A big piece of real estate

The Taichung City Government's website reports here that a Hong Kong investor, Richard Li, is interested in developing the old Shuinan Airport. We heard about this on the TV news earlier (though they focused more on how a city councilwoman was trying to act as a matchmaker between Li and the mayor's daughter Hu Ting-Ting).

Shuinan Airport

The TV news was suggesting that the redevelopment might result in a rise in the cost of housing in Taichung. But the story on the website mentions some problems with the Ministry of National Defense that might slow down the redevelopment of the airport. Anyone heard anything more about this?

Oysters coming home to roost

(Don't ask me what that title's supposed to mean--I have no idea!)

My colleague and fellow disser-commiserator John just sent me a copy of the original short story "A Pail of Oysters" that Vern Sneider published in the Antioch Review in 1950. (The novel, about which I've written three posts, was published in 1953.)

I haven't had time to read the story yet--I'm too busy fighting my way through a dissertation chapter that I want to finish before the end of the month--but I notice it seems a lot more focused on Li Liu and his family. There doesn't appear to be any Didi, Precious Jade, or Ralph Barton in this story. Hmmm... (More later...)

And thanks, John!

Back from Oberlin

Had a nice time in Oberlin, despite all the warnings we got prior to going about the terrible weather in the Cleveland area.

(Saw this igloo on Oberlin's campus on Tuesday. By Wednesday it had mostly melted away.)

Got some good productive time in at Oberlin's Archives, thanks to the kind help of Roland Baumann, Ken Grossi, and Tammy Martin (and their assistants). Thanks, all!

We had dinner Monday night with our friend ERG, who came to Oberlin to visit. Had a great time with him!

We also got some needed shopping in. (It's nice to be able to buy shoes in a place where the clerks don't keep reminding you that you have big feet...)

I read three books on the flight there and back. On the way over, I read From Evangelicalism to Progressivism at Oberlin College, 1866-1917 by John Barnard (available for free online at OSU's Knowledge Bank). On the way back, helped by a 3-hour delay on the runway due to a heavy crosswind, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Ordeal by Slander by Owen Lattimore. Good books! (See, I don't just buy 'em...)

But now it's back to work. Classes begin March 1, so I have syllabi to write and a few days to get some quality dissertating time in. So... talk to y'all later...

[Update: And now I can see what we just missed, weather-wise...]

But I still love you, Internet...

Here's one reason why...

"And you know, I don't even feel any withdrawal symptoms..." (he said, his lips trembling...)

Our home has been without Internet service for the past few days (lousy phone company), but we haven't had time to call them to find out what's wrong. And we don't miss it that much, either. So the former native Chinese speaker and I decided tonight that we're going to cancel our ADSL service at home. And I feel pretty good about it, actually. (But I wonder if I'll start to gain weight...)

Or maybe I'll just make my own donuts...

I would be remiss not to mention this...

Dunkin' Donuts has arrived in Taiwan. (And I just went to Mr. Mister Donut for the first time last Sunday. I'm so out of style.)

It sounds like the Taiwan stores will also offer the ham, egg, and cheese breakfast bagels that helped me face those awful Syracuse winters...

Update: Thanks to Heather's comment and the wonder that is YouTube, I now present...

Weekend trip

We had some time off yesterday, so we took the High-Speed Rail (HSR) to Taipei yesterday. We could only get a one-way trip, and we could only get seats on the 7 o'clock train. But that turned out to be OK.

People like to take pictures when the train is coming. Here's one guy trying to fit in his family and the train. I love that photographer's pose. Looks like he's in training for the next Matrix movie....

The trip was smooth and quick--we left right at 7:00 and arrived in Banqiao (or "Banciao", as they write it) 53 minutes and 25 seconds later. (In contrast, the bus we took from Taipei to Taichung last night took about 2 hours--and I think the driver was speeding the whole way.)

We spent the morning at the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum. Quite a sobering experience. (There's also a "virtual museum" that contains a lot of the pictures that are on display at the museum. Unfortunately, it's only available in Chinese.)

Coming back to Taichung, we felt kind of jealous of Taipei's MRT system, though we know how much people in Taipei suffered during the construction of the subway. But we're hoping to see something like it in Taichung one of these days...

Goal

To finish my dissertation before my fortieth birthday. (Let's see, that gives me about 31,449,600 seconds, give or take.)

Four new books in the former native speaker's library

It was almost like a birthday present (except that I paid for them...). This afternoon I got a box from Labyrinth Books, containing the four books that I ordered in November. They are all hardbound books, but only one (the Luce book) has a dust jacket. But three of them were less than US$10 each, and the last book was only $15. Not a bad deal...

• Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia by Robert E. Herzstein (Cambridge UP, 2005)
  
• Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric edited and translated by Wayne A. Rebhorn (Cornell UP, 2000)
• A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947 by Lai Tse-han, Ramon H. Myers, and Wei Wou (Stanford UP, 1991)
  This has been characterized as a "case study of pseudo-objectivity" written by KMT apologists at the Hoover Institution, but it's still important to read, I think.
  
• The United States in the Asia-Pacific since 1945 by Roger Buckley (Cambridge UP, 2002)

"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus"

It's the week that all the first-year students take their English oral final exams here. Walking around the building, you can see students standing all over, holding papers and mumbling strange words to themselves. It's times like these that I begin to think I'm actually teaching at Hogwarts.

One of my first-year students just used "vouchsafe" in her oral test, and another used "artifice." Either I'm doing something right, or their electronic dictionaries are working overtime...

Back to the archives

(I gotta work on writing better titles...)

I just read Christopher Phelps's (or is it Christopher Phelps'?) column in the Chronicle about his dream archive. Some points to remember before I dig around in the Oberlin archives this winter break (or that I wish I had thought of last time I was there, so I wouldn't have to dig around in the archives this winter break):

1. "Archival copy rates vary a great deal. The top end often seems usurious at 50 cents or more a page. Nevertheless, price cannot deter a scholar. Should I order $319 worth of copies? Answer: of course. It's cheaper than a plane ticket or gasoline, room, and board should I have to return for a second trip."

Hmmm... that's only one point. Well, it's important enough that it should be more than one. For some reason, during my last couple of trips to the archives I was particularly parsimonious with the copying. I don't know what I was thinking. Now I have to fly halfway around the planet to do what I should've done the first time. And without a grant. (Hmmm... maybe I should set up a donation box. Wait a second...)

[Update, 1/12/07: OK--got the donation box up and running (on the upper right-hand side of the page. I don't expect much, but it's worth a try...]

TaichungPAWS

My colleague Douglas informed us about an organization he's involved with called Taichung People Animals Welfare Society (Taichung PAWS) that has begun recently. Here's an introduction from the organization's website:

We are a group of concerned people from various countries who have joined together to care for homeless animals in the Taichung area. Each of us has different motivations and ideas about homeless animals in Taiwan, but we have one thing in common: that we all care deeply about animals. We want to see some changes in our local society. We hope that there will no more homeless animals in Taiwan. We hope that more people will adopt and care for animals. We hope that people will stop killing animals and choose TNR (trap/neuter/release) to control homeless animal populations. We hope that the next generation of Taiwanese will be more educated about animals and that they will have concern for animals as we do. We hope to solve the problems of homeless animals in the Taichung area through Adoption/fostering, TNR, and education.

They're holding an event from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday 1/13 at the Our Home Cafe near World Gym. (Here's a map.) More details here.

Three books the former native speaker wishes were in his library, but is content (for now) to borrow from someone else's library

During an online search this past weekend for materials related to Vern Sneider's A Pail of Oysters, I came across a reference to some letters that he exchanged with George Kerr, author of Formosa Betrayed. Some images of those letters are available online via the National Repository of Cultural Heritage, but I also found out that the 228 Museum in Taipei published a 3-volume set related to Kerr:

• Collected Papers by George H. Kerr
• Correspondence by and about George H. Kerr (I)
• Correspondence by and about George H. Kerr (II)

I found out that Tunghai's History Dept. library had these books, so I borrowed them today. Talk about fascinating stuff to curl up with on a cold winter night. There are all sorts of interesting topics that come up in the letters--discussions with (and about) Thomas Liao (a Taiwan independence activist-in-exile who eventually returned to Taiwan in a propaganda coup for the KMT), letters in response to Formosa Betrayed and concerning the trouble he was having publishing a history of Taiwan to 1945, discussions regarding the assassination attempt on Chiang Ching-kuo in 1970 and its aftermath... Just a lot to keep a curious reader busy. These were published in 2000--I'm a little embarrassed it has taken me so long to come across them.

Didn't realize they were so healthy...

BBC News reports that Momofuku Ando, the Taiwan-born Japanese inventor of instant noodles and founder of Nissin Food Products, has died at the ripe old age of 96. Notable is the fact that, according to the BBC, Ando "often ate his company's instant noodles." Guess Nissin really produces "long-life noodles"...

Hegemony

It's windy this evening, so I wore my favorite baseball cap when I went out for a quick walk:

I get a strange feeling of power whenever I wear it. (Unfortunately, it didn't stop the guy in the SUV from almost running me over. Guess that's another example of the material world trumping language.)

I'm starting off 2007 with this?!

We've been going to a certain restaurant in Taichung for a couple of years, and I always found amusing a sign that is stuck on the door of a stall in the men's restroom. It's in the stall where the "squatter" toilet is located. Well, this time I happened to have my camera with me, so I took a picture of the sign:
Now I don't teach technical writing, but it would be interesting to do some usability testing on these instructions. (Would people think that they had to take off their shoes before "dropping"?...)

I had a little trouble getting a clear shot because the sign kept reflecting the light of the flash, so I tried a couple of times until I found that standing at an angle and using red-eye reduction made for a pretty clear picture.

It was at about this point that I also realized that if anyone had come into the restroom and seen multiple flashes coming from inside one of the stalls, I'd have had a bit of explaining to do... Guess I could have told them I was 閃電俠 (the Flash)...

(Remind me to get a picture of the other sign--the one that contains the words "Memento excrementi"*--some time.)

*Sounds like a great title for a blog, doesn't it?

Anniversary wandering around Dadu

One way that the former native speaker family likes to spend its wedding anniversary is by randomly driving around and looking at historical sites. (Actually, we don't need the excuse of a wedding anniversary to do this.) One year, when we were visiting my parents during winter vacation, we went to Shepherdstown, WV to eat lunch at a German restaurant, then found ourselves crossing the Potomac River into Sharpsburg and visiting Civil War battlefields. (Don't read too much into that particular way of spending a wedding anniversary.)

This year we were both working on our anniversary, so we saved the random driving for today. We started out searching for a new housing development we wanted to take a look at, but ended up taking a winding road down Dadushan and into the town of Dadu.

We drove around a little there. Then I saw a sign that said "Huangsi Academy" (磺溪書院) and we decided to drive there to take a look. It turned out that the Huangsi Academy ("Huangxi" in pinyin) is a "3rd class historical site" in Taiwan. I'm going to quote the English part of sign in front of the school (without correcting the grammar which, comparatively speaking, isn't that bad):

Huangsi School, commonly known as Wunchang Temple [文昌祠], was the culture and education center of the Dadu area in the past. During the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Jiacing [Jiaqing, 嘉慶] in the Cing [Qing, 清] Dynasty, (1799 A.D.), for the purpose of encouraging literacy, an aristocrat from Dadu, Jhao, Shun-Fang [趙順芳] and a Wurih aristocrat, Yang, Jhan-Ao [楊占鰲], cofounded Si Yong Society, later converted to Wunchang Temple. Later, Huangsi School was established on the site of Wunchang Temple in the thirteenth year of Emperor Guangsyu [Guangxu, 光緒] in the Cing Dynasty (1887 A.D.).

Huangsi School, positioned north faced south and leaned toward east, is a Chinese Quadrangle [四合院], with the width of seven rooms (seven Kaijian [開間]), two units of buildings (two Jin [進]), two wings of chambers (two Hulong [護龍]), a joint worship pavilion, and a grand front court. In the first unit, at the center of three Kaijian is the main gate, on which the swallowtail eaves cascade at the both sides, to allow the seven-Kaijian facade to spread evenly. The lecture room of three Kaijian situates at the second unit, where Wunchang God is worshiped at the center. Right in the front, a joint worship pavilian with eight-pillar and the Sieshan [歇山] style roof is decorated with characteristic eaves and vivid ceramic encrusted adornments. The passing corridors which spread two sides of the lecture room are connected to the dormitory at the wings. The exterior walls of the corridors are embellished with delicate brick carving. The architecture is vastly adorned with engraved brick carvings, from the wall panels, to the door and window frames, to the windowsills, to the semicircular-shaped dadoes, and to vase-shape corridor doors. These features make the architecture stand out from the rest in Taiwan during the Cing Dynasty.

November 27, 1985, Ministry of the Interior declared "Huang S Academy" a 3rd class national historical site.

Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung County

Let me provide a few pictures of what they're talking about.

Huangsi School

Lecture room

Vase-shaped door

Ceramic adornments

More ceramic adornments

A ceramic elephant

The interesting thing about these ceramic adornments is, if you look carefully, you can see that they're actually bowls that have been broken, cut, and shaped into these decorations. (The former native Chinese speaker saw a TV show that described how this is done.)

The main door to the temple

A plaque that says "Huangsi School" but, for some reason, identifies the founding year as the twelfth year of the Guanxu Emperor's reign. Wonder who's right...

Some of the carving they mentioned

This last picture is a palanquin (轎子) used to carry someone who had passed the civil service examinations and become a jinshi (進士). The phrase on the side refers to someone who had come in in first place in all of the 3 levels of the civil service examinations.

The former native Chinese speaker is convinced that in a previous life, I was a "fragile scholar" (文弱書生) who probably died young of T.B. I don't know about that, but I'm hoping being near that palanquin will help me as a scholar... (*cough*)

[Update, 8/19/16: Here's a picture of a round portal in the temple, taken more recently by Alexander Synaptic.]

Movin' and shakin'

[Updated, 11:10 p.m] Not in relation to James Brown (r.i.p.). Just had a 'little' earthquake. About 3 or 4 tremors, actually. [As Amanda says, though, it wasn't that little down south! And I just heard on the news (11:00 p.m.) that it was the biggest in the Pingtung area in about 100 years.] Here's some basic information.

[Slightly sarcastic aside: The CNN article I linked to below is notable for being one of the few CNN articles about Taiwan that does not contain the line, "China considers Taiwan a renegade province." Where were their copy editors?]

[12/27/06 update] The BBC News' website notes that communications have been affected by last night's quake:

Taiwan's largest telephone company, Chunghwa Telecom Co, said damage to an undersea cable had disrupted 98% of Taiwan's communications with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.

And Mabel Liao writes in the comments (below) from "the center of the earthquake" in Hengchun, where she teaches. She says her school was closed today because of rockslides.

Son of Frankenscheduling

We just got our schedules for the spring semester. Because this semester everyone so enjoyed the long weekend of Oct. 6-10 and the Saturday make-up on Oct. 14, it has been decided that we'll have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR make-up classes on the Saturdays of March 3, March 10, April 14, and June 9 (to make up for days off on Feb. 26, Feb. 27, April 6, and June 18, respectively). Joy joy joy.

The reasons for this are, first, to give people a longer winter break--beginning classes on March 1 rather than Feb. 26 (too bad I already bought my plane tickets). And April 6 is the day after Tomb-Sweeping Festival, so they had to give that Friday off. (But why make it up? What happened to Spring Break?) And then June 18 is the day before Dragon Boat Festival (a Tuesday), which is a day off.

So is this going to be a trend? Every semester we'll be getting these bizarre schedules? I've been around long enough to remember teaching on Saturdays, but at least it was a regular thing back then. Maybe we should just get rid of the 5-day week here and go back to the good old days...

Anybody else's schedule for spring looking like this, or are we the only ones?