A Sunday afternoon in Ryūsei and Gosei

Or desperately looking for something to do on a day where the expected rain showers didn't materialize. Perhaps "Scraping the bottom of the barrel" might be a more appropriate subject heading. In any case, we first drove to the "seaside" town of Lungching (Longjing) 龍井, home to the world's highest carbon dioxide-emitting power plant in the world (41.3 million tons of CO2 annually, folks!). Despite the attempt of the plant's operators to hide this fact by painting the smokestacks in colors pretty enough to excite a 2 1/2 year-old child, the most interesting thing going on at the waterfront was a tugboat guiding a bulk carrier registered in Valletta called Conquistador into a berth (the cargo ship in the foreground is the Navios Felicity, out of Panama). Pretty gripping stuff, huh?

 

We then drove from the power plant to look for a nearby bicycle trail. The plan was to let Amber exercise her legs by riding her tricycle, but the bike path turned out to be a narrow lane on the side of a road, with only the eternal vigilance of worried parents separating children from cars. So at my wife's suggestion, we went to the neighboring town of Wuch'i (Wuci) 梧棲, home of Taichung Harbor.

I've been to the harbor several times over the years, and it never gets any better with each visit. Weekends, especially, are packed with people. Walking through the restaurant area means having to pass through a gauntlet of aggressive restaurant touts grabbing your arm, and shoving menus in your face (one woman even kept telling me how handsome I was in an attempt to get us to sit down and eat something!). The main fish market can be interesting, but only up to a point - how much noise, combined with pushing and shoving, and odors of dead sea creatures, can a normal human being put up with? All of the above could be tolerable if there was actually a beautiful sea view to compensate, but the ocean is hidden behind large concrete blocks, and the adjacent park area has deteriorated rapidly since my last visit several years ago. So naturally the editors of Compass Magazine, those masters of making silk purses out of sows' ears, rate the port as one of T'aichung's (Taijhong) 台中 "must-see" destinations!

Here's a video of a portion of the quiet, contemplative stroll we took through the fish market:

Taichung Port fish market

Shouldn't the sale of hammerhead sharks be banned (if it isn't already)?

I admit to tampering with the photograph on the top. The ocean didn't look anywhere near this nice from standing atop a concrete tetrahedron at Taichung Harbor!

Better luck next Sunday, I hope.

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky...

In fact, I do know why - Typhoon Kalmaegi has come to town, and most things are closed today, including my workplaces. Except that I wasn't sure of that last fact, and so I left home as usual this morning, and rode out into the wind and rain. I arrived at work, only to find everything closed up (Doh!), and naturally got soaked to the skin in the process. Before that, I parked my scooter, and walked to a nearby 7-Eleven to buy a newspaper. The small lane that leads to the store was flooded, as you can see below from the short video I made. I ended up wading through it to the other side, with the water going up to my knees (I'm 6'3", or 189.5 centimeters tall, which should give you a good idea of how much water there was), and spilling into the front rooms of some houses. 

Wading for Godot 

Just after filming this, a kid came riding by on his bicycle. He made it about halfway across, before having to turn around and find another route.

If I were a salaried worker, I would enjoy the opportunity of having the day off. Unfortunately, I'm paid by the hour, and Fridays are my busiest days. Typhoon days thus bite into my income. Actually, typhoon days bite, period.

UPDATE: I went out this afternoon with Pamela and Amber, in order to rent some DVDs from Blockbuster, and do some grocery shopping at a Sinon supermarket. The rain was still coming down pretty hard. On the way home, we came across this car. There are several underpasses in Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原 that become flooded very quickly during heavy rainstorms, and a sight like this unfortunate Mercedes isn't uncommon.

Later, after the rain had stopped, I took Amber up to the roof of our apartment building. Thanks to Bryan from A Walk in Hachioji's comment about the view from up there, I've come to have a better appreciation of it, and have gone up several times in the past week to have a look. One good thing about typhoons is that they blow away all the dirty air, and thus leave clear views (for a while, anyway) in their wake. Maybe this is why I noticed for the first time that the Taiwan High Speed Rail 台湾高速鉄道 tracks are visible from our rooftop. Using binoculars, I was able to catch sight of two Shinkansen trains going by (the first one heading south, the other going north), but the trains could also be made out fairly well unassisted. I'm glad I don't live in a built-up urban area where the view would be one of ugly concrete apartment blocks.

Take off, eh?

The normally on-target Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ has an overly optimistic editorial on the recent developments in relations between China and Taiwan ("Cross-strait relations take off"):

"The Taiwan Strait 台湾海峡 shrank last week as China and Taiwan began the first regularly scheduled nonstop flights between them. The flights will boost the Taiwanese economy and facilitate ties between the island and the mainland. Most important, however, they will give ordinary citizens on both sides of the strait a better understanding of each other. This should help build better relations, draining tension from a regional flash point."

Layman I may be, but other than hotel operators, restaurateurs and souvenir vendors in a few targeted areas, I don't see how the overall economy is going to benefit much from a small influx of Chinese tourists. Also, as I imagine the mainlanders are going to be bundled onto tightly-organized package tours, I don't see much interaction happening (other than with the aforementioned hotel staff, servers and trinket sellers), unless they happen to run into protesters from Falun Gong 法輪功.

Meanwhile, the rush to embrace China goes on:

"The Taipei 台北 government also allowed exchange between the Taiwanese and Chinese currencies, expanded cross-strait travel by ferry via offshore islands to all Taiwanese citizens, and allowed Taiwanese mutual funds to put more of their capital in mainland assets. It is contemplating lifting restrictions on mainland investment by Taiwanese businesses, allowing Chinese investment in Taiwan's real estate, and allowing Taiwanese banks to do retail business in the mainland."

And in return, the Chinese have upgraded the missiles they have pointing at this island. Yes, things are looking up!

Singing for her supper

My daughter Amber sings a song in Japanese that she picked up from watching the NHK children's programs which are broadcast during the weekdays at lunchtime:

Video of Amber singing for her supper

It's raining, it's pouring, the Rams are scoring...

...or so went a variation on the old rhyme that I vaguely recall from childhood. It's been raining a lot here recently, and it's been doing so like clockwork. I got caught in nasty downpours while going home for dinner on both Monday and Tuesday, at roughly the same time, and in very similar conditions - heavy rain, with thunder and lightning. Today it rained almost the entire afternoon, but as this is the only time during the week that I now have to go walking in the mountains, I couldn't let the opportunity slip by. Besides, after having to give up a long-planned hike between Gas-san 月山 and Yudono-san 湯殿山 in Japan because of inclement weather, I am determined not to be a wuss when it comes to weather and mountains (within reason, of course!). And so I rode out again to Tak'eng (Dakeng) 大坑, and this time walked up the No. 6 Trail, and down the No. 7 (with some exploring in between). The rain was steady but not too hard, and the combination of an umbrella and a plastic poncho keep me reasonably dry (though I ended up soaked from perspiration). The wet weather had the added bonuses of shrouding the hills in atmospheric mist, while keeping other hikers away (though there were a few diehard KTV crooners out today).

Upon returning home, the rain let up somewhat, but the sky started to get more ominous-looking, so I took Amber up to the roof to have a look. Amber had fun playing around while I was taking pictures, and we both managed to get back inside before the heavens opened up again.

The air was so clean and clear that the ocean (in this case, the Taiwan Strait 台湾海峡) could be seen in the distance, thanks to the power of my camera's zoom lens. This is truly a rare sight.

Threatening skies

やっと！

I've gone up and down the hiking trails in Tak'eng (Dakeng) 大坑 a number of times, but one thing I had never done was to walk the length of the trail on the ridgetop, the one that connects with all four paths leading to the top. Until today, that is. Not having anything specially planned for this Sunday, and with the weather looking OK (little did I know), and my daughter parked in front of the computer watching her new Barney the Dinosaur DVD, it seemed like as good a time as any to head out to Takeng, and so I did, arriving at the beginning of the No. 2 Trail around 11:15. After securing my scooter, I walked along the road to the No. 1 Trail (still technically closed from typhoon damage, but well-trodden with hikers in typical Taiwan fashion), climbed up to the top of the No. 1, walked the entire length on top of the ridge to where it joined the No. 4 Trail, took the No. 4 down to the bottom, then walked back along the road, and returned to my parked scooter. In all, it took 3 hours and 38 minutes to complete the circuit (and roughly 2 hours to cover the distance on the ridge between the No.'s 1 and 4), and according to my pedometer, I took a total of 15,325 steps in the process. Not a bad workout.

The haze over T'aichung (Taijhong) 台中, combined with the threatening skies over the Takeng region, meant there were no good views and precious little of interest to photograph. At least the heavens had the courtesy to wait until I got home to open up - there is a raging lightning and thunderstorm outside now as I write this!

Johnny Naiko

The enigmatic Johnny Neihu, who has a column every Saturday in the Taipei Times, is in many respects the anti-Gregory Clark. Unlike Greg, Johnny does not search for ways to excuse the actions of tyrants, and his information is factual, and therefore grounded in the real world. Most of all, he has a sense of humor, something that Clark seems to have been born without (it's inspiring to see how Greg has managed to overcome this birth defect, and find success in life). Johnny shows his un-Clarklike grasp of things in today's commentary, "Between rocks and a chip trace", in which he writes about the recent Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島 comic opera:

"Yes, just when you thought the kafuffle over last month’s sinking of a 'recreational' fishing boat by the Japanese coast guard had died down, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week started beating its chest again over news that several members of the Japanese Diet 国会 were preparing to inspect the islands."

Unlike many news reports on the Senkakus, Johnny provides some relevant background information on the issue:

"...the 'dispute' only really became one in 1968, when the UN’s Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East reported that there might be vast, Saudiesque oil deposits in the continental shelf below. Overnight the number of countries interested in the islands increased by 100 percent — to two. China then completed the gruesome threesome...in 1971."

In short, neither Taiwan nor China cared much about the islands until the possibility of there being oil under them thar sea rocks arose:

"...as we know from recent history, the thought of controlling gazillions of barrels of black gold makes fighting wars and reckless military action seem like a good idea."

Johnny then goes on to heap deserved ridicule on the great patriots of the Chinese nation:

"(People First Party 親民党) members like Yunghe (Yonghe) City 永和市 Councilor Huang Hsi-lin, a member of the Taiwan Safeguard Diaoyutai Movement Union, are so patriotic that they just can’t wait to sail to the islands at the first sign of trouble, whereupon they bravely defend the Republic of China’s 中華民国 territory by throwing plastic bottles at Japanese patrol boats. But this patriotic fervor isn’t the preserve of us folk in Taiwan; you even get crazy sons-of-bitches flying in from Hong Kong just so they can burn Rising Sun flags in front of the Japanese mission. Indeed, nutcases from Hong Kong seem to have almost cornered the market for pointless acts of fanaticism where the Diaoyutais are concerned. Anyone remember David Chan, an activist who drowned near the islets on Sept. 26, 1996, after leaping off a protest vessel with five others in an attempt to swim to the islands and assert China’s sovereignty? Poor Dave jumped, snared his foot in a rope and smashed his head against the boat. More idiotic than patriotic, I’d say. Even that mild-mannered toilet-paper obsessive, President Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九, goes into a full-on, fist-thumping frenzy at the mere mention of these sacred rocks."

In these situations, Gregory Clark tends to switch to automatic, blame everything on Japan mode. Johnny, however, thinks the fault lies elsewhere:

"In this situation I tend to do what everyone else around the world does when they can’t find a satisfactory explanation. I blame the US. After all, it was the Americans who controlled the Diaoyutais for 27 years following the Japanese surrender in 1945 before handing them back to Tōkyō. But even after giving them back to Japan, Uncle Sam refused to categorically state a position on the ultimate sovereignty of the rocks."

Johnny eventually leaves the topic of the Senkakus by asking:

"While we’re on the subject of protecting islands, why is it that the present government is so concerned about defending 7km² of rocky outcrop but doesn’t give a rat’s ass about protecting Taiwan proper?"

Funny how nowhere in his column does Johnny Neihu place the blame for the escalation in tensions between Japan and Taiwan over the Senkaku Islands on "Japan's muddled, nationalistic hard line over territory", as Gregory Clark would have you believe. Johnny Neihu may be a smart ass, but Clark is just...I'll let you figure out the rest of this sentence.

And just to show how, as Johnny describes it, these "rocks (are) capable of sending people over the edge and more often than not succeed in turning them into gibbering wrecks", the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ had this story today, "Taiwan research ship nears Senkakus, snubs JCG":

"A maritime research ship of National Taiwan University 台湾大学 intruded into Japan's territorial waters near the disputed Senkaku islets in the East China Sea 東シナ海 early Friday, ignoring a warning from a Japan Coast Guard vessel 海上保安庁...The 794-ton, 50-meter ship at 5:25 a.m. entered the waters 22 km southeast of Uotsuri Island 魚釣島 of the islet chain, which is under Japan's control but also claimed by Taiwan and China. Despite the warning from the JCG patrol ship Hateruma, the research ship stayed in Japanese territorial waters for three hours...When the Hateruma's crew tried to ascertain by radio the purpose of the vessel's trip, the Taiwanese replied that they were collecting seawater for research. The Hateruma demanded the ship immediately leave Japan's territorial waters, informing it that research activities without advance notice and the consent of the Japanese government are not allowed. However, the Taiwanese ship failed to respond further and left the territorial waters around 8:20 a.m...."

In this brave, new world of the KMT 中国国民党-run Taiwan, even public universities have become tools for promoting nationalistic hard lines over territories. The same can't be said for Gregory Clark's Akita International University 国際教養大学, thank goodness.

On the home front, as in my home, I dusted off the child carrier, and for the first time in over a month, took Amber out to Chung-cheng (Jhong-jheng) Park 中正公園, to do some walking. A couple of my students, Angel and Sharon, came along, as did Sharon's son. Amber enjoyed seeing all the flora and fauna on the short trail that took us to the top of a ridge overlooking the park. But most of all, she enjoyed blowing bubbles.