Ranting, Part 2

The China Post is a rag. Sure, it prints a wider variety of wire service articles, and has more comprehensive coverage of Major League Baseball games, than the Taipei Times, and its ineptly translated local news stories can put a smile to one’s face (when was the last time you read the word “ruffian” in an article?). But that grin can quickly dissipate once the Post’s editors turn their attention to politics. First published in 1952, the China Post served as the English-language mouthpiece for an authoritarian regime that arrested, imprisoned and executed tens of thousands of people. Taiwan and most of the rest of the world have since moved on, but the people behind the Post struggle at times to keep with the times. They still believe in the Nationalist 中國國民黨 ideology, and in their world, the word “mainland” isn’t an adjective, but a part of a capitalized proper noun (“Mainland China”). When it comes to Japan, the newspaper’s commentators, particularly Joe Hung and Dr. William Fang, can’t seem to write about contemporary events in that country without slipping in completely irrelevant references to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 大東亜共栄圏.

Ah, Japan. With the exception of the Taiwan localization movement and former president Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁, there’s nothing that the China Post’s editorial writers despise more than Taiwan’s former colonial ruler. At times, it seems the paper is still waging the Second Sino-Japanese War, instead of trying to make sense of what’s going on in the 21st century. Wednesday’s editorial was a prime example of the head-scratching nonsense the paper can spew out when the wrong buttons get pressed.

“Why try to rock the boat?” starts out thusly:

“Japan seems to have made a truly incomprehensible decision, which can only be interpreted as an inane attempt to rock the boat in the East China Sea. If implemented, the decision would make it necessary for Japan to deploy its soldiers on two of the Ryūkyū Islands 琉球諸島, which are administered as the prefecture of Okinawa 沖縄県.”

The editorial was written in reaction to the announcement made last week by Japan’s Defense Minister 防衛大臣, Toshimi Kitazawa 北澤俊美, that the government is considering deploying personnel from the Self-Defense Forces 自衛隊 to Miyako 宮古島 or Ishigaki Islands 石垣島 in the next five to eight years, and stationing a 100-member coastal surveillance unit on Yonaguni Island 与那国島, the closest island in the Ryūkyū chain to Taiwan, in response to growing activities by China’s navy. This comes on top of Japan’s unilateral extension last month of its Air Defense Identification Zone 防空識別圏 from Yonaguni westwards to overlap with parts of Taiwan’s zone.

From a Chinese nationalist’s point of view, it’s understandable why these actions could get someone riled up. Both China and Taiwan claim the Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島, which would also be covered under Kitazawa’s proposal. But the Post’s editorial (inadvertently?) lays out the reasonable justifications for Japan to consider such action:

“The PLA Navy certainly is very active in the East China Sea. It wants to show its flag in the Western Pacific, and one way to reach its waters is through the southernmost part of the Ryūkyū chain. That is cause of concern to the Japanese…”

It what follows the “…” that starts to raise eyebrows for this reader:

“…who boasted one of the world's strongest navies prior to the Second World War. China is building a blue water fleet including an aircraft carrier, which even when combat ready in years, cannot match the Imperial Navy that destroyed the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and secured air and sea supremacy in the Pacific during the first year of what the Japanese used to call the Great East Asian War.”

In one long sentence, the China Post has managed to reference the Imperial Navy, Pearl Harbor and the Second World War! Actually, the Japanese didn’t destroy the entire fleet at Pearl Harbor, but what does that have to do with the announcement made by Kitazawa?

It gets worse (or funnier, depending on how you look at it):

“Beijing never even tries to match the American sea power.”

Let’s see – annual double-digit increases in the Chinese defense budget every year for the last 20 years, combined with purchases of modern vessels and weaponry from Russia, have turned the 225,000-strong People’s Liberation Army Navy into Asia’s biggest fleet. Most defense analysts would agree that China is concentrating now on expanding its naval power further out into the Pacific, and thus poses a challenge to the US’ long-standing supremacy in this area. Countries like Singapore and Vietnam are worried, but not the editorial staff of the China Post, it seems.

After acknowledging that Japan has the right to station troops anywhere it wishes on its territory, and noting that following the end of the Cold War, Japan’s main threats in this region are China and North Korea, the editorial nonetheless questions why the country wants to station troops in Okinawa 沖縄:

“To guard against Chinese missile attacks, a surveillance unit may be necessary, but not foot soldiers either on Miyako or Ishigaki. Incidentally, both islands are far off any possible route of North Korean missile attacks. So why should Japan positively consider a troop deployment on either of the islands?”

In its own schizophrenic manner, the newspaper answers its own question:

“The only serious dispute between Tokyo and Beijng is over the natural gas and oil reserves in the East China Sea. Japan does not like any Chinese show of force that may affect the long, almost interminable, negotiations to solve the dispute over the overlapping exclusive economic zones, but the assertion of the determination to defend the Sakishima chain 先島諸島 and deploy personnel on Yonaguni to keep an eye on Chinese naval activities makes no sense whatsoever.”

There are other, equally serious disputes between Japan and China, with the Senkakus being the most notable. The Post makes no reference to this or to the increasingly aggressive actions by Chinese military forces towards Japanese vessels that have occurred in the area in recent months. It makes perfect sense for the Japanese to want to keep an eye on China’s growing naval belligerence, but the editorial writers bizarrely retreat into the irrelevance of events that took place a couple of centuries ago:

“The PLA does not even dream of conquering either Ishigaki or Miyako, whose fishermen massacred in Taiwan after a shipwreck gave Meiji Japan 明治時代 a handy excuse to attack and occupy Hengch’un 恒春 in 1874. Beijing does not want a revenge for the (Mutan) Incident 台湾出兵, for which US$500,000 was paid to Japan as ‘indemnity’ and no condemnation of aggression was declared as a concession which implied recognition of Japan's claim to sovereignty over the former Kingdom of the Ryūkyūs 琉球王国, a vassal state of China for hundreds of years. Moreover, islands are hard to defend. And if ever an invasion were considered, Okinawa rather than any of the Ryūkyūs would be attacked. Well, the United States did just that in May of 1945, and at the last leg of General Douglas A. MacArthur's island-hopping campaign, thousands of innocent Okinawans, regarded as second-rate citizens, were slaughtered by the retreating Japanese troops. Japan annexed the Ryūkyūs in 1872 as a prefecture, where the people still remain a disadvantaged ethnic minority group.”

Like the earlier references to the Imperial Navy and Pearl Harbor, the Mutan Incident has zero relevance to the topic at hand. Neither do the attempts to bring up the tragedy that befell the people of Okinawa from April-June 1945. All of this is a somewhat lame attempt at reminding the readers of some of the things that Japan did in the years before World War II in an attempt to prejudice their views regarding Japan’s legitimate modern-day security concerns. And notice the remark about the Ryūkyūs being a vassal state of long-gone Chinese empires. Japan may have formally annexed the kingdom in 1872, but it had been under its control since 1609, when troops from the Satsuma domain 薩摩藩 in Kyūshū 九州 took over the islands. In the eyes of the China Post, though, once a Chinese vassal state, always a Chinese vassal state.

The editorial concludes in this manner:

“Hard as it may be to understand why, we do not object to the Japanese deployment of troops on either of the two islands, particularly at Miyako where there is a coastal guard command. Probably it is aimed at boosting the local economy. But we do not feel comfortable with the surveillance unit on Yonaguni. Though we do not believe it will keep an eye on our air traffic, Taiwan needs no foreign military air surveillance at the door. Japan has to remember Taiwan is no longer its docile colony.”

I think I can safely assume that the writers on the editorial staff of the China Post never took college courses on expository writing or logic. Sad to say, however, that these are probably heady days for them. China is a rising, resurgent power, eager to assert its claims to islands in surrounding waters, and no longer shy about backing up its claims with shows of strength. Taiwan may no longer be a docile colony of Japan, but it is turning into a docile junior partner to the authorities on the mainland, which should warm any Chinese nationalist’s heart. For the Japanese, the China Post seems to be implying that now that the Middle Kingdom is on the rise, the Little Dwarves need to remember their proper place in the old, er…new order that’s about to be restored, I mean established. Put up and shut up, and everything will be fine.

In its defense, the China Post does do a good job of cleaning my windows.

Ranting, Part 1

In the world of blogging, one link leads to another, which is how I came across an article on cultural hybridization in Taiwan, and the following lines:

“Most short and long term visitors to Taiwan will comment on its unique characteristics, culture and style. Taiwan has an identity that makes it clearly different from all its neighbors…”

The writer and his blog shall remain nameless as I generally like and agree with the majority of his postings. The idea that Taiwan is somehow uniquely different from its neighbors, whom I take to mean the two Koreas and Japan, is what bothers me. Is the writer implying that the other countries of Northeast Asia are somehow difficult to distinguish from each other and Taiwan? Aren’t all cultures and societies unique in their own special ways, and if so, wouldn’t that then render the sentences above meaningless?

The article in question is mainly concerned with the external influences that have shaped modern Taiwanese society. While I’m not that familiar with Korean history, I do know that Japan’s “unique” and “different” culture is also the result of centuries of (Asian) continental and Western influences, framed by a long period of self-imposed isolation that allowed it to develop many of those things that we think of when we ponder what makes Japan so Japanese (a process which also occurred in Korea, but not here in Taiwan). So just what is it that makes Taiwan so “different from its neighbors”? Certainly Korea and Japan have been heavily influenced over the centuries by the behemoth next door, China (and Taiwan even more so, of course). Nonetheless, the Koreans and the Japanese have managed to take these initially foreign inputs and turn them into things that are now truly national. I’m not sure it can be argued that Taiwan has done the same. With the noticeable exception of the aborigines 台灣原住民族, what aspects of present-day Taiwan can be held up as examples of products of a different or unique Northeast Asian culture? Many bloggers point to the lasting effects of 50 years of Japanese colonial rule, but the cultural influence of that period mostly exists on a surface level – the taking off of shoes indoors, the love of hot springs, the popularity of oden おでん (which ICRT last week, while admitting its Japanese origins, nevertheless insisted was a “unique part of Taiwanese cuisine”!) and so on. At its core, this is still a Han Chinese 漢族 culture, with practices, traditions and, most importantly, the “Middle Kingdom” mindset not very dissimilar to those that exist in China.

Acknowledging that Taiwan is a Chinese culture is not the same as insisting that this island is a part of China, and must be “reunified” with the “Mainland”. Due to historical reasons (not to mention moral justifications), Taiwan has developed into a separate political entity, and this writer hopes it remains one. I would love nothing more than to see a Republic of Taiwan come into existence some day, recognized as a sovereign nation by countries around the world and welcomed into the UN and other important international organizations. I just don’t see the need to either trumpet a so-called “unique Taiwanese identity” that doesn’t exist in the first place, or to blow out of proportion the differences that are actually there today.

Perhaps it has to do with something I’ve noticed over the years I’ve spent living in Japan and Taiwan. There is a tendency among some Westerners who have resided in an Asian country like Taiwan or Japan (but not in both) to assume one of two things: a.) the country of residence is “unique” in relation to its Asian neighbors; or 2.) what is true in the Asian country of residence must be true in its neighbors as well. This can be manifested in the observation by my best friend Steve, a long-term ex-pat resident of Taichung 台中, of how a certain TV program featuring a panel of Mandarin-speaking foreigners is demonstrative of how Taiwanese view outsiders, when in fact the show in question is basically a copy (or rip-off) of an old Japanese program hosted by Beat Takeshi ビートたけし, aka Takeshi Kitano 北野武 (the only thing being unique about Taiwanese TV, in fact, is how imitative it is of Japanese programming). It can also be seen in the surprise expressed by the British owner of the school I managed in Yokkaichi 四日市, Japan when I told him that him that, no, Taiwanese kids did not sit cross-legged on floors like our Japanese students, but used desks and chairs. It seems that living for too long in one Asian nation while spending very little time in its neighbors can turn your host country into a very deep well, and you into a very large frog. It’s no wonder some people are able to convince themselves that Taiwan Beer 台灣啤酒 is great to drink. :-)

So, is Taiwan “unique” and “different”? Yes, but no more so than any of its neighbors. Taiwan in definitely not like Japan, for example, but at the time same time, Japan does not much resemble Taiwan. To say otherwise demonstrates naivety at best or a sense of cultural myopia at worst. Apples and oranges, anyone?

Besides, when it comes to plain-out weirdness, no society in Northeast Asia can top North Korea.

Everything but the Buddha

Instead of hiking this Tuesday afternoon, I rode the train to the nearby city of Changhua 彰化 to do a bit of sightseeing. Good thing, too, for it rained all day long, and being in the mountains would no doubt have been a less-than-pleasurable experience. Changhua is noted in Taiwan for its Great Buddha Statue, but having visited it several times already (the last occasion being a few weeks ago when I walked along some rural roads for two hours and eight kilometers/five miles in order to reach it), I decided to give Sakyamuni a pass. Besides, being only a couple of years older than myself and made of concrete, Changhua's Buddha can hardly compare to the Kamakura Daibutsu 鎌倉大仏 in Japan, not to mention many similar historical examples in China. So today I went to have a look at some of the other attractions the city of 230,000 people has to offer.

Changhua isn't far from Fengyuan 豐原 by train. Going there, the Tzuch'iang limited express took roughly 25 minutes, while even the local train got me back in just over half an hour. Exiting Changhua Station 彰化車站, I walked over to narrow Ch'enling Road, and begin checking things out. First up was Cat Mouse Noodles 猫鼠麺, an establishment in these here parts for noodles that having nothing to do with felines or mice (the name apparently comes from a Taiwanese-Mandarin pun). An intrepid travel writer would have naturally stopped here to see what all the fuss is about, but I was quite content to have eaten at the Fengyuan MOS Burger モスバーガー branch before catching the train.

Further along Ch'enling Road, where it meets Minsheng Road, was what should have been my next destination, the Yuanch'ing Temple. However, the front area of the temple was in the midst of some large-scale digging project, and as a result, only one wing was open to the public. Fortunately, the nearby Confucius Temple 孔子廟 wasn't being disturbed by any construction or road-work, so I quickly headed there. Dating from 1726, Changhua's Confucius Temple is one of the nicest in all of Taiwan, and is worth a look if you're walking from the train station up to Pakuashan to see the big-ass Buddha. Like all Confucius temples, the interior is devoid of any representation of the venerable master, just admiring plaques with inscriptions from Chinese emperors.

From the temple, it was a short walk along K'ungmen Road to Chungshan Road, and the route leading up to the top of Bakuashan and the Buddha. Instead of walking up, however, I went inside the new Museum of the War of 1895. Set up in a converted bomb shelter, the museum details the resistance to the Japanese takeover of Taiwan following the end of the First Sino-Japanese War 日清戦争 and the Treaty of Shimonoseki 下関条約 in 1895. Though free to enter, the displays lack any English explanations. In fact, other than a pamphlet giving a rough outline of the museum, the only English inside consisted of the words "Republic of Fomosa" (sic) projected onto a wall and a copy of the proclamation made by the Japanese governor-general of Taiwan 台湾総督府, Kabayama Sukenori 樺山資紀, on the takeover of the island.

Close to the 1895 Museum is the Changhua Arts Museum, located in the former Changhua Convention Hall, an attractive Japanese-era building dating from 1933. Also free of charge (Changhua is a bargain to visit!), the exhibition on the first-floor consisted mainly of watercolors of idyllic rural Taiwanese scenes. I was more interested in the map of Changhua dating from 1935, on the second floor. The old Shōka Shrine 彰化神社 could be clearly seen, along with the commemorative tablet that the Japanese erected on the site of the present Great Buddha. Kudos once again to those who preserve these fine old buildings, and put them to good use.

Just behind the art museum was the last of Changhua's non-Buddha sights, a 300-year-old well built by the Dutch. It was hardly worth seeing, as it has been cemented over, with an Earth God Shrine erected behind it for good measure. My Lonely Planet guidebook says the well still pumps out drinkable water, but I didn't give it a try.

And so ends the story of what to do when in Changhua on a rainy afternoon, and you don't feel like visiting the Great Buddha Statue. The middle of the town where the sights are located is easy to get around, and it only took me a couple of hours to see everything at a leisurely pace.

  

Happy Anniversary to us

This Tuesday will be our eighth wedding anniversary, so to celebrate we went out with Amber to have lunch this afternoon at Zion here in Fengyuan 豐原. The restaurant is located in a beautiful wooden building dating from the Japanese period. I believe it originally housed the headquarters of a local textile company, but now it has been converted to an establishment serving Western-type meals. Good ones, too, judging from the pork and squid set I enjoyed today. It's great to see these grand old buildings being preserved (and not just as museum pieces), instead of being torn down in order to erect yet another of those concrete monstrosities that blight Taiwan's urban landscape.

Following our celebratory lunch, we drove into the Fengchia 逢甲 area of T'aichung 台中 to do some shopping at the Carrefour hypermarket there. Now I've been accused at times by certain anonymous cowards (as judgmental jerks almost always are) of being some kind of "neo-colonialist". These trolls can think whatever they like, but it seems to me that a great many Taiwanese harbor both a nostalgic look back at the colonial past and an envious eye towards their former colonial masters. Either that, or Japan is just plain cool in the eyes of many people here, especially the young. It certainly isn't me that's exhibiting "neo-colonialist" tendencies!

In the wake of the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement 海峽兩岸經濟合作架構協議 between Taiwan and China, the government is making a push to sell the benefits of the ECFA to its neighbors, according to this AP article from today's Japan Focus ("Taiwan, Japan to develop broadband technologies"):

"Three big Japanese corporations may join Taiwan in developing cutting-edge broadband technologies that will allow them to jointly tap China’s vast telecommunications market. Fujitsu Ltd 富士通, NEC Corp 日本電気 and Mitsubishi Corp 三菱商事 have expressed an interest in the offer to develop WiMax technologies together with Taiwanese firms, said Yiin Chi-ming, a Taiwanese state minister. Yiin said he expects to sign a memorandum of understanding with the three Japanese firms to set up a company involved in WiMax system integration when he leads a trade mission to Japan next week. WiMAX - short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access — expands broadband wireless access over longer distances of up to 50 kilometers (31 miles) and reduces the cost of implementing broadband. Taiwan has sought foreign investment in the wake of a landmark trade deal the island signed last month with China, under which the mainland would slash tariffs on goods produced in Taiwan. The trade pact, known as Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, will also cover a broad range of services, Yiin said. 'Foreign firms can benefit from Taiwanese companies’ knowledge of the Chinese market and their strengths in product innovation and commercialization,' he said. The trade group will also visit other Japanese firms to discuss joint projects in electric car, electronic components and energy-related technologies, he said."

The Taipei Times has a similar, and more detailed, article here.

In one final bit of Taiwan-related news from Japan's English-language media, Wayne Graczyk, in his weekly Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ column "Baseball Bullet-in" had this to say today:

"Retired but keeping a Japan connection, former Seibu Lions 埼玉西部ライオンズ and Hiroshima Carp 広島東洋カープ third baseman Scott McClain is now working as a scout for the Chicago Cubs, helping to cover the Pacific Rim with Steve Wilson. A one-time pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers who was on the 1993 Dodgers postseason tour to Fukuoka 福岡, Wilson later played in Taiwan, married a Taiwanese woman and decided to settle there."

("Death of 'The Boss' huge news in U.S., not in Japan")

Wilson is (was?) the owner of Willy's Second Base, a bar and grill in T'ainan 台南 that's listed in both the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides Taiwan guidebooks. His Wikipedia entry can be found here.

Short but sweat

I got back a short while ago from a late morning walk on the Hsint'ien 新田 trails in T'antzu 潭子. The humidity level was high, but the walk was relatively uneventful, except for the many caterpillars out and about. The future butterflies and moths were everywhere on the trails, crawling on leaves and wooden posts, hanging by threads from tree branches and ending up on my clothing. I was also kept company by a trio of geckos on the ceiling of a pavilion where I stopped for a Pocari Sweat ポカリスエット break. On the way home, the rice fields were full of egrets looking for insects and small frogs.

Three strikes, yer out!

Strike One: I rode over to Dia, the biggest swimming pool in Fengyuan 豐原, after lunch in the hope of cooling off on this hot and humid summer afternoon. Unfortunately, being summer vacation, the place was full of children. As I pulled into the parking lot, a large tour bus had just finished disgorging the last of its kiddie occupants, all lined up and ready to go inside. A look through a window confirmed that a quiet swim was going to be out of the question, so I gave up. Unless I'm with Amber, being a hairy barbarian in the midst of a throng of unsupervised screaming little shits isn't my idea of summer fun.

Strike Two: Seeing as swimming is out of the question until September (after the ガキ are back in school), I rode off in search of the elusive Nank'eng Hiking Trail 南坑登山歩道, somewhere in the hills of Fengyuan behind Chung-cheng Park 中正公園. There were signs on the road pointing the way to this:

"Coffee", "simple meals" and, worst of all, "karaoke" 卡拉OK hardly conjure up images of trekking in the great outdoors, and truth be told, I'd been here a couple of times before. On the first occasion, I was chased off by a pack of dogs, and on the other, by a middle-aged woman who insisted there was no hiking trail despite what the sign on her building said. Today there were no dogs or people around, and I found the "trail". Or rather, I discovered a small paved road leading up to a clearing that at one time had picnic tables and, presumably, a nice view of Fengyuan below. Presumably, because it was hard to see anything through the bushes, reeds and weeds that Nature had been using to reclaim the clearing.

Strike Three: On the way home, I stopped off at the city hospital. Not to visit any sick friends or relatives, fortunately, but to buy English muffins from the convenience store there. It's the only place in town that I'm aware of that carries these welcome treats from home, but on a day like this one, I wasn't too surprised to find that they were no longer in stock.

Oh well, the great thing about baseball is that even the best teams lose ⅓ of their games, and the best hitters fail at the plate 70% of the time. I did enjoy riding around on some back roads that I hadn't been on in quite a long time. One route took me to the public mausoleum, overlooking the city below:

One thing I'll never understand about the local culture is why the dead are given what would be considered prime real estate in the West, while the living cram themselves into barely habitable urban areas:

I'm sure I'll get on base the next time I head out.

Following the signs

My wife went to see a specialist in T'aichung 台中 this afternoon, and my daughter and I went along for the ride. While Pamela was cooling her heels in the clinic, Amber and I took a long walk around the neighborhood, which included a Carrefour hypermarket with a Gordon Biersch brewpub.

My wife was at the doctor's for a long time, so daughter and Dad had a couple of breaks while waiting for Mom to finish up: