Update on water harvesting question about Taiwan

A quick post to mention that I received a reply from the Water Resources Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs, that indicated that they have been doing cloud seeding for the past 10 years. They referred me to this explanation of cloud seeding. They didn't say much about atmospheric water harvesting, which suggests that they are not doing anything presently in that direction.

I also came across a recent article in Nano Energy on "Solar-powered nanostructured biopolymer hygroscopic aerogels for atmospheric water harvesting." One of the authors is a professor at National Tsinghua University in Taiwan, so I wrote to him to ask if he knew of anyone in Taiwan working on practical applications of atmospheric water harvesting. I'll update when I hear back.

Considering the recent reports of heavy fog in western Taiwan, atmospheric water harvesting sounds like an ideal approach to Taiwan's drought conditions.

Another source on atmospheric water harvesting:

• "Fog‐to‐Water for Water Scarcity in Climate‐Change Hazards Hotspots: Pilot Study in Southeast Asia" by Zaitizila Ismail and Yun Ii Go, Global Challenges (2021). 
  Abstract: "Water is indispensable for human survival. Freshwater scarcity and unsustainable water are the main growing concerns in the world. It is estimated that about 800 million people worldwide do not have basic access to drinking water and about 2.2 billion people do not have access to safe water supply. Southeast Asia is most likely to experience water scarcity and water demand as a result of climate change. Climate change and the increasing water demand that eventually contribute to water scarcity are focused upon here. For Southeast Asia to adapt to the adverse consequences of global climate change and the growing concern of environmental water demand, fog water harvesting is considered as the most promising method to overcome water scarcity or drought. Fog water collection technique is a passive, low maintenance, and sustainable option that can supply fresh drinking water to communities where fog is a common phenomenon. Fog water harvesting system involves the use of mesh nets to collect water as fog passes through them. Only minimal cost is required for the operation and maintenance. In conclusion, fog water harvesting seems to be a promising method that can be implemented to overcome water scarcity and water demand in Southeast Asia."

Is anyone in Taiwan doing work on atmospheric water harvesting?

OK, I'm going way out of my own comfort zone when it comes to this topic, but I'm going to toss out an idea anyway. I heard about this idea of harvesting water from the atmosphere on NPR a long time ago (was it this many years ago?). Lately, the news from Taiwan has been about the lack of rainfall (fewer typhoons, which is resulting in less water for industrial, agricultural, and residential purposes). It has come up most recently in worries about how Taiwan's production of semiconductors will be affected by the drought.

What I haven't seen yet is any reporting on the possibility of using the idea of atmospheric water harvesting to provide more water to Taiwan. I wrote a couple of friends about it--one a Taiwanese industrial engineer at my school, and the other, a faculty member in a university in Taiwan that has a sustainability science program. Neither of them knew much about what might be going on in Taiwan in relation to this idea. 

I also wrote an email to President Tsai's office (through their website--I don't have her personal email or anything). I mentioned a couple of articles about this idea (they don't let you forward links, unfortunately): this more general-audience article on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for water harvesting, and this academic article on "autonomous atmospheric water seeping MOF matrix." 

I don't know if anyone in Taiwan is working on this already. I don't know if it would even work--maybe it's too humid in Taiwan (a lot of the places where they use these things seem to be pretty arid). But it might be worth a try. 

[See update here.]

Transcript of an interview with Kam Louie at National Taiwan University

I came across this transcript of an interview with Kam Louie. It's 99 pages long (!), so I haven't finished it yet, but it's quite interesting. 

Everything I know about academic writing I learned from my six-year-old

My six-year-old likes to talk about dinosaurs. Any conversation you try to have with him always ends up turning to dinosaurs. The other night, he was talking to his grandmother, who asked him how he liked the book she had sent him. "I like it! I like it a lot! Small Inventions that Changed the World!" (He said the title very dramatically.) But then, "The Paraceratherium was a giant rhino that walked the earth over 30 million years ago…” As you can imagine, it’s not easy to have a conversation with him, unless you want to listen to him lecture you on the prehistoric world (Paraceratherium was technically not a dinosaur, he reminds me).

I am supposed to talk to a class of first-year English majors in a couple of days about my research and teaching, but I've got this on my mind instead. I'm thinking about how how much watching my kindergartner has taught me about scholarly writing. Here are a couple of points that come to mind:

• The importance of taking part in a conversation. Kenneth Burke's metaphor of entering the parlor is popular among writing teachers (I have it in my syllabus, in fact). The example above demonstrates the risks of not listening for a while until "you have caught the tenor of the argument." Typically, upon waking up, his first words to me will be something like "Baba, 65 million years ago, a giant asteroid collided with the earth near Mexico, and the dinosaurs all died." (Before you write to correct that, be aware that I am simplifying what he says to me--he's more complex and nuanced.) My point is that like my son, I need to learn good academic writing "manners"--instead of jumping right in with my own contribution, I need to think about how what I want to say relates to what people are currently talking about. 
• The importance of good titles. I hate my titles, but my son doesn't seem to have any trouble with putting out short, provocative titles. Here are a couple (he also has a cool pen name: Mr P.):

• The importance of branching out into other areas of inquiry. While he's currently thinking a lot about dinosaurs, you can see from the two titles that my son doesn't only write about prehistoric life. He has also found out, too, that learning about geology is important to understanding dinosaurs.
• The importance of not being too much of a perfectionist. My son just plows on through mistakes, as you can see from the title of "Human Destroys the World!" I try to remind myself that nothing I write is going to be the "final word" on the topic, so I shouldn't put so much stress on it being "perfect" or on responding to all of the critical voices in my head in that one paper. Save something for future work or responses to criticism. Just put it out into the world! And don't let spelling get in the way.
• The importance of writing every day. Right now he's asking me for paper, so I'd better stop this and get him some.

"Hey, guys! Wait up for me!"

 

Recorded from my kitchen window Sunday, Feb. 7

Another book in the former native speaker's library

I don't have time these days to read or write anything not related to teaching, but I can still buy books! My latest purchase is an English translation Ye Shitao's A History of Taiwan Literature by Christopher Lupke. It has a great cover, a 1927 street scene by Ran In-ting (藍蔭鼎), an important Taiwanese watercolor artist. (Here's a short video in Mandarin about Ran.)

I first heard about this translation from an interview with Lupke on the New Books Network. I liked the interview, especially for the chance to hear about Lupke's experiences in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and about his process of doing the translation. (It took him about 10 years!) 

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to read it, but I think I'll have to dip into it as I work on a writing project on a somewhat related topic. The book's a bit expensive, so hopefully I'll get reimbursed for it!

Rebecca Wragg Sykes on Neanderthals

This is a topic that I know absolutely nothing about, so I'm not sure why this article, "Sheanderthal," was pushed to me. (Maybe it's because my six-year-old is constantly asking me how to spell the names of dinosaurs and other words about the prehistoric world, and I have to look the words up on Google!) But this was a pretty fascinating read about what scientists know, and what they speculate, about the lives of female Neanderthals. I was particularly struck by the interdisciplinarity of the work, combining archaeology, genetics, anthropology, biology, and probably a couple of more disciplines I've not noticed. 

I'm now watching a conversation between Michael Shermer and her about her book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. Shermer talks a little too much, in my view (sorry, dude!), but it's pretty interesting to listen to.

Wenchang Jun Figurine (文昌君公仔)

In last semester's Travel Writing class, I asked students to write about a "souvenir" that they had acquired (or hoped to acquire) in their travels. I asked them to describe the item, to explain where they had acquired it, to discuss its meaning to them, and to consider how the souvenir might be metonymic (based on the article by Morgan and Pritchard that I cite below). I thought I'd share what I wrote in response to that assignment for anyone who might be interested. (It's not likely to be published anywhere else!) We wrote our assignments as letters to each other, which as I explained to them at the beginning of the semester has long been one of the main forms of travel writing.

---------------

Hi everyone,

I acquired this little figurine of the 文昌君 (Wenchang Jun), or “God of Literature and Culture," in a bookstore in Taichung back when I was working on my doctoral dissertation. This god, who is also called by other names like 文昌王 (Wenchang Wang) and 文昌帝君 (Wenchang Dijun), has historically been associated with learning and literacy; he was traditionally called upon by people who were preparing for the Civil Service examinations in Imperial China. Even today, students who are preparing for the university entrance exams or other important tests will go to Wenchang temples (Wenchang Ci, 文昌祠) to ask for the god’s blessing. 

Photos of my 文昌君 figurine (公仔) taken by myself (August 22, 2020).

Obviously, the figurine above is the "cute” version of the god. A more “serious” version can be found in temples like the Wenchang Temple in Xinzhuang, New Taipei City (see image below). 

Wenchang Dijun (文昌帝君), taken at the Xinzhuang Wenchang Temple (新莊文昌祠), Taiwan. (Photo taken by Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 4.0)

One place in Taiwan where the Wenchang Dijun can be found is in academies established to teach children (typically boys) and train scholars to pass the Civil Service examinations during the Qing Dynasty. Back in 2006, my wife and I visited the Huangxi (or Huangsi) Academy (磺溪書院) in Dadu, Central Taiwan, which, according to a sign in front of the school, had been established on the site of a Wenchang temple around 1887. (If you want to know more about the temple and academy, check out this post on Alexander Synaptic's blog.) 

Photo of the Huangsi Academy taken by myself (Dec. 29, 2006).

Although I do not worship Wenchang Dijun and never (consciously) asked for his blessing on my dissertation work, I couldn’t resist picking up the figurine when I saw it in the Nobel Bookstore. The name of the bookstore itself calls up several associations--besides sounding a little like Barnes and Noble, it also suggests a promise that customers can become successful scholars like Yuan Tseh Lee (李遠哲), a Taiwanese scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1986. Even more than Barnes and Noble, Nobel, like many bookstores in Taiwan, devotes much of its space to stationery and test-preparation materials in addition to selling popular and scholarly books, gifts, and manga. 

This souvenir isn’t an expensive, hand-crafted art object. It cost me NT$85 (less than US$3) with my Nobel membership card. To me, though, it signifies something important about the place I was in at that time, both literally and figuratively. Sitting in the stationery section of that multi-storey bookstore, it reminds me of the important role examinations play in the lives of Taiwanese and the various methods they might use to do well on those exams (from attending exam prep classes at night to visiting a Wenchang temple to ask the god for help getting into their “first-choice” school). I imagine the meaning of the “100 分" on the paper Wenchang Jun is holding is clear to anyone in this context--you can imagine how having this on your desk as you study might encourage you in the middle of those late night study sessions. That was also a reason that I bought this--to motivate me as I worked on my dissertation, a long drawn-out process that didn’t seem to want to end. Seeing him sitting there, brush in one hand, the promise of a perfect score in the other, gave me a feeling that this was a marathon I would finish. 

The figurine also speaks to Morgan and Pritchard’s assertion that “souvenirs are rhetorical, socially incarnated signs, registering a complexity of acquisition and signalling complex social messages” (41). At one point, I had the figurine in my office, and it acted as a “cute” conversation piece that simultaneously indexed my own “authenticity” as someone who understood the meaning and significance of Wenchang Jun. I also probably hoped that it would remind people of my (self-perceived) status as a scholar through its association with the long tradition of Wenchang temples and academies in Chinese culture. 

Now the souvenir acts as a touchstone for memories of a previous place in my life--the waning years of my formal studenthood and the culture in which I was trying to immerse myself. 

Works Cited

"新莊文昌祠" (Xinzhuang Wenchang Temple). Wikipedia, zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%96%B0%E8%8E%8A%E6%96%87%E6%98%8C%E7%A5%A0. Accessed 22 August 2020.

Morgan, Nigel, and Annette Pritchard. "On Souvenirs and Metonymy: Narratives of Memory, Metaphor, and Materiality." Tourist Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2005, pp. 29-53. doi:10.1177/1468797605062714.

"Interesting times" redux

A Twitter posting from Ketagalan Media (why oh why am I still looking at Twitter postings?) reminded me that I started this blog almost 17 years ago in the context of Chen Shui-bian's win over Lien Chan, who called the election a fraud. As the Twitter post says, "Rioters set fire on the streets and rammed down the gates to Kaohsiung's courthouse." I recall that former KMT legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) was one of the instigators of that. Ugh. Anyway, the US seems to have outdone Taiwan by having a sitting president instigate a violent riot/coup attempt. Maybe this is what is meant by "American exceptionalism."

[Edit: Struck those words because I don't want anyone to feel like they have to give me a history lesson.]

 Nope.

End of 2020

It's the end of 2020, but I can't say I have a lot of hope for 2021. Despite having some vaccines, COVID-19 is still raging--particularly in the US, where "toxic individualism" and governmental corruption/incompetence have combined to give the US the dubious honor of accounting for almost a fifth of the world's COVID deaths, despite accounting for only 4.25% of the world's population. Hard to be proud of that statistic. And it's hard for me to be optimistic at this point. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.

End of the semester

Turned in my grades last night, wrote up some final emails, filled out a couple of surveys that were sitting in my inbox, and now have until January 19 to rest, connect, and prepare for the upcoming semester. I'll be teaching all online courses again in the spring, by choice (and by necessity, since my son will continue attending school remotely, too). 

Our spring semester starts about a week late this term because the school has canceled spring break, which seems like a reasonable decision to me although it means students will be more worn out by the end (as will I!).

I don't have much to say at this point, since I'm worn out from life shoveling snow grading. Just thought I needed to get a posting in before the end of December. I do want to work on a writing project, so I was glad to stumble across this Twitter thread by Kathleen Lubey about a writing hack. That might come in handy...

Stephen J. Hartnett, et al., "Postcolonial Remembering in Taiwan: 228 and Transitional Justice as 'The End of Fear'"

Number six in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.

Hartnett, S. J., Dodge, P. S.-W., & Keränen, L. B. (2020). Postcolonial remembering in Taiwan: 228 and transitional justice as “the end of fear.” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 13(3), 238-256, DOI: 10.1080/17513057.2019.1614206

I just saw that Hartnett has a book coming out next July taking a communications perspective on the US-China-Taiwan relationship, which reminded me that I had this article in my files, waiting to be summarized. I'm interested in this article also because although it's found in an intercultural communication journal, it's one of the few published works about Taiwan in rhetorical studies.

The authors begin with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's 2017 Facebook post addressing China on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre and China's response to that, arguing that the way both sides marshaled arguments about the June 4 and February 28, 1947 massacres demonstrates that "public memories about China’s TSM and Taiwan’s 228 serve as sites of bitter contestation about historical events, their political legacies, their resulting communicative patterns, and what they foreshadow for both Taiwan’s emerging democratic life and China’s rise to global power" (p. 239). The authors want to add to the scholarly conversation about 228 by "examin[ing] the rhetorical work of postcolonial remembering, an anti-authoritarian reclamation project wherein confronting the damage caused by past atrocities fuels Taiwan’s emerging discourse of democracy, multiculturalism, and national autonomy" (p. 239).

Readers might feel this kind of topic isn't typical of an article in a journal focused on intercultural communication, and the authors acknowledge this by pointing to prior research that calls for more postcolonial perspectives in intercultural communication. They argue that their study can also "extend a line of research asking how postcolonial remembering in Asia can help drive both contemporary politics and collective imaginings of possible futures" (p. 240).

The authors also raise a few points that I have been thinking about lately: one has to do with the delicate balance between demonstrating allyship and participating in what Teju Cole has called "the white savior industrial complex." Part of my own worry about writing about Taiwan, besides "getting it wrong" (though to be honest, if you write anything about Taiwan's place in the world, someone is going to say you're wrong), is that my motivations will be questioned in terms of my identity as a white American male. (And perhaps rightly so.) Hartnett, et al. (I'm not sure how all of the authors identify racially, ethnically, and otherwise) deal with this by briefly referencing Linda Alcott's famous article, "The Problem of Speaking for Others," then referencing A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights through International Networks, 1960-1980, by Linda Arrigo and Lynn Miles. Folks familiar with the history of Taiwan's democratization probably know of Arrigo (艾琳達) and Miles (梅心怡), who used their international connections to advocate for Taiwanese political prisoners and more generally for human rights in Taiwan. Their book, which depicts the work of Arrigo, Miles, and other international advocates for Taiwan, lends to Hartnett, et al., the idea of "lending a voice." As the authors put it, "Our work, then, is offered in the spirit of solidarity with our local collaborators--not speaking 'for' but 'with' and 'alongside' them--and with the hope of supporting the ongoing process of transitional justice in Taiwan" (p. 242).

That last quote alludes to another issue I've been thinking about and have asked some people in Taiwan Studies about--the relationship between academics and advocacy. Different disciplines, of course, treat this question differently. When I asked about this during an online session with some senior Taiwan Studies scholars (part of the 2020 Taiwan Studies Summer School), though, the response was generally to the effect that doing rigorous scholarship was the best way to advocate for Taiwan (my memory might be faulty on this, so if you were there and remember differently, let me know!). The quote at the end of the above paragraph takes a more activist stance that, if I'm not mistaken, is more typical of rhetorical studies--it implies that scholarship can (should?) consciously be a social justice project. 

A third issue, then, concerns the disciplinary perspective. In addition to the activist stance I have suggested above, where the authors align themselves both with advocates like Arrigo and Miles and with their own "local collaborators," the article takes on what is to people who study Taiwan a familiar story, telling it partially in the language of rhetorical studies so as to introduce Taiwan's history to a new audience. There's a need for this, I think: what I call the "shaped roughly like a tobacco leaf" approach to writing about Taiwan for people who don't have much idea about the place. Kerim Friedman wrote about this on the Anthro(dendum) blog. While it can be annoying to have to explain KMT governance of postwar Taiwan (how many synonyms can you find for "incompetent and corrupt"?), Kerim notes that

the real problem is that nobody would demand these histories if it wasn’t for the fact that Taiwan’s own government (until the end of Martial Law in 1987) and the government of the People’s Republic of China both had a shared interest in sowing confusion about the history of Taiwan in order to portray Taiwan as part of China.

So a lot of this article is necessarily pretty obvious to anyone knowledgable about Taiwan: there's the narrative of 228 and the White Terror, the story of the rise of the dangwai that led to establishment of the DPP and the end to martial law, and descriptions of the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum and the Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park. These familiar/unfamiliar elements are made relevant to communication studies scholars by reference to transitional justice, postcolonial remembering, public memory work, and other concepts often used in the field of rhetoric (and, to be honest, other fields of study). If I have the opportunity, I would like to show this article to a colleague who doesn't know much about Taiwan and see what they think of it. Does it give a new perspective on those topics that I mentioned above? Does it give a new perspective on Taiwan, which, thanks to the news media, I'm guessing a lot of people think "split with the mainland in 1949?" This could be the value of this article: if it can begin to bring Taiwan on its own terms into the orbit of rhetorical studies, if it can begin to make Taiwan's fascinating history a relevant part of the field on its own, then it will be serving a valuable purpose even if its content might be "old hat" to those in Taiwan Studies. (And selfishly, I look forward to citing it in my own work rather than having to repeat the whole "shaped roughly like a tobacco leaf" narrative!)

Well, I haven't summarized this article as much as I have analyzed (possibly critiqued) it. I recommend it, though, and if you are not a Taiwan Studies person, let me know what you think of it!

Company

 We had a visitor on Saturday...

Lev Nachman on studying Taiwan from a disciplinary perspective

I'm listening to a podcast of an interview with Lev Nachman, a PhD candidate in political science at UC Irvine, and it's reminding me of what I quoted at the end of my previous post about doing what you can where you are for Taiwan. It also relates to what Hsin-i Sydney Hsieh says in her article about the need to take a non-China-centric approach to studying Taiwanese communication. Nachman says, 

One of the biggest ways that I've been actually able to pitch Taiwan in academia is not in a China context, but rather looking for more disciplinary avenues, such as peace and security studies, studies of democracy, both of which Taiwan easily falls into. And I'm very fortunate that UC Irvine has departments for both of these topics, and they give funding for graduate students who want to study these topics. You know, just at UC Irvine alone, when I go to these funding opportunities, and I say, "Hey, I'm interested in Taiwan," they say, "Great! That's a great case that we don't think about very often and it totally falls within the study of democracy and it totally falls within the study of peace and security." Even though Taiwan might not be as easily considered a[n] important topic in a China studies department, I'm able to get a lot of extra support from unexpected places. So another big piece of advice I have for people who are interested in Taiwan studies is to think outside the box and to think outside of a China-centric framework and realize that Taiwan is actually very interesting to so many other parts of academia. You just have to pitch it to them.

A good reminder. He also talks about some of the dilemmas that Taiwan studies faces in terms of the area's relationship(s) with China studies. He calls it a "lose-lose situation": either you are part of a China studies program and don't get much attention on Taiwan in courses, etc., or you have your own program but don't get many interested students. 

Here's the whole interview:

Hsin-i Sydney Yueh, "Beyond Cultural China: The Representation of Taiwan in US-based Speech Communication and Journalism Research"

Number five in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.

Yueh, H.-i. S. (2020). Beyond Cultural China: The representation of Taiwan in US-based speech communication and journalism research. International Journal of Taiwan Studies, 3, 292-320, DOI:10.1163/24688800-00302006

Things are still busy, but I'm in the mood to read and summarize Hsin-i Sydney Yueh's article on how American articles in the fields of communication studies and journalism represent Taiwan. Yueh points out in the beginning the relative lack of speech comm and journalism participation in Taiwan Studies, as evidenced by a low number of communication-related topics at the annual North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA) conference. As she also notes, "while American speech communication and journalism education heavily influences communication education in Taiwan, it seems that Taiwanese communication gains little attention in the United States" (p. 293).

Yueh begins with a historical survey of early articles in speech comm and journalism about "Free China," and then moves on to introduce the two main scholarly organizations in the US that are devoted to Chinese communication: the Chinese Communication Association (CCA) and the Association of Chinese Communication Studies (ACCS), both of which are affiliated with the National Communication Association (NCA). They appear to be more distinguished by their disciplinary foci (CCA is mostly made up of scholars in journalism and mass comm, whereas ACCS has more of a speech comm focus) than by any geographical or political division. As she points out, both of them appear to hold a "Greater China scholarly framework" (p. 296). 

Yueh goes on to do a quantitative description of Taiwan-focused research published in journals published by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the International Communication Association (ICA), and the NCA, finding a total of 72 articles published across 47 journals between the 1950s and 2010s. Furthermore, those 72 articles represent the work of 52 scholars. Over half of the articles used quantitative methods, and 23 used a qualitative approach. 

She continues by looking at the themes of the articles, finding the most popular to be topics such as newspapers, freedom of speech, public relations and advertising, government media control, electronic media, gender representation in the media, audience perception of the news, new media and social media user behavior, Taiwanese people's acculturation in the US, and political participation and elections (p. 304). (Evidently some articles contained more than one of these themes.)

When discussing how Taiwan has generally been represented in these studies, Yueh notes, 

Unlike anthropologists in the 1980s, who started considering the ontological status of Taiwan (Simon, 2018), the assumed route of understanding traditional Chinese culture through Taiwan is a less debated issue in speech communication and journalism studies. The CCA and the ACCS seemed to establish a strong Greater China framework that can be extended and connected to the Taiwan-based Chinese Communication Society (CCS) and the PRC-based Communication Association of China (CAC) (Kim, Chen & Miyahara, 2008). (p. 306)

As evidence of this "Greater China Framework," Yueh cites an article that alternates between calling Taiwanese people "Taiwanese" and "Chinese" and another that refers to "Chinese in Taiwan" (p. 307). She also reveals some of her own struggles explaining her "national, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identities to an academic audience" (p. 307). But, as she points out, even if Taiwan is considered in the disciplines of journalism and communications to be part of "Greater China" or "Cultural China," it is still marginalized in the scholarship: 

In any recent edited book comprising ten or more chapters that is concerned with communication phenomena or journalistic practices in cultural China, it would be common to see only one chapter or no chapters about Taiwan (for example, see Lee, 2000; Wu, 2008). (pp. 307-308)

Therefore, she argues, the idea that Taiwan should represent or be studied as part of "Cultural China" should be abandoned: "Starting from recognising ... [Taiwan's] ‘marginality’ on the world map ..., scholars can find new theoretical routes and opportunities to represent Taiwan in communication and journalism research" (p. 308). Her next section introduces quantitative and qualitative communication and journalism scholarship on Taiwan that suggests ways in which Taiwan can be more properly foregrounded and moved out of the Greater China framework.

She also points out problems with how Taiwan has figured in intercultural and international communication research that has sought to provide East Asian alternatives to Western theories of communication. She critiques some studies that are classified as "bottom-up" research for being simply "literature reviews of Chinese communication or Chinese history and culture," and proposes that "Taiwan can provide a bottom-up solution in terms of decolonising both Western and Chinese perspectives on international and intercultural communication" (p. 312, emphasis mine).

While some of her sources are rhetorical studies, I wanted to zero in on the field of rhetoric a little more, so I did a quick and unscientific survey of published rhetoric articles about Taiwan and presentations at the Rhetoric Society of America biennial conferences that focused on Taiwan, and there wasn't much. Between 2004 and 2018, there were five presented papers at RSA about Taiwan, two of them by yours truly (my count might be off since, besides my own papers, I only counted papers that included "Taiwan" in the title). 

There are even fewer articles about rhetorical practices in Taiwan that have been published in rhetoric journals based in the US. Stephen John Hartnett has written or co-authored several articles published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and The Quarterly Journal of Speech, taking a rhetorical perspective on China's foreign and domestic affairs, but his mentions of Taiwan are generally as an obstacle to US-China relations or as, from China's point of view, an internal issue (and often, Taiwan shows up in a list of other countries or territories that have issues with China, like Tibet, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc.). One notable exception is a 2020 article co-authored by Hartnett that examines public memory related to the February 28, 1947 Incident. (Yueh cites this article; I'll have to summarize this article later on.)

Yowei Kang and Kenneth C. C. Yang have written in The Howard Journal of Communications about "The rhetoric of ethnic identity construction among Taiwanese immigrants in the United States" (2011), which I'll add to my collection of articles I need to review. Otherwise, there isn't that much out there in the field of rhetoric. 

In 2006, I had a manuscript based on a 2005 conference paper (itself based on a 2001 graduate seminar paper) entitled "Naming Taiwan" rejected by the QJS--it had problems, I'm sure, but I was surprised to read one of the criticisms that complained that this manuscript about Taiwanese presidential inaugural addresses didn't tell the reviewer anything important about American presidential inaugurals (!?). 

Fortunately, in 2014, Hui-ching Chang and Richard Holt published a book with Routledge entitled Language, Politics and Identity in Taiwan: Naming China, that in part analyzes the rhetoric of presidential inaugurals. Yueh cites this book, along with some of their articles. It's notable, though, that the book is part of Routledge's "Research on Taiwan" series rather than a communications series, and that only two of the four journal articles from them that she cites were published in communications journals. (I'm not faulting them for this--it could be evidence of the difficulties of publishing about Taiwan in communication journals. One of the articles, "Taiwan and ROC: A critical analysis of President Chen’s construction of Taiwan identity in national speeches, 2000–2007" was published in a journal called National Identities.)

At any rate, I've been thinking recently of something Jenna Cody said about the need to help put Taiwan more in the spotlight: 

This is also a call to all of you, my readers (yes, all twelve of you). Look at what you already do — your life, your career, your field — and figure out how you can contribute to Taiwan that way. What soft power impact can you have, in your respective fields?

Besides noting that if she has 12 readers, that's at least twice as many as I have, I resonate with her call, even with all of my concerns about making sure I don't become a "self-appointed ally" or a "white savior." I guess that's why I'm doing this series on communications studies articles about Taiwan--to inform myself as well as the five or so people who might be reading these posts. 

"Confronting Disinformation: A Conversation with Audrey Tang"

I'm drowning in work right now, plus having to monitor my son's remote schooling. (Though I have to admit watching his teacher at work this way has given me even more appreciation for both the struggles of schoolteachers and the public school system here!)

Anyway, I managed to attend a virtual webinar with Audrey Tang about a week ago (I think it was then--everything is such a blur anymore). I just got an email from Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which hosted the event, that included a link to Tang's talk, so I thought I'd include it here rather than try to decipher my hurriedly-taken notes (Tang talks really fast!):

These days, it's hard to be optimistic about democracy (especially after last night's debate), so I appreciate having been given the chance to hear some good news...

Update: See also this article on Tang. "Taiwan’s digital czar Audrey Tang shows how to improve democracy like it’s a technology."

Some articles on racism in Taiwan on Taiwan Insight

I see that Isabelle Cheng (author of the article I summarized here) has written an article for Taiwan Insight about her research about migrant women caregivers in Taiwan. This is the latest article in a series on racism in Taiwan published in Taiwan Insight. These include:

• "Is Taiwan Covering over Contemporary Issues of Racism with a Veneer of Multiculturalism?" by Brian Hioe (August 27, 2020)
• "Taiwanese Identity and Racism in Taiwan" by Chieh-chi Hsieh (August 28, 2020)
• "As Taiwan Develops, Can Racism and Discrimination Be Avoided?" by Milo Hsieh (August 31, 2020)

New year's resolutions for the 2020-2021 academic year

Just noticed my resolutions from last year--that seems like it was a century ago. Not sure I achieved any of the goals I had set for last year, no matter how vaguely I phrased them. I can't blame it all on the coronavirus, though. As I have chronicled elsewhere on this blog, not having a Twitter account doesn't mean that I haven't spent time on Twitter. I just do it, I suppose, less efficiently. (But not having an account does probably decrease my time on Twitter overall because I'm not posting, responding to posts, etc.)

I achieved a couple of things that I didn't mention as goals in last year's resolutions, like developing a new course (Travel Writing), revamping my first-year writing course (which went well), co-writing a successful proposal for a "peer connections" exchange program for the mentoring of incoming international students from China (most of whom, as it turns out, will be participating from China), and figuring out how to put together my son's new bicycle with minimal use of colorful language. 

This year will be a challenging one personally and professionally. My son will be doing his kindergarten classes remotely, which means we'll have to keep an eye on him so he doesn't swipe away his teacher in favor of YouTube videos. I'll be teaching all my fall courses online, which is both a blessing and a challenge because I've never taught first-year writing online before (and I daresay most of the students have never taken an online writing class before, so none of us probably knows quite what to expect). The peer connections project will continue throughout the fall. I might be involved with a couple of other research projects as well. 

I hope to be able to continue posting summaries/discussions of scholarly articles related to communication practices in Taiwan. Those are interesting to me, personally. (I don't know if anyone else gets anything out of it--I might just be displaying my ignorance for all to see in those posts--but I'm learning a lot from reading the articles.) The motivation for doing this came from something I wrote last year when I was preparing to talk to incoming English majors about my career path in English, and I wrote in a brief self-introduction about Taiwan being a place where "communication practices grew out of historical experiences of migration, colonialism, and political marginalization." Being smart, analytical people, several of the students had written questions about this characterization of Taiwan, questions to which I could either give broad, unsatisfying answers or very particular and also unsatisfying answers. So this little summarizing project is an attempt to educate myself in case anyone approaches me with this question again. As I said in my summary of Todd Sandel's chapter on "communication modes" in Taiwan, it's actually incredibly difficult to describe communication practices in Taiwan (or probably anywhere) in any coherent but also inclusive way. (This is something we discussed way back when in my intercultural communication class at Tunghai when we were discussing the overwhelming "whiteness" of some authors' descriptions of "American" communication patterns.) Anyway, if I have time, I will try to keep reading and writing about these articles. If anyone knows of some good articles about Taiwan communication practices (somewhat broadly conceived), drop me a line in the comments!

Speaking of Taiwanese communication practices, I'm trying my hand (my mouth, actually) at learning Taiwanese Hokkien through a website called Glossika. I'm mainly using this site because the Taiwanese lessons are free--they do that for some languages out of their expressed interest in language preservation. I have no idea how "authentic" the language in the lessons is, but I'm not at a point yet that I want to commit to paying for lessons. So far one phrase I've been able to use is "you are lazy," which I say to myself a lot...

Isabelle Cheng, "We want productive workers, not fertile women: The expediency of employing Southeast Asian caregivers in Taiwan"

Number four in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.

Cheng, I. (2020). We want productive workers, not fertile women: The expediency of employing Southeast Asian caregivers in Taiwan. Asia Pacific Viewpoint. Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1111/apv.12275

I decided to follow up on that article I mentioned at the end of my summary of Hsin-I Cheng's (2018) article on relational citizenship. 

Cheng begins her article with an anecdote from 2014 of an Indonesian caregiver in Taiwan who told her of being given an injection before her arrival to prevent her from becoming pregnant. Shocked, Cheng decided to try to find out more about this practice.

Cheng focuses on the legislation in Taiwan that casts foreign caregivers as "temporary, supplementary and disposable outsiders" who are excluded from the "national community" (p. 2). 

Taking a top-down approach, the study identifies four major laws concerning naturalisation, residency, employment, mobility and fertility that regulate the lives of foreign caregivers, and analyses parliamentary debates, government policy briefings, press releases and migrant handbooks. It also examines longitudinal social survey results in order to understand how the host society perceives Southeast Asian migrants. (p. 2)

Cheng describes "migrant women’s self-identities as workers, victims, carers and human beings ... [as] deeply entangled" (p. 3). She points to how they are typically discussed in terms of their victimhood and their status as important sources of income for their families back at home. Their sexuality and reproduction, she argues, are not seen as a topic for research due in part to "methodological sexism"; in society, they are more often seen either in terms of morality (in their home countries) or as "a threat to profitability" (from the point of view of their agents) (p. 3). From the point of view of the host state (in this case, Taiwan), "their potential to give birth (particularly to mixed children fathered by local men) ... [leads to their being] considered a threat to the cohesion of national identity" (p. 4). Thus, the goal of the host society (and the state) is to ensure that migrant women remain productive (but not reproductive) as workers who can remain outsiders to the society rather than settling in as residents.  

Cheng illustrates this by tracing the history of legislation regarding migrant women caregivers since they have been able to legally come to Taiwan starting in 1992. She first points out that the need for migrant caregivers has grown out of the aging of Taiwanese society, the traditional emphasis on providing elder care at home, and the increasing participation of Taiwanese women in the workplace. While there is a desire (at least on the part of the government) for local caregivers (in the form of middle-aged Taiwanese women), that kind of work has been looked down upon as "dirty, difficult and demeaning" (p. 5), (ironically) through its association with foreign caregivers. The pay for migrant caregivers is also artificially kept down through a government cap on their income. "However," Cheng argues, "this economic cheapness [that makes the migrant women desirable as workers] runs in tandem with the perceived socio-political costs of accommodating foreign women at the prime age of fertility who are seen as the undesirable other" (p. 5).

Cheng looks at the development of four laws that govern the position of foreign caregivers in Taiwan: the Nationality Act, the Immigration Act, the Employment Services Act, and the Labour Standards Act. She points out how these acts developed and work together to render foreign caregivers ineligible for naturalization despite the extensions on how long they were allowed to work in Taiwan (up to 14 years); in effect, they are "permanently temporary" (p. 5, emphasis in original), which benefits Taiwanese society by providing cheap long-term workers while at the same time avoiding the purported "social problems" their presence might bring (problems that Cheng points out legislators didn't define, except for the fear that they would become involved with local men) (p. 5). Criticism of these and other measures to control the movements of migrant women, such as not allowing them to decide for themselves to change jobs, have not resulted in effective policies to protect their rights (p. 7). 

Cheng next goes through the history of required pregnancy screenings for foreign caregivers, which was required for 10 years (until 2002) before coming to Taiwan, right after arrival, and every six months during residence in Taiwan. Caregivers found to be pregnant would be expelled. Although the requirement to be tested every six months was abolished in 2002, it was not until 2015 that the final pregnancy test (the pre-entry test) was no longer required (p. 8). Unfortunately, migrant caregivers are not always informed of their rights because the handbook is only published in Chinese and English. [This makes me want to find information about the status of the teaching of Chinese to migrant workers in Taiwan. (And English, too, although I'm reminded of Pei-Chia Lan's 2003 article (pdf), "'They have more money but I speak better English!' Transnational encounters between Filipina domestics and Taiwanese employers."] The handbook still discourages migrant workers from getting pregnant, warning of "dire consequences" to the mother and the child, particularly if the child is born out of wedlock (p. 8). 

[To add something about Lan's (2003) article: she observes that in 2002, the percentage of Filipina domestic workers in Taiwan dropped drastically, and the percentage of Indonesian workers rose almost as dramatically (p. 155). She attributes this to employers' beliefs that Indonesians are more complaint than Filipinas, a characterization that she associates with social and linguistic factors: 

Indonesian workers, who speak little English in general, are less capable to verbally bargain with their employers. Besides, Indonesian migrants are even more isolated in Taiwan than their Filipina counterparts, who are at least able to retrieve information by reading English newspapers and have affiliations with Catholic churches and NGOs that offer some legal assistance and counseling. (p. 156)

"Indonesian workers in Taiwan," Lan goes on, "... have no choice but to learn Mandarin Chinese or Holo-Taiwanese for the sake of communication. As such, Taiwanese employers get the upper hand in their linguistic exchanges and social interactions with Indonesian maids" (p. 156). This adds another, sociolinguistic, element to what Isabelle Cheng, Hsin-I Cheng, and Todd Sandel have discussed.]

Cheng points out that although the government has changed some policies in response to human rights associations' criticisms and in order to be able to continue to brand Taiwan as a nation "founded on human rights protection" (人權立國), those policies don't necessarily reflect the views of Taiwan's citizens, the majority of whom (according to surveys) view Southeast Asian migrants as undesirable (p. 9). Taiwanese are willing to 'import' Southeast Asian caregivers, but they are not interested in having them become part of society. As Cheng puts it, "Such a scenario makes Taiwan a ‘walled’ migration state (Hollifield, 2004) which embraces economic openness for the purposes of reaping the fruit of migration but ensures socio-political closure in gatekeeping the boundaries of national community" (p. 9).

I would note that of the surveys Cheng mentions toward the end, the most recent one that specifically addressed the question of whether foreign workers should be allowed to become residents was from 2006; She also cites a 2018 survey that asked whether Taiwan should encourage immigration from Southeast Asia--only 8.4% agreed with this idea (p. 9). I'm not sure how this information squares with Sandel's discussion of foreign brides as the "fifth ethnic group," except perhaps to note Cheng's argument that at this point in time, it appears that the state and the populace are evidently not in agreement about the place of Southeast Asian migrants in Taiwan. This article doesn't touch on Hsin-I Cheng's point about foreign brides being characterized in terms of their relationships with Taiwanese husbands, in-laws, or children. Perhaps the survey statistic points to a difference between how individual decisions by families to try to carry on the family name are viewed versus how a possible official decision to encourage Southeast Asian immigration on a larger scale would be viewed. I'd have to get a look at the actual questions used in the cited survey. (Unfortunately, the website doesn't seem to be working right now. I guess I'll try to come back to it later to see.) 

I got the wrong survey--that link is to the 2006 survey. The correct (2018) survey is reported on in this article by Timothy Rich in The Diplomat: Rich surveyed 1000 Taiwanese on the web, asking them one of four questions: "Taiwan should encourage immigration," "Taiwan should encourage immigration of skilled workers," "Taiwan should encourage immigration from Southeast Asian countries," or "Taiwan should encourage immigration of skilled workers from Southeast Asian countries." As he reports, questions that included the idea of "skilled workers" scored higher than those that didn't, although "skilled Southeast Asian immigration" was agreed to by only 44.6% of the respondents to that question, and the question about immigration from Southeast Asian countries that didn't mention skilled workers was agreed to (as Cheng notes) by only 8.4% of its respondents. Not being a statistics guy, I can't vouch for his methods (and he's not asking me to!). Web surveys can be a bit iffy, of course, since the respondents are kind of self-selecting. It would have been interesting, for instance, to get a little demographic information about who responded and how he sought out the respondents. I'd like to see if this kind of survey has been conducted with a larger group.

Going back to the 2006 survey that Isabelle Cheng cites, I'd note that there's one question in the survey (questions here; pdf) that asks, "Do you agree or disagree with the statement, 'Foreign laborers who work legally in Taiwan for at least seven years should be allowed to apply for long-term residency'?" (請問您贊不贊成若「外籍勞工在台灣合法工作七年以上，就可申請長期居留」？). Cheng notes that 67.6% of respondents disagreed with the statement in 2006. 

There are more recent surveys, but the questions seem to be different. This 2016 survey asks questions about attitudes towards a son's or friend's decision to marry someone from the Mainland, an overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia, a Vietnamese, or a Southeast Asian who's not of Chinese ethnicity. It also asks questions about whether the government should restrict Mainland Chinese or Southeast Asian spouses from obtaining Taiwan ID cards. Nothing, though, about foreign laborers. 

There are some questions in this survey from 2015 about whether foreigners should be allowed to get ROC citizenship: they divide the groups into "European/American/Japanese professionals" (歐美日專業人士), "Domestic helpers from Southeast Asia" (東南亞的外傭), "Laborers or fishermen from Southeast Asia" (東南亞籍的勞工或漁工), " Let's look at the answers: 

For European/American/Japanese professionals: 

• Should strictly restrict: 26.9% (I'm taking the first column of percentages)
• Should restrict a bit: 24.6%
• Should try not to limit: 45.2%
• (The rest, 3.3%, didn't answer or said they didn't know)

For Domestic helpers from Southeast Asia:

• Should strictly restrict: 47.8%
• Should restrict a bit: 25.7%
• Should try not to limit: 23.6%
• (The rest, 2.9%, didn't answer or said they didn't know)

For Laborers or fishermen from Southeast Asia:

• Should strictly restrict: 51.2%
• Should restrict a bit: 24.3%
• Should try not to limit: 21.6%
• (The rest, 2.9%, didn't answer or said they didn't know)

Notably, the numbers for domestic helpers and laborers/fishermen, while not great, seem a bit better than what Rich found (although of course the questions are different). 

OK, probably no one has read this far, so I'll stop here. But there are a lot of interesting surveys on that site. Might take another look at them some time.