The other English newspaper - The China Post

The other English newspaper that I can get in Tainan is the China Post(but I think there is a third English newspaper in Taipei).

It also has a free website at:

www.chinapost.com.tw

I get both papers on the weekends and they both are 20 pages long and cover the same issues. I think that the Taipei Times is more of the opposition paper and the China Post is more the government paper. Both papers have a parent paper in Chinese and the local stories are taken from the Chinese version. The Taiwanese local stories have to be translated into English so there is a slight delay between when the story comes out on the TV/radio and in the newspaper.

The current ruling party, the KMT, is more friendly to Mainland China. The opposition, the DPP, is more for Taiwan independence. I'm for the DPP.

World/US news feed like Reuters, WSJ and NYTimes are current.

Below is a sensational story from the China Post of 1/29/2011. This doesn't happen very often but just trying to image the event is exciting.


Police rescue 16 underage girls from triad-operated bar

The China Post news staff -- New Taipei City prosecutors yesterday rescued 16 underage girls from two drinking establishments operated by the United Bamboo Gang of Taiwan's triad society, where the girls were reportedly forced to undress while they drank with gang members and perform other sexual acts.

The ad-hoc investigations team arrested 10 members of the “Bear division” of the Bamboo Gang, including deputy chief operator of bars, Tung Chin-wen, and impounded large amounts of ketamine and the club drug “Ecstasy.”

The New Taipei investigative teams made surprise visits to two establishments “Kai-wo” and “Shangri-la” in the Chungshan district early yesterday morning, their presence literally eliciting screams among the unclothed patrons and uniformed female waitresses, who had been engaged in debauched revelry.

Some naked male patrons had to scramble for clothes and failing to find their own, used the women's g-strings and gauzy lingerie to cover up, local media reported.

Many of the working females were discovered to be underage. Some bore bruises on their arms after admitting that they had endured physical beatings from attempts to run away.

Prosecutors also raided many documents detailing each female's measurements and the coded services she was willing to perform, with prices ranging from NT$1,000-NT$2,000.

Tung, 35, the Bear division's deputy chief, was in charge of recruiting delinquent female students from middle school, offering them drugs and accommodation. Once the girls were hooked on the drugs, he would demand that they pay back their rent and other utilities by forcing them to “sign contracts” and perform sexual services at the establishments.

According to police reports, many girls tried to run away, only to be dragged back by gang members and held in a small room, where they were beaten until they agreed to continue working. Some girls fell pregnant during the sex work and were forced to undergo abortions, often resuming their services shortly after.

Taipei Times

This is my daily newspaper now.

It's a daily of about 20 pages but it is also free and available online at:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/

I pay 15NT for the priviledge of holding it in my hands and the responsibility of recycling it went I'm done. It has a more international outlook than a US newspaper and US/Taiwan relationships are a major concern.


Some of the best stories are local ones, here's one that appeared last week. It summaries Taiwan traffic in a nutshell:

British teacher killed by taxi in Taipei
By Rich Chang  /  Staff Reporter

A 32-year-old British man was hit and killed by a taxi in Taipei City early on Saturday morning.

Taipei police said Mark Paul Bennett was hit as he was crossing at the corner of Jilin Road and Minquan E Rd at about 3am.

TV news footage showed the windscreen of the taxi was broken by the impact, with one of the victim’s shoes lying on the road.

Police said the 70-year-old driver of the taxi, Chen Chin-tsang (陳金藏), was driving his vehicle illegally as by law cab drivers must be under the age of 68.

Chen will be charged with accidental homicide in the workplace and also be fined for driving a taxi illegally, police said.

They said that Chen, as well as a female passenger, told police that the taxi was crossing the junction on a green light.

Chen said he did not see the victim before the collision.

Police said Bennett moved to Taipei last May and was working as an English teacher.

An acquaintance of Bennett’s said his mother and brother had arrived in Taiwan yesterday.

The accident occurred less than a year after former ambassador to Guatemala Lu Yi-cheng (陸以正) was hit by a taxi in April while crossing in a pedestrian zone, promoting the administration of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) to step up efforts to clamp down on drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians.

According to regulations, drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians can be fined between NT$1,200 and NT$3,600.

Police authorities urged drivers to yield to pedestrians, while calling on pedestrians to stop at red lights.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER

It's still Merry Christmas in Tainan

There are still alot of Christmas Decorations up in Tainan. My father, who put up the Christmas Tree afew days before Christmas day and took it down on St Patrick's Day, would be proud. But in Taiwan, I think there are other reasons for the long season rather than just thritiness. The Chinese New Year is coming soon and Taiwan has gone a little crazy on using LEDs. Whereas there are some old traditional(who's tradition?) decorations that seem out of place in the tropical Taiwan.

  But LEDs bring the decorations to new heights

Christmas trees(artifical) can adapt to LEDs.

Even an old government building can be used as a platform. In the boring day:

in the exciting night:

I check to see how long the decorations stay up after the Chinese New Year. I hope Saint Patrick's day does get popular in Taiwan. But everyone likes beer, so who knows?

A trip to City Hall

This past Sunday was the Tainan Marathon. Running events are popular in Taiwan, this time of year is cool enough and a lot of Taiwanese are into fitness. Bicycle riding is also popular, riding around the island hugging the coast is a popular route.

I didn't

    1. run the marathon
    2. walk the marathon

I walked TO the marathon. The Marathon started and ended at the Tainan City Hall which is in the Western District of Tainan and I live in the Eastern District. It is about a 1.5 hour walk from my place to the City Hall. Luckily Tainan is located on the flat ocean coastal plain and has very few hills, a good place for a marathon.

Something went wrong with my camera and I lost all the shots but I retraced my route 2 days ago and got some of them back. Also the City Hall is open during the weekdays but not on Sunday.

In just the two years I've been coming to Tainan, I can see the city government is doing more to get foreigners to come and visit. They have an assistance office for foreigners.

They have internet access and lots of information about Tainan and Taiwan, here's the reading material I left with:

They had a great mural of Tainan as seen by google Earth, it was good to see the whole city in a 50 foot by 10 foot picture. This is just the middle third of the mural. It really shows what a port Tainan was in the olden days.

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Of course it couldn't be a true Chinese government agency without paying tribute to the big guy, Confucius.

FengLiSu

FengLiSu is a small cake with a pineapple filling in the middle. The crust is maybe like the outside of a muffin.(See pictures below)

Any research is sure to start a controversy. As part of my research on the "xiaochi" (snacks) of Taiwan, I tried one FengLiSu and said it was the best I ever had. Another student at my school had recently gotten married and had to give gifts to his wife's relatives. One of these gifts was FengLiSu. So he said what I thought was the best wasn't and he gave me a sample to test.

Here is the first FengLiSu.

 

 Here is the one used for the wedding gifts:

The winner in my opinion was the one used for weddings, it has a sweeter, softer filling and a thicker crust. The other was bigger but size isn't everything. Here's what I consider the best FengLiSu store in Tainan.

Part of my problem with this research was that the other store is actually famous for their meat bun(baozi) so they couldn't be expected to do a good job on FengLiSu. Their baozi is good but I need to do more research before I make a definitive decision.

The name of this store is KLin, I think in the past I had it confused with KLIM, another famous brand in Taiwan.

New Year's is coming!

The Chinese New year is February 3rd and it is surronded with 2 weeks of vacation for both school kids and workers. So it is a big deal. Around Tainan you can just feel the excitment. Lots of special things are on sale because everyone goes home for the holidays and brings something home.

Red is the big color of celebration for posters and gift envelopes.

Even the local minimarkets get into the actions with packages of snacks for the vacation days.

There are stands selling all the decorations you might need.

And of course there's food that is special for the occasion, maybe just in amounts not seen during the year.

We're all going to be careful otherwise it could be an unhealthy holiday.

HuaYuan #3 Things to Eat

The food at the night markets is probably the biggest draw. There all kinds of small snacks for 30-60 NT($1-$2) but two or three would be enough to fill you up so it's better to go in a group so that you can each sample lots of the small snacks. Most of the snacks are made on site. Here we have the fixing for making candied crab apples and strawberries on a stick. I think the sugary coat overwhelms the fruit.

 

And here it the famous Guan Tsai Ban that I had such a hard time finding. I think a lot of the small snack shops have a store and a mobile operation and the mobile operation just sets up at a different night market each night. 

There are stalls selling a variety of dried fruits, vegtables, meats and seafood. These are all sold by weight.

There are a few stalls that have sitting area where you can get a plate of their speciality. I tried the "philly" which I think is a corruption of the fillet, it's a cast iron plate with a wooden serving plate. The dish has noodles, egg and slice of meat splatting with gravy. I made a mistake and got beef, I think Taiwanese pork or chicken is always better done than beef.

The waitresses that controls the sitting area know that throughput is the name of the game. When we finished, the waitress, in perfect English said: "Finished?" and then whisked away our plates. It was a shock at this Taiwanese event to hear the perfect English with the perfect intonation.

Right now there is another controversy about US beef shipments to Taiwan. Taiwan has limits on the kind and amounts of additives in meat and the US is always exceeding these limits. The Taiwanese then halt accepting US beef and the US trade officials try to strong arm the Taiwanese in to accepting the beef with additives. Taiwanese say: "Just ship us beef without the additives". It's really something for the Taiwanese to be more health conscience than the US but the US farmers have been in control of the US Department of Agriculture for a long time. But this is really an issure for the US Food and Drug Administration.

HuaYuan #2 Things to Buy

More than half the stalls in the Night Market are vendors selling clothes, accessories, trinkets, dodads, stationary, cell phones, ... The night markets are famous for their low prices and maybe low quality but if you're not planning to wear it forever does it really matter? Also there are probably a couple vendors selling the same line of product in the same night market so the competition means the prices are low. Saturday night is not a school night so the early crowd include a lot families with children. The elementary school children like to decorate their school back packs with dangling toys.

Older children, in high school might need a cell phone, because it seems everyone in Taiwan has a cell phone or a new cell phone case.

What I can figure out, is with everyone having a cell phone, why are watches still popular?

I missed taking pictures of the clothing stall which were by far at the most common. Most of the style are the fashionable current models, in a sense the stalls can move faster than the brick and mortar stores. There are no changing rooms so you better know your size and be able to pick it from what it looks like on the rack.

HuaYuan #1 - games

The biggest night market in Tainan is the HuaYuan YeShi over on the western side of Tainan on Saturday and Sunday nights. It starts about dusk but by 8PM it is "stall to stall" people. You don't have to walk, you just shuffle along with the rest of the crowd.

As I see it there are three areas for the Night Market:

1. Carnival games
2. Things for sale
3. Food for sale

Today I'll do some of the games as the Night Market. There's lot of balloons to pop for prizes and ping pong balls to throw into holes. But for some Taiwanese this will be as close as they ever get to a gun.

Some of the guns are very life like:

I didn't see my favorite of fishing for tropical fish with a paper net but they had a similar game of fishing for shrimp with a bit of food at the end of small pole and line.

While I was watching I didn't see anyone catch a shrimp, the shrimp must have already had their supper. But that's OK you can buy some shrimp from the vendor and cook them right there on a charcoal brazier..

This week

I've finished the 4th week of classes, this semester is only 8 weeks long so I'm half way through. Time is really flying because I busy. My 1 on 1 classes are gong well, I have two good teachers and Im making good progress. The Grammar and Pronunciation classes are OK and a chance to meet other international students. TaiJiQuan is proving to be my worst class, it's just another Chinese skill that I suck at. It's good to learn what you're bad at but I learned I was bad at TaiJiQuan in the first half hour, too bad I have another 8 hours to go.

A few days ago was the full moon so the air was full of the smell of burning paper money. This is some ceremony to please the ancestors with offerings and burning fake money that they can supposedly use in Heaven. Even my dormitory has to do "BaiBai".

 The only employee that remains from when I was at this dormitory before is the janitor, he has the added duty of doing the "BaiBai".

I saw my first accident yesterday. It happened right in front of me as I was waiting for the traffic light to change. It seems as the light changes a motorcycle overtook a scooter that was stopped at the light. It looked like a father was taking his daughter home from school when they were rear ended. I really felt for the father seeing his daughter sprawled out on the road.

  In Taiwan, everything gets reused. These old school desks are used as tables at sidewalk restaurants. Sitting at these small tables always makes me think of those parent/teacher meetings when Eli and Ely were in elementary school.

My Research

I've started a new research project in Tainan. Because Tainan is famous for "Xiao Chir" (small snacks), I've decided to survey the situation here in Tainan. I have a newspaper article and map of the famous ones and I'm checking them off one by one. I have a lot of enthusiastic supporters in this project, my 2 teachers are all for it and have alot of suggestions for places that weren't on the newspaper's list.

I live in the newer Eastern district of Tainan and most of the famous places are in the older Western district, so it's a 30-60 minute trek to most of them. But even in Taiwan I can see then days are getting longer and there is more time to explore that part of town.

This was my first hit after the Guan Tsai Ban. It's a plate of assorted sausages. The ones with meat were the tastiest but there were the strange ones. One white one was made with rice and peanuts.  Another was made from Tofu. Ok but I'm not going back.

This one was an oyster/egg corn starch pancake with vegetables. Pretty good, I'd go back, I know some people like this one.

One good thing about this research project is that you can hardly mess up. I went to one address and couldn't find the address. But I found some good snacks anyway. (I had the address right, I was just on the wrong street.)

This was a Chun Jie, a spring roll with finely shredded cabbage and dried shredded pork inside a disk of onion bread. It was really good.

This was another find on the wrong street, it's called "dan bing", a fried egg wrapped in a sheet of fried bread and then sliced. Pretty good, but pretty common too.

Just the thing to eat while reading the morning newspaper.

KaoHsuing National Museum of Science and Technology

Continuing with the mathematics theme, I have some pictures of geometric structures from the National Museum of Science and Technology in KaoHsuing.

Whenever I go to such museums or parks on a Sunday they seem strangely empty with very few visitor. This seems strange in Taiwan where the streets, stores and restaurants always seem busy. I think it is because the Taiwanese really treat Sunday as a day of rest and relaxation. The Monday through Saturday week is so busy and hectic that Sunday is the day to stay home and recharge for the coming week. For school children and parents this seems especially true.

 

The building is built with a lot of the structural supports exposed.

It is a big building with lots of different exibits some specifically hands-on projects for children.

 Taiwan has always been a textile manufacturing center so there is a large display about manufacturing and home crafts.

But I always come away feeling a little older when they display computers that I use to own and I thought were so modern at the time.

The KaoHsuing Main Stadium

Continuing with the mathematical theme, we have the KaoHsuing Main Stadium. It was built for the 2009 World Games, which are like the Olympics but for lesser known sports. Because it is new there were a lot of geometric features, it was quite futuristic. It can hold upto 40,000 spectators and the field is big enough for soccer or rugby. (Rugby, is actually popular with the students at NCKU, I see them playing every morning on my way to class.)

I took a tour with a group of senior citizens. There is an interesting pasttime in Taiwan of trying to guess where a speaker comes from. From small differences in how they speak Chinese or Taiwanese, the listeners can guess the speaker's hometown. My group of senior citizens had only a few questions about the stadium but mostly wanted to know if they guessed the tour guide's hometown as being TaiZhong. It was.

You'd think that in such a small island as Taiwan there wouldn't be that much variation, but there is. It doesn't matter to me, they will always know from just one sentence that I'm not from Taiwan.

The stadium seemed built from pipes(curves) crossing in different directions.

The parallel family of curves generate a surface.

 

Some of the sculptures around the stadium look like protein shapes that I generated while at the Yeast Resource Center .