I went to the Tak'eng (Dakeng) 大坑 area this afternoon to do some walking and, unsurprisingly, found the area had been battered by last weekend's storm. There were several landslides along the No. 7 trail, like this one...:
...but they were all passable. The real damage was on the No. 8 trail. About halfway down from the top, a section of the wooden steps had been washed away by what appeared to be a large mudslide:
I was still able to cross at this point, but soon afterwards, the trail came to a sudden end, blocked by dirt and fallen trees. Retracing my steps, I took an alternate route and made it down to the end of the trail, only to soon find that the road beyond was completely impassable due to a series of large storm-caused earth movements. The view on the left is what forced me to turn around, and make my way back to the No. 7 trail. The photo on the right was taken from the approach to the No. 8 trail (from the other side of the landslide), when I stopped to have a look on my way home:
Considering the fact the No. 1 trail is still officially closed almost a year because of storm damage (hikers still use it, however), it looks like it's going to be a long time before the No. 8 gets cleaned up.
Despite not being able to walk my intended route, I was able to see a lot of wildlife on the paths today. No doubt this was due to the relatively little human foot traffic, being a weekday afternoon on top of the damaged trails. The snake on the left was one of two I came across today. This one was long, and in the bushes off to the side of the trail - I wasn't able to get a very clear picture of it as it slithered away:
Speaking of calamities, it seems that some in the ruling Kuomintang (Guomindang) 中国国民党 are beginning to wake up to the fact that the administration of Mr. Ma 馬英九 has so far been a disaster for Taiwan ("Taiwan official bemoans bad Japan relations"):
"A failure to maintain political ties and a lack of senior Japan-savvy Taiwanese envoys has caused 'fault cracks' and misunderstandings to emerge in bilateral relations, ruling Nationalist Party Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung 呉泊雄 said Tuesday. 'In these past few years, fault cracks in the Taiwan-Japan relationship have appeared, and because of neglect in maintaining contact . . . many misunderstandings have been generated,' Wu said...Referring to senior Nationalist Party diplomats with links to Japan, he said, 'Right now we lack this kind of talent.' Wu made the comments to a visiting delegation of Taiwanese living in Japan who...said Japanese officials had expressed concern to them over Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's attitude toward Tōkyō 東京. Wu received them at his party's headquarters in Taipei 台北. His remarks are the strongest indication since Ma took office May 20 that Taipei's ties with Tōkyō are wobbling, despite what some pundits said were 'sugar-coated' assurances Monday by Ma that relations were on track."
The same Taiwanese delegation apparently received more "sugar-coated assurances" later on Tuesday from Wang Jin-pyng 王金平, Speaker of the Legislative Yuan 立法院, according to an article in today's Taipei Times ("Wang affirms Japan’s importance to Taiwan"). As the story notes:
"...many in Japan are skeptical about Ma’s stance toward the country because he failed to mention Japan in his May 20 inaugural address and played an active role in Taiwan’s campaign in the 1970s to claim sovereignty over the disputed (Senkaku islands) 尖閣諸島."
Of course, Gregory Clark would probably find some reason to excuse Ma and the KMT, and put the blame for any problems squarely on the Japanese government. In his most recent column in the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ ("Birth of a massacre myth"), however, Clark avoids Taiwan and focuses on finding excuses for the Chinese government over the Tiananmen Square Massacre 天安門大虐殺. While trying to make his case that there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 4, 1989, Clark grudgingly admits:
"True, much that happened elsewhere in Beijing that night was ugly. The regime had allowed prodemocracy student demonstrators to occupy its historic Tiananmen Square for almost three weeks, despite the harm and inconvenience caused. Twice, senior members of Deng Xiaoping's regime had tried unsuccessfully to negotiate compromises with the students. Unarmed troops sent in to clear the square had been turned back by angry crowds of Beijing civilians. When armed troops were finally sent in, they too met hostile crowds, but they kept advancing. Dozens of buses and troop-carrying vehicles were torched by the crowds, some with their crews trapped inside. In the panicky fighting afterward, hundreds, maybe even thousands, of civilians and students were killed. But that was a riot, not a deliberate massacre. And it did not happen in Tiananmen Square."
Oh, those poor soldiers, victims of the heartless students and civilians:
"Photos have helped sustain the Tiananmen massacre myth. One showing a solitary student halting a row of army tanks is supposed to demonstrate student bravery in the face of military evil. In fact, it shows that at least one military unit showed restraint in the face of student provocation...Photos of lines of burning troop carriers are also used, as if they prove military mayhem. In fact, they prove crowd mayhem."
Unless I'm reading this wrong, Clark is suggesting that the demonstrators in essence got what they deserved. And the well-meaning Chinese government is the victim of:
"U.S. and British black information authorities ever keen to plant anti-Beijing stories in unsuspecting media...Damage from the Tiananmen myth continues. It has been used repeatedly by Western hawks to sustain a ban on Western sales of arms to Beijing, including refusing even a request for riot-control equipment that Beijing says would have prevented the 1989 violence."
The logic that Clark employs here is reminiscent of an Escher impossible reality woodcut. If Western governments hadn't banned the sale of riot-control equipment, Tiananmen wouldn't have happened. But the sale of riot-control equipment to China is banned because of Tiananmen, which could have been avoided had the sale of riot-control equipment to China not been banned due to Tian...
Clark is a product of the 1960's, so perhaps he's still suffering from the drug-induced paranoia so prevalent among many baby boomers. After all, JFK was killed as part of a massive government conspiracy to prevent him from revealing the truth about Roswell. Uh, wasn't he?
And like Uncle Rico in "Napoleon Dynamite", Greg must relive his one great moment in life:
"Despite having organized single-handedly over Canberra's opposition an Australia table-tennis team to join the all-important 'Ping-Pong diplomacy,'..."
This reference almost always manages to make it into Clark's writings on China.
On a more positive note, it seems that ASUS is doing pretty well these days in Japan ("A cheap belt is tightened"):
"When ASUSTeK Computer of Taiwan introduced a bare-bones notebook PC for the rock-bottom price of ¥50,000 ($464 or NT14,110) in Japan in January, consumers snapped up the entire stock of 10,000 units in three days. Since then, the company has struggled to keep up with demand, moving a total of 70,000 units by the end of May. Meanwhile, domestic (Japanese) makers, whose portable PCs were all priced at ¥200,000 ($1860 or NT56,440) or higher, scrambled to follow the Taiwanese lead."
No black information here, just cheap computers.
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