Namaxia Redux

Above awesome cyclist Mark Roche takes a break on the epic first day of riding out to Namaxia.

A gray day, but great friends to go to Namaxia with. Unfortunately I planned a route that was too taxing for me, and so had to take it easy on day 2. But a good time was had by almost all... click READ MORE for pics and commentary...

Taiwan Voice: Development and Ecology in Tainan

Taiwan Voice posted this to Facebook. Thanks for the hard work, Taiwan Voice. Click on READ MORE to finish...

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Industrial development project in southern Taiwan raises concerns over ecological impact

The issues of ecological preservation and sewage treatment surrounding the development of Hsinchi Industrial Park (新吉工業區) in Tainan brought about opposition by environmental and local cultural groups. In March, Tainan City government withdrew the initial plan and proposed amendments that, in addition to zero wastewater discharge, another hectare was to be set aside as a pheasant conservation area, saving 4.2 ha of land in total, which is about the size of five football fields. Hsinchi Farm, the designated area for Hsinchi Industrial Park, measures more than 120 ha (about the size of 145 football fields) and is currently a sugar cane field inhabited by wild birds such as oriental pratincoles and common pheasants. The government initially planned to discharge wastewater into the wetlands in Taijiang National Park, but was lambasted by environmental groups and local inhabitants. Fang Chin-cheng (方進呈), the chief of the Tainan City Economic Development Bureau, said that the amendments approved last month were being sent to the Environmental Protection Administration for an environmental impact differential analysis review. Prior to the review, he said they would schedule a seminar to explain everything to the locals.

Yanshui with FTV

Last weekend I was out and about with FTV again in Nantou, Miaoli, and Yanshui in Tainan. Pictured above is the Bridge to Nowhere in Nantou, a suspension bridge across a gorge. You walk across and walk back, and pay for the privilege. There is another one near Jhushan, and they both rake in the cash. Total tourist trap, avoid at all costs.

However, I made my first real trip to Yanshui in Tainan with FTV. I've passed through before, but I never realized what a great little town it is. There are hordes of old buildings lying around, a port, an Old Street, and a beautiful wooden structure from the 19th century, a rarity in Taiwan. Yanshui was a key port in the 19th century, but has long since declined. Well worth a day trip, it is small enough to walk around and offers plenty of camera-friendly moments. I've ignored the famous temple there where everyone goes to be pummeled with fireworks. Our local guide told us that the fireworks activity, while popular with both locals and foreigners, is wrong and disrespectful to the god. Onward to the really interesting stuff below the READ MORE fold!

Tainan: But...but our land grab is different!

Art takes shape.

The Taipei Times editorialized today on the land expropriation for the rail line in Tainan....

The project, which was approved by the Executive Yuan in 2009, aimed to move an 8km long stretch of railroad track underground. To facilitate the project, the Greater Tainan Government plans to demolish more than 400 houses on the east side of the current tracks in downtown Tainan. When the project is completed, the original surface tracks are to be removed to make way for a park and a commercial district.

The land expropriation case in Greater Tainan has sparked protest from some households who accused Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) of reaping the benefits of land expropriation and disregarding people’s property rights. They urged the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to pay as much attention to the case as it has to condemning Miaoli County Government Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over his handling of the Dapu case.

Lai has insisted that the railroad project in Tainan is completely different from the Dapu case, because the expropriation of 62 hectares of land in Dapu was to benefit developers, with most of the seized land to be used to build residential and commercial complexes. The railroad project in Greater Tainan, on the other hand, is a major public construction project, with much of the land to be used for road construction to benefit the city, Lai said.

Lai's claim that Dapu is being expropriated for developers seems like a bit of misdirection. The rationale for the Dapu demolitions is that they are needed to round off a science park..... But your bullshit alarm should be going off. Read that again:

When the project is completed, the original surface tracks are to be removed to make way for a park and a commercial district.

A friend of mine present at a hearing on the issue said that Taiwan Railway officials testified that they did not have enough money to do a deeper line, and they couldn't pay higher prices for the land since they didn't have enough money for that either. So the land was expropriated and compensation was low. TRA officials also said that the underground line will help stimulate Tainan's economy, though it is hard to see how, unless they mean the commercial development which is going to take place above it. I'm trying to track down some artist's rendering of what the freed-up land is going to look like, but I've heard that includes shopping malls. We both know, dear reader, that the land is going to make some big businessman a ton of money on that "commercial district". None of which will reach the original land owners.
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Daily Links:

• Bruce Jacobs lays out what China is. Apparently international publications wouldn't (dare) take this piece, so it wound up in the TT.
• The "pearl milk tea causes cancer" findings appear to be.... BS.
• HSR tix to rise in price in Oct as price increases approved.
• How Beijing's desire to annex Taiwan screws up Caribbean cooperation
• Amis raft launch shows how they once navigated the sea.

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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!

Twofer from Commonwealth: rice and nukes

Went to the bike show in Taipei this friday to drop in on friends and ogle the gear. Great time. Expecting full report on the show from Taiwan in Cycles tomorrow!

Commonwealth Magazine has two excellent articles this week, one on political rice buying by China that explains why ECFA has neither benefited the south nor changed hearts and minds, the other on the fourth nuclear power plant. On rice, discussing how China early on adopted a two pronged strategy, one to win the hearts and minds via purchases, the other to strip mine Taiwan's agricultural know-how.....

This January, Wang Zhizhong twice visited Houbi District – the major rice producing area in the Jianan Plain – accompanied by Taiwan's former Minister of Justice, Liao Cheng-hao. Also in Wang's entourage were high-ranking officials from the Cuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province.

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During each of his four visits over the past two years, Wang went directly to Taiwan's agricultural areas, meeting with representatives of production and marketing teams, farmers' cooperatives, as well as fruit and vegetable wholesalers. He also visited farming families in Jiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung.

"These were special fact-finding itineraries to get the real picture of Taiwan's agricultural industry," explains ex-minister Liao, who accompanied Wang on all his visits to Taiwan.

Chinese officials not only want to understand the industry, they also want to import knowledge in the form of farming advisors and farming technology. Wang, who commands a vast interpersonal network in China, is planning to develop a plot of land of 4,300 hectares – roughly 165 times the area of Da-an Forest Park in Taipei – in Chuxiong Prefecture's Yuanmou County into a model zone for cooperation in high altitude organic agriculture between Yunnan and Taiwan. The project is explicitly defined as a cross-strait agricultural cooperation zone.

The piece also gives some numbers on the "hearts and minds" campaign...

Council of Agriculture (COA) statistics show that in June last year, after China gave the green light for rice imports, Taiwan exported a total of 773 tons of rice to China, about 25 percent of the island's total rice exports. This made China the largest buyer of Taiwanese rice alongside Hong Kong.

Taiwanese rice is not exactly an export hit. Although officials pride themselves on exports to 27 countries, total exports reached just 1,900 tons in 2011. With China added as a new buyer, rice exports soared to 3,100 tons last year. But this is still a far cry from 140,000-ton rice quota that the Taiwanese government has approved for export per year. Clearly Taiwanese rice could use more overseas buyers.

More.... the amounts....

COA statistics show that Taiwan exported rice worth US$1.32 million (about NT$39.6 million) to China last year. But local rice farmers feel that they do not reap any tangible benefits from exporting to China.

To put that tiny number in perspective, from my post on how the government is trying to encourage the hearts and minds switching to support of closer relations with China, the Council on Agriculture observes:

Of these, items on the ECFA early harvest list such as bananas, hami melons, lemons, oranges and red dragon fruits accounted for US$1.38 million,

Miscellaneous fruits are a bigger seller in China than rice politically purchased! The sum is simply too tiny to have any political effect.

The problems of China's approach are further laid out: the purchase and distribution system ensures that profits don't return to the farmers or even the local rice mills, but rather come to distant middleman, as we have already seen with other aspects of this trade:

This can be attributed to the way in which Taiwanese rice is distributed and marketed. Normally, farmers sell their entire harvest to rice mills, which process and sell it on to distributors. Rice destined for export to China is usually sold to the rice mills at the same price as rice for domestic sale; the farmers themselves do not earn a single penny more.

At the same time, the rice mills sell to Chinese distributors at the same price as domestic rice dealers. Therefore, the rice mills also do not earn more from selling to China.

How the system really works, and a hint of one of its real purposes, is laid out in these paragraphs....

"Chinese officials mostly come here to buy rice to build connections with Taiwanese county and city governments or local communities," observes Wu Yuan-chang, head of the Taiwan Province Rice and Cereals Association. He believes that Chinese rice importers only want to make their higher-ups happy and that after reaching China the Taiwanese rice will not find its way onto supermarket shelves due to a lack of distributors.

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This past January, Liu Gui-miao, a former Tainan County councilor for the ruling Kuomintang and now marketing manager of the farmers' cooperative selling Chamuying Rice, sold 1,632 2-kg. bags of rice to the Foshan City government, a deal facilitated by the Tainan City Straits Economics and Trade Cultural Development. Upon import into China, the bags of rice were used as official gift packs or hand-outs to low-income families.

"They repackaged the rice into 289 gift packs and gave them to government officials. The rest was used as food aid for distribution to low-income households," association secretary general Lu Ai-hua, who formerly served as the chairman of the now abolished Yongkang City Council. In March, Lu will visit China again, hoping to land bigger orders in Luohu, the gateway between China and Hong Kong on the China side.

While much of the hype focuses on alleged benefits Taiwan receives from more closely aligning itself with China, one more important aspect of the drive, never discussed in the international media, is the way closer China links are parlayed into greater support for the KMT at the local level. Stronger links to China means, essentially, more links between Chinese money and KMT officials at the local level. People often assume the south is Green but it is more like a checkerboard -- the local level officialdom is often KMT, and more importantly, the local institutions of agriculture -- mill ownership, ag and irrigation cooperative officials, marketing firms, and so on, are more likely to be KMT. China's cooperation with such individuals helps increase the strength of their local patronage networks and improve their political prospects. Just as the Taiwanese moving their small factories to China was a way to preserve the system of family ownership and competition on price and avoid upgrading to modern management methods, so the KMT's move toward China is a way to avoid political change and preserve KMT power. China is the Vishnu of the Taiwanese sociopolitical world, ruling by preserving.

The Commonwealth piece also points out that the political rice is not distributed in China where it would cause trouble for China's powerful grain interests. Such Taiwanese rice as is sold on actual store shelves in China gets there via private marketing arrangements, and is largely a niche market, as the last page of the piece discusses. The political rice has neither stability nor order volume, two keys to maintaining and expanding markets. As Commonwealth observes...

Two years ago China began purchasing milkfish from Taiwan under contract, a move also intended to win the support of local fishermen. But in the end prices and order volume proved difficult to maintain.

The rice campaign was focused on Tainan; so was the milkfish campaign. The actual amount ordered for last year was US$4.45 million (source). Here's a piece from Dec 2012 full of promise, but I can't find anything on subsequent milkfish orders. Surely FocusTaiwan would be bragging...

The nuke piece is also quite good. It's full of interesting claims:

Dealing with nuclear waste has even become a hot-button diplomatic issue. A report published in the American journal New Scientist noted that there are 437 nuclear power reactors in 31 countries around the world, but not one repository for high-level radioactive waste.

Spend some time with it.
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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.

The Taiwan Badlands

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend some time in the Taiwan Moonscape, the area of badlands in southern Taiwan. I had never seen the area up close and personal, merely ridden through it on a bike. One thing I hadn't understood was how big they were. The map below should give some idea of the extent of this 100,000 hectare formation which crops out as badlands in the area around Tianliao, with a thickness variously given as 3-4 kms (source), spreading across southern Taiwan from Chiayi to Kaohsiung. Mudstone formations are also found in Kenting near Hengchun and in Taitung. Walking around in the area naturally caused me to wonder: what was its origin?

Extent of the badlands in southern Taiwan, the Gutingkeng Formation (source).

Taiwan's badlands are unique, being the only badland formation on earth in a tropical area with good rainfall. The others in Italy, the US, and elsewhere, are all in arid or semi-arid regions. Badlands typically consist of weak sedimentary rock and fall into two basic types: calanchi, with pinnacles or sharp peaked ridges, as in Taiwan, and biancane, which are more rounded.

This paper on the history of the rivers in the area observes that the badlands are undergoing uplift. As the Philippine Plate shoves its way northwest toward China, it pushes the crust up, causing the area to tilt toward the ocean and lifting it up. The effect of this uplift can be seen in this picture below, which shows how the rock layers lie on their sides perpendicular to the ground, instead of parallel to it:

The mudstone exposed in the foothills area of southwestern Taiwan is a sedimentary rock formed several million years ago (source). It is usually referred to as Pleistocene in origin. It is cut through with layers of limestone in places, which are quarried by Taiwan's ubiquitous gravel industry. The mudstone area is also the location of mud volcanoes, which track one of the region's major NE to SW running faults. At the famous hot springs site of Guanziling the hot springs crop out through this deposit of mudstone.

The mudstone layer itself, as far as I was able to ascertain, is a deposit of marine sediments that formed during the late Cenozoic period (Pliocene/Pleistocene) as a giant sedimentary basin was gradually filled in with silt and clay and then uplifted to its current position by the action of the Philippine Plate.

One interesting idiosyncrasy of these badlands is that the bare slopes are mostly south facing. The reason for this is solar radiation (source), not monsoon rains or typhoons as one might think. During the long dry season, the sun heats the slopes, making them inhospitable to vegetation, and causing them to crack, speeding weathering. The result is the south-facing bare slopes so typical of the badlands area. According to this article, because of the massive precipitation and sedimentation, the Erhjeng River, which drains the area of mudstone, yields 1.3 x 10⁷ tons of sediment annually, the highest rate of sediment discharge in Taiwan.
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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.

The Old Sugar Refinery in Sinying

If you are ever in Sinying in Tainan with nothing to do, the old sugar refinery there might be just the ticket for an hour or two, depending on how much breaking and entering you feel like doing (satellite view). Many's the time I've seen it from the train line and said to myself that I really have to get in there with a camera. By great good luck, a group of us had an hour to kill in Sinying today and we wound up there.

As a Taiwan amusement park it's quite sickly; not a concrete dinosaur in sight and the vendors were all closed. But there is a the germ of an awesome kitsch experience in place: a little sugar line train ride. Taiwan Sugar Corp lists this as a culture and leisure park. So stay tuned, I'm sure Totally Unique Souvenirs are on the way. The outdoor exhibits consist of a few old sugar line locomotives; there's a small exhibit room as well.

There's tons of wrecked and rusting metal to photograph as well as a slew of buildings dating from the thirties through the fifties. If you are into industrial ruins, want to film a post-apocalypse flick, or are searching for video sites for a death metal tune, this place is heaven.

On this side of the main road they store all the train cars.

Some working engines are present.

The complexity of the track network is amazing.

A memorial to the completion of the engineering in 1948.

The old administrative buildings and dorms are still around, though the housing units next to the site are falling apart and seem to be slated for demolition. Be sure to walk toward the large engine house in view across the main road from the toy train and then walk along the paved roads to view all the old buildings, processing tanks, and administrative structures for the full experience.
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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.

What I learned in Tainan

Spent this week in Tainan, a place I love to visit. Overflowing with history, it has the island's best looking women and friendliest people, except for where you're from. I learned a lot in Tainan this week......

DPP Splits

Seen on an ATM: Attention! The gangster may use the English operation interface to cheat you!

An aspect of the KMT Adminstration's drive to place Taiwan in China's orbit that the international media seldom comment on is role of ECFA and other agreements in supporting local political arrangements. One of these was bluntly pointed out by President Ma yesterday when he claimed that ECFA will create 34,009 (note, that is "09" exactly not "10" or "08") jobs in the five municipalities in Taiwan. Not coincidentally, the year end elections have the mayoral positions for those five municipalities up for grabs, and in all of them the opposition is performing well at this point.

In Kaohsiung DPP politician Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) has split the DPP -- apparently -- by formally announcing that he is running in the mayoral election for the Greater Kaohsiung Municipality. The pan-Green papers had quite a bit of commentary, with some arguing that Yang may well split the KMT vote since he will need KMT support to make his candidacy go. He has received endorsement from Master Hsing Yun, the pro-China head of Fuoguangshan, it is also reported.

Yang's chances of winning in Kaohsiung are nil; pro-DPP voters will vote overwhelmingly for Chen Chu. Voters in local elections are usually quite saavy -- recall that when James Soong ran for Taipei mayor he got only a handful of votes. Also, the vote consists of both Kaohsiung city and Kaohsiung county. Chen Chu's narrow victory in the last election corresponds to only part of the electorate. In the last election for Kaohsiung County chief in 2005, the DPP polled 353,232 votes to the KMT's 244,015. That coupled with the Kaohsiung city vote likely means that Chen Chu can lose a few thousand votes to Yang and still win. However, the winner of that 2005 Kaohsiung County Chief election? Yang Chiu-hsing. So there may be some sentiment out there for him still....

Yang may inspire another DPP politician in Tainan to go it alone. Reportedly, Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) will jump into the race in Tainan since he lost the party primary.

Compare the actions of these two politicians with those of the loser in Taichung, Lin Chia-lung. Lin was decisively beaten by Jason Hu in the last election. He has gracefully stepped aside for Su Chia-chuan this time around. If only everyone in the DPP had that kind of common sense and class.
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Daily Links:

• China, Taiwan to resume talks on adding cross-strait flights.
• Daniel Rosen in WSJ says the US should restart the TIFA talks with Taiwan, as the next stop in its "re-engagement" in Asia. They are slated to resume in December anyway, and TIFA is too modest a goal -- can we have an FTA, pretty please? The CNA published an excellent run down of major trading partners and their attitude toward FTAs with Taiwan this week.
  
• Major League Baseball wants to open the 2011 season right here in Taiwan! But the Giants players are split on the issue.
  
• Last week the MAC was saying that the missiles facing Taiwan should be removed without preconditions, this week it is saying the Anti-Secession Law is impeding cross-strait ties. Go MAC!
• The Hezbollah approach to defending Taiwan, while Brian comments on the recent simulation that shows China taking Taiwan's capital three days into a conflict.
• Remember when the tennis world said Rendy Lu was from Taipei, China and other places. Now the Rogers Cup people have it correct.
  

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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!

Student Protests in Tainan

Two images of the student protests in Tainan. Braving the rain, roughly 30-50 students come out to ask for Ma to apologize, senior police officials to step down, and most importantly, reform of the Assembly and Parade law, a relic of the martial law era that is often used to shut down protests. These student protests are separate from the DPP protests and senior DPP who have appeared at them have been asked to leave. Students at leading universities around the island have begun protesting in its major cities since the end of the protests again the Chen Yunlin visit to Taiwan.

UPDATE: Monday's Taipei Times article on the student protests

UPDATE 2: Janice says in the comment

The movement's main website:
http://action1106.blogspot.com/

Other related weblinks:
http://taichung.action1106.org/
http://tainan.action1106.org/
http://hsinchu.action1106.org/
http://wiki.action1106.org/
http://map.action1106.org/
http://taipak2008.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

[Taiwan]

Another Gorgeous Day in Tainan

Air Supply, behind bars at last.

The rain stopped, the wind blew in, and the sun came out. And so I marched across Tainan, camera in hand.

This introduction to the history of National Chengkung University, whose institutional core dates back to the Japanese period, refers to Taiwan being "returned" to China. *sigh*

Rising prices don't slow down those delivery vehicles. In many cities gas delivery trucks constantly roam the streets of their neighborhoods, waiting for phone calls. This reduces delivery times.

Sunlight in the alleys.

Shengli Road in Tainan.

Flowers crowd the camera.

There's a doctoral dissertation hidden in these signs.

85C is a booming Taiwan coffee chain that opened an outlet in Australia.

One thing I like about Tainan is that the wilderness of signs has not been tamed by some local government that wants all the signs to look the same.

Residential neighborhoods.

Curving alleys are a feature of Taiwan neighborhoods. A relic of their origin in converted rice fields?

Water pumps waiting for customers.

A small restaurant takes a break between meals.

Another great thing about Tainan is the brick pavements. Very atmospheric.

A gas cooker, common in street stands.

Washing down after lunch rush.

A small shrine tucked into a crevice next to an auto repair shop is a physical metaphor for the unobtrusive integration of religion into everyday life in Taiwan.

A street stall.

I've never seen this variety of mango before. Delicious.

It's nice to have something to do while the vendor cooks your onion cakes.

In every neighborhood such bulletin boards announce places for rent.

The sun brought out the clothes.

Enjoying an afternoon BBQ in a tea stand.

Good fengshui: where an alley intersects housing, a temple is often built to deflect the negative effects of the road running like a dagger into a potential home.

The inside of a local restaurant. Bare walls: I've never understood the attraction.

Meats pose in a local restaurant display.

Your friendly neighborhood police station.

Filling up with water.

Words fail me.

Sells a little bit of everything.

Drying the cleaning stuff.

The imposing edifice of a local junior high school.

The day was so clear that the mountains were visible. I've actually never seen them before.

After a long walk, ice cream is the correct therapy for sore feet and a parched tongue.

[Taiwan]