Market Day Pics

Skies are blue in Taiwan!


There's a construction project down the road from me. Makes for cool pictures.


Campus at night.


Yesterday at the train station a model and photographers were hard at work.




Waiting for breakfast.










Mormons stage skits in front of a local department store.



Market day, Taichung county.













Bags of soybean milk.






The market is one big impromptu still life.




































Fixing the car? No, looking for the snake they found in it.


Can't find it? We'll just blow the snake out with an air compressor...

[Taiwan]

I'm wrong! wrong! wrong! Hurray!

Here we are with the NEW MAYOR OF KAOHSIUNG! Goooooooooo Chen Chu!

How much do the pre-election polls here suck? Mega. Only the Liberty Times nailed it. Good for them! Chen Chu squeaked in by 1,000 votes, and is now the DPP mayor of Kaohsiung! TAI HAO!

Since Taipei was a foregone conclusion, and pundits insist on seeing the election as a vote on Chen Shui-bian -- they can eat this: the silent majority has spoken.

Can't wait to see how the international media spins this one. And Soong had to bite it in Taipei too, picking up about 50,000 votes -- couldn't even hit 5% in the Bluest city in Taiwan. The Blue electorate refused to split the vote. Next week on the blogs and in the papers: Is Soong Finished? And just wait 'til the whispering starts against Ma Ying-jeou. More calls for Lien Chan to run in '08, I'll wager.

Tawk among yourselves. I'm off to celebrate.

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT] [Chen Shui-bian] [James Soong] [Taipei] [Kaohsiung] [Chen Chu]

China Times Weekly and Local Media Competence

How do we know the local media is incompetent? The China Times Weekly has a report this week on Chen Shui-bian's son, Chen Chih-chung, and his wife, Huang Rui-ching. The last paragraph of the first page conveys the following information about Huang Pai-lu, the father of Huang Rui-ching, who recently came under absurd accusations of immigrating to the US:

葉信村還說，黃百祿是個孤兒，小時候被過繼到黃家，長大後也沒有親戚。後來他跟吳麗華結婚，他的岳父吳東河對這個在坎坷環境中長大的女婿就特別照顧。

Ye Hsin-tsun added that Huang Pai-lu is an orphan, and when he was a child, he was adopted and raised by the Huang Family, and after growing up, he had no relatives. Eventually he married Wu Li-hua, and....

According to the paper, Ye Hsin-tsun is Huang's best friend. It is a common pattern in the local media reporting on personage X for the reporter to "cite" someone close to X, and then later, X's friend denies ever having talked to a reporter. In any given case one doesn't know what to believe, but with so many, the pattern is clear: reporters appear to be making up interviews.

What's the nonsense? Well, everything. You see, it just so happens that Huang Pai-lu is my wife's sixth uncle. Far from having no relatives, Huang comes from a family of eight brothers and three sisters, by two wives. He was not an orphan, but, in a longstanding local custom, was given by my wife's grandfather's second wife to her sister to foster and raise because that family had no son. He is well aware of what family he came from; my wife has met him, and many of her relatives attended the wedding of Huang's daughter and Chen's Shui-bian's son. Needless to say, all of this is a matter of public record, which the reporter was too incompetent to locate.

Oh, and yes, that's right In some ghostly way, I'm related to Chen Shui-bian. And, for that matter, Huang Pai-lu.

[Taiwan] [media]

UDN intern lies about vote-buying

Maddog blogs on a dirty tricks....

The Hsuan Chuang University student posted messages on the SocialForce.org discussion board saying that he and his neighbors had personally received payment of NT$1,700 (US$52.62) as an incentive to vote for the DPP's mayoral candidate in Taipei, Frank Hsieh. Others participating in the discussion expressed doubt, but Chiu pretended to be someone who "had originally planned to vote for Hsieh" but said that he was dismayed because "buying votes was just what the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used to do." The as yet unidentified Chiu insisted that his story was true and that he had personally received the money. Someone passed the information along to Hsieh's campaign office which, in turn, contacted the police.

The kicker is that the culprit was an intern for the paper UDN. The timing is suggestive...last minute dirty tricks are a staple of the KMT bag -- recall the video of Su Tseng-chang's "vote-buying" that came out a couple of days before the elections last year, with no clear source or participants....of course, if things had worked out, the paper probably would have run a story on the "vote buying."

[Taiwan]

ESWN on Local Media Polls

ESWN discusses the polls:

Here are the numbers for the Kaohsiung mayoral election:

Liberty Times (12/5): Huang Jun-yin (34.38%) versus Chen Chu (34.09%)
China Times (12/4): Huang Jun-yin (43%) versus Chen Chu (29%)
TVBS (12/3-12/4): Huang Jun-yin (51%) versus Chen Chu (31%)
United Daily News (12/2): Huang Jun-yin (39%) versus Chen Chu (27%)
Era TV (11/26-11/27): Huang Jun-yin (41%) versus Chen Chu (26%)
ETTV (11/24): Huang Jun-yin (41%) versus Chen Chu (29%)

According to Liberty Times, KMT candidate Huang Jun-yin has taken an ad out to question why the Liberty Times figures are different from the others. The South Society responded that the reason was obvious: the "Chinese media" are biased and therefore things happen in their public opinion polls. As examples, the South Society said Chen Shui-bian was not picked by the "Chinese media" in the last two presidential elections, but he won both times; four years ago in the Taipei mayoral election, DPP candidate Lee Ying-yuan polled below 20% but he ended up with 36% of the votes. This proves that the polls by the "Chinese media" are way off and untrue.

Does that contradict what I wrote in the beginning? Not at all, because there have been many elections as well as many public opinion polls. The ones cited by South Society favor their case. They do not tell you about examples that contradict their case.

(BCS via Yahoo! News) In the Taipei county election last year, the polls from all except one media outlet favored KMT candidate Chou Hsi-Wei over DPP candidate Lo Wen-chia by at least 10 percentage points. That exception showed the two candidates in a dead heat. In the end, Chou won by 190,000 votes (=10.5%). Yes, it was Liberty Times which was the exception.

What is happening this time? Nobody knows until afterwards. But previous performances are not a good predictor -- if you are willing to consider the totality of the evidence instead of a selective slice.

I totally agree. I can't believe the pro-Green Liberty Times has Chen Chu neck-n-neck with Huang, when every other poll has a sizable advantage to the KMT. It makes no sense -- the pro-Blue papers are strongly biased, but with the exception of TVBS, they are not clinically insane. Will Chen Chu close this gap? You bet. But she isn't going to make up 10 points on Huang. I think he'll win comfortably by 5 points.

Consider: Su did a great job in Taipei County and lost. Hsieh cleaned up Kaohsiung but the DPP is going to lose it. Whatever you may say about the Presidency, Chen was a strong mayor of Taipei -- and lost. Yi-lan was ably run by two excellent DPP administrations -- and lost. See a pattern here?

Unless I see an amazingly well constructed DPP internal poll that says different, tomorrow the DPP will lose both cities. Hau by 10 in Taipei, Huang by 5 in Kaohsiung. I can't wait to read the nonsense in the foreign media over the next few weeks. *sigh*

[Taiwan]

Formosa Foundation Student Ambassador Program

Jerome Keating passed this around:

+++++++++++++++++

Subject: Now Accepting Applications to 2007 Ambassador Program

The Formosa Foundation is accepting applications to the 2007 Ambassador Program now through March 16, 2007. Application instructions and forms are now available online at http://www.formosafoundation.org/ourwork/upcoming-events.php

Please forward this email message to everyone you think may be interested to apply.

The Ambassador Program is a unique training program of its kind. We recruit students from the United States and Taiwan , who will work together to help develop a closer relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan . The Program provides a rare opportunity to meet with United States Congressmen and Senators to discuss U.S. policies toward Taiwan .

The 2007 Ambassador Program will begin on June 17and conclude on June 29, 2007. Ambassadors will spend the first week Los Angeles and the second week in Washington D.C. The Formosa Foundation will cover expenses for tuition, meals and lodging for the duration of the Program, plus round-trip transportation from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.

The Program is designed primarily for college and/or graduate students who support the advancement of human rights, democracy and the right of self-determination for the people of Taiwan . Selection criteria includes academic achievements, extracurricular activities, participation in community affairs, and interest in promoting the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

To Apply, Submit items below:
1. Application Form (Taiwan Applicants click here)[LINKS DON'T WORK - MT]
2. Personal Statement
3. Copy of recent transcript
4. Two letters of recommendation
See Application Form for full instructions.

Application Deadline - March 16, 2007
Selection Results will be announced on April 16, 2007.

Amy Lin
Formosa Foundation
Ambassador Program Director

[Taiwan]

Amnesty and the Death Penalty in Taiwan

For many years Amnesty International has been carrying out a campaign to eliminate the death penalty, and Taiwan is one of their targets.

A recent case is that of arsonist and murderer Chong Deshu:

Chong Deshu is at risk of imminent execution. His execution order was reportedly signed by the Minister of Justice on 1 December 2006. Under standard procedure, execution should have taken place three days after the notice of final judgment from the Ministry of Justice – that is, 4 December 2006. However, the execution has not yet been carried out. It is possible that the Chong Deshu could be executed at any moment without notice.

The article gives some background information on the death penalty here:

Between 70 and 100 prisoners are believed to be held on death row in Taiwan, of whom at least 22 have had their sentences confirmed. Execution is carried out by a shot in the heart through the back or lethal injection although so far no-one has been executed by lethal injection in Taiwan. So far, no executions have been carried out in Taiwan during 2006, continuing a downward trend in the use of the death penalty since 2000. Local anti-death penalty activists had hoped that 2006 would be an "execution-free year" helping to increase momentum towards abolition. Several Taiwanese officials have indicated support for abolition of death penalty in recent years, including President Chen Shui-bian.

The Taiwanese authorities have taken some measures to reform the death penalty system over recent months: the use of shackles for those on death row has been reduced; and legal aid has been extended to death penalty prisoners. However, the government's promises to move towards abolition have yet to be fulfilled.

I've worked with Amnesty in the past, and they are truly a wonderful organization.

[Taiwan] [Amnesty] [Chen Shui-bian]

The Hermit Kingdom

Remember when Shih Ming-teh was going to camp out in front of the Presidential Palace until Chen Shui-bian stepped down? All bluster of course. As the media have reported, Shih is going to be a recluse -- until Chen Shui-bian steps down. Jerome Keating notes:

Shih Ming-deh has recently returned from the sunny climes of Thailand where he basked while whatever remnants (if any) there were left of his red shirts withstood the wind, rain and cold outside Taipei Main Station. Now Shih is plying another grandstanding move. He pledges that he will be true to his word, that since his coup did not topple Chen Shui-bian, he will become a recluse. He will retire into a small apartment near the main Taipei Main Station and stay there until Chen steps down in 2008.

Lots of people live a reclusive life in a small apartment near the train station, but only Shih can manufacture any media moments from it. Long past his sell-by date, as Shih was bidding reporters good-bye and closing the door to his new apartment, he told reporters that the public should vote Blue, and if they don't vote Blue, they should cast an invalid ballot.

I'm not worried, though. I'm sure the BBC will go right on breathlessly reporting about how Shih's demonstration was a non-partisan demonstration designed to "highlight corruption." It's one thing to err, but another to persist in it. As my favorite Vulcan once observed, just be sure you're not confusing empiricism with stubbornness.

But enough scoring on the klueless BBC. Bottom line: it's heartbreaking to see Shih Ming-teh, whom so many of us admired for so long, become a shill for the people who once put him in jail. What was it all for, Nori?

[Taiwan] [Shih Ming-deh/Shih Ming-te] [Chen Shui-bian] [BBC]

Drive By Shooting

A whip scorpion, perfectly common, sometimes seen around house and home.

The Iron Law of Taiwan Driving: there is no crowd so dense I can't shove a car through it.

Parked and waiting whilst the wife ran errands, I wondered: what is this fellow up to?

Carefully he arranged each can...

...and when at last, when he had them all in the right place...

...he crushed them. Never say there is nothing to do in Taiwan.

Cars running the red light. Cars making illegal right turns. Night.

Here's some more pics from the geocaching day in Hsinchu. We spent the day driving all over Hsinchu peeking into the many small towns along the way.

What's the chief skill needed to photograph in Taiwan? Handling shutter speed? Controlling the depth of field? Weather-proofing the camera? Nope. It's keeping the wires out of the picture.

Police station.

[Taiwan]