The Destruction of the Huaguang Community

The Taipei Times has written an excellent two-part series on the destruction of the Huaguang community in Taipei to make way for a ritzy upscale development...

Part 1 Refugees Squatting on a Gold Mine

Part 2 This Land is Whose Land?

"For decades, the 12-hectare Huaguang Community (華光社區), which is located in the heart of Taipei, was home to the poor, the elderly and the disadvantaged — until, that is, it became prime real estate. The area will soon be flattened to make way for a glitzy, upmarket neighborhood inspired by Tokyo’s Roppongi district. The process of forced evictions by the central government began a few years ago, and there was no relocation plan for the residents. To facilitate evictions, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), which owns the land, filed lawsuits against residents for “illegally” occupying state properties, resulting in fines to residents that range from a few hundred thousand New Taiwan dollars to several million. Most inhabitants have been forced to leave. Others have died while fighting for their right to stay."

The savagery of the government's drive to get the people off the land by defining them them as illegal residents and then slapping them with fines and lawsuits and garnishing of salaries is shocking. These are old people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, who have been squatting here for decades, many born and raised in the community. Since everyone says that the development will make big bucks, the obvious thing to do is arrange a generous compensation plan and resettle the people in shiny new houses.

Ordinary lower-class mainlanders like these people and their forebearers were in many ways excluded from the Taiwan Miracle. The Taiwanese themselves, limited in their ability to obtain government and military jobs along with important civil occupations in the 1950s and 1960s, turned to manufacturing and developed Taiwan's brilliant miracle economy. Mainlander/KMT elites and their cronies skimmed that wealth in a variety of ways to fund the developmentalist state, party and state-owned corporations, and enrich themselves. But working class and poor mainlanders often lacked the skills, education, capital, and family connections to better their lives. They got by on state rations -- given rice confiscated or taxed away from Taiwanese farmers -- and settled down in squatter communities like Huaguang and other communities now vanished from Taipei. Now the KMT government, in that marvelous bit of alchemy by which public lands are transmuted into private gold, is screwing them.

“I was taught to love my country, but I didn’t know the country I loved was like this,” Cheng Wei-hui says. “It gives money to big corporations and condemns us people to death.”

Yes, that's right. This Flickr search (English) and this one (Chinese) will bring up some nice pictures of the community.
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Jerome Keating Meet Up Sat 13

A thunderstorm brews above Wenzheng Lane, near Sun Moon Lake

Jerome Keating sends this around:

Our next meeting is this coming Saturday, July 13, at 10 am.

Speaker, Stephen Pilion Ph.D. of St Cloud State Univ.

Topic: "Have you wondered what is going on with Labor Activism on either side of the Taiwan Strait?"

Are things happening and if so what?

NMA rocks Taiwan: Taiwan State of Mind Parody

More hilarity from the animators at NMA.
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Turncoat Yang Chiu-hsing to run for K-town Mayor for the KMT?

Yum.

KMT Minister without Portfolio Yang Chiu-hsiung has filed an application for membership in the KMT, according to news reports.

Minister Without Portfolio Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) yesterday filed an application for party membership with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) amid speculation about a bid for the Greater Kaohsiung mayoral election.

There have been several days of media reports that Yang plans to run as the KMT candidate for Kaohsiung city. Yang has been denying that he plans to run for mayor of K-town.

Those of you with long memories will recall that Yang left the DPP in a huff in 2010 after failing to win the nomination for the upgraded Kaohsiung municipality. The nomination process caused much complaint within the DPP and Yang was not the only DPPer rankled by it. He had been county chief, while current Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu had been mayor at that time. However, unifying the city and county eliminated the country chief position, Yang's job. Yang ran against Chen Chu as an independent.  Chen Chu won re-election while Yang, a talented and popular administrator who might have recovered a position in the DPP had he been patient, went on to become Minister without Portfolio in the current Administration.
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Daily Links:

• Aussie News: Taiwan's Youth are deserting the country. Amazing how you can talk about the economic issues yet never talk about why they are happening.....
• J Michael with a beautiful essay on why Taiwan's youth are saving the country.
• Filmmaker sneaks Chinese photographer into military base
• IMPORTANT: Warm Oolong Tea: Taiwan reportedly lobbying US congress for help getting submarines

  ...a number of officials inside the halls of Congress have stated that Taiwanese officials from its TECRO office in DC have approached them in recent months regarding ways in which the sale could be facilitated. The officials stated that the the talks focused primarily upon finding a third country that would be willing to transfer the blueprints and expertise to the United States, and then transferred to Taiwan, where the submarines would be built. American defense companies, most likely General Dynamics or Northrop Grumman, would be contracted to implement the weapon systems and electronics into the completed submarines.

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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!

Chinese Paper: The Mainland Brides of Taiwan...

A Taiwan bride to be and her groom to be get prepped for weddings photos at a 7-11 outside Houli. The nearby area is a popular site for weddings photos, a consumer tradition.

A Chinese paper had an article on a new 22,000-strong political party founded by Chinese brides. Ever heard of it?

Lu, 48, is the chairperson of the Chinese Production Party (中华生产党), which she founded in 2010 to fight for the rights of mainland-Chinese immigrants in Taiwan. The party, which has more than 22,000 members, has become an essential player in Taiwan's political landscape.

..........

"I want mainland brides to have an impact on Taiwan's political parties and facilitate cross-Strait peace and exchanges. Taiwan has 340,000 mainland spouses. That means 340,000 households, and out of those more than 200,000 have got Taiwan ID cards," says Lu. "This gives us a huge political power."

The article describes how she supports the KMT. Interesting how this Chinese paper presents Taiwan democracy as total normal -- you can even found your own political party, even if you are an immigrant. More ominously, it also gives a glimpse of how the Chinese themselves see the Chinese bride population, as a sort of potential fifth column.

UPDATE: TT ran a story a few days later.
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Saturday Linkfest

Weeding the sidewalk garden...

Too busy to blog today, so let's catch up on some links:

• China and Taiwan: Steady as She Goes
  

  China, Taiwan and the US appear to be relatively comfortable with the current state of cross-strait relations. But that shouldn’t lead us into a false sense of security, warns Roderick Wye. Beijing still remains determined to unite Taiwan with the Chinese mainland.

• Not often you see good stuff like this in the media: Taiwan on Edge as China grows closer
  

  As China's economy has slowed so too has Taiwan's, with growth falling to 1.6 per cent per year in 2012 down from more than 10 per cent two years earlier. "You can't ignore the fact that we are overdependent on the Chinese market," says Nancy Hsiao Hung-chen, Deputy Minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development.

• Helping SE Asia come to grips with Taiwan
  

  Lesson 5. Taiwan must also be flexible. The onus for reaching out and finding systemic solutions to the problems presented by Taiwan’s isolation predominately rests on its Southeast Asian neighbors. It is their diplomatic problems with Taiwan that stand in the way. Taiwan, however, must also be farsighted. At some points in the current dispute, reasonable compromises presented by the Philippines—President Aquino’s apology for instance—seemed to be rejected out of hand by Taiwan.

• China says countries bringing other nations in South China Sea dispute are 'doomed.'
• The courts are fair. That's why this minor DPP official got two years for authorizing a $4,000 NT payment. No, it's true.
• Taiwan's pariah state status makes it a conduit for illegal finance, stolen art, and once again, weapons technology transfers.
• Chinese dissidents are fine with democracy for China, but don't like it in Taiwan. Chen Guangcheng says independence is out of date
• SOAS expands its Taiwan Studies programs
• Some nice pics of a trip to Taiwan
• Coping with the Global Financial Crisis in China and Taiwan: Assimilation and Resiliency Between Confrontation and Assimilation: China and the fragmentation of global financial governance
• Coping with the Global Financial Crises: institutional and ideational sources of Taiwan's economic resiliency
• Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: the strident turn
• Cross Strait services agreement will impact Singapore, New Zealand FTAs so the legislature should vote on it as a package, says a KMT legislator, although LY says it will not.
• Defense spending in Asia to outstrip North America in less than decade
• Ma touts better quality military
• Phils boosts military
• NOT TAIWAN: MERS goes global

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When will the American Left learn about Taiwan? Eli Clifton in The Nation

What is wrong with the US Left on Taiwan and China? Too often, my fellow lefties are peering at East Asia through thick Cold War goggles. The latest example of the ignorant Cold War lenses that shape the thinking of the US is Eli Clifton's godawful article in The Nation this week.

Just skim it; it's largely a waste of time. Instead pick up J Michael Cole's excellent rebuke of Clifton's commentary at The Diplomat:

Those are perfectly legitimate questions, and we’re all for transparency in the funding of research institutions — especially when it comes from abroad. The problem is that the article’s claims are based on two assumptions that belie a poor understanding of the think tank world and, more importantly, the maddeningly complex workings of U.S.-Taiwan relations.

On the first issue: U.S. think tanks receive funding from a plethora of governments, institutions, foundations, universities, and individuals. Some of those donors, for various reasons, choose to remain anonymous. For example, the Brookings Institution’s 2012 annual report shows one anonymous donor in the $1,000,000-$2,499,999 category, and three in the $500,000-999,999 range — the same bracket as the “problematic” TECRO identified in the article. That same year, TECRO’s donated between US$250,000-US$499,999 to Brookings, which is hardly a strident advocate of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Like a lot of other foreign entities, the Taiwanese government funds a number of other think tanks in the U.S. There is nothing unusual, or even illegal, in this.

Moreover, while the article focuses on TECRO’s financial contributions to AEI, it makes absolutely no mention of the much more substantial — and oftentimes less transparent — donations to U.S. think tanks and academic institutions by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government, wealthy Chinese individuals, or corporations with strong business interests in China (to that we can also add the co-optation of retired U.S. generals and government officials via highly lucrative corporate positions). Nor is it said that through those institutions, the PRC is attempting to sever U.S.-Taiwan ties, end U.S. arms sales to the island, and encourage the perception that the “re-unification” of Taiwan and China is inevitable, by force if necessary, even if this goes against the wishes of Taiwan’s 23 million people.

In short, by being so selective, the article completely omits the tremendous influence that the much stronger party in the dispute, China, has on U.S. policy on Taiwan.

The second major problem with the article is that it assumes that TECRO was using its (presumably un-kosher) influence on AEI to push for arms sales — especially 66 F-16C/Ds — at a time when, as anyone who follows U.S.-Taiwan relations closely would know, Taipei was dragging its feet on arms sales and, later on, seemed to be doing everything in its power to kill the F-16 program. In other words, rather than dictate to the researchers at AEI, Taiwan was funding analysts that were growing increasingly critical of and impatient with Taipei’s passive attitude to arms procurement — the exact opposite of what the article claims.

Of course China is omitted, that practically goes without saying. Argh. The idea that TECRO wants arms sales is part of the Cold War view that lefties still use to assess East Asia, also present in Lee Fang's piece from last year which makes exactly the errors that Clifton does. In this upside-down view of the universe, F-16 sales to Taiwan "militarize" the conflict between China and Taiwan, while apparently there is nothing China can ever do to militarize the conflict....

Walter Lohman observed that Brookings, also a recipient of TECRO funding, hosted DPP Chairman and likely presidential candidate Su Tseng-chang at a reception a couple of weeks ago, which is certainly not something the KMT-run government wants to see, yet TECRO gives money to Brookings. Some friends of mine who were there told me Su was warmly received... good!

The other reason this article peeved me, in addition to its by-now bog-standard Leftish ignorance of Taiwan, is that all the stuff that Cole writes about is available on this and other political blogs, including Cole's own, as well as in the local media. Clifton didn't have to do much, just send around emails to us and we'd have been happy to explain everything to him. *sigh* Why ever do they think we blog?

Great work, J. Michael.
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Some gossip on the TPP

Gossip drifting over to me ears from inside the Beltway: apparently Taipei is signaling Washington privately that despite what it is publicly saying, the Ma Administration does not want to become part of the TPP. One wonders what private protocols have been negotiated between Beijing and Taipei over closer links to Washington. We already know the Administration doesn't want the F-16s despite the noises it makes publicly.

Anyway, believe or don't, as you please. Just passing along some stuff whispered in my ear......

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Taiwan and Renewables at JapanFocus

JapanFocus has an excellent piece on Taiwan's energy situation in int'l comparison.... and some good points about the silliness of objections to renewables:

To illustrate our proposition, let us suppose that the Taiwan government said today that the entire nuclear power fleet would be phased out over five years, and would be replaced by a series of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, rooftop solar PV, and wind power. The scare stories are that this would cover Taiwan in photovoltaic cells and wind turbines; that it would be prohibitively expensive; and that it would be unreliable since power could be generated only when the sun shines or the wind blows. All these claims are false. The reality is that just a few mirror farms using molten salt technology as heat sink would be needed, taking advantage of the fact that China is now committed to CSP and will be driving down the costs. (See our article on CSP (co-authored with Ching-Yan Wu) at Japan Focus here) The land area needed in Taiwan would be no more than 62.5 square km (a square of sides less than 8 km) – which is as nothing when compared with Taiwan’s land area of 32,260 km2, and comparable to the land currently devoted to Taiwan’s advanced science and technology parks. The Hsinchu park totals 650 hectares; the Central Taiwan park 1400 hectares; the southern Taiwan park 1608 hectares – totalling 3900 ha or 39 km2. CSP plants generating half the entire nuclear output would occupy an area only marginally larger than this – and generate power 24/7 in a way that is infinitely more reliable and safer than the current nuclear facilities. And – this is the central point – this would catapult Taiwan into a world-leading position as supplier of CSP key technologies and equipment while creating domestic job opportunities as well. Such a strategy would also facilitate Taiwan’s urgent need for industrial transformation from a lower to higher value-added innovator. 

The world needs to get down to zero carbon within the next two decades, especially major polluters like the US, China, and Taiwan, if we're to have any hope of containing the coming climate disaster.
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Hehuanshan

Above is a pan of Puli on Saturday morning, taken from the Cheng Pao hotel. Full size.

Third time is charm, they say. The last two tries at Hehuanshan I failed to make it past Tayuling, unable to sleep above 2000 meters. But I had done them from the Taroko side, which everyone says is harder. This time I did it from the Puli side, which is clearly easier. Would I make it? Click on READ MORE below to find out!

Get 'em young, train 'em right: dope testing for schoolchildren in Taichung

Steve contemplates the beauty of a soon to be drug tested landscape

Don't miss Far Eastern Sweet Potato's disturbing post on the apparent pattern of organized crime attacks on critics of Beijing in Hong Kong: a preview of what will happen here? It certainly worked that way in the martial law days. But here at home in the Intelligent City of 2013, the City is mandating massive drug testing for school students (Chinese). Taichung AmCham sent around an English summary:

While the city had previously announced plans to increase the numbers of students pulled out for urine drug testing, this week saw the announcement of some firm numbers--including a pledge to conduct a minimum over 4000 such tests on students in junior and senior high schools and vocational schools. This compares with a mere 193 such tests conducted last year and only 71 conducted so far this year. The city in February announced the standards for determining which students will be targeted, which ranged from the very specific, such as if the parents of the student have a record of taking drugs or the student is found in an internet cafe. Other standards are considerably more subjective, such as if the student arouses suspicions of a fellow student and is backed by a teacher or simply exhibits ‘odd behavior’. They also announced in February that the policy does not require parental consent. Other actions announced include plans to try and get all students, campuses and communities to act as enforcement gatekeepers and a plan for schools to ‘intimidate’ students by telling them drug abuse harms the bladder, which could lead to them having to attend school in diapers. 

This program incorporates some of the worst features of Taiwan schools, including the use of students to rat on one another, a feature that begins from the first day of elementary school. "Being found in an internet cafe" can trigger a drug test? And exhibiting "odd behavior?" This is sick. There will be many false positives and as in all things official in Taiwan, the real dopers will soon learn how to defeat the test. Soon everyone's locker will look like Jude Law's refrigerator in Gattaca, with bags of clean urine hanging from every nail... and if a test is positive, will they test again? And if it is positive, will that result in a permanent record, arrest, and trial? And who is paying for all these tests? The stupidity of this is monumental. You can see how students will use it to hassle kids who are different or who they have grudges with...... this isn't enforcing drug laws, it's enforcing conformity....

Hopefully this program will stay, and die, here in Taichung.....
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Daily Links:

• Taiwan's archaic Adultery Law
• Foreign students arrested for having sex in a park
• US Taiwan stance unchanged, reports envoy, but I like the way the US appears to emphasize the consent of Taiwan's people is necessary. 
• Your home is chemical storage depot

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Taiwan-Phils Fishing Pact? Probably not....

One of the great joys of biking in Taiwan is meeting all the friendly people.

With Taipei and Manila agreeing to forego the use of force in settling disputes at sea at a recent meeting, a pact which enormously favors Taipei since Philippines' boats rarely poach in Taiwan waters, but the reverse, alas, is all too common, the possibility of an actual fishing pact between the two sides is being raised. Discussions (a second preparatory meeting) are scheduled for July...

Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs director-general Benjamin Ho, in an interview with Taipei Times, said his government wants well-defined coastal areas where fishermen from both countries can operate freely.

"Our goal is to sign a fishery agreement with the Philippines ... We will continue to negotiate with the Philippines [on that issue]," the Times, a major newspaper in China and Taiwan, quoted Ho as saying.

Ho added that the next meeting will likely be held in July involving both countries' fishery, foreign affairs and maritime security officials.

The report added that the second preparatory meeting to take place in Taipei will "pave the way for fishery talks between the two countries."

Over at the East Asia Forum, a commentator from the Philippines has a nifty piece discussing the possibility of a fishing agreement between Manila and Taipei. The last of Taipei's demands in the shooting case, the call for a fisheries agreement, was the most significant, he says. The writer observes:

Yet a fishery agreement at this point in time could be disadvantageous for the Philippines. For one, Taiwan has a more developed commercial fishing industry than the Philippines. In fact, at present, the operation of Taiwanese fishing vessels off Batanes and Cagayan in northern Philippines has been a perennial complaint of many local Filipinos, notably artisanal fishermen since many poachers were caught well within coastal or municipal waters. Thus, any joint fishing cooperation in the overlapping Exclusive Economic Zones of both countries will only increase Taiwan’s advantages. For some, a fisheries agreement would essentially amount to legalising poaching under the façade of cooperation.

There are also practical impediments to an agreement to cooperate to curb illegal fishing. Foreign poaching is rampant in northern Philippine waters, and losses are tremendous, amounting to some P75–P150 million ($US1.8–3.5 million) every year. But because of its inadequate maritime law enforcement capabilities, Manila was only able to apprehend 108 foreign nationals for illegal fishing from 2006–2012. The Philippines’ limited enforcement capabilities would also make it difficult for it to monitor or supervise the conduct of joint fishing activities.

He also observes that the "demanding, haughty (if not outright bullying)" way in which the Ma Administration demanded the agreements has been offputting for Filipinos. Indeed, fishing associations in the Philippines are already demanding that Manila put a stop to any negotiations:

It described a potential deal as being like handing the nation's marine wealth on a silver platter to Taiwan at the expense of the sovereignty and territorial rights of the Philippines' 100 million people.

"Taiwan wants unlimited fishing access in the Philippines and that is the real score and the Manila government seems like ready to give in to the request," the group said in the statement.

See also The Manila Standard. It seems likely that in the end negotiations will stall over domestic opposition in Philippines, and the situation will return to status quo ante, with Taiwanese fisherman poaching and Philippines being able to do little and less about it.

A Taiwan-centric government would make maintenance of relations with Philippines a key priority. Let's hope that the public bullying that Taipei inflicted on Manila during the fracas over the shooting of the fisherman does not appear in the private talks over the fisheries pact.
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DPP Chairman Su's visit to the US

Went out yesterday to collect bug pics for a post but didn't shoot any good ones. But I did find this lovely bit of mimicry. Leaf mimicry is common (and beautiful) among butterflies and moths in Taiwan.

I blogged on DPP Chairman Su's visit to Taiwan over at Asian Correspondent
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Wind Turbine Problems in Miaoli... Wait a second

A protest against the Infravest project in Yuanli winds down.

UPDATED: Ketty Chen has a much longer and better piece on her blog

The Taipei Times ran an article on the wind power protests in Yuanli in Miaoli today. I'm a longtime proponent of wind energy, back to when I was working in Washington DC writing on US energy policy in the early 1990s. It was then that I became a huge wind enthusiast.

When I first heard about the protests in Yuanli a while back I assumed that some of the locals were engaging in the common tactic of using public "protests" as a way to extract some cash from the the big firm. I've encountered this on many occasions before, most notably on this one. I went up there a couple of months ago on my bike but I arrived soon after the protesters left. So I was quite intrigued to hear that the student protesters had gotten involved, and that Dr. Ketty Chen, wise in the ways of things Taiwan, would be heading down to Miaoli to scout the situation. Those two facts alone suggested I might be wrong.....

A number of things struck me about the article.....

He learned that the firm intended to build 14 wind turbines, each capable of generating 2,300 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy, along the township’s 2km pristine coastline.

I've biked this coast a zillion times. There is no "pristine coastline" here. Check GoogleMaps, the satellite image there is old (map link) and gives some idea of what used to be there. There are concreted ports, "improved" stream mouths, ponds, roads, bike paths, and a seawall on either side of it. See this Taipei Times photo that was with the article. Just south of the port the dunes are protected by fences (image). Note in that image the bike path sign.... it's an enjoyable set of paths, winding among the wind machines at some points...

...which leads to another thing that bothered me rather deeply:

They apprehend the low-frequency noise generated by the turbines and fear they might develop a condition known as wind turbine syndrome from living so close to them. Although the condition has yet to be medically recognized, a number of scientists believe there could be a correlation between a higher incidence of health problems and depression due to long-term exposure to the low-frequency noise generated by wind turbines.

Actually, it's not a case of "yet to be medically recognized." "Wind turbine syndrome" is, at the moment, known to be a form of psuedoscience, right up there with the anti-vaccine movement, global warming denialism, creationism, and similar. Wiki has an excellent page on the impacts of wind power. It notes that in the last decade there have been eighteen peer reviewed articles on turbines and health, finding nada. Many observers have noted that communities targeted by anti-wind activists are the ones that worry about wind turbine syndrome. As the Wiki page points out, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) sardonically noted that wind turbine syndrome has a cure: money...

The second factor is whether people derive income from hosting turbines, which miraculously appears to be a highly effective antidote to feelings of annoyance and symptoms."

It should be intuitively obvious that with two decades of operation of wind machines around people, wind turbine syndrome should be robustly appearing in communities that host wind machines, among wind energy researchers and engineers, and so on. No such body of data exists. Interested readers can google "wind turbine syndrome" and bone up on the topic. This article from Slate is a good start.

Despite the positioning of the article as "big business vs the local community" to me this one still has a strong feel of the kind of thing where nobody is on the side of Right, though I have no doubt that opponents are sincere in their opposition. Alas, not every case of residents fighting city hall is the Miramar Hotel fiasco redux. If residents of Yuanli really want to remove something of proven toxicity from their environment, they might think about that fossil-fuel fired power plant just up the road in Tunghsiao (visible in the top picture, ghostly in the background). That thing is going to kill and sicken far more residents of Yuanli than the wind machines ever will.

Bottom line: the worries over wind turbine syndrome can be cured with a healthy injection of cash. Someone needs to take the lead on that. It would also be nice if someone introduced Taiwan's big firms to the idea of managing community relations so that this sort of thing is stopped before it starts.

REF: this image shows the art gallery discussed in the article. It is located here. The bike path goes right past it. Beautiful grounds, well worth a visit. Also, in 2008 residents of a village in Taoyuan defeated an InfraVest plan to deploy wind machines there. UPDATED: Infravest Taiwan's backgrounder on the issue.
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Blast from the Past: June 6, 1913, 'Terrible Campaign' Launched in Taiwan

The Japan Times reprinted a piece from a century ago this week:

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‘Terrible campaign’ launched in Taiwan

Military operations against the tribes in northeastern Taiwan were commenced at dawn yesterday. The government forces consist of 3,000 men, of the police and native troops. Mr. Uchida, Chief of the Civil Administration, is on the scene. General Sakuma, Governor-General of Taiwan, will be in the field early next month.

The Governor-General, it is believed, has planned one of the most terrible campaigns for the subjugation of the savage tribes living in eastern Formosa.

Most of these tribes have been brought under the rule of the Japanese Government, but there is one, called the Taruko [now rendered Truku], that has never recognized the sway of foreigners. The tribe lives around the upper reaches of the Takkiri River [Taci Jili River], a locality surrounded by the most rugged and precipitous mountains in Taiwan. The tribe is composed of 20,000 savages of the most ferocious type, and the Chinese Government, when it ruled Formosa, never attempted to subjugate them....
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