The View from Taiwan

Friday, August 03, 2007

Taichung Panoramas

Had a few minutes at school today, so I shot some panoramas of Taichung to get some practice lining up panoramas with the new camera. The one above shows downtown from the south. The train station, which is not visible, is at the extreme right of the picture.

This shot shows the suburbs on the south side of the city. Taiping is on the right, up against the mountains. In the foreground is Wufeng. Dali occupies the center of the picture. To the left Taichung's downtown can be made out. This was taken at about 6:00 PM, you can see the sides of buildings lit by the setting sun.

Many times I've shot the plain between Changhua and Taichung (right) at sunset. My apologies to the poster who last week asked me if those were wind machines in the extreme background. I said no, but I was wrong. If you look in the center right of the pic, behind the red arched bridge, you can see wind machines lining the horizon.

[Taiwan] [Taichung]

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Daily Links, Thursday, Aug 2, 2007

Plenty of places to climb around on the blogs today....

The Only Redhead in Taiwan has an awesome post on his greening.

mediadiary, always interesting, has a review of a 1950s training film on how to raise livestock in Taiwan.

Scott blogs on the English villages, untrained English teachers in Taiwan, and King Car Education Foundation, which means well, but can't do a damned thing right.

The Foreigner blogs on the Rebirth of Global Autocracy.

Jerome has been blogging like a wild man on the KMT's stolen assets: here, here, and here.

CFImages does Lukang. Beautifully.

bent blogs on transitional justice and democracy here.

Taoyuan nights blogs on the housing market boom. Skeptically.

Taiwan Matters! hosts Maddog's article on Kathrin Hille's reporting.

Brian does Cosplay.

Yet another piece on Treasure Hill in Taipei from Canis Lupus, a great blog I just discovered.

A-gu on selling cigarettes to minors.

NEEDS: Formosa Neijia needs another person willing to study massage so his teacher can open a class.

MEDIA: Pinoy Cook in Taiwan. Taiwan authorities find that Vietnamese Tea is poisonous but in common use in packaged tea drinks or sold as Taiwan tea. Taiwan Review talks about a music teacher who does ethnomusicology among the local aboriginals. Former Economist writer Philip Bowring has a totally conventional piece that argues for the possibility of a breakthrough in China-Taiwan relations in '08 because Hsieh is a "moderate." Ah, the Beijing-based media lives in a different world. What is the Taiwan firm behind the iPhone? Human Rights Watch reports no progress on human rights in China a year before the Olympics.

LINKS: Monday's Taiwan links at David on Formosa. Bent has links. Kerim always has plenty of links.

SPECIAL: Taiwan's own Iris Ho named one of the Hill's Top 50 Most Beautiful people.

[Taiwan]

Ma's Legal Woes Increase, Hsieh's fall -- and the new CW

Reuters reports on the legal situations of Ma and Hsieh.

Frank Hsieh, of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), welcomed the acquittal of the three officials in a corruption trial concerning construction of a subway project in the southern city of Kaohsiung, where he was formerly mayor.

"It proves my innocence," Hsieh said in an interview with cable news network Sanlih, even though his woes are not over.

Taipei prosecutors are investigating Hsieh and other DPP political heavyweights for their use of special funds while acting as government officials.

Hsieh takes a breather, though I find it hard to believe that the largely pro-Blue prosecutorial forces and judiciary aren't going to convict him. Meanwhile Ma took another hit:

Ma has pleaded not guilty to charges he misappropriated T$11 million (US$335,000) from a special fund over five years during his tenure as mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006.

In June media surveys showed Ma ahead of Hsieh, but analysts say the presidential elections are highly unpredictable.

Ma has said he will not withdraw his presidential bid if convicted. He was once known for his clean image and his indictment sparked accusations of a political persecution. In a surprise move, Taipei prosecutors pressed additional charges of breach of trust and fraud against Ma on Tuesday.

I find it hard to believe that the largely pro-Blue prosecutor's offices and judiciary are going to convict Ma. But if they don't convict Ma, how will they convict anyone of special funds abuses? After all, no one disputes that the money is actually in Ma's accounts (and his wife's too). The only issue was whether taking it was OK -- and under the law it clearly is not.

MEDIA NOTES: This article has the new conventional wisdom on Hsieh.

Hsieh was widely seen as a moderate compared with independence-minded President Chen Shui-bian, who has tested China's patience and upset the United States by pushing the envelope on formal statehood for the island.

But that perception was undermined when Hsieh pledged in the interview to make Taiwan a "normal country" if he was elected.

OLD CW: Hsieh is a moderate. NEW CW: Hsieh is radical pro-independence nutcase like the dreaded Chen Shui-bian. Oh, the outcry of disappointment! Feiren and myself have been saying for months what would happen when the world discovered Hsieh. The article contains the usual errors:

China has claimed sovereignty over democratic Taiwan since their split in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war. The United Nations ousted Taipei in favor of Beijing in 1971 under a "one China" policy which the DPP has rejected.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, but is obliged by the Taiwan Relations Act to help the island defend itself. China's parliament passed the Anti-Secession Law in 2005 mandating war if the island formally declared independence.

China and Taiwan did not split -- they were not together -- it was the KMT and the Communists who split. Bonus error: the writer says the Taiwan Relations Act obliges the US to help defend Taiwan. It does nothing of the sort. It merely mandates that the US President determine whether Taiwan has sufficient defense. It mandates no concrete action on the US part.

[Taiwan] [US] [China] [Frank Hsieh] [Ma Ying-jeou] [Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)]

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Investment Casting Morning

Wednesday I blew off all the work I have piling up and zoomed up to Hsinchu to watch an investment casting facility that makes parts for my friend Michael Klein pour aluminum. Our journey began and ended in the grimy factory town of Hukuo, full of Thai and Filipino restaurants catering to the local foreign laborers, where Michael makes his home.

Breakfast

A large temple offers a promising excursion on a later date.

A religious procession, all-male, passes by.

Passing through some of that good Taiwan farmland...

Testing the super macro on a hibiscus.

The factory

At the factory.

Investment casting is also known as the Lost Wax process, because the wax is burned away in the creation of the mold, leaving the mold behind (you'll see). The casting process begins with the molding of a wax replica of the part to be molded. Here the worker, moving rapidly, extracts the wax replicas from a mold.

Here are the parts. They will be fixed to a tree, 9 parts on each side, 18 to a tree. Ok, it's gibberish now, but it will make sense in a few minutes.

Inspecting parts for motorcycles. This factory is actually quite well known in the business, and manufactures parts for a number of famous overseas brands.

After being attached to the trees, the wax replicas are taken to this room to be coated with sand in two steps. First, they are coated with an extremely fine, hard sand that has a very high resolution and reproduces the part with extreme precision, and then they are coated with a coarser sand.

Here a worker coats one of the parts.

Checking to make sure everything is OK. Note that there are nine parts on a side.

A close up of a part, in this case, a heat sink.

Coated and dried, these parts await molding.

Parts coated with the fine sand. The part here are three pipes, the other pronglike portions are actually part of the mold, not the part. They will become tubes when the mold is made, enabling metal to flow to the part.

Molding a plate. The tiny stubs are actually to permit the wax to flow out when it is melted.

After the wax replicas have been coated with sand, the next major step is to place them in a furnace.....

...where the wax is melted away, leaving the sand behind....

....in the shape of the mold and the parts to be molded. Here Michael hefts one of the molds after the wax has been "lost" -- melted away. Note the smooth interior. The cup here is not part of the molded part, but is only part of the mold into which the molten metal is poured. Michael said that they recover about 95% of melted wax for reuse.

Here a pile of aluminum cups waits to be melted down and reused. The molded parts have been removed, processed, and shipped to the buyer.

Globalization: aluminum ingots from Dubai, to be processed into parts in Taiwan, for shipment to the US for assembly into a final product.

The aluminum furnace.

Here the molds await heating so that the melt can be poured into them.

The worker blows the inside of the mold clean before pouring the aluminum.

Touching up the mold before pouring begins.

Critter break: we went out to wait for the pouring to begin, and I shot a few critters.

I was quite taken with this colorful fellow, whom I had never met before.

Back inside to watch the workmen pouring the aluminum.

The worker dipped the bucket into the furnace, took out some liquid aluminum, then poured it carefully into the cup, where it ran down the tree and through the gates into the nine parts waiting to be molded. The heat emanating from the molds is incredible, and Michael and I went out in the sun once in a while to cool off.

The second cup there is called the riser. It acts as a reservoir to insure a constant and stable flow of metal into the molded parts.

The molds are preheated in a furnace (can't pour molten metal into a cold mold!). Here two workers wait while the dipper is at work.

A mold is removed from the furnace.....

...and placed on the floor, ready to be filled.

A production run.

Freshly poured metal.

The workman chipped away the sand to have a look at the part.

The metal and the sand mold cool at different speeds, resulting in the mold cracking. That's a desired effect, it doesn't bother the part -- since the mold will have to be removed anyway. Often, Michael explained, the part unmolds itself as the mold shatters from differential cooling.