Changes in the weather

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. I was fortunate in that I was able to arrange my work schedule so that I would have the morning off, and thus get to see Amber open her gifts, of which she got too many, I'm afraid. The expectations bar has been raised!

Other than Christmas, things have been quiet on the Kaminoge front. This morning, as is becoming the case on Tuesdays, I woke up at 6 in order to get out into the mountains in the Sintian area and do some walking. Whereas the last couple of weeks I had been blessed with gorgeous (if not necessarily warm) weather, today was a case of non-stop drizzle. On the one hand, this meant having to tread carefully over slippery, muddy sections of trail, including one part which had been washed away by a previous rainstorm or typhoon. But then again, the rain meant the mountains were covered with mist, and the trails were free of other, more sensible souls.

 

"Self-Portrait in Mirror" circa 2008

No snow here

The last entry on this blog is the result of what happens when I leave my computer unattended in order to use the bathroom, and my 2-year 11 month-old daughter assumes control. If only I knew what she was trying to say!

Christmas is almost upon us, and while friends and family back home are digging out from under the snow, here in central Taiwan the weather has been clear, sunny and, while not warm, certainly nothing like the freezing temperatures being felt in most of the U.S. at the moment. Taking advantage of this, I got up early this morning and rode out to Cheung-chung Park. This time, however, instead of going up trails, I walked uphill along a road, and upon reaching the top, kept on going, eventually completing a long loop back to my parked scooter after just over two hours walking：

The top of the hill is covered with fruit orchards, with views of the mountains in the distance. On the right is the scene that greeted me as I walked down the other side, back towards Cheung-chung Park. In the distance, the cities of Fengyuan 豐原 and Houli 后里 can be seen on the left and right, respectively, with the Taiwan Strait 台湾海峡 far off in the distance. The Chinese-looking building in the foreground, on the left, is Fengyuan's Martyrs' Shrine. I've never seen it open, yet the grounds are still maintained.

On the left is the view looking down from the parking lot of the Fengyuan Country Club golf course. The bridge on the left serves trains of the Western Line 西部幹線 (or, more specifically, the Taichung Line 台中線 or Mountain Line 山線) of the Taiwan Railway Administration 台灣鐵路管理局. The bridge seen on the right is part of the original Mountain Line track, which has now been converted into the Houfeng Bicycle Trail. The photograph on the right shows some Bougainvillea. The building in the background is the dormitory for players on the Sinon Bulls 興農牛 professional baseball team.

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Xmas Shopping

Christmas is not widely celebrated here in Taiwan, but doing some final shopping today in Taichung (T'aichung) 台中 left me feeling as exhausted as I would have back home in the States. Or is it that I'm just getting older? My daughter, on the other hand, had a seeming inexhaustible supply of energy all through the afternoon and into the evening, before finally conking out in the car on the drive home. And while she may be too young to comprehend the meaning of Christmas or what it is that Santa Claus does exactly, she has figured out that something special is going on.

Some pictures from today:

 

We first went to the Tiger City shopping mall, where there was a Chibi Maruko-chan ちびまる子ちゃん event going on. This show is very popular in Taiwan, though mentioning the name "Maruko" will nonetheless draw a blank from many Taiwanese fans of the series (not with my daughter!).

Tiger City naturally had a Santa figure on prominent display, and Amber took this picture of her parents standing next to it. Not bad composition from someone who isn't even three years old yet.

From Tiger City, we drove over to another shopping mall, the name of which I can't recall. Suffice it to say it's the one near the NOVA computer mall. Here there were some illuminated displays set up out front, and Amber had her picture taken in front of them:

Shopping completed, we headed back to Fengyuan 豐原. And so the shopping is almost done, though the wrapping remains to be started. We have only a small, sad-looking artificial tree set up in the living room (which I'm too embarrassed to take a picture of), and I'll only have Thursday morning free to watch Amber open up her presents, before having to go off to work. And, of course, there's no snow (unlike my family and friends back home, who seem to have a lot of it at the moment). Still, I'm happy to see Amber beginning to feel excited by Christmas, and hopefully it won't be too far in the future for her to enjoy the genuine article.

Trying days

Taiwan has been obsessing about it for a while, but the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ editorial staff has only now gotten around to commenting on the arrest of Chen Shui-bian  陳水扁. You mean there were other news stories happening around the world all this time? Hard to imagine, isn't it? In "An ex-president heads for trial", the paper explains:

"Taiwan's former president, Mr. Chen Shui-bian, was indicted on corruption charges last week. This is a shocking development in the career of a man who campaigned on a pledge to clean up Taiwan's politics. In the supercharged atmosphere of Taiwan politics, all sides will be tempted to intervene in or influence the legal process. That cannot occur. This trial must be transparent and free from any taint of politics. Taiwan's future may depend on it."

If the future of this island is riding on this case, then what lies ahead for Taiwan are some very dark days. From the moment Chen was arrested, and through his lengthy, pre-indictment detainment (can people really be held that long without charge here?), this affair has been mired in Taiwan's political muck. It's hard to see Chen's upcoming trial suddenly rising above all that.

I get the impression the JT's writers already know what will transpire in the end, for the editorial's conclusion sounds like a desperate plea:

"The case has inflamed Taiwan's already caustic politics. Mr. Chen's supporters have taken to the streets to proclaim his innocence. After his election, Mr. Ma (Ying-jeou) 馬英九 said he wanted to reach out to the 42 percent of Taiwanese who did not vote for him. That will be impossible if Mr. Chen's trial is seen as a political tool. The judiciary must not become a device for political retribution or revenge, or Taiwan's democracy could be undermined. Much rides on the trial of Mr. Chen: It must be flawless."

Ma's idea of reaching out to those who voted against him appears to be to prosecute only opposition party politicians for alleged corruption, and by politicizing the judiciary (threats of impeachment have been made against the judge who had the temerity to actually let Chen out on bail before his trial, as if members of Taiwan's independence movement were actually entitled to civil liberties). Chen, along with members of his family, will no doubt be found guilty, and he will receive the maximum punishment. Those eight years from 2000 to 2008 when the KMT 中國國民黨 was inexplicably out of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei (T'aipei) 台北 is a mistake that cannot be allowed to happen again.

Being in purgatory, or a trip on a Taiwanese tour bus

Every year, the apartment complex where we live takes the money that it has earned from selling the residents' waste to recyclers, and uses it to pay for a bus trip for all the people who live here. Last year, it was to Tamsui (Tanshui) 淡水 and the Taipei Zoo. For this year's journey, the buses traveled in the opposite direction, to Kaohsiung.

Everyone met downstairs around 6:30am (OK, we were about 10 minutes late), and the four chartered tour buses parked across from the neighborhood Family Mart departed at 7:07. At 7:23, it began - the karaoke カラオケ singing. And it continued, non-stop (with the exception of a couple of brief visits to freeway rest areas), until we reached Kaohsiung 高雄 just after 10. It's one thing to go to a karaoke box (or KTV's, as they're known in Taiwan) - after all, you do so on a voluntary basis. But on a packed tour bus, there is no escape from the retread enka 演歌 (songs that were originally in Japanese, but retrofitted with Taiwanese lyrics). The view from the bus window certainly didn't provide an escape, for while the on-board TV set was playing videos of European castle towns and snowy scenes of Japanese villages, the scenery outside was 100% west coast. West coast of Taiwan, that is. Flat agricultural plains, broken up here and there by industrial complexes, and small towns with their concrete box skylines.

Amber posing at a rest stop; a video image from one of the karaoke songs, which looks like it was filmed in Magome 馬籠, Nagano-ken 長野県.

Kaohsiung looked almost beautiful after the long, concentrated assault on my eardrums, aka the bus ride down. And, in fact, the city has done a great job in cleaning up its act in recent years. The bus passed by several of Kaohsiung's new subway stations, including the Formosa Boulevard stop, but I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of that station's exterior architecture. I was able, however, to snap a photo of the former city government building/now current Kaohsiung Museum of History.

  

Our first destination was the Former British Consulate at Takao, completed in 1879 and used for customs administration until 1895. There were good views toward the ocean from the front, and of the city and harbor from the back. It was also already packed with sightseers at that hour of the morning.

 

After about an hour at the former consulate, it was back on the bus for the short ride to the Gushan Ferry Pier, and the even shorter ferry ride across the harbor to Cijin 旗津 Island. The guidebooks suggest visiting the oldest temple in Kaohsiung, a historic gun emplacement that was the scene of a battle when the Japanese took over Taiwan in 1895, and a lighthouse with great views of both the sea and the harbor. We didn't do any of that, unfortunately. Instead, with the 90 minutes we were given on the island, we walked up the very crowded Seafood Street (dodging cars and scooters, as well as people. The concept of a pedestrian-only road, at least on busy Sundays, doesn't seem to have caught on in many places in Taiwan), had a long (overpriced) lunch with some others from our tour bus, then spent the rest of the time letting Amber have some fun in a small playground in front of the beach. Had we been on our own, no doubt we would have taken in the above sights in a leisurely manner, with a break for lunch at a less-crowded eatery, all the while enjoying the ocean scenery. Eat-and-run, however, is the nature of travel, tour bus style.

   

After lunch and back on the bus, we left Kaohsiung, and made the first of two (count 'em, two) stops at souvenir drive-ins (for want of a better description), this one in Madou (Matou) 麻豆 in Tainan County. Ostensibly, the bus pulled in for a restroom break, but in order to reach the bathrooms, we had to run a gauntlet of vendors peddling various snack foods. Many of the sellers were using microphones to ensure their sales pitches could rise above the din of the crowd. The hard-sell didn't stop there, either. After leaving the drive-in, the bus drove on to our next destination, a "leisure farm" in the town of Jhongpu (Chungp'u) 中埔, but soon after passing through the city center, it pulled to the side of the road to allow a woman to get on, who proceeded to extol the virtues of salty raisins and vitamin pills all the way to the leisure farm's parking lot. It must have been an effective presentation, because several people ended up buying from her. For me, however, it was all the more annoying than usual because up until the saleswoman had gotten on the bus, we had taken a break from the karaoke and were watching the hit movie "Cape No. 7", which was nearing a key moment in the story when the DVD was paused to allow the raisin lady to do her thing.

The farm itself was a total tourist trap, with its cute farm animals, arcade games, snack and souvenir stands. On the other hand, for my as-yet-not jaded daughter (and may she never become so), this was the highlight of her day. She got to feed leaves to goats, run around on a spacious lawn, and enjoy yet another playground with slides. And I've got to admit, the location deep in the betel palm-covered hills was an attractive one. Still...

By now it was dark when we returned to the bus. "Cape No. 7" had almost reached its conclusion when we arrived at the second roadside souvenir emporium, the "Small Elephant Original Coffee & Mountain Tea Theme And Leisure Park". At least there were free coffee samples, and somehow me managed to get out of there without buying anything. Back on board, I was expecting to see the end of the movie, but instead it was karaoke time again! This time, the accompanying videos were not of the Travel and Living Channel variety, as the following screenshot shows:

After the pachyderm pit stop, it was time for dinner. When you travel by tour bus, large, noisy institutional dining halls are the order of the day. These places appear to be expressly set up, along with the souvenir stand rest stops, to serve the needs of Taiwan's huge tour group industry. Hundreds of people sitting at dozens of round tables, all eating the same courses, which are brought out on a continuous stream of large trays, while tour leaders use bullhorns to guide their charges to the proper tables, and the kitchen uses a PA system to communicate with the servers. The following short video clip, while of poor quality, I hope gives some idea of our intimate, relaxing dining experience:

Group Dining, Taiwan Style

It still took more than an hour to get back to Fengyuan 豐原 after dinner, 60 minutes of not only karaoke, but games, the point behind which I couldn't really fathom, and which I didn't bother asking my wife to elaborate on. It was close to 8:30pm by the time we got back, and I was knackered.

Knackered, and amazed. Amazed at why people here seem to go on these kinds of trips time and time again, when the whole process just left me exhausted, and anxious to get back home. Taiwan is a small enough island that most sightseeing spots can be easily done as a day trip without being part of a large group, with the advantages of being able to see and do things at your own pace. But no doubt I'm missing the point. There is some kind of bonding experience going on here. It doesn't really matter where you go (because you have probably been there before) and what you do when you are there (except eat, preferably something connected to the place you are visiting), it's the fact you are doing it with the others in your group that is most important.

So was it a hellish experience? No. As I noted at the beginning, with the exception of lunch and a small insurance charge, this outing didn't cost us anything. Everyone was very friendly, especially towards Amber, and I got to see most of "Cape No. 7" (though only with Chinese subtitles). So I wouldn't call this "hell". On the other hand, Dante might have included a Taiwanese bus tour as part of his description of Purgatory, had he actually had the chance to go on one. Unless, of course, he loved karaoke.

Speaking in two tongues

My daughter was playing by herself in her bedroom after lunch today, and she was speaking to herself...in Chinese. Until recently, English had been her primary language, but lately she has been using Chinese more often, though never with me. Language acquisition is a concern I have living in Taiwan, as I'm Amber's primary exposure to the English language (along with some DVD's my parents have sent from the U.S.), and I don't get to spend much time with her during weekdays due to work commitments. My wife uses English with our daughter occasionally, but naturally she converses most of the time in Mandarin 中国官話. Combined with the fact that Chinese (and Taiwanese 台湾語) is what Amber hears when she goes outside, I'm worried that her English ability could start to be affected. We'll be visiting my parents for a couple of weeks next month, which will be a good experience for her linguistically, but I'm wondering if the long-term solution would be to have her grow up in an English-speaking environment, with Mandarin being reserved for the home.

On a completely different topic, the chairman of the Kuomintang 中国国民党, Wu Poh-hsiung 呉伯雄, is currently in Japan in yet another attempt to repair damaged relations. The Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ has the story ("Time to end Senkaku dispute: Wu"):

"Japan and Taiwan should work to settle their territorial dispute in a peaceful manner and strengthen bilateral cooperation for the development of the East China Sea 東シナ海, the chairman of Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party said Wednesday in Tōkyō 東京. 'Our position is very clear' regarding Taiwan's claim of sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島 in the East China Sea, Wu...reiterated during a speech at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. But the two sides 'should avoid any conflict,' he added."

Wu's speech comes after two Chinese survey ships were spotted on Monday near the Senkakus, in what the Japanese consider territorial waters. Was this intrusion coincidental or deliberate? As the Japan Times notes:

"Wu, whose visit to Tōkyō is the first-ever by a leader of a ruling Taiwanese party, was involved in a historic meeting in China with Chinese President Hu Jintao 胡錦濤 in May. The meeting brought together the heads of China's and Taiwan's ruling parties for the first time in over half a century. Regarding concerns that stronger ties across the Taiwan Strait 台湾海峡 may weaken ties between Tokyo and Taipei (T'aipei) 台北, Wu acknowledged that communication and exchanges between the Nationalist Party and the Japanese government were 'insufficient' during the eight years his party was out of power. But he stressed that the two countries share basic democratic values and ties with Tokyo will remain strong."

Unfortunately, those so-called shared "democratic values" seem to be weakening these days in Taiwan. As some observers pointed out in the run-up to Human Rights Day yesterday, Taiwan appears to be becoming more like China rather than the other way around. Sadly, it feels like Taiwan's wonderful experiment in political freedom is gradually coming to an end. And don't expect the likes of Wu to mourn its passing. As the article notes:

"Wu...said he supports China's position on the issue of Tibet's demand for autonomy..."

Ivan must be feeling pretty good these days.

On the road in Miaoli

My friend Thoth Harris (The Montreal Writers' Storm Sewer) had invited me on a couple of occasions to go riding with him in Miaoli 苗栗, where he has been living since coming back from Canada last spring. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take him up on his offer...until today, that is. It took about an hour on the scooter, riding from Fengyuan 豊原, through Houli 后里 and Sanyi (Sani) 三義, and finally to Miaoli, where I waited for Thoth at an observation tower by the side of Highway 13. The views toward the mountains and the city were great, which made it all the more stranger why such a pavilion had been erected along a busy road with no place for cars or motorcycles to park. TIT - This is Taiwan, I suppose!

Thoth took me through central Miaoli, which looks much the same as most small Taiwanese cities. One place that did stand out, though, was a Taoist-themed park adjacent to a large temple in the downtown area. Here, religious devotion was expressed through tacky/kitschy sculptures. The view from the top of the artificial mountain did reveal a good example of a still-functioning Japanese-era home.

From the park, we rode out of the city, and up to the Mingde (Mingte) Reservoir. This large man-made lake was very pleasant. It was unusual to find a quiet place with fresh air that wasn't overrun by hordes of visitors, and we spent some time on the road going around the reservoir and taking in the scenery. My guide for the day:

After checking out some of the sites around the lake, we set off on a long ride through the countryside, finally ending up in Nanjhuang (Nanchuang) 南庄. Rough Guide describes Nanjhuang as "a small, atmospheric Hakka 客家 village", which I'm sure it is...on a weekday. On this Sunday, however, the town was packed, especially on a small lane lined with food stands. I'd wager that up until five years ago or so, Nanjhuang was a quiet village, even on weekends, but it has since joined the growing list of "old towns" in Taiwan that are drowning in a sea of tour buses and tourists every Saturday, Sunday and national holiday. Still, even with the hordes, it was nice to see a lot of old Japanese-period wooden buildings in use, instead of the usual hideous concrete-and-tile blocks so prevalent all over this island. And the mountains stretching off into the distance were a magnificent sight.

It was getting on in the afternoon, so we rode back to Miaoli, and had a cup of coffee before I left for the ride back to Fengyuan. The trip home was dark and chilly, but uneventful, except for the one place where I failed to notice the motorcycle lane in time, and ended up on an elevated expressway. Fortunately, traffic was light, and besides, I'm a stupid foreigner, so what do I know? My thanks go out to Thoth for taking the trouble today to show me some of the sights around his neck of the woods.

 

 

Above it all

While the nights recently have become chilly (by local standards, anyway), the days have been gorgeous. This morning I went for a walk in the Sintian Mountain area, part of the township of Tanzih (T'antzu) 潭子. I've been in these hills on a number of occasions, but always on hazy days, it seemed. Today, however, the sky was clear, and the sight in all directions was a wonder to behold (especially when looking east, where the mountains seemed to go on and on). The photographs I took didn't do the views justice, but I've posted a couple anyway.