Terrific Taiwan articles

It's really time for the reality to penetrate the debate over ECFA: Taiwan, with so many industries in direct competition with China, is going to be blasted by waves of cheap Chinese junk. The Straits Times has the call:
The China-Asean Free Trade Area (Cafta), which kicked in at the start of this year, has been greeted with little enthusiasm in the region.

A Philippine Daily Inquirer story, headlined 'The China-Asean Free Trade Area: Propaganda and reality', contended that contrary to the positive spin by the country's leaders, 'most of the advantages will probably flow to China'.

A Jakarta Post analysis urged Indonesian companies to 'face the music' and take on the challenge of competition from China. The most telling headline was in Beijing's China Daily: 'China allays fears of Asean nations over Cafta'.
This article begins with Thailand, which China absolutely screwed:
Thailand, in particular, had a bitter experience. In 2005, tariffs for 200 items of vegetables and fruits were abolished. Thailand expected to export tropical fruit to China and import winter fruit from it at zero tariff. But what happened was that Thai farmers of garlic, longan and other fruit and vegetables were decimated by cheap Chinese imports. Worse, Chinese officials reportedly either refused to lower tariffs on Thai imports or left the Thai produce to rot in warehouses.

The Thai experience fanned fears that Asean would become the dumping ground for cheap Chinese agricultural and manufactured products. And that fear is not unfounded.

Already, smuggling of cheap Chinese shoes into Viet Nam has done damage to the shoe industry there. In Indonesia, cheap imports of clothes, toys and electronic goods, often through smuggling, have hurt local manufacturers of such products. What would happen when the floodgates to cheap Chinese products are thrown wide open? It is no wonder that Indonesia has asked for a two-year delay in tariff reductions for 228 items.

The trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) figures are not encouraging either. Since 2004, tariffs between the two sides have been coming down, and Asean's trade deficit with China has widened. From 2000 to 2008, China-Asean trade grew sixfold to US$198 billion (S$280 billion). But Asean's trade deficit also widened five times to US$21.6 billion. Asean's cumulative FDI in China was US$52 billion in 2008. By comparison, China's FDI in Asean was just US$2.8 billion.
This piece, after discussing hopes for change in this situation (yeah, good luck with that), goes on to make the connection between China's duplicitous, mercantile trade policies and its territorial ambitions...
Still, if the Chinese hope to allay the fears of Asean, they should do more to assure that bilateral trade and investment flows are not skewed in their favour. If Beijing cannot reassure Asean that the grouping has little to fear from it economically, how can it begin to address fears over its intentions in issues such as the territorial disputes it has with various countries in the region?So many of Taiwan's industries have counterparts in China. Cheap Chinese junk is going to go through the island's economy like a tsunami. Hey journalists! Someone needs to ask Ma at a press conference a direct question about these economic realities: how can Taiwan expect to succeed where everyone else is experiencing problems?

Note also that according to the FDI figures, China doesn't reinvest in its ASEAN partners. Money comes in, but it doesn't go out. US Establishment China policy is to tame China by ensconcing it in the global financial and trade system like Gulliver pinned to the sand by the ropes of the Lilliputians. This policy appears to be a failure (except for the well connected foreign policy types making the big bucks off consulting and similar work, which is why the "tame China by binding it to us" approach will always have spokesmen): the world system is finding China too big a mercantilist nugget to swallow.

UPDATE: Walden Bello has a long piece on this problem in the NI (h/t to David in comments), similar to a piece of his I blogged on earlier.

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Which Bike To Buy For Taiwan Riding?

Sometimes when I am out riding or talking to friends and coworkers about my rides, I get a lot of questions from people who are interested in doing something similar. A lot of people want to explore the pretty pictures on a bicycle, have adventures with friends or just get into better shape when the creaks of creeping middle age start making a descent night’s sleep and impossibility.

A lot of folks just hop on down to the Giant shop and the sales clerk sticks them on any moderately priced mountain bike that is clogging the stock room and off they go (fitted or not). At some time in the 90’s someone decided that fat tired mountain bikes were the cure-all for the average. This is great for a weekend duffer and going around town, but for serious riding there is a lot to think about that can seriously affect whether the rider will ever reach their goals. Getting the right bike is like selecting the right tool for the job.

For Taiwan riding here are some common bikes and things to think about. I hope this post will help those of you on the fence thinking about biking Taiwan better understand your options and choose the best weapon.

The Mountain Bike:

Many people who first start riding in Taiwan often reach for a flat-bar mountain bike as their initial choice. Giant sells them by the truckload. They look sturdy, have fat tires for rough surfaces. They often come with an assortment of shock absorbers which many people feel will add to comfort, and the stable looking flat-bar looks simple and easy. Some have disc brakes and feel like a tank.

The Pros: Mountain bikes are rugged, sturdy and cheap. They often use 26” tires, which are easy to spin up to speed. They are great climbers and often have a wide range of gears designed to spin across loose dirt without torquing out and sliding. Mountain bike geometry is more upright for added visibility and the quick steering makes negotiating obstacles much easier. Mountain bikes can descend with confidence due to their center of gravity being shifted to the rear. There are many mountain bike trails in the hills above Taipei, Taoyuan and Miaoli where a mountain bike enthusiast can have a lot of fun.

The Cons: Unless you really have the opportunity to ride on singletrack and rough trails and have convenient transportation to those trails, a mountain bike is not the ideal choice. Mountain bikes are designed for off road where they excel, but on road they can be extremely uncomfortable. The geometry is not designed for long road rides and the tiny cranks mean that a lot of energy is wasted spinning a crank without as much forward motion. The gearing is not practical for the road. Mountain bikes are made to withstand abuse, but that means they are unnecessarily heavy for most road riding in Taiwan. The knobby tires take about 3-5 mph off road speed and the soft tires combined with the shock absorbers sap energy from the rider that could be better used for motion. This can actually reduce comfort. The flat-bar is great for negotiating roots and stones, but it puts a lot of stress on the wrists and may be painful after a couple hours.

The Standard Road Bike:

There are all kinds of road bikes from race bikes to relaxed bikes. They all serve a different purpose. These bikes are usually rigid framed bikes with skinny tires and drop handlebars. In Taiwan, road bikes have taken off and have an air of exclusivity and sex appeal. Road bikes are designed for mainly road riding and Taiwan has some wonderful roads.

The Pros: Since road bikes are designed for road riding, they obviously are better for… the road. If you ride mainly on pavement then a road bike is truly worth a hard look. Although the novice may assume a road bike will naturally be unstable and uncomfortable, with the proper fitting the opposite may be true. A road bike better balances the rider for putting down distance on the roads and they are generally geared to achieve greater speeds. The standard 53/39 crank may be fine for flats, but for mixed conditions the compact 50/34 has replaced the road triple. Road bikes are usually between 9 and 11 cogs on the rear cassette (speeds) and so a 10 speed with two cranks has “20 speeds”, but it is called a 10-speed because of the number of cogs. The drop handlebars offer a wider range of hand positions to relieve stress on the wrists and avoid numbness. Road bikes come with many add-ons, including: rack mounts, fender eyelets, bottle mounts and other options. A road bike may weigh between 16 and 23lbs depending on the material and construction. I like to imagine one lb as a can of coke. There gets to be a point that it just doesn’t matter… especially when the rider is carrying 30 extra cokes around the middle. It is not uncommon for a road rider to log 8-12 hours in the saddle. The 700c wheels have a more gradual angle of attack, so the bumps don’t feel as rough. With so much of Taiwan accessible by paved roadway, a road bike is an excellent choice for exploring Taiwan.

The Cons: Road bikes are generally more expensive than mountain bikes. In my opinion, a “good” road bike should be between $1500 and $3000, but in Taiwan a descent Giant or Merida road bike can be found for half that. For a lot of beginners the road gearing may be difficult for a beginner, especially for hill climbing. A road triple may be a better choice or the SRAM Apex http://www.sram.com/news/sram-apex-wherever-road-takes-you , which gives the rider a road double with a wider rage of gears. Some bumpy roads may be harsh and a road bike really shouldn’t be abused on harsh terrain like a mountain bike. The smaller frame limits the width of tires you can use.

The Cross Country Bike:

An XC (Cross Country) bike is generally a term used to describe a larger framed rigid mountain bike, often with larger 29” wheels. They often have a wide range of gearing between mountain and road bikes. An XC bike has flat bars and an upright position. They are often designed with rack and fender mounts. The term “Cross Country” refers to the type of long rides over dirt trails.

The Pros: XC bikes are often used by travelers and Mormon missionaries in Taiwan for their versatility and durability in a variety of conditions. They make a pretty good all rounder and they can be loaded for touring. XC bikes are often inexpensive and not a theft risk. They can use wider tires for mixed conditions and the 26” and 29” tires can be found all over the globe. The XC bike geometry favors climbing over a stable descent.

The Cons: XC bikes are not as fast as road bikes. They are heavier and are often geared with mountain triple cranks, which are not ideal for road use. The flat bars can lead to fatigue over long hours of touring and the upright position is less aerodynamic.

The Touring Bike:

A touring bike is a road bike that is specifically designed for long, loaded touring. When asking about touring bikes in some Taiwanese shops, I was routinely pointed toward the Cross Country bikes. While an XC bike can be a great light tourer, it is defiantly not a touring bike. Touring bikes should have drop-bars for the superior had positions for long riding. The geometry should be upright with longer chainstays and a longer wheelbase. A true touring bike should use 650c wheels for their versatility around the world, but many have switched to the more comfortable 700c wheels. Touring bikes use cantilever or V-brakes to better accommodate fenders and fatter road tires. The geometry of most touring bikes is optimized for riding loaded with gear and thus may actually perform better under load. They are extremely stable bikes and offer a wide range of gears for heavy pushing up mountain passes.

The Pros: For long, long distances day in and day out over all kinds of roads, a touring bike can’t be beat. Both front and read panniers can be loaded for months on the move and the tough frame can handle all kinds of abuse. The rider can pedal for hours at a time in total comfort. The components are durable and readily available in all parts of the world.

The Cons: These are hard to find in Taiwan, though I do know a few places. If you are not planning long trips involving plenty of camping, then a touring bike may be overkill and impractical for daily or weekly day-rides. Basically, if you are not planning to cross the Gobi desert, then there may be better options.

The Cyclocross Bike

A cyclocross bike is a special kind of drop-bar road bike designed for racing semi-off road races in often muddy conditions. Cyclocross was traditionally used as Fall training for road riders. A typical cyclocross bike has slightly more relaxed geometry than a road bike and greater tire clearance for knobby tires. They tend to have longer wheelbases for stability and comfort over rough courses and they are slightly more robust than a typical road bike. Cyclocross bikes primarily use cantilever or V- brakes like mountain bikes (though some use disc brakes). The forward geometry lends itself to climbing and they often have higher bottom brackets for greater clearance.

The Pros: Despite being designed around a particular racing discipline, cyclocross bikes have become a favorite as a do-all bike for the person who wants to have it all. They can be stripped down with skinny tires for speed or beefed up for dirt. Some can be loaded with panniers and racks. They use drop bars for better hand position and more upright geometry for better visibility in traffic. Their robustness and design makes them comfortable like a tourer, but nimble like a race bike: A good bike for Taiwan… if you can only have one bike.

The Cons: Cyclocross bikes have a higher center of gravity and may not feel as stable descending. The upright position catches wind and, depending on the geometry, they can be twitchy at times. Although cyclocross bikes can be loaded with racks, they are not as stable as a touring bike nor do they have the descending chops of a mountain bike. A jack of all trades… master of none.

The Folding Bike:

Folding bikes are small, lightweight bikes, designed with a hinge in the middle to carry in the trunks of cars or on train cars. They use unconventionally small wheels and standard cranks. Some use drop bars and others use flat bars.

The Pros: They are portable and great for getting from the train to the office.

The Cons: Folding bikes are less stable with smaller wheels and thus less able to roll through bumps and ruts. The hinge can act to absorb energy that could go into forward motion. Folding bikes sit lower and drivers are less able to spot them.

Summary: Taiwan has a variety of conditions to ride and it is up to the individual rider to determine which bike is right for their needs. Think about the rider you are and will likely become within the life of your bike. In general most road bikes would be the best option for the type of riding most people do. A cyclocross bike or XC bike would be a close second if there is a possibility of dirt and back road cycling. Heavy mountain bikes should only be considered if you are seriously considering the mountain trails. Forget folding bikes unless you don't intend to travel beyond the train and the office. Most importantly, for whichever bike you choose... be sure you get a proper fitting and don't buy unless you can ride for an hour.

Happy riding!!!

The celebrated reopening of Yushan Main Peak on March 6th was accompanied by a death on the summit. This, and the winter-like weather of the last couple days has meant the main peak being closed again to ordinary hikers. It is still possible to apply for permits if able to prove you having proper training, experience and gear (carefully checked at multiple stages).

In the caged section.

Before the summit.
Before we know it, the summery weather will have returned, trails will be fine...and then a malingering El Nino may produce more exciting news.

Don't forget to consider Snow Mountain (Xue Shan, Shei Shan, Syue Shan etc), Taiwan's second highest. Probably more scenic, more relaxed, easier to get permits for, and - if wanting to do unsupported - more accessible by public transport.

Continuing my moment of of positivity: I'm often infuriated by the design of Taiwanese websites, Shei-Pa National Park's animated main page is quite inspiring nowadays.

May, June, July and August scheduled dates coming shortly.

Richard barkingdeerinfo@gmail.com

Photo by David Reid.

The White Eyes at Riverside Live House, 5 March 2010.

The White Eyes is a post from: Taiwan Photographers

SO FREE WOOD FIRED PIZZA AND CHEESE
No. 28, Lane 283, Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 3
(02) 2364-3351

MRT: Gongguan or Taipower Bldg

website: SoFreePizza's blog

hours: 11:30 AM - 9 PM

$

Kid friendliness: not a lot of seating, but adjacent to a park with a few benches

Visit reviewed: 5/16/2009



The first time I passed by So Free, I wondered what all the people were doing standing around the rustic looking cabin. When I realized it was a pizza place, I had to give it a try.

The menu at So Free Woodfired Pizza and Cheese is short, but sweet. Eight 8 inch pizzas cooked to order in a wood fired oven.

And you can't beat the price at NT$120 for an 8 inch pizza with fresh ingredients, especially in comparison to the fancier options in town- Fifteen Pizzeria and Primo Trattoria pizzas run in the NT$300 range for the same size.

The tradeoff for the lower price is limited seating and the limited selections of pizzas, especially if you're craving some pepperoni. All the pizzas are vegetarian.



But So Free still keeps it interesting. I'm not sure if I'd try the Korean kimchi and Ginger Superman, but the pesto mushroom and rosemary potato sounded appetizing. You can also appeal to your sweet tooth with a dessert pizza topped with apple cinnamon or banana apple.

I tried the Mushroom Asapargus pizza which came fairly loaded with fresh ingredients- chopped asparagus and mushroom with lots of cheese and sauce. The crust is thick enough to hold all the toppings, but pliable enough to fold a slice in half for a bite for your mouth.

The seating at the Gongguan eatery is extremely limited, so you can opt to wait awhile for a barstool seat, or do what we did which was order it to-go (which is still a good 10-15 minute wait when they are busy) and eat it at the adjacent park. It's also close to Tai Yi Milk King, so you can get some shaved ice afterwards if the weather is warm.

I know I still have quite a few pizza places in town to try- some readers have recommended Mary Jane's Pizza and Le Rouge- but I'm slowly working my way through them all! Any others to add to my to-do list? And has anyone tried the dessert pizzas here?

Dainty Betel Nut has been making serious inroads. We got play on a local TV station in Taiwan. Click here to open the page, and click on the VIDEO icon on the page to see the segment.
My interview was cut, but I am mentioned as the travel writer who wrote the original story. I do get half a line in - me, saying to Tobie
"Get your fucking tentacle out of my face man!"
(An in joke between Tobie and I, from the film District 9)
Anyway, more beautiful photos from the film here:
The film is mostly done; Principal photography is 90% done, with just one more day of shooting scheduled. Footage so far looks fantastic and Tobie has already started a rough cut. But the production, run on no-budget and fumes, is in need of just a few shekels for completion. Tobie sent me an email earlier: 
We are using the "crowd-funding model" to get this movie funded, and this is how it works: I am pre-selling tickets to the Premiere party. Basically you send me NT$1000, and you'll get a VIP invitation to the party (at a cool location in Taipei where we will screen the film, the behind-the scenes interviews, as well as the bloopers, followed by live music, and the chance to hobnob with the cast and crew. PLUS, you'll get a LIMITED EDITION DVD of the movie, featuring all of the above!)So, to be a part of this movie, all you have to do is send me NT$1000 in whatever way convenient to you. Text me at 0931091608 (outside of Taiwan +886 931091608 ~ JSB)and say, "I want to help you make your movie!" together with youu name, and I'll text you the ATM details. Or send it by PayPal to topenshaw@hotmail.com. Or email me at that address and I'll send you details. Send a damn pigeon if you must, but get me that 1k and cool things will happen!
So for my friends & readers outside of Taiwan, what Tobie is asking for is a thousand Taiwan dollars, or just about 35 US ~ not a lot of money. While you will of course be given the same VIP invite to the premier (we are already securing a location), if you can't make it I'll still make sure that you're mailed the limited edition DVD, signed perhaps by the director himself, or me, as well as special mention on this very blog.

The movie is very nearly done. All that needs happen is another day of shooting for some of the final dialogue sequences. Everybody involved is absolutely committed to making it happen, and the money is basically for another day's equipment rental, transport & food for the final day's shoot.

On a personal note, Tobie, who has become a dear friend as well as creative collaborator, is absolutely focused on the project, and will let nothing will stand in his way. In our last face to face meet-up before I headed off to Singapore, I jokingly suggested that Tobie might sell a kidney to fund the movie.

Had I only known what these words would trigger...

On hearing the suggestion, Tobie whipped a massive, ugly looking knife from inside his director's bag. Pulling his shirt up, he began making what I can only assume was a practice incision along his lower back.

"A capital idea, man. I can get 20,000 down at the organ market easily!""Don't me a fool!" I grabbed for the knife. "In this traffic you'll bleed to death before we're halfway there!""Get your fucking tentacle out of my face!" He hissed, pulling the knife back a few inches. "The production needs to be finished, and anyway Ek is as sterk as 'n fucking beer!"
I saw that Tobie was in the grip of what in show business is known as post completion directorial mutilation frenzy. (According to IMDB, Michael Cimino actually gnawed out half his liver on a dare during the final days of shooting Heaven's Gate.)

A very dangerous state indeed.

I managed to talk Tobie into putting the knife away, but only by promising that some dedicated Snarky Tofu reader out there would pony up a few bucks for the completion of the film by the 20th of the month.

Again, that paypal address: topenshaw@hotmail.com. 









***post script, scrolled way down. No, of course this didn't actually happen. But here's something that did: A friend of mine who probably wants to remain nameless actually approached me a few days ago and pressed me for details on Clifford Heller: Gaijin King of Japan Special Seafood Fetish Movie,asking me in all sincerity how it was that my dearly departed comrade managed to hide his fame as a professional squid-fucker beloved throughout the land of the rising sun from his friends and family for so long. I just had to laugh. How Indeed? This sort of stuff makes writing this blog worth it. Thank you all for reading! Oh, and send money for our film!

Pazih speakers must learn to be traditional

Whenever I am out, either on the bike or just out, I like to watch, listen, and talk to people. I like to get oral histories and think about how history, people, cultures, ethnicities and constructs all converge on a particular spot. Sometimes something happens that triggers a moment of deep reflection or simply a moment of “wow!”

The bicycle makes a wonderful and disarming way to meet people in Taiwan. An ice breaker if you will. In Taiwan people love to ask where you are going and if you are going “around the island”. This ice breaker leads to some often surprising discoveries that would otherwise have remained concealed.

One major purpose of this blog, aside from simply posting routes and pictures, is to use the bicycle as a starting point to explore different topics that are related to learning Taiwan. The bicycle in this blog serves as the ice breaker to a greater discussion of Taiwan related themes.

An interesting encounter:

Our Host

As we climbed up through the hills of Lugu with dusk closing fast, we stopped at a hostel that was reasonably priced and had vacancy for 5 people. The owner and his family, as well as some of the other guests, were very excited to have a group of foreign cyclists staying at the hostel. A few people near the door lingered to look at out bikes and components and cock an ear to listen to the oddness of five Chinese speaking foreigners.

Later that evening the owner treated us to a fungus dish at dinner and came out to chat for a while. The owner is a short man with a tan complexion, slight build and round nose. He looked like many other people from the area and as most people who have really lived in Taiwan know, Taiwanese are a people of great diversity. (I can’t stand hearing foreigners talk about “homogeneity” of Taiwanese. )

We were in mid conversation with the hostel owner when, for no apparent reason and completely out of the blue, he made an abrupt declaration that resonated above the din of the conversation.

“I am not an Aborigine!” He announced.

“Aborigines dress in costumes and sing and shout Oy ay ay!! No, I am not an Aborigine”, he continued in a half-pantomime.

I was a bit stunned. Nobody had even suggested he was an Aborigine and it had absolutely nothing to do with our conversation. So of course I had to wonder why he felt he needed to make this an issue and so deliberately attempt to establish his distance from the Aboriginal identity.

Now, I know a lot of people who would like to say this gentleman, like most Taiwanese, must be an Aborigine as over 80% of all Taiwanese are thought to carry markers in their DNA linking them to any of the Austronesian speaking peoples of Taiwan and beyond and he is simply ashamed and hiding his "true" identity. Many foreigners remark that many Taiwanese don't look "Chinese", but I am about as confident in describing the appearance of a person in China and I am a European or American.

I am not trying to dispute the DNA study, but I think this belief is a dead end that seeks construct a Taiwanese ethnic-national identity rooted in a primordialist authenticity, similar to China’s construction of the “5000 years of Chinese culture”. I think this line of thought misses the point of what it may mean to be an Aborigine or any broadly defined ethnic group in Taiwan, and the gentleman on the mountain helps to clarify this point.

The R.O.C. which supplied much of the state structure that governs Taiwan today, is very much rooted in the early Chinese nationalist ideology that centered around modernism and social-Darwinism.

“Considering the law of survival of ancient and modern races, if we want to save China and to preserve the Chinese race, we must certainly promote Nationalism. To make this principle luminous for China's salvation, we must first understand it clearly. The Chinese race totals four hundred million people; of mingled races there are only a few hundred million Mongols, a million or so Manchus, a few million Tibetans, and over a million Mohammedan Turks. These alien races do not number more than 10 million, so that, for the most part, the Chinese people are of the Han or Chinese race with common blood, common religion, and common customs-a single, pure race.”

Sun Yat-sen in San Min Zhu Yi (1927)

It is quite evident from the passage above that Sun embraced racialism and also viewed human beings and cultures on a trajectory of forwardness and backwardness through teleological time.

The R.O.C. government enacted a policy of strong centralization to bring the people of the new nation closer to the cultural center and create a sense of unity, which had never existed before in Chinese history. The nationalization process focused on strongly centralized notions of government, language, education, economy and culture. The KMT regularly used force to wrest control of localities from warlords and the powerful elite who had hoped for a loose federation of localities and independent states. Later, Chiang Kai-sheck’s New Life movement of the 1930’s effectively canonized a national culture for the R.O.C., which married Republican modernism and social darwinism with a state-defined Han traditionalism. The official nationalist culture placed a burden on all peoples, particularly peripheral peoples, to demonstrate their alignment with the state by adopting official culture. It also legitimized, in the eyes of the government, the states own superiority over those peoples.

When the R.O.C. arrived on Taiwan following the armistice with Japan in 1945, the KMT maintained its framework of strong centralization. The experience of fighting warlordism for two decades in China influenced how the KMT engaged in its relationship with Taiwan’s different cultures. By framing national and local cultures in terms of their forwardness or backwardness, the KMT party-state implemented itself as the civilized center and burdened the majority of Taiwan peoples to identify with the state or risk losing access to state power. Many of the disparate refugees who followed the KMT to Taiwan readily replaced their home languages and cultures with those defined by the KMT to align themselves with the government and with other fellow refugees. This policy also established ethnicity as either a conduit or a roadblock to power. The New Life vision of a Han-centric state, was reaffirmed by the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement of the 1970’s, which promoted “Traditional Chinese” culture to check cosmopolitanism and compete with the PRC for authenticity.

The establishment of a strong Chinese Nationalist culture as the state’s own symbol of modernity, and the state’s denial of modernity to local/indigenous cultures, is evident in the R.O.C.’s terms for recognizing indigenous peoples. Taiwan’s indigenous peoples must satisfy the R.O.C.’s standards for being traditional in order to be recognized as authentic; denying their coevalness and trapping indigenous peoples in Han stereotypes as they are imagined to have been at first contact. In essence, to be viewed as indigenous, one must also be viewed as traditional. This creates a cleave between indigenous peoples and the state that can never be bridged on equal terms. This structure has continually frustrated groups of Plains Aborigines, who are confronted with not being “traditional” enough to be viewed as authentic in the eyes of the state.

This brings us back to the gentleman in Lugu.

The current groups of recognized Aborigines are groups of indigenes who were largely defined, not as much by their preexisting beliefs of ethnic cohesion, but rather by the way they come into contact with the state. They are asked to resemble how they are imagined by non-indigenies to have been at first contact. Under the definitions promoted by the state, those who fall within those state definitions are impelled to negotiate with state power differently than those who do not (not unlike Foreigners). This nexus is a major location of Aboriginal ethnic identity as well as a tool for constructing ethnic boundaries.

The formulation of cultural tradition is based on the manipulation and interpretation by particular people themselves…especially when the tradition is utilized as a powerful element to maintain ethnic boundaries… Tradition is imagined, shaped and defined by holders or sharers of the tradition in a meaningfully current situation… Even when an ethnic group’s original cultural traits have disappeared, it can still mold an exotic expressive culture to attract tourists.” (Hsieh 1994:201)

Our host in Lugu was simply not participating in the indigenous identity. Although he may have very recently leapt the boundary line between Aborigine and non-Aborigine, he was rejecting the traditional image that has come to form new meanings of what indigenality or Aboriginal identity means in Taiwan and he had joined the majority, possibly as a means to seek social and economic mobility or simply because he did not view himself as reflecting the image of an "Aborigine".

It is not surprising why he or his recent ancestors may have made the leap from indigenous to non-indigenous. When living within a state structure like Taiwan’s that has linked ethnicity so closely with mobility, and centers so closely around state-Han cultural chauvinism… the gap between “modern” and “backward” can only be bridged by shedding the traditional. He clearly did not share or wish to share the symbols and meanings of traditionalism with Aborigines and thus successfully shed that identity. The burden of the indigenous identity may have been too great or too much of a liability under the current structure.

Of course he is not an Aborigine! He is not living life experiencing it as an Aborigine. He views the symbols of the Aboriginal identity as an outsider. The symbolism as a group marker does not apply to him as he has likely, successfully renegotiated into a new identity with no boundaries to impede his movement from being indigenous and, unlike the PRC model, state structure is not prepared nor willing to send him "back". A Chinese nationalist might view him as having been successfully transformed into something "better". A harsher critic might suggest he had been self-colonized as a part of a civilizing project that is still very active and very colonial in nature. This project acts under the name of the ROC. Still, this gentleman clearly represents how easily these borders can be crossed and that people may have plenty of agency over their ethnic identities and how they choose to deploy them.

The phenomenon above demonstrates how the ROC structure drives ethnic and cultural change and creates a problematic post-coloniality for Taiwan. The only way to truly begin a post colonial existence and create equality in Taiwan is to start over from a culturally neutral center where everyone is within equal distance from the center as opposed to the state defined Han-centricism where some are closer than others. Until then the ROC will continue to operate as a civilizing center and a colonial entity.

On a final note on ethnic change in Taiwan: I chuckled aloud when the gentleman went around the horn to ask where we were from. When it was clear most of us had been in Taiwan a very long time, he declared “Oh! Well by now you’re all just Taiwanese.”

Notes: I choose to use Aborigine with a capital "A" to reflect its construction on par with other constructed ethnic identities: Hoklo, Hakka, Mainlander, Foreigner.

References: Hsieh, Shi-chung. (1994). Tourism, Formulation of Cultural Tradition, and Ethnicity: A Study of the Daiyan Identity of the Wulai Atayal. In Stevan Harrell, Huang Chun-chieh eds., Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan. Westview Press. (Pp 201)

My friend Kerim Friedman tipped me off to this piece at Language Log on on literacy and the sex ratio. It observes:
I was spending a pleasant portion of a Sunday morning reading a shocking article in The Economist on The Worldwide War on Baby Girls. One of the sad conclusions of that article is that the preference for male babies, which in some parts of the world is driving the ratio of male to female births to as high as 130 male births per 100 female, is actually getting worse as education gets better in some parts of the world. One of the points made is that "[i]n China, the higher a province’s literacy rate, the more skewed its sex ratio."The post's author then went on to make a graph that illustrates his point: the higher the literacy, the higher the gender imbalance in favor of males. Is Taiwan any different?

Taiwan Today offered this summary of Taiwan's gender imbalance issues yesterday:
Over the past five years, the imbalance between the sexes at birth in Taiwan ranged between 108 and 109 boys to 100 girls. The figure is far higher than the ratio of 105 to 106 suggested by the United Nations, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

MOI data show the sex ratio at birth in Taiwan from 1955 to 1986 was within the U.N. scale. It began rising in 1987 and in 2004 was 110.7 on average, the highest in the ROC’s history and topping countries around the world.

“This figure was even higher than that in China, which has a one-child policy,” said Ho Bih-jen, secretary-general of the National Alliance of Taiwan Women’s Associations, March 5. “The proportion dropped in 2008, but was still the third-highest in the world.”

.....

According to the MOI, in 2004, the sex ratio at birth for first child was 108.7; for second, 109.4; for third, 122.6; and for the fourth, 122.8.

....

“But in recent years, the South Korean government has forbidden obstetricians from revealing a baby’s sex before it is born. Today, the country is no longer in the top-three list,” she said. “Parents in Taiwan still tend to give up having a baby when they learned of the fetuses’ sex.”

Ho said if Taiwan’s sex ratio remains on track, in 10 years there will be 200,000 fewer girls than boys. “This grave imbalance would create serious social problems such as sharp decline in birth numbers.”
As this article on the similar phenomenon in Korea describes, not only does the sex ratio mean fewer women to bear babies, it also lowers the fertility rate because couples stop having children when they hit their first son. Further, as birth order increases, so does the sex ratio -- the last kid is more likely to be a son, since couples stop when they reach a boy. This leads to another weird family shape I have seen in Taiwan several times but not elsewhere: families with 4,5,6 or even 7 girls as mom and dad fail to get a son despite repeated tries.

One has to wonder about the other social effects. If girls are more likely to be raised in families where there are more kids and they get proportionally less attention, what are the results on things like self-esteem, competitiveness, negotiating skills, or independence? If boys are more likely to be raised in families where they are only children, or the youngest child, what are the likely effects?
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Daily Links:

• Polls: Party allegiance of voters, and New Taipei City mayor elections. It looks like Tsai Ing-wen, the Chairman of the DPP, is the only competitive candidate. But DPP regs say the Chairman cannot hold public office while Chair.
• Exports rise for fourth straight month. Yay! Meanwhile male labor force participation hits new low.
  
• Drew with excellent post on our ride in Nantou this weekend.
• Water prices not to rise for foreseeable future.
• The US Taiwan Defense Command blog pointed to this 1976 Pittsburgh Press newspaper article on the then-fading US presence in Taiwan.
  

_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

For the normal, proportionally sized person, the Giant SCR is a great starter road bike.

I bought a Giant SCR last week to help me figure out if I want to become a roadie again. In short, yes, I want to be a roadie again, it’s faster.

Overall, the Giant SCR is a great value for a road bike. It’s somewhat lightweight at 9.4 kg, has a stiff rear triangle, has very smooth working Sora shifters and deraillers and rides comfortably on Taiwan county roads.

Gearing wise, I’m very surprised at how well I’m adapting to the compact double 50/34 in front with an 8-gear 12-26 in back. I’ve been used to spinning a 48/38/26 front and 10-31 back for the past year.

For now, I’d prefer a rear 11-27 and later, a 10-26 when back in shape. That rear cassette change would make going even faster and climbing easier.

In the flats, between the gearing changes and bike stiffness, my casual riding pace and in spite of not being in riding shape, is 4 kph faster. I’m finally realizing how much pedaling energy my Giant LTD shocks have soaked up. On hill climbs, the SCR is grinding up than spinning, but I’m at the same pace and more energetic at the top.

On the downsides, I think the bike is too twitchy and the Sora shifter thumbtack controls limit hand placement for me. I think the twitchiness is more due to the race inspired geometry and I’m not used to it yet. Still, I’m keeping my downhill corners 5-10 kph slower than normal.

On hand placement, my hands are big, but short fingered. As such, I have to pick either riding on the hoods or in dropped position and then set my saddle and handle to accommodate me.

As I’m a go fast kind of guy, my hand preference is in the drops. With being in the drops though, in order for me to safely stop at speed, I needed to turn the front brake left shifter outward and rotate the drop bar downward. This change barely allows my finger tips to pull the brake lever.

Due to the Sora thumbtack shifter, when in the drops, gear changes in both directions are nearly impossible. This isn’t a big issue for the front derailer, but a big one for the rear.

On the right shifter, I can barely change the gears. To do so, I have to loosen my hand position, twist my hand awkwardly inward and up in order to rotate my thumb forward enough to barely click the thumbtack controller.

I’ve mentioned that the bike is a comfortable ride. However, that’s if I ignore the aches and pains from my elbows to hands. I can’t figure out if…

• The bike is too small or big; I’m riding a small, but thinking medium might be a little bit better.
• I’m dropped to low; I’m thinking maybe coming up a couple of inches would help based upon some on hood hand position tests.
• I’m not used to being drops; I’ve been in drops for 14 years prior to my 4 years haitus though.
• I’m too far forward or back; might also be causing the bike twitchiness.
• Or something else; any ideas?

At this point, my hand and arm positions are the real problem areas in finding a truly comfortable position that also lets me have solid control over the bike on flats, climbing and descending.

While in the drops, I’m quite comfortable. However, I can’t safely change gears with the Sora shifters in both directions and I surely wouldn’t mind having more of my fingers on the brake levers.

To counteract the hand position, brake and shifter issues, I’m seriously thinking about buying a used Rival gruppo with double-tab and installing it on the SCR. Then again, if I’m going to drop $ 1,000 USD for the gruppo, I might as well buy a better frame too.

As my goal built bike weight sans accessories is sub 8.0 kg., the SCR is 9.4 kg is a bit too heavy and could potentially be even stiffer when pedaling hard.

In the end, despite my grips above, the Giant SCR is a great entry level road bike. Even when I buy a third bike, I’ll keep this one around for friends, family and wet weather.

PS: Bike buyers, push your bike shop to let you ride for an hour before buying. If they don’t, find another bike shop or try out a friends like model. Personally, once a bike passes that first hour of riding and it’s a potential buy, I need a couple more days of trying it out on routes I’m used to.

Related Posts

• Michael bought a Giant SCR 2!
• Biking Taiwan: Riding Jhihshan Road in Taipei
• Biking Taiwan: Taichong Weekend with Michael T and Drew

Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I went to the TW-Bents warehouse last Friday, and we met with Walter and Kevin. They had some new stuff to show us.

The main star of the day is this new trike. It’s a giant of a trike, built for larger, heavier riders. The main feature of this trike (besides it’s size) is the material it’s constructed of. This is an all-aluminum trike, and it is very light weight for it’s size.

Look how massive the boom is! Take a look at the BB to get an idea of just how big the tubes are. The wall thickness of the tubes is 2.5mm.

This shot shows one of the rear dropouts. Look how massive the rear triangle members are. This is one monster trike!

Shot from the front of the trike.

This cockpit shot shows how massive the tubes are. Don’t be fooled by the perspective though, as this trike is also considerably wider than any other trike they make. The seat is the same as the Artifice, so that should put it all into perspective for you.

You may want to view these photos in the large size. Clicking on any one of the photos will take you to the Flickr page where you many view the alternate sizes.

This is the junction of the boom and the main cross member. Look at the beautiful welding!

This bracket is massive! I know I keep using that word, but nothing else adequately describes this trike and it’s components!

Closeup of the rear triangle joint. Notice that this is not a folding trike. This trike was built for stability and it does not flex!

This is Walter on the trike. Please note that Walter is over 6 feet in height. I saw Walter take this trike on a test ride. He purposefully took very hard turns, where the front tires were drifting. Due to the wide track and excellent geometry of this trike, the front wheels did not come off the ground.

This trike will not be shown at the Taipei Cycle Show coming up soon. However, the following item will be shown:

This is a beautiful recumbent tandem. A full sized seat with a back will be used on the rear position (captain). The bike features dual drive, and a set of frame couplings that can be opened to shorten the frame for transportation. This beauty will be shown at the Taipei Cycle Show!

Thanks for reading! We welcome your comments, questions, recommendations and retweets!

First in series Previous in series

The Lads On The Loose In Nantou:

Daybreak over Si tou
This past weekend we packed our bags for a rare multi-day ride. With everyone's commitments and projects going on it is often difficult to string together the logistics to make a trip worthwhile. We had initially planned another route for the weekend, but that fell through, so we chose a route into the highlands of Lugu. Lugu is a famous spot for nature tourism and also as one of Taiwan's largest producers of high-grade oolong teas. Lots of clouded hills and big nature.
Our gang was an assortment of the usual rabble of murderers and cutthroats; Michael T. Michael F. and Chris M. all of whom I have ridden with before. Then there was a new face, Eli A. The Wild Card.
It was two days of hard riding and the kind of road conversation you might get when you combine five guys with a roughly combined seventy-five years of life in E. Asia and an intense interest in Taiwanese cultures, politics, history and life. The recipe for a good time.
Leaving Jiji
Michael and I decided to haul ass down to the town of Jiji immediately after work, which meant a three hour ride in the dark. Despite sounding a bit daunting, a night ride in Taiwan is actually quite relaxing. There is less traffic and the air has a crispness that is missing in the daytime. Rather than taking the Highway 16 right past Jiji's front gate, we took the hilly scenic route in, which is wonderful if you enjoy "green tunnels" in the blackness of night. We picked the first hostel we could find so we could fuel up for the next day. I wish we had looked around a bit more as we ended up paying way too much for far too little. The towels were no bigger than a snot rag and couldn't cover the head of a goose. To add insult to injury, the decor looked like something out of Lien Chan's study... complete with a large portrait of the late dictator Chiang Ching-kuo.
Sunrise on Shuili
When morning came we left Jiji, which was, I might argue, completely destroyed during the 921 earthquake and seemingly rebuilt by government subsidized tourism companies. When I first visited Jiji a dozen or so years ago, it was to see the old agriculture railway that served as a major artery for the flow of produce draining out of the rich valleys of central Taiwan to be further processed and later sent to Japan; an economy which carved out the regions identity and linked it, for the first time, to a much larger global network of trade. Now it seems Jiji has been reinvented with a whole new identity directly rooted in the idea and practice of tourism itself.
Never ride through a market
We arrived in the old town of Shui Li early enough to enjoy our morning while we waited for the rest of the gang to arrive. We just spent our time playing online and sitting out on the street looking at faces. This is a rare treat as we are usually in the saddle and off to points unknown before 7:00am. Shui li is really an interesting town that was once a major logging camp during the 18th through early 20th centuries. Highland indigenes, Hoanya plains indigenes, Hakka and Hoklo speakers all converged on the area for work, trade and commerce. At one point the flow of timber became so great the practice of logging in the area was curtailed in some areas by imperial decree due to the impact it had on the irrigation networks down river. Despite popular belief, the Qing administrations paid a great deal of attention to managing Taiwan's disparate ethnic and economic interests; so much so that Taiwan's Qing ruled territories were governed unlike any other regions within the empire. This fact was not lost of Taiwanese, who understood their particularity as an island frontier.
Sitou Tourist Central
The 10:30am train brought the other boys and their bikes and we were soon deep in the hills of Lugu. We ate one hill after another before a nice lunch of trout along the Nantou Local Highway 151. We crested the hill near Lugu Township and launched down a steep grade to the other side. We ended up passing my friend's tea farm, but we needed to press on to get a room before they were all taken. The final climb was a pretty rough ride and we were all feeling it. By dusk we were off our bikes and reclining on the patio of our hostel discussing politics and modernity with a bottle of pretty ok wine courtesy of Chris. We were joined by the owner who I will blog on here.

Mountains of Lugu
The next morning we hit the road bright and early for a trip up to the Family Mart for a little coffee and snacks for the road. The main tourist drag in Si tou/ Xi tou/ Hsi tou is nice for a Taiwanese tourist strip, but oh so kitsch. When one too many men carrying little dogs around in dog purses came through, we realized we had overstayed our welcome and beat it back down the hill for a little Mei Er Mei breakfast. A good rule of thumb for mountain riding is to buy one sandwich for now and throw another in the pack. Eli found this useful. Eat before you get hungry because once you bonk... there's no coming back.
Murderers and Cutthroats
The road from Si tou to Sanlinxi has twelve switchbacks that have been marked with zodiac animals. The pig turn leads to the horse turn... to the ox turn and so on.... The weather bureau had rain in the forecast and the clouds were already pushing up against the mountain. When I travel I never really have enough things to warrant racks and panniers, so I just use a light pack with light clothes. The prospect of rain always adds a bunch of weight to that pack and so I can't wait till I ride without the prospect of rain. During our ride up the 151 it seemed that every dad in a minivan thought he was driving to qualify on the F-1 circuit and it made things a little dangerous. At one point we saw three vehicles driving abreast trying to pass each other on a blind turn. The Papal Restroom
Looking out over the forest it was an amazing mix of greens and browns. The locals say they still get Formosan black bears that come down off the mountains and rummage through the fields. Michael at Sanlinxi
As we turned along the back of the mountain it was just a great bank of fog. We spotted the Nantou Local Highway 49 to Zhu Shan that would be our rapid escape from the foggy peak. Though, the tea farmers say the cooler temperatures and moisture from the fog is what makes Taiwan's tea so special. Taiwan has the highest peaks in East Asia that catch the moisture evaporating off the sea and lock the mountains in thick fog.

Forcing a smile (I am getting better at it)
There's a bike in the woods
The subtropical jungle gives way to second and third growth cedar. Although there are still a few old growth stands left on the mountain, most of the trees have been logged. After the Japanese located the indigenous peoples through their Anthropological missions, they were able to assign them territory and thus open up large tracts of land for exploitation. Taiwan produced huge amounts of timber for the Japanese Empire and the Japanese developed a forestry program to manage Taiwan's timber resources. Under the ROC colonial project much of the forest land was stripped of timber and by the 1960's much of the timber operations had been suspended.

Among the tall timbers
Through the fog
Michael F. and Eli arrived at the top and we were soon barreling down a poorly maintained mountain road just big enough for two lawnmowers to pass within an eyelash. If I had been aware we would be taking this type of road I would have selected a different set of tires. It is like choosing the right tool for the job. I have the bike for it, but unless I put on the fatter tires when I need them I am putting myself at a disadvantage. Still... the 25c Contis did well enough, but I was constantly afraid of losing traction. Another issue was braking. I love my disc brakes for that kind of descent. It is still not easy on the lower arms, but I felt in control enough to handle the long descents. The road to Zhushan
The forest gave way to the tea farms which are perched on the near vertical hillsides. I am sure the views are spectacular and the fog made sure my imagination would imagine the best views I have never seen.

Tea farms of Lugu

The tea from Lugu is really amazing. As a bit of a tea connoisseur I have a few particular farms I prefer from Lugu. Although Taiwan's Oolong teas are world famous for their quality, Tea is only a recent addition to Taiwanese mass culture and the Taiwanese gift economy. Oolong teas were first cultivated as a cash crop in the mid to late 19th century beginning in the north amid the various enterprises of the Banchiao Lin family. All tea comes from essentially the same plant with the difference in taste coming from a variety of factors including: processing, maturity, environment and age. Tea was extremely labor intensive and therefore few Taiwanese sought to add tea to their list of crops. Because of the high cost in processing, tea became known as "Green Gold" as it was considered extremely valuable. Most Taiwanese, until very recently, were satisfied with plain water. That helps explain why tea is often given as a gift. Today, much of the tea is machine picked as young people don't want to labor in the fields. Machine picked tea is not the best quality, but isn't bad. For the hand picked hand rolled teas, foreign labor has been brought in to replace the old women who traditionally picked the tea, but can no longer work in the fields. This new development has created a problem in that the foreign workers need to be trained in a short period of time to produce top shelf teas.
There's Green Gold in them there hills
The way out
From the tea fields we cut through the "Sea of bamboo", which is a bit eerie in the mist. Finally after a serious high speed chase on a beautiful road out of the wilds, we wound up in Zhushan where we could all eat again and fuel up for our return.



Crouching Tiger Hidden Salsa
Chris, Michael T. and myself blasted home along the Highway 3. I was keeping steady at about 20-23mph all the way to Wufeng and beyond. We said our goodbyes to Chris at Nantou and then Michael and I parted in Dali. In all our maximum altitude was 1700 meters. I traveled approximately 130 miles over the course of the weekend and managed to have a great time with great people. Michael F. pointed us upward and onward, Eli made a splendid debut, Chris pressed on with might and courage, Michael T. won most improved and did some excellent cycling. I felt like I was riding stronger as well. Sometimes I don't always ride with people with the fanciest gear or the nicest bikes, but the quality of the companionship is always second to none.


The approximate route

Cooking up breakfast near the Changgung Hospital in Linkou

BLOGS

• Craig on licensing your photos
  
• Steven Crook links to a great piece from Taiwan Today on Taiwan's unfair naturalization laws.
• USTDC with an article from the 1960s on US-Taiwan defense planning
• Laowiseass interviewed by Pakistan newspaper
• Fili's second in his series on cross-cultural relationships
• Jenna rips on a China-India comparison
• A Hungry Girl visits Hook.
• J Michael observes how Beijing sees culture as a weapon.
• Wild at Heart says road expansion in Kenting is destroying it.
• Ben writes on how FarEastOne attempted to circumvent the laws preventing Chinese investment in critical tech sectors, and calls for a boycott.
• Biking in Taiwan on six day ride in southern Taiwan. Awesome.
• The China Beat with excellent piece on ChinaPol, the discussion forum. Note Baum's reference to academics, who are upbeat about China's rise, and journalists, who are more skeptical.
• Drew on biking the Central Cross.
  

Hanging out on the trails above Taichung.

MEDIA

• Blue Polls: UDN poll has Hau up by 9 over Su for the year-end election in Taipei. TVBS poll has Su up by 2, with large advantage over Hau in item on who would make a better mayor. Obviously pro-Blue Taipei recognizes who is the most competent, but refuses to vote for him regardless. Fascinating display of identity politics over rationality.
• Are there really 500,000 Falun Gong believers in Taiwan? I would have thought it an exaggeration to say "500".
• The government has killed China Mobile's investment in FarEastOne. Thankfully. But can you imagine the whining that would go on about how Chen's "anti-China" policy is hurting the economy, if this had happened under the previous Administration?
• Ban Ki-moon is still a China suck-up
• China hands out junkets to US Congressmen.
• Annette Lu finds out what many of us have been saying
• Health insurance premiums could rise as early as April. Good.
• The Premier unveils plan for 36 infrastructure projects in Kaohsiung.
• This China Times editorial on why the KMT keeps losing is a classic of bad thinking, outmoded Confucianist crap, and inability to face reality. Speaking of losers, President Ma says he will continue to reform the KMT, while the rest of us are still waiting for him to start.
• China reaches the tipping point in its demographic crisis.
• China warns again on Hong Kong democracy. And how do you think they will treat Taiwan?
• Poor victimized China says poor US-China relations are all Washington's fault. If Washington would only kow-tow, things would be ok.
• How is Ma going to get elected in 2012? Absentee voting is in the cards...
• Formosa Landlocked Salmon successfully spawned in the wild!
• President calls for more cross-strait religious exchanges. Religion is an important link in the emerging cross-strait political nexus.
  

A gorge in central Taiwan.

ACADEMIC/GOVERNMENT

• Project 2049 on Taiwan's military command and communications technology
• Kurt Campbell's review at State of US East Asian policy.

DON'T MISS
Robert Kelly's superb article on Yushan in the WSJ.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Another awesome weekend of riding in the mountains of Nantou with the usual suspects, this time in the tea fields in the Xitou (Hsitou) area.

On Friday night Drew and I biked down to Jiji from Taichung. Jiji is a kitsched out tourist site overwhelmed by tourist hordes on the weekends, but on Friday night it was as dead as any small town in Taiwan. Saturday morning we headed out to nearby Shuili on a lovely ride on the ridges overlooking the river.

The road leaves Jiji as Mingsheng Rd and enters Shuili as Minquan Rd, changing names several times. There are several overlooks with excellent views along the way, this one looking west back to Jiji.

Although I generally object to hill climbing before breakfast, I was willing to make an exception for vistas like this one.

At Shuili we did all the cool things the town has to offer, like hanging at 7-11 and playing computer games at the internet cafe, while we waited for the others to appear.

The morning market was packed....

...and at the bus station some local Filipino workers waited for a bus.

We took 131 out of Shuili through the land where the gravel trucks trash rivers non-stop.

We then went up a side road and started climbing.

At the lower altitudes Nantou is the Land of Betel Nut palms.

The five of us, Drew, Eli, Michael F, and Chris, take a break. The climbing was steady for the rest of the day.

But the mountains were lovely, as always.

Slowly we climbed out of the betel nut wasteland and into the tea farms on the ridges near Xitou.

The higher we went, the lovelier the scenery.

Up into the world of tea.

The road through the land of tea.

Eli takes down an important number, just in case.

At lunch we stopped by a restaurant next to a small lake, where we enjoyed baked trout and the 921 Memorial Bathroom.

Then it was downhill to 151. 151 is the main tourist route up to Xitou, so we decided to avoid all the cars (see photos from previous ride in the area). From there we crossed the gorge and went up the less crowded but much steeper road on the other side.

With great views, of course.

As evening fell, we arrived here to overnight at about 1000 meters after a hard day of climbing. Dinner here was pretty good eating after a hard day of riding, and the conversation was well worth coming all the way to Nantou for.

As you can see, after 921 it was one of the few buildings left standing in the area. UPDATE: Nope, this pic is from Typhoon Toraji in 2001.

The morning found us eating a traditional Taiwanese breakfast, you know, the one where they serve the coffee in shot glasses.

Our goal for the day: The 12 turns on the twisty road at the bottom left there. A wonderful climb up to over 1600 meters...

First, however, we decided to go into Xitou for another breakfast. Rice porridge is ok, but doesn't cut it as a riding food. Here the signs warned to watch out for bicyclists...and elves.

The town was already starting to get crowded as we rode up to the Ultimate Family Mart in Xitou town for coffee and snacks. Thus, for the second day in a row, I found myself climbing before breakfast was finished.

Then the climbing began.

Michael F stands next to a sign naming the curve. Each curve is named after an astrological sign.

Rounding a curve. The road was long but the grade was easy.

Shot this caterpillar grabbing a snack.

The road fogs over quickly and by 11 it was pretty well socked in.

Drew and Chris leave the traffic in the dust.

Four kilometers short of Shanlinxi, we turned onto this incredible road, Nantou 49, which falls 26 kms to Jhushan.

We took a short break here.

The road dropped steeply through the tea fields, with the fog revealing tantalizing vistas from time to time.

It was lined with closed buildings.

Drew captures a tea farm.

Steep, curvy, and fogged in, this descent was one long clenched sphincter. The concrete surface was uneven and occasionally unpaved. A sheen of dust and gravel frequently covered the road, and my fingers ached from braking. And if you misjudge, there is the precipice on your left. I do not recommend this descent unless you have fat tires and excellent life insurance. The shot at the top of this post is also from that descent.

After nine kms of brutal descent, we came to paved road.

Even at lower altitudes the views were astounding, and the descent became a blast, rocketing down steep slopes with sharp curves and mountain walls all about us.

Finally, we arrived in Jhusan, where we parted ways, Drew and I biking on to Taichung. Special congratulations to Eli, who finished his first long ride in the mountains, a difficult one for a new rider. Very impressive!

An amazing ride. Hope to see you on the next one!
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

The official "Chinese Taipei" Olympic flag, with the obligatory Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party symbol.
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of the U.S. listed Taiwan as "Chinese Taipei" in a list of countries that were warned of a possible tsunami generated by a strong earthquake in Chile. According to the Taiwan News:

An opposition lawmaker has demanded that Taiwan's government defend the country's sovereignty by asking the U.S. government for a correction after referring to Taiwan as "Chinese Taipei" for the first time in official usage.
The first major international organization to use "Chinese Taipei" was the International Olympic Committee. According to Wikipedia:

The Chinese nationalism asserted by the top [KMT] leadership of the ROC government during the 1970s meant that a name such as "Taiwan" would be unacceptable to them. The ROC leadership insisted that there be some kind of “Chinese-ness” to the name under which the island's team competed. The name "Chinese Taipei" was formally created and accepted by the Taipei government in March 1981.
So we can already see that the KMT construction of "Chinese Taipei" as a moniker for Taiwan was originally a way of thwarting any sense of Taiwanese nationalism or consciousness and imposing the KMT's own colonialist Chinese Nationalism on Taiwan's international identity.
But I have to wonder: if "Chinese Taipei" is good enough for the KMT-led government to refer to Taiwan internationally when it was allowed by China to join the World Health Organization and other organizations, why should it raise a stink if the US or other governments start using this offensive, KMT-originated nonsense name? Remember, the KMT's goal is to ERASE Taiwan as a country in the minds of both the world and the Taiwanese because in their minds, it's just a "region" of the old, defunct Republic of China.

Remember when the evil Chen Shui-bian was guilty of the grave sin of "de-sinification": making Taiwan somehow less "Chinese" by removing symbols of the KMT one-party state? Even though everyone in Taiwan still spoke Chinese, wrote Chinese, worshiped Chinese religions, and celebrated Chinese holidays? Now, the KMT are trying "de-Taiwanification": uprooting all the localization and growing Taiwan consciousness that the last two pro-Taiwan administrations achieved by changing the education system and emphasizing Chinese history and Taiwan's Chinese roots, thereby forcing the Taiwanese identity to become an integral part of the Greater Chinese Nation.

The use of "Chinese Taipei" is just part of the KMT's ongoing effort to erase Taiwan as a country and an identity. In fact, one of the depressing aspects of living in Taiwan since the KMT won back control of the presidency in 2008 has been watching them slowly erase Taiwan as a national identity. Looking back at their campaign posters before the March 2008 election, ignorant viewers might have been fooled into thinking the KMT was some kind of pro-Taiwan party.

2008 campaign poster: notice the shape of Taiwan used as the bird's wings and the prominent use of the words 台彎 (Taiwan).


2008 campaign poster: (Táiwān yīdìng yíng) means "Taiwan definitely wins".
Of course, anyone who can read a history book or newspaper should know this is not true. The first thing the KMT did the day after Ma's inauguration was remove the word "Taiwan" from the Chinese version of the official government website. Later, Ma told foreign reports that Taiwan was not a country, just a "region" in the Republic of China. etc. etc.

2009: "Taiwan" being covered over with "Taipei." Don't want to offend our masters in Beijing, do we?
In Fall of 2009, the word "Taiwan" was replaced by the local KMT government with the word "Taipei" at an NBA exhibition game. Like the odious moniker "Chinese Taipei" that China and the KMT forces Taiwan's olympic athletes to use, and which the KMT agreed to use as Taiwan's official name at the World Health Organization, replacing "Taiwan" with the name "Taipei" removes Taiwan's endemic sovereignty and independence, and reduces Taiwan to nothing more than an island built around a Chinese city.
Fortunately, it seems the Taiwanese are finally waking up to Ma Ying-jeou's ideologically driven sellout of Taiwan to China, and have soundly defeated KMT candidates in local legislative bi-elections. It gives me hope that the Taiwanese may finally put a stop to the KMT's ongoing erasure of Taiwan.

Last week I posted about my interview with a spiritual medium, Mr. Hsieh Yen-tang. In the second half of our interview, I wanted to know more about these spirits and the state of existence they occupy. Mr. Hsieh began by explaining to me how to differentiate between different kinds of spiritual beings. 

He said that spirits may be divided into two kinds. The first kind is the gods. These are either the gods of nature or the souls of people who have become gods through the good works that they did in their lives. The other kind of spirits is the souls of normal people who have passed away.

Sometimes, Hsieh told me, a spirit’s condition in the afterlife is greatly affected by how and where it died. He said that one kind of spirit that comes to mediums for help are the souls of people who died away from home. They might have died in an ancient war and perhaps lost their head or a limb. Their families didn’t perform the rites to help them become whole again. Today, if someone dies in a car accident, for example, the family of that person might enlist a Taoist priest to go to the site. The priest then helps the spirit to find its way home. If they lost an arm or a leg in the accident, the priest also helps the spirit to become whole. 

Another topic we touched upon during our interview was the idea of ‘possession.’ Mr. Hsieh talked very casually about what might be considered a very strange phenomenon. 

“A spirit may possess the body of a medium,” he explained. “They do not touch the medium’s soul when doing this, but merely borrow their body to communicate. While possessed, the medium has no control of their body. The spirit is wholly in control. If a spirit is from another country, for example, they might speak a language that the medium cannot, such as Hakkanese. They can use then use language of the person they inhabit to communicate. Because our bodies are only meant to contain one soul at a time, there is a physical effect to being possessed. When there are two souls in one body, it results in a sort of conflict. I, for example, become feverish, while other people might belch.”

Hsieh also discussed the spirit plane in greater detail. “Our religion divides the place that spirits inhabit into three levels, heaven, hell and the realm of the living in between,” he said. “Which level a spirit inhabits is decided by what it is there to do. We are always surrounded by them, science just has yet to reach a point where it can detect them. Some people see them, and some people don’t. We inhabit the same plane. The part of that plane we see can be referred to as ‘yang,’ while what we don’t see is ‘yin’ Spirits inhabit our world, and we in turn inhabit theirs.”

In my last post, I mentioned Mr. Hsieh’s mostly silent companion who he referred to as Master Zhao. Master Zhao is a tall, imposing figure with a stony countenance. So I was surprised to learn that what he is a master of is ‘spiritual healing.’

The idea of spiritual healing is of course known to our Western listeners, though it’s usually associated with Christianity. Where Western spiritual healers call upon the power of God to heal people, their Taiwanese counterparts use what’s referred to as “qi.” Qi is the Chinese concept of a life energy, an essence within all living things that can be applied to different ends. For example, practitioners of Chinese kung fu make frequent use of qi in their martial arts. But Master Zhao uses his understanding of qi to more peaceful ends.

“Spirit healing,” he explained, ”uses qi to alleviate pain or discomfort. It’s often faster and more effective than traditional medicine. If you go to a doctor and can’t find any answers, perhaps the problem has to do with a previous life, in which case we can fix it in five minutes. Only after someone has experienced it for themselves can they believe it’s for real.” 

Master Zhao went on to tell the story of how he came into this unique profession.

“I used to run a noodle shop,” he said. “Business was good, but the physical toll of the repetitive movements eventually became unbearable. A friend sent the man who would become my teacher to offer me his services as a spiritual healer. I was reluctant at first, but I gave it a try. As the healer used his methods on me, I felt a warmth pass across my body until I discovered the pain was gone. It returned after I went back to work, so I knew I would have to learn the methods if I wanted to sustain the effects. I began to study spiritual healing with my teacher. I’m not yet an expert. You can study for a very long time and still have a long road to walk. But now I can teach people that this strange and wonderful thing really exists. I can help them to rid themselves of their pain.”

Check out next’s week ‘In Mystical Taiwan’ where I examine one of the creatures of Chinese / Taiwanese folklore.