The Mandate of Heaven天命

"CNN still hasn't figured it out"

2007-07-07T15:56:00.000+08:00

Former CNN Reporter Aaron Brown has an interesting take on the competition between CNN and Fox News:

"On the one hand, you have this very disciplined, ratings-directed news organization, or whatever they are... On the other hand, you have an organization that is trying to figure out if it can be all things to all people. Can it be an opinion network, can it be a tabloid-driven network, can it be a serious news organization? It used to be a serious news organization.

It's hard to be all those things. It's really hard to be all those things.

You end up being none of them."

Brown thinks Paula Zahn's show is symbolic. "Whatever competence she has, and whatever skills her producers have, it wasn't clear to me what the program was," Brown said. "It has never had a clear definition. In some ways, I believe the network is [similar]."

Brown said he noticed an "incredibly dismissive attitude" toward Fox when he arrived at CNN in 2001.

"It ran through every part of the organization, top to bottom. It wasn't just bosses, everybody had it. I thought then, and I said then in meetings, that this is a huge mistake. And it was. That's the truth of it. It was," he said. "And I think in many ways the organization continues to pay for it."

Brown continued: "Fox is an incredibly disciplined organization. CNN is much less disciplined. It's part of the reason why CNN's a better journalism organization. It doesn't have the kind of top-down discipline that Fox has.

But in a competitive race, Fox knows exactly what its audience wants. It's been one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen in television: no matter what the story is, no matter what the circumstances are, if it's not what the audience wants, they will walk away from the story."

The Starbucks/Paul McCartney nexus (Updated)

2007-06-06T21:16:00.000+08:00

Tuesday I sat in Starbucks for several hours because I've been editing a Master's thesis by a student from Tsinghua University in Hsinchu. It didn't take me long to notice that Paul McCartney's new album was playing (I had some recollection that he had just come out with a new album). I remember the thought flashing through my head: this is pretty good. Maybe I'll go out and buy it.

I took another sip from my coffee and continued reading. Imagine to yourself a time-lapse photographic movement, a jump forward...time has elapsed. The coffee cup that was once filled with robust steaming brew is now only half full. It suddenly occurs to me that I am stuck in a recurring theme: "I've heard this song before." Yes, the Paul McCartney album had finished and apparently started again from the beginning. And again...and again...and again...on and on and on...from beginning to end and end to beginning and back again. Was I in the movie, Groundhog Day?

I know Starbucks has a habit of doing this; they usually play one CD for days, weeks, even months at a time. The CDs are centrally produced and then sent out to all of the different Starbucks. I have no way of gaging whether or not every Starbucks has the same music playing at any given time, nor do I know if there is any set time-limit for how long a CD can play, or how long before a new cd is distributed. What I do know is that the Christmas season was a little difficult to bear. Moreover, up until that day--Tuesday--the songs on any one CD have always been from a variety of artists. Never just one, so there is generally the feeling that you are hearing a variety of sounds. So I was thinking--this is unusual.

I finally decided to do a Google search: Paul McCartney and Starbucks. I figured they must have signed a deal. I was right. McCartney's new album was released on Tuesday on the "Hear Music label, a joint venture between Starbucks and the Concord Music Group." That's what Allan Kozinn writes in the June 4 International Herald Tribune. He goes on:

"Memory Almost Full" is a change for McCartney, although not primarily in musical ways. It has, after all, hints of everything from the sound of his 1970s band, Wings, to echoes of relatively recent work like "Flaming Pie," from 1997, and McCartney seems to have steadfastly avoided hopping on current pop music trends.

Still, he wanted to shake up his approach to releasing an album. The video made its debut on YouTube. And having been an EMI artist since the Beatles signed with the company in 1962 (apart from a series of American releases on Columbia in the 1980s), he moved to Hear Music, hoping to draw on the eagerness and energy of an upstart label.

"Am I feeling like I've left the family home?" McCartney said, when asked if switching labels was traumatic. "I have left the family home, but it doesn't feel bad. I hate to tell you - the people at EMI sort of understood. The major record labels are having major problems. They're a little puzzled as to what's happening. And I sympathize with them. But as David Kahne said to me about a year ago, the major labels these days are like the dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid."

Although Hear Music has collaborated with other labels on projects ranging from Ray Charles's "Genius Loves Company" to a recent compilation of John Lennon tracks, McCartney is the first artist signed to it directly. To celebrate his album's release, Starbucks is having what it is calling a global listening event: The album will be played around the clock on Tuesday in more than 10,000 Starbucks stores in 29 countries. Based on its high-volume traffic - some 44 million customers a week - the company expects about 6 million people to hear the music that day. Starbucks's channel on XM satellite radio will also be promoting the record heavily, and XM will devote another channel exclusively to McCartney's music on the release day.

So there I was, participating in an early 21st century emerging trend, "a global listening event." A new gimmick or a sudden bifurcation in the trajectory of global capitalism? So far, McCartney is the only artist to sign on with the collaborative label. Will it be a success? Certainly, the fame of the ex-Beatle will give a boost to the incipient trend, and Starbucks is a perfect medium through which to expose coffee-drinking customers--some who sit for hours or come on a daily basis--to new sounds.

But will this attempt to program customers work? Or is it overkill? One thing I can say is that after the first listening I was tempted to buy the album, but after repeated listenings, I was driven to rebel against the not-so-subtle washing of my brain.

Did I mention that I just love the new Paul McCartney album?

Update: Tony Sachs has some interesting thoughts about McCartney and the future of CDs over at The Huffington Post:

Sir Paul's pretty hip. He knows that record companies selling CDs through record stores is so last-decade. He also knows that debuting his video on YouTube is a lot more cool than giving it to MTV, which probably wouldn't have touched it, anyway, and reaches just as many of the young'uns. His innovative marketing strategy has generated a ton of publicity, and he didn't even have to shave his head and flee rehab to get it.

The run-up to the album's release was flawless. But now that Memory Almost Full has been released, latte-drinkers nationwide will find it in their local Starbucks outlets for a whopping $15.99. That's not exactly priced to move, especially when you can find it on Amazon for $9.99. If you want the deluxe edition with extra songs, Starbucks isn't even stocking it.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of numbers Memory Almost Full does in its first week, especially in Starbucks. Because if they can sell a $15.99 CD that can be found in almost any other store for a lot less, then the presumption that the CD is on its last legs will have to be re-thought.

The CD is far from dead. It may not have a clean bill of health, but still accounts for more than 80 percent of music sales. Rather, what's dead is the CD store. And that's a whole 'nuther story. Just because people don't want to go to a store that only sells music doesn't mean they don't want to buy music while also getting a mochaccino from Starbucks, or a flat screen TV from Best Buy, or some ammo from Wal-Mart.

The Dutch roots of New York City and Taiwan (Update)

2007-05-05T11:48:00.000+08:00

Update: Cross-posted at the European Tribune, where it has been on the recommendation list--a lot of great comments there. Check it out.

This is a very long post, but I had to get it out of me. Read at your leisure. [editor]

I'm reading a fascinating book--The Island at the Center of the World--by Russell Shorto. No, it is not about Taiwan, though, in many ways, it could be, and the global context in which the story is set, is the same. The second part of the title of Shorto's book should provide you with insight into its main themes--The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotton Colony that Shaped America.

Shorto's thesis is that the history of early America that American children learn in school--especially the role that New York City (New Amsterdam) played in that history--is not the complete picture; it is rather a narrative propagated by the British, who inherited New York from the Dutch. Shorto's task is to discover--and uncover--the contribution of the Dutch colony in forging what became the United States:

We are used to thinking of American beginnings as involving thirteen English colonies--to thinking of American history as an English root onto which, over time, the cultures of many other nations were grafted to create a new species of society that has become a multiethnic model for progressive societies around the world. But that isn't true. To talk of the thirteen English colonies is to ignore another European colony, the one centered on Manhattan, which predated New York and whose whose history was all but erased when the English took it over(2).

Shorto's book mentions Taiwan only briefly, though it does raise questions about which I have also been wondering in the case of that other island pulled suddenly into the epicenter of the global trade network: What is the Dutch legacy (hamburger shops?)?

Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC), discovered Manhattan in 1609 when his ship entered the river that would be known by his last name. The mandate with which the VOC had charged Hudson had been to find a new passage to Asia. It is amazing--looking at the discovery from my modern-day perspective--that anyone would have dreamed that the Hudson River (near to where I grew up) was a passage to Asia. Hudson soon realized that his dream passage was a dead end, but the stories he brought back with him to Amsterdam, as Shorto writes, had a more important effect:

The news of Hudson's river voyage passed through the sieve of Dutch political and business interests. To the sea-minded merchants on the Zandhoek and the Buitekant, Amsterdam's harborfront, monitoring the offloading of lighters packed with Spanish taffeta, German porcelain, Swedish copper, and East Indies spices while looking for the next business opportunity, hopes of a newfound passage to Asia were forgotten as they studied Van Meteren's report (published as an announcement to the world that the discovery was Dutch). There they learned of the discovery and charting of a water highway into the unexplored continent that was "as fine a river as can be found, wide and deep, with good anchoring on both sides." It was a bonus that it was lightly inhabited by a "friendly and polite people...."(33-34)

And from that discovery, a Dutch colony known as New Netherlands, where the author of this blog would spend much of his early years, and where his parents still reside.

The Dutch did not discover Taiwan; the Portugese did (at least the first Europeans to do so), in the late 16th century, and as almost everyone knows, they named it Ilha Formosa or the Beautiful Island. However, the Dutch East Indies Company or VOC soon acquired part of southern Taiwan, and just as the history of what is now Manhattan was altered by the sale of land, so too was the history of Taiwan. Lynn Scott, who penned a docudrama based on VOC records for Radio Taiwan International, writes:

On January 20, 1625, a very important transaction took place on the southwestern coast of Formosa: the Dutch representative of the VOC bought a strip of land from the western plains aborigines for fifteen pieces of cloth. The story of colonial trade and tragedy on Formosa during the next thirty-eight years of Dutch rule holds secrets about this island which exchanged everything -- names, languages, people, cultures, religion, and trade -- everything, that is, except its heart.

Similarly, and about the same time, one of the first leaders of the New Netherlands' colony, Peter Minuit, purchased Manhattan from the indigenous inhabitants of the island. Shorto writes:

So he bought it. Everyone knows that. Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island from a group of local Indians for sixty guilders worth of goods, or as the nineteenth-century historian Edmund O'Callaghan calculated it, twenty-four dollars. From the seventeenth through the early twentieth century thousands of real estate transactions occurred in which native Americans sold parcels--ranging in size from a town lot to a midwestern state--to English, Dutch, French, Spanish, and other European settlers. But only one is legend; only one is known by everyone. (49-50)

Shorto has an interesting discussion about what such purchases meant in seventeenth-century America, and how they were interpreted differently by the Europeans and the indigenous peoples. I would like to see a similar discussion of how Aborigines in Taiwan understood such land sales, but that's a tangent for another day.

What interests me for now is the global context in which the Dutch came to occupy parts of North America, Taiwan, and of course other places as well:

Dutch control of Dayuan severed the trading route between China and the Philippines, threatening Spanish interests. The Spanish had occupied northern Luzon 呂宋 since 1571 and had built a fortress in Manila. Chinese merchants traded there and even established a Chinese community called Parian 澗內. Japanese traders also visited Manila, and the settlement enjoyed growing prosperity. The Spanish would not tolerate Dutch interference from a base on Taiwan and resolved to defend their interests. In 1626, a Spanish expedition traveled to Keelung, which the Spanish called Santísima Trinidad, and built Fort San Salvador. Between 1628 and 1629, they moved to occupy Danshuei, where they set up the settlement of Fort Santo Domingo in a bid to attract Chinese merchants.

With the Spanish in the north of Taiwan and Dutch in the south, confrontation between these two European adversaries was inevitable. The Dutch were not content to allow an expansion of Spanish power on Taiwan, and tried to expel the Spanish forces on several occasions. In 1642, the Dutch finally sent troops north to attack the Spanish fortresses. The Spanish were defeated and, after only 16 years, forced to withdraw from Taiwan. This left the Dutch as the sole ruling power on Taiwan until Jheng Cheng-gong’s conquest of the island in 1661/62. (Huang Fu-san)

For some reason, whenever I heard that the Dutch controlled southern Taiwan, near Tainan, and the Spanish occupied areas of northern Taiwan, and that the Dutch defeated the Spanish, I never made the associations with the battles between the same powers in other parts of the world--never until I started reading Shorto's book:

As Henry Hudson arrived in Amsterdam in the autumn of 1608, the world around him was turning. The Spanish and Portuguese empires that had had their way with South America and the East Indies for more than a century were in decline, and two new powers were rising in tandem. The Dutch were growing in might right alongside the English, and would peak sooner, giving the world Rembrandt, Vermeer, the microscope, the tulip, the stock exchange, and the modern notion of home as a private, intimate place.

The Dutch, of course, were of the sea; keeping it back was a way of life. Consequently, water was the orientation; they were the continent's ship-builders, sailors, pilots, and traffickers, and this was their key to empire. When the union of Spain and Portugal in 1580 closed to Dutch traders the port of Lisbon (where they had long received Asian goods for resale throughout Europe), the Dutch merchants took the drastic step of stocking their vessels with gunpowder and cannonballs and going directly to the Iberian supply source, the islands of the East Indies, more than a year's journey away by the southern route. They arrived with guns blazing at the Portuguese military-trading posts there, and took them, converting Java, Sumatra, and the Malaysian peninsula into outposts of a new empire. When the first successful convey returned home in 1599, its hulls packed with six hundred thousand pounds of pepper and an equal amount of nutmeg, cloves, and other spices, Amsterdammers were stunned at the plenitude. Churchbells throughout the city rang, and the rise to world power began. (25-26)

The other context in which to understand this events is the Dutch fight for independence from Spanish rule. It is strange that I never made this connection before, considering that I lived in Leiden (where the Pilgrims took refuge before sailing to America) for about a year (that's where I was on September 11, 2001).

The Netherlands (low countries) first came under under Spanish rule in 1495, as Shorto says (27), 3 years after Columbus sailed to America. He goes on:

As Hudson entered Amsterdam, the United Provinces of the Netherlands had been fighting for independence from their Spanish overlords for nearly four decades, and the long war had toughened them, focused them, made them militarily and economically stronger. Before, they had been scattered, each province tending to go its own way. The Catholic tyranny of Spain--complete with bloody Inquisition tactics to force Protestants to return to the fold--united them. It gave them a Father of the Country in the person of Willem I, the Prince of Orange, known to history as William the Silent. (27)

The northern part of the Netherlands (present-day Netherland) declared independence from Spain in 1579, 11 years after the start of the Eighty Years' War with Spain. The southern part (present-day Belgium) remained Spanish territory and Catholic. What was now known as the United Provinces in the north became a refuge for persecuted religious groups. Spain finally recognized Dutch independence in 1648, 6 years after the Dutch defeated Spain in Taiwan. It really is surprising that I never considered this in connection with Taiwan's history. I was in Leiden for October 3rd:

It is a huge party, with an enormous funfair and a dozen of open air discos in the night. The municipality gives free herring and white bread to the citizens of Leiden.

It was on that day in 1574 that the city of Leiden gained its independence from the Spanish, after two long sieges:

The town of Leiden had withstood a Spanish onslaught in 1574, and as a reward for the bravery of its fighters, William the Silent chose Leiden as the site of the grand university that he believed the Dutch provinces needed if they were to become a nation. In a remarkably short time the university achieved a status equaling that of Bologna or Oxford and became just what William had envisioned: a breeding ground for the new nation's top scientists, politicians, lawyers, and religious figures. (95)

This brings me back to the possible Dutch legacy in Taiwan. First, the obvious ones. The Dutch period saw the first Protestant missionaries arrive in Taiwan. But the bigger impact of Dutch rule, was as Huang Fu-san writes, economic:

The Dutch came to Taiwan to establish a base from which they could engage in international entrepôt trade. Their administration of Taiwan followed the dictates of mercantilism and gave rise to Taiwan’s tradition of trade and commerce. The Dutch also developed light industry to further increase their profits, leading Taiwan down the road towards greater economic development. These achievements were possible thanks to the cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship between the Dutch and the Han Chinese.

The Dutch also developed agriculture in Taiwan, cultivating sugar and rice on the island. This also resulted in the first large-scale migrations of Chinese settlers to Taiwan.

But what are the more abstract, harder-to-detect legacies of Dutch rule in Taiwan. One hint might come from Shorto's book. Shorto believes one of the biggest gifts the Dutch gave to the United States was the notion of tolerance:

Tolerance was more than just an attitude in the Dutch Republic. Following the bloody religious persecution of thousands in the previous century at the hands of the Spanish, the Dutch provinces had broken new ground in writing into their 1579 de facto constitution the guarantee that "each person shall remain free, especially in his religion, and that no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of their relgion." This sentence became the ground on which the culturally diverse society of the seventeenth century was built. (96, see also p.6)

I'm reluctant to read too much into this, or to generalize too much, but people often comment about how open Taiwanese society is, how there is an anything-goes attitude about religious and political diversity. I know it wasn't always like this, just like it wasn't--and isn't--always like that in the US. There are always diverse impulses, but at least we can say that there is religious diversity in contemporary Taiwanese society--Daoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, a variety of popular religious trends, new religions, secret societies, etc. People usually attribute this diversity to "Chinese culture," as if "Chinese culture" is in its essence open to diversity. The argument that is usually made is that Chinese religion is akin to syncretism--meaning that it is an amalgamation of different religious elements--and that Chinese people worship a variety of deities and do not distinguish between different religious traditions.

This might be part of the story, but there are several religious groups outlawed in China, that can openly worship in Taiwan: Falungong, Yiguandao, etc. In China, religious practice is extremely controlled by the government. The situation wasn't that much better in Taiwan during 50 years of Kuomintang rule. The KMT, Japanese, and Qing governments all attempted to restrict religious and political organizations. So, where does this laissez-faire attitude towards religion and politics come from in Taiwan?

Another potential Dutch legacy I have been considering while reading Shorto's book. Were the seeds of Taiwan independence planted during the Dutch period? Recall that during the time that Dutch were in Taiwan, they were fighting their own war of independence with Spain, and one of their battlegrounds was Taiwan:

[Peter Paul] Rubens was elated and went next to visit his countryman, Ambassador Joachimi, in London, hoping to persuade him that now the best hope for a unified Dutch Republic was for the rebel government to seek terms with Spain. But Rubens seriously underestimated the resolve of the northern provinces. Joachimi was as much a rebel as those he served, and told the painter that the only way the provinces would unify would be if those in the south joined in the war. (70)

Of course, there are many factors in the evolution of the Taiwan independence movement, most significantly, peoples' experience during the KMT period; I am merely speculating about the possible subtle sprouts of independence-thinking during the Dutch period.

Or perhaps it is simply as former US diplomat in Taiwan, George H. Kerr, once wrote:

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Formosans, despite the Cairo Declaration, hoped for a guaranteed neutrality under American or international trusteeship. Instead, they were delivered over to another and more oppressive occupation.

Their prosperous society was invaded by a horde of mainland Chinese, often brutal, ignorant, and greedy -- the dregs of the Nationalist army. The new governor, under orders, bled the island dry, ruthlessly and with dispatch.

Yet still the Formosans hoped. American propaganda, promising freedom to all oppressed peoples, and citing the glorious Revolution of 1776, continued to pour in upon them. In February 1947 unarmed Formosans rose en masse to demand reforms in the administration at Taipei. Chiang Kai-shek's answer was a brutal massacre. Thousands died -- first among them were the leaders who had asked for American help. Washington turned a deaf ear, while the Chinese communists rejoiced.

After Chiang's military collapse and retreat to Formosa the situation became even worse. As American emotional commitment to Chiang became more fervent, Formosan hope for American or United Nations intervention or understanding faded and died.

But, if Shorto is correct, then even that American propaganda of which Kerr spoke, was part of the Dutch legacy that became encapsulated in the notion that all humans are created equal and that all people should be free.

CNN at it again

2007-04-25T23:09:00.000+08:00

First look at the headline CNN used in its story about what Cheney "said" about Democrats. Then look at how they changed the headline of the AP article about Vice President Annette Lu running for president in Taiwan. It seems to be a pattern with CNN. At least they used quotation marks in the Annette Lu story.

The Tea Conoisseur revisited

2007-04-25T22:11:00.000+08:00

This is one of my favorite posts ever and I will continue to link to it from time to time.

The history of a nation and a man

2007-04-25T21:44:00.000+08:00

You don't want to miss this great post by Jerome Keating about Peng Ming-min, especially if you don't get what the Taiwan independence movement is all about. Peng was the Democratic Progressive Party's first presidential candidate back in 1996, also about the time I first arrived in Taipei. Peng's running mate was Frank Hsieh, who I now one of the DPP's presidential candidates this time around. They lost to Lee Teng-hui, but I still remember my first landlords referring to them as president and vice president. Do yourself a favor and read Jerome's piece about this fascinating life.

Why the name changes? Here's why.

2007-04-25T21:38:00.000+08:00

Via The View From Taiwan, this excellent rundown on the rationale for renaming currently going on in Taiwan.

As part of this program, the Taiwanese government is pursuing a campaign to rename numerous state-controlled institutions. In 1949, when the Chinese Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war against the Communists and relocated the national government of the Republic of China to Taipei, they brought with them a host of the Republic’s state cultural, industrial and administrative organizations. These were maintained as a part of their forty year claim to be China’s legitimate government. The current government is removing these references to the Nationalists’ party-state and their legacy of nation-building on Taiwan in the name of China.

So China Post has been renamed Taiwan Post; the state China Petrochemical Company is now CPC, Taiwan; even the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, the grand square and monument to Taiwan’s former military strongman in central Taipei, has been renamed the Taiwan Democracy Memorial.

The naming issue is a cause of unease and a degree of confusion for the international community. The sharp response by the US State Department to the recent Taiwanese moves was modulated more by the Chinese reaction than a coherent position on the importance or otherwise of naming. Western governments generally have seemed to regard names as a rather eccentric preoccupation of the Chinese and Taiwanese, lying merely on the surface of their real regional geo-politics. The Chinese and Taiwanese, however,steeped in the intellectual heritage of Confucianism and its understanding of socio-political knowledge, have long understood the way names, and language generally, are the basis of politics and social structure. Naming defines the boundaries of power. In this, Confucius was something of a post-modernist, and two and a half thousand years later Western social theory has caught up in the work of writers such as Jacques Derrida.

The renaming program is just the most recent aspect in a campaign of post-authoritarian reckoning which has been going on in different forms for twenty years in Taiwan. The government is deploying the instruments of the state to redraw the boundaries of the island’s identity and history so that it is known as specifically Taiwanese. In so doing it consolidates the very basis of Taiwan’s political sovereignty.

The Taiwan that is being renamed by the government as “Taiwan” incorporates a distinctive island history. The received international shorthand for Taiwan’s history is to say that it “split from the mainland in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war”, but this is a very contingent and politicized reading. In Taiwan, a counter-narrative has been established over many decades which understands its history as a continuous narrative of its fraught location on the overlapping boundaries of the European, Manchu, Japanese and Chinese states which have ruled over it for four hundred years. Taiwan has an indigenous people who are Pacific islanders; its first modern government was a Dutch colonial administration in the 17th century, before being governed by the Manchu Qing dynasty until it became a colony of Japan in 1895. Taiwan was passed to the Chinese Republic in 1945 as part of an Allied agreement, and in 1947, the Taiwanese launched an uprising against Chinese Nationalist rule, which was brutally crushed. It was only then in 1949 that the national government of the Republic relocated to Taipei.

I find this a little scary

2007-04-23T22:18:00.000+08:00

Atrios, commenting on a reader poll at Daily Kos:

A significant (not a majority or most, but significant) number of respondents basically read the Daily Kos and not much else. Their view of blogging is Kos-centric. That is, it isn't really about liberal blogs generally it's all about the Home of the Great Orange Satan.

I'll avoid the temptation to go deeply into this, but I think a lot of the social dynamic that plays out there and elsewhere can be explained in part by this. Us outsiders see Kos as one blog among many, if a very highly trafficked blog, and his voice one among many many many voices on the blog (the other front pagers, the prominence of the recommended diaries, etc...). Some insiders and former insiders see it as the center of the universe.

I've been a regular reader of Kos, and occasional sidebar diarist, since about May or June 2003 when I got swept up in the Dean craze. I think it was Joe Trippi who pointed me there. I usually start my day at the orange site, but not just to read what Markos says. I usually glance over what the front pagers (Markos included) write, then see what's up with the recommended diaries. From there, I pick some of my favorites from the blogroll, my first pick usually being mydd.com. Unfortunately Markos got rid of some of my regular sites (like liberaloasis.com), most of which have links on this site.

The idea that there are people that only read Kos, though, just gives me a weird feeling. I have always considered myself an outsider there, part of the community, but not attached to it. I think it provides a great service, a wonderful cacophony of voices. Some I agree with; some I do not. No, I don't always agree with Markos either. Sometimes, the verbal attacks in the comment section are bothersome, but to be honest, I don't really go there for the comments. I mean, sometimes I will scan them, but there are just too many. In fact, I am more likely to read the comments on less trafficked sites; it's easier to digest them.

Well, not much more to say about this. I just find it amazing that in the vast multiversal un-structure of the blogosphere, there are those who every day, several times a day, maybe even all day long, only visit one orange mansion.

I can live with this

2007-04-21T20:41:00.000+08:00

Brian Williams' explanation of why NBC aired video sent to them by a mass murderer. Makes sense. At the same time, I don't think there was anything wrong with people questioning NBC's motives. It is a nice gesture that Williams bothered to respond and explain their decision-making process. It shows that they are not beyond judgment or accountability, and that they are not somehow separate from the audience who views their broadcast. Williams demonstrated a level of transparency and humanity that I find commendable. That said, I'm still not sure how I would have handled the situation myself. Does it help to transform a killer into a martyr, one that future killers will look back to as a symbol? I don't know

Is Taiwan Chinese?

2007-04-11T21:07:00.000+08:00

Michael has a great post that asks what it means to be Chinese?

Anyone who has been around Taiwan for any length of time knows that the claim that "Taiwan preserves Chinese culture better than the mainland" is an old KMT propaganda chestnut. Such claims of "preserved" cultures that view traditional culture as both identifiable and unchanging are romantic fantasies of the western colonial era, but more fundamentally, they beg the question of what is meant by "Chinese culture."

Looking at Taiwan, what does one see? Taiwan has a democratic government -- there is nothing else like it in Chinese history, and a growing awareness and appreciation for democracy -- also a rarity in Chinese history. The educational system and police structure are European filtered through Japanese colonialism and postwar authoritarianism. Japanese influence is enormous, from food and fashion to technology. The business culture is an ecletic blend of imported ideas like double entry bookkeeping and local ideas like guanxi networks. For breakfast I can get a "western" breakfast of a layer sandwich that is entirely a local cuisine, or I can eat a Chinese breakfast consisted of foods updated by modern technology and altered thereby, whose ancestral dishes stem from the continent next door. I drive on western-style roads, in western-style cars....well, I could go on forever. Just what's "Chinese" about Taiwan? (Purely as an aside -- why does technology always disappear when we talk about culture? None of the tech now used on Taiwan is of recent Chinese vintage. The major shaping influences are all western).

Well, on the other hand, just about everything, one could answer. The local languages are all Chinese languages, except for the aboriginal tongues. Cultural ideals about women, the family, child-raising, male and female relations, politics, sex, religion, power -- many deriving from "Chinese culture," (again, except for aborigines) but as for actual culture practices? Your mileage may vary. What people say about themselves, and how they actually behave, are very different things.

The only reason anyone even raises the "Is Taiwan Chinese" issue is because Taiwan's alleged "Chineseness" is a claim that is part of the package of assertions that Beijing makes about Taiwan to support its drive to annex the island. Definitions like "Is Taiwan Chinese?" are a matter of values, not facts, only worth arguing about over beer -- unless some predatory power decides to base a foreign policy on them. It's a shame that an academic who says he knows better has nevertheless chosen to use a highly debateable title that is so useful to Beijing.

Virtual Town Hall Meeting

2007-04-07T00:40:00.000+08:00

On Tuesday, April 10, 7:15 PM, MoveOn will be holding a virtual town hall meeting, at which MoveOn members will have the opportunity to ask Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Joe Biden about their views on Iraq.

Sign up here to attend a local virtual town hall house party.

The creeping authoritarianism

2007-03-24T10:43:00.000+08:00

Digby has another fantastic post--this time, a smack down of Michael Kinsley, who seems to be averse to the Democrats using their subpoena power to investigate Bush administration's scandals. Kinsley thinks it all should just be a question of voters deciding at the ballot box. Digby responds:

If Kinsley truly believes that the way to deal with this kind of thing is simply to win elections (and I assume lead by example) then it's doubly important to rein in this authoritarian impulse and establish with the public that they will not play the game this way. It is not enough in our cynical time to simply say that they will turn over a new leaf. They must show how far the other side has gone and ensure that they are held responsible for it.

I've watched this creeping authoritarianism for more than 30 years now. It's not a figment of my imagination and I'm damned tired of jaded political pundits telling me to lighten up. These same people told me that it didn't matter if Ronald Reagan had a secret government working out of the basement of the white house (Oliver North is so awesome in his uniform!) and it didn't matter if George Bush Sr pardoned all the criminals in that scandal and it didn't matter if a partisan congress impeached a president over sex. We were told to "get over it" when Bush's henchmen manipulated every political lever they could find in his brother's and father's political machinery to take office in 2000 --- and then decided to govern as if they'd won in a landslide. Then came illegal war, torture, spying on citizens, denial of habeas corpus and all the rest. Excuse me, but I'm not going to sit around and chuckle knowingly that this is "just the way it is." It isn't. History proves that very bad things can happen to good countries. Only fools pretend that great nations can't go down the wrong road.

Destination or Process?

2007-03-23T21:46:00.000+08:00

Some people view life as a destination to be reached. They speak in terms of settling down, reaching one's life-goals--an arrival. To them, the ends are more important than the means. Mistakes along the way are viewed as failures. Their view of research is the same: it is either right or it is wrong. They dismiss an entire work because of the presence of a few factual errors.

There is another group--into which I am more likely to fit--that views life more as a process, a series of stages, mile points, cyclical motions, falling down, getting up, being stupid, figuring things out. From this perspective, the mistakes and failings are all part of the journey, rather than just pitfalls to be avoided. Well, one can only hope that the product of previous mess-ups (if one has a mind to learn) would be increased wisdom, and the more wisdom, the fewer mess-ups. But that is different than saying one has arrived somewhere permanently.

This is just ridiculous!

2007-03-19T22:00:00.000+08:00

Why can't the Democrats do a better job guarding their headquarters? I don't know how many times I've heard about break-ins at Democratic headquarters, going all the way back to the Watergate break-in. Perhaps there were other such happenings before that. Now there's this!!! Just hire a security company. Put up cameras. And don't let them steal your game plane, or commit other such mischief.

Flags are powerful symbols

2007-03-18T08:21:00.000+08:00

From the AP:

When artist John Sims sees the Confederate flag, he sees "visual terrorism," and a symbol of a racist past. When Robert Hurst sees the flag, he is filled with pride as the descendant of a soldier who fought for the South during the Civil War.

Their differences have flared into a war of words, catching a local museum in the middle.

Hurst walked into the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science this past week and saw an exhibit by Sims, including a Confederate flag hung from a noose on a 13-foot gallows in a display titled "The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag."

Hurst asked the museum to remove the display, along with 13 other pieces by Sims.

The museum, however, announced Friday it is standing by Sims' work, on display since Feb. 26, because it wants to inspire dialogue in the community about a symbol that engenders a diversity of strong responses.

"There's a balance between the nature of the art that we show and the outcome that we seek, which is to promote dialogue and conversation, and have you maybe think of something in a slightly different way," said Chucha Barber, the museum's executive director.

In this case, I would likely stand behind the museum and the artist. I am not in all cases against the display of such flags and symbols; it all depends on the purpose of the display. Is it because you want to glorify (and bring back) what is being represented? Or do you have educational purposes? Are you saying that what is being represented should never happen again? Are you trying to get people to think?

I liked the museum's reaction to protests against its display of the confederate flag:

The museum, however, announced Friday it is standing by Sims' work, on display since Feb. 26, because it wants to inspire dialogue in the community about a symbol that engenders a diversity of strong responses.

"There's a balance between the nature of the art that we show and the outcome that we seek, which is to promote dialogue and conversation, and have you maybe think of something in a slightly different way," said Chucha Barber, the museum's executive director.

Update on the potential problem of romanticizing Nazism in Taiwan

2007-03-13T21:18:00.000+08:00

Some of you may remember a couple of posts (see here and here) I wrote last year about a Nazi flag I saw hanging from someone's window as I was traveling on the Danshui line of the metro. Most people thought I was making a big ado about nothing. I described at the time a debate I had with a friend about the display of a Nazi swastika:

He thinks that these displays of Nazi-era Germany are meaningless, and that the people displaying them are clueless about what happened. They are just doing it for fun. Or else it is just a small clique within Taipei society--the displays part of their fashion.

It is possible that this is a harmless fad, a group of people who think it is all a fun game, and that the symbols look cool. It is also possible that they are unfamiliar with the holocaust. I remember visiting Dachau when I was in college and seeing the George Santayana quote for the first time: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

The making light of the holocaust by displaying its symbols for fun is already a dangerous act; it is a forgetting. Is it possible that children in Taiwan--that children anywhere--aren't learning about the holocaust. I don't mean to focus solely on what happened in Europe; genocides have occurred throughout history and humankind still has not learned.

But I also wonder if there is something more nepharious afoot. Is someone purposely exporting the items to Taiwan and elsewhere--either a local or a foreigner--as a way of propagating some kind of ideology? How was it that these symbols came to Taiwan? And how do the people who display them interpret them?

In my second post on the subject, I felt the need to clarify some issues. One was that I knew the Nazis had co-opted an ancient symbol; I knew (and know) that Buddhists (and others) have a similar symbol. The following was also important for me to say:

Lastly, I would like to clear up a few points in my last post. I was not arguing that Taiwanese people are anti-semitic. The thought never even crossed my mind. I wasn't even making a case about anti-semitism. The latter is partly because I prefer not frame this kind of phenomenon as "what they did to us," but instead choose the frame: "what humans have done to each other." To me, the swastika is but one symbol of mass violence that humans have produced, and there is the potential for such violence in any society. That is why we should remember--to prevent it from happening again and to not glorify or romanticize the symbols of its manifestation in former times.

Months passed and I stopped thinking about the issue. Then, a few days ago, a friend of mine--Angelica Oung--who is a reporter for the Taipei Times told me about an article she read in the Apple Daily, which discussed a group of students in Taiwan who have formed a Nazi organization. As Michael Turton mentioned on his blog, Taiwan News then picked up the story:

Twenty university students yesterday founded an association with Adolf Hitler as its inspiration, and set themselves the goal of turning Taiwan into a Nazi country in a bid to show their extreme dissatisfaction with the continuous political squabbling that pervades life in Taiwanese society these days, according to local Chinese-language media reports.

The National Socialism Association presently has over 800 members on its books, most of whom are university or high-school students, according to information on the association's Web site.

One co-founder of the association, surnamed Hsu, announced plans to invite all members to hold a meeting next Saturday, explaining that supporters will be clearly told that the NSA aims to seize the reins of government.

"We will find a quiet place to discuss the association's future with our members earnestly," the 22-year-old Hsu was quoted as saying.

Hsu, who graduated from the political department of Soochow University last year, noted that she was so fed up with all the political wrangling between the ruling and opposition parties that she and several other followers of Nazi ideology decided to found the association.

It is hoped that they could transform Taiwan into a Nazi country, said Hsu.

Angelica and I then met in Beitou this past Sunday. She was writing a story about this new Taiwanese Nazi party and wanted to interview me about my reaction when I first saw the swastika from the metro:

What Alberts saw was a red swastika flag hanging from a window in an apartment building near the MRT line.

"It is a very ... potent symbol. I couldn't help but notice," Alberts said. "What is it doing in Taipei?"

After the interview, we then walked to the apartment building with the Nazi flag. The big question was whether or not this person was connected to the Nazi association.

My initial thought when Angelica mentioned a Nazi group in Taiwan, especially after seeing their website, was that they were children of conservative families who came from China in the forties, which still held a grudge over the loss of the "mainland"--families that still dreamed of the heyday of their beloved Republic of China and that weren't exactly happy with the move to multi-party democracy. Just a hunch.

I'll let Angelica, who has since written the definitive story on the subject up to this point, finish the story:

With Alberts' help, the Taipei Times located the apartment in which the Nazi flag was displayed. It was located in a gated community in Tienmu. A man in his late thirties answered the door and agreed to speak to us, on condition of anonymity.

"Hitler did a lot of bad things which I don't condone, but he also turned Germany from a weak and divided nation into a world power," he said. "I admire that because unity and strength is what Taiwan needs. Democracy and capitalism have their good qualities, but they have left our collective spirit chaotic, flagging and mired in defeatism."

These comments mirrored the rhetoric found on the NSA blog.

"We have seen relentless societal and political chaos since democracy was instituted in this country ... wake up, youths of Taiwan!" an open letter said.

However, the man claimed he had never heard of the NSA and had a view of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) legacy that was diametrically opposed to Hsu's.

"Taiwan used to be a part of the axis as a part of Japan," he said. "Who did more for Taiwan than Goto Shinpei as the governor-general?"

"When the KMT came, they were the brutal occupiers, they oppressed the Taiwanese," the man said.

Asked if he believed he would have fit in society if Taiwan were still under Japanese occupation, the man replied: "I am in contact with hard-right [sic] elements in Japan ... they all love Taiwanese people. If the KMT did not take over Taiwan, I believe that in time we would have been accepted as Japanese." Read the whole article...

Two similar yet opposed views both identifying with the same political symbol, the same powerful leader, the same ideology--both looking to an earlier time before democracy and capitalism--both lamenting the current weak state of their country and dreaming of a time when there was unity and strength and prosperity. Funny (or not so funny) how both selectively overlook the tremendous loss of life that was the flip side of their naive daydream.

The Duty of the Press

2007-03-12T22:25:00.000+08:00

Digby says:

This isn't brain surgery. A reporter's privilege should not be used to help powerful people in government lie to the public about what it's doing or punish its enemies for speaking out against it. It exists to protect people who are risking their livlihoods by speaking out against those same powerful people. This is not hard for rational people to understand and yet in Washington they are so confused by their relationships with the powerful that they seem to be speaking in tongues on this issue.

The political press is not a monolith. There are incredible reporters like Priest who have done extraordinary work under very difficult circumstances. We can't do without them. But the insider culture of Washington that McEnroe describes in his piece above is a decadent and insular little circle of celebrity and power that has affirmatively harmed this country. The Libby trial opened up that fetid boil and did this country a favor. I'm not surprised that they are squealing as loudly as they can --- or that the rightwing freakshow is behaving as if they were born yesterday. After all, they all know they are compromised. They just didn't think we did.

Read the whole post...

Blood on the streets

2007-02-23T23:43:00.000+08:00

This coming Wednesday marks the 60th anniversary of the 228 Incident (Massacre), which occurred (or began) on February 28, 1947, and still animates many of the political disputes in contemporary Taiwan, the animosity between green and blue, the decisions to de-Sinify (as some call it), the distrust of overtures of peaceful liberation coming from Beijing. Memories of what happened still lurk beneath the surface of Taiwanese society.

If you don't know what happened, then PLEASE read the article quoted in full below. It first appeared in the May 24, 1947 issue of The Nation. You can also find more US media articles on 228, written in 1947, at this excellent site. Wikipedia also has a good rundown. I'll keep looking for relevant sites. If you know of any sites that would open our eyes further to what happened, or have wisdom to share, please let us know in the comments.

5/24/47, The Nation

Terror in Taiwan

By Peggy Durdin

On February 27 a policeman of the Taiwan (Formosa) Monopoly Bureau saw a woman selling smuggled cigarettes on the streets of the capital, Taipei. When he tried to seize her tray and money, she pulled away, and he struck her a crashing blow on the head with his revolver butt. She died at his feet. An angry mob gathered, and the police shot into the crowd, killing one person and wounding others. Forthwith a year and a half of gathering hatred for an inefficient, autocratic, corrupt administration exploded into unarmed demonstrations against the mainland Chinese.

China put down the revolt with brutal repression, terror, and massacre. Mainland soldiers and police fired first killing thousands indiscriminately; then, more selectively, hunted down and jailed or slaughtered students, intellectuals, prominent business men, and civic leaders. Foreigners estimate that at least five thousand Taiwanese were killed and executions are still going on.

Governor General Chen Yi has turned a movement against bad government into one against any Chinese government. Nanking has again demonstrated that its chief solution for political and economic crisis is force. In spite of a curtain of censorship and official misrepresentation, the tragic events that took place in Formosa in March are well known here.

The Chinese government owns, controls, and operates -- for government profit and personal squeeze -- almost the entire economy of Taiwan. one of the articles whose importation and sale are rigidly controlled is tobacco. Many Taiwanese street venders sell smuggled cigarettes. It was in the course of a campaign against the sale of smuggled goods that the woman was killed in Taipei.

The rioting which followed was not consciously revolutionary but was against the hated monopoly police which symbolized for the people the government's exploitation of their island. Unarmed processions marched to the government offices to demand punishment of the policemen, compensation for the dead and wounded, and dismissal of the head of the tobacco monopoly. They beat to death two policemen in front of the tobacco monopoly's office and burned the stocks of tobacco. Police guarding the Governor's office raked the crowd with machine-gun fire without provocation.

Barricaded in its offices, the government lost control of the city. Shops closed. Transportation broke down. Mobs of Taiwanese, still unarmed, beat up a number of mainland Chinese and burned their possessions, though not their homes. Truckloads of police rushed through Taipei's streets machine gunning the demonstrators while Governor Chen Yi was busily broadcasting conciliatory promises. During this period not a single foreigner saw an armed Taiwanese.

With calculated trickery Chen Yi continued his efforts to appease the people while he waited for military reinforcements. On March 2, over the radio, he expressed his love for the Taiwanese, and promised that none would be prosecuted for rioting, that the families of the dead would be compensated, and that he would appoint a committee to settle the incident. This group composed of mainlanders and representative Taiwanese, most of whom have since been shot, was to be known as the "Committee to Settle the February 28th Incident" and was to present to him by March 10 their suggestions for the reform of the administration.

Though efforts of the committee Taipei and the near by port of Keelung became quiet. Students patrolled the streets, keeping order. Many of these students are now dead.

Meanwhile the spark ignited in Taipei had spread down the whole length of Taiwan. In the first few days of March the Taiwanese took over the administration of almost every city. As far as can be discovered, they seized control in most instances without the use of firearms. Violence was usually limited to beatings, though some officials were killed.

On March 7 Chen Yi's committee handed in its recommendations. Reasonably enough, they included the following: that Taiwan be given provincial, not colonial status; that provincial magistrates and city mayors be elected before June; that a larger proportion of Taiwanese be given administrative, police, and judicial posts; that all special police be abolished and no political arrests be permitted; that freedom of press and speech and the right to strike be granted; that managers of all public enterprises be Taiwanese; that committees be elected to supervise these public enterprises and the factories taken over from the Japanese; that the trade and monopoly bureaus be abolished; that the political and economic rights of aborigines be guaranteed; that Taiwanese be appointed to as many army, navy, and airforce posts in Taiwan as possible; that detained "war criminals" be released (Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire for fifty-one years); that the central government repay Taiwan for the expropriated sugar and rice; that garrison headquarters be abolished "to avoid misuse of military might." These proposals were not presented as an ultimatum. They were clearly a basis for negotiation. Chen Yi had already agreed to most of the points.

At noon on March 8 the commander of the Fourth Gendarme Regiment told the committee that its demands for political reform were "proper," but asked that it withdraw its demand for the abolition of garrisons. He said, "I will guarantee with my life that the central government will not take military action against Taiwan." At this point, although most of the island was still in the hands of the people, Chen Yi could have reached an agreement with them which would have insured the Nanking government's continued control of Taiwan and the cooperation of the Taiwanese. He only needed to move honestly toward reform. But he had at no time any intention of establishing peace by compromise. This was revolt; he would crush it. He was obliged to temporize and deceive until his troops arrived.

On the afternoon and evening of March 8, without warning or provocation, the streets of Keelung and Taipei were cleared with gunfire to cover the entry of mainland troops. These reinforcements consisted mainly of the Twenty-first Division, a Szechuan outfit with a reputation for brutality. In the next four or five days more than a thousand unarmed Taiwanese in the Taipei-Keelung area alone were massacred. A year and a half earlier many of them had joyously welcomed the arrival of the Chinese troops. Now truckloads of soldiers armed with machine guns and automatic rifles shot their way through the streets. Soldiers demanded entry into homes, killed the first person who appeared, and looted the premises. Bodies floated thick in Keelung harbor and in the river which flows by Taipei. Twenty young men were castrated, their ears cut off, and their noses slashed. A foreigner watched gendarmes cut off a young boy's hands before bayoneting him because he had not dismounted from his bicycle quickly enough. The radio advised students who had fled from the city to return to their homes, but when they did so they were killed. Any prominent person was in grave danger.

By March 14 the killing had tapered off in Taipei. In other cities the
terror followed the same pattern.

While this legalized slaughter was at its height, Chiang Kai-shek told the audience at the weekly memorial service in Nanking that Taiwan would have constitutional rights "at an early date." The recent riots, he revealed assuringly, were "instigated by Communists." He admonished the erring people of Taiwan to "abide by law and not become an instrument of traitorous cliques."

Terror has won temporarily in Taiwan; the island is sullenly quiet. At this writing Governor Chen Yi has not yet been dismissed, in spite of a resolution passed by the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang several weeks ago.* Chen Yi has important friends. Moreover, to dismiss him promptly would mean loss of face; it is more tactful to let him resign, in good time. A Taiwanese who had spent his adult life in anti-Japanese activity said to me bitterly during the height of the terror, "The Generalissimo won't dismiss Chen Yi now. That would be an admission that he and the government had made mistakes. But hundreds of Taiwanese die every day that Chen Yi saves face."

The Minister of National Defense, Pai Chung-hsi, sent by the Generalissimo to Taiwan to investigate the affair and "comfort" the mainland Chinese, has denied any reprisals against the Taiwanese; the rioters were simply pursued, arrested, and punished. There were no atrocities, he said, giving the lie to foreign eyewitnesses. "Chinese troops have been instructed by the government not to commit any atrocities; so it is not possible for them to commit any atrocities in Formosa or anywhere in China," he explained. While he admitted that there were defects in the Chinese administration of Taiwan, Pai blamed the revolt on Japanese influence and on the Communists. Not a single neutral observer, however, accepts Pai's or the Generalissimo's statement that Communists instigated or directed the riots. None believes that Communists have any influence at present in Taiwan. However, shortly after news of the massacre began to leak through to China, the Yenan radio claimed that hundreds of Taiwan soldiers in Kuomintang armies on the Shantung front were deserting to the Communists. Certainly Chen Yi has followed the procedure most likely to cause the development of a flourishing Communist movement in Taiwan.

A group of Japanese-trained gangsters and ronins undoubtedly participated in the uprising, but they did not start it. Foreign observers in Taipei state categorically that the sole cause of the revolt was the flagrant misrule of the Chinese mainlanders. The Taiwanese had repeatedly and fruitlessly petitioned for reform. It is not surprising that they finally acted.

* Since Miss Durdin wrote, Chen Yi has been removed, and Dr. Wei Tao-Ming has been appointed governor of Formosa. -- Editors, The Nation.

The ways of Washington must change

2007-02-12T22:32:00.000+08:00

Another line from Obama's speech I liked:

I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness - a certain audacity - to this announcement. I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.

Choosing my presidential candidate

2007-02-11T21:03:00.000+08:00

I am still undecided about my favorite among the batch of Democratic presidential candidates, but the words from Obama's announcement for president struck a chord with me:

My work took me to some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods. I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant closings. I saw that the problems people faced weren't simply local in nature - that the decision to close a steel mill was made by distant executives; that the lack of textbooks and computers in schools could be traced to the skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away; and that when a child turns to violence, there's a hole in his heart no government could ever fill.

It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith.

After three years of this work, I went to law school, because I wanted to understand how the law should work for those in need. I became a civil rights lawyer, and taught constitutional law, and after a time, I came to understand that our cherished rights of liberty and equality depend on the active participation of an awakened electorate. It was with these ideas in mind that I arrived in this capital city as a state Senator.

It was here, in Springfield, where I saw all that is America converge - farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard. I made lasting friendships here - friends that I see in the audience today.

It was here we learned to disagree without being disagreeable - that it's possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst.

This piece on Obama by David Sirota (I Want to Believe) is also worth consideration, as is Zack Exley's advice for Obama (Will Obama Put on the Makeup).

The provenance of my on-line name

2007-02-03T21:41:00.000+08:00

For those who would like to know why I call myself Wulingren, or at least part of the reason why, first read the translation of Tao Yuanming's, "The Peach Blossom Spring" here, and then watch the very nice animated retelling below. It is less than 8 minutes long, and well worth watching.

Ah, that's such a beautiful story. I read it in my second-year classical Chinese class more than ten years ago, and the moment I poured my soul into deciphering it, it became perhaps my favorite piece of writing in Chinese. There was a resonance, one I have felt on several occasions since, like the time I happened upon the Bunun Tribal Area (That was a particularly prolific period of my blogger existence).

The animation is produced by Chu Bang Fu (Chu Bong-Foo):

...the inventor of the Cangjie method in 1976,the first Chinese input System which is still widely used today. He is named as "The father of the modern Chinese computing". He also invented Chinese computer with Acer in 1979,Chinese Windows in 1990,Chinese E-Book device in 2001,Chinese CPU such as V-Dragon SCS3210 with IBM in 2004,etc,. Now he is doing research about mass-production 3D software system to produce thousands of animation works with Chinese culture spirit.

Wikipedia has more about Chu and the Cangjie method, which I must say I have never understood.

Beginnings of a sketch of how Taipei came to be the way it is

2007-01-01T20:19:00.000+08:00

I hope you are all ready for it; here is the first stroke on the page. Since March, I have been wondering (sitting with my head hunched forward, propped up by my hand bent backwards, like a great sculpture I know you have seen)--I have been wondering about this: How has Taipei developed into the metropolis that it is?

It is not a city like Beijing or Xi'an with an imperial plan radiating outward from a numinous center. It is not one of those grid-like American cities or an urban European landscape with medieval roots stemming from a network of multiple gilds, but in some ways, perhaps more like the latter. And yet, also in the same vein as Los Angeles modernity, though more rustic and run down and gritty and oozing history that seems to splash out all over and from the myriad consciousnesses that inhabit the city--each an immigrant in its own way at its own time. The question is when and how many can say they are truly original inhabitants? That person I would like to meet.

So, I was wondering how Taipei came to be the way it is. Until recently, I haven't been able to find many good books on the subject. There are substantial sections in many local bookstores on the history of Taiwan, but little on the history of neighborhoods in Taipei, really, separate towns, and how they merged into to this one big, magnificent urban wonder. Yes, there are some books in Chinese, though mostly with little detail, or at least with little of the kind of detail I have been looking for.

In English, there is even less, though Culture Taipei! A Guidebook for Thinking Travelers by Christopher Logan and Teresa Hsu is one exception; it includes an excellent overview of Taipei's history. It is from this book that I first got the idea of Taipei as several towns:

Taipei reached its full growth only recently. In its infancy, the city was a cluster of small towns, which were gradually absorbed by the growing metropolis after World War II. Modernization has been quite thorough, but for a few streets and buildings.

Recently, I also discovered this article by Joseph R. Allen via Michael Turton's site. Entitled "Reading Taipei: Cultural Traces in a Cityscape," it seems to be exactly what the doctor ordered. I should post on it in the near future.

So far, I have just set up the frame. Now for the first stroke. Today, I walked out of the Shuanglian Metro Station in search of a topic for my show on different professions in Taiwan. I walked across the street from the number 1 exit towards the traditional market that bustles all along the modern metro construction. My md player was recording sounds as I walked aimlessly on the scent of a fascinating profession.

After making a circular pilgrimage through the market, I found my way back to Minsheng West Road. Behind me was Chungshan North Road, which the Japanese built to lead travelers to the shinto shrine that once stood in the place of the Grand Hotel.

I walked away from that imperial avenue towards Tihua Street, in the heart of Tataocheng. Tihua Street is one of those streets--reminders of the past--that still survive.

I stopped by a store on Minsheng selling all sorts of religious images (statues, posters, lanterns, etc.) After lurking in front of the shop for several moments, I finally discovered the courage that propelled me forward into the shop; I told the shopkeeper where I work, and asked her if she would grant me an interview. She said she only sold this stuff, but it would be better to go to go to a shop on Tihua Street, called Lao Mien Cheng, where they make the lanterns.

So, I hovered westward on Minsheng with my md player recording most of the sounds along the way. Finally, I arrived at the shop highlighted in the previous paragraph and sat down on a little chair for a chat with the shop's owner, Chang Mei-mei. Her family has lived in the area for generations. The conversation got even more interesting when her brother, Chang Ming-hsiung (he has an excellent website if you read Chinese), a historian of Taipei, happened to show up.

I learned a lot today. Like many on the beautiful island, the Chang family came to Taiwan from Fujian a few hundred years ago. They were fisherman, but became rice farmers after crossing the strait. They were in San-chung, not far from Taipei, and then moved to Wanhua--Taipei's first port--and finally settled in Tataocheng, when that replaced Wanhua in the 19th century.

During their great grandparent's generation, one side of the family were tea farmers and the other side made paper packaging for the tea. In 1915, they set up the present shop to sell ghost money to people in the south. The paper came from China. Then, about 50 years ago, they began to also manufacture paper lanterns.

Tataocheng大稻埕: This was originally an aboriginal settlement with a much smaller radius, near what is now Kuei-sui Street. Chinese people started filtering into the area, and if I understood correctly, people from Keelung and from Wanhua competed for control (this fact might need to be revised). Around the time of the American Civil War, Tataocheng became Taipei's inner port when the Danshui River started to silt up near Wanhua, making it difficult for ships to enter. The town of Danshui remained the outer port where the big ships to set anchor.

The other towns (Chang Ming-hsiung said they were more like old streets): Wanhua (Lungshan Temple), Sungshan, Talungtong (near the Yuanshan Metro Station, the Confucius Temple, Pao-an Temple), Shilin, and Peitou (where I live).

Quote of the day

2007-01-01T09:48:00.000+08:00

Hunter on Saddam:

The hanging of Saddam Hussein seems one of those things that people are almost obligated to comment on, even though the real-world impact seems destined to be basically nil, or nil with footnotes attached, anyway. Saddam became irrelevant the moment he was booted from power; the rest of his story was denouement. Though, one can imagine, not to him....

I can safely say that I have no pity for Saddam. But I have a great deal of pity for us, and I will regret his death only because of the unambiguous moral superiority it would have shown to keep the cretin alive and imprisoned -- a moral superiority that is above us, and will apparently forever remain so.
Saddam is dead. Another tin-cup Ozymandias, another man in history unworthy of the sand that covers him. Truly and without remorse, good riddance. He follows hundreds of thousands of better souls who, unlike him, deserved none of it. Let his requiem be a brief verbal farting of Fox News pundits, followed by the silence of eternity.

May the rest of us deserve better fates.

This is funny

2006-12-31T23:11:00.000+08:00

Taipei and Kaohsiung Mayoral elections

2006-12-10T13:01:00.000+08:00

All of your election questions are answered over at Taiwan Matters. See also Michael Turton's surprise reflections. Check out Jerome Keating's analysis later today. Also a lot of good stuff at Taipei Times.

Pour some cement on the mushy middle

2006-11-14T09:57:00.000+08:00

Atrios dispels some myths about "independent" and "swing voters":

I think the big issue here is the perpetual confusion of "independent" and "swing voters" with some concept of "centrist" or "moderate" which is generally put out by the press, when in reality these people are often low information voters who are likely to vote for someone "who knows what s/he stands for" instead of someone who has mushy middle distinctions-without-differences policy positions. There are tribal Democrats, tribal Republicans, and some genuine "can be convinced on the issues" voters. But most of the people up for grabs "in the middle" aren't really in the middle in any sense that we understand it. Instead, they vote their gut and are proud of it.

Besides, if you run a mushy middle candidacy, they're still going to run commercials calling you a crazy liberal who's going to make your son marry a dude and raise taxes to 100%. I see it happen over and over.

Chris Bowers for Philadelphia Mayor

2006-11-14T09:44:00.000+08:00

Only if he wants to, but at least read this:

There are two specific narratives that I find absurd. First, there is the notion that people win elections by moving either to the left, the right or the center. This is one of the most pathetic types of lame, D.C. based thinking used to describe what is ultimately a broadly non-ideological electorate. The second type of narrative, which I find far more preposterous--and actually offensive--is the notion that elections are won by either one or a small handful of high-level consultants / party leaders in some backroom somewhere. That is just flat-out crap, and it need to be called such. Ultimately, voters and the American people swing elections. As much as the media seems to have forgotten, this is still a democracy in America, and when there is a change in power, it happens because the American people wanted a change in power. It didn't happen because they were tricked, scammed, or otherwise manipulated by a small number of consultants and / or party leaders hiding behind a curtain somewhere. Yet still, after every election that results in a change in power, one man behind the curtain or another is anointed by the media as the primary cause of the change in power: Atwater, Carville, Gingrich, Luntz, Begala, Rove, Rahm, etc. The message they want us to hear is that this very small list of people are responsible for changes in power in America, which is just a cynical, patronizing, aristocratic, anti-democratic, bullshit message to send out to Americans and to our democracy.

And there is something else too. Hundreds of thousands--millions--of Democratic and progressives activists contributed to this victory. Moving public opinion for even 5% of the electorate is extremely difficult, and there is no way it could have been accomplished without a broad-based, team effort. Everyone deserves credit and congratulation. However, not everyone is getting credit, and there are even some elements in the leadership of the Democratic Party who want to prevent certain others from receiving any credit. There are those who still say the netroots are destructive to the party, that Howard Dean is destructive to the party, and that the left-wing is destructive to the party. The thing is, that the netroots, Howard Dean and the party's left-wing all worked their asses off to help Democrats win this cycle, and our thanks for that is to be punched in the nose by Carville, Tauscher, Rahm, and a whole bunch of others. That is just offensive and bound to lead to increasing internal strife within the party. We are not Dobson-ites demanding tow Supreme Court justices and a Constitutional amendment. A step in the right direction might be to actually say thank you, and that you appreciate our efforts. You must read on....

The Oregon mail-in voting model

2006-11-07T23:06:00.001+08:00

Sounds right to me:

1. My ballot and voter's pamphlet arrived by mail about three weeks ahead of election day.

2. My ballot could be mailed in at any time, or dropped off at a community collection center during the week preceding the election. I opted for this and dropped my ballot off at a neighborhood grocery store last Wednesday. I got a round of applause from the volunteers when I walked in, ballot in hand. I voted, bought myself a cookie from the bakery, and was done in five minutes.

3. I went online yesterday and verified that my ballot had been received by my county auditor's office.

One of the heroes of this election

2006-11-07T22:48:00.000+08:00

Digby says it best:

There are a lot of heroes in this election, but my personal vote goes to Michael J. Fox. It takes guts to go up against the GOP character assassination machine and that guy did it with humor and nobility. I hope for their sakes that all those heartless losers who went after him, including the first lady, who didn't have the class to stay out of the mud, never have to face what he is facing. They don't have the character to deal with it and they don't care about curing it. It was one of the lowest things I've ever seen.

More on the toilet bowl restaurant

2006-11-06T22:32:00.000+08:00

By the way, I tried the toilet bowl restaurant; it is called Modern Toilet (biansuo便所). The food was not bad though nothing special. It was more the novelty of it all. It was kind of loud though, with all those teenagers running around. The worst part was that they didn't serve our soft serve chocolate ice creams in a toilet bowl like we saw other people get.

Anyway, my brother (hey Mitch) discovered that the Toilet bowl restaurants have made it into the foreign press.

What happens next if Democrats win big on Tuesday?

2006-11-06T22:02:00.000+08:00

Bill Scher has some excellent advice that might be helpful for progressives in Taiwan as well.

I just saw another casualty involving a motor scooter

2006-10-27T13:59:00.000+08:00

Luckily, this time it was the scooter and not the driver. It was in front of the Xin Beitou Kentucky Fried Chicken. You know the one. You can't miss it coming from the metro station. The scooter was under one of those yellow minibuses and a small crowd (including I presume the driver) was gathering around the scene of the accident. It seemed as if nobody was hurt.

It wasn't like that two weeks ago on Guangming Rd, which takes you to the divide (what used to be a river, but has since been covered up and converted into a road/parking lot) between Beitou and Xin Beitou. A girl was lying on the road--motionless; someone held his hand under her neck. Her scooter was discarded to the side.

She has been in my thoughts ever since. I wonder how she is.

Then, during the very same week, I saw another similar post-accident scene on Bei-an Road, near the Grand Hotel and RTI. Again, someone appeared to be hurt.

Soon after I moved into my place in Beitou, I was walking down Quanyuan (Source of the Spring) Rd., approaching Sun Yatsen Primary School where the road forks off up the mountain. You know, there is a perpetually blinking red light there. It never changes. It never directs anyone to stop, and cars come from three different directions. Only in the morning is there a crossing guard who guides the children across the street.

Other than that, you are on your one--like the chicken who tried to get to the other side (ha ha) or frogger in the video game. Sometimes its scary...

Well, one morning (I think it was while the children were walking to school) I was walking down Quanyuan (Source of the Spring) Rd., approaching Sun Yatsen Primary School where the road forks off up the mountain. That's Xinmin (New Citizen) Rd. A car was coming down--carelessly.

Simultaneously, a motor scooter was coming down Quanyan Rd--apparently also carelessly. I think that is the direction from where the scooter was coming because before I knew it, the driver of the car was slamming on her brakes and I heard a crashing sound--the car ramming the scooter and the woman on top catapulting to the ground.

People ran over to her and she slowly stood up, in pain. She looked like she would be ok and it was a good thing she was wearing her helmut.

And still, people keep asking me why I don't get myself a scooter. I'm sorry, I'm a metro person. It's convenient and so much fun to swipe my card.

Formosans would vote for U.S. rule

2006-10-21T09:54:00.000+08:00

Michael links to this fascinating Time article about Taiwan (then known in the west as Formosa) from June 10, 1946:

World War II brought B-29 raids to Formosa, and liberation brought the scarcely more welcome visitation of Chinese bureaucracy. (Formosans use the adjective "Chinese" as a synonym for inefficiency and confusion.)

The new Chinese Governor Chen Yi found the raid-battered Formosans docile. He promptly put his nephew in charge of the Taiwan Co., which bought coal at 200 yen a ton and sold it at 4,000. Black-market gold sold at 300,000 Chinese dollars an ounce, against $180,000 in Shanghai. Even in fertile Formosa, mass starvation threatened.

Japan Got the Atom. Chen Yi rounded up scores of "collaborators" while his pooh-bahs made themselves snug. Last week "Down with the Governor!" posters appeared all over the island. In two towns, hungry natives burned sugar godowns. Formosans greeted the few visiting Americans with: "You were kind to the Japanese, you dropped the atom on them. You dropped the Chinese on us!"

Thoughtful Chinese on the mainland began to agree with the Formosans. Said Ta Rung Pao, China's counterpart of the New York Times: "Fundamentally speaking, China was not qualified to take over . . . she lacks the men . . . technique . . . commodities . . . capital. She governs, but is inefficient. She takes, but she does not give. This is the government's shame."

Most foreign observers in Formosa agreed that if a referendum were taken today Formosans would vote for U.S. rule. Second choice—Japan.

WARNING: The following post contains the F-word

2006-10-13T10:10:00.000+08:00

I'm sitting in Starbucks somewhere in Taipei. There's a guy ordering at the counter. I can only see the back of his shirt, which reads: "You fucking fuck!" The words glare out at me. And no, this is not a translation. I wouldn't even know how to begin to say that in Chinese (but if anyone can rectify my ignorance, please do so in the comments).

Anyway, he stands for a long time with his back to me. I stare on in wonder, waiting for him to turn around so I can see what is written on the front. Curiosity is killing me.

And then, he slowly rotates in my direction, and the words gradually emerge; it is like waiting for the image in the photography studio.

Aren't you as curious as I was? Can't you guess? On the front of his shirt were the words: "Fuck you!"

I guess this is one of those situations similar to the youths wearing Che Guevara shirts: He probably doesn't understand.

2006-10-11T23:34:00.000+08:00

Resign, Mayor Ma Ying-jeou!

Life in Taipei on National Day 2006.

PFP Candidate exploits traditional Taiwanese religious sensitivities

2006-10-11T22:36:00.000+08:00

Here is the next installment in my series on the relationship between religion and politics in Taiwanese society (Walk through the colon):

I've been sitting on this for a few days now; I just haven't had the time to put it down into words. On Friday--Mid-Autumn Festival--I was sitting in the Xin Beitou Starbucks trying to finish up a translation I have been working on for what seems like ages. I took a sip from my latte...

And then suddenly I heard the sound of ritual drumming outside--you know, those big red drums. I looked out the window and there was a procession of little trucks going by. They are the kind of trucks that could represent a religious or a political procession. Of course, anyone who read my last post (the one linked to above) knows that I see little distinction. Read on...

Ancestor Worship and Politics

2006-10-01T19:54:00.000+08:00

Check out my new post over at Taiwan Matters!

Letter from Thich Nhat Hanh to Bush

2006-09-30T00:04:00.000+08:00

I received this as an email today and discovered it is virally spreading around the Buddhist-inspired blogosphere, which I see is vast:

Letter from Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh to President George W Bush

Plumvillage, Sept 22, 2006

*"Our home is large enough for all of us. Let us go home as brothers and
sisters." - Ven Thich Nhat Hanh*

*Thenac, France -- *Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh recently wrote a handwritten
letter to US President George W. Bush about a dream he had of his
brother. He shared this dream of his with the President and implored Mr
Bush to rethink the situation in the Middle East. Here is the letter in
full.

*Honorable George W. Bush
*The White House
Washington DC, USA

Plum Village
Le Pey 24240
Thenac, France

Dear Mr President

Last night, I saw my brother (who died two weeks ago in the USA) coming
back to me in a dream. He was with all his children. He told me,
"Let's go home together." After a millisecond of hesitation, I told him
joyfully, "Ok, let's go."

Waking up from that dream at 5 am this morning, I thought of the
situation in the Middle East; and for the first time, I was able to cry.
I cried for a long time, and I felt much better after about one hour.
Then I went to the kitchen and made some tea. While making tea, I
realized that what my brother had said is true: our home is large enough
for all of us. Let us go home as brothers and sisters.

Mr. President, I think that if you could allow yourself to cry like I
did this morning, you will also feel much better. It is our brothers
that we kill over there. They are our brothers, God tells us so, and we
also know it. They may not see us as brothers because of their anger,
their misunderstanding, and their discrimination. But with some
awakening, we can see things in a different way, and this will allow us
to respond differently to the situation. I trust God in you; I trust
Buddha nature in you.

Thank you for reading.

In gratitude and with brotherhood,
Thich Nhat Hanh
Plum Village

Do your part!

2006-09-26T22:40:00.001+08:00

Chris Bowers analyzes six polls. Three show major victories for Democrats in November; three show only minor victories, with Republicans retaining the majority. The verdict:

Here is the point I am trying to get across: it currently is equally probable that Democrats will sweep this election to a degree surpassing Republicans in 1994, and that Democrats will make only small gains in this election. The lesson of polling right now is that two possible nations have appeared before us, and we live in them both. The truth is not in between. Our work over the next six weeks will determine which nation we will live in for years to come: the nation with the huge Democratic sweep, or the nation with the extremely narrow Republican majority? One of the main factors determining this choice is how much you--and yes, I mean you--are willing to give of yourself over the next six weeks.

If you dream of accountability, if you believe in protecting the constitution, if you believe Bush and Cheney and Rumsveld and Rice and Rove and all the other neo-cons are dangerous or incompetent or corrupt or stupid or whatever you feel they are doing wrong, then get involved. Do your part! Whether that means giving your money or time or both, then do it. Don't wait. Find your candidate(s), whether local or somewhere else, and support him/her/them.

Bizarre Meanderings of a Wandering Mind

2006-09-25T22:16:00.000+08:00

Taken to its extreme:
The view that everything is an illusion
Negates itself.
Indeed, the view that everything is an illusion
is an illusion.
And so, everything is real.
But that is also an illusion.
What then are we left with?
Between reality and illusion--
It is like adding a positive number
To a negative of equal measure.

Chinese timeline

2006-09-24T21:18:00.000+08:00

The other day, while walking underground from Zhongshan Station to Shuanglian Station, passing one bookshop after another, I came to one with classic books like Journey to the West, which I plan to read in its entirety. After browsing for awhile, I approached the counter to purchase the book about the Monkey King's journey westard, and then noticed a thin booklet called Zhongguo lidai dashi nianbiao中國歷代大事年表 (Chronology of the Great Events of the Successive Chinese Dynasties). It is actually a fold-out timeline of Chinese history, from the mythical Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns down through the mainstream dynastic line. It also lists the capital cities and important events for each dynasty.

Unlike most such timelines, this one does not end with the fall of the Qing Dynasty, but instead continues and ends with the Republic of China. There is no Peoples Republic of China and the last time Beijing was the capital was during the Qing Dynasty.

Instead, the last capital city listed is Taipei. Interestingly, the first major event of the Taipei period of the Republic of China is the Cultural Revolution. Other events include the entry of China into the UN, and Our Country's (woguo我國) retreat from it; the death of Chiang Kai-shek and rise of his son, Chiang Ching-kuo; the lifting of martial law in the Taiwan region, Chiang Ching-kuo's death and Lee Teng-hui's selection as president; the establishment of ties between China and Korea, and the breaking of ties between Our Country and Korea; the first provincial, Taipei, and Kaohsiung elections; the first democratic elections; and the changing of the ruling party.

Some issues stand out: the timeline basically accepts the Kuomintang's (KMT) version of Chinese history, in which the Republic of China is the culmination and legitimate heir to the dynastic line. This was after all the view of the ROC government during the reign of Chiang Kai-shek and his son--the KMT was legitimate and the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), were the usurpers. The KMT's historical mission, as it saw it (perhaps still sees it) was to retake the Mainland, really to restore the authority of the true ruler. It is the age-old story of the Mandate of Heaven.

However, the fact that the timeline ends with democratic elections and the KMT's loss of executive power (temporary?) might be an indication of a more subversionary reading. Perhaps, it is meant to show the movement towards democratization, and highlight its lack on the Mainland. It will be interesting to see how the creators of this timeline alter it after the next elections.

That raises the question: who are the creators? Are they blue or green? It seems highly unlikely that they are green, though ending the timeline with the election of Chen Shui-bian and his Democratic Progressive Party could point to this. But representing the Republic of China on Taiwan as the true successor to the Qing Dynasty hardly strikes me as a green position. It would seem as if the creators are more likely from the blue camp.

I did a google search of the timeline's publisher--Yih Chyun Press (益群). That, I now know, is the publisher and distributor of Falun Gong's materials. How does this affect our interpretation?

2006-09-17T21:53:00.000+08:00

RoadRunner

I think Roadrunner, one of the most brilliant cartoons ever, says it all, and better than I ever could.

2006-09-15T22:48:00.000+08:00

What we are

This is pretty cool.

2006-09-15T12:45:00.000+08:00

Mary Landrieu fights back

Check this out!

Slobbering hounds of hypocracy

2006-09-15T12:19:00.000+08:00

Tweaked beyond infinity
Patterned genius on the edge.
Once a setting of the sun
Now a glowing orb rising over the horizon.
Golden rays embracing the ocean vast,
Multipled beyond the single vision
That once held us in its grasp.
Too many times have I failed to see
The reflected wonders in the depths.
I was carried away by circumstance
And the rumors of those with microphones
Speaking louder than the rest.
Assured of their own personal glory,
They spoke of evil
And of the inimical sin of the open-hearted.
They mocked the peace-loving hairy ones
And those who sought harmony with the earth.
They locked up those who decried
the emancipation of man,
And furnished criticism
of those who would help others reach their goals.
Yes, they called us evil,
When all along they were lying through their teeth.
Slobbering hounds of hypocracy,
Fooling those with little information.
They Made up stories to twist the masses
So that they looked away from their own inaction.
But all along there they were conniving,
Harboring but a single goal:
To return authority to their mindless demigods,
those who stood before cameras
on the ruins of once great civilizations.
Oh, they had a plan;
It was to reap from the planet
All that their greedy hearts could devour
At the banquet table.

In the beginning...

2006-09-15T12:03:00.000+08:00

I was there in the beginning
And have the perspective of the oldest man alive.
I see through the eyes of antiquity,
And know the stories the elders told around the fire--
Miracles of first-hand experience
And awareness of the origin,
the cycles of ebb and flow.
I am one of those elders,
Since I was there from the moment of creation.
In my genes is the magic of the ages
Passed on and on and on.
It came down from the source
And flows through your veins as well.
You were there at the fire as was I;
You heard the legends of the ancestors,
How they communed with strange animals
And expressed their inner hearts
Using talismanic rhymes
That too this day coalesce before our eyes.

Some of my favorite words

2006-09-15T01:04:00.000+08:00

In no particular order and without any explanation:

1. Magic
2. Integrity
3. Sincerity
4. Accountability
5. Responsiveness
6. Reality
7. Laughter
8. Humanity
9. Cohesiveness
10. Resonance
11. Ethereal
12. Serendipidity
13. Humor
14. tolerance
15. legitimation
16. mediation
17. community
18. profound
19. transform
20. Comprehend
21. Wisdom
22. levity
23. synthesize
24. interact
25. Harmony
26. liberate
27. Adapt
28. transcend
29. blend
30. friend
31. Divine
32. Mindful
33. Manifestation
34. Ideology
35. Structure
36. Unity/Diversity

2006-09-13T23:46:00.000+08:00

Keith Olbermann on Bush

Keith says it like it is, something very rare on television these days.

Clinton's meeting with bloggers

2006-09-13T23:10:00.000+08:00

Yes, Bill Clinton met with a group of some of the top liberal/progressive bloggers in America. John Scher from Liberal Oasis reports:

The meeting was very casual and much of it off-the-record, but a transcript of the on-the-record portion should be available in a day or two.

Clinton has been getting into blogs over the past year or so. His aides have been including blog posts in his packet of daily news clips.

In particular, he was very impressed at how liberal bloggers were able to strip the legitimacy off of ABC's crockudrama "Path to 9/11," getting the facts out so quickly that even some conservatives felt they had little option but to concur.

And he dismissed criticism of liberal bloggers as counterproductive extremists.

This is a healthy development: for someone of Clinton's stature to recognize that blogs are more than potential ATMs to be talked down to, but can positively shape political discourse and create a more hospitable environment for Democrats to thrive.

He concludes by arguing that this is having a tranformative effect on at least Democratic politics in America:

As more and more people already in positions of great influence become open to really hearing the substance that originates in the blogosphere, the influence of entrenched special interests wanes, and the voices of the grassroots get louder.

Yesterday was a step in that direction.

More on a political symbol

2006-09-13T21:53:00.000+08:00

Once again the metro pulled way from Qiyan station. I was sitting in the right seat with my camera pointed at the space where I knew the apartment building would appear in a matter of moments. There it was approaching. I caught a glimpse of the red, symbolic violence, but just as I was attempting to capture it in my sights, the building was already past, and then came the announcements in four languages--Mandarin, Hoklo, Hakka, and English--that we were arriving in Qili'an. The doors opened and as if pulled by an unconscious force I arose and exited the train. I exited the station and was determined to get a picture of the flag I discussed in the post below. Well, I walked back towards Qiyan and found the right building. I walked along the grassy field below the metro tracks, but unfortunately it is difficult to see the flag from the low perspective. This is the best I could do:

The only way to get a better shot would be to walk along the tracks, but a gate and a sign that said "Danger: High Voltage" convinced me not to pursue that path.

I know there are some people thinking: "It's probably just some Buddhist icon." Well, yes they are related. In fact, the Nazis co-opted an ancient symbol. Rather than give you the run-down myself, I'll provide you with some links to some of the interesting sites I found. First, here is what the Nazi flag looks like. You can learn more about the Nazi use of the flag here, and about the history of the symbol here and here. The last link is a compilation of quotes from different books that discuss how similar symbols were used throughout history by different cultures, before the Nazis turned it into a symbol of violence. Wikipedia also has a fascinating discussion of the Swastika's long history.

Lastly, I would like to clear up a few points in my last post. I was not arguing that Taiwanese people are anti-semitic. The thought never even crossed my mind. I wasn't even making a case about anti-semitism. The latter is partly because I prefer not frame this kind of phenomenon as "what they did to us," but instead choose the frame: "what humans have done to each other." To me, the swastika is but one symbol of mass violence that humans have produced, and there is the potential for such violence in any society. That is why we should remember--to prevent it from happening again and to not glorify or romanticize the symbols of its manifestation in former times.

I was also making a statement about how dangerous fictions are propagated and perpetuated about different peoples, groups, and events.

I should add that I sincerely apologize if the person is a devout Buddhist.

Something that I find disturbing

2006-09-10T21:00:00.000+08:00

Somewhere between Qiyan and Qili'an on the Danshui metro line, there is a red swastika flag hanging in a window in a highrise apartment building. I have been trying to get a picture of it (as evidence), but the train is always moving too quickly for me to capture it. I will have to get out of the train at one of the two stops and walk along the track until I see it.

No, it is not the Buddhist image. I know the difference. It is the Nazi symbol. What is it doing in Taipei?

Since the late nineties, I also noticed some people riding motorcycles wearing World War 2 era German military helmets. Some of them are even marked with swastikas.

I debated this with Ingmar when he was here. He thinks that these displays of Nazi-era Germany are meaningless, and that the people displaying them are clueless about what happened. They are just doing it for fun. Or else it is just a small clique within Taipei society--the displays part of their fashion.

It is possible that this is a harmless fad, a group of people who think it is all a fun game, and that the symbols look cool. It is also possible that they are unfamiliar with the holocaust. I remember visiting Dachau when I was in college and seeing the George Santayana quote for the first time: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

The making light of the holocaust by displaying its symbols for fun is already a dangerous act; it is a forgetting. Is it possible that children in Taiwan--that children anywhere--aren't learning about the holocaust. I don't mean to focus solely on what happened in Europe; genocides have occurred throughout history and humankind still has not learned.

But I also wonder if there is something more nepharious afoot. Is someone purposely exporting the items to Taiwan and elsewhere--either a local or a foreigner--as a way of propagating some kind of ideology? How was it that these symbols came to Taiwan? And how do the people who display them interpret them?

Perhaps as an aside, yesterday I did a search on "Taiwan politics" on Youtube. I found a video (I won't link to it) that was said to be an English version of a short Chinese documentary, called "The Taiwan Question." It claims to "explain to the people of Taiwan the political reasons why they are losing the psy-war battle with Red China." To make a long story short, according to the video, it's the age-old story that it's the fault of the Jews. They created communism. They are the reasons why Chiang Kai-shek lost China. They control the media.

All of the same lies, repeated over and over again for the last 50 years. Repeated so many times that they seap into the consciousnesses of unaware people--people who don't stay informed.

It is just like what is happening with the ABC/Disney docudrama, The Path to 9/11. It's the same message, except this time it's "Clinton did it." Worst of all is that they're not just showing it in America, trying to use it to swing another election. They are marketing it overseas as well. It will be aired by the BBC and in New Zealand and Australia, where it is being marketed as "the true story." As Digby says:

The reason this matters so much, and why Democrats are so apoplectic at the way ABC has handled this material, is that popular culture has a way of inculcating certain concepts into people's minds, especially young minds, far more effectively than talking head programs or earnest debates among political bloggers and columnists. This is the kind of thing that could taint the debate for generations if it takes hold.

The right howled mercilessly at Oliver Stone's depictions of JFK and Nixon, claiming that he was rewriting history. He was, and he used very clever techniques to do it --- particularly the odd, dreamlike optical montages that feel like memories. But the key is that these films were about events that happened long in the past --- they were re-writing history, not writing the first draft while the immediate events were still being debated. Certainly, nobody sent out high school study guides saying they were based on fact or claimed they were based on The Warren Commission Report or Nixon's memoirs. Stone never claimed that he was depicting a factual account but rather always said that he was providing an "alternate history."

"Path to 9/11" is using the sophisticated techniques (if not the talent) of Stone's "alternate history" style to create an alternate reality in real time. The purpose of this can best be compared to the "who lost China" and "sell-out at Yalta" campaigns of the late 40's. The right made political hay for decades out of those --- blaming the Democrats for being soft on communism. These set the stage for the next 50 years of full throated accusations of traitorous cowardice and we are dealing with the residual results of that cynical political calculation even today. (After all, the Republicans of the day were the reluctant warriors in WWII. They desperately needed to erase that image just as they desperately need to erase the image of the Bush administration's failures on 9/11 and Iraq.)

If this nonsense is allowed to stick, we will be battling these inaccurate demagogic, phantoms for another 50 years --- and I don't think the country will survive it. These new rightwingers make the red-baiters of the 50's look like Gandhi. In order for the Republicans to maintain power as often and as much as possible, they must find a way to blame the Democrats for terrorism and ensure that neither party can ever stray from the most hard line they can possibly maintain. It's the same formula that killed over 50,000 Americans in Vietnam and it's going to do far worse this time out if we let it happen again.

The mess at Facebook

2006-09-08T11:42:00.000+08:00

For those of you who don't know about Facebook:

Originally created in 2004, the social networking site has expanded into the seventh-most trafficked site with nearly 8 million users. It focuses on college and high school students, allowing them to create a personal profile page that can then be linked to the accounts of other friends, creating a network of interlinked profiles. Currently the site is only open to college and high school students, though there has been limited recent expansion into companies and workplaces. Part of the reason for Facebook’s success is that it’s an online social network grounded in a physical space (i.e. a college campus) meaning that many of the faces and relationships on the site also exist in real life.

I logged onto Facebook today and noticed something very disturbing, and obviously, many other people were bothered by new changes:

Yesterday, Facebook launched a new feature called feeds, which is a live stream of constant updates on the recent activities of your Facebook friends. Everything you or your friends do on Facebook, from adding new friends, to changing your profile, or commenting on other people’s pictures, is now streamed live to your homepage when you log onto the site. It was new, technologically impressive, and unexpected.

And a lot of people didn’t like it. Really didn’t like it. It was a significant change from the old Facebook interface and many felt as if it was a violation of their privacy. To many it just “made stalking too easy.”

One of Facebook’s features is the ability to start groups accessible to anyone on the Facebook network called “Global Groups.” And so many protest global groups were created yesterday to protest the change to the site. (Note: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's creator, has commented on these concerns on the facebook blog.) One group in particular, "Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook),"; somehow connected the intangible elements of luck and timing to become the most popular “anti-feed” group.

By 11:55pm on Tuesday, its first day of existence, the group gone from 0 members to 68,607. At 12:55am it had grown to 85,521 members, having added nearly 20,000 members in an hour. At 2:06pm today there were 223,460 members, having almost doubled in size in 12 hours.

In essence, the group went viral.

Except that it didn’t, not in the way that we usually think about viral distribution on the internet. Viral distribution has traditionally involved the action of passing something along, either via email, or blog, etc. Traditionally spreading the word about the “anti-feed” group would have required two separate and distinct actions, first joining the group (which takes about 5-10 seconds to do and requires no follow-up) and then spreading the word (either via active means – email, instant-messaging, etc. or passive means – blogging, away messages, etc).

But with the creation of the "feed"; feature at Facebook has removed the active element once necessary for information distribution because it automatically updates your friends. Of course people still have to sort through stuff and decide whether or not they care, but the act of distributing of that information in Facebook has been automated.

Every time someone joins the Facebook group "students against Facebook news feed," every single friend that user has is made aware of this the next time they login, without any action other than joining the group being required from the user. Read the whole article.

It is a design with subtle fibers

2006-09-08T10:58:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I try to express it,
But it is a design with subtle fibers.
You try to extract it from its source,
But just as you retreat with a strand,
It severs like silk in the mud.

Dandelion fuzz sent on its course--
The moment of inspiration is lost.
Just trying to piece it all together,
Difficult for one lacking in crossword skills.

Or think about the poet
Who dreamed of a cosmic landscape,
A glimpse into the mind of hazy, opiated madness.
Underworld reckonings
And memories of nomadic invasion;
Pleasuredomes of surreal ecstasy.
The lines were all there,
Resigned to perfect, superconscious verse.
Would he have recalled the visage
Of immortal delight the next rising of the sun?
When someone came and knocked on the door,
Arousing him from his slumber
And interrupting his iambic fantasy.

I've been seeing a specialist

2006-09-05T00:29:00.000+08:00

He's helped me to regress--slow and easy--into all of my past lives. Pretty cool! Unfortunately, I can't stop quacking like a duck.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

2006-08-31T00:25:00.000+08:00

Recently, I reported that there is a restaurant in Shilin where everyone sits on toilet bowls. Well, now we are just getting a report in that in that restaurant the food is also served in toilet bowls, and anonymous sources are also saying that they serve curry. Go figure! You've heard it here first from the worlds leader in toilet bowl restaurant-related news.

Funny ad

2006-08-31T00:20:00.000+08:00

I just saw an ad for an English school on a bus. It had a picture of a guy under which were the words:

I'm 15 now.
Guess
How old was I then?

Then, lower down, another picture, with the words:

That was me 10 years ago.

That's like that radio ad in the old days where the guy asks:

What time is the 10 o'clock news on?

What I love about poems

2006-08-30T11:42:00.000+08:00

One thing I love about poems
Is how they just come to you,
Like falling snowflakes,
Or leaves on an autumnal day.
They seem to come from nowhere,
And yet, they're there.
Sometimes just a flavor,
Or a feeling--an inspiration,
With all its myriad nuances.
Other times, a beating of the heart,
A flash of brilliance from the unconsciousness.
The important thing is to stay tuned in;
Otherwise, you will lose the thread.
Better bring this to an end,
Else the magic will escape me--
In a flash.

On museum walls

2006-08-28T22:47:00.000+08:00

There once was a time when I could see forever,
When I roamed the grasslands of my youth--
A shephard standing on the horizon
Gazing out at landscapes without end.
No frames could contain their proportions.
No contour lines led the eyes towards artificial depth.
Just multiple points,
Each with its own perspective,
In a vast and immeasurable expanse.
Horses once galloped in these wilds.

And then one day came a warrior
With a lasso twirling in his hand.
He rounded up the horses.
He put borders around the edge.
He tamed his environment
And installed those all-too-familiar lines.
The shephard who once peered out into infinity
Is now a figure in a painting on museum walls.
Occasionally a passerby comes along
And recognizes what the shephard saw.

Taiwan Dragon Well Beer

2006-08-25T11:07:00.000+08:00

Some nights when I return home from work--usually about 9:30--I stop in the 7-Eleven below where I live and grab a beer. There is something very relaxing after a long day about collapsing on the couch with beer in hand and losing myself in one of those silly variety shows that are on the TV here.

The usual choice is Taiwan Beer or one of the Japanese beers, but I started to notice another one called Taiwan Dragon（龍泉）Beer. Maybe it was the name that resonated with my fascination for the anomalous; I also liked the flavor. Dragon Springs became my exclusive beer.

Dragon Springs is made by the Taiwan Tsing Company, which I had never heard of. Several times I told the guy at 7 how much I liked Dragon Springs--I think I even said I liked it better than Taiwan Beer.

Then one day the path to Dragon Springs had vanished. It wasn't there. Where was that landscape that I had so cherished?

I looked at the other beers in the refrigerator and selected a Qingdao, which everyone knows is a Chinese beer, originally brewed by Germans. I believe it is still a Chinese-German joint venture.

Sitting on my couch I perused the label. There again: Taiwan Tsing Company. So, Dragon Springs is made by Qingdao (Tsingtao). Taiwan Tsing is Qingdao brewed in Taiwan.

What is interesting is that nowhere on the label does it say it is a Chinese company. It just says it is an international brand brewed locally in Taiwan.

Interesting marketing strategy. I suppose international could refer to the fact that it is a joint venture or that it is sold all over the world, but it seems to me that they are trying to mask the fact that it is a Chinese company. For many people, that wouldn't be a problem. There might even be people who drink Qingdao specifically because it is Chinese. But there is another market of people who very proudly drink Taiwan Beer. They are Taike (台客）--people who love everything Taiwanese and they certainly would not drink Qingdao, knowing from where it comes. That is why I think the marketers disguised the provenance of Taiwan Dragon Springs. It is a strategy for reaching out to Taiwan [Beer] lovers.

Of course, everyone already knows Taiwan Tsing is Qingdao. As I placed my Taiwan Tsing beer down on the counter (click) The guy at 7 said: "I heard it is good beer." He doesn't drink beer. "Do you like it better than Taiwan Beer?" I replied: "Oh, I like both." Everyone present laughed. The next day I returned and bought a Taiwan Beer.

p.s. I strongly recommend clicking on the above link and reading the piece by Jerome Keating about taike. He is a long-time Taiwan observer and liver. You will learn something about the Taiwan spirit and about how many Taiwanese people perceive their history and present.

Taiwan Matters

2006-08-22T09:33:00.000+08:00

I am now contributing to a new blog on Taiwan politics that Michael Turton has put together. It's called Taiwan Matters. Check it out!

Press freedom in Taiwan

2006-08-22T09:01:00.000+08:00

Levitator translates an article by Flora Chang (張錦華), director of National Taiwan University’s Graduate School of Journalism, that appeared in a Falun Gong-associated newspaper. Chang asks the question: Does Taiwan really have press freedom? Her answer:

So I analyzed four newspapers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait: the People’s Daily (人民日報), mainland China’s official media; the relatively more critical Sothern Metropolitan Daily (南方都市報); and Taiwan’s United Daily News (聯合報) and China Times (中國時報) (both of these newspapers have correspondents on the mainland). As a result, I found out that the numbers of reports on specific corruption cases (translator's note: as opposed to reports on corruption in general) in China were in the single digit for the entire 2005 -- four in the People’s Daily; five in the Southern Metropolitan Daily; three in the China Times; and only two in the United Daily News. Besides, each case is reported only once, even if it involves several billion renminbi and implicates several hundred people. Every report points out that the corrupt people have been arrested and convicted, but it rarely casts any doubt on or offers any critique of the corruption process and problems in the system.

……

Recently I saw a reader’s letter in a major newspaper saying that the chain of corruption cases in Taiwan depresses him very much and he is even thinking of immigrating to the mainland. I was shocked because the corruption of Communist China’s government officials are far worse than Taiwan’s. China is ranked No. 4 in the world and No. 2 in Asia for its level of corruption. China scores 0.59 on the Gini index for income gaps, far higher than the international safety standard of 0.35. China is already on the brink of high risk. Apparently the Taiwanese public is completely unaware of this.

……

It is worth noting for the Taiwanese public that our media is very free on the surface, but in fact Communist China’s media controls are also severely affecting Taiwan’s media. ……

A metaphor for life

2006-08-16T13:33:00.000+08:00

I was sitting there, outside, at the table,
Coffee cup in hand.
No I was not picking chrysanthemums.
Nor was I gazing at distant mountains.
Instead, my mind was fixated on the flow of traffic,
Raging on and on.
Somehow I think this was not what the hermit had in mind
When he lamented the clamor of horses and chariots.
Like him, my mind was unperturbed.
Because when the mind is far out
The earth--and all its rancor--is also remote.
There was a subtle breeze
And the leaves responded in kind.
A bird descended from the sky.
And in all of this, there was a metaphor for life.
What it is I do not know.
As hard as I try,
I cannot put my finger on it--anymore.

Tattoos

2006-08-15T11:27:00.000+08:00

No, I didn't get one, but I have noticed many people with them here--especially young women. Not too many skulls and crossbones, yin-yang symbols, satanic monster figures, scenes of Armageddon, roses, I love yous, names of loved-ones, etc., though I did see one woman with a hemp-leaf tattoed on her back. Hilary can attest to that. More common are small and unremarkable, though sophisticated, identifying marks, usually on the hand, wrist, or forearm, ornaments, like patterns on ancient vases, like jewelry but inscribed into the surface of the flesh. Is this an ancient tradition or a contemporary practice? Where do the two intermingle?

2006-08-13T23:44:00.000+08:00

Girl takes pic of herself every day for three years

I'll put this back up since it seems to be available again. Like the Smoke-idea, but she took a picture of herself everyday for 3 years.

Someone should make a movie about this

2006-08-11T15:37:00.000+08:00

"For most nomads, television remains an unimaginable luxury, while a motorcycle is a potentially life-altering possession."

That's from Jim Yardley's New York Times article, The 2-wheeled nomads of Tibet, which describes how many Tibetan nomads in Qinghai are exchanging their horses for motorcycles:

But an unexpected necessity here in the immense grasslands of the Tibetan plateau are the six motorcycles on display, including the Asiahero Alt 150-7 bought by a nomad named Trashi Dorjay. He had traveled almost 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, to the store from his tent because he wanted a bike to herd his sheep and yaks.

"I used to ride a horse," he explained. "A motorcycle is faster."

At altitudes of 4,300 meters, or 14,000 feet, or even higher, in the range of the immense, mountainous grasslands in Qinghai Province, in western China, have become motorcycle country.

With a motorcycle now sometimes cheaper than a horse, ethnic Tibetan nomads scattered across the region are buying them not just as necessity but also as status symbols. The dingy truck-stop towns along the highway are swarming with Tibetans on motorcycles. Read on...

What is at stake

2006-08-11T15:29:00.000+08:00

Steve Soto has more good advice for Ned Lamont (and through extention, all Democrats running this fall) in has campaign against right wing sock puppet, Joe Lieberman:

Ned, do something that John Kerry never did: run this race as if you were running against Karl Rove. Counterpunch now and keep Joe against the wall, and on the defensive. If Joe wants to make Iraq and the war on terror the issue in this race, then tie Joe to Bush as a status-quo rubber stamper and run against them both.

Remind voters that after five years of Joe and Bush, we are apparently no safer now than we were on September 10th, 2001.

It's as simple as this

2006-08-11T12:12:00.000+08:00

Liberal Oasis' Bill Scher, who has been one of my daily reads for a couple of years now, has the perfect anecdote to the GOP fear-mongering: the truth. Scher argues that British police were able to foil a terrorist plot through simple law enforcement measures without any color-coded alerts. He contrasts this with Bush foreign policy:

We are all too painfully aware that the threat of terrorism has worsened after six years of Dubya's foreign policy.

We know that by occupying Iraq, saber-rattling with Iran, and fanning the flames in the Middle East, Bush has facilitated the spread of Al Qaeda's ideology, strengthening militants and marginalizing moderates in the Arab/Muslim world.

Scher goes on as follows:

And being in Iraq didn't weaken their political will to strike again. It only gave them more oxygen.

Bush claims we are "fighting them over there" so we don't have to "fight them here."

But fighting the wrong people over there is making more people want to bring the fight over here.

If this plot is a reminder of anything, it's a reminder that our current foreign policy is destabilizing the world and making us less safe at home.

It's as simple as that. That's how Democrats should respond to Replican charges that they are weak on security.

Conspiracy-theories and the reality-based community

2006-08-11T03:50:00.000+08:00

Booman23 writes an excellent post on the pervasive use of terms such as "conspiracy-theory" to close off legitimate avenues of questioning about the tactices of the Bush administration as well as those of other governments and organizations. This time, people are using the term to ridicule those who see something strange in the new security alert--the first time it has ever gone to red. Remember how it went back to normal right after the 2004 election. Listen to Booman23 speak:

Contrary to many in the blogosphere, I refuse to be a proud member of the reality based community. That phrase is probably the most misinterpreted statement in modern history. What the aide meant was that the neo-cons create history, while we merely study it.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

How do they create history? They give the Israelis the go ahead to invade Lebanon at the next provocation. They issue false terror warnings based on old intelligence or the the mad ravings of mental patients. They plant phony stories of terror and WMD in the New York Times. Perhaps they carry out false-flag operations. They act. We witness.

When you predict that something will happen because you have analyzed the enemy's intentions, and then they do pretty much exactly what you predicted at the time you predicted using the methods you predicted, then it is not a conspiracy theory.

We can either be a reality-based community that credulously ignores the past, including the history of 2002, or we can shout down conspiracy theorists for their lack of complete knowledge and corroboration...or we can admit that the administration has lied about terror in the past and are likely do the same, now.

There are real terrorists out there aiming to hurt us. Cheney's policies increases their numbers and passion every day. But we should not succumb to these tactics. We must stand up to them. Otherwise, we "will be left to just study what [they] do."

A fascinating societal phenomenon

2006-08-11T00:37:00.000+08:00

I believe it originated in Japan but appears to be quite popular among high school-aged youth in Taipei. They dress up as comic book characters and take pictures of each other. I witnessed it once at the Yuanshan Metro station and today at the Taipei Story House.

From the Metro, approaching Sesame Hill

2006-08-11T00:29:00.000+08:00

Some of my readers will appreciate this sign; to the rest--I've opened an air conditioner store called:

It's about Dignity, stupid...

2006-08-09T02:34:00.000+08:00

Breakingranks asks us to put ourselves in the out-there Other's shoes:

Despite splendid cross-cultural efforts like Mosaic, we tend to think about the problems of Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, etc. as being "over there". The violence of war is something that happens on the other side of the TV screen. However, the issue of "dignity" is universal.

This is the key to getting past the "happening somewhere out there" mentality. The deprivation of dignity is happening right here in the U.S. The deliberate deprivation of dignity might be most prevalent in the "bad neighborhoods", but rest assure, rankist tactics are working their way up the social scale. When you see the Lebonese woman pleading for her dignity, imagine yourself making a similar plea to your boss. What would you do if your plea was ignored or met only with laughter? How far back do you draw the dignity line? I'm willing to bet that for most of us dignity is more important than any amount of pay, and people take their biggest risks in life to try to defend it.

A three-word reply

2006-08-09T02:21:00.000+08:00

Ian Welsh says:

For years whenever you'd bring up the Christian Right and the Republican party people would sneer, "oh, they never get anything from the Republicans. They're just getting used."

I still hear that sometimes and I turn to the person and I reply with three words, "Alito and Roberts."

If they're smart, that's the end of the conversation. Read on...

Sound familiar?

2006-08-08T12:16:00.000+08:00

Herald Tribune:

Pro-Beijing lawmakers approved legislation here [Hong Kong] Sunday giving broad authority to the police to conduct covert surveillance, including wiretapping phones, bugging homes and offices, and monitoring e-mail.

The bill was passed by the 60-member Legislative Council in a vote of 32 to 0 soon after pro-democracy lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest Sunday morning. The Democratic Party and its allies had tried to introduce nearly 200 amendments through four days of marathon debates, but all were defeated or ruled out of order.

Finally, the toilet bowl restaurant

2006-08-06T21:44:00.000+08:00

Taiwanese heavy metal

2006-08-06T10:25:00.000+08:00

The Levitator--a solidly good blog from Taiwan--has a fascinating post on the Taiwanese heavy metal band, Chthonic:

There is a reason why Chthonic is more than just another bunch of head-banging noisemakers. To their growing fan base, their songs have become part of Taiwan’s creation myth—like myths at the heart of every other nation’s collective psyche. They are architects consciously shaping the Taiwanese ethos in pop culture, and an important force in Taiwan’s long-running tug-of-war between different identities.

And they’ve done it with little help from the big media-entertainment-culture establishment.

Chthonic’s themes are not limited to the Han Chinese experience. Their first album includes songs that invoke Aboriginal gods. Their second album Ninth Empyrean deals with conflicts between Han and Aboriginal gods. Relentless Recurrence deals with a female ghost who follows her rapist-murderer to China for revenge.

The gradual expansion and consolidation of the Taiwanese identity is clearly evident in the band’s decade-long success—nowhere as big as Andy Lau but big enough to sustain the band under their independent TRA label. They are also big enough to get concert tours in quite a few countries, recording tours in Denmark, and US releases of their albums. No mean feat for a “symphonic black metal” band in a country where the demand for this genre is generally low.

"We are tired of fighting"

2006-08-06T09:02:00.000+08:00

Ariana Huffington has a very good post on Ehud Olmert, whom she had praised earlier this year for "his ability to change course when staying the course has proven to be the wrong path." Now, she sees a different man (below is quoted material):

When I first met Olmert, he was singing a very different tune. Indeed, I was impressed by his willingness to stand up to the hard-liners in his country who were resisting his plans for withdrawal from Gaza and push for a difficult solution that he believed was the only way for Israel to achieve a lasting peace.

Here's what he said at a dinner I MCed in New York in June 2005: "We are tired of fighting. We are tired of being courageous. We are tired of winning. We are tired of defeating our enemies. We want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors. And I believe that is not impossible."

Olmert, the man who was "tired of fighting... tired of defeating our enemies," now sees the battle with Hezbollah as "a unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon." Shades of George Bush invading Iraq to change the rules in the Middle East.

So now that he's talking like Bush, is Olmert also starting to think like him?

Let's hope not. With the fighting in the Middle East threatening to spill over into Syria and Iran (much to the delight of the neocons inside the White House), this is the time for Olmert to do a gut check and a conscience check... and realize that while he may be winning individual battles, he's losing the war to make Israel safer. This is the time for him to course-correct -- avoiding the Bush model of fanatically staying the course while driving the car over the cliff. The last thing we need is an Israeli Thelma to go with our American Louise.

When championing the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Olmert recognized that it was going to be both really painful and really necessary in order to create a lasting peace.

And just because it didn't immediately result in greater security for Israel doesn't mean it was the wrong approach. As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in his column on the lessons Israel could learn from Spain's battles with Basque separatists and Britain's struggles with the IRA, "restraint and conciliation can seem maddeningly ineffective -- but they are still the last, best hope for peace."

My apartment viewed from one angle

2006-08-04T13:39:00.000+08:00

Butterfly dreaming

2006-08-04T13:33:00.000+08:00

More pictures of ghosts

2006-08-04T13:30:00.000+08:00

Interesting letter about pan-green academics' calls for President Chen to step down

2006-08-04T12:54:00.000+08:00

I was reading this letter in Taipei Times and liking it, and then I realized it was written by Michael Turton. For those of you who aren't following Taiwan politics, there was a failed pan-blue (KMT and PFP) attempt to recall President Chen. The said reasons for the recall were that some of Chen's family members, including his son-in-law were implicated in a corruption scandal.

Then, some pro-DPP (Chen's party) academics called for Chen to step down. They presented a petition with 20,000 names, which was viewed in Taiwan as news. I don't know how many petitions I've signed in America--petitions that attracted many more signatures than the academics could muster--and they never made the news. Interesting.

Michael calls these academics naive and explains why (indented material is quoted from letter):

While claiming that morality should be a concrete concept that pervades daily political life, Lin says: "However, in trying to ascertain how responsible Chen is for the scandals, we've become stuck in the quagmire of partisan politics." In essence, Lin argues that Chen should step down whether he is guilty or not.

Convicting people by rumor and social pressure is not ethics as it is generally practiced in democratic countries. In democratic countries, when the family of the chief executive runs afoul of the law, he doesn't resign. Neil Bush's numerous escapades have not made his brother US President George W. Bush the target of calls to resign, nor did Billy Carter's influence-peddling lead to calls for brother Jimmy to resign.

In developed democracies people are assumed to be responsible for their own actions; family members are not held accountable as that point of view is considered backward and unfair. We who think Chen should remain in office also have an ethical standard, one that refrains from crucifying people for the crimes of others. It's weird, but there it is.

Lin never addresses the underlying absurdity of "resigning to take responsibility." Taking responsibility means cleaning up the mess you made, not leaving the stink behind for others to swim in. Lin also fails to note that useless resignations are the bane of the Taiwanese government. It is routine for officials to resign to "take responsibility" and disappear from public view for a while -- meanwhile the practices go on and no meaningful change occurs.

Do Lin or any of his cohorts imagine that if Chen resigns, things will actually change for the better in Taiwan? The system of influence peddling and incestuous government-business relations will, if anything, worsen and only confirm that the least palatable components of the political order are capable of bringing down the president.

Lin calls for dialogue, but does not seem to realize that if Chen steps down it will demonstrate that partisan rhetoric, not dialogue, is effective in achieving the goals of political parties in Taiwan. He asks that institutions be reformed, but thinks that damaging the presidency and a party committed to institutional and constitutional reform is a good way to do that.

It should also be noted that getting rid of Chen has been a pan-blue goal from the first day of his presidency -- it seems Lin has forgotten that when Chen killed the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant back in the early days of his administration, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators threatened to impeach him. The assaults on Chen are part of a larger and long-term pan-blue strategy to destabilize the government and denigrate self-rule. The movement did not suddenly spring into being overnight when the Chen Che-nan (陳哲男) scandal broke.

Going back further, the pan-blue assault on the president dates to the struggles between conservative mainlander Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) and independence supporter Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) over whether Taiwan should have a presidential or parliamentary system. This was essentially a debate that masked a struggle for control of the government between the mainlander-run power structure and the emerging democratic forces. We are still living in that struggle, and a Chen resignation would have a profound impact on the institutional development of the government. Lin simply ignores all this history.

I know this must be an extremely difficult situation for DPP politicians. My only reference point is the Clinton impeachment attempt of the late nineties. I don't know what would have happened if Clinton had stepped down and allowed Gore early-on to rise from his shadow. But, Clinton witheld the storm and the Republicans have been dominent ever since. Would Gore have been in a better position to win the 2000 presidential elections if Clinton had bowed out in a strategic way? I sincerely do not know the answer to this. Does everyone agree that Annette Lu would be incapable of taking the reins of power?

My view of China

2006-08-03T13:43:00.000+08:00

When I conceptualize China, I picture a vast and overflowing vessel--the map of China. What is overflowing? Chinese culture, which already an amalgam, has continuously poured out from every side. The vessel simply could not contain it. At the same time, the vessel is dotted with myriad holes through which other cultures--Thai, Tibetan, Altaic--have flowed in. Throughout history, the liquids have splashed together, combined, and dissipated in unique and fascinating ways, yielding new transformations that, strangely enough, conformed to expected patterns.

The reflected world

2006-07-31T22:30:00.000+08:00

Often eyes too shy to meet face to face gaze off into a reflected world. There, in the alternate reality on the other side of the window pane, as the train passes underground, there: we see eye to eye.

More on Scribblism

2006-07-28T23:58:00.000+08:00

Who knew as the idea hit me on my approach to the Xinbeitou station that there really is something called scribblism? See Scribblism: art and practice of the scribble. Way cool site.

A short note

2006-07-28T10:45:00.000+08:00

I spend a lot of time on this site going back and forth between writing about Taiwanese politics and American politics, between attempting to capture what people I meet here think about their society and what I am thinking, feeling, seeing, dreaming, smelling, hearing, and doing on any given day--between subjective and objective, personal and global, the past, present, and future. That is partly the nature of blogs (though many bloggers confine their discussions within specific frames), but probably more a reflection of my own manner of scribbling. So, hopefully, those of you who were attracted to this site because of an interest in Taiwan's situation won't be put off by a post on America's situation, or vice versa. Likewise, it is not my intention to scare away people who have liked some of my posts that transmitted the words of random strangers on the streets of Taipei with posts that described memories from my childhood--ones to which only my parents could relate. I guess I am also one of those random strangers lurking in Taipei's lanes and alleyways.

A Shaolin monk

2006-07-28T10:35:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, on the metro I met a monk from Nepal (probably Tibetan). He told me he came to Taiwan 8 years ago to learn martial arts. He lives at a temple near Taoyuan, where a monk teaches him the Shaolin way. I didn't ask him if his master came from Shaolin temple in China. There wasn't much time to talk. Soon after we started chatting, we arrived at Yuanshan. Both of us got off, said a few more words, shook hands, and went our separate ways. Should have given him my business card. Silly me.

Get ready for it: 2008 will be a pivotal year in this planet's history

2006-07-27T22:49:00.000+08:00

1. Taiwan presidential election: Ma Ying-jeou expected to win (?)

2. American presidential election: Already some front runners (Hillary and McCain), but the field in both parties is open and anything might happen. Don't listen to the pundits and out-dated consultants.

3. Beijing Olympics: You know this is going to be amazing, no matter what your views are. I'll try to be there.

4. ???

What else will be happening that year? What other countries are having presidential elections? Send your letters to the personnel department in the comments section.

A lot will happen before than, but 2008 will be the year.

Misunderstanding Taiwan

2006-07-27T07:39:00.000+08:00

Michael has an important post critiquing a Washington policy paper on Taiwan. It might be difficult to read for those who are pro-China at all costs as I once was:

Taiwan is a headache for the foreign policy Establishment since its ornery democracy that insists on an independence of its own interferes with smooth relations with China (translation: Big Profits), and thus, much of the writing that comes out of Establishment institutions on Taiwan consists of attempts to find a language and a stance that rationalizes the writer's cognitive dissonance as he, usually a decent human being, discusses how democratic Taiwan can best be betrayed to Communist China. Often this involves blaming Taiwan for being "provocative," thus inviting the reader to subconsciously adopt the point of view that Taiwan is an obstreporous child in need of discipline, and deserves its fate. Reading such stuff, one is reminded of Jan Masaryk's visit to Downing Street after the infamous surrender at Munich, where he told Chamberlain and Halifax: "If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls."

My own personal wish is to see an open and thriving China (not just economically)--one that can accept the co-existence of a prospering but independent Taiwan. When China can do that, it will truly live up to the greatness that is its potential, and will be a model for the world.

Interesting restaurant idea

2006-07-23T22:01:00.000+08:00

I must have walked by it a million times (well maybe not that many) as I window-shopped in Shilin. It looked like a store selling toilet bowls. But tonight, after purchasing a Kung-pao chicken pizza (and eating it), I walk past this "shop" on my way back to the metro. I looked inside and there were a lot of people sitting on the bowls; they were at tables; they were eating. No, this was not a toilet bowl shop; it was a restaurant and all of the seats were toilet bowls. Perhaps (and this is pure speculation) the place doubles as a bathroom supply store. I'll have to obtain some pictures. Stay tuned...

The systemic problems

2006-07-23T08:34:00.000+08:00

David Sirota responds to the New York Times review of his book, Hostile Takeover, and in the process arrives at the systemic problem in American media/politics:

That, my friends, is the fault line that is driving everything in today's politics: a battle between the people inside the Establishment whose careers rely on protecting the status quo and the vast majority of Americans who have been locked out of their own political and media debate. Of course, you don't hear that in our current political discourse - everything is always ramrodded into a debate between Democrats and Republicans, red and blue, liberals and conservatives. That's deliberate - the Establishment wants the public to think this battle is about everything OTHER than the struggle between those with power who want to preserve the status quo, and those without power who want democratic control of their country. Because if this fault line is actually brought to the front and talked about, it means a direct challenge to the powers that be.

You can see how frightened the Establishment is in how the elites treat anyone who dares highlight this fault line.

In the book world, books like Hostile Takeover, Crashing the Gates, How Would A Patriot Act?, Lapdogs and others are movement books that represent the desires, aspirations and centrist political positions of the vast majority of Americans. Books like The Good Fight and The World is Flat, on the other hand, are books that not only represent the status quo Establishment, but go out of their way to attack the nerve of those outside the Washington Beltway who want serious change. Not surprisingly, the Establishment aggressively pushes the latter in its corporate media channels, and attacks or suppresses coverage of the former.

In the electoral arena, Washington pundits and incumbent politicians are out in force breathlessly berating Connecticut voters that are backing primary candidate Ned Lamont in his challenge to incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman (D). The Establishment is outraged that voters would have the chutzpah to believe that elections should be, well, elections - and not coronations for Senators who think they are royalty and think they can sell out their constituents with no consequences.

Even in the policy arena, this Ordinary Americans vs. Establishment s power struggle is occurring. On one side, you see millions of newly engaged citizens involving themselves in Internet activism, union organizing, and political campaigns that take on the status quo and push a policy agenda that represents the vast majority of Americans. You see courageous politicians take principled stands on specific policies that the Establishment has tried to preserve for years.

On the other side, there are organizations like the Democratic Leadership Council, which is holding its "national conversation" in Denver this weekend. The group purports to represent America's political "center" but on issue after issue after issue, the organization and its highest-profile leaders have gone on record advocating for extremist national security, trade and economic policies well outside the mainstream of American public opinion. These policies, undoubtedly influenced by the group's big corporate donors, have helped destroy America's middle class and weaken America's security. The group, of course, purports to represent ordinary Americans. But they can't hide even the farcical nature of that assertion. As just one example, the Rocky Mountain News reports the DLC's supposedly "national conversation" runs "through Monday at the Hyatt Regency hotel and is not open to the public." And now the group is pitching stories to reporters trying to openly position themselves as the counterweight to grassroots political organizing and activism.

The New York Times and other Establishment media try to make everything about one party or another, and about one election or another. But what is clear - and what is frightening them and their friends at their elite cocktail party gatherings - is the realization that a movement is being built that transcends both parties and any one election. This is a movement that sees the principles of standing up for the little guy and the ideology that puts regular people first not as a threat, but as a necessity to rebuilding the foundations this country was built on - foundations that are now under a vicious assault by those in the Establishment.

Lee 等会 (Lee Wait a Minute)

2006-07-22T22:37:00.000+08:00

There is a fascinating documentary on the Taiwan Art Channel about former Taiwanese President, Lee Teng-hui, and the democracy movement in Taiwan. Unfortunately, I can't understand much of it since it is mostly in Taiwanese. Looks like the eighties and nineties (before I came) was an exciting period in Taipei and elsewhere in this island nation. But, then again, what period hasn't been (including now)?

About the title of this post: it comes from a joke. Apparently, when Chiang Ching-kuo was on his death bed and had to choose a successor, he said, "You wait a minute" (你等会) and everyone took him to mean: "Lee Teng-hui" (李登輝). The two sound alike. I doubt this was a joke told by his supporters, but the documentary played a song based on the joke.

This kind of pun on leaders' names is common in Chinese, not just in Taiwan. I was just in the 7 Eleven near where I live, and someone referred to President Chen Shui-bian as Chen Shui---pian. By changing the "b" to "p" he was in effect saying--Chen Shui-deceive. He was very clear about what he meant.

Wikipedia has an interesting description of Lee's life and career, especially this bit about the Taiwan localization movement, the predicessor to the Taiwan independence movement:

Lee Teng-hui, during his term as president, supported the Taiwanese localization movement. The Taiwanese localization movement has its roots in the home rule groups founded during the Japanese era and sought to put emphasis on Taiwan as the center of people's lives as opposed Mainland China or Japan. During the Chiang regime, China was promoted as the center of an ideology that would build a Chinese national outlook in a people who had once considered themselves Japanese subjects. Under this ideology, Taiwan was seen as a place for mainlanders to resent as they waited for the re-conquest of the Maoist mainland. Taiwan was often relegated to a backwater province of China in the KMT-supported history books. People were discouraged from studying Taiwan and old customs were to be replaced by "Chinese" customs. Lee, conversely, sought to turn Taiwan into a center rather than an appendage, a shift that was widely supported in Taiwan. However, he has stated that his actions were also based on the premise that a Chinese identity and a Taiwanese identity are ultimately incompatible, a notion that is very controversial on the island, even among supporters of localization.

Lee presided over the democratization of Taiwanese society and government in the late-1980s and early-1990s. During his presidency, Lee was followed by persistent suspicions that he secretly supported Taiwan independence and that he was intentionally sabotaging the Kuomintang. The former suspicion was proven true by Lee's behavior after his Presidency, which led to his expulsion from the Kuomintang and subsequently becoming the spiritual leader of the strongly pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union.

Could that be a ghost?

2006-07-22T16:39:00.000+08:00

Bush's New Clothes

2006-07-19T23:32:00.000+08:00

For those of you who haven't been following Bush's mishaps on the world stage and for those who have, SF Gate columnist, Mark Morford, has the definitive piece: "Bush Gropes, Planet Cringes Knead a German chancellor, banter dumbly, reveal global ignorance. It's Dubya abroad!" He sums it all up:

So now we know.

I mean, we sort of thought we knew, before, what kind of guy George W. Bush is, essentially our very own inept, inarticulate ex-alcoholic ex-frat-guy failed-businessman pseudo-leader who famously appeals to the most God-fearin' and least educated and least attuned among us because he is, well, one of them.

We thought we had him pegged: Just a casual and aw-shucks sort of walkin', talkin', war-happy embarrassment to the country who was rumored to be a Genuinely Nice Guy in person but who, when he traveled abroad, nevertheless caused the entire nation to pre-emptively cringe in preparation for all sorts of imminent humiliations and lots of hilarious-yet-excruciating new material for "The Collected Bushisms."

But every so often we get a glimpse of just a little more. Or, rather, less. Of what lies just beneath that carefully controlled sheen of White House spin, what happens when Dubya is away from his handlers and his prefab scripts. We get a hint of just what fuels that clueless amble, that Chosen One bumble, that graceless and decidedly dorky sort of approach to everything from ordering a Diet Coke to comprehending Middle East chaos.

Witness, won't you, the latest in a huge pile of embarrassing Bush-on-tape moments. (Warning: Not for the faint of intellect.)

Here he is, the leader of the Free World, fresh off being caught on a live microphone at the Group of Eight summit meeting muttering to his favorite poodle Tony Blair, using his bestest Texas-boy shtick, that if them gul-dang Syrians would just tell Hezbollah to knock this s-- off, everything would be dandy ...

Here is the president of the most powerful nation on the planet, fresh from an awkward smackdown by Vladimir Putin on Bush's failed war in Iraq, muttering to Blair and Chinese President Hu Jintao, actually more amazed and confounded by the fact that Jintao's flight home takes about as long as Bush's to Washington ...

(Bush: "You eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country. Takes him eight hours to fly home ... Russia's big and so is China. Yo Blair, what're you doing? Are you leaving?" Ah, dumb-guy banter. Makes you feel proud all over, no?)

And now, the icing on the giant cake o' domestic torture. Here is Dubya, strolling speedily into a G-8 summit meeting where powerful, intent world leaders are already gathered to discuss, presumably, serious issues of the day, walking straight up to a seated German Chancellor Angela Merkel and giving her a weird, unsolicited shoulder rub from behind, before dashing to his seat. Oh yes he did.

The pictures, the video reveal all. Merkel reacts accordingly, is instantly creeped out, cringes and shrugs Bush away with a look of surprised revulsion. Read on...

The Scribe of Scribblism

2006-07-18T11:16:00.000+08:00

It was inevitably the case that as a child, whenever one of those mega-boxes of crayons was placed in front of me and next to a blank sheet of white paper, I would reach for a random color and begin scribbling. I liked the way different colors mixed together in an expanding flow of chaos. However, I had no sense of how to fix this chaos into an orderly pattern, though the more I scribble the more a pattern seemed to emerge on its own.

There were many of us who scribbled their way through life, but it was hard to avoid comparisons with the other kids who designed extravagant images, magnificent in their detail. How did they do it, without even a ruler to guide their way.

I continued on this pathway in college. It is visible in so many instances of recollection: in the way I randomly chose courses during my freshman and sophomore years from a vast spectrum of offerings; in the way disparate parts of my thesis gradually came together in a re-run of the many times I put pencil to the paper of those connect the dots books I liked as a kid (they must have been designed with us scribblers in mind); in the way I splattered wax on T-shirts during batik class; and in the way I took each day as it came without much thought about the future. I figured my career would come to me (or it would not) and their was no need to waste too much energy on formulating a resume.

Then, following college, I went to China for a year; this was a move that full-filled a life-long dream, but was also one--at least in the short-term--that did little to imprint a direction on my life. It would come, but at the time I was still scribbling. It was as if I was thrown smack dab in the middle of the ocean, or rather in the heart of the Middle Kingdom. I had also moved beyond the peaceful hamlet of my upbringing into the wider world, where I threw off the armor protecting my cultural assumptions.

But would a pattern emerge from all my scribbling. Would I walk in a specific direction outside the dreams that filled my consciousness?

At the time, the notion of direction was actually something that I feared. I was searching but not deciding, and it was the very idea of making a decision that scared me. First of all, there seemed to be so many possibilities out there, and at the same time, I pictured each potential decision as influencing--really fixing--the rest of my life. There was no turning back.

Thus, even though I was in China, my head was really in the clouds and I wasn't appreciating the reality that was in front of my eyes.

Then I returned to America and for the first time in my life I heard the words: "What are you going to do with your life?" This question freaked me out because of what I already described--that fear of making a decision. But I was also scared of somehow missing that golden moment, that once in a lifetime happening that transforms one's destiny in a serendipitous flash. Or had I already missed it?

Unless you are a scribbler you probably have a hard time imagining how difficult it can be to make this determined leap into an unknown venture--or perhaps it is only scribblers who would even dream of the alternate reality on the other side of the rainbow. You are organized, matter of fact, and down to earth. I am fine with that; there are myriad paths to the capital. I am simply describing my experience.

I endured a period of total confusion, one in which my scribbling got out of hand. I was afflicted also by a culture shock induced by my return into America's orbit, one which I likened to Zhuangzi's butterfly dream. It was much more of a challenge than going to China.

I revved up my car on a wintry day in February. It was dark and stormy and I drove on slippery roads in a direction despite my fear of direction. I drove into the unknown blizzards of the future that have become the past. I drove even though I witnessed no hope of finding a destination. That voice in my head--the one that likes to say, "You can't!"--was predicting doom.

And do you know what happened? Within days the sun was shining in the heavens. The chirping of birds in a morning park instilled hope in my heart. Encounters with strangers renewed in me an optimism about humanity and the possibilities that life has in store.

The more I drove the more I found my direction...and then came the single most important decision of my life up to that moment, the one that brought me out of my head and onto the page, which was at the time comprised of thousands and thousands of flashcards.

It was the decision that forced me to focus all my energy on linguistic mastery--the language was Chinese. For years I gave up scribbling. Other modes of being were crucial: memorization, internalization, and comprehension, etc. You couldn't just say anything because, "Chinese people don't say that." So it also called for becoming culturally sensitive, learning how to express things not how I was comfortable expressing them, but how it was acceptable to express them. This is a lifelong process, but the more I have learned the more "acceptable" has become "comfortable."

After all these years, I am still a scribbler. What has changed is that I no longer see scribbling as the creation of a chaotic mess; it is more a process. One must have faith that a pattern will emerge, that accumulated pages will come together into a dissertation, that the web has no weaver.

I introduce a new mode of thought to the world: scribblism. There are millions of us faithful out here, though unfortunately we have hitherto been unable to develop an effective form of communication. Our correspondences are percieved as jibberish and each of us has his/her own method of scribbling that is undecipherable to anyone else. Our religious structures are a mishmash of different materials assembled without any thought for function--or for that matter--form.

Of course, neither do we have leaders nor a social structure. And without a social structure no cohesive belief system.

The only thing that unites us is a faith--a principle--that there is something more to our scribbling, something that can be detected, something that, once discovered, can bring coherence to life, and with that coherence, a basis for everything else that humans hold dear.

Journalistic Courage

2006-07-15T23:17:00.000+08:00

Via Mcjoan at Dailykos, Washington Post reporter, Walter Pincus writes:

A new element of courage in journalism would be for editors and reporters to decide not to cover the President's statements when he -- or any public figure -- repeats essentially what he or she has said before. The Bush team also has brought forward another totally PR gimmick: The President stands before a background that highlights the key words of his daily message. This tactic serves only to reinforce that what's going on is public relations -- not governing. Journalistic courage should include the refusal to publish in a newspaper or carry on a TV or radio news show any statements made by the President or any other government official that are designed solely as a public relations tool, offering no new or valuable information to the public.

This should be true in any so-called free society where truth is valued over PR.

2006-07-14T23:13:00.000+08:00

Pink Floyd - Live At Pompeii - Echoes (part 1)

This is after Syd Barrett left the band, but one of the more amazing Pink Floyd appearances, live at Pompeii, though not much of a crowd. I think you can get a sense how creative these guys were/are. Amazing video as well, and one of their best songs. Haven't heard that in a long time.

This guy was simply bizarre!

2006-07-12T23:34:00.000+08:00

Nightmarketing

2006-07-12T22:48:00.000+08:00

Pink Floyd's crazy diamond dead at 60 (Updated below)

2006-07-11T23:08:00.000+08:00

Yes, Syd Barrett, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd has died. This means a lot to me since Pink Floyd was my favorite band from high school through college and beyond. Even now, when I hear Pink Floyd songs I am moved in a very very particular way. It all started when my sister gave me her warped copy of "Dark Side of the Moon" (post-Barrett). It took me awhile, but it gradually replaced Def Leppard to become my most listened to album and band. First I got hooked on "Money" and then the rest of the album followed, which led me to many other Floyd discoveries.

Actually, in 6th grade we used to all plug into the tape recorder in the library and listen to "Another Brick in the Wall" over and over again: "We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control." And so I went on to get a Ph.D. Go figure?

The AP article by Jill Lawless--an appropriate name--has a particularly egregious error, which sooner or later will be corrected:

Barrett co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965 with David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright, and wrote many of the band's early songs. The group's jazz-infused rock made them darlings of the London psychedelic scene, and the 1967 album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" — largely written by Barrett, who also played guitar — was a commercial and critical hit.

However, Barrett suffered from mental instability, exacerbated by his use of LSD. His behavior grew increasingly erratic, and he left the group in 1968 — five years before the release of Pink Floyd's most popular album, "Dark Side of the Moon." He was replaced by David Gilmour.

Floyd fans already caught it; the rest of you are in the dark. The article does not include Roger Waters as one of the founding members, and nowhere even mentions his name. Instead, David Gilmour is both one of the founding members and Syd's replacement. This is a shame.

Update: I also posted this at Daily Kos and got a lot of interesting comments. It was amazing how fast the comments multiplied. I think there are a lot of progressive Pink Floyd fans out there. Almost 200 people voted in the poll I posted there. Check out the results.

Here is a corrected version of the AP article that mentions Roger Waters.

Adam Berstein pens a good piece on Syd in the Washington Post:

Roger Keith Barrett was born Jan. 6, 1946, in Cambridge, England, where his father was a university lecturer in pathology. He was drawn to jazz and blues early on, playing ukulele and later switching to guitar, and he hung out in music clubs. He took his nickname from a old Cambridge jazz drummer he knew, Sid Barrett, and used a "y" for effect.

Mr. Barrett was an indifferent art student in London when he joined his high school friend Waters in a rock band that included Mason and Wright. Mr. Barrett wrote many of the group's early songs, inspired mostly by prodigious drug use and an astronomical atlas he carried everywhere.

He also renamed the band, formerly the Screaming Abdabs, after two obscure American bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd "Dipper Boy" Council.

It also has the nitty gritty on Syd's life after he left the band. Kind of tragic:

After brief hospitalization, Mr. Barrett was cared for by his mother, and he rarely left home. After his mother died in 1991, his health worsened, and his eyesight began to fail. He enjoyed gardening, however, and was said to be skillful at stuffing peppers.

The revised AP article adds this fascinating tidbit about Syd's later years:

He spent much of the rest of his life living quietly in his hometown of Cambridge, England, and reverting to his real name, Roger Barrett.
He was a familiar figure, often seen cycling or walking to the corner store, but rarely spoke to the fans and journalists who sought him out over the years.

Ma's trip to Japan (Update)

2006-07-10T14:13:00.000+08:00

I just noticed this informative article at Asia Times Online by Hisane Masaki on Chairman--I mean--Mayor Ma's trip to Japan, as well as Japan's position in the middle of the cross-strait conflict:

In stark contrast with its withering ties with communist-ruled China, Japan's relations with Taiwan, a capitalist democracy, have been in full bloom in recent years. In the absence of diplomatic ties, Japan still imposes strict restrictions on high-level official contacts with Taiwan.

At the same time, economic and cultural exchanges between Japan and Taiwan have expanded. After Japan dropped visa requirements for Taiwanese visitors last year, the two countries exchanged a record 2.5 million visitors. Taiwan is currently Japan's fourth largest trading partner. The 345-kilometer Taiwan High Speed Line using the Japanese Shinkansen bullet train technology system is under construction between Taipei and Kaohsiung and is due for completion later this year. The project is widely seen as a symbol of Japan-Taiwan friendship.

As such, many Taiwanese are said to harbor pro-Japanese sentiments. Some Taiwanese even think that Japan's 1895-1945 colonial rule in the region has contributed to the island's current economic prosperity through the universities, roads and other infrastructure the Japanese left behind. According to a recent survey by the Taiwanese business magazine Global Review, Japan topped the list of countries that Taiwanese would prefer to emigrate, travel or think is the "greatest". Former President Lee was staunchly pro-Japan and even defended Koizumi's Yasukuni visits.

However, not everyone in Taiwan shares those favorable sentiments, including elements inside the KMT which favor closer ties with Beijing. Earlier this year, the KMT fumed when Japanese and Taiwanese groups jointly erected a monument in a Taipei suburb honoring thousands of indigenous Taiwanese who died while fighting for the Japanese Imperial Army in Southeast Asia. Most of the monument was ordered dismantled by local KMT officials a few weeks later. Ma reportedly described the incident as a good example of the emotions that could be unleashed if embracing Japan goes too far. Taiwanese who revel in the Japanese colonial period are still "brainwashed," he said.

(Update) I also missed Michael's post on the same article. Be sure to also read the fascinating comments to his post.

Life's ideal

2006-07-10T13:12:00.000+08:00

Ambivalent Maybe--that humble lover of words and symbols--of Lumpenlogogracy summed up my own personal ideal better than I ever could when he said he got the impression from reading my blog of: "a sublime state of laid-back fascination." While I can't say I have reached any sublime state, I am definitely content with the direction my life has taken, and this city ceaselessly offers fascinating experiences to feed my imagination. I guess I am laid-back by nature (part of it is cultivated), and am at my best when I can see wonder in the world, though I also have my mood-swings, yearnings, and short-comings, as well as moments that are filled with boredom, loneliness, melancholy, and other negative feelings (these moments have been diminishing however). To make a long story short, what you read here is real, though of course not complete. I have done nothing intentional on the level of a million little pieces to enhance this blog--that is, nothing beyond the creative use of words to share my experience with the world. I yam what I yam.