June 2: Webinar, "The Challenge of COVID-19: The Taiwan Experience"

I'm hoping to "attend" this webinar next Tuesday:

6/1/20: UPDATE FROM THE FAIRBANK CENTER:

AVAILABLE ON ZOOM. CLICK HERE TO ATTEND.

WEBINAR – THE CHALLENGE OF COVID-19: THE TAIWAN EXPERIENCE
JUNE 2 @ 9:00 AM - 10:45 AM 

Speakers:Jen-Hsiang Chuang, Deputy Director-General at Centers for Disease Control, Taiwan
Steve Kuo, President, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan 

Moderators:Winnie Yip, Professor of the Practice of Global Health Policy and Economics in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director, China Health Partnership.
William Hsiao, K.T. Li Research Professor of Economics in Department of Health Policy and Management and Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health 

Organizer: Steven Goldstein, Sophia Smith Professor of Government, Emeritus, Smith College; Fairbank Center Associate 

Webinar is available using Microsoft Teams or Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. No registration is required.
Click here to attend.

Will write up some notes about it afterwards (assuming I have time!).

Our second floor feels like a three-warms

My wife told me this afternoon that our upstairs felt like a 三溫暖 (sān wēnnuǎn; sauna), and that got me thinking about the origins of this term.

But to start with a digression: for some reason, when I typed 三溫暖 into Google Translate, it romanized it as "Sān wēng nuǎn" instead of "Sān wēn nuǎn." I'm not sure why. But I noticed that if I put spaces between the characters: 三 溫 暖, Google "fixed" the transliteration to ""Sān wēnnuǎn." If I leave a space between 三 and 溫暖, it's OK. But as soon as I put 三 and 溫 together, it becomes "Sān wēng nuǎn." Why is that? Here are some screen shots to prove it!

Getting back to the point of this post. I found several sources that say 三溫暖, like its synonym 桑拿 (sāngná) are transliterated loanwords from English. (To me, though, it's easier to hear "sauna" from sāngná than from sān wēnnuǎn.) 

This led me to wonder if there was actually something in traditional Chinese referring to "three warms." Looking up "三溫暖是什麼意思" I found that a lot of people in China were evidently curious about this, too. One respondent on a forum on Baidu wrote, that 三溫暖 was what people in Taiwan call 桑拿: 

一个台湾朋友给了很权威的解释：Sauna，在台湾翻译成“三温暖”，其实是兼顾了音译和意译。“三温暖”除了跟英语的“Sauna”读音相近外，意思上也表达了这个蒸汽浴的传统。传统的芬兰桑拿房是全木结构，在桑拿房靠墙建有三阶木榻，每阶的温度各不一样，中下层的温度更低，方便老人家和小孩子，而上面那层温度最高，适合身体好的青壮年人享用，因为Sauna屋有三阶温度各异的木榻，所以称“三温暖”，意思也贴合。

To Googlify:

A Taiwanese friend gave a very authoritative explanation: Sauna, translated as "three warmth" in Taiwan, is actually a combination of transliteration and free translation. "Sanwennuan" is similar to the English pronunciation of "Sauna", which also expresses the steam bath tradition. The traditional Finnish sauna is made of all-wood structure. There are three steps of wooden couches built against the wall of the sauna. The temperature of each step is different. The temperature of the middle and lower levels is lower, which is convenient for the elderly and children. The upper level has the highest temperature and is suitable for young and middle-aged people who are in good health to enjoy. Because a sauna house has wooden beds with third-order temperatures, so it is called "three warmth", and the meaning also fits.

But then they add, interestingly, something about the meaning of 三溫暖 in Korea:

韩式“三温暖”：就是头一汤泡到摄氏36度的水池里十分钟，然后跳到冷水池里；第二汤泡到40度的水池里十分钟，接着再跳到冷水池里；最后是干、湿桑拿十分钟，再跳到冷水池里。这样，热水下皮肤伸张，排出身体中的污垢、头屑等排泄物；冷水下，皮肤收紧，防止脏物回流。如此“三热”、“三冷”，构成“三温暖”。按照韩国人的说法，三温暖可促进血液循环和新陈代谢，对肌肤美容和体形塑造有神奇效果。

To roughly (and Googly) translate:

Korean-style "three warmth": the first time is to soak in the pool at 36 degrees Celsius for ten minutes, and then jump into a cold pool; the second time is to soak in the pool at 40 degrees for ten minutes, and then jump into the cold pool. The last is a dry and wet sauna for ten minutes before jumping into the cold pool. In this way, the skin stretches under hot water to discharge dirt, dandruff and other excretions from the body; under cold water, the skin tightens to prevent the backflow of dirt. Such "three hots" and "three colds" constitute "three warms". According to Koreans, Sanwennuan can promote blood circulation and metabolism, and has a magical effect on skin beauty and body shape.

I'm not much of a saunaphile, so I can't say which of these interpretations best fits the Taiwanese idea of saunas. (I should add that my wife is also not a frequenter of saunas, but said she has heard the "Korean" description more than the "Finnish" one in Taiwan.) All I can say is that it was hot upstairs today!

Go Grandriders 不老騎士

I saw that ｢不老騎士：歐兜邁環台日記｣ Go Grandriders (2012) was on Kanopy and asked our school library to order it. I'm thinking of using it in my Travel Writing class in the fall as a look into another perspective on travel by looking at what motivates the elderly people in this documentary (averaging over 80 years old) to go on a motorcycle trip around Taiwan. The movie came out about a year after I left Taiwan, but evidently it was filmed in 2007, while I was still there. For some reason, though, I don't recall hearing about this trip while I was there (though I imagine it was in the news). And I only had a vague recollection of the film before I "discovered" it on Kanopy. Here's the trailer for the movie:

As you can see from the trailer, the film is somewhat sentimental. Reviews that I read of the movie ranged from Miriam Bale's snarky and dismissive hit piece to slightly more appreciative pieces, like Justin Chang's review that calls the movie "warmly ingratiating" while admitting that the movie is somewhat superficial and at times "unexciting."

But I wonder how the film plays to different audiences. It seems to have been well-received in Taiwan, as well as in Hong Kong and South Korea (Chinese Wikipedia). It touches on some aspects of Taiwanese modern history, particularly the Japanese colonial period when some of the riders had been police or on opposing sides of the war between Japan and China. It might be that a reaction like Bale's is due at least in part to not understanding the whole context of the film. Bale claims (she doesn't support the statement, so I can't call it an argument) that what she calls "mystery" in the film comes "mostly from omission in the sometimes inept storytelling." But my guess is that anyone familiar with Taiwan's history--the primary audience of the film--would not find much mysterious about it. When one of the riders, a former Nationalist Chinese soldier, says that another rider, a Taiwanese lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese army, used to be enemies but that "a smile between brothers can melt enmity"(兄弟一笑泯恩仇), this seems no mystery to me (the question then being whether it's the director's responsibility to spoonfeed Taiwanese history to an American viewer like Bale).

It might be, too, that the style of the movie is also more suitable for some East Asian audiences than for American audiences. That's certainly a possibility, given the fact that the film was a winner at the Asian American International Film Festival and was nominated at the 17th Busan International Film Festival and the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. However, it's also interesting to observe that the most positive review I saw published was by Frank Scheck, in which he concludes,

The filmmaker documents the proceedings in refreshingly matter-of fact-fashion, thankfully avoiding the temptation to overly sentimentalize or mine cheap humor and contrived suspense from the proceedings. It somehow seems doubtful that an American director would have shown such restraint.

I don't know much about Scheck besides the fact that he's described as an "American film critic," but he has a more understanding perspective on the film than Bale.

At any rate, I'll be interested to see how students in my Travel Writing online class respond to the movie. I'm putting together some questions for them to think about regarding the role of place vs. the role of the journey in the film. I'll have to think more about the questions, which will probably involve watching it again. Pass the Kleenex, please!

Finished reading Before the Storm

So I decided that instead of feeding my rage over what's going on currently, I'd give myself a chance to rage about the past. I just finished Rick Perlstein's 2001 history of '60s conservatism, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.

Like the other two Perlstein books that I've read (Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge), this book was packed with historical details of famous, infamous, and little-known events and people, seemingly culled (by Perlstein or his research assistants) from newspapers of every size across the US. In with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the candidacy of Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith (the first woman to run for president as part of a major party), and the murder of Kitty Genovese are such details as the number of African American journeymen in the Brooklyn plumbers' local ("three ... out of several thousand members" [236]), the rise of businesses and products catering to fears of nuclear war (like "'Foam-Ettes--the Toothpaste Tablet You Can Use ANYTIME, ANYWHERE--WHEREVER YOU ARE, even in a family fallout shelter' [143]"), and the origins of the boysenberry and its relationship to the growth of conservatism.

Unfortunately, some of Before the Storm is as hard to read as that previous sentence probably was. Like a lot of readers (at least judging from the book's reviews on Amazon), I came to this book last, after having read Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge. Reading the books out of order like this, I can see how Perlstein's style has (fortunately) developed. Like the later books, this one sometimes takes detours in the narrative to bring readers up to date about a figure, trend, or other historical development that is important to the overall story. At times, however, the detours were not accompanied with proper signage and I found myself lost when I was back on the main road. At times I'd be reading along and suddenly come along a sentence like, "By July, ..." and wonder, "July of what year?"

Overall, though, I learned a lot from this book. It even clued me in on a 1953 executive order signed by Eisenhower "demanding homosexuals be fired not just from all federal jobs bur from all companies with federal contractors--one-fifth of the U.S. workforce" (490). This order, Executive Order 10450, was interesting to me as it seems to have formed part of the context in which George Kerr was forced to resign from his work at Stanford with the International Cooperation Administration. (See my brief bio of Kerr in the Camphor Press edition of Formosa Betrayed.)

I see that Perlstein has a new volume coming out in August: Reaganland. I'm looking forward to it, but considering that the Amazon website says it's 1040 pages long, it'll be a while before I get to it...

A break from COVID and CANVAS

I was going to post a thoughtful note on George H. Kerr's perspective on the April 24, 1970 assassination attempt on Chiang Ching-kuo, but I'm burned out on COVID-19 news and transferring my Blackboard materials to Canvas for my first summer class that begins May 4. So I'm going to relax with this video, which I just encountered. Apologies if you've seen it before:

Ragesurfing

This is the term I came up with this morning to describe how I lurch from one anger-inducing news story to another about the intersection of politics and COVID-19 (and, sometimes, bad reporting).* I imagine I'm not the only person who does this. I've seen the term "doomsurfing," but that describes something a bit different--as Kevin Roose defines it, doomsurfing consists of "falling into deep, morbid rabbit holes filled with coronavirus content, agitating [one]self to the point of physical discomfort, erasing any hope of a good night’s sleep." Ragesurfing, perhaps a subspecies of doomsurfing, is characterized by the active pursuit of news articles that you know will make you angry and a descent into the rabbit hole of reading the comments on stories or social media posts with an emphasis on the ones that you strongly disagree with or that are dismissive or insulting to your perspective. "I knew there would be some idiots who would agree (or disagree, as the case may be) with this posting!" you say, vindicated in your belief that not everyone on the internet is as enlightened as you (OK, this is about me), at the same time growing more and more angry and despairing at how stupid and/or evil "they" are.

I'm not sure what motivates ragesurfing; Roose, in another article, argues that what he calls "machine drift" happens when our thoughts and emotions are influenced by our online experiences through "a combination of humans and sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence." He quotes the adage that "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." His objective is to explore how our tools shape us, which, if you believe that ragesurfing is a result of being manipulated by our tools, seems an important consideration. Maybe his podcasts will shed some light on this phenomenon (though he'll probably end up giving it another name that will stick better than "ragesurfing," which will probably make me even madder).

Note that ragesurfing doesn't imply engaging those other points of view, though I guess it doesn't preclude engagement. Personally, I don't have a Twitter or Facebook account, so my consumption of social media is strictly from the sidelines. This might enhance the feelings of impotent rage--Roose suggests that "using social media actively makes us feel better than consuming it passively," but I have no intention of diving into the volcano just because I'm burning my feet by dancing around the edge.

I suppose that ragesurfing, unlike doomsurfing as it's currently being used, does not have to be concerned only with coronavirus-related content. However, it makes sense that it would surface now, when I'm stuck at home, sitting in front of the computer or staring at my phone way too much.

I need to get back to grading right now, so I'm just going to post this as a "half-formed thought." I'll try to stay away from my usual grazing locations. Like a cow that eats too much lush green grass in the spring, I'm liable to start staggering around and fall over. (That simile probably proves I'm a suburbanite.)

*Update: I found the hashtag "#RageSurfing used once in a late 2018 tweet:

Doesn't seem to be exactly what I mean by the term, though... "Ragesurf" also comes up, as in this tweet:

Still doesn't seem to mean the same thing.

I'm supposed to be grading...

My son's first book

My son has gotten into writing books now. His writing looks like a flock of birds, and he glues the pages together so they form sort of a long wallpaper-like thing. Maybe a scroll, except that he doesn’t roll it up.

It’s all about Thomas and Friends, of course. The trains look like alien heads with big eyes on top of long footless legs (which are actually wheels). Then he draws the tracks and writes the text (see the left-hand side.) He could write some real letters if he wanted to, but I’m not going to rush him. He finished one book last night and got to work on another one today. I wish I had his energy. He calls them “Awdry books,” so I guess they’re based on the books the Rev. W. Awdry wrote back in the day.

Clearing out yesterday's fallen branches

Yesterday a big storm came through, with heavy rain and strong winds that tossed branches around the yard and even cut out our power for about 45 minutes.  (We were lucky on both counts--other people in the state had trees fall on their houses or lost power for much longer times.) Today was a reasonably nice day, so this afternoon my five-year-old and I went out to clean up the fallen branches that were scattered all over the yard.

My son alternated between picking up branches to put in my wheelbarrow and playing with his wooden Thomas trains; sometimes his trains helped carry the branches over. Henry, the big green tender engine, was especially helpful. While we worked on collecting the branches, we discussed Henry--his helpful but sometimes "arrogant and vain" personality (as my son described it), his fear of rain, of wind, and of heights. Every once in a while it amazes me not just that he's talking so much, but that we have things to talk about (though our most content-rich conversations seem to circulate around Thomas and his friends, which I know more about now than I ever wanted to).

Of course, now that we have all of these branches, I have to figure out how to get them to the dump on Saturday...

Light at the end of the tunnel...

... for this semester, anyway. This week is the last week of classes, and I'm finishing up reading drafts of Travel Writing portfolios right now. I've made everything due at the end of the week so I can get caught up on grading the "little" things and attending to last-minute student questions.

It has been interesting teaching all of my courses online this semester. The confused feeling that a lot of people have been having the past few weeks--not knowing when the work day begins or ends, not even knowing what day of the week it is--has been my experience since January, so I've more-or-less gotten used to it. While I have missed a lot of face-to-face interaction that happens when I'm in the office more frequently, the sense of FOMO has slowly faded. (Probably in part because the school has been closed for about a month.) I do still have the weird feeling that time has stretched out--the beginning of the semester, the impeachment of old what's-his-hair, and all the other pre-COVID-19 events of 2020 seem to have taken place years ago.

No recommendations for people working from home as a result of this--I'm not in the business of giving advice on this blog (at least not purposely). In this case, I'm probably not a good model of how to work from home, at least if you read the advice other people give. It's 3:30 in the afternoon right now, I'm sitting on the sofa with a blanket over me and I haven't showered yet today. The TV is on to Paw Patrol (not for me) and my son is still in his pajamas and getting muffin crumbs all over the sofa. No role model here...

How Tunghai University ended up in Taichung instead of Hsinchu

I'm supposed to be working on my never-ending (never-beginning?) Kerr paper right now, but I'm going to take a break to transcribe an April 29, 1954 letter to George H. Kerr concerning Tunghai University. The letter is from Re-lin Su (蘇瑞麟), a former student of Kerr's (a little about him here). According to an article in the Bradford County Telegraph, Su was the "principal of the Chu Tung County High School in Shin-chu, Formosa." He was in the US at the time of this letter, under the auspices of the Foreign Operations Administration of the US government.

Here's the letter:

April 29, 1954 

Dear Kerr Sensei: 

I'm glad to hear from you. This is my third week here, and I have a very light program. There is nothing to do except to attend conferences, all kinds, whether it concerns my program or not. I'm sure I can't learn much, but it is good for me to read some books and prepare my monthly, quarter, predeparture and final reports. 

I've not met Mr. Kabura yet. He is living at dormitory. It is my pleasure to hear he is here, I'm going to try to see him. 

Before I left Formosa I've heard about a new college. My hometown was one of the two prearranged campuses, but because of county governor of my county was not interested in it, so the new college was decided to be established at Taichu. And last January when I was in Berea College, Ky, I've heard something about it. I was told it was going to follow Berea College--labor system. But at that time it was not decided what and how many departments the new college should have. There is one agricultural college in Taichu already. As for social science, our government does not like it any more. I think you are still remember there was an evening college for social science in Taihoku before the February war. I'm sure you know why our government does not like to open social science college.  

This new college is a mission college. I think it will be good for Formosa. At least some more high school graduates can attend college and receive college level education. You might not be able to imagine how hard to attend college in Formosa, even secondary school.  

We've around three hundred secondary schools--senior high and junior high--and yet only about half of elementary graduates who want to attend junior high school can go to junior high school. The circumstance is not better at all since the Japanese control. 

Do you have any concern about the college? I've ever talk to one of professor in Berea College. I want to put up some relation between my high school and the college. Not only to send students to the college, but to get their help and cooperation to my school's extension service to the communities.  

I've written a few lines before, the county governor was not interested in a new college. In fact, he was not he was interested in it. There will be a election of county governor in May, he wanted to be as candidate again. When two years ago there was the first election for county governor in Formosa, I was the most hopeful one. He came to talk with me let him try, and this time--this May 2--he would help me. Because of I had not so much money to forward as candidate, and he is older than me, so I agreed to let him try.  

And last May before I came the States because he wished to forward as candidate again, so he was afraid of me very much. If the college was established at my home town if I would forward as candidate he was sure he would fail. So, so long as the college concerns he did not show any interest and guide those people who came to see the prearranged campus, he let one of supervisor of schools led to a place where there are two Buddist Temples.  

On the contrary Taichu offered a large land for campus, in fact Taichu is much better than the place where the county governor had shown in my county. 

And this time only one candidate for county governor. Of course I'm not interested in that job I am enjoying my present job more.  

But still is the strongest enemy for him, and many people wanted to put me as candidate this time while I am here and know nothing about their election. 

This democratic way does not profit our democracy at all so long as this election concerns. 

Sincerely yours, 

RL. Su

Su, Yao-tsung, ed. Correspondence by and about George H. Kerr (II), pp 593-596. (Errors in original.)

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

I came across Michael Berry in his response to a position paper by Shu-mei Shih about "Linking Taiwan Studies with the World" (from my quick dip into the International Journal of Taiwan Studies). Given his invocation of China as "the elephant in the room" facing Taiwan studies, I was curious to see where he was coming from in terms of his research. Looking at his bio and research statement on the UCLA website, I found that he had translated Wu He's Remains of Life. So I decided to buy it.

Now I'm thinking about whether I should rearrange my "order of reading" for the books I've received. I have to admit I haven't gotten very far into any of the books that I mentioned receiving last month. Too busy being enraged by current events. (I keep thinking I should start a Twitter account just to link to all the things that enrage me. Would that be therapeutic, do you think?) Maybe reading a novel would be a nice way to get away from current events. (Though reading about the Musha Incident isn't exactly pleasant...)

Here are some reviews of the book that I have found. Although they're all about the English version, they don't say much about Berry's translation.

• "Remembering the Musha Incident: Wu He’s Remains of Life" by Ilaria Maria Sala (Cha Journal, April 2018)
  
• "'Remains of Life' by Wu He" by Yu Zhang (Asian Review of Books, 18 July 2017)
• "'Remains of Life' by Wu He [Why This Book Should Win]" by Adam Hetherington (Three Percent)
• "James Joyce-like novel about Japanese genocide of Taiwan tribes is a tough read, but worth the effort" by Mike Cormack (South China Morning Post Magazine)

"A Government of Merchants": GHK (indirectly) on the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19

[Update, 10:48 p.m. Well, this doesn't make any sense, probably  because I've been feeling tired and dizzy all day. The "parallels" are kind of loose. I guess the part I would emphasize here is that both regimes were/are corrupt and that both "leaders" didn't/don't take responsibility for their incompetence and corruption. I didn't go into Chen Yi's role in the cholera and bubonic plague outbreaks, but there's probably some parallel there, too. See this paragraph from Denny Roy's Taiwan: A Political History, where Chen's first director of public health declines to stop dumping sewage from cholera wards into ponds that were used for fishing by saying, "After all, only the poor people are contracting the disease." The only parallel is that reading about what's going on now gives me the same feeling of impotent rage that reading Formosa Betrayed gives me.]

Reading about some of what has been going on with the way the Trump administration is handling the coronavirus reminded me of chapter five of George H. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed. This chapter, entitled "A Government of Merchants," contains descriptions of the Chen Yi government in Taiwan that are sadly evocative of the Trump government's practices. To name a few:

• Kerr: "Next the Governor's own men developed a firm control of all industrial raw materials, agricultural stockpiles and confiscated real properties turned over to them by the vanquished Japanese. By the end of 1946 these huge reserves were fairly well exhausted, and at last in early 1947 the Governor's Commissioners imposed a system of extreme monopolies affecting every phase of the island's economic life. This was Chen Yi's 'Necessary State Socialism' in its developed form and the ultimate cause of the 1947 rebellion." 
• From Raw Story today (4/3/20), we get the news that after Jared Kushner claimed on Thursday that "The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use," the Strategic National Stockpile's website changed the Stockpile's mission statement to reflect Kushner's view. The original mission statement that called the Stockpile "the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out" and promised to get "the right medicines and supplies ... to those who need them most during an emergency." The new mission statement removes those assurances and calls the Stockpile "a short-term stopgap buffer" that can be used "to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies." The onus goes to the states to develop their own stockpiles, which is almost impossible to do since, as some governors have complained, the federal government keeps outbidding state and local governments on personal protective equipment (PPE). (It's admittedly not an exact parallel, but the similarity is that the federal government--through Kushner--is claiming "ownership" of the stockpile. Who is Kushner referring to when he says "it's supposed to be our stockpile" (emphasis added)?) Although Trump would never use the term "necessarily state socialism," it's the same kind of graft...
• Kerr: "To loud demands for action [on rice shortages caused by government confiscation] the Government first replied with flowery talk of 'patriotism' and 'food for the Army, defending Formosa from Communism,' and then Chen lost patience with the critics. He sharply denied Government responsibility, countering with charges that the Formosans themselves were selfishly hoarding grain. Undoubtedly some Formosans were, but the quantities in private hands were insignificant."
• While the Trump administration outbids state and local governments on PPE and denies its responsibility to supply them with needed supplies, Trump accuses hospital employees of stealing supplies. As Kerr says about the hoarding of grain, there might be some theft, but as the Vox article says, it's "hardly on the scale the president has suggested, and only what is needed to keep hospitals running given the federal government had not been able to provide them with badly needed supplies."
• Kerr: "After the Transfer [of Taiwan from Japan to the KMT government] few of these stockpiled materials reached the open market through legal channels. In most instances we have records of quantities surrendered (records made by the Japanese), but only the vaguest indication of what became of them. Of 423,000 tons of camphor surrendered, for example, an official report shows that only 400 tons were actually refined in the first half-year of the Chinese occupation. We do know that very large shipments left the island, assigned to private warehouses in Hong Kong. Nearly 3,500,000 cases of matches were surrendered, but an acute shortage of matches developed in Formosa in early 1946. (At the first People's Political Council, in May, the Government spokesman explained this, saying that the Government had been able to distribute only 1473 cases in the first six months 'because of lack of adequate transport.') The match stockpiles, too, had gone to the mainland."
• An April 2 question-and-answer between CBS' Weijia Jiang and Rear Adm. John Polowczyk of the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirms that the "airbridge" the US government has established to bring in supplies from abroad is mainly being used to supply private companies with those much-needed medical materials. In other words, the taxpayers are paying to provide shipping services to commercial companies that then sell those supplies to the highest bidder (among state and local governments)--which means that the taxpayers are paying (at least) twice for the supply of these PPE, ventilators, and other medical supplies. I don't know if this is illegal, though I know it should be...

I could go on, but I have to think about my blood pressure...

On the bright side (for me, anyway)...

I feel like Mr. Scott. Getting some reading done. Currently reading through some articles from the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. (But now will probably end up binge-watching Star Trek...)

Three new books in the former native speaker's library

Since the Association of Asian Studies conference this year was cancelled, I took advantage of the University of Hawai'i Press Asian Studies online sale (you can still order by 3/31!) to buy a couple of books that I have been interested in for a while:

• Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650, by Gregory Smits (2019)--I got interested in this book after reading John Grant Ross' enthusiastic review on the bookish.asia blog. 
• Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan, by Hiroko Matsuda (2019)--this book combines two of my favorite kinds of research methods--archival work and oral histories--to tell the story of Okinawans who immigrated to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period there. Paul Barclay has a positive review of the book in Japanese Studies. 

The books showed up on my porch today, so I donned my hazmat suit and brought them in. Since we're all socially distancing ourselves right now, I might even get a chance to read them in the near future, especially if I don't read my books in the order that I buy them. 

I'm currently reading another book that I ordered earlier:

• Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship, by Shui-yin Sharon Yam (2019). I haven't seen any reviews of this book yet, but I'm interested in Yam's discussion of storytelling as a way to promote what she calls "deliberative empathy" among different and differently-empowered groups in a society. I'm also interested in the book's focus on Hong Kong as a site of struggle among competing populations of Hongkongers, South Asians, Southeast Asian domestic workers, and mainland Chinese migrants.
  

Hopefully posting these books will force me to read them!

We still live in interesting times, but I'd like them to be more boring...

I started this blog 16 years ago tonight with the rather bland line, "We live in interesting times in Taiwan."

Sixteen years ago, we had just come out of the SARS scare; I remember lecturing about library research to classes of masked students. Now all the instructors at my current school are teaching online.

I'm teaching a travel writing course to students who are strongly advised, if not required, to stay inside. Luckily, one of the most recent readings for this class was the chapter, "On Habit," from Alain de Botton's book, The Art of Travel. In this chapter, de Botton relates the experience of trying to treat his familiar surroundings as new and strange. Drawing on the ideas of eighteenth-century Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, who wrote a book about traveling around his bedroom, de Botton suggests that we need to revisit the familiar; as he puts it, "Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen" (249).

In response to this reading, I asked students to walk around their neighborhoods and try to treat them as strange new places. I didn't know when I set up the course that COVID-19 would confine us to our immediate surroundings, but as I say, we live in interesting times. Some students addressed the coronavirus directly in their writings, pointing out how it had changed their surroundings and the way they viewed them. One cited a line from Pascal that de Botton quotes toward the beginning of his chapter:

"The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room"--Pascal, Pensées, 136.

I guess we have a chance to train ourselves to stay quietly in our rooms.

Sent this to NPR about COVID-19 management in Taiwan

I've been getting frustrated with how the US media has been generally ignoring Taiwan's management of the coronavirus, especially in contrast to the mismanagement here at the federal level. The WHO is busy praising the PRC for its handling of the coronavirus, but the fact is that Taiwan was much more open, transparent, and effective in its response from the beginning.

An interview on Weekend Edition yesterday with Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the director general of the World Health Organization, was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. In response to that interview, and to the fact that as far as I've heard and seen, there hasn't been any coverage of Taiwan's response, I wrote the following short note (I edited the links for this blog, since I couldn't make active links on the contact form):

In response to the interview yesterday with Dr. Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization and his portrayal of China's response to COVID-19, I wonder why there has been no coverage on NPR (as far as I can tell from searching the website) of Taiwan's successful response to the coronavirus. If you look at articles like this one from Al-Jazeera and from the JAMA Network, you can see that Taiwan is actually leading the world in managing the coronavirus crisis. This, in the context of the WHO's continued refusal to allow Taiwan even observer status. (See also this article from Foreign Policy.) Taiwan is even helping other countries like Palau with coronavirus management. American listeners would probably be very interested in hearing about a country where the government is proactively and effectively curbing the spread of COVID-19.

I also sent this to PRI's The World and CNN. I don't know this will have any effect on the lack of coverage of Taiwan, but I encourage anyone else who wants to spread the word to write to their favorite stations, local and national. I'm not on social media, so I don't know how much this is already going on, but we have to keep pushing Taiwan's story in various ways.

[Update, 3/14/20: NPR's website now features an article entitled, "With Odds Against It, Taiwan Keeps Coronavirus Corralled." I don't know if my email had any role in this, but it's good news.]

Андрей Гражданцев in Russians in China. Genealogical index (1926-1946)

Not quite sure what to do with this information yet, but here's a reference to Grajdanzev about when he was in China. I'd love to know if any of the other Гражданцев names are of related people.

"НА" stands for Справочник «Весь Харбин» за 1926 год (Roughly, "All Harbin" Directory for 1926). According to this book, there's a copy in the Russian State Library (копия в Российской Государственной Библиотеке [шифр Рос 3-4/2-63]). Would love to know if anyone in the US has it. (WorldCat lists a copy about 1923 that's available in the New York Public Library, but it's the wrong year.) 



Ah me and my weird obsessions...

[Update: The author of Russians in China, Kirill Chashchin, has a blog: http://rusgenproject.com/. Perhaps I should write to him...]

My copy of Grajdanzev's Formosa Today

Around the time I started posting about Andrew Grajdanzev, I bought a relatively inexpensive copy of his 1942 book, Formosa Today, on Amazon. It didn't click with me at the time, but when I received the book, the name "Harold J. Noble" was written at the top of the cover.

I don't know if this means that Noble owned the book or not. The book used to belong to the College of the Pacific--there's a bookplate on the inside front cover that says, "In Memory of Harold Joyce Noble." Noble, who was born and raised in Korea as a missionary kid, was a major in the Marines during WW2 and later on First Secretary in the US embassy in Seoul in 1950. Before that, he received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (writing on "Korea and Her Relations with the United States before 1895") and teaching at the University of Oregon from 1931-1934. He was also a member of the Institute of Pacific Relations. He died at the relatively young age of 50 (I can say that now) aboard a flight from Japan to Hawaii on December 22, 1953, when he was on his way home to California.

"A Lasting Memento: John Thomson’s Photographs Along the River Min"

Happened this morning upon a TV show called Asian Focus that's on Sunday mornings at 7:00 (why so early on a Sunday morning??). There was a segment on about an exhibit of photographs of Fuzhou, China, taken in 1870-71 by Scottish photographer John Thomson, with accompanying contemporary photographs by Luo Dan, a Chinese photographer inspired by Thomson's photographs. The exhibition is open until May 17th at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA:

As far as travel souvenirs go, few can beat John Thomson’s leather-bound photo album Foochow and the River Min. From 1870 to 1871, the Scottish-born photographer traveled 160 miles up the River Min to document the area in and around the city of Fuzhou (Foochow), an important center of international trade and one of the most picturesque provinces in China. Thomson sold his book by advance subscription to the foreign residents of Fuzhou — tea planters, merchants, missionaries and government officials — who wanted a way to share their experiences with friends and family back home.

Fewer than 10 of the original 46 copies of this album survived, and the Peabody Essex Museum is privileged to own two of them. A Lasting Memento: John Thomson’s Photographs Along the River Min presents this rare collection of photographs for the first time at PEM. The exhibition also features 10 works by contemporary Chinese photographer Luo Dan.

Luo Dan's photographs sound interesting because he evidently used the same complicated photographic process (apologies to my late father for my complete ignorance about the history of photography) to photograph members of the Lisu and Nu ethnicities in southwestern China. So his pictures look very old even though they're not. (You can see an example on this page.)

Guess I'll have to find some time to go up to Salem before May 17 to have a look!

[Update, 5/20/20: Well that never happened.]

Missed a spot: More on Grajdanzev and IPR

An update on Grajdanzev's presence in the McCarran IPR hearings. I missed a few spots where he was discussed more in testimony by Owen Lattimore. This was because they spelled his name differently (but inconsistently) in that part, as "Gradjanzev" or "Gradjansev."

Grajdanzev (spelled correctly) is mentioned briefly in a paragraph about a meeting in a letter from Carter to Holland ("Exhibit No. 53"). The meeting is about "Soviet Policy in the Pacific"; Grajdanzev is said to have attended, along with 12 other people (although Lattimore denied having been there). The context of this testimony is whether Lattimore had met James S. Allen and when he "knew" Allen was a Communist.

He comes up later (as "Gradjansev") in a Feb. 10, 1938 letter written to Harriet Moore of the American Russian Institute about asking Moore and Grajdanzev to write a "rejoinder" to an article to be published in Pacific Affairs by economist L. E. Hubbard (misidentified at times as "L.M. Hubbard") that was critical of the Soviet Union. (This is the article, entitled "A Capitalist Appraisal of the Soviet Union.") Originally Lattimore wanted the Soviet economist, V. E. Motylev, who had protested the Hubbard article to write a rejoinder, but evidently Motylev wasn't willing. So Moore and Grajdanzev were approached to write "the most penetrating and masterly rejoinder that can possibly be produced."

Lattimore stated that a rejoinder hadn't been published, but that an article entitled "The Rate of Growth in the Soviet Union" was published in response to Hubbard's article. That article, written by "Andrew W. Canniff," is here. Lattimore noted that "Canniff" was a pseudonym (and the front matter to the issue of Pacific Affairs identifies the name as a pseudonym),* but he wasn't sure if it was a pseudonym for Moore and Grajdanzev. The Senator questioning Lattimore suggested that Moore was a Communist at the time in question, though Lattimore denied knowing any information about this at that time.

They go on to discuss Grajdanzev ("Gradjansev") for a bit:

Senator FERGUSON. Who was the gentleman there, Gradjansev?

Mr. LATTIMORE. The other was Mr. Gradjansev, who was a White Russian.

Mr. MORRIS. Do you know whether that is the same Mr. Gradjansev who was dismissed from General MacArthur's headquarters for left wing activity?

Mr. LATTIMORE. I did not know that he was dismissed for left wing activity. I know he worked for a while under SCAP.

Mr. MORRIS. Did you know he was dismissed?

Mr. LATTIMORE. Yes; I knew he was dismissed.

Mr. MORRIS. What reason did you believe was the cause of his dismissal?

Mr. LATTIMORE. The reason I heard was that he had given some cigarettes to some Japanese. He was a man who didn't smoke, and he used his cigarette ration to give to some Japanese who were doing some economic work for him, and this was considered, I believe, to be black-marketeering.

This story is slightly different from the one given by Holland (mentioned here) about Grajdanzev selling liquor on the black market to pay his research assistants. Both stories, though, suggest the kind of close observation he was under--as Masuda described it, Grajdanzev was being tailed for some reason.

Lattimore goes on to say that, given the description of "Canniff" in Pacific Affairs as someone who was "studying the agricultural economics of both the Soviet Union and Manchuria," Canniff "was probably Mr. Gradjansev."

Grajdanzev's name (spelled properly this time) comes up again in a 1940 letter from Lattimore to Frederick V. Field that is discussed during Lattimore's testimony. In the letter, Lattimore recalls recommending Grajdanzev to S. Taylor Ostrander (whom Lattimore describes as being connected with the Defense Advisory Commission), who needed "an economist competent to deal with Japanese wartime fiscal policies." "I pointed out that for his purposes the fact that Grajdanzev does not yet have his citizenship might be a barrier, but he told me that in some cases they proceed by appointing someone to a general job, with salary allowances for taking on assistants for such purposes as this."

Going back to the "penetrating and masterly rejoinder," Lattimore says that at the time, he had "no reason to suppose that Harriet Moore was Communist, and I had no reason whatever to suppose that Grajdanzev was Communist, or pro-Communist." (Which makes me wonder if Lattimore is implying that he now thinks Grajdanzev is at least pro-Communist. Unfortunately I don't think he ever answers my question.)

One more time that Grajdanzev comes up in the questioning of Lattimore is when the senators present a translation Grajdanzev did of a Soviet newspaper article praising an article that Lattimore wrote about Soviet treatment of national minorities. Special Counsel Morris asks Lattimore (somewhat sarcastically, I suspect) if it was Grajdanzev's regular practice to forward to Lattimore "favorable references in the Soviet press."  Lattimore's response is that, "as a friend of mine, if he ran across something that would interest me he would send it to me."

Finally, there is Exhibit No. 566-G, which is a 1938 letter from Lattimore to Grajdanzev. It's mostly about Lattimore's response to Grajdanzev's views on the progress of the war in Europe, but Lattimore starts off by writing about what appears to be Grajdanzev's attempts to get US citizenship:

I think you are doing the right thing about trying to arrange your own application to get on the quota. It seems to me that there is a good chance that this will succeed, and if it does it may simplify the problem for Mary. I am assuming, of course, that you will let me know without any delay if there is anything whatever that I can do.

I'm not sure where this exhibit is used in the questioning of Lattimore, though.

The moral of the story: consider alternative spellings of names like Grajdanzev!
--------------------------
* The front matter also identifies "Canniff" as the author of an article entitled "Japan's Puppets in China" that was published in Asia. (This article was published in 1938 in Volume 38, No. 3 of the magazine, pp. 151-153.)

Grajdanzev's publications available online

Here together are links to the books by Grajdanzev that are available online, since print versions are usually expensive (or undependable if you buy facsimile editions):

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. Formosa Today: An Analysis of the Economic Development and Strategic Importance of Japan's Tropical Colony. International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942. (limited to search-only)

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. Korea Looks Ahead. IPR Pamphlets No. 15, American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944. (pdf)

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. Modern Korea. John Day, 1944. (See below)

Grad, Andrew J. Land and Peasant in Japan: An Introductory Survey. International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1952. (See below)


Still not found online (links are to WorldCat):
Grajdanzev, Andrew J. The External Trade of Manchuria, 1928-1935: An Analysis. N.p., 1936.

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. (comp.). Statistics of Japanese Agriculture, with Introductory Notes. International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1941.

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. The Economic Development of Formosa. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1941.

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. Memorandum on Politics and Government in Korea. International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942.

Grajdanzev, Andrew J. Economic Planning in India. Institute of Pacific Relations, 1945.

A little more about Andrew Grajdanzev in Occupied Japan

Came across a couple of references to Andrew Grajdanzev in Eiji TAKEMAE's The Allied Occupation of Japan (translated and adapted from the Japanese by Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann), Continuum, 2002.

In regard to McArthur's SCAP special staff sections:

Lieutenant Colonel Cecil G. Tilton, Chief of Local Government Division, made a singular contribution to the reform of local administration. Holding a BS and MSc from the University of California (Berkeley) and an MBA from Harvard, he had taught at the Universities of Hawai'i and Connecticut before entering the Army. After training at the University of Virginia School of Military Government, he was recruited to teach at the University of Chicago CATS [Civil Affairs Training School]. Tilton was assisted initially by John W. Maseland of Dartmouth College and Andrew J. Grajdanzev, an ardent advocate of decentralization and home rule. Grajdanzev later played a role in drafting SCAP's land-reform programme. Tilton followed Local Government Division to Eighth Army headquarters when it was transferred there in mid-1948. (158-159)

 In regard to Grajdanzev's participation in SCAP decisions on land reform:

By mid-October 1945, SCAP, too, had begun to mull the merits of land reform. When Natural Resources Section failed to move quickly on the issue, MacArthur assigned this task to Civil Information and Education Section. On 9 November, General Headquarters issued SCAPIN-257 ('Agricultural Programme') directing the government to submit a plan on its long-range food-production goals by the end of December. The plan did not concern land reform per se but was to include counter-measures for the problem of tenancy, credit, ground rents and taxes. (340)

Takemae discusses how SCAPIN-411 ("Rural Land Reform") was written based on the view that "egalitarian land reallotment" would "not only prevent a resurgence of militarism but nip radical Socialist and Communist ambitions in the bud" (341). SCAPIN-411 directed that "the government would buy up land from non-operating owners, sell it to the tillers and eliminate absentee landlordism by transferring their property to landless tenants" (341).

CI&E had drawn up SCAPINs 257 and 411, but now Government Section and Economic and Scientific Section also became involved. Work got under way in February 1946 and, in March, primary responsibility for the reform shifted from CI&E back to Natural Resources Section. The drafting committee included William T. Gilmartin and Ladejinsky of NRS (the latter [a "Russian-born agrarian specialist" who supported land redistribution] having transferred to Japan in December for that purpose); Lieutenant W. Hicks of CI&E; and Thomas Bisson and Dr Andrew J. Grajdanzev of GS. On 9 May, Ladejinsky completed a staff study borrowing heavily from ideas that ["radical Japanese agronomist"] Yagi Yoshinosuke had advanced in 1936: national expropriation of tenanted land and its sale to the tillers, compensation for landlords and entrenched tenancy rights. (341-2)

Takemae goes on to describe all the political maneuvering among the delegates of the Allied Council for Japan to nail down the details of the land reform program. There was a lot of haggling over the upper limits of land that landlords could keep--some calling for 5 hectare limits, some calling for 3, and some for 1 hectare. The bill that had to be approved by the Japanese Diet was based on a proposal that "the government fix the amount of tenant-cultivated property a landlord could retain at 1 hectare, impose an absolute limit of 3 hectares (12 in Hokkaido) on all holdings and make the acquisition programme compulsory" (342).

The bill was submitted to the Diet on 7 September 1946, but opposition surfaced from an unexpected quarter. Andrew Grajdanzev of Government Section's Local Government Division protested that the programme was too extreme; what was needed, he said, was 'reform, not revolution.' Grajdanzev convinced GS Chief Whitney to back his demand to clarify exceptions to the 3-hectare upper limit on holdings in a way that would benefit large landowners. Whitney also agreed to modify the composition of the land commissions to favour landlords. [Japanese Agriculture Minister] Wada, however, dug in his heels and refused to budge on the issue, and Schenck threw his full support to the plucky Agriculture Minister, embroiling NRS in a battle royal with the more powerful GS, which won the day. Whitney accused Schenck, in effect, of kowtowing to the Japanese and ultimately browbeat the NRS chief into compliance. Government Section obliged Wada to make exceptions to the 3-hectare limit and impose a land-price ceiling. As Diet deliberations on the amended bill proceeded, NRS abandoned its earlier strategy of secrecy. Schenck warned a Liberal Party delegation of "dire consequences" should Parliament fail to carry the legislation. In that case, he said, the Supreme Commander would have no alternative but to issue a formal directive. The law was enacted without incident on 21 October. (343)

Wow. Lots of quoting there. I don't know much about the agrarian reforms in Occupied Japan besides what I quoted here, but this does give me a little more information on what Grajdanzev was up to in Japan after the war.

[Update, 2/12: This might be useful at some point:

331.42 Records of the SCAP Government Section 
1945-52 
291 lin. ft.

Textual Records: Decimal correspondence, 1945-52. SCAP instructions to the Japanese Government ("SCAPINS"), 1945-51. Issuances of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1945-51, and of General Headquarters Far East Command, 1947-51. Records relating to the Far Eastern Commission, 1945-51. Records concerning the Japanese Diet, 1946-52. Records relating to elections, 1945-51. Records relating to the removal or exclusion from office of individuals considered undesirable as public officials ("Purge Files"), 1945- 51. Records concerning the Japanese Civil Service ("National Personnel Authority File"), 1945-51. Records concerning the economic decentralization program ("Zaibatsu File"), 1945-50. Records relating to religious, cultural, economic, and other organizations in Japan, 1945-52. File containing information on Japanese individuals involved in legal cases under U.S. jurisdiction ("Biographical File"), ca. 1945-52.

https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/331.html#331.42]

WHO is for Taiwan?

OK, that was a terrible title. It just struck me, though, that the other day I posted something about a petition to support Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization, and then I noticed that someone had found their way to a post of mine from almost 15 years ago that bemoans the fact that Taiwan was not allowed in WHO. There's a sad consistency to all this. (And if you look at Michael Turton's entries about Taiwan and WHO, you can get even more of a sense of this.)

*Sigh*

By the way, if my loyal reader(s) haven't signed that petition yet, don't let the fact that there are already over 100,000 signatures stop you from signing. The more signatures, the better!

Petition for the White House to support Taiwan's participation in WHO

I just signed this. I don't know if it will lead to any action on the part of the US government, but it's worth a try:

Taiwan owns high-quality medical technology and abundant medical experiences, and has been contributing to medical issues continuously. However, Taiwan has always been precluded from WHO due to China's opposition and pressure, which made Taiwan unable to access timely information from WHO at SARS outbreak. Now, since the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV is spreading and Taiwan is already standing at the first line of defense, to protect the 23 millions Taiwanese people and global safety, Taiwan should not be excluded from WHO due to political reason anymore. 

Still looking for those (probably non-existent) recordings or transcripts of "World Affairs are Your Affairs"

I was hoping that in a couple days, I would be able to "celebrate" the 70th anniversary of George H. Kerr's radio appearance on KNBC's "World Affairs are Your Affairs" with a post presenting what was actually said during that program. As I mentioned a week or so ago, Kerr was invited to the program and asked to provide an outline of his expected talking points.

I went to the Harvard Law School library on Thursday to look at their collection of the Bulletin of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, a publication of the organization that co-sponsored the program. I wanted to see if there was any mention of the program. The collection contains volumes 1-6 of the publication (I don't know if that's all the issues they had, but it seems to be the case judging from the WorldCat database), dating from 1947-1952. Looking through the issues, I found that they did include announcements about upcoming programs. But as luck would have it, the January 1950 issue was devoted to the annual conference (focusing on "Facing the Facts in China") hosted by the Council, and there was no mention of the radio program.

Kerr's name does pop up in a few places:

• The November, 1949 issue's article, "Knowland, Douglas to Speak" at the annual conference, mentions that Kerr was invited to the conference, but the later issues (including the January 1950 special issue) don't mention Kerr.
• The February, 1950 issue's "Calendar of Events": Thursday Open House, 4:30-5:30 p.m., "Feb. 9--GEORGE H. KERR, Lecturer in History, Stanford University, and Research Assistant, Hoover Institute; formerly, Vice Consul in Formosa. The United States and Formosa."
• The April, 1950 issue's Calendar of Events: Public Meetings, "April 11, 7:30 p.m.--OAKLAND--GEORGE H. KERR, Stanford University. Formosa--A Hot Spot of Asia. Technical High School, 4351 Broadway, Oakland. Arranged by Oakland Technical Adult School Forum."
• The June, July, August 1950 issue's notes on the activities of the World Affairs Council of Sacramento, including "a forum on 'The Current Crisis in China and Formosa' in which George Kerr, former Vice-Consul in Formosa, Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hearn (Ret.), and Tully Knoles, Chancellor, College of the Pacific, participated."

So that's the extent of what I found thus far.

Just read: Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country

Louise Erdrich, Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of My Ancestors. Harper Perennial, 2014.

My first book of the year. I picked it up at Brookline Booksmith from a table of sale books (there might still be some copies there if you hurry). I'm a weepy sort of reader anyway, but I never thought I'd get emotional over a brief description of a tree that was felled by a storm.

I bought the book because I'm teaching an online course in travel writing this semester. I bought it too late to make it required reading, but I quoted a portion of it in a letter to the students, where Erdrich describes a motel room that she and her infant daughter Kiizhikok stop at after they get back from spending time with friends and family outdoors in Ojibwe country (in northern Minnesota and southern Ontario):

The loneliness of roadside motels steals over me at once. Walking into my room, number 33, even with Kiizhikok’s presence to cushion me, the sadness soaks up through my feet. True, I might have dreams here, these places always inspire uneasy nights and sometimes spectacular and even numinous dreams. But they test my optimism. My thoughts go dreary. The door shows signs of having been forced open. I can still see the crowbar marks where a lock was jimmied. And oh dear, it is only replaced with a push-in knob that can be undone with a library card, or any stiff bit of plastic, I think, as I don’t suppose that someone intent on breaking into room 33 would use a library card. Or if they did, I wonder, dragging in one duffle and the diaper bag, plus Kiizhikok football-style, would it be a good sign or a bad sign? Would it be better to confront an ill-motivated intruder who was well read, or one indifferent to literature? 

I reign my thoughts in, get my bearings. There are touches. Although the bed sags and the pickle-green coverlet is pilly and suspicious looking, the transparent sheets are tight and clean. A strangely evocative fall foliage scene is set above the bed--hand painted! Signed with a jerky black squiggle. The bathroom shower has a paper sanitary mat picturing a perky mermaid, breasts hidden by coils of green hair. The terrifying stain in the center of the carpet is almost covered with a woven rug. As always, on car trips where I will surely encounter questionable bedcovers, I’ve brought my own quilt. There is a bedside lamp with a sixty-watt bulb, and once Kiizhikok is asleep I can read. (78)

I used that to introduce students to a "great tradition" in travel writing: describing one's iffy living quarters. I like a lot of things about these paragraphs, but one is the simple adjective "terrifying" to describe a stain in the carpet. It evokes so much without saying too much.

Of course, there's a lot more to recommend this book than a description of a motel room and a fallen tree, but I'll leave that discovery to the reader.

Looking for recordings of the KNBC radio program, "World Affairs are Your Affairs"

A query posted to the ether: I'm trying to find a recording or transcript of a January 20, 1950 broadcast of the KNBC radio program, World Affairs are Your Affairs. George H. Kerr was invited to participate in a panel discussion on "strategy in the far Pacific" along with Captain John G. Crommelin, Staff Commander, Western Sea Frontier. The moderator was Frank Clarvoe of the San Francisco News.

In a January 12, 1950, letter to Kerr, (Mrs.) Sally Smith Kahn of the World Affairs Council of Northern California described the program as "an informal roundtable type with give-and-take discussion, rather than prepared speeches." "However," she continued, "if you have time, it would be most helpful if you could draw up a brief one-page outline of points which you would like to see covered on the program."

Kerr complied with an outline that emphasized "the gravity of economic and political problems involved," which he argued "appear to outweigh the military and strategic advantages to be gained" by direct US intervention in Formosa. He called Formosa "a military liability" to the US because of the presence of Chiang Kai-shek and argued that Taiwan without Chiang could become "an important training base for the 'Little Marshall Plan' being considered for Southeast Asia."

He also argued that "American policy regarding Formosa has been based on a seriously inaccurate premise, mainly, that Formosa in 1945 and thereafter is indistinguishable [sic] a part of mainland China and must be treated as such."

Anyway, I've made some inquiries to the World Affairs Council, but haven't heard back yet. No luck with various types of Googling and searches in some archives. But maybe I missed something, so I make this plea for help. HEELLLLPP!!!

[Update, 1/8/2020: Wow. Just read the New York Times obituary for Crommelin, who died in 1996. Relevant portions to this post:

In 1949, he was a captain serving at Navy headquarters in Washington when steps toward unification of the armed forces were being discussed and made. But strategic, organizational and personal differences between the Navy and the Air Force -- and also, on a lesser scale, between the Army and the Navy -- exploded into a series of charges, countercharges and public hearings that shook the Pentagon.

Captain Crommelin, as he then was, publicly complained that the Defense Department was scuttling naval air power and showing improper favor to the Air Force. He also asserted that ''a Prussian General Staff system of the type employed by Hitler'' was being imposed on the armed forces under unification.

He was relieved of his duties at the headquarters and publicly reprimanded by Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, for making public confidential Navy letters linking top admirals to active opposition against unification.

Captain Crommelin was transferred to San Francisco to be air officer of the Western Sea Frontier. After he continued his criticism in the face of orders to keep silent, he was ordered by Admiral Sherman to be furloughed at half pay, beginning early in 1950. That year, The New York Times's military affairs expert Hanson W. Baldwin wrote that Captain Crommelin was a ''stormy petrel who wouldn't shut up.''

Then, the captain moved to his native Alabama, applied for retirement and ended his three-decade Navy career in May 1950, with the rank of rear admiral because of his combat record.

In later years, he operated part of his family plantation, named Harrogate Springs, in Elmore County, raising a variety of crops. He also ran unsuccessfully for various public offices. He was a candidate in the Democratic Presidential primary in New Hampshire in 1968 and also repeatedly announced himself as a candidate for the United States Senate. The National States Rights Party, advocating white supremacy, nominated him for Vice President in 1960.

And so on... ]

[Update, 1/16/2020: So far, no responses from the World Affairs Council chapters that I've contacted... ]

Kaohsiung Incident 40th anniversary exhibit at the Kaohsiung Museum of History

This hasn't been publicized much for some reason, but from now until Dec. 15, the Kaohsiung Museum of History is hosting a special exhibit on the Kaohsiung Incident (美麗島事件). Here's a press release about the exhibit (in Chinese). A rough Googled translation:

Exhibition Name: Looking Back on the Road-Belonging to Our Beauty Island
Exhibition time: November 29-December 15, 108 [2019]
Venue: Special Room 104, Kaohsiung City History Museum 

The development of democracy is a long road, and Taiwan's democratic process is obvious to all. This (108 [2019]) year is the 40th anniversary of the beautiful island incident. This event is not only a very important historical chapter of Kaohsiung, but also a crucial moment influencing Taiwan's democratic development. The Kaohsiung City History Museum serves as the cultural and historical base of Kaohsiung City. Through the help of the National Human Rights Museum of the National Human Rights Museum and Mr. Su Yaochong of Providence University, Kaohsiung launched the "Looking Back to the Road of Time-November 29, 108" A special exhibition of our island of beauty. 

On the (29th) day, the curator Professor Su Yaochong of Jingyi University gave a lecture on the 40th Anniversary of the Beautiful Island Incident and a special exhibition tour, sharing how the people strived for "democratic politics" before and after the event. Countless sacrifice, in exchange for understanding the results of strict and democratization. 

Lin Siling, director of Kaohsiung City Government Bureau of Cultural Affairs of Kaohsiung City, said that as long as it happened on this land, it should stay in the hearts of people in this land. Democracy is a kind of literacy. Regardless of the inheritance of democracy 40 years ago or 40 years later, there will be different expressions of maturity after different stages. I hope that school institutions can come to the exhibition and think about how young generations can achieve it through peaceful and contributing methods. Democracy belonging to this generation. 

The special exhibition uses three exhibition areas, "Background of the Times", "Outbreak of Conflict" and "Beyond Beautiful Island", to combine photographs, police helmets and shields, newspaper clippings, and cultural relics from other party magazines at the time to tell the public about the beautiful island incident. Pick up and turn. I hope that through the exhibition, I will lead the audience to trace the historical context of this major event, and then reflect on the future of Taiwan's democratic politics. 

The "Kaohsiung Incident" or "Beautiful Island Incident" occurred on December 10, 1979, when the "Beautiful Island Magazine" held a march to promote International Human Rights Day. A serious clash between police and civilians broke out. A total of 152 people were arrested. The remainder were tried in general justice and another 8 were tried in military law.

I'm unfortunately not going to be able to go since we won't be going to Taiwan this winter break, but I hope anyone who sees this will either go or publicize the exhibit more on social media so it gets good attendance.

Night in the American Village

I just finished reading Akemi Johnson's Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, which I bought in Kindle format after reading John Grant Ross's review of it.

Ross does a good job summarizing the book (without giving away too much!), so I recommend you read his review (and then buy the book!). I just want to mention a few points that I found interesting (which probably will say more about my own particular--or peculiar--interests than about the book itself). A lot of what the book centered around had to do with language, culture, and intercultural relations of various kinds--not surprising, I suppose. One extended example:

Johnson describes a 34-year-old Okinawan woman named Naomi who worked at the U.S. Navy Hospital as an Master Labor Contractor (MLC), a full-time position for "permanent residents of Japan who are unconnected to the U.S. military"; Johnson describes MLCs as forming "the lowest rung of the chain of command, below American active duty and civilian personnel." And not surprisingly, these workers as the lowest rung turn out to be "the continuity that [keep] the place running." One of things that make Naomi essential to the functioning of the base is her language ability and cultural knowledge. Johnson describes how this knowledge works on a typical day:

Over the first four to five years on the job, Naomi had learned a sophisticated system of code-switching to thrive in her multicultural workplace. "Once I go through the fence [between the U.S. base and its surroundings], I become chotto, a little bit, American," she said. On base, she shifted her mindset, ready to say "no" if she meant "no" instead of the "Hmm, let me think about it" she'd use off base. She had to be ready to adjust, depending on whom she was talking to, something she excelled at because of her experience living in both the United States an Okinawa. "I can imagine how they tend to think," she said of Americans and Okinawans. She knew with a local, middle-aged man who worked on base, she had to joke with him, talking to him casually, with an Okinawan accent. When she spoke to her contractor from mainland Japan, she switched to a Tokyo accent, which she'd learned from having Japanese roommates in the States. With her American supervisor, she had to use clear and professional English. If she messed up, the stakes could be high. "If I talk to an Okinawan ojichan [grandpa] with a mainland accent, he'll block me right away. Boom! 'I don't talk to you anymore.'" If she talked to him the correct way, he treated her like family. "That's how I figured out how to survive in that environment. I like it, actually."

Shuttling among languages and cultures (as Suresh Canagarajah might put it), Naomi demonstrates a sophisticated rhetorical awareness of what it takes to get done with different people in different contexts. She is almost a different person depending on who she is talking to. To Johnson, Naomi points out the implications of this in terms of her self-identity:

Looking back on her experience, Naomi thought it was easy to label the different roles she had played: Okinawan, international student, adult professional. But those labels didn't adequately describe her. "The inside is more difficult," she said. "I'm a blend of so many factor: Okinawa, United States, California, and on the base. ... It's hard to categorize me right now." ... She valued this flexible self she had cultivated. "My perspective changes almost every day," she said. "I'm creating my own style."

I'm not sure if Naomi is her real name because Johnson notes that she changed some interviewees' names (but on the other hand, she mentions a "Naomi Noiri" in her acknowledgments). I've been discussing with some colleagues the issue of international students' names, in particular the international students who choose to be called by "English" names. Naomi's experience and her awareness of moving in and out of identities adds an interesting twist to the question of what it might mean to take on a name that is not the one you were born with (or rather, that your parents gave you) in intercultural contexts.

Anyway, read the whole book! It's a great read.

Oh, and on a vaguely related note...

The pastors in the churches from my fundamentalist upbringing are saying, "Aha! I told you so!"

And when I saw this new item, I immediately thought of this:

(Don't think those pastors would appreciate the song, though...)

Something to come back to when I get a chance (I always say that...)

A student in one of my first-year writing classes is doing research on "technological singularity" and it jogged my memory of a book I once owned (and might have actually read some of!) years ago by Stephen L. Talbott: The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in our Midst. (I'm amazed that I can actually remember the whole title! Must have been memorable!) Unfortunately, I no longer seem to have that book unless it's in my in-laws' house in Taiwan, but I was able to find some notes on the book by C. M. Mayo, who did a lot of research on the ideas behind the book. She also points out that Talbott has put the book online on his website, so I don't have to buy it again...

I don't know (yet) how Talbott's book might connect to the questions my student will be trying to answer about technological singularity, but it might be that the warnings that he raises are even more fundamental to our relationship with each other and technology than the question of what AI might be able to do in the future.

Publication by former student

Rickard Stureborg, a student from my summer ENGW 3315 (Advanced Interdisciplinary Writing) course, revised one of his projects for class and submitted it to "Towards Data Science," an online publication of articles about data science and machine learning. The other day he wrote to tell me that they had published it! Yay!

Here's his article, "Artificial Neural Networks for Total Beginners." Using an example of how to predict the height of a tree based on the soil content of the ground, Rich explains how models would be created, tested, and refined using machine learning.

Note: I know that almost 20 years ago I argued against teachers "advertising" students' publications because it struck me as being an appropriation of their work.  But as Rich told told me, the more I share it, the more people will see it. (Now I have to go back and revise that paper...)