Category: Taiwan

New PLA missile `a warning’ for the US, experts say

Does anyone else finds the rhetoric about China’s “peaceful rise” a little bit unconvincing?

From the Taipei Times:

China’s newly-developed submarine-launched Ju Lang-2 missile serves as a warning to the US not to underestimate Beijing’s military power, Taiwanese military experts said yesterday.

“The Ju Lang-2 poses a great threat to the US because it has better precision and guidance and is harder to detect,” said Weng Ming-hsien (翁明賢), a professor from the Institute of Strategic Studies at the Tamkang University.

“China wants to tell the US that it has never stopped developing nuclear arms. China also wants to warn Russia not to get too close to the US,” he said.

Weng said China probably would deploy the Ju Lang-2, which carries nuclear warheads, on its Han-class nuclear submarines.

Lee Shih-ping, a military expert specializing in warplanes and warships, said Ju Lang-2 posed a new security threat to the US because it could be fired from the sea and reach the US interior.

Assorted news updates

Jenkins’ hometown reacts with rage, indifference to visit

“I would have liked to have seen him lined up and shot like a traitor. I don’t care how old he is. He still did it,” said Vera Outland, who had considered lining Main Street with protest signs for Jenkins’ return.

In the end, she decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.

“If you ask me, he was a coward,” said retired U.S. Army Col. Earl Daniels, who went to school with Jenkins and served a combat tour in Vietnam. “I hope I don’t meet him on the street, tell you the truth, because I don’t know how I would react.”

Not exactly the reception that Jenkins has been getting in Japan.

For Chinese, Peasant Revolt Is Rare Victory
I had mentioned when it first happened, back during the anti-Japan protests, but the Washington Post has a very good, long article on it. Well worth reading.

Khmer Rouge trial to get more funds

PHNOM PENH (Kyodo) Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Japan is prepared to cover the $11 million shortfall in funds for a tribunal to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to justice, Cambodian government sources said.

In a meeting Friday with Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, Machimura said Cambodia could use an already allocated Japanese grant to meet the shortfall, according to a senior official who attended the meeting.

Rightists thwart Yasukuni rally by Taiwanese

A group of indigenous Taiwanese gave up an attempt Tuesday to stage a rally at Yasukuni Shrine because they didn’t want to clash with rightists.

They had hoped to protest Yasukuni’s enshrinement of their relatives who died fighting for Japan in the war.

About 50 descendents or relatives led by indigenous legislator Kao Chin Su-mei arrived near the shrine in central Tokyo in the morning on two buses. They decided to scrub the protest after police told them the shrine was surrounded by 100 rightwingers, Kao Chin said.
[…]
Up to 150 officers, including riot police, were mobilized to prevent a confrontation between the two sides.

It’s pretty sad that the rightwingers managed to drive off the protesters after coming all the way from Taiwan. According to a Taipei Times report right-wingers had been threatening the aboriginal protesters before they even left Taiwan.

May Chin said last week her office had received “countless phone calls” warning her group against making the trip.

She said she had also been sent an anonymous postcard which threatened in Mandarin: “I will wait for you in Japan on June 13 so that you can come to Japan and return lifeless to Taiwan.”

You might think that 150 police officers may sound like adequate protection, but I wouldn’t count on Japanese police to keep me safe from anything.

Post Computex Photo gallery. Part 2 – Girls (and gawkers)

Continuing from part 1 (gear) of my Computex photo gallery/a>, here are a few sample thumbnails. Or just browse the album directly.

Anyone who has ever been to, or read about, any kind of large trade show related in any way to the computer technology field will be familiar with the show models or ‘booth babes’ hired by major presenters to lure attendees to their booth, where they can have their arms filled up with brochures and worthless branded knick-knacks. While for most attendees, the booth-babes may only be a pleasant distraction from the more serious business of checking out the new hardware, there is a serious contingent of people who are there just to check out, and photograph the dancing, scantily clad, attractive girls.

As good looking as most of the girls are, most of them are surrounded by so many excessively eager, desperate, camera-bearing men that you can’t just stand there and enjoy the show, except in some of the smaller out of the way booths. Larger, more popular booths such as Shuttle or Nvidia were just so hideously jam-packed that seeing the models up close would require about as much effort as pushing your way through a moshpit to the front row of an overcrowded rock show.

After seeing the ridiculous effort that these photographers exert to attend each little dance number and photograph the models at each company’s stall, I realized that the photographers themselves were just as amusing as the models, and decided to present a photogallery interleaving portraits of the photographers with the photographed. For the ideal presentation, start with this first model photo and view the rest sequentially within the gallery.


Click here for an obsessively complete photo gallery of models from this year’s Computex, as well as past computer trade shows..

Where’s the Niurou?

The Asahi reported today that as of June 1st, Yoshinoya resumed sales of gyudon at all 45 of its stores in Taiwan. This is the first time Taiwanese gyudon lovers have been able to buy the bowls in one year and four months since Yoshinoya halted sales last February following the Taiwanese ban on U.S. beef imports. Taiwan reopened imports in April, but only for cattle under 30 months of age.

According to the article, the price is some 20 percent higher than before sales were halted, but this apparently hasn’t stopped large numbers of visiting Japanese businessmen from frequenting Yoshinoya outlets.

Since MFT founding contributor Roy is in Taiwan this summer, and in keeping with the challenge issued by Adamu last week, and Curzon and Joe‘s intrepid trek to consume coffee flavored ramen, perhaps Roy might be willing to visit and give an eyewitness account. Five points for every photo you get of a Japanese salaryman chowing down on gyudon! And ten for any still beating hearts you find in the bowl!

Post Computex Photo gallery. Part 1 – Gear

There are a lot of candidates for the center of the world’s IT industry: Cupertino, Redmond, Palo Alto, Tokyo, Seoul, – but these days it seems to be Taipei.

The definitive expression here is DIY, widely known in English speaking countries as an acronym for Do It Yourself, but here in Taiwan adopted as a uniquely specific lexical item referring just to the homebrew computer industry. If you walk into any of the many, many, many expansive computer stores in Taipei you will be overwhelmed by a selection of parts unavaliable at all but the rarest of US computer stores, and more interesting struck by the odd lack of brand name desktop systems.

“Here in Taiwan, if you can’t make your own PC you’re not a man,” I was told earlier today by a Taiwanese guy named Kevin. This is a sentiment that I can imagine evoking a kind of cultural jealousy in hardware geeks throughout the entire planet.

This little number from Foxconn has the distinction of being one of the coolest and best looking PC case designs I have seen. They also have the fine distinction of having provided one of the exhibitor ID tags that was used to sneak me into the show.

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending Computex, Taiwan’s trademark computer and technology expo, the largest in Asia and the second largest of its type in the world after Hannover, Germany.

Of course I took a number of photos, and here is a sample of them. I have divided photos into two parts: Gear and Girls, since as everyone knows the motivation for attendance at these tech industry shows is based almost equally on both of those things.


Some of the literally hundreds of case designs on display.


This is exactly what we’ve all wanted for all these years! Screw laptops, next time I buy a portable I want something that looks like Q cobbled it together.


This isn’t an ipod shuffle, but an unreleased prototype product of the socalled iVogue mp3 player line from Jetway. They estimated a July release date, but the website doesn’t even have a listing for these products yet, much less pricing information.


Easily the most impressive piece of actual new technology I saw at the show. This is an experimental prototype CPU cooling system, from Korean manufacturer KM Korea. The demo had a chip of some kind running at about 50 celsius, quite hot to the touch. You press the button and it activates their cooling device, and the heat instantly drains away from the chip surface, cooling it to about 15 celsius in only a couple of seconds. I have no idea how it works, and where the heat is being dissipated to. Perhaps the table concealed some kind of wormhole, through which the heat is sent into whatever dark dimension in which Cthulhu waits.

Arrival in Taipei

I’m dead tired. I arrived in Newark airport at about 10pm New York time tuesday night. Boarding at 12.30 Five hour flight to Seattle. Two hour wait. Twelve hour flight to Taipei’s Chiang Kai Shek airport, arrival 7.30am. Bus to Taipei station. On the way I pass Mosburger several times. Mosburger is the Japanese answer to McDonald’s, and the absolute unrivaled king of burger-form fastfood. Not aware that it existed anywhere outside of Japan I am thrilled far out of proportion to the actual significance of this discovery.

Arriving at the train station it takes me a few minutes to figure out exactly where the hostel is. Thirteenth floor of a building, above an electronics mall with Acer, Apple, iRiver, Asus, MSI, BenQ stores is not the place one you would expect to find a youth hostel, but when they said “right across the street from Taipei main station” they meant it-doubting only causes me to walk back and forth a few times, the strap of my portable computer carrying case wearing out my shoulder muscles.

I check in, I prepaid on the internet but I don’t have an Internation Youth Hostel membership card so I give him a few dollars to register for one of those before I’m allowed in. I’m sharing a room with a couple of Japanese guys who just arrived from Korea and leave for the Phillipines in a week. They are planning to travel all the way around the world. “How long will it take”, I ask.” Hmmm, maybe a year”, Ohta ventures. Clearly their plans are not fixed. I ask what their plan for the day is? “I think we’ll go see this”, he says. “What?” I ask stupidly, when I realize he is wearing a yoda shirt, and his friend (whom I think is named Kobayashi) has Darth Vader on his chest. “Ah yes, I saw that last week. Definitely better than the last two. But of course, if you’re enough of a fan to wear a t-shirt there’s really no question about going is there?”

I go to take a shower. Slightly confused at first, as the toilet stalls and shower stalls are the very same. Let me be clear, because I thought my eyes deceived me at first. The shower is mounted above the toilet, and the toilet seat becomes soaked as you shower next to it. I suppose it’s an efficient use of space, but I am a little shocked. This design would be anathema in Japan, where they don’t generally even allow the toilet and shower to be separate stalls in the same room, much less so… interactive.

I go down the block to the subway station, and look around the underground bookshop for a while before I go into the purchase area. I’m pleased to see that a moderately sized general bookstore has specifically marked off sections for fantasy and science fiction. It is all in Chinese, but I notice that much of it is translated from Japanese authors, and probably most of the rest from western languages. I also note that there are books in English scattered throughout the store, mixed in with the appropriate topical section, not segregated in an English corner. I recall what I had read about the linguistic history of Taiwan. Originally inhabited by aborigines speaking Pacific island languages, Fujianese and Hakka settlers from southern China, colonization by Dutch, expulsion of the Dutch and a larger influx of Chinese, speaking a mix of southern dialects. Annexation by Japan around turn of 20th century, imperial rulers gradually implement replacement of Chinese with Japanese, particularly effective in education and literary worlds-for a time in the 30’s and 40’s even native Taiwanese are writing literature in the Japanese language. Following Japan’s defeat in the second world war Taiwan is given to the Republic of China, the government of which decides to supress Japanese as well as all non-Mandarin dialects, a policy which continues in full force until the 80’s and I believe is still gradually leveling off. The author’s theory seemed to be that the history of language on Taiwan has led to a culture in which many people have a more relaxed distinction between native and foreign languages. I consider that a single bookstore in which English books are shelved alongside Chinese books does not make for a broad sample.

From Jersey to Taiwan

I first visited China in March of 2003 during the between semester break of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan where I was studying at the time. I never wrote much about that trip, but my fellow traveler Chris Gunson, who was also studying at Ritsumeikan as an exchange student from Rutgers, has a good account of the entire journey (illustrated with my photographs and his maps) on his website at www.cgunson.com/china/. At the time I know no Chinese at all, and although Chris had taken a little Chinese in high school he couldn’t actually speak it to any degree, just understand a few words and read or write simple sentences. Since we were both students of Japanese, which has a writing system largely based on that of Chinese, we could read a decent number of words in much the same way that a reader of English can make out some Spanish or German words on a page, and traveling all the way across a country as large as China with only these limited communication skills to rely upon was part of the fun.

Still, after spending about three weeks in China without the ability to communicate with a single taxi or bus driver, the servers in any but the best restaurants, the ticket sellers at the train station, or any other local people aside from the rare college student, unable to watch tv, read the newspaper, and so on I thought that it might be fun to learn Chinese and someday return with the ability to do all of those things and more. Ordinarily this would seem like a mildly nutty decision, but since I was already living in Japan studying that language it hardly seemed unreasonable. During the following semester in Japan, my second, I made arrangements to stay for a second year so when I returned home to the States that July it was only for summer vacation and not for good. When during the summer I stopped by my home university, Rutgers to see some people and take care of some things, I dropped by the university bookstore and bought the textbook used there for elementary Chinese.

When I went back to Ritsumeikan I started to study the book with the help of a girl from Shanghai that I was friends with, but just doing a little bit every week I didn’t really get very far, and she was impressed enough that my pronounciation was less awful than that of Japanese people that she knew studying Chinese that she didn’t worry much about my general slow progress, and when we both ran out of time to study together I set aside Chinese study for a while.

About a year after my first trip to China I went again. This time I was traveling alone much of the time, instead of wandering aimlessly I was visiting friends that had studied with my in Japan, and the trip was capped by a journey from China into Kazakhstan. I originally created the first version of this site to document that trip, and part of those journals are preserved in early entries on this blog. Here are some of them.
2004 travel journal
HK part 1
HK part 2
HK part 3, etc.
Shekou
Shenzhen
Beijing
Yonghe Gong (Former palace in Beijing converted into Tibetan Buddhist temple)
Tiananmen
The Summer Palace and lost on the way there.

I never actually wrote an adequate account of the trip out west and to Kazkahstan, but there are a number of photographs in my gallery section, as well as of all sections of China that I visited.

On this trip to China I actually brought my textbook with me and tried to study a bit while I was traveling, but time was short and my level was so low that I gave up quickly and just enjoyed myself, and resolved to actually register in Chinese class when I returned to Rutgers in the fall. I had also been studying a little bit of Korean on the side at Ritsumeikan, with the help of a Korean girl that I was dating at the time and actually ended up registering for both Chinese and Korean 101 for the fall semester. (Sidenote, I stopped in Seoul for a few days on the way home from Japan. My travelogue from that time is located here and here)

I had assumed that because Japanese and Korean have such similar grammar and use Chinese loanwords in such a similar way, and because it uses a fairly easy phonetic writing system instead of thousands of characters that it would be easier than the tonal Chinese language to learn, but over the course of the semester I was surprised to find that while I had to study mindlessly for hours to memorize Korean vocabulary, after having already spent years memorizing Chinese characters for reading Japanese, Chinese class was by far the easier of the two. Studying two languages at elementary level at the same time was kind of inconvenient, so next semester I just stuck with Chinese so I could properly concentrate.

Around the middle of that final semester, one day in class my Chinese teacher handed me an application for a Taiwan government scholarship to study Chinese in Taiwan. “Do you have any plans for the summer yet?” she asked, adding “the application is due tomorrow.” Not even remotely having and fixed plans for after graduation I brought the application back the following day, and a couple of weeks found out that I had got the scholarship, which is $25,000 New Taiwanese Dollars (about 30 to one $US) per month, which will be placed in the care of the school in Taiwan at which I study for me to get when I arrive. What’s that? Although I was assured money to study in Taiwan, I hadn’t actually registered for an actual course of study yet, so I scrambled to get together the application forms for that, which in addition to the standard teacher recommendations also required a physical and HIV test (negative of course). The people in the scholarship office made it clear that scholarship recipients were guaranteed admission to the program of their choice, of course phrased a bit subtly. After looking over the various options I opted for the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University, in Taipei.

My flight leaves tonight (technically tomorrow’s calendar date) at thirty minutes past midnight. It flies first to Seattle, then I transfer for another twelve hour flight to Chiang Kai Shek international airport in Taipei. The scholarship provides me money that is expected to be used for tuition, rent and other expenses, but it actually only lasts for three months while I’m going to be staying for at least six, so I need to make up for the shortfall out of my own pocket, partly through some money saved and partly through the freelance Japanese to English translation that I have been doing part time for about three quarters of a year, and can carry on doing anyplace where I have a decently stable internet connection. Because the school dorm is for some arcane reason not avaliable to recipients of this particular scholarship program (incidentally, a rule that I also saw in Japan, which caused great inconvenience for at least two international students that I knew), I will be staying in a youth hostel (conveniently located across from the main Taipei train station) for the first few days while I try and find some accomodations on my own. Since the campus is located extremely downtown, as you can see if you look at this map of the area (warning, very large image!). The NTNU campus, also known by its abbreviated Chinese name ShiDa(師大) is located just a couple of blocks northeast of Guting Station, which is one of the largest in the city. Since the school is located in such a downtown area I may or may not be able to afford a room within walking distance, but I’m sure that going a couple of subway stops away would not be much of a hardship at all.

So this is it, I’m about to have some dinner, pack up my stuff, and head to the airport. I would like to remind everyone that there are a number of galleries of photos from some of my previous trips, and to look out for more of both writing and photographs here regularly and hopefully soon.

Fear of protesters will keep Jackie Chan from Taiwan

From the Taipei Times

Movie star Jackie Chan (成龍) says he will stay away from Taiwan for four years to avoid protests over remarks he made calling last year’s presidential elections a joke, TVBS reported yesterday.

At a news conference in China last year, the action hero said Taiwan’s disputed presidential election was “the biggest joke in the world,” provoking calls from politicians in this country to ban his movies.

In an interview in Cannes with TVBS broadcast yesterday, Chan said he wanted to avoid Taiwan for the time being.

“If I come, some people might organize something at the airport,” Chan said, alluding to recent political protests at CKS International Airport.

For the record, I don’t think that Taiwan’s presidential election is a joke. Please don’t throw things at me when I come off the airplane in Taipei next week.

Two interviews discuss Japan’s war apologies

The Asahi, one of Japan’s three major daily newspapers, has two contrasting Q&A format opinion pieces regarding Japan’s recent problems with China and Korea that some people may find interesting. The first is with a German freelance journalist Gebhard Hielscher, who was formerly Far East correspondent for the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Q: What was your reaction to the recent outrage against Japan in China and South Korea?

A: My impression is that all along, Japan has been deliberately not trying to face the past, and hoping that these issues would go away. Japan has been more concerned about its relationship with the United States.

Running away from the issue of compensation to the two countries that were the main victims of Japan’s aggression, the Japanese have had it (protest) coming for all these years.

Our (Germany’s) main victims, aside from the Holocaust, were the Soviet Union and Poland, and we have done a lot for them. I always leave out the Israel issue because it is not part of the comparison: Japan did not commit a Holocaust. But what we did in Poland, which is colonize it, can be compared to what Japan did in the Korean Peninsula.

Germany didn’t pay direct reparations to Poland, or the Soviet Union, but the Allied Forces took a lot of industrial property out of Germany as a form of reparation. Also, Germany gave up 24 percent of its traditional territory to these two countries, the two biggest victims. We saw that as one way to pay our moral debt.

The intreview given as a response to Herr Hielscher, which disagrees from what I would consider a rather moderate position, and not the extreme nationalist stance that has been irritating everyone, is by Keio University professor Tomoyuki Kojima an expert on Chinese and East Asian affairs.

Q: Do you think Japan has compensated enough for wartime aggression, compared with Germany?

A: In terms of state-to-state compensation, I would say Japan has done more through the process of normalizing relations with many of its neighbors.

While there are countries that did not demand compensation, for those countries that did, we have paid compensation.

In the case of China, both Taiwan, with whom Japan normalized relations first, and mainland China, declared they would forfeit claims for reparations.

Taking the example of forced labor, a court has ruled that the former employer of forced laborers from China and Korea pay damages. But the same court did not rule on whether the state was liable, as that issue has been settled through bilateral negotiations.

In the case of South Korea, for example, Japan agreed in 1965 to provide grants and loans to the country. There is a problem that it was not clearly referred to as “compensation,” but in reality both sides agree that is what it was.

There are individual issues pertaining to the war that remain unresolved, and that is undeniable. Definitely Japan must do something.

But my view is that it is not worthwhile to simply consider Germany a model and criticize Japan for lack of atonement for the past.