check from Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office for disaster relief.

The new National Reconstruction Commission, with its power to dispense funds to bypass county and city mayors in the affected areas and perhaps give them directly to township chiefs, highlights a couple of issues. For one thing, the possibility of direct money handouts to local township chiefs are reminiscent of the direct money handouts through consumer vouchers -- an apparent vote buying program -- and for another, it also highlights how the "Green" south isn't really "Green" but is actually a melange of Blue and Green at different levels of government. Whether or not the DPP government levels are bypassed, note that the money will be arriving in hard-hit communities just before the December election, among ethnic groups (aborigines in the mountains, the Hakkas of Chiadong and Linbian) with long-time support for the KMT.

*Mike Davis' awesome Late Victorian Holocausts is another must read in this area.

Marakot and the Ghost of the Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:58:00 +0000

In yesterday’s Taipei Times newspaper (August 18) I read more of the horrible blunder that led to almost a week’s delay in the request for and arrival of international relief aid to help rescue and assist victims of rain-swollen Typhoon Marakot, which devastated the southern half of the island nation on August 8, 2009. [ See: “Back in Taiwan, Ou Apologizes…” ]

What I am reading yet again informs my suspicion that Taiwan’s civil service machine, its deeply entrenched network of bureaucrats, remains a holdover of Chinese Nationalist colonialism whose purpose is contrary to the survival and well-being of Taiwan and its people.

Yesterday’s news (August 18) reports Ministry of Foreign Affairs chief Francisco Ou as apologizing again for a memo instructing all overseas offices and embassies not to accept foreign aid other than cash. Minister Ou, in classic Nationalist Party (Kuomingtang--KMT) fashion, then tried to push the blame onto the shoulders of others. Why do I say “classic” fashion?

Well, I cannot forget this is the political organization

that supported three decades of “White Terror,” a nightmare that engulfed thousands of people, innocents pulled from their homes in the middle of the night, executed and buried in unmarked graves merely for seeking freedom of speech. (The tiny gravestone on the left is all that identifies one of these victims in a lonely spot of a Taipei cemetery that was only recently discovered.)

The Nationalist Party has blood on its hands,. It is a party that historically has a high tolerance for the notion that those unworthy of Nationalist values are at least worthy of imprisonment, torture and murder. And it is the party that established a self-maintaining killing machine that functioned at its best during the White Terror period, and which boasts a sister machine that still functions at full tilt in China, the land that birthed the deformed monstrous fetuses of Nationalist and Communist Parties.

Both machines operate not on gas and oil, but on blood and flesh. And once you create an independently functioning machine that runs on blood, you had better make sure you supply the machine with a steady supply of blood and bone.

And perhaps that is why in Taiwan the now-defunct National Security Agency‘s “secret police” eventually began feeding upon its own, tossing previously loyal bureaucrats and torturers into the hopper. When they ran low on innocent civilians, torturers pointed at other torturers and bureaucrats fingered fellow bureaucrats as Red Spies in need of psychological reconditioning available from a bullet in the brain.

Since the very welcome death of mini-me dictator Ching-kuo Chiang in 1988, the murder machine has been dismantled. But the odor of grinding gears, two decades later, continues to permeate the walls of the surviving Civil Service bureaucracy. Like the lingering odor of baked bread leads to hunger, perhaps the smell of blood encourages another sort of salivation, a desire to slash out and tear into another person’s life. And here today is Foreign Minister Ou, quick to slash out by passing blame to others, preferably his vulnerable subordinates.

Ou’s memo refusing aid was in print just one day after the Foreign Ministry had sworn that it never closed the door to international assistance, except of course for cash contributions. Rallying to defend his boss, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia quickly told the public that the whole affair is a misunderstanding brought about by a poor choice of words.

What Minister Ou really meant to say, dear Comrades, was that Taiwan staff should refuse foreign rescue teams and equipment “temporarily” until the full extent of the disaster has been evaluated. And besides, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is merely a mouthpiece for the Central Emergency Operation Center, which is responsible for requesting foreign aid. Hsia is worthy of the Squealer Award.

At least Hsia has won the support, ahem, of his boss. Foreign Minister Ou said last week that demerits would certainly be “handed out” (what a poor translation, or is that really how the Chinese translates--demerits handed out like candy, come and get ’em) to any staff responsible for “the oversight” that is a memo from Ou himself. Lovely fellow. But he went further, adding that Deputy Hsia was a great asset to the Ministry whose departure, “if it came to that,” would be very saddening. Well, it came to that. Hsia today (2009 August 19) he handed in his resignation, taking full responsibility for the memo because he was technically “in charge” while his boss Ou was overseas.

Not content to feed on their own within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, bureaucrats turned their eyes on other government ministries worthy of “blame.” An unidentified ministry official was quoted today as saying that the National Fire Administration must be responsible for the memo because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “had no authority to ask for (international) assistance because such decisions were under the National Fire Administration’s jurisdiction.”

When the National Fire Administration defended itself by saying it had never consulted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the refusal of international aid, the unidentified Foreign Affairs spokesperson showed claws with a warning that “the ministry had kept records of communications with the National Fire Administration and was fully prepared for a face-off if it came to that.” For those about to die, we salute you.

Hsia’s refusal of foreign aid, offered almost immediately by the United States and Japan, is typical of what I recognized as a Nationalist distaste for a helping hand. Yes, the Chinese are miserably proud, and in another posting perhaps I can talk about my good friend Mr. D’s views on the pride of landlords and Neighborhood Decline.

But here, let me draw on my decades-ago experience as an editor-proofreader whose salary came from the fascist-minded Nationalist Party. Surrounded by bureaucrats every day I quickly recognized the presence of a barely suppressed anti-Americanism, revealed through snide comments and occasional insults from important “ambassadors” (a title that by the mid-80s was becoming increasingly irrelevant as more nation states switched diplomatic recognition to the Red Fascists) and petty bureaucrats.

The most prevalent of these snide insults was the emphasis upon the “youth” of the United States, which was noted as a detriment compared to the great sage-like wisdom of a China over 3,000 years old. These kinds of boasts were made even as China writhed in the blood poured out by the Supreme Red Fascist Mao, and while Taiwan suffocated beneath the weight of gunshot corpses piled up by the mini-Mao in hiding on Illa Formosa.

The mini-Mao was able to maintain his kingdom and oversee the functioning of his murder machine with American dollars. That he needed the greenback to support his survival must have been a blow to his ego. The shame surely seeped into and throughout the bureaucracy, as mini-Mao and Party, and by extension Nation, were one and the same.

And so the constant reminders of bureaucrats high and low, spoken in absolute confidence and strengthened by a dismissive wave of the hand: “You‘re a foreigner; you wouldn’t understand. We are Chinese. We understand.”

Human rights advocate Linda Arrigo later confirmed my observation, noting that the Nationalist attitude was one of pull and push with the United States. The pull is the survival-ensuring acceptance of American money, but the shame of taking in handouts leads to anti-American insults, the push, on the part of the bureaucrats who would like to believe that the money in their coffers and the guns in their hands are the result of their own greatness.

It cannot be overemphasized that Ma the Incompetent has the blood of Chiang the Younger’s bureaucratic machinery on his hands, as he served as Chiang the Younger’s English language secretary for a number of years. He would also have inherited the Pull and Push Mindset. But this time around he allowed the Push to overwhelm the Pull. Why is that?

Simply put, the playing field has changed. No longer is Illa Formosa viewed by the Nationalists as a last stand against the Red Fascists. An odd virus has sickened the Nationalist bureaucracy, causing a shortness of breath that makes it impossible for our serving bureaucrats to utter harsh words against the Red Fascists. The virus also affects the eyesight, plaguing government officials with a shortsightedness that makes it impossible for them to see that the land upon which they stand is not an extension of the Chinese land mass that looms in the distance.

Suggestion that this sickness has infected the Ministry of Foreign Affairs comes from an earlier incident involving a rogue bureaucrat named Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英). Under a pseudonym, diplomat Kuo who posted some rather venomous anti-Taiwanese comments on a blog. Examples of what he said include:

a.) “Most people see being a half breed as something to be ashamed of. The Taiwanese are proud of it”

b.) “Martial law was an example of benevolent administration by the government of that time”

c.) “We are high class mainlanders!”

d.) “The big problem with Demon Island (Taiwan) is that we can’t get our logic straight because of idiots”

e.) “After China uses force to (invade) Taiwan, there cannot be any discussion of political liberalization. Taiwan will need to be locked down and purged for many years.”

(Yeah, well, that last one sounds like Jackie Chan, but it’s not.)

Kuo was relieved of his job, losing his pension in the process. When he returned to Taiwan he was surrounded by gangsters whose job it was to protect him from rightfully irate Taiwanese.

What needs stressing is that this man was a longtime civil servant, a member of the bureaucracy from the days of Chiang the Younger, and survived buried deep within an organization that surely would have recognized his anti-Taiwanese tendencies and, given his lack of staying power, chosen not to penalize him. The system is so powerful that fascist Kuo even survived eight years of the Chen Shui-bian Administration.

I note all this as confirmation of my paranoid suspicion (note my words, please: I speak of “paranoia” and “suspicion,” with no proof and here I make no charges, only ponderings of possibilities) that the bureaucracy charged with protecting and caring for the people of Taiwan is actually capable of crushing them like grapes in a wine press through, in the case of Marakot, a lack of attention, a failure of imagination, and a slowness of response.

The problem is not a ghost in the machine, but the ghost of the machine.

The bureaucracy exists to maintain itself, and it must struggle against the haunting whisperings of a ghost that seeks not the oil of bureaucratic efficiency, but the malodorous blood of human sacrifice as fuel and lubricant. The bureaucracy’s slow response to the plight of Taiwan’s southern citizens may have satisfied the spectral ghoul’s craving for the sight, smell and taste of blood.

A more reasoned response to the disaster might suggest that the government’s initial inaction stems from a lack of foresight and imagination on the part of the Powers that Be. (Shades of 9/11 and Katrina, perhaps? Ma the Incompetent refused to acknowledge the comparison last night in his press conference.)

Stated simply, too many of Taiwan’s bureaucratic and political leaders ensconced behind desks at the Executive branch and the central government bureaucracy are unfamiliar with any terrain other than Taipei City and the road to the airport in Taoyuan, which they traverse quite frequently in their effort to exchange personal greetings with Red Fascist officials. Factor in their lack of imagination and common sense, hard won through doing time in a school system created by the mini-Mao Nationalists to discourage individual creativity and critical thinking, and you’ve got a reasonable argument for why the government sent in so few rescue personnel (soldiers) and failed to provide transport for the evacuation of mountainside villages in the days preceding the storm’s arrival.

When Ma the Incompetent looked out from the Taipei City banquet hall windows on August 8, he estimated that the storm was not so bad and lacked the imagination to suspect that the winds and rain might be worse elsewhere on the island.

(In last night’s press conference, Ma the Incompetent blamed the rain for his tardy ordering of rescue operations. As one citizen then taunted in the press: “What kind of government leaves its people in pouring rain for three days before it begins rescue work?” Well, ever heard of Myanmar?)

It is a miserably sad irony that the victims of the storm represent two very serious “political” populations. First, the majority of voters in the storm-flooded south have typically been identified as “pro-Green,” meaning they support the party that stands in opposition to Ma the Incompetent’s Nationalist crew of colonial holdovers.

The storm ruined many produce and livestock farms in the south, potentially bankrupting a good number of pro-democratic, anti-colonial voters. Could this destruction have given at least a few of the pro-Chinese colonizers a sense of satisfaction at nature punching up a long-overdue payback for decades of anti-colonial troublemaking. Somewhere in Taiwan, or more likely in China, sits a satisfied ex-bureaucrat Kuo.

The great irony, of course, is that so many of the south’s younger voters switched camps and cast ballots in support of Ma the Incompetent and his fellow colonial-minded politicians.

By and large, though, the primary victims of the typhoon were Aboriginal people. Here the irony is especially powerful, as the Aborigines have always been supporters of the new colonizers, a support that stems from the influence of generous Nationalist money handouts and a historical dislike of the “Taiwanese” who disenfranchised them centuries before. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.

What the Aboriginal are apparently blind to is the Nationalist colonizer overwhelming dislike of them. In the bloody days of mini-Mao rule the Nationalist goal was to eradicate tribal cultures and traditions. Aborigine languages were disrespected, traditional costumes were illegal, and people could not sing the original words of their folk songs but had to replace them with patriotic drool. And still today the government considers it an easy and harmless thing to do to displace tribal people from their land.

I can’t understand how Aboriginal people can so easily forget Ma’s true colors, which he flew for the Aboriginal public to see in December 10, 2007 as mayor of Taipei City. In a meeting with tribal people who were living illegally on Hsintien Riverside land, Ma made comments such as: “I will treat you like a person … and I will educate you well and provide you with opportunities” and “Aborigines should adjust their mentality.”

In a later apology for the comments that betray his underlying belief that Aborigines are not “persons” and so his treatment of them as persons is something special, Ma offered an apology that wasn’t an apology: “If some people feel unhappy for this reason, I accept to apologize.”

Typhoon Marakot has allowed Ma the Incompetent to once again show his anti-indigenous tendency. Survivors of the typhoon were angered last week when Ma commented to a journalist (in English) that it was the villagers’ responsibility to get out of town when the wind blows.

Ma said that this is the first time in many years that a typhoon has brought such heavy rain (let’s not talk about last year’s typhoon that tore through the south, Mr. Ma), and so the villagers were unprepared. “If they (the villagers) were (aware of the intensity of the storm), they should have been evacuated much earlier.” (Well, Mr. Ma, how could they be aware when the Central Weather Bureau appears to be nothing more than a roomful of monkeys with typewriters?)

Ma the Incompetent then went on to say: “Just because they stayed where they lived . . . but you see, they didn’t realize how serious the disaster was.” Yes, Ma the Incompetent, and Ma the Insensitive. And yet, Aborigines voted for him, and probably will continue to vote Nationalist Blue. I’m flummoxed. Am I blaming the victim? Well, to what degree are we responsible, as voters, for the actions of the public officials we voted for? Are the American voters who cast their ballots for George Bush responsible for the thousands dead in Emperor Bush's Baghdad Adventure? That's definitely a topic worth pursuing. But returning to this present issue...

It is not just Ma the Incompetent who comes across in my view as anti-Aboriginal, an observation I defend with reference to his dismissive rhetoric. Let’s point a finger at the whole Legislature of Ma Wannabes. Back in 2005 the Chen Administration had submitted a proposal for land restoration, calling for things such as the restriction or even removal of illegal mountainside hotels, the replanting of land damaged by betel nut farming, and the refusal to rebuild mountain roads (hey Mr. Ma, what about your plan to build a new road to Hualien, the Environmental Impact Study be damned?).

As usual, the Chen Administration tried to do something good for Taiwan, but the Nationalist-controlled Legislative Branch nixed everything. And now they sit and cry “We will do something about this,” with the horses already out of the barn, excepting the horse’s ass that sits in the farmer’s chair. When will the voters of Taiwan realize that the Nationalist Party is a party dedicated to the colonization of Taiwan? Colonizers don't care about their colonies. Their purpose is to suck the golden teat for as long as they can before pulling up stakes and heading back to the land of their passports: the USA.

The Marakot disaster now gives the government a new opportunity to backhand its aboriginal supporters, this time by refusing to allow survivors to return to their traditional lands. Presumably families would be forced onto lands close to their original tribal territories, or even worse they would be relocated into urban areas. As one Aboriginal storm survivor said: “Forcing us to relocate to the city permanently is no different from killing us” (Taipei Times, 2009 August 19, p. 2).

Police Motto: Make Study, Not Protest

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:45:00 +0000

Oh my goodness, the mess on my desk is that bad! I'm referring to the foot-high pile of papers and assorted documents that has been sitting there, well, for over a year according to the date on a news clipping I just unearthed midway through the pile.

I see why I saved the article. I was interested in a front-page Taipei Times (4 December 2008) piece titled "Losheng Activists Block Demolition." The article is about the last holdouts of protesters and residents of the Losheng Leprosy Sanatorium in Taipei County (Sinjhuang City). The sanatorium was partially demolished to make way for an MRT line extension, despite protests and also despite promises from Ma the Incompetent who as a candidate promised to preserve the Japanese colonial era landmark (and the only home ever known by many or most of the patients).

The quote that caught my eye was:

"Sinjhuang Precinct Chief Hsu Yung-sheng said through a loudspeaker (to the students barricaded inside and protesters outside) ... "You shouldn't be htere. You should stay home and study."

Yes, once again our brave men in the police corps are leading the way toward democracy and the responsibility of the youth. Where were these brave heroes of "education" when students joined the zombie hordes of the Red Shirt "movement?" Did they swat down (or up) the thumbs of enraged but generally non-thinking students who wasted their time (when they should have been home studying) over an issue that served to improve the lives of absolutely nobody? No.

But when students stand up and defend the rights of some of Taiwan's weakest members of society, the brave guardians of peace come on full force, saws and backhoes ready at hand.

Makes me proud to be a New Taiwanese.

Moonscape in Kaohsiung

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:38:00 +0000

The view of some rock formations that the locals refer to as "the moon," as seen from the window of a passing car on the Second Southern Highway.

The Moon Worlds of Kaohsiung County

China Post Article

Speeding along a serpentine country road through the unexceptional, low rolling countryside of Kaohsiung County, our scooters round a corner when abruptly the mixed woodland bordering the lane ends, the ground on the left falls away steeply, and an extraordinary ravine of crumbly, light brown earth unfolds to the left.

The Americans call this type of landscape “badlands,” but to the Taiwanese they’re more like the surface of the moon: “Lunar World,” as they call them. These strange landscapes of barren clay soil eroded into bizarre knife-edge ridges, sharp pinnacles and graceful, curved arcs are a strangely beautiful if surreal element of the landscape in parts of northern Kaohsiung and southern Tainan Counties.

Badlands landscapes are by no means unique to this region of Taiwan. Anyone who’s motored along freeway one between Miaoli and Taichung cities will have passed and maybe admired the magnificent moonscape of Fire Mountain (火炎山), just south of the town of Sanyi, while there are several examples in the east-coast county of Taitung. To see Taiwan’s most impressive, photogenic and extensive “lunar world” landscapes, however, look no further than the Kaohsiung/Tainan county border area.

Perhaps the best known of all is the area called Tianliao Moon World (田寮月世界), on route 184, three kilometers east of Tianliao village. This area is easily accessible (there’s no need to even leave the car, as there’s a good view of the entire landscape from the busy main road), but various ungainly additions to the landscape, such as wide, elevated concrete walkways and ornamental concrete pavilions crowned with sickle moons, rob the landscape of its natural beauty. The place more resembles a children’s playground built in an old quarry than the fascinating natural curiosity that it is.

Head instead for Caoshan (草山), 15 kilometers north, and Taiwan’s largest expanse of badlands landscape. Caoshan is a small settlement at the northern end of an isolated, five-kilometer-long ridge rising out of the otherwise featureless lowlands of southern Tainan County. The area is very popular with tourists, most of whom head for the 308 Viewpoint (308高地, named after its height, in meters, above sea level). This is as good a place as any to begin an exploration of the bizarre landscape that lies just to the north.

The viewpoint (and adjacent coffee shop, an ugly, two-story monstrosity of exposed metal girders) commands a magnificent panorama over a huge area of barren, eroded soil—a deeply wrinkled landscape eroded into countless mini gullies, ravines and peaks. Vegetation hangs on in places, softening the landscape a little, but this place still looks like nowhere else in Taiwan.

Enjoy the view for a few minutes, but if time is short, leave this tourist trap behind and head down into the heart of the badlands themselves. The direct way is via a narrow lane that fearlessly plunges straight down the very steep northern escarpment of the ridge. Take care if going this way, as it’s very steep. In a couple of kilometers, the road levels out temporarily. Look out here for a sign in Chinese to the “Grand Canyon” (大峽谷).

Turn right and follow the dusty lane for a couple of hundred meters until photogenic pinnacles of earth loom above the road on either side, for all the world like miniature mountain ranges. Park in the car park at the end of the road, and walk towards the metal fence in front, until the “Grand Canyon” is suddenly revealed as the ground in front drops away into a deep ravine.

The silly name does this beautiful place no favors. It’s neither a spectacular nor a massive landform, but the countless formations of the rain- and wind-carved ravine walls—impressive, exquisite, delicate, often appearing to defy gravity—make a wondrous sight. This place is especially magical come late afternoon as the sun sinks low in the sky, casting a rich orange light over the cliffs.

The Grand Canyon of Caoshan makes for some great photo ops and the developed area around Tianliao Moon World is perfect for the kids, but my own favorite area of badlands is the one we stumbled across on our scooters at the beginning of this article: a little-known one lying about midway between them.

Take route 28 from Tianliao, and about two kilometers after Moon World, turn left onto a narrow lane known as route 39-1. Motor along this quiet, winding road for a spell, and once again thick undergrowth and trees make way for those strange hillsides of crumbling earth.

The landscape here looks no more like the surface of the moon, for all I know, than the nearby Grand Canyon resembles its namesake in the U.S. but one thing is for certain: This is the closest thing we have in Taiwan to a lunar landscape.