Trails, Dude

Another free Wednesday afternoon, another excursion to some of the hiking trails of Tak'eng (Dakeng) 大坑. The No. 8 Trail is still officially closed due to recent typhoon damage, but someone has dug out some makeshift paths to go over and behind the several landslides that have wiped out portions of the road. This was probably done to give farmers access to the fruit orchards in the area, but it also meant I was able to go up the No. 8 despite the crime scene-like yellow tape barrier. The main route to the top is still barred, as the wooden steps in one section were destroyed by a landslide, but there is another trail that hugs the side of the hill, and makes for an alternative path to the karaoke カラオケ joints up above (oh joy). From the summit (if you can call it that - it's a short walk up), I joined up with the No. 6 Trail, and took that to where it meets up with the relatively new No. 9. There were plenty of insects to see along the way:

After a couple of days of extreme low-visibility conditions, the views of the mountains and the city of T'aichung (Taijhong) 台中 were pretty good today:

While walking down the No. 9 Trail, I discovered a new trail, the No. 10 (もちろん), that appeared to be in the final stages of completion. I thus have a good excuse to return to the area soon to see what the new route is like (a quick note to the superstitious: the way leading from the No. 9 Trail back to the parking lot for Trails 6, 7 and 8 passes right through a cemetery. It is Ghost Month 盂蘭盆, after all).

Today's Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ has an article ("Japan-bred canines have leg up in Taiwan guide dog industry"), by Max Hirsch of Kyōdō News 共同通信社, about how dogs from Japan are:

"...transforming Taiwan from an island once known for putting dogs on menus to one that increasingly uses them to lead its blind and patrol its airports."

This trend is being led by the demand for guide dogs:

"...the guide dog industry (in Taiwan) is tiny, with just 24 dogs for the island's some 60,000 visually impaired people. But it was only last year that Taiwan's parliament OK'd fines for peddling dog meat, once a popular food. The (Taiwan Guide Dog Association) itself, the island's biggest, didn't emerge until 2002. Since then, however, the number of dogs processed through the association has increased yearly amid growing demand for service and police dogs islandwide. Just last month, Japan donated four puppies to the association, which had already graduated four other Japanese guide dogs this year...Among the nearly 20 canines the association has trained, some three-fourths are Japan-bred, while Japanese guide dog authorities hold the most seminars in the region on training...Lacking proper canine breeding conditions, Taiwan's reliance on Japan in building up a sizable service dog industry is clear."

I remember when Pamela and I were dating how she would point out dog meat restaurants while we were driving around Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原. The signs would say 香肉, or "fragrant meat"! According to professional dog trainer Rei Chang:

"'Taiwanese dogs trend toward sickness or emotional instability, so we have to look overseas.' Japan, Feng said, is an ideal source because experts there have bred superior strains and developed related expertise over decades. Japanese canines, she said, enjoy the extra advantage of being able to get by the island's strict animal quarantine measures, which all but ban dogs — even top-notch service canines — from countries farther away. Not surprisingly, Japan represents the regional nexus for the service dog industry, with its training schools comprising the bulk of the Asian Guide Dog Breeding Network. Using English as its lingua franca, the network facilitates exchanges of dogs and knowhow among Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Representing AGBN in Taiwan, the association typically receives dogs from fellow chapters in Japan and trains them locally."

The thing is, when I was living in Japan during the 1990's, I can remember reading stories in the newspapers of hotels refusing entry to guide dogs (due to "No Pets" policies), with the implication being that Japan was far behind the United States in that regard. I don't know if things are any better for the visually-impaired these days in Japan, but the JT article does serve as a reminder of how some ideas make their way from the U.S. to Taiwan after being passed through a Japanese filter.

A day at the beach

Well, what do you know. There is at least one halfway decent beach on the west coast of Taiwan after all. OK, Mashakou (Mashagou) 馬沙溝 beach in T'ainan (Tainan) County 台南県 isn't going to make anyone forget Hawaii or Okinawa, but the sand and water were relatively clean, and despite it being a warm Sunday afternoon, there weren't that many people there. With my wife wanting to have a day to herself, I took my daughter on the two-hour drive south from our home in Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原, in central T'aichung (Taijhong) County 台中県, and met up with my friend Steve, his wife March and their two kids at a freeway rest stop near the turnoff for Mashakou.

Amber had a great time playing in the "big ocean", and digging in the sand.

The swimming area was small, as is often the case with beaches in Taiwan. But all things considered, you could do worse (a lot worse, actually) than Mashakou if you would like to reconnect with the water.

ナショナリズム

It'd been a while since I last went out to the Chung-cheng (Jhong-jheng) Park 中正公園 area to do some walking, so this afternoon I rectified matters. I was expecting to see a lot of damage from the two recent typhoons, but surprisingly, there wasn't much at all. What I wasn't expecting to see, however, was how overgrown with vegetation one section had become since my last visit. It seemed like very few walkers had passed through in the interim, as I was constantly brushing away spider webs that had been spun across the path. There were also a lot of ants around - whenever I stopped to have a look at something, my feet and ankles would get stung by aggressive ants in the vicinity of my sandals. Something was definitely different about the Chung-cheng Park area. For one thing, I kept coming (no pun intended) across insects in the act of making more insects, such as these butterflies and spiders (I'm assuming the male spider is the small red one):

In fact, the whole area was crawling (pun intended) with bugs:

Meanwhile, back in the human realm, the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ had an interesting article today for those who fret over the "rise of Japanese nationalism" (gasp!). "Nationalism isn't an issue in Japan" begins by stating:

"As Japan renews its claim on Takeshima 竹島 (Dokdo to Koreans) and prepares to mark the Aug. 15 anniversary of the end of the Great East Asia War 第二次世界大戦, we can expect more Asians — and some Americans — to warn against the dangers of rising Japanese nationalism. What is striking, however, is the absence of nationalism in Japan compared to its Chinese and Korean neighbors and its American ally. Regardless of the metric used, Japan scores very low on nationalism. Its investment in its armed forces as a percentage of national income is small, especially for a country living in close range of two potential war zones (the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan). Moreover, in the past two decades the offensive capabilities of North Korea against Japan, namely its ballistic missiles and nuclear program, have grown significantly. China, another potential adversary for Japan, clearly has a much stronger military than 20 years ago. But Japan continues to keep its military investment at around 1 percent of national income (perhaps a little more if other expenses are included). The phenomenal waste in Japanese procurement programs also shows that the military budget is as much a funding mechanism for Japanese businesses as a tool to build up a strong military. Moreover, when it comes to dealing with the outside world, Japanese diplomats are as unlikely as those of the Holy See to resort to threats of force. There are no John Boltons in the Japanese Foreign Ministry 外務省. This peaceful, low profile reflects a basic fact often ignored by outsiders: Japanese voters favor candidates who care about bread and butter issues over those whose concern is Japan's greatness and military might."

There were certainly no belligerent threats made by the Japanese side during last month's farcical standoff over the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島. The same could not be said for the administration of Mr. Ma 馬英九. The writer then proceeds to break down the reasons behind nationalist sentiment, and how Japan differs in these regards:

"Nationalism often arises out of a sense of national victimization. A major cause of Chinese and Korean nationalism is a belief that foreigners preyed upon and humiliated their countries. As a result, many Chinese and Koreans want to see no insult to their national dignity go unpunished, however insignificant. A case in point is South Korea's quixotic campaign to rename the Sea of Japan 日本海 the East Sea."

The last point has definitely not been one of South Korea's brighter moments. The Sea of Japan is called so because the body of water is defined by the geographical presence of the Japanese archipelago 日本列島. Remove Japan, and you're left with...the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, the sea is only to the east if you're a Korean. Should the Japanese call it the "West Sea", and the Russians the "South Sea"? Is cultural myopia a side effect of nationalism?

"In Japan's case, however, there is no sense of victimhood. Yes, Japanese either experienced or know about U.S. terror bombings during the war. But, with a few exceptions, this pushes them toward pacifism. It fuels their contempt for the Japanese militarists who led the nation on a war that destroyed the country. It may also make them dislike the alliance with America, but it does not make Japanese long for a new Imperial Japan armed to the teeth ready to conquer lost territories."

Actually, the Japanese have a strong sense of victimhood over the war, but the writer's point is valid in that they tend not to blame outsiders for their devastating defeat.

"Another foundation of nationalism is a belief that one's country has a destiny to lead the world, or at least its region. This helps explain the support of Americans for military intervention and the conquests of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Though Chinese nationalism lacks the universalistic ambitions of America's, many Chinese think that history gave China a right to regional primacy. In Japan, however, there is none of the messianic urge found in Western cultures. Nor do Japanese have the same sense of civilizational and historical greatness that is common in China."

In other words, Japanese never considered their country to be the Middle Kingdom (although the Western Honshū region is called 中国). So why aren't there more articles about the "rise of Chinese nationalism"?

"There are also domestic factors that energize nationalism. One is fear for the country's territorial integrity and/or a belief that there are still unredeemed provinces. In the Chinese case, anxiety about Tibet, Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan), and Inner Mongolia fuel Han 漢民族 nationalism. Moreover, for most Chinese, Taiwan is a Chinese island that must be brought back into the motherland. In the Korean case, national division can only encourage nationalism, even though South Koreans are lukewarm toward actual unification. Memories of Japanese aggression in both nations also generate a nationalist reaction in China and Korea. In Japan, however, there is no domestic separatism to be afraid of. And, despite the pro forma Japanese claims on the Northern Territories　北方地域 and Takeshima, few Japanese care about them."

One reason memories of Japanese aggression still get people riled up in China and Korea is that the governments there use history as a way to divert attention away from current problems in the respective countries. And while the Japanese right wing 右派 is very vocal about things like the Northern Territories (as anyone who has heard their sound trucks could tell you), the rightists are completely unable to mobilize mass demonstrations involving thousands of angry protesters. Most Japanese have more important things to do than slaughter innocent birds:

"A second domestic issue is nationalism as an alternative tool to confront the government. In autocratic China, nationalism is an indirect way to oppose the ruling party. When demonstrators throw rocks at the U.S. embassy or attack Japanese diplomats, they are also criticizing their rulers for being weak-kneed. Moreover, simply by marching through the streets, or gathering virtually on the Internet, they demonstrate to the Communist Party that the people can mobilize on their own. Though South Korea is now a liberal democracy, many of its leftwing nationalists came of age when anti-American (or anti-Japanese) nationalism was fused with the fight against the military regime. Japan, however, has been a free society for well half a century, if its citizens are unhappy they simply go to a voting booth rather than seek alternative forms of mobilization. Japanese society may have problems but nationalism is not one of them."

In other words, Black-billed Magpies (the national bird of Korea) can rest easy in Japan.

もうひとつの台風

また？！ Yep. Ten days after having to stay home from work due to Kalmaegi, Typhoon Fung-wong (a Cantonese word meaning "Phoenix") has given me another unplanned, not to mention unwanted, day off. Mother Nature owes me some back pay! The signs of the approaching typhoon were obvious yesterday, as it was very windy all day long on Sunday, though it didn't rain here in Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原. From the early morning to the mid-afternoon this Monday, it was raining constantly, but there was little or no wind, and the amount of rainfall was no heavier than usual, so I was left wondering why I had to stay home from today (banks, financial markets, government offices and schools were all closed). The answer became apparent around 3:30 or so, naturally when we decided to go out to the supermarket. Here is a video I made of the windy and rainy conditions on our way back home from the store (note how the van in front of us can't be bothered to wait for the signal to change to green - standard driving practice here in Taiwan. You will also hear my daughter get very excited as we pass the local 7-Eleven. She says "Doraemon" ドラえもん, as the convenience store chain has been giving away little figurines of the Japanese アニメ character as part of a promotion):

Typhoon Fung-wong

Here's a photo, taken in our neighborhood, of a large potted tree that has been blown over, knocking over at least three parked scooters in the process. You can get an idea by the water droplets on the camera lens what it was like to be standing outside while the typhoon was passing through:

As of 9:30 this evening, I still don't know whether or not I'll be going to work on Tuesday. If I do go out tomorrow, I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot more damage from Fung-wong.

In the aftermath of the storm

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.

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.