Daily Links, Oct 10, 2008

A letter sent a reader in Taipei... our out of touch IRS is not aware that Taiwan is not a part of China; nor is it US policy to say that it is.

Another week has gone by, and I'm off to Washington DC next week to give a paper at a conference there, and look up old and new friends. If anyone knows of any Taiwan-related seminars, talks, etc, in DC at that time, please let me know. Dunno how much blogging I will be doing. Don't know if I can tolerate a state of non-blogging for long....

In this sequence, my wife and I watched in disbelief as this Mormon missionary, first seen taking notes by the side of the road, strides out into the street to accost a couple on a motorcycle. Probably just a coincidence that the girl was the most attractive femme in the street. Alas, the light changed and the potential income stream for the Church for the next four decades peeled off, unmormonized. Just to make sure he was completely rude to everyone in the intersection, the missionary kept talking well past the light change, forcing everyone in the traffic line to wait for him. Please stop behaving in this rude, self-centered, and irresponsible way, guys. There's no need to put everyone at risk by accosting passers-by in the middle of the freakin' intersection!

Speaking of Washington, before I forget, even if you have forgotten to register to vote, you still can. Click on link at the top of the blog, fill out the forms, print out the emergency ballot, and follow the instructions for printing it out. Even if your state is a lock for one campaign or the other, you can still affect the results of local campaigns.

Death lurks in the green leaves.

What's lurking on the blogs today?

A teacher in China plans to sail all the way to Taiwan on a boat that is glued together.

The ROC tourism director touts "traditional Chinese culture" on Taiwan. Along with the old politics, the old colonial tropes are returning too. UPDATE: Commenter below rightly points out I am wrong.

Michella reports on her new boss at the news station.

Sponge Bear looks at a piece that points out that Taiwan is closer to Japan than you think. He also writes eloquently on the bizarreness of Sinophiles in Taiwan.

Taoyuan nights points out the stupidity of Taiwan's stock market policy. It's a good thing we got the adults into power with their cool pragmatism instead of ideology, eh? Although I have to admit that I never thought they'd turn out to be eff-ups to this extent, a phrase I'm hearing many a local voter utter.

Taiwanonymous on baked raw oysters and joss carving.

Wild at Heart blogs on the problems of pandas and goats and other rare animals being exchanged.

Vets in the good old days.

Riding the Houfeng bike trail in Taichung.

Fili on local expat blogs in English.

The Bala Daily on one of the most important motivators for studying in Taiwan: comparisons to the dreaded straight-A relative...

Lao Ren Cha on Taiwanese pride.

The incomparable Victor Mair, one of the most fecund China scholars of our day, on common bisyllabic terms in Mandarin.

The statuesque Joanna Rees has some lovely images of her Japan trip.

This shows the plan for Highway 4, which comes out of Fengyuan near the mountains, runs down the ridges south to Dongshan Rd in Taichung, and then swerves to follow the river down to Guoguang Rd. Taichungers, if you see construction on the roads running parallel to Jungong Rd and south, that's what's going on. The large circle, representing an exit, near the river in the center-right foreground is at the intersection of Dongshan and Jungong.

OUTRAGES: Article in today's Taipei Times warns that much folk art connected to Penghu temples is going to disappear. Note the headline and teaser:

Penghu’s old temples face demolition
DISAPPEARING: Many of Penghu’s temples, which were built during the 1960s and 1970s, are too new to be categorized as protected sites of national heritage

Yes, but when the DPP wanted to do something about Dead Dictator Memorial Hall in Taipei, it was instantly classified as a historic site, although it had been built in the late 1970s. There's something wrong with the world....

In Chinese, this sign in the parking lot of the HSR says this is a special parking space reserved for women. In English, it is complete gibberish.

IMAGES: A friend tipped me off that these image collections of Old Taiwan have been expanding. Enjoy...

Colonial Pictorial Works
http://imago.lafayette.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fcpw

Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection
http://imago.lafayette.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fwarner

The Michael Lewis Taiwan Image Collection
http://imago.lafayette.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Flewis

Professor Paul Barclay along with his assistants have been hard at work over the summer to produce a digital collection that is second-to-none.
http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~barclayp/

There's a whole class of magazines that publish magical systems for winning the lottery.

MEDIA: Taiwan offers deer, goat in exchange for pandas. Let's send them Li Ao instead; he's very entertaining and he loves China. The Straits Times is Xinhua mouthpiece. China warns Obama and McCain that they had better not sell more weapons to Taiwan, or Beijing will take its ball and go home. Ma Ying-jeou hails arms sales, after his party held them up for years. John Tkacik points out the arms sales aren't all they are cracked up to be. SHOCKER: 6 arrested for rigging Taiwan baseball games. Is Taiwanese baseball any less scripted than pro wrestling? Taiwan cement export prices go up 50%. KMT goes after Taiwan Foundation for Democracy? AND IN OTHER NEWS: Arms deal riles China. There was a weird moment this week when it was suggested that SARS was China biowarfare, and then retracted the next day. "Made in Taiwan" food zone at supermarket does booming business. Taipei Times sees ROC fiction replacing Taiwan reality. Milk powder scandal exposes China's worsening administrative problems. Taichung Jazz Festival to open soon....

An old man eats breakfast in the Taichung suburb of Taiping.

It's Double 10 Day, so don't forget, as a friend reminded me, to 熱烈慶祝台灣地區區慶!!

[Taiwan]