In the news

Mariko Katō of the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ looks at the different approaches taken by the Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九 administration towards China and Japan in "Will warmer ties burn Taiwan?":

"For many countries China is a key partner in international relations, whether in recovering from the financial crisis or tackling climate change. And this is no less true for Taiwan, whose government is sidelining long-term political disputes with the mainland for the sake of improving economic ties. For some, the pragmatic pro-China policies of the new Nationalist government that came to power last year signal an overdue thawing of cross-strait relations, which could lead to greater international recognition. But others feel that the Nationalist 中國國民黨-led administration is focusing on China at the expense of older friendships, for example with Japan. Taiwan's government...will be negotiating with Beijing early next year on signing an economic cooperation framework agreement, or ECFA 海峽兩岸經濟合作架構協議, a free-trade pact. The government hopes it will pave the way for similar deals with other Asian countries with whom Taiwan does not trade freely, mainly because of opposition from China..."

The government claims that signing an ECFA could eventually lead to free trade agreements with countries like Japan and South Korea, but there have been few, if any, signals from the authorities in China that they would not object to such deals. The Ma administration is placing its hopes for growth on tying the island closer to China, but many here worry that Taiwan will become too dependent on what is already its biggest export market:

"While the government insists the pact is crucial for maintaining Taiwan's economic competitiveness in the global market, critics say little is known of its contents except that it will reduce restrictions on trade between the two sides. Some also fear it will jeopardize Taiwan's sovereignty, while the government insists that any deal will be purely economic."

What does this all mean to the Japanese? Katō writes that:

"...some experts say Taipei 台北 has grown careless about its traditional friendship with Japan due to the shift in focus on China. Earlier this month, Masaki Saitō 齋藤正樹, Japan's top envoy to Taiwan, resigned as director of the Interchange Association 財団法人交流協会, Tōkyō's 東京 de facto embassy in Taipei. Saitō stepped down after he angered the Ma administration in May by referring to Taiwan's international status as 'unresolved.' Ma blocked Saitō from contacting him, the prime minister or the foreign minister, effectively making his job in Taiwan impossible."

Rational people would certainly agree that the KMT reacted in a manner out of all proportion to Saitō's supposed offense - his interpretation of Taiwan's status was supported by many in the Democratic Progressive Party 民主進步黨, after all. Historical truth is the salt on the slug of Chinese nationalism. Kato goes on to explain that:

"Saitō's resignation is the latest incident that has threatened to sour Japan-Taiwan relations. Shortly after Ma took office last year, Taiwan's then prime minister, Liu Chao-shiuan 劉兆玄, threatened war with Japan over a collision between Taiwanese and Japanese vessels in disputed waters. Meanwhile, territorial rights over the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島 in the East China Sea 東シナ海 continue to be claimed by Taiwan, Japan and China."

Ma's anti-Japanese feelings are not shared by the majority of people in Taiwan. Unlike the Koreans and Chinese, the Taiwanese in general hold relatively few grudges against Japan over the colonial past. When the DPP was in power, it viewed Japan as a counterweight against aggressive moves by Beijing. The present administration may not like it, but Japan still matters, as Katō further shows:

"Not only is China a priority over Japan in Taipei international relations, the mainland is also catching up with Japan on the number of tourists visiting Taiwan. Under Ma's administration, direct flights across the Taiwan Strait started last July. About 760,000 mainlanders have flocked to Taiwan this year compared with 850,000 Japanese, with Chinese visitors boosting the Taiwanese economy by $930 million (¥86 billion/NT30 million) since last year, according to the government's Tourism Bureau. But the tight spending habits of the Chinese mean the Japanese remain important clients, according to David Hsieh, deputy director general of the Tourism Bureau. 'Japanese people stay two or three days in one place, but mainlanders spend just one day,' he said. 'They come in groups of 50 to 100, but they do not spend money, and they haggle. They can spend as low as $60 (¥5550/NT1949) a day.' Hsieh added that the government continues to spend the most money on Japan in terms of tourism advertising."

Official policy directions may have changed, but people's attitudes haven't:

"Taiwanese interest in traveling to Japan is also still strong. More than 1.2 million Taiwanese tourists visited Japan last year, second only in number to South Koreans, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization 国際観光振興機構."

Katō's article ends with a hint to Ma to be careful when attempting to foist an ECFA on the country and its citizens:

"T'aipei's efforts to foster warmer relations with Beijing are not welcomed by all Taiwanese. 'Taiwan's interest should be first when negotiating with China,' said 34-year-old Shengming Wang, an industry analyst at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research in T'aipei. 'Most people still don't exactly know the profits and impacts that would come about by signing the ECFA,' he added. Wang said many people in Taiwan, including himself, consider themselves Taiwanese, independent from their ancestral roots in mainland China. According to a government survey last May, 65 percent of the population think of themselves as Taiwanese while only 11 percent feel they are Chinese. About 18 percent see themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese, while the rest have no opinion."

A Toyohara Sunday

The central Taiwanese city of Fengyuan 豐原 isn't an especially large city, having an area of 16 square miles and a population of 165,000. But like many such burgs in Taiwan, its compact downtown area can get densely packed, especially on weekends, when the city (to paraphrase a more astute observer of Taiwanese affairs than myself) "vomits up people". It was into this maelstrom that we waded on Sunday afternoon, in a partially successful search for shoes (my daughter found some she liked, I didn't). Amber was like a solar battery on a sunny day, absorbing the energy from the 人山人海 atmosphere and converting it into a Superman-like ability to leap uneven sidewalk sections in single bounds. A true child of Taiwan she be...

The noise of the traffic going under the train tracks already had my daughter excited before we had even reached the center of town.

Accessories being sold from tables set up on sidewalks were an irresistible allure to both child and spouse.

Amber inside the Fengyuan branch of Kobayashi Cookies, a shop noted for its custard cream cakes, which are an irresistible allure to yours truly, much to the regret of my waistline (the sign next to Amber refers to クリスマスのギフト). Yes, that's "Kobayashi" and not the Mandarin reading of the characters 小林, "Hsiaolin", despite the fact the company is from the small T'aichung County 台中縣 town of Tachia 大甲.

A Single-parent Xmas?

What's Christmas like in a non-Western society? All the trappings - trees, lights, music, Santa Claus etc. - might be in place (Japan more so than Taiwan), but when it comes to the actual day, if it happens to fall on a weekday, it's off to school and/or work as usual. Christmas 2009 fell on a Friday, which meant both Pamela and I had to go to our respective places of employment, while Amber's preschool/day care center/kindergarten was open for business. I could have arranged to take at least the morning off, but that wouldn't have been possible for my wife, so we decided to delay opening the presents until today (Saturday). But wouldn't you know it - like many Taiwanese, my wife is sometimes called on to go into work on Saturdays, and this day was one of those occasions. We could have pushed Christmas back one more day, but opening the presents on the 27th just didn't sound right, and besides, Amber was eager to open the wrapped goodies under our little tree. And so it was basically a father-and-daughter affair this year as the Kaminoge household's two American passport holders observed a belated Christmas morning.

Oh well, this is Asia. My daughter still had a great morning opening her gifts (including a few stocking stuffers), and seemed very satisfied with what she got from Santa - a doll and crib, and a Thomas the Tank Engine small train set:

The doll has been by her side most of the day, while Thomas and Percy have been given a number of runs around the track. Dolls and trains - perhaps my little 娘 will grow up someday to be a full-time engineer/mother!

メリークリスマス！

Anyone for culture?

T'aichung 台中, for some reason, likes to call itself a "city of culture". Anyone who has spent some time in Taiwan's third-largest city might be surprised to hear that, considering the number of shady businesses that can be seen in almost all areas of the wannabe metropolis. Taichung's current mayor, Jason Hu 胡志強, has been working to make the city live up to its nickname, unlike his predecessor Chang Wen-ing, who spent the last year of her administration handing out permits to virtually anyone who wanted to open a pachinko パチンコ parlor (and there were many!). Unfortunately, he's been wasting his efforts on futile attempts to land local branches of well-known museums or spending large sums of money on white elephants like opera houses, when the money instead could be used to combat Taichung's crime rate (the highest of any city in Taiwan), or improve unglamorous but necessary items like sewage systems.

In one respect, however, Taichung does have something to be proud of in the culture department. There may not be many galleries around town, but there is the excellent National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which I visited this afternoon in lieu of going hiking. On show is Viewpoints & Viewing Points - 2009 Asian Art Biennial, featuring 56 artists, art groups and film directors from 20 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The 144 works on display cover a wide range of media, ranging from standard paintings to video installations. Best of all, it's free of charge:

Like many exhibitions, the displays tend to be hit or miss, but most were interesting, if not always successful in their stated ambitions. Photography wasn't allowed, and the heavy-handed presence of attendants in each room stopped me from sneaking any shots, but here is a brief listing of some of the installations that had me stopping to take longer looks:

"Some Memorial Flags" (Louisa Bufardeci, Australia) combined statistical data about things such as internet access and political affiliations to create new national flags for a grouping of countries that included Turkey and Kyrgyzstan;

"Bloated City and Skinny Language" (Hung Keung, Hong Kong) was a fun installation that had 漢字-like symbols following an image of the viewer projected onto one wall of a small room;

"Last Riot-Last Riot 2" (AES+F, Russia) had disturbing scenes of beautiful young people threatening each other with samurai swords 日本刀 and baseball bats against a computer-generated background of changing scenes, in beautiful HD video and set to music that sounded much like gagaku 雅楽;

"The Edge of the Heaven" (Lin Jia-an, Taiwan) was a collection of large black-and-white photographs showing industrial scenes of Taiwan;

"Paramodelic-graffiti" (Paramodelic, Japan) is one to keep the kids away from, not because it may be too disturbing, but because it's a floor-to-ceiling and all four walls-installation of toys cars, race tracks, plastic farm animals and erector sets. One child couldn't resist while I was there, much to the consternation of one of the attendants;

The paintings of Taiwanese artist Lien Chien-hsing were interesting in their blending of idyllic nature scenes and wild animals in unexpected ways;

"Religion Space" (Qu Yan, China) was a series of photographs of the interiors of makeshift Christian churches taken in rural Chinese villages;

The installation by Yang Mao-lin of Taiwan combined traditional Buddhist sculptures with modern pop icons like King Kong and Gigantor 鉄人２８合;

"CU:Clesthyra's Undoing" (Tim Gruchy, Australia) sounded pretentious, but actually was a 360-degree screen showing changing scenery such as beaches and Chinese cemeteries;

"Double Happiness" (Chang Chien-chi, Taiwan) was a print and video documentary on Vietnamese brides and the Taiwanese men who pay for the privilege of meeting and marrying them.

The exhibition runs until February 28, 2010, and did I mention it was free? Upstairs, and being held concurrently with "Viewpoints & Viewing Points", is another show called "Mind Topology - the Phases of 2009 Korea" that looked worthwhile as well. Unfortunately, time was running short and there were some errands that needed to be done, so I had to leave. I did, however, take a walk through the Museum Art-park Way, which begins across the street from the art museum. The long, narrow park located on a meridian between two small roads, is in an area that's home to some of Taichung's more aspiring cafes and Western eateries, as well as upscale Chinese and Japanese restaurants:

Eventually, it was time for the ride back to Fengyuan 豐原, a city that has a culture center, but not much culture to put in it.

Interconnected Disconnectedness

It isn't easy observing a holiday like Christmas in a non-Western culture, particularly the secular aspects of an otherwise religious occasion. If we were Christians, we could just join the nearest church (like the Presbyterian one a few blocks from our apartment building), but we're not, and we haven't (and won't). As December 25 falls on a Friday this year, both my wife and I will have to go to work and my daughter's kindergarten will hold classes as usual, so we will have to wait until the next day to let Amber open her presents that have been sitting under the tree (once we finally get around to wrapping them and putting them there, that is). Speaking of trees, due to the cramped living conditions of our small apartment, ours is, well, pathetic. It's artificial, for one thing, and smaller than even my daughter. Amber, though, got a kick out of decorating it with the few ornaments we have, and seems genuinely satisfied with how it looks. I've vowed to get a bigger, better one for next Christmas, but in the meantime, it seems my little 娘 has grasped the meaning of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" without having ever seen the cartoon (something that will have to be rectified someday)

 

Strawberry Pickin'

A "sacred tree" close to the restaurant where we had lunch this afternoon

Much to Amber's delight, we went to a strawberry farm in T'antzu 潭子 in order to pick some of my daughter's favorite fruit. Fruit farmers are geniuses - come harvest time, they can sit back and collect money from city dwellers who are more than happy to do the picking for them.

(insert "yowza" comment here)

Computing

I've been using the same laptop for more than five years now, and it's now showing its age. Actually, it started showing its age from a long while back, but I've been putting up with slowing operating speeds, jammed keys and occasional small electric shocks because basically I'm too cheap to buy a new one. Today, however, my wife convinced me to go to a large computer show in T'aichung 台中 to see what's out there, both in terms of the latest models and current prices. I saw some reasonably priced laptops for less than NT19,000 ($590/¥52,520). Prices certainly have come down over the years since I bought my first computer, a Tōshiba 東芝, for around $3000 in the mid-90's, so I'm now officially in the market. While I mull over the many brochures we picked up this afternoon, here a few photographs to share with you...

The show was held at Taichung's now-disused Shuinan Airport. We parked our car on what was once the runway, and in the background can be seen a couple of old airplane hangars:

Being a red-blooded all-American male, in addition to computers, I was also keeping an eye out for what the Japanese like to call コンパニオン, women who present products at car or electronic shows. However, the computers were more interesting. With the exception of the stunning woman working at the Sony ソニー booths, most of the promotional models were dressed like race queens. While there's certainly nothing wrong with that (insert smiley face here), the dancing was atrocious and too many ridiculous games were played. Of course, I couldn't leave without a couple of pictures:

Some of the High-definition TV's on display were showing a Japanese music program featuring KONISHIKI: