Friday Blog Roundup: July 22, 2005

It's Friday again (happens with disturbing regularity) and so once more I have gathered posts of interest from Taiwan bloggers for your amusement and edification.



Actually posted in May, Ahmad in Taiwan posts on the traffic signs and English on The Beautiful Island:

Driving in Taiwan can be a frustrating experience, especially if you're not familiar with the language. But even for those who are fluent in the language (myself included), there are times when logic-defying sign placements can lead to involuntary spewing of foul language. My personal experience with Taiwanese road signs (of lack thereof) as a driver leads me to the conclusion that road planners here uses these rules to decide where to place their signs:

Ahmad, you're lucky to get signs in English! In some parts of Taiwan, there aren't any! He also has some melancholy thoughts on Singaporeans overseas. Ahmad! Post more!



In the category of "way cool" Eight Diagrams passes along some great news about a massive new photo archive of iconic images for free on the internet:

Many iconic images, the kind long found on posters and greeting cards - Stieglitz's shot of a spindly tree framed by New York office towers on a rainy spring day; Weegee's teeming Coney Island hordes; Lewis Hine's "Icarus Atop Empire State Building" - will be joined by thousands of other works by eminent artists that the general public has rarely had an opportunity to see.

Don't miss the very interesting post on Oprah and Faulkner either.




David at Jujuflop muses on Ma's victory in the KMT Chairmanship election:

• With such huge support, Ma has a great opportunity to reform the KMT. The KMT 'old guard' (headed by Lien Chan) were always going to resist change (I had posted before questioning how much freedom the new leader would really have), but this should give Ma the power to push through reforms despite their resistance.
• Even for the KMT it's not who supports you that matters, it's how many support you. Wang had the overwhelming support of senior KMT members (and a videotaped message from James Soong, the head of the PFP), but it meant very little in the final analysis. Democracy has truly arrived for the KMT.
• There must be big question marks over the future for Wang (and his allies) now. In 2008, the legislature will be halved in size, and you can be sure it'll be Wang's supporters who will be most nervous about losing their jobs.
• This will answer a lot of questions about how popular Ma is outside of Taipei (his powerbase). Of course, a poll of KMT members is different to a presidential election, but the fact that he even beat Wang on his home turf of Kaohsiung means Ma can claim to be the most popular KMT member in all regions of Taiwan.
• Why did no one predict this result? The polls in Taiwan are usually fairly accurate in predicting results - but everyone was surprised by this one.

Ma beat Wang handily. I'm still reeling. David had another good post on Ma being snubbed in victory. Losing or winning, Ma always manages to look pathetic somehow. Maybe he should have cried, and at least gotten some political mileage out of it all. There is also a thread at Forumosa.



P. K. Friedman over at Keywords discusses the failure of DPP education policy in Taiwan, in conjunction with comments from Scott Sommers on the same issue. Friedman writes:

I don't know exactly what Scott means by failure, but I do know what I mean. Contemporary Taiwanese language-in-education-policy is supposedly aimed at two goals: First, teaching native languages. Secondly, teaching English. (There have also been some changes to Mandarin language education, but those are much less controversial.)

Native language education today consists of primary school students receiving one period a week in native language instruction. If the goal of this instruction is to reverse the stigma associated with speaking native languages, then it might be considered a success. However, if it is to actually reverse years of decline in the speaking of Taiwan's native languages, it is pretty much a failure. In those communities where native languages are widely spoken, the classes are minimally useful, but in communities where children do not speak their native language at home, one hour a week is not enough to make even a minimal impact.

Friedman notes: "The problems with English education are more complicated and are much more tied to increased economic inequality in Taiwan." Yup, and they always have been too. Friedman's PHD thesis on language here is online. Sommers has another round on the same theme. Don't miss Sommer's posting on the English education survey done at his school. It is one of the theme's of Scott's writing that the usefulness of native speaker teachers is overblown.



Lots of people blogged on the typhoon this week. Mesheel writes on Typhoon Haitang:

This morning Johnny and I had to do some typhoon preparation on our balcony and I insisted on filling ALL our buckets and containers with water. I don't want to be stuck at home for several days without water or electricity. In my 3 years in Taiwan I was always lucky enough. During typhoon Nari 4 years ago, I was in Japan with my brother for 10 days when practically the whole city of Taipei was flooded and some areas where without water for up to 4 days. I hope this is not going to happen the next few days, cause according to the Central Weather Bureau this typhoon is a BIG one. It already started to rain. I'll keep you updated...

Many foreigners comment on the way Taiwanese go completely crazy when a typhoon comes. As Mesheel points out, disasters can and will happen. The big one last year knocked out our power and water for several days. Over at MAW KUH's Taiwan Life, Marc logged the definition of a typhoon:

The terms "hurricane" and "typhoon" are regionally specific names for a strong "tropical cyclone". A tropical cyclone is the generic term for a non-frontal synoptic scale low-pressure system over tropical or sub-tropical waters with organized convection (i.e. thunderstorm activity) and definite cyclonic surface wind circulation (Holland 1993). Tropical cyclones with maximum sustained surface winds of less than 17 m/s (34 kt, 39 mph) are called "tropical depressions" (This is not to be confused with the condition mid-latitude people get during a long, cold and grey winter wishing they could be closer to the equator ;-)). Once the tropical cyclone reaches winds of at least 17 m/s (34 kt, 39 mph) they are typically called a "tropical storm" and assigned a name.

Menghshin Journal, always full of interesting stuff, blogged some pics of the torrential rains. Russia, Mongolia, China... also had quite a nice post describing Taipei after the typhoon. B@Taiwan describes the feel of the storm. ADOA has a pics and video blog. Frost Thoughts also has pics, describing the storm as "kinda pussyish" -- which it most certainly was, thankfully. E-Taiwan news totes up the damage. David Kleykamp over at Tamkang U asks if anything good can come from a typhoon.

You can tell a better tomorrow is a Taiwan veteran, echoing a common observation that typhoons clean the air for a day or two:

I'm similarly excited that there's supposed to be a typhoon hitting the east coast this weekend. It should be super clear the day after the typhoon passes. Hopefully I'll have the chance to get some clear sunrise shots of 龜山島 over by Toucheng and some good shots of all of Yilan County from the 北宜公路.

I was having the same thought....where should I go on Tuesday and Wednesday to take pictures? Don't miss the great pictures too. A better tomorrow offers some fantastic stuff.



Taiwan Tiger, always a great stop for pictures and commentary, offers step by step instructions for making the Hakka tea called lei cha:

Just northeast of Kaohsiung city is a wonderful Hakka village named MeiNong. The village is well-known for its paper umbrellas and Hakka culture museum. Unfortunately, we didn't get there in time to go the museum, but we did have the opportunity to make some Hakka style tea called Lei1Cha1 擂茶 at a restaurant in MeiNong. The restaurant's food smelled delicious, but we only drank tea. Here's what you do:

We did that up in the Hakka town of Beipu in Hsinchu and it was great fun. Those tea shops have great atmosphere too.



MeiZhongTai has an analysis of the Pentagon's recently-released report on China's military capabilities. I can only echo his thought:

I wish the report would have offered more information on the capabilities of the amphibious lift and other platforms and their capacity to carry infantry or marines across the strait.

The report has lots of stuff implying threat, but not enough detail. I love the count of mentions of Taiwan (168 times!) at the end.



Poagao has some excellent musings on Taiwan gangsters this week:

Some foreigners seem to think that gangsters are all either mainlanders or southerners or cab drivers or whatever, but it seems to me that the whole spectrum of society is included (gangster dentists? flower-store hoodlums? Why not?)

Yes, it seems gangsters dabble in all sorts of this here in Taiwan. It is interesting that in the US we refer to gangsters as organized crime -- crime, organized, but still crime -- whereas in Taiwan it is called hei dao, the Black Path -- black, to be sure, but still a path, and thus, in some way, bearing a certain social legitimacy.



Betelnutblogger has a multipart posting on KMT and CCP cooperation during the 1937-45 war against Japan. Post I fisks the recent revisionist history that has emanated from Taida...

An article in last Tuesday's Taipei Times ("Re-writers of History Ignore Truth") got my attention and my goat. My eyebrows always rise upon hearing that a professor or two has hold of that truth thang, and sure enough, this is a classic example of historical scholarship in the service of politics. The authors are introduced as Tai Da profs in journalism and political science respectively. Well, at least they're not history professors.

...while Post II continues...

The article in question seems to ignore entirely the period after the Xian incident, when a genuine "united front" existed in Wuhan. It was not Mao representing the Communists here (he was an ally, but a wary one), but his rival Wang Ming. Mao followed a more Trotskyite strategy of rural peasant rebellion, while Wang Ming found favor with Stalin by pursuing "bourgeois revolution" alongside the KMT.

...and Post III lays down some smack....

It is instructive to keep in mind what the thesis of the authors is: In response to the CCP's recent admission that the KMT did play a large part in the resistance, the authors maintain that, in fact, the traditional KMT account is entirely vindicated: the CCP not only didn't fight the Japanese much between 1942 and 1945; they not only financed themselves with opium sales in that period; but these things were exclusively so of the CCP, while the KMT had an exemplary record of fighting valiantly with hands clean of opium selling.

...and Post IV offers the coup-de-grace:

In the summer of 1948 the "first decisive stage of the civil war" would be fought in Manchuria, and the Reds, enjoying a two-to-one advantage in manpower, would win decisively. What had happened in the intervening period of time was that the house of cards that was the Nationalist regime collapsed, because they'd lost the trust of the Chinese people. When they retook areas that had implemented land reform in their absence, they used brutal methods to reinstitute the old system. Inflation was through the roof. (One of my favorite quotes of the entire book is from the corrupt KMT Finance Minister, the H.H. Kung: "Inflation! Inflation! There is no inflation in China! If people want to pay twenty- five dollars for a fountain pen, that's their business, it's not inflation. They're crazy, that's all. They shouldn't pay it.” In 1940-41, food prices in Chungking increased by 1,400%). The economy was run for the benefit of the top families. The army was politicized. When the people of China turned on the Nationalists, it happened with breathtaking speed.

"The economy was run for the benefit of the top families. The army was politicized." Hey! I know another country like that, also run by the KMT....



Karl at Chewin on the Chung posted some very funny stuff this week. If World War II Was a Real Time Strategy game. (Warning: language) (Knowledge of RTS games required) and a joke about a talking dog I hadn't heard yet.



And if you're not reading liberal blogger TomDispatch.com, you should be. Tom gave us a perceptive piece by Judith Coburn on the failure of the media to report on Iraqi civilian deaths, including a citation from Juan Cole that points out that the death rate among Iraqis since the invasion of Iraq is now higher than that during the Hussein regime.

And from the category of waaaaaay too much time on your hands comes this completely absurd blog.

Have a great weekend, folks!

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