Fishing in Storm Drains

I noticed this guy fishing in downtown Taipei the other day as I was walking to the bank on my lunch hour. He was scooping minnow-sized fish out of a storm drain on Bade Road (八德路) and putting them into a shallow red bucket (see pic). I asked him if all of the storm drains had fish in them and he replied "no". When I asked how he knew this one had fish, he shrugged and replied: "I've just known for a long time."

It didn't occur to me to ask what he's going to do with the fish. They're way too small to eat. I should have asked him what "a long time" is too. I wonder if he means since he was a little boy. I'm sure the area (this was around section three) would have looked drastically different then. But Bade (八德) itself has been around in road form for centuries. I've been been told it's the original north-south highway of Taiwan.

Taipei Signs

One of my colleagues asked me why I was taking a picture of this sign. "Because I enjoy the irony - it's an invitation to suicide," I answered. Right of way means nothing in Taiwan. There isn't even an expression in Chinese to capture the essence of its meaning. But I know that this sign is simply a PR stunt. The local government figures it makes Taipei look international so they waste money putting it up. I already know what they're going to say when some tourist takes it at face value and gets creamed crossing the street: "My god, those foreigners are pushy. This is NOT America!"

I showed it to a few distant family members over a father's day dinner and they insisted that the city is cracking down. My sister-in-law has even seen a police officer on the news threatening that he'll be writing drivers up in Hsih Men Ting (西門町) if they drive around like nutcases without any regard for pedestrians. In particular, he's had it with weaving.

I have never, personally speaking, seen a driver get a ticket for crashing through a crosswalk, not once. I've never seen a driver in Taiwan catch it from the cops for endangering pedestrians. Nope. But it has been explained to me why drivers disregard people outside their vehicles. This is the first explanation, "look around, guy, and see you're in Taiwan. We change when we drive overseas". Second, "car owners in Taiwan are aristocrats. Cyclists and scooterists are proletariat. Commuters are peasants." Simply get out of the way or get crushed beneath my wheels.
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This ad would probably be for tzong tze, an oily rice wrapped up in different sorts of leaves. Tzong-tze's a staple during Dragon Boat Festival, although a lot of Taiwanese people like to eat them year-round. The restaurant has been written up in a lot of Taiwan's 'round town mags and papers. I'm not a big tzong tze eater (although they do sometimes hit the spot, especially if they're caked with hot sauce and you've got a couple of cold beers to wash them down). But this sign works/is working on me. I want tzong-tse.

Cycling in Taipei? Yeah, Right

I was just about run over by a cyclist yesterday as I crossed the street near my office (Dunhua and Bade) because I hadn't noticed this new bicycle lane had been put in. As a person who's worried about pollution, which is intolerable in Taipei, and an interested cyclist, I'm all for the promotion of bikes as an alternative mode of transportation. But I can't help feeling this is lame. Actually it pisses me off. If Ma (Taiwan's president) is going to advocate we use bikes because they are not: "fuel consuming vehicles" or that we can "help protect the Earth" by riding them, then he should back it up with bicycle lanes that thread along the city's streets, with cops on every corner to ensure the maniacal drivers of Taipei stay out of them. I mean, what the heck are we supposed to do once we cross the street? Should we get up on the sidewalk and weave through the pedestrians, ringing our little bike bells? In the papers, there have been lots of shots of Ma on his bike, but these are obviously for PR, because if he's ever ridden in Taipei he'd know how useless his ideas, or these new crossings, are. Cyclists are NOT worried about dealing with pedestrians on the streets. They're afraid they'll get creamed by one of the many drivers who have no clue how to drive. Here's something on Ma in the China Times: "The [president] said he was happy to see more and more bike lanes being built in every county and city in Taiwan to promote biking as an alternative means of transportation, and he expressed the hope that local governments will introduce sound and more comprehensive biking-related laws to protect the safety of cyclists" http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national%20news/2008/05/05/154911/Ma-touts.htm


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My colleague asked me where "Manka" was in Taipei. When I read the Chinese underneath, I discovered that it referred to Wanhua (萬華), also the name of my blog. I thought this was pretty amusing, as Manka, or Monga (艋舺) is a transliteration of Taiwanese. The rest of the map has transliterations of Chinese (Mandarin). This map is part of the Periplus Editions series out of Singapore, which seem to be highly regarded.


Coincidentally, I had just explained to another colleague (the map's owner) that I am one who usually stays out of the ongoing pinyin debate - Wade-Giles (威妥瑪拼音) is better than Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) or whatever - as a.) I don't give a crap and b.) I first learned Chinese using the bopomofu (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) or the Chinese phonetics symbol system, the only one offered to students in Taiwan back in the nineties when I started out. My colleague was in blogland, viddying the intense arguments on the subject, and trying to figure out why anyone cared. Most of the Taiwanese I know speak pretty good Mandarin, and they understand neither Wade-Giles nor Hanyu Pinyin.