I'm Calling It Aboriginal Taipei

Every time my wife hears Chinese Taipei, I think she's going throw the TV out the window. Since when is Taipei Chinese and what about the rest of the country?

I noticed a trend today when I was getting my Internet sports fix. CNN/Sports Illustrated ran with this headline: "US softball shuts out Taiwan 7-0". No Chinese Taipei stuff. And Yahoo put it like this: "US shuts out Taiwan 7-0". At ESPN, the medal counter is also calling Taiwan, uh, well...Taiwan, with Chinese Taipei in parentheses: http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/medals
If you go to the official Website of the Olympics out of Beijing, Taiwan is not listed at all. There is a place, however, called Chinese Taipei.

The blog In Claudia Jean's Eyes has brought up an interesting point in a post called: "China's Olympic dirty trick against Taiwan" (she's also not using Chinese Taipei). According to this writer, Taiwan was set up to lose. On Thursday, Taiwan had to play in the last time slot against Japan, a very tough opponent. The next day, they were scheduled in the earliest slot, against China. This is the only time a team has had back-to-backers like this, and look who benefits: http://claudiajean.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/taiwan-baseball-olympics/

I don't know how sympathetic I am though. Actually, I don't really like this Taiwan baseball team. Why? I don't think they've displayed very good sportsmanship; they are ungracious when they lose, and full of excuses. They complained about the strike zone in the China game. The umpire was from Panama, not China. Then, they bitched about their own second baseman making mistakes and their own relief pitcher being "too cautious". What does that mean anyway? He doesn't throw enough balls or wild pitches? They complained about the new, extra innings rule, where runners are automatically inserted at first and second base to start the inning, claiming, "we weren't used to it". Do they mean that half an inning later the Chinese were, and that's how they won? Or, are they admitting they did not practice for this scenario. They've also complained that their best players are in America. Every team except Cuba, China and the Netherlands is facing this problem.

This is the same team that got into a brawl a little while back with the Canadian Olympic team in Douliu (斗六), Taiwan. The brawl, which cleared both benches, was sparked by the fallout from a home plate collision between Canadian base runner James VanOnstrand and Taiwanese catcher Yeh Chen-chang. As VanOnstrand was walking away, the catcher threw the ball at him, hitting him in the back. The Taiwan Journal reports Yeh flipped it at the Canadian, but my colleague who was watching the game says it was an overhand throw:
http://taiwanjournal.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=30686&CtNode=122 My colleague also says that fans at the game started throwing garbage at the Canadians. Later, when the Taiwanese TV media picked up the story, it was neither flip nor throw. They simply showed the Canadian bullies pounding on their Taiwanese hosts.

This is how the piece in the Taiwan Journal ends: "Even though Taiwan enjoyed home-field advantage, many supporters were not optimistic about the team's chances, especially when Hung announced his final lineup composed of many young and inexperienced players. But equipped with burning ambition and guided by Hung's astute tactics, the team of unproven youngsters eventually obtained respect both at home and abroad by making the public's wish of going to the upcoming Olympics come true."

Hung's astute tactics? Hung is the manager; the guy that blames his players, by name, in the media for losing games. He is the guy that was badly out-managed in the China game. He's the guy that did not prepare his team for the new rules, and who did not notice the glitch in the schedule until it was way too late to do anything about it.

The Canadian media doesn't really sing Hung's praises. But they do say the brawl galvanized the Canadians in a tight game, one which they came from behind to win.

Final comments: I don't think that the Taiwan team should be using scheduling as an excuse for losing. I mean, come on, baseball isn't that tiring (unless you're a pitcher). Players sit or stand around for 95 percent of the game. That is why Major League teams are able to play 162 games a season, averaging six a week. The players should go look at Michael Phelps if they want to understand tiring. This guy Mao from Keelung that was in the Taipei Times today summed it up beautifully: "It's just like in history. Last night we lost to [former colonial power] Japan and today we lost to the communist bandits."

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.
ओने ऑफ़ माय coll

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.

Li Ao's Cell

Above is Li Ao's Cell, I think maybe from the early 1980s


We went to visit the Calaboose Jail for political prisoners in Jing Mei (or, depending on who you're talking to, Hsin Tien), Taiwan last week. Originally a school for military law, Calaboose was taken over by the Taiwan Garrison Command (Taiwan's secret police during martial law) in the 1960s.

The jail has housed many well-known political prisoners, including writers such as Bo Yang (柏楊), The Ugly Chinaman (醜陋的中國人), and Li Ao (李敖). It had two courthouses, an execution ground and profitable laundry. (Political prisoners were rewarded for their hard work in the laundry by being allowed to watch a communal TV at dinner. They washed everything from police uniforms to Chiang Ching-kuo's underwear.)


Calaboose - My daughter's down the hall checking it out




The sign above reads "fair and not corrupt" and was on the side of the Military Court, established by the Garrison Command in 1967. The courthouse was built by the Garrison's engineering unit, which was made up of political prisoners, and financed by the sale of property confiscated from these same individuals. Trials at the Military Court were said to have been conducted swiftly, with verdicts that were often based on the word of the accuser. Appeals were possible, but also risky as lighter sentences could be stiffened or even turned into the death penalty at the whim of a single judge. Before-and-after shots of the political prisoners executed by order of this court are now shown inside as part of a video display. Needless to say, it just goes on and on.

The First Court, built in 1977, is parallel to the Military Court. The eight individuals blamed for Kaohsiung Incident (高雄事件), when Taiwanese took to the streets to protest martial law, were also tried and convicted inside. They were Huang Hsin-chien (黃信介), Shih Ming-teh (施明德), Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄), Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Chen Chu (陳菊) and Lin Hung-shen (李勝雄). These guys, and their lawyers, including Chen Shui-bien (陳水扁), Su tseng-cheng (蘇貞昌) and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), became the who's who for the democratization movement in Taiwan and later the DPP government, the first non-KMT government in 55 years.


BTW, the jail also housed Wang Shi-ling (汪希苓), the person Taiwan pinned the murder of the writer Henry Liu on. The museum claims Liu was an American, but I remember reading that he had a green card. Anyway, this was enough for the US to put some heat on the Chiang. Liu, who lived in Sacramento, California, was just finishing off a book on Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). When Liu couldn't be enticed by bribery, Chiang's youngest son Alex ordered the hit through his gangster buddies in the Bamboo Union. I think it's fair to say that the son was operating on his own initiative, though, even if he did receive help later on in covering it up. Alex had his hands in all kinds of unsavory business. He died young; and people have written that it probably had something to with drugs.

Instead of getting a cell, Wang got his own place, a kind of Taiwanese villa with several rooms, a front yard, kitchen, etc. from which his wife could come and go. A few years later, he was transferred to more scenic place on Yangming Mtn. I don't know how the story ends. I think maybe he was pardoned for health reasons.

We went on a Sunday and were the only visitors. My wife figures either people are not interested right now in the general mood of denial that has slipped over the island or they're afraid of it. Anyway, here is address: 台灣人權景美園區　地址: 台北縣新店市復興路131號 or Taiwan Human Rights Memorial (Taiwanese People's Empowerment Jingmei Garden) at 131 Fuhsing Road, Hsin Tien, Taipei. Phone: (02) 2218-2436: http://www.thrm.org.tw/en/

Bali, Taiwan

I've been to Bali (八里) several times in past couple of months. I rode out there twice on my bicycle and then visited with my wife, daughter and wife's cousin. The main attraction in Bali is the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology (十三行博物館), which focuses on the local Aboriginal people and has a Paiwan Aboriginal (排灣) exhibit running right now. As much as I enjoyed getting the history of the Shihsanhang people and also a rundown of more recent developments, after contact with the first the Chinese (contact seems to go back 2,000 years - there are some Warring-states coins being displayed to back this up) and later the Spanish and Dutch, I think I'm most impressed by the spectacular architecture of the building itself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrick_cowsill/2663744108/
I took down a dateline of the area while I was in the museum. It is as follows:
1712 The Ching establishes a military outpost in Bali.
1731 The Bali Prefecture is established, making the port the first governmental, economic, military and sea transport area in Taiwan.
(Actually, the Spanish established Fort Santiago just across the Danshui River in 1626. The Dutch took this over in 1641. I guess this doesn't count though because they're not Chinese. I was also interested by the date, which comes right on the heels of the Zhu Yi-gui revolt, when the Taiwanese managed to kick Ching soldiers out of Taiwan for six months.)
1790 The Ching designates Bali as the official port link to Fuzhou. "With Bali a stepping-stone between China and Taiwan, Bali town becomes a bustling center."
1840 The Bali harbor, which like so many other harbors in Taiwan, begins to silt up. (I'm not sure how they specifically come up with 1840, but there it is.)
1858 Danshui and not Bali is named as one of the treaty ports in the Tianjin Treaty. Bali becomes more and more obscure over the next 150 years.


I took this shot on the ferry from Danshui to Bali. If you get there early enough, you won't have trouble loading your bike on board. You can also swipe your Taipei MRT Go Card to cover the fee. We had to pay for our 1.3 year-old-daughter though. The fare-taker told me it was for insurance reasons.

Cycling has been exploding in popularity in Taiwan. There are so many people out that one cannot ride the river routes on the weekends without encountering traffic jams like this one, especially at the far western ends, near Danshui and here in Bali. I've heard that if you want to buy a bike right now, especially a good fold-up one or something tier II and above you'll be waiting at least six months. Demand is that great. People looking to unload one of those editions can get pretty much full value for what they paid. My friend Eric, for instance, sold this one the first day he put it on Yahoo Auctions. He recovered 95 percent of the original cost: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericdiep/467982730/in/set-72157600106691045/

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On another note, there has been a lot of speculation on whether Vince Weiguang Li is of Chinese or Taiwanese descent. He's the person from Edmonton, Canada that murdered that poor kid riding the bus in Manitoba, Canada. The name gives us a pretty good clue that he is, as do the photos. Forumosa is featuring a nasty thread right now on this topic: http://forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?p=883263&sid=eb86674914ab68c26b02155671ba183d
For example, one guy says: "Oh good, he's not white. That means the CBC et al can't blame the systemic racism of mainstream (read white) Canadian society. It's probably all America's doing anyway, damn you George Bush!" I wonder what this means. Or: "OK, just saw a bigger photo, and noted the name. He's definitely Asian. What a relief!" Where's the relief? Somebody was brutally murdered. Try to explain it this way - the murderer looks and sounds Asian - to the people that cared about the victim.

I've spent a lot of time in Canada. People who come from out-groups will hear it on a daily basis in Canada.

Safety First

I took this shot on my cell phone last Friday. The workers are removing an air conditioner from a fourth floor apartment in Taipei. Notice that they are not wearing safety harnesses.

I cropped another shot for a closer look.

I've had a bad week for noticing accidents in Taiwan. Last Thursday, I was even part of one. I was riding a bus from the Wanfang Hospital MRT station to my place in Wenshan when a taxi suddenly cut in front of us and braked to pick up a pedestrian. The bus driver had no choice but slam on the brakes, sending one elderly woman over his shoulder so that her face planted hard in the metallic dashboard. Another passenger fell on the coin drop. The bus driver immediately ordered everyone off the bus, but it was pandemonium, and no one was going anywhere. The first woman's face was split open and gushing blood. The latter's arm was also bleeding pretty badly.

We were surprised to see the taxi driver appear at the bus window, yelling threats and pretending he had no hand in the matter. When he saw all of the blood, I guess he had second thoughts. He high-tailed it back his cab and, with his passenger already inside, tried to make an escape. The light in front was red and he pulled up next to a police car.

After a decade in Taiwan, I still can't believe something isn't being done about the carnage on the roads. Everything else seems to improve. There is now national health. We have new parks popping up all over the place. The MRT is making life for commuters easier. People have protested nuclear power in the tens of thousands. Anyone, no matter how silly, can get a university education. Yet people can't figure out how to drive. This just does not make sense to me. I don't understand how individuals who are so well educated can drive so badly, like they do here in Taiwan.

Once again, it's really been an awful week for me when it comes to seeing accidents. I've seen two scooter crashes first hand, one aftermath of scooter accident (see below pic) and freeway pile up. To top it all off, I heard this story over lunch last Thursday. It took place 15 years ago and starts with my friend's future husband droppng her off at home. They were still in college at the time.

After leaving her place, the fiance was crossing a bridge in a for-scooters-only lane when a speeding car nailed him, sending him for a good tumble. Instead of doing the courteous thing and stopping to help, the driver simply sped off. It was dark, so, as my friend explained, her fiance who was out cold could have been there all night, laying in the middle of the road. It was dark out, so the driver figured nobody had seen him. But he wasn't so lucky either. After making a note of the license plate, another driver took my friend's fiance to the hospital.

Later, when the cops dragged the driver who had caused the accident in, he claimed: "I was scared. That's why I didn't stop. Besides, I thought you were dead."

After relating the story, my friend asked me: "Can you imagine that? If that guy hadn't stopped, I wouldn't have had a father for my two sons. Yet that nice man refused to even see my husband, let alone hear his thanks." She didn't say: "Can you imagine that - there are people out there that are this immoral!" She never said: "I wanted to kick his ass!"

"What about the driver?" I replied, "I hope you guys put him away for a long time." [In Taiwan, hit and run, even when it leads to death, is a civil and not criminal case.]

"No, but he looked pretty sorry when the police brought him in. Plus he paid NT$20,000 in compensation. That was enough to buy a new scooter back in those days." When I asked her if she/they didn't feel they were also responsible - responsible because they hadn't removed a maniac like this from the streets when they could have, I received this: "It's not like that in Taiwan. You don't understand it yet. Besides, he would've only gone to jail for a year."

I don't even know what to say to something like that. I believe that people who hit and run should receive stiff sentences. Once more, I don't think that these cases should be in the hands of the victims. But I do know I should keep as far away from the streets and driving as is possible here in Taiwan.



I'm lucky I didn't see this accident, at the corner of Fuhsing and Nanking, across from the MRT entrance. When I got there, they had put pylons around the scooter, debris and personal effects. I took this shot two days later. These items, a raincoat, shoes, etc., were then brushed up to the curb. The crunched motorcycle was also there. It was sandwiched between two waiting taxis.

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.

Yangmei, Taiwan

On Monday, I took this shot in the Yang Mei (楊梅) Train Station, which is a couple stops south of Chung Li (中壢). I looked up Yang Mei on Wikipedia: "Yangmei is one of the three largest towns in Taoyuan. The center is only 40 minutes from the west coast of Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait". Yes, I could see it coming in on the local train. "To the north it borders Pingzhen city; to the south it borders Hsinchu County. To the east, Yangmei borders Longtan Township. There were lots of Yangmei Trees [Japanese Bayberry] when Chinese immigrants entered this place, so that's how this town got its name." For a city of 143,00, Yang Mei's pretty obscure. An old commuter train rumbles in and stops here every hour (each direction).

I grabbed this shot while killing time on the Yang Mei platform ( I had a 40-minute wait for my train back to Taipei). I really like these benches. Notice how they're mixed in with the baby-blue plastic benches. I wanted to post the following shot up on Blogspot, but could not, as I am unable to upload vertical pictures. I think somebody might've abandoned this Formosan wheel barrow shortly after the Second World War: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrick_cowsill/2608230582/ I think Flickr and Apple might also have issues, as I can't upload pics via Safari.