Category: Asia

If you thought politicians in your country were immature

From Penghu links to be `case by case’

Speaking at a separate event, TSU Chairman Shu Chin-chiang (蘇進強), however called the government a “liar” in front of DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) at an activity held by the Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance that both men attended yesterday morning.

Shu’s remarks immediately made the atmosphere awkward.

[…]

Sitting beside Shu, Su looked embarrassed and did not respond to his criticisms.

The two men did not talk to each other and left the news conference separately.

Romanization in Taiwan

I just spotted this article on romanization in Taiwan at a good and brand-new Taipei related blog with the unfortunately bland name of Taipei, Taipei. This article he(she?) links to, as well as the blog post on Taipei2 do a good job of introducing the problem of completely un-standardized, incompetent romanization of place names in Taiwan.

At least the situation seems to be improving in a way. Here in Taipei, all official signs now use standard Hanyu pinyin.

Let’s look at the way 古亭 has been romanized. The MRT stop is labelled “Kuting.” But because the apostrophes are routinely omitted in Taiwan, it is completely impossible — even for the relatively few people who are familiar with Wade-Giles — to know if the name is really Ku-ting (Guding ㄍㄨ ㄉㄧㄥ), K’u-ting (Kuding ㄎㄨ ㄉㄧㄥ), K’u-t’ing (Kuting ㄎㄨ ㄊㄧㄥ), or Ku-t’ing (Guting ㄍㄨ ㄊㄧㄥ). (Note that hanyu pinyin, Guting, has no such ambiguity and works well to show the correct pronunciation.)

That’s four equally likely possibilities — and that’s without considering tones, which are an essential component of Chinese. If tones are included in the computations, there are 64 different possible pronunciations of the two syllable “Kuting” — hardly a useful representation of 古亭.

As it so happens, I live right by 古亭 MRT station, and it’s official romanized name is, of all things, Guting! Exactly what it should be. The Taipei city/county government has, sometime in the past few years, rewritten all of the signs in proper Hanyu pinyin.

Another example that those of us currently living in Taipei luckily do not have to deal with.

But Tamshui is the historical Taiwanese name for the city.

No. Tamsui (no h) is the correct historical spelling, reflecting the Taiwanese name for the city. Tan-shui would be correct Wade-Giles, and Danshui correct hanyu pinyin. Of course, the “Tam-shoo-ee” pronunciation formerly used on the MRT is quite beneath contempt.

Like Guting, 淡水 is now rendered in the correct Hanyu pinyin of ‘Danshui.’ It may not match 17th century Dutch maps, but it sounds closer to the Chinese pronounciation, and it’s consistent with, for a start, the way people write Chinese words in the Roman alphabet in the other 99% of the planet that isn’t Taiwan.

Unfortunately the problem persists in other areas of Taiwan. For example, I have seen the character 中 romanized as, zhong, chong, chung, jhong, and now thanks to Taipeitaipei, the inexplicable ‘jhorg.’

How on Earth is this inconsistency helpful to anyone?

Bears, oh my

As the New York Times reports that my home state of New Jersey is gripped by the furry paw of a bear epidemic…

State biologists estimate that as many as 3,400 bears now roam New Jersey, the nation’s most densely populated state, and say a hunt is the most effective way to control the increasingly troublesome population. Two bears were killed last weekend in Sussex County in northwest New Jersey after one broke into a house and another broke into a shed.

“We are going to have a large population of bears way into the future. It’s a prolific problem,” said Martin J. McHugh, the director of the state’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. “Our aim is to reduce the growth of the population.”

Here in Taiwan we see what happens when bears are allowed to run completely rampant.

A three-year-old boy was critically injured yesterday after a caged circus bear nearly ripped off his arm in southern Taiwan, a hospital official said. Doctors performed emergency surgery to reattach the right arm of the boy, who was found lying in a pool of blood by the bear’s cage on a farm where a circus from Vietnam was performing, an official from Chi Mei Hospital said. Farm staff said the boy, who went to see the bear perform stunts like riding a bicycle, might have provoked the animal by trying to pat it. The incident occurred while his mother was talking to performers. The performance was suspended after the attack. The boy’s parents blamed the farm owners for the attack for failing to put up warning signs in front of the bear’s cage, local newspapers said.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

I have here an article from the July 18 Chuunichi Shinbun. For some reason it is no longer avaliable on the website (404 error), but luckily you can still see the original Japanese text in Google cache.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

Seoul- Kiyoshi Nakamura.

According to the issue of Korean Magazine ‘Choson Weekly’ which went on sale July 17th, a former representative (72 years old) of North Korea’s People’s Supreme Congress (basically their ‘parliament’) who recently defected to the South said in a statement to South Korea’s National Information Institute that the North “visited Taiwan for the purpose of exporting North Korean made missiles.”

When asked about the nuclear problem he said, “North Korea is manufacturing kiloton capacity nuclear weapons.” On the other hand, “The North has little confidence in their large nuclear weapons, and so are also manufacturing 500 kiloton nukes.”

According to the same publication, this representative was also a researcher at the “Oceanographic Industrial Research Facility”, which is a subsidiary of the Secondary Economic Association that covers the entire munitions industry. They primarily develop such things as missiles, and are responsible for production and external business.

The representative let known his desire to defect in May of this year, in a third country.

He was allowed into Korea by the National Information Institute, and investigations are continuing.

Has anyone seen this story reported anywhere else? I’m particularly asking you Korean-speaking Marmot readers.

Update: Adam, your correction is noted.

Typhoons

I’m sitting here with the rain pouring down outside my window, waiting for typhoon Matsa to come in full swing. I’m not actually praying for a day off tomorrow (like during the last typhoon), although if I seriously thought it would help I’m not completely averse to sacrificing a small animal. Not one of the wild dogs in the empty field next door though-they’re actually quite friendly.

Taiwan’s National Weather Bureau has a really amazing typhoon tracker on their website.

Update: Tv news says 明天不上班不上课

Paekche and Kudara

I don’t usually like to just provide links to things on other blogs, but the Marmot pointed out this amazing article that’s just the sort of thing I love.

A research on the name Kudara
Here’s a random excert.

For these characters Karlgren reconstructs the archaic and ancient Chinese pronounciations: *χmwət / χuət for 忽 , – / mai: for 買 , *nâd / nâi- for 奈 and *nəg / nậi for 乃 50, from which we can obtain the pronounciations in Paekche’s language *xol for “fortress”, corresponding to the Mongolian qorga “fortress 51, fence”, to the ancient Turkish qurγan “fortress” and koriğ “enclosure” 52 and to the MK 53 .ulh “enclosure, fence” 54, *mai for “river”, perhaps to be connected to the MK mɨl “water”, and with the Mongolian mari “great river” 55, *nai for “land”, corresponding to the Jurchin náh, to the Manchu na, to the Goldi na and to the ancient Japanese *na, all with the meaning of “land”.

The already cited 56 Chou-shu passage mentions for the king of Paekche the names Wolaγa 於羅瑕 and Kjʌnkitsi 鞬吉支 and for the queen the name Woljuk 於陸 57. Let’s reconstruct, always with the help of Karlgren, the northern Chinese pronounciations of the 6th-7th century of these names.

Japan to drop visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists

Today’s Taipei Times reports that advocates for Taiwanese independence are renewing calls for a formal declaration of a Republic of Taiwan and the promulgation of a new constitution. I found this quote particularly interesting.

“The good news that Japan has agreed to waive the visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists shows that Japan recognizes Taiwan as a nation,” Wang said. “It also shows that our promotion of correcting the country’s official name and writing a new constitution has made some preliminary achievements.”

As for the visa waver plan.

The bill was initiated by the head of the lower house’s legal affairs committee and passed with the support of the Liberal Democratic Party and its ruling coalition partner, Komeito, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

As Japan does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the bill is necessary if Japan wants to offer a permanent visa waiver for Taiwanese citizens. Japan’s existing exit and entry regulations only authorize visa waivers for citizens from countries that maintain diplomatic ties with Japan.

It seems that from the Japanese side this is more about promoting tourism than endorsing Taiwanese independence, but it is true that with relations between Japan and China becoming increasingly tense, Japan has recently become more supportive of Taiwan. The bill passed unanimously, showing that whatever policy differences Japanese politicians may have, this was a completely non controversial decision.

As a side note, due to the English language Taiwanese press’s extremely helpful habit of including Chinese characters for proper nouns, I now know that Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) famous quote that there exists one country on each side of the Strait of Taiwan is written “一邊一國.”

Just cuz this shouldn’t go unnoticed — Japan Just Lost to NK in Soccer


First NK shuns Japan at the 6-party talks, now their soccer team is making Japan look like a bunch of fancy boys. I gotta say, the North Koreans sure know how to make someone feel unwelcome:

Japan stunned by N. Korea at E. Asian c’ship

Monday, August 1, 2005 at 07:38 JST
DAEJEON — Japan’s hopes of lifting their first east Asian championship title suffered an unexpected blow on Sunday after a shock 1-0 defeat to North Korea on the opening day of the four-team tournament in South Korea.

Kim Young Jun capitalized on some poor defending to strike the decisive goal in the 27th minute at Daejeon World Cup Stadium as North Korea avenged their recent 2-0 defeat in the Asian zone qualifying competition for next year’s World Cup finals.

I couldn’t find any pictures from the game but this was linked on Xinhua’s site:

Yowzer!

Starbugs

Seeing this Boingboing post on international Starbucks knockoffs prompted me to post the photos I took at the famous Taiwanese Starbucks knockoff, ‘Starbugs.’

Up in riverside entertainment/boardwalk area in Danshui, a small city in Taipei County about 30 minutes north of Taipei City proper, you can find this unusually specialized pet shop.

Inside, they sell nothing but beatles, large spiders, and crabs.

If any reader happens to be an amatuer entomologist, feel free to let me know what these little monsters are properly called.