Happy New Year!

Whoa. Way too much food today.... Happy new year, ya'll!!

And if you still need food, here's an Android app with locations for over 200 night markets...

See you in three weeks!
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Randomicity

Here's the real story of New Year! The cleaning.... I'm taking his month off from blogging. But I am still biking, so enjoy some pics from various rides lately. I'm also still writing, had a letter in the Taipei Times the other day.

Can't find yourself? It's because you don't have the "life password" contained in this pamphlet I saw at the temple in Yuanlin yesterday.

One of the pleasures of being a teacher is meeting up with old students. I went down to Yuanlin to see if there were any interesting old relics -- alas, the only old relic was myself -- but I did have lunch with Natasha, who hasn't seemed to have aged a single day while I piled on the years.

Flowers are always in bloom in Taiwan.

At the Thai place that Natasha took me to, the Thai lounge singers regaled us with "Blue Bayou."

The eatery outside the temple in Yuanlin near the train station.

Communicating with the gods at the Matsu temple in Yuanlin.

For burning.

For a small town, Yuanlin feels big and crowded.

Natasha took me up to Baiguo Mountain to one of the temples there.

Hangin' at the temple.

In an alcove offerings appease the god.

Last week Drew took me on a nifty little climb right outside Taichung that is popular with local bikers, Beikeng Rd. It runs past the golf course off of Taiyuan Rd just before you get to Taiping town.

The views were excellent, and if you ever wanted to know what you were breathing....

Farm and orchard country.

Chris Bolster came along for the ride. The grade is easy and the road surface is in good condition. Drew's sturdy ride report with many photos is here.

It's New Year's at the market. That means unspeakables soaking in the morning cold.

The morning market near my house is an absolute madhouse as New Year approaches.

With all the trash the recyclers are picking up a treasure trove.

With the extra business vendors were mobilizing young female labor from friends and family to help out. Here I ran into one of my Chang Gung students lending at hand to a local vegetable vendor. Hello Rosa!

In addition to the vendors who had fixed spots, some people pushed little carts full of goodies.

The tofu vendor scores.

True to Taiwan's just-in-time manfuacturing tradition, delivery people were dropping off new goods as fast as the customers could take them.

At home my wife prepared a small table for the kitchen god. Can't wait to eat those Vietnamese spring rolls!
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

On Break

Thanks, all!

A hard fought election, a disappointing outcome. I'm taking a few weeks off from posting, being totally burnt out and urgently needing to focus on other aspects of my life. Biking pics will continue to go up, though, they are not stressful!

See you when the semester starts again in Feb.

Michael
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 [Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Election Day

Lee Teng-hui speaks at the rally, courtesy of reader Michael Gruber.

To watch the vote count on the net, Sanli is here.

In a few hours we'll know, but for now enjoy some links. Lee Tenghui came out yesterday to speak at the big rally. It was an emotional moment, nicely scripted and choreographed:

“I don’t have much time left. Please support Tsai. Make her the first woman president in Taiwan who will make this country a model of democracy. Now, I put Taiwan’s destiny in your hands,” he said.

Lee is one of the great figures in the growth of 20th century democracy, in a very different way on par with people like Havel and Mandela. If Taiwan's democracy actually does change China, he will have left a towering legacy.

Meanwhile former AIT head Douglas Paal, known for unabashed anti-DPP views during his tenure and now here to perform a dog and pony show for the KMT, found AIT distancing itself from him:

AIT Director William Stanton called off a meeting with Douglas Paal yesterday morning, a source said, which was later confirmed by the Prospect Foundation, an institution affiliated with the KMT that invited Paal to visit Taiwan

Thanks, AIT. Although some aspects of Paal's analysis are dead on, his wholly uninformed and partisan viewpoint is revealed in comments like:

Paal also criticized the “Taiwan consensus” proposed by Tsai, saying the idea was “a way of saying [that Tsai has] no desire to reach cross-strait agreements.”

But enough of Paal. The Nelson Report passed this around:

Note: no details to add on the Taiwan election except that results are expected shortly after breakfast tomorrow (Saturday, DC time) and to report that serious analysts are predicting a very strong chance that challenger Tsai Ing-wen will regain the presidency for the DPP from KMT incumbent Ma Ying-jeou. Stay tuned. Sunday morning (9 am DC time) your Editor will be on CCTV-Beijing, assigned topic the Obama defense "Asia Pivot"...we'll see. Monday is a Federal Holiday so no Report that day.

Wonder who these serious experts are who think Tsai will win. Ballots and Bullets hosts the usual excellent stuff. Stephane Corcuff on identifying consensus in the Blue-Green continuum, Lee Teng-hui's last hurrah, and Jon Sullivan's great piece on Mikael Mattlin's book Taiwan's Politicized Society, which argues that Taiwan's democracy is still a veneer, because the KMT has never permitted full consolidation.

Also see longtime Taiwan scholar Richard Kagan on the election. Frozen Garlic's best flags of the year! And see his Quick Thoughts, lots of good observations. BBC's China media monitoring reports that Beijing has ordered a blackout on news and commentary on Taiwan's election. How the CCP must hate Taiwan.

Finally, a CS Monitor piece cites me on why the election is more sedate on the whole (except for the last week!).

Check Google search, Taiwan's election is right there!

No predictions here. It's going to be close. Good luck to all.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Links for the Election Eve

Glad this one will be over soon and I can go back to posting biking photos....

• BBC says Beijing "is suspicious of" Tsai. Notice that while newspapers regularly report that Beijing is suspicious of Tsai -- a formulation found across the media -- no newspaper ever reports on how Tsai feels about Beijing. Wouldn't it be great if newspapers upheld democratic values of fairness and fidelity to reality?
• Although/Since it is illegal to release information about polls, the KMT has a rundown of self-serving party estimate information from all the parties here. No polls here, no sirree! Although, I'm sure the Agency Against Corruption will want to know what the DPP was doing releasing such data.
• DPP rips the Douglas Paal dog and pony show for the KMT.
• The usual yadda yadda on how the election could result in changes in the economy.
• Taiwan dollar at two month high, global investors expect Ma victory.
• >stunned< Reuters actually covers the legislative election. Good job, guys.
• China uses new tactic to influence the election: silence. 
• Taiwanese flock home for election: WSJ
• The Australian: China looms large.
• AP: Ma loved in Beijing and DC, not so much at home. AP has done a good job this election, especially compared to BBC, NYTimes, AFP, and several other news orgs I could name.
• CNN sources Taiwan election stuff from a former Beijing correspondent with predictable results.
• Video from WaPo on how Taiwan voters are choosing course of relations with China.
• Not a bad piece at all on what the election means from a City U of HKK academic in BBC.
• Dem and Progressive Failure on Taiwan is mirrored by Taiwan continuing to be an issue for Republicans.
• AFP channeling Xinhua as usual, don't bother reading, only included for completeness and opportunity to hack on AFP.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

WHACK! Hitting the Links in the Afternoon

Weather tomorrow predicted to be 16-21C with rain. That's tolerable weather for Taipei citizens, who after all are used to a troglodyte existence with no sunlight for months at a time. It's amazing to me that any vegetation is alive in this city. Hence don't expect the weather to affect the vote up here.

• Ketty Chen comments on Al Jazz about the election.
• NYTimes channels IPS story on how the vote will determine the fate of nuclear power. The IPS story is much better.
• NYTimes says 70-80% of Taiwanese in China backing Ma.
• Douglas Paal, former AIT head, private citizen expert in dog and pony shows, arrives to let everyone know he supports the KMT.
• TSU says it must garner 5% of the vote or die. We can only pray.
• Vote buying, dirty tricks: DPP complains.
• AP: Candidates make final push
• Anyone looked at the bond and currency markets? They don't see any issue with a Tsai win.
• Tsai might win. Fortunately Beijing and Washington need not feel horror at the prospect of a moderate economics PHD representing the pro-democracy party winning a legal and free election in a US-allied state. 
• SPECIAL HAHA: Su Chi, longtime KMTer, close Ma associate, in NYTimes extolling the virtues of Taiwan democracy for changing China. Among KMTers it is an article of faith that the democratic state built over KMT objections can change China. If the KMT had never encountered the Taiwanese, they would never be a political party in a democratic state. 

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Morning Linkfest

I'll be posting links periodically throughout the day...... first an announcement from Ballots and Bullets:

Jon Sullivan, who has been running the Taiwan 2012 blog at the University of Nottingham, will be live blogging on Election Day. If you are in Taiwan on Saturday and have any observations, insights etc. that you would like to share, please mail Jon (email address on the blog at http://nottspolitics.org/category/taiwan-2012/).

There's a big list of the latest from his blog below. Wonderful stuff.

The Think Tank the National Bureau of Asian Research has a bunch of papers about the election online, all from the usual suspects.

• Taiwan's Future: Narrowing Straits  by Robert G. Sutter
• Defining a Healthy Balance Across the Taiwan Strait  by Robert G. Sutter, Jianwei Wang, J. Bruce Jacobs, Alan M. Wachman, Ji You and Nancy Bernkopf Tucker
• Rising Rationalists: The Next Generation of Leadership in Taiwan  by Shelley Rigger

Ballots and Bullets, lots of great stuff here.

• Campaign ads in Taiwan 2012
• Implications of the EU Debt Crisis for Taiwan-China relations
• The Heat is Rising- Notes from Taipei
• The PRC’s preferential policy towards Taishang and the possibility of unification
• The limits of observing elections in Taiwan
• New Tories prove a problem for Cameron
• Can any president satisfy Taiwan’s demanding voters?
• Consensus under Stated Differences: Commonalities in Ma and Tsai’s Cross-Strait Policies
• A plot against first-time voters?
• And by Their Friends Ye Shall Know Them
• In praise of a ‘normal’ election

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Links Nom Nom Lin Nom Nom Nom Li...

More links! DPP rally at Shr Jeng 2 Road and Henan Rd.....

• Cong. Ed Royce: The policy of 'managed ties' with Taiwan is wrong and election is good time to change it
• Bloomberg News: Taiwan Inc. backs Ma Ying-jeou. Big business supporting the President who is backed by Wall Street and Beijing? There's a shock. 
• Great piece by Ralph Jennings in the CSMonitor: Taiwan's top election issue is wealth gap. Compare to the US, where in the Republican primary the top issue appears to be Other People's Genitals followed by Which Non-White Nation Shall We Bomb Next?
• Taiwan's Gamble: Asia News Network, good stuff on identity, election.
• Paul Mozur in WSJ: an alternative explanation of why Taiwan's election is so close.
• Angry Red Bird for President Tsai!
• AP on the election rallies
• Election bookmaking ring busted in Chiayi, but sadly, no info on who the bookies favored.
• Haha. Fooled by Campaign Poster Foto. They all try to look younger in the pics. 
• CNA on Taiwan businessmen heading home to vote in election. 
• China pans Taiwan's new fast attack boats.
• VIDEO: Ben Goren's excellent take on the election: "It's about..." now in video form!
• Douglas Paal in town for another election day Dog and Pony show. Just like 2008!

NOT ELECTION: Fighting for the future on Orchid Island
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.