Sunday, Jan 29, 2006, Taiwan Blog Round Up

It's back! I've felt awful since I had to stop doing the Taiwan blog round ups. I suspect that rounding up on Fridays next semester will be impossible, but Sunday can probably be maintained. So I am shifting the Taiwan blog round-up to Sundays. Enjoy!

David at jujuflop, whose writing on Taiwan's politics is illuminated by vast knowledge and deep insight, blogged on a number of important political topics over the past few weeks. First, he discussed the change of premiers:

There was almost no reaction from the stockmarket to this announcement - because the premier wields very little actual power. The premier (who is appointed by the president) presides over the cabinet (which is appointed by the president), reports on polices (which are set by the president) to the Legislature, and countersigns laws (which are signed by the president). In other words, the premier does the work of the president. It’s worth noting that in other presidential systems (e.g. the US) and parliamentary systems (e.g. the UK), the leader of the country is also head of the cabinet. That these positions are separate in Taiwan is yet another sign of Taiwan’s defective constitution.

Whoever replaces Hsieh will be the 5th premier to serve under President Chen (President Lee also got through 5 different premiers in his time). The fact that the list of premiers under Chen includes a KMT member, and DPP members who were both allies and potential challengers to Chen’s rule - but that there have been no major policy shifts between premiers shows where the real power lies.

And don't miss his important post on how the KMT is destroying the government, one Yuan at a time:

One of my regular topics is the collapse of one of the five branches of government - the Control Yuan; In two weeks time it will have been empty for a whole year. Although you can make a case for intransigence on both sides causing this, the fact that the pan-Blues have refused to even review the nominations for the Control Yuan yet is an indicator of who is being the more childish. Anyway, this budget has effectively disabled the second branch of government, the Examination Yuan.

The Legislature has frozen two-thirds of the Examination Yuan’s budget - leaving just enough to pay salaries, but not enough to actually do anything. The Examination Yuan is responsible for the civil service, so while its paralysis won’t cause the country to collapse, it does cause problems:

The Blue strategy is to paralyze Taiwan and transfer the blame to the Greens. So far it has largely been a success. Not only is the strategy working, but the DPP seems unable to educate the public on what is really going on. Taiwan's Other Side, a pro-KMT blogger whose title bar features the memorial to the dictator Chiang Kai-shek, also commented on this:

Backed into a corner by his sudden drop in popularity, Chen may have actually done the right thing for once. As Chen’s popularity inevitably fades, Sun has the opportunity to become a reformer within the party and undercut one of 馬英九 Ma Ying-jeou’s platform for the next election. Taiwan’s near future and the long-term political prospects of the DPP depend on Su’s willingness to stand up to the demands of the ROC’s detached and overbearing president.

TOS' thesis is that the Chen brings people into the premier's office in order to destroy them because he doesn't want to share the limelight with them. The reality is, as David correctly points out above, that the post has little influence and could hardly threaten the prominence of the President. Revolving premiers is a normal feature of Taiwan's political history, and is hardly the result of conspiratorial activities on the part of Chen Shui-bian.

Scott Sommers and I had an exchange of posts on grading in Taiwan's universities.

Michael Turton has linked to my post on the subject and added his own observations on the matter. Check out his words of wisdom on the matter. I particularly like what he has to say about the contribution of this system to grade inflation. This has been my personal answer to the problem in general English classes for non-majors. The school really doesn't like this and regularly reports back to us on our grading compared with other departments. But what do they expect?

A further complication of grading for foreigners, which I forgot to mention, is the ever-present problem of English student names, Chinese names and student numbers. Each student has a unique number that starts with the year they entered the program. They also use English names in AFL -- but those English names are informal and not recorded anywhere in the system. The result is that, if the student forgets to write the number down, or (more likely) it is illegible, the teacher has to guess which Chinese name and which English name are matched. I have even had students go an entire semester, 13 or 14 writing assignments, and yet never write their student number on a paper despite repeated requests. This creates a mess at the end of the year.

Doubting to Shuo revises his low opinion of China Air:

For many years I’ve felt a special hatred towards China Airlines, the kind of hatred normally reserved for murderers, rapists, the RIAA and Microsoft. Two years ago I decided to stop flying China Air once and for all. At that time, they compared with Singapore Air as follows: Singapore Air had monitors in front of every seat, and nice headsets to go along with them; passengers could watch movies on demand or play video games during their long flights. China Air had a shitty little headset which usually only worked for one ear, and five or ten radio channels that all sucked. Movies were only available in the larger screens dispersed around the cabin and passengers couldn’t choose which ones to watch. Singapore Air had a very safe track-record. China Air racked up more accidents, injuries and deaths than just about any of their competitors. Singapore Air had mildly uncomfortable seats. China Air had torture devices re-labeled as seats. Singapore Air had decent food. I literally threw up after one China Air meal. I’m sure you get the idea.

David on Formosa discussed the problems with the government program that puts foreign English teachers into local primary schools:

In July last year I posted about teaching English in Taiwan. There I noted that the Ministry of Education (MoE) program to recruit foreign teachers for Taiwanese schools had fallen drastically short of its recruitment target.

The Taipei Times reports today that the MoE managed to recurit just 40 teachers for the program.

David also notes that the topic was blogged by several foreigners, including this writer:

Taiwantroll and Michael Turton also comment on the program. Taiwantroll was a participant in the program. He suggests that having a Chinese speaking co-teacher in the classroom would improve the success of the program. Michael Turton suggests that there is a need for much better orientation and training before teachers are sent into the schools.

Note that Taiwantroll's recommendation is exactly what cram schools actually do -- they often pair foreign teachers with Chinese assistants.

The recent flap driven by Apple Daily's sensationalist accusation that a local government English education website was teaching foreigners how to pick up local girls was decisively put down by Tim at Indiac.

Taiwan's foreign bloggers immediately understood what a balls-out lie that is.

If you're a male foreigner in Taiwan, you'll easily meet more women than you can shake your stick at. But more to the point, you won't need to go to the friggin' Taipei City web site that teaches English at all!

The story was clearly a lie when the Apple Daily published it, it was doubly a lie when ESWN repeated it, and he's doing a service to nobody but the liars by doing so.

The sad part is that the widely read Asian blog ESWN picked it up, thus spreading Apple Daily's lie that the website was aimed at foreigners, when in fact it was aimed at locals. The international blog Global Voices online also rounded up the discussion between David at jujuflop, Tim, and myself, but the damage had been done, and the poor editor lost his job. Think Apple Daily will apologize?

A slew of great posts filled the leaky pen this month. Don't miss his remarks on Cute among the femmes of Taiwan.

It has long been my secret suspicion that, generally speaking, Japanese and Western children from the "First World" mature more quickly than children from Taiwan or Korea, say. Perhaps it's unfair, but I've always thought that the best way to test this theory is to use adults' responses to cute-and-cuddly things from childhood to guage their level of maturity. An adult will see a toy or a puppy and go "oh that's cute," but she will also say to you "don't try to be cute" with a level of tonal bitterness that just can be conveyed in Chinese ("bie zhuang ke-ai!"). This is because in Taiwan we see a far more extreme version of "cute" values than we have back in the US. To be ke-ai here means to be "innocent," i.e., tianzhen (天真), or "heavenly true," and un-self aware. This is what women especially are supposed to aspire to, in all honesty and earnestness, if they want to be attractive and desirable to the Alpha Males.

I've had the same suspicion that TLP has as well regarding the maturity, although of course, "maturity" is largely a culturally-defined concept. Taiwan's problem with cute has long been a running complaint of mine -- I'm pretty relentless about getting my female students to stop wearing pink. This infantalization of culture has spread all over -- even the cartoon figures painted on fences who warn you that construction sites are dangerous have huge eyes and other "cute" attributes. TLP adds:

Meanwhile, in Japan or the West girls will pretend to be "cute," with a certain undercurrent of naughtiness implied. Thus, older women won't have any qualms with wearing high-school uniforms, but they will in Taiwan--where the implication of sexuality would be too obvious. The point is, there's a certain level of self-awareness or "camp" implied with Japanese "kawaii", but Taiwan's "ke-ai" girls (and boys) just don't have "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" attitude that Japanese or western girls do when they play cute. Partly Taiwanese miss the joke, I think, because they aren't very sophisticated about their understanding of female beauty--there is cute (ke-ai), there is beautiful (mei-li, 美麗), and there is "hot" (hen la, 很辣). Hot and cute cannot go together because ke-ai is still reserved solely for "adorable," as an innocent child or cosplay girl oughta be.

Daniel at Suitcasing also commented on Asian beauty:

There's a new huge advert up somewhere in Taipei's Main Train Station, taking up a whole wall above one of the escalators: Asian beauty. Five women, the one in the middle is Asian, the four others are white. They are in shadow; she is glowing. They are models in glittering dresses, but somehow they look ugly and ungainly. They snarl in envy; her lips are closed as she stares off into the distance, as if thinking, "Yeah, bitches. Kiss it". It's a advert for "Asience" cosmetic products, presumably specifically designed for Chinese skin. Every time I see it, I still can't quite believe it.

The Chinese girl is pale, with an oval face and small rosy mouth, in a red top with bare shoulders. She's very pretty, in a scary way - as this is very much one version of Chinese attractiveness, and, I feel, the kind of attractiveness more popular in mainland China. It's also weird in terms of the word "Asia", as if the Chinese are claiming all of Asian beauty as their own. Does the cream work as well on Malay or Tibetan skin?

TLP also has a good post reviewing Wretch, the Taiwan blog hosting service, entitled Wretch: Taiwan's Answer to MySpace.com?

The Gentle Rant commented on an odd angle of an appalling affair: a wedding given by a local politician that featured 20,000 guests.

What I'm wondering is how many sharks were 'finned' to whip up 20,000 bowls of shark fin soup? I found an interesting article called, Shark Fin Soup: An Eco-Catastrophe?

The eco-catastrophe aspect was one that hadn't occurred to me -- there were just so many things about the event that defied belief, that one slipped under my radar. The wedding featured two teenagers as pregnant bride and nervous groom, and was given by a prominent "colorful" politician with a long record of legal trouble -- someone who, in another country, might be referred to as a "don." Prominent Blue politicians were among those in attendance:

The wedding party was more a show of Yen Chin-piao's political muscle than a celebration of the new couple's friends, bringing together political figures of various parties, including the opposition Kuomintang's former chairman, Lien Chan (連戰), incumbent Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as well as Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) were said to have been on the reception's guest list, but neither appeared at the ceremony.

And the Chinese papers also dropped a few broad clues about the nature of the host:

昨天南北二路不少「兄弟」以「集團企業」名義參加，有的一來就十幾桌，黑衣黑褲，令人側目；鎮瀾宮副董事長鄭銘坤綁架案中，外傳居中協調的「憨面」也是貴賓。

A rough translation: "Yesterday from north and south came no small amount of "brothers" using the names of companies to attend, taking up more than a dozen tables, wearing black clothing and black pants. Everybody looked at them."

Big Ell also blogged on the Big Wedding:

This is yet another indicator of Taiwanese societies move away from the pan-greens to the pan-blues. The pan-greens used to have the wedding banquet record but have failed again to meet the challenge of the blues. The number of wedding tables at the weddings of Taiwanese big-wigs has always been a bell weather of sorts in Taiwan Politics. Very similar to the empty promises bell weather in Canadian politics.

Don't miss his post, which accentuates the humorous aspects of this affair. It is one of the signals of the widespread acceptance of people-who-would-not-look-out-of-place-in-Goodfellas in Taiwan that while the papers commented on the rather obvious organized crime aspects of the wedding, none of the comments were negative. You can be sure that in the US, if the 4 highest-ranking members of the party out of power had attended the wedding of a prominent Goodfellas type, there would have been quite a few indignant comments in the press.

Several of us have been tracking the rise and fall of James Soong. Jerome Keating, who has written a book on th history of the island, has posted a couple of longer essays on the topic.

There was a time when the Good Ship James Soong was like a dreadnaught moving steadily forward with definite presidential ambitions. Like the Bismarck it seemed unstoppable and unsinkable.

When the US changed its embassy from Taipei to Beijing in 1978, Soong was there to give a stirring speech and rally the sagging morale of the island. As head of the Government Information Office (GIO) he was the man working to put a positive spin on the KMT's nefarious crackdown of the democracy movement in the Kaohsiung Incident (1979). In 1988, he spoke up and defended Lee Teng-hui against hard core KMT who didn't trust him to succeed Chiang Ching-kuo as president.

By 1994, Soong had become the first and only directly elected Provincial Governor of Taiwan; he received the highest percentage of popular vote of any Taiwan candidate in any election. His popular vote was even higher than that of then President Lee Teng-hui (roughly 57 percent to 53 percent). It should be noted however that the people of Taipei and Kaohsiung as special municipalities did not vote in provincial governor elections.

Though a Mainlander, Soong could speak Taiwanese however fractured it was and as Provincial Governor he was known for his largess in distributing and sharing provincial funds. Even minority groups such as the Hakka and aborigines benefited by his support. His chances for a future presidency seemed a safe bet but this proved to be his high-water mark.

The dreadnaught began to take some hits in a falling out with Lee Teng-hui. In 1996, Lee wanted him to serve out his term as Provincial Governor, but Soong wanted to replace Lien Chan as Premier when it was determined that Lien could not be both Vice President and Premier at the same time. Next, the position of Provincial Governor was eliminated. On an island state the size of Taiwan, a provincial governor was redundant, but other motives appeared to be beneath the surface. With this loss of position Soong's source of dispensable funds disappeared.

Keating also discussed Soong and the PFP back in December. I blogged on it here and here.

I had the good fortune to attend a presentation by Linda Arrigo, who has long been involved with the democracy and independence movement here. My Linda Arrigo and the Kaohsiung Incident discusses Arrigo's important, insightful, and fact-filled presentation on the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, one of the watersheds of the democracy movement in Taiwan.

Linda Arrigo first came to Taiwan as a young girl, graduating from Taipei American School in 1963. She returned in the early 1970s to do research on factory workers for her graduate research. In those days martial law had a profoundly economic slant that has disappeared in the center-right "hagiography" that functions as the current reading of the past: it was anti-worker, and striking was a capital crime. Arrigo's research thus led her directly into a contemplation of Taiwan as an authoritarian state supported by the US, and thence to a position of opposition to it. Hence, in the latter half of the 1970s, she became deeply involved in the human rights, democracy, and independence movement in Taiwan. Eventually she became the English secretary to the group of Non-KMT politicians, the tangwai, out of whom the DPP would eventually spring, and married Shih Ming-te, one of the most prominent members of the pro-democracy movement. During the period of international media attention to the Kaohsiung incident and the subsequent arrests and trials, she was an important voice to the outside world.

In that vein, don't miss Jerome Keating's three part series on the history of the DPP and the democratic movement, part III being delivered in December:

When the founders of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) formed a second party and went against the Kuomintang's (KMT) one party state law in 1986, it was not a matter to be taken lightly. Three high-profile (and still unsolved) murders of the early 1980's had been carried out with government sanction and/or acceptance for lesser matters. Likewise the numerous imprisonments and violations of human rights continued. The Garrison Command still operated with almost total license. People could not voice their opinions freely in public. The media were controlled by the state. It is a world today's youth can hardly fathom.

I took a trip to Lukang last week, and so it was with great interest that I read Bourdeiu Boy's bricolage on the topic of photography and culture in Taiwan.

Lugang has a particular place in the iconography of the local in Taiwan, notably for its long history of settlement and its preservation of traditional architecture. As DeGlopper notes long before bentu wenhua became the subject of the fashionable newspaper supplements, Lugang had a strong sense of its distinct identity and of a pre-history, before Japanese colonization and Nationalist rule which evinced a kind of timeless past: "The old days before the Japanese, while frequently invoked, seem to be thought of as a static moment, a sort of degreeless noon. The Lugang of 1750 and the Lugang of 1890 are put together in the category of ‘the old days’, which is contrasted to the present."

Hsu’s photographs are an example of Taiwan’s practices of cultural memory. They are grouped into categories of traditional architecture, children, the elderly, agriculture, food, fishing and religious worship. Architecture features traditional rough brick walls, the very narrow stone-paved lanes that are a characteristic of Lugang and images of Taiwanese roofs taken from an elevated height with a long focal-length lens, capturing a terraced landscape of the distinctive tiled Taiwanese roofs with curving gables. Children are represented playing games such as hacky-sack and marbles; adults are engaged in traditional activities as labouring, ploughing with oxen, repairing fishing nets, cooking, threshing rice and so on, and wear traditional Taiwanese clothing. Some of the images are iconic, such as a child in a conical straw hat riding an ox, a nativist symbol of nostalgia for an imagined rural past.

Mind of Mike blogs on plumbing problems and trust in Taiwan:

Well, two evenings later someone finally came, but low and behold, it wasn't a plumbing company, but the father of one of their teachers. He seemed, just from looking at him, ill-equipped to handle a job like this. After all, the only tool be brought with him was a can of WD-40. Hmmmmm. A plumber with WD-40??? Anyway, after looking the place over for about 30 seconds and ignoring my explanations of the problem completely, he annouced that the house must be completely repiped. I don't even know if "repiped" is a word, but that's in essence what he wanted to do. Oh yes, and one other thing, he said that it was impossible to put the pipes back in the wall because of the cost, so they would have to be run OUTSIDE the wall throughout the apartment.

Needless to say I wasn't impressed and as pushy as he and his teacher daughter was, we had to say no. This really pissed them off and I am sure they will be angry for a while. To be honest, afterwards, I was felt a little bad, and hoped that the next plumber wasn't going to say the same thing. Wait.. Just for the record his price was 10,000 NT.

A day later I called another friend and asked him to help me find a plumber. He called another one right away and came over with him to make sure everything went smoothly. The second plumber took a much more professional look at it and said that he could fix it inside the call, without repiping the house, for 5000 NT. Which he actually proceeded to accomplish this morning after about 3 hours work.

Jason at Wandering to Tamshui looks at contenders for the crown of Biggest Ass-Clown in Taiwan politics, now that Pasuya Yao is gone from his post as head of the GIO.

Now that we have nowhere left to go to get our Pasuya Yao fix (at least, until the next round of legislative elections), I feel the time has come to anoint a new Reigning Clown Prince(ss) of Taiwanese Politics, a politician whom members of the Taiwan blogosphere can fall back on when they're too lazy to write anything of substance (which never happens here!).

Could it be Tsai Chih-fang?

As we continue our quest for the new King/Queen of Idiocy in Taiwan politics, we briefly recast our gaze to the other side of the aisle to consider a man who is certainly no slouch himself in the ass-clown department, DPP legislator Tsai Chi-feng (蔡啟芳).

The Evidence: Tsai thrust himself back into the national dialogue last November when he pledged to change his name to "Biao Ge" (婊哥, meaning "Bitch Brother") if the government failed to shut down the Blue-leaning TVBS television station. In a move that would seemingly deep-six his chances at capturing the ass-clown crown, Tsai admitted he had misunderstood the situation, and indeed changed his family name to "Biao", although the character used (裱, a homophone of 婊) means "picture frame" instead of "beeotch". Such semantic trickery, in my humble opinion, more than cancels out his admission of guilt.

Or is it Chui Yi? My personal nomination goes to Chiu Yi, whose recent arrest featured 200 policemen:

The Evidence: During the pan-Blue protests following their election upset, Chiu kept himself busy on election night by instigating pan-Blue rioters to ram a truck into the Kaohsiung District Court on March 20. Chiu defended himself against the charges, saying "The prosecutors decided to indict me before they had really talked to any witnesses. People who were there with me all knew that I didn't do whatever it was they said I did." Prosecutors, however, had evidence suggesting otherwise, including a video clearly showing Chiu's misbehavior, and charged him with violating the Parade and Assembly Law.

Chiu has made a name for himself by suing others for reportedly secretly filming him sex up his old lady, slamming the pan-blue alliance's legal team for its handling of the post-election lawsuits, suing DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun for defamation, and publicly fighting with ex-Premier Frank Hsieh over whether Hsieh had called First Lady Wu Shu-chen "an empress" over the phone. Most recently, Chiu has made headlines for ditching the PFP to return to the KMT (purportedly to buy win more votes in the year-end mayoral election), and just last night was arrested following an appearance on a popular talk show for failing to show up in court to face charges related to his performance on election night 2004.

One of Taiwan's best English websites, POTS, has finished up its career. Sad news indeed! Nevertheless, I wanted to draw attention to their last article, on a foreign population that few think about: foreigners in prison.

Inside, you enter the security area through a double set of Plexiglas doors with electronic locks. There are no iron bars to be seen anywhere. Beyond is a campus set behind an attentively pruned garden with flowers and hedges in geometrical patterns. To one side is a basketball court....[LINK]

It's a deeply moving story....

A number of bloggers commented on the inclusion of internet slang characters in this year's college entrance exam. Pinyin news has both comments and links:

• 
  

• ::>_< ::
• 3Q
• Orz

::>_< :: is supposed to represent crying. (The colons are tears, the underscore is the mouth, and the others are the eyes.)

For “3Q,” the three is pronounced san and the Q is pronounced as in English, yielding “san Q,” which is meant to represent the English phrase “thank you.”

“Orz” is intended to be a pictograph of a person bowing down on the floor, with the O as the head, the vertical line of the r as the arms, and the z as the legs.

This test is crucial to the lives of those seeking to enter post-secondary education. Many students spend years studying for this exam. The nation’s parents, stressed-out from worry about how their children will do on this test, will probably go ballistic over this. I’ll be surprised if those questions end up being counted toward the final score.

The Foreigner on Formosa found an odd display window with some disturbing juxtapositions of mannikins and newspaper articles:

Some time back, I did a double-take when I noticed something in a window display outside a fashionable shop in Taipei's Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Building, near the main train / subway station. Too bad I didn't have my camera.

Fortunately, I later saw it again in Taipei's Warner Village area, where this picture was taken. The right-hand side of the display couldn't fit into the shot because the lens wasn't wide enough, but you get the idea:

Fred Shannon has been churning out one good post after another on ESL and English here. Recently he had a back to back on Taiwan's English skills:

In a letter from the Editor of the China Post on January 1, 2006 titled, Why Our Children's English is Inferior, concern was expressed for the regressing English proficiency levels of Taiwanese children compared with the proficiency levels of other Children in Asian countries.

Every year, the University of Cambridge Examination Syndicate releases the results of it's main suite examinations for English proficiency. Taiwan, in 2004, was ranked 11th place out of sixteen countries, falling three spots from 2003 when it was ranked 9th. In 2002, Taiwan was ranked 4th among nine Asian countries. In sum, the English proficiency of Taiwanese children has been falling yearly.

Shannon also discusses whether Taiwan's poor English skills are affecting its competitiveness:

The article is based on a government report prepared by National Chengchi University and Education Testing Services (ETS), which describes how Taiwan is losing competitiveness to its Asian neighbors particularly in the banking and techonology industries.

The report argues that with a shortage of English-speaking professionals, Taiwan may be left behind by more it's more English proficient competition. Consequently, in order to maintain Taiwan's competitive edge, the authors of the report strongly recommend that companies offer more in-house foreign language training programs and that the government draft more international langauge policies.

MeiZhongTai can always be counted on for informative and well-written posts. He discusses policy on the arms purchases. Exactly what weapons does Taiwan need?

Whatever becomes of this arms package, it is important to not judge the ROC military or the commitment of Taiwan to its own defense solely by this one package. As Gary Schmitt and Dan Blumenthal have pointed out, not wanting some overpriced submarines is not the same as free-riding or lacking commitment to one's own self-defense. The government is doing its best to whip up support for arms acquisitions after all even if it does seem to be taking a page from the duct-tape-as-a-defense-against-terrorism school of defense with proposals for a strategic quick-drying cement stockpile.

Brian Mathes also reviewed Taiwan's weapons acquisitions and their possible effect on Beijing:

All this of course will not please decisionmakers in Beijing, and one must consider the possibility that this 5-year development curve may actually provoke Beijing to make moves toward reunification or at least to give Taiwan disincentives to weapons development. At the same time, I am not convinced that Beijing could successfully manipulate political and military factors to recieve unification on its terms at the present.

MZT reviewed the roundtable on Ted Galen Carpenter's new book The Coming War With China:

Joining Mr. Carpenter on the stage were moderator Chris Preble (CATO) and China experts Richard Bush (Brookings) and Clyde Prestowitz (Economic Strategy Institute) with the latter two offering comments on Mr. Carpenter's book. The roster of attendees reads like a who's who of China and national security scholars as well as policy and defense practitioners. For those who were unable to attend and don't wish to watch the video in its entirety, a summary and discussion of the points raised follows. It needs stating that these comments are based on the notes I took during the talk and I am unable to double-check their veracity against the video due to a slow internet connection.

An excellent report, MZT!

Cold Goat Eyes blogs on Jack, the student we all know:

The last student I came to was 'Jack' and when I asked him the same bloody question I had just given to the other ten high-schoolers, something very wonderful and strange happened. He talked. I mean, he actually spoke. This kid opened up his mouth and vocalised some of his thoughts that became complete, lengthy, well-articulated sentences that, in turn, became structured speech and finally an impressive, vocabularous, thoughtful and insightful monologue. I have seen Jack many times before, in Taiwan, in the UK, in Spain. He is all over the world, this kid. Slightly overweight, painfully shy and deeply intelligent, he sits at the back of the class with at least one empty desk between him and his neighbour. His peers don't like him very much because he is perceived to be aloof, unsociable and 'different' and most of his 'friends' are a good deal older than him. Jacks are often tinged with a lick or two of autism.

Taiwananonymous translates information on the life of the influential author Sanmao....

I recently read Sanmao's Crying Camels. Searching for information about Sanmao and her works in English, I found very little. There was a reference to Sanmao speaking in support of the existences of UFOs. (There is a very short description of a UFO appearance in the book Crying Camels.) I did find one essay in English, called Foreign Characters in San Mao's Short Stories, which was worth reading . This essay, like other references I have seen in English, refer to her writing as "autobiographical fiction" or "travel fiction." Personally, I would not attempt to classify her writing because I do not know how much is true and how much is fiction. When talking to a Chinese coworker about Sanmao, he even doubted that Sanmao's husband Jose (Hexi) existed. This is definitely an overreaction, the kind of cynicism of someone afraid of looking overly credulous.

Access Kaohsiung Community Services, dedicated to helping Big Noses in Taiwan, wants to let everyone know that they have an information center:

We have a great information center on Chongde Road, Tsoying District which has a large English library, free internet and wireless, and lots of info so you can get involved in Kaohsiung activities. Come enjoy the outdoor patio and a great cup of coffee (Brunch Cafe) while listening to good music.
Hours of operation: Sunday-Thursday 8am-9pm, Friday-Saturday 8am-10pm
I hope to see you there soon!

I definitely want to get down there and scope it out one of these days.

I always enjoy the posts of blogs that focus on specific topics, since they invariably have something to teach. For example, Asian Castings Consortium has an interesting post on the best tool maker in Taiwan.

I have introduced Customers to Mr. Tony Lin on several occasions, both through blog entries and also articles written about bicycle parts production. So, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this man to the public with what is perhaps the only photograph of him available anywhere on the world wide web. Sorry to make such a big deal out of this, but this is a big deal: This is the best damn tool maker on the whole island of Taiwan. His name is Mr. Chung 張春榮. In this photograph are shown from left to right: Tony Lin, Mr. Chung, Michael J. Klein.

Tea Masters, another one of my favorite topical blogs, has a great post on how teapots are made:

3 classic ways of making teapots:

1. La pei is the traditional pottery technique where you put the clay on a revolving plate and then as the plate turns you can create an even round form (like demonstrated in the famous scene of the movie 'Ghost' with Demi Moore). Works best for bigger teapots. An example here.

2. Shou la pei, like in the picture above, is doing the same thing with your clay, but without the revolving plate. We use mostly the thumb to make a hole in the ball
of clay and then progressively make the walls thinner and thinner. (More in the July 2004 Archive).

3. Small Yixing teapots: the clay is spread (cut or pressed like pizza paste) evenly and thinly. This layer is then cut and the ends of both sides are joined together to make a cylinder. That's why there are junctions (more or less visible) with this method, as you mentioned.

The Surveillance Society Expands: The Big Yawn blogs on an emerging trend: cameras in cram school classrooms:

My school has followed suit with many other schools in Taiwan and indeed many other countries in Asia and installed cameras in the classroom. Personally this doesn't bother me and the cameras appear to be for show as they are on the kids rather than the teacher and it seems often they are turned off but now parents can watch classes without actually being inside the classroom if they so wish. The staff at my school have family, as students, in several of the bushiban classes and often the cameras are on to watch their generally ill-behaved offspring. Occasionally teachers are observed from outside the classroom as to whether they are active in the classroom or just concentrating on the student's writing in the workbook. I must be doing an OK job as the complaints have been minimum. It is unfortunate that often the only time that you receive feedback in a bushiban(language school) is when there has been a complaint.

This is apparently a trend all over Asia, as tBY points to writing on the issue in Korea.

This blog says it is the official blog of the DPP. If true, then why the hell don't they trick it out! It looks incredibly unprofessional.

The Snowman in Taiwan blogs on the problems of a Christian College getting accredited in Taiwan, as two centralized authority systems vie for control:

Reading The Taipei Times today and came across this little article. It appears that there has been a Christian College in Taipei that is not recognized by Taiwan's Ministry of Education (MOE). Now the school has gone out to the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) for accreditation. TRACS currently accredits 37 institutions in the USA (including one in Guam). There are 15 schools looking for accreditation. Only Christ College is outside of the USA.

"For the past decade, the ministry had been denying the college's requests to be registered and recognized, saying that it is a religious school which hopes to reserve the right to select its own faculty members and students." This appears to be the major issue. The MOE in Taiwan allows colleges and Universities the right to hire people, but still wants some say if issues arise.

Yup. I'll be interested to see if the college can create precedents other schools can take advantage of.

INFORMATION: Radio Free Taiwan links to online maps of Taiwan's hiking trails.


HUMOR: The Foreigner on Formosa points to this hilarious If Dr. Seuss Wrote Star Trek NextGen. Nothing frustrates foreigners here like driving. Mind of Mike posted on the topic, and added this funny pic:

Meanwhile Jonathon Biddle discovers that Luis Vitton has abandoned fashion for a more lucrative industry:

And ThreeSpleens discovers a friendly warning in his local ATM:

SHORTS: Poagao interviews/photos Ang Lee and leaves a demo with him. Congratulations to Mengshindy for getting accepted into a great PHD program. Islaformosa, where are you? Podcaster What's Up in Taiwan has interviews with local expats. Psst! Wanna buy a ferret? Taiwananonymous has the skinny. Brian at Life of Brian has a new 3-D digital stereo photography camera. Way cool. aemoncannon trips to Kenting and brings back pics. Another Short Holiday in Kenting courtesy of Man About Taiwan. Applepea blogs on things to do around Taipei. Berta Liao goes to India, one of my favorite places to vacation. Taiwan says goodbye to the Clutterbucks after seven years. Taiwantroll is going to Thailand and bidding the Beautiful Isle good-bye. Senorita Pequena visits the Dongmen Art Museum. As always, great photos at 35togo, Unplugged, the forgetful's photo gallery, the forgetful's photo gallery, amateur commune, andres, Clarke vs Matt, Cat Piano, T_C at Fotolog, battphotos, Fotologging Taiwan, Photoactionboy, leftmind, MaMaHuHu, Everything Visible is Empty, Roger in Taiwan, Love Songs (Are for Losers), Photoblogging Taiwan, Eight Diagrams, Tagging Taichung, The New Hampshire Bushman in Taiwan and The World, and This Life.

Way cool stuff: Robot Action Boy had a link to this unique set of photos made from the air with a special lens.

My own site: I have a new picture page on Betel Nut Girls.

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