The Future...

Will it work? Former derivatives trader and bond manager Detlev Schlichter has a good essay on Bitcoin up at his place. It is early days yet, but the possible consequences of Bitcoin, or that of some similar digitally distributed currency, successfully taking off might be... somewhat eventful.

Update: One of the key things to be wary of in any future use of Bitcoin, is the the kind of people running the exchanges. In Britain for instance, the exchange "Britcoin" is apparently being run by people who want to be regulated by the government. FFS. The same is true for Mt Gox. If the exchanges will comply with government regulation in order to rat out people involved in say, the drug trade for instance, then it is simply a matter of time before they start ratting people out for things like "tax evasion" or, in principle, anything else (e.g. incandescent lightbulbs). I think they are shooting themselves in the foot long term in order to avoid trouble with the government now, although you could say that that was a likely cost of them setting up Bitcoin at this early point. There will have to be a proliferation of exchanges in the future perhaps with their trustworthiness rated via some third party. The whole point and value of something like Bitcoin to someone like me is that it allows people to trade free, not only from currency debasement concerns, but also free from the command and control diktats and taxation of a predatory State. I think these stories give further weight to my argument that a digitally distributed currency will not take off in a major way until we begin to see runaway inflation. For the time being, even though I wouldn't be buying anything illegal (except maybe lightbulbs), I would nontheless be reluctant to use a major exchange like Mt Gox.

The Horrible Slide

"On a long enough time line, everywhere is Greece."

- Detlev Schlichter.

One of the key functions of a modern bank (i.e. one which acts as more than a mere safe deposit box) is to coordinate time preferences for savings and investment. Some people prefer to save money, whilst others decide to borrow; a bank coordinates this transfer of money from savers to borrowers and back again via interest rates. When enough people prefer to save for the long-term, interest rates tend to be set low. Conversely, when enough people need to focus on short term necessity, interest rates tend to be set higher. This core function of coordinating the savings of some people with the borrowing of others is distorted beyond all recognition by two things: one is the fractional reserve system and the other is the fiat nature of modern currencies issued by central banks.

The fractional reserve system refers to a set of banks operating on an interesting principle: of the total value of savings and demand deposits received, only a small fraction (in Taiwan this is 8%) need be kept in reserve to cover withdrawal demands. All of the remainder can be loaned out by the bank to generate income from the interest rate. Under a fractional reserve system, bank deposits can thus be in two places at once: in theory, they are still available on demand at the bank yet at the same time they have already been put to work as loans. This arrangement works fine so long as a critically large number of depositors do not attempt to withdraw all their deposits at the same time - an event which is unlikely except in the case of a collapse of customer confidence during a bank run.

The fiat nature of modern currencies (such as the NT$) consists in the fact that their notes are redeemable for ... nothing. As such, the money supply under a fiat currency system is elastic, with the central banks regulating this supply largely by the adjustment of interest rates. However, their regulatory tendency is to keep interest rates low and therefore keep the supply of money set in an expansionary trajectory (for example, the narrow monetary base of the NT$ has continuously expanded over the last six years from NT$1.7 trillion [US$58 billion] in May 2006 to NT$2.6 trillion [US$89 billion] in May 2011). It is partly because interest rates are kept low by an expanding supply of cheap credit issued by the central bank, that these interest rates cannot accurately reflect the actual time preferences of savers. Thus we see the interest rates that banks offer savers are typically less than the rate of inflation, at perhaps 2% or 3% per annum at most. Would-be savers in need of higher returns on their capital instead shuffle off to try their luck on the stock-market or with the mutuals. If it were otherwise, that is, if interest rates were not artificially depressed by the monetary policy of the central bank, then one consequence would be that banks would probably offer fewer loans at higher rates of interest, thus creating better security for savers who would no longer need to risk their savings on the stock market for a decent return. A far more important consequence however, would be that fewer loans at higher rates of interest would significantly alter the structure of capital investment throughout the economy. In Taiwan, it may be that far less money would go into the construction business for example, and far more into new environmental technologies (e.g. water recycling systems). This is a subtle point, but of immeasurable consequence.

The cheap loans made available to the commercial banks from the central bank also allow for the multiplication of the amount of money in the economy - the monetary base - by issuing more in both business and consumer loans than they have received in savings deposits anyway (this multiplier effect is aided by their issuance of things like checking deposits and money substitutes such as credit cards). So whereas Taiwan's narrow monetary base (M0) for May 2011 is NT$2.6 trillion, the monetary aggregate (M2) is actually more than twelve times that at NT$31.6 trillion (US$1.09 trillion - hit the CBCrm "more information" link for an excel download - the same table is available as a word download elsewhere on the site). That is why Taiwan's banks were able to issue a total of NT$19.6 trillion (US$677 billion) in loans last year (as of May this year, that figure is now NT$23.5 trillion [US$811 billion]), whilst actual savings deposits accumulated over time amounted to no more than NT$13.6 trillion (US$469 billion)*.

What this means is that the economy is substantially inflated and distorted beyond what would be its true size, and crucially its true shape, under conditions in which interest rates reflected the time preferences of savers more accurately. Some areas of economic activity may be little more than bubbles inflated by cheap bank loans (part of that NT$19.6 trillion of last year); when enough such areas of sufficient size do eventually pop, then the banks will be left with a lot of "distressed assets" on their hands, i.e. the quantity of their non-performing loans will expand rather suddenly. Depending on how large a proportion of the total aggregate of bank loans these NPLs make up, the central bank may decide to purchase them by substantially increasing the monetary base. This is what is known as "quantitative easing" (or in Austrian circles, "debt monetization"). It is essentially a policy of printing money, one which debases the value of the currency (bad for savers everywhere, whether in the banks or in the stock market) and thus begins to slowly open the door that much further to everyone's nightmare monster: runaway price inflation.

The distortion of the capital structure is not exclusively achieved by the lending policies of the banks however. Very large quantities of money are wasted spent in what demands to be known in accord with conventional politeness as "the public sector" (but which really ought to be referred to as "the parasitical sector" or "the socialist sector" in order to bring to clarity the principles through which it draws breath). Consider: Taiwan's government debt is currently over NT$21 trillion (U.S.$727 billion) whilst Taiwan's nominal GDP for 2010 was estimated to be somewhere slightly north of NT$12 trillion (U.S.$420 billion). The government's debt is therefore approaching twice the annual size of the economy. Meanwhile, the profligacy of government spending continues despite these monstrous numbers: revenue for this year is approximately NT$1.6 trillion (U.S.$55 billion), with most of that money spent on (mal)education, healthcare, other forms of social welfare - and also defense. That expenditure will amount to NT$1.79 trillion (US$61 billion) - resulting in a NT$159 billion (US$5.5 billion) deficit. In order to pay down its debt from realistic surpluses (let's say NT$159 billion per year), and not counting changes in the value of the NT$ over time, the government would need 132 years to pay off the national debt!

Should this level of government spending continue, the danger to the people of Taiwan is that a future economic bust (perhaps the next one?) will sufficiently impact against both savers and businesses so as to substantially reduce government revenue. If and when that happens, the government may either seek to borrow funds from the PRC** or it may impel the central bank to embark on a policy of "quantitative easing" not only to buy up "distressed assets" from the balance sheets of the commercial banks, but also to purchase parts of the government's own debt, which, as we saw above, is almost twice the annual size of the economy. Either of these two policies might well be sufficient to precipitate either political annexation or runaway hyperinflation and eventual currency collapse: I very much doubt that the monetary base can be expanded from NT$2.7 trillion to absorb even one 10th of the government's debt without causing significant inflationary pressures. In order to stave-off having to take either of these two options therefore, it is imperative that the central bank of Taiwan pursue a more cautious interest rate policy (and, given recent rate hikes, they seem to be leaning in that direction) but, more importantly, that government spending across its' four largest items - education, healthcare, defense and other forms of social welfare - begins to be seriously cut.

Now I am not arguing anything as absurd as that such things as education and healthcare should not exist or that they should exist only as privileges for a well-off middle class - contrary to the mad, tropical delusions of the diseased wing of the Left. No. The first aspect of what I am saying is that putting capital to use on principles unresponsive to market conditions is inherently wasteful; the second aspect is that it is worse than that: the principles to which government "investment" in maleducation, healthdare, social hellfare and so on are responsive are those on which the acquisition of political power is most effective. I would think it a likely conjecture that the growth of government spending on such services is proportional to the increase in the production of professional politicists***, which occurs primarily in and through the universities and other educational institutions whilst stewed in a broth of pop-culture.

What are the possible solutions? Well there are two proximate problems; one is fiscal and the other is monetary, although both derive from the presumptions of monopolized political power. On the fiscal aspect: either a proactive program of boldly reducing government spending is taken up or the government begins to default on its debts (or perhaps both, though I think certain consideration ought to be given to the question of defense****). On the monetary aspect, either the central bank attempts to pull off a 100% reserve reform of the banking system to be followed by a return to a commodity based currency (though I have both ethical objections to, and practical doubts about this), or the government abolishes legal tender laws (which would allow the possibility of competition in currency). Neither of these possibilities has any remote chance of happening - at least until it becomes too late. So what to do in the meantime?

Keep an eye out for events in respect of independent, digitally distributed electronic currencies such as Bitcoin. If it really begins to take off (how to measure this - a 100,000 users?) and government attempts to hamper (or sabotage) it in the meantime fail, then it could potentially be a real game-changer in ways we can only begin to imagine and that would absolutely dwarf the impact of something like Wikileaks.


*Some more detail for balance: the total number of deposits was NT$25.8 trillion (of which demand deposits were NT$2.7 trillion), contributing to a liability total (including equities) of NT$30.4 trillion. Against that, the NT$19.6 trillion worth of loans made up 60% of the banking sector's combined asset total of NT$32.5 trillion. Of those loans, there was NT$8.5 trillion worth of long term loans as against NT$6.2 trillion medium and only NT$4.5 trillion short term (I don't have any data on loan maturity matching policies). The two largest State-owned banks, Bank of Taiwan and Land Bank of Taiwan, loaned out just over NT$2 trillion and NT$1.6 trillion respectively (if that seems small, bear in mind that Taiwan has, I think, something like fifty domestic banks [although some of the smaller ones have been bought by the larger ones] along with twenty eight foreign banks and numerous other credit issuing organizations). The number of banks in Taiwan is ridiculous.

**Borrowing from the PRC is... seriously undesirable.

***Note: not mere politicians.

****Though that doesn't mean I think everyone should be forced to pay for it.

Second Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) Trip

I was out all day at Nanhua reservoir (南化水庫) today (I mean Sunday, though I'm posting this in the early hours of Monday morning. I was also out there for a good couple of hours on Saturday afternoon too during the rain) to take pictures and explore from the south end across the east and up to the north end. On Saturday I went further along the west side and under the dam chute through to an open-air museum of military relics and beyond (I may leave that for a seperate post).

Although it was fairly bright today, it was also very humid, so I deliberately allowed myself to shoot on F8 - F9.5 with the shutter speed slightly lower than the light itself would have suggested on the theory that a post-hoc reduction in image brightness would clarify the image whilst preserving the colour (though of course as the afternoon drew on and the light changed, I had to adjust). For example, the following image was taken from the south end of the reservoir whilst standing about three feet deep in the water and holding the camera as close to the surface as I dared...


Since I had the camera set to double-shoot, I took two almost identical images. Below is practically the same image, but with the brightness reduced considerably...


Funnily enough, a split second after I took this (or another similar) image, a fish jumped out of the water... damn. I briefly imagined myself standing in the water behind a tripod hoping to "catch" fish.

My four-legged escapadist, meanwhile, took to the water with some sort of similarly mad idea...


On the subject of catching fish, before we had got down to the water's edge (and again on the way back) I stopped to talk with this family fishing the shallows off the bridge...


The two dudes had had a few tins of Taiwan beer, but the only fish in their bucket were a few skinny mullets; they had a little girl and her mother with them so presumably they weren't too keen on anything more ambitious. There were a couple of those typical Taiwanese make-shift boats made out of plastic piping tied up along down toward the reservoir and I wondered (but didn't ask) what the protocol is (if any) for using one of them to go out onto the water. I also asked them if they knew whether there was a road down from the east side to get a closer look at the waterfall bringing the water into Nanhua from up across the mountains in Jiaxian. They didn't know, but I eventually scoped out two or three possibilities. Here's a couple of pictures taken from the west side of the dam yesterday to show what I'm talking about...


The same thing in context...


Both of those images above were taken when it had been raining for several days on the trot, and you can clearly see that there is plenty of water gushing into the reservoir, but what you can't see from these stills is the violence with which it smashed its way down the chute; it must have been in the order of several tons per second. It was all drastic symphonic strings and cymbol clashes. Today however, it was dry and sunny, and up on the eastern mountainside the stream which must have led down to that headlong crash into the reservoir yesterday wasn't to be heard. Every stream I came across was barely a trickle.

However, route 179 around the reservoir to the southeast and eastern sides did occassionally offer spectacular views northward and toward the west with the dam, control station and observation platform (the views from which I criticized in my first post on Nanhua reservoir) clearly visible. This view is from the south end, more or less dead-on looking north...


The next image shows the observation platform covered in trees to the centre-left with the control station below that to the right, plus various boats and floats littering the foreground...


Zooming back out a bit this next image (which I cropped to avoid the now stubborn haze over the western mountains) shows the whole of the accessible west end of the reservoir from the observation platform and control station on the left to the complete span of the actual dam until it locks into the shoulder of the next mountain on the right. Notice how the lip of the release chute to the left seems to sit just below the high water mark on the dam; the dimensions to which that chute were constructed have to be exactly right to prevent water from flowing over the top of the dam during a peak. It would have been impressive to have seen it working during the rainfall spike of typhoon Morakot back in 2009.


Whilst on the east side overlooking the dam itself, I noted two or three possible little roads down to the falls I mentioned earlier, but since I wasn't sure which one to take, I decided to drive on northwards. On the way back, I took a little peep down the most likely candidate to let the dog stretch her legs, but decided I would leave a proper nosing for another time.

The road on the east side of the reservoir winds its way north at times smooth and firm, and other times ragged as a hag. Occassionally, the round mirrors at the bends are blocked by ferns meaning that bombing around like a madman isn't a good idea (of course that didn't stop about half of the people I saw driving around in their blue trucks [I know how to say the special name they give them {"fah-zai-chur"}, but does anyone know the characters?]). For one thing, there are other drivers and the occassional member of the animal kingdom to consider, for another thing, the road surface at the entry to a bend may be smooth, but it may be ragged and jagged as hell on the other side. There is also construction work going on at various places. At one point, for example, excavators were working on a new weir in order to protect the road from flooding. Though they were presumably in a desperate rush to finish before the summer rains begin, it looked to me as though they were perhaps half-finished at best...


Eventually, the road winds its way downhill to where the northern head of the reservoir comes clearly into view from the roadside. At this point the mountain shoulder on the west side begins to taper northeast, shaping the northern mouth of the reservoir in coordination with the jutting crag on the east; this is the entry point for the reservoir's chief tributary. This next image shows exactly that tapering of the western shoulder from the south side of the eastern crag...


And here is the subsequent, somewhat obscured, view from the northern side of that same crag...


The reservoir behind me, I followed the river north for a short while for no other reason than that it looked like a scene from my seven year old imagination on reading Tolkien's "Fellowship of the Ring"...


Eventually, however, enough was enough; the road was increasingly becoming just a glorified blob of dried cement and there didn't seem to be any possibility of crossing over to the western side, and if that wasn't enough, the mountains were beginning to shake their clouds at me and rumble idle threats of rain.


I must have made the right decision; on my way back the light started softening its sweep over everything with a sort of Bryan Ferry-esque class.

It's not wise to want to see and know everything.

At Least Earn Your Opinions

"The site has blocked you from posting new comments."

The price of opinions acquired on reflex enthusiasm is the inability to defend them in argument. Hence the recourse to the adult approximation of a silly child's "shut up, I don't like you, go away!" response: my most recent comments were deleted and I've been banned (again). If Ben himself didn't gain anything from those exchanges at his place, then perhaps at least one of his readers did.

Jill Singer

Why are there so many eco-fascists at the Herald Sun in Australia? Not only do the human insects infesting that rag think that people who disagree with them (people like me) should be tattooed a la the Jews herded up by the Nazis, but that this should be followed through - we should even be gassed. Jill Singer in her own words:

"I'm prepared to keep an open mind and propose another stunt for climate sceptics - put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas - say, carbon monoxide.

You wouldn't see or smell anything. Nor would your anti-science nonsense be heard of again. How very refreshing."

Except of course, she wants to see us do it to ourselves, since naturally she wouldn't want to get too dirty fingering the likes of me with her polizei probosci.

What a bigoted and intolerant fem facile.

Memory Bends

Damn it. Last week, whilst out bombing around the mountains I'd had an idea for an essay on ideology and pragmatism, but looking back I can't seem to remember what it was that set me off. Pragmatism, largely the product of Charles Sanders Pierce, amounts to the insistence that a deliberation over consequences need not be strictly limited by prior principles of action. Thus pragmatism serves not to inform "ideological" political opposition, but rather "driftological" flopposition. Where was I going with this? Was it recent developments in the U.S. Congress with regard to the TRA? I forget.

Now that the bigger bike is fixed (I had to replace the starter motor and a couple of leads) I may drive out to Nanhua reservoir (南化水庫) again tommorow and see what sort of pictures I can get and subject the area to a more detailed nosing around. I know what I'm looking for. I won't even mind if it rains - rainfall hitting the surface of the reservoir would be a great subject.


Must remember to bring a notebook and pen with me. Other essays (including on monetary reform) will have to bide their time.

Stephen Metcalf Essay At Slate

Entitled "The Liberty Scam", and written by one Stephen Metcalf, this essay over at Slate purports to be a critique of libertarian ideology via a somewhat mangled attempt to deconstruct Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" argument. I may consider writing my own rebuttal when time allows - in the meantime, some of the commenters are already on Metcalf's case.

Newly Discovered Reading Disorder: Seletivxia

Me:

"Fox News is the only TV news station in the U.S. with a small government conservative bias (though not a consistent one) - all the other stations are run with a big government / progressive bias."

Ben Goren:

"And .. 'a small but not consistent conservative bias' ??? ROFL."

What was Dalrymple's phrase again? Oh yes: the willful "suspension of intelligence".

Against Chen Mei-chin (陳美津)

"As a small island nation, Taiwan simply cannot afford a nuclear disaster and the devastating effects on humans and the environment would last for decades..."

Yet more anti-nuclear scaremongering in today's Taipei Times.

"In Japan, the contamination of farmland forced farmers to destroy their crops and slaughter their cows."

That's outright bullshit. It was the government, in their subservient fear of a public subjected to the emoting propaganda of environmentalists and other politicists, which forced farmers to destroy their crops.

"Phasing out nuclear energy will cause a shortage of electricity and raise the cost of energy that in turn will hamper economic growth — or so the argument goes. However, the example of Germany shows just the opposite: Investments in renewable sources of energy actually create hundreds of thousands of jobs and promote economic growth."

That's such a bad counter-argument as to almost look like it was made deliberately; everyone else would have to pay higher electricity prices in order that a relatively small number of people could have government-provided jobs. Underlying that argument however, is the even worse premise that the economy should be subject to the utilitarian "calculations" of politicists like Chen. To take up that premise is to treat the lives of some people as dispensible in the pursuit of political goals that will benefit others. That is economic canibalism - befitting only to the intellectual savages of the punyversities.

Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) Trip

Wushantou Reservoir lies very close to the Lioujia District of Tainan County, where the plains begin to meet the first foothills marching away into the distant mountains of Nanxi and Nanhua further out to the east where the other two reservoirs lie (Tseng-Wen [曾文水庫] and Nanhua [南化水庫] respectively). It is also the oldest of the three having apparently been constructed between 1921 and 1930 under the direction of the Japanese civil engineer Hata Yoichi during Formosa's colonization by the Japanese*.


Of course, the public information on Yoichi in English was not subjected to any sort of quality control, but the basic factual claims are clear enough, if sorely lacking in detail; I could have read a few pages on this fellow and not thought my time wasted.


The mapped layout of Wushantou Reservoir shown above is actually quite uninformative, since it shows only those spots deemed by the authorities to be of interest to visitors whilst failing to give a proper geographical description of the reservoir itself - notice how the reservoir is presented merely as a blue area fading to white as it disappears off the top of the board. For me this is a negative because the geography is actually quite interesting; from the top of the levy, Wushantou appears much smaller to the eye than either Tseng-Wen (曾文水庫) or Nanhua (南化水庫), and yet it is a fair size as its' disintegrated, chaotic-cactus-like appearance on this irrigation map below indicates.


Note the position of Tseng-Wen reservoir at the top of the map with its' two outflowing rivers to the north and south. The contrast is due to the fact that Wushantou reservoir lies well to the west of the mountains (which, though not shown on that map, cover the entire white area to the top of that image) with its minor constituent pools lying in the little troughs between the hills and ridges with small feeder streams running between and connecting them. It is possible to catch glimpses of some of these constituent pools from way up on the mountainside beneath the electricity pylons on route 174, but they cannot be rendered comprehensible from a single encompassing point unless it be from the air.


The blue mountains blocking the horizon of this image straddle the County districts of Dongshan to the north and left (with the Guanziling hot springs), Lioujia in the centre and Danei to the south and extreme right; on the other side of them is Nanxi district where the much larger Tseng-Wen (曾文水庫) reservoir can be approached. Wushantou reservoir itself however, seems to deflect all approach but from the west (which I think of as the "front") - even as it invites with glimpses of little half-villages on the other side...


Toward the south end of the western levy from which the reservoir is viewed (and from which these images above were taken) there is an unremarkable little mansion behind a grove of trees elevated on a natural hill, within which there is a statue of Jiǎng​ Jiè​shí (蔣介石, and known in the west as "Chiang Kai-shek" the "generalissimo", even though he was an incompetent general and mass-murderer of civilians**).


Wushantou reservoir must have been a favourite spot of the KMT leadership, since, to this very day, the staircase to the hill is prefaced by an immaculately maintained helicopter landing spot!


The statue itself is mounted on a plinth inscribed with the usual hagiographic guff, though the red lithographs*** set into the lower sides of the thing are remarkable for their anachronistic appearance today, highlighted by the mocking stains of already age-tinted birdshit.


Whilst the statue and all other artifacts on that hill were either rusting away, cracked, broken or in a general state of disrepair, the trees populating the grove were evidently being trimmed once in a while and generally looked after. They were mostly Junipers with a few Rosewoods, and one or two of a tree in which I have some interest: the Camphor tree (牛樟樹).


Aside from the petroleum base, camphor is the chief ingredient in anti-mosquito creams such as Tiger Balm, Mentholatum cream and Green Oil.


Blurry as this picture is (even on automatic focus, it's not easy to focus on little camphor berries in the breeze - and they were slightly too high to be got hold of between thumb and forefinger), it does at least give some detail on the camphor berrry. Back in the 1860s, the Americans (and later the Brits) had realized that camphor could be used, in conjunction with nitrocellulose, to produce the world's first plastic: celluloid. During the brief period of forty years or so between the ratification of the treaty of Tientsin in 1860, and the handing over of Formosa to the Japanese in 1895, Taiwan may well have been the world's foremost exporter of camphor (which other countries were exporting it?) - fulfilling a critical function in the global market for celluloid-based products (e.g. camera film, dolls, stationary), much like the semi-conductor industry in Taiwan today fulfills a critical function in the global market for consumer electronics products. This is another aspect of Taiwanese history which many Taiwanese are themselves unaware of.


Back to the red-propaganda nonsense; this one is on the east side of the 蔣介石 statue and features a fairly poor etching of a row of P40s (with cockpit canopies retracted) many of which were later captured by the (other) commies.


This image above shows the dictator gesturing toward what would seem to be the north end of Wushantou reservoir - he was perhaps inspecting repairs to the dam, as the water is released through a series of large pipes to the north end of the reservoir, set beneath its clay levy from which the previous images above were taken.


This image shows the dam outlet from an angle off to the left with the flat line of the levy clearly visible above. Of course the pipes will have been refitted in recent years but it's remarkable in a young country like Taiwan that this is a more than 80 year old piece of (Japanese) civil engineering still serving the agricultural needs of the farmers in Tainan County's central plains today.

To the left of that last image (hidden by the tree), there is a small building housing a museum dedicated to the history of the reservoir and the people involved in making it. I spent a little time in there, but it contained more than enough to suck me in for at least an hour, so I decided to quickly cool off under one of the showers they had built in the family play area, head off back to Lioujia to get some 雞肉飯 (chicken rice) and a beer and then see if I could drive around to the other side - the east side - of the reservoir and take some pictures from there while the light was still good.

Alas I didn't find any proper access roads leading down to the reservoir from the east side; route 174 just kept climbing into the mountains. There were however, a few tiny farmer's trails snaking away into the bamboo, strewn with dead leaves. There were no signs so I drove the bike a little way down one of these and then decided to get off and walk. After about 20 minutes going steeply downhill to what I hoped may have been one of Wushantou's constituent pools, I entered a little clearing full of lime bushes (青檸喬木) planted in rows beside a dried up stream with a few banana trees at the back.


A half of one of those limes, cut into two pieces, is what I put in my gin and tonic at night. It was eerily quiet down there next to that dried up stream; I was trespassing in any case, so I was concerned to get out quickly lest I be discovered and have to apologize to the owner and explain what I, some random foreigner, was doing wandering around with a professional-looking camera in his grove of immaculate lime bushes.

That little foray was disappointing (though not without interest and a certain disturbing discovery**** on my way back up the trail), and so I headed back to shoot the reservoir from the west side some more before heading off home.


The light had changed by this time due to the heavy clouds rumbling in from the mountains out east and I began to think I might get soaked. On the way back I stopped to photo the blue wharehouse of a steel rod supplier (for the yacht industry in Kaohsiung).


Given the circumstances in which I left Wushantou, it struck me as somewhat serendipitous to come across this apparition from Conrad's book. The inadequacy of words, indeed.


* Formosa was of course occupied by Japan from 1895 to 1945, following the Sino-Japanese war over Korea; yet it was actually the British Foreign Office which was partly responsible for this turn of events since it was they who issued a defacto sanction to the deal by indicating to the Qing their unwillingness to intervene on behalf of British trading interests on Formosa (I have papers for this somewhere which, if my memory serves me well, include copies of the written correspondence between the British Consul and the Foreign Office).

** It was under his rule that the KMT instigated periods of "White Terror" both in China and on Taiwan.

*** 1970s KMT propaganda, as evinced by the modern-looking train.

**** Of which I'd rather not say anything at this point (and for very good reason, so don't ask - I may relate what it was I found at some point in the future, but not now). Please bear in mind that this is my blog, and I am, in some ways, my own most important reader.

Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) Trip

Industrial and residential demand for water in both Tainan and Kaohsiung is met in large part by the water stored in Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫). As reported in this short in the Taipei Times last week, Nanhua is currently holding water to about 50% of its' capacity, whereas the other two reservoirs (曾文水庫 and 烏山頭水庫) are at lows. The extra water in the Nanhua reservoir is due to it being diverted there by the Jiaxian Weir (甲仙節流) of the Qishan river (旗山河) in neighbouring Kaohsiung County. A British firm (Advantech) was involved in setting up the weir monitoring equipment there. Jiaxian district (甲仙鄉) is one of my favourite spots in Kaohsiung County, it's about half an hour out of Qishan district (旗山鄉), and lies on the road up north into the mountains running through places like Baoli (anyone know the Chinese character for Baoli?*).


As can be seen from this schematic of the reservoir next to the lower control station, the reservoir is quite narrow in the middle such that it vaguely resembles an egg-timer.


The public observation point just up from the lower control station affords a view directly over this narrow centre of the reservoir. I was quite shocked at how narrow it actually is - I could comfortably swim that distance.


The length of Nanhua lies on a north-south axis, with the public observation point overlooking the reservoir's narrow waistline from the west. This image shows the diagnonal view looking north-east from the observation point past the upper control station. I quite like the contrast of whites, greys and blues among the clouds in that image.


Looking directly north you can see the curve of the dam just behind the upper control station. Frustratingly, the road across the dam was closed to the public (presumably because it first passes through the control station).


In general, the siting of the public observation point affords fairly poor views - the dam itself to the north is largely obscured by the control station, whilst the proximity of trees and bushes obscures the views to the south-east.

I've been around the south-east side on a previous occassion (last year I think), but without the camera. Tommorow I'll go back and scoot around the south-east lip of the reservoir to see whether there are any good views, then I'll probably head up to the north side for a lengthways look. I'm also on the lookout for a good camping spot; camping is expressly forbidden at the Tseng-Wen reservoir.

*I once had the exasperating, yet amusing experience of asking locals in Baoli to point to the traditional mandarin map of Kaohsiung County to show me the character for Baoli. Despite living there, they couldn't actually point to where it was on the map. To this day I'm still not sure whether that was due to illiteracy (being brought up in the mountains) or the appalling geographical ignorance that many Taiwanese people seem to have (and without any sense of embarassment).

Tseng-Wen Reservoir (曾文水庫) Trip

OK so I wanted to go out with my dog and see Tainan County's three reservoirs on account of this little short in the Taipei Times a week ago. Of the three, Tseng-Wen Reservoir (曾文水庫) is by far the largest (it is apparently the largest in all of Taiwan). Driving out there took just over an hour from my place in Tainan City, averaging 65kph. I headed out east bearing slightly north through Yongkang, Sinhua, Shan-Shan, Zuohzhen, Yujing, and Nanhua districts into Nanxi, where Tseng-Wen is located. It's a lovely drive once you get past Shan-Shan.


The toll guard let me in for NT$45 (down from NT$70 after consulting with his female colleague - I've no idea why they thought I deserved a concession price, I wasn't even really listening to them). To be honest, the charge could have been five times that amount and I wouldn't have been too bothered - but I would think NT$45 is still cheap even for families with lots of kids. There was an Information Centre with a convex glass design, which I thought was nice though I didn't bother with it other than to take a quick snap as I was somewhat time conscious. I will go back for another visit at some point, and then I'll have a look around - maybe they have some reservoir stats, dam construction pictures and old black and whites from before the dam was built. I'll look next time.

This is a view of the Tseng-Wen reservoir (曾文水庫) dam from the approach road. The dumper trucks at the bottom of the image give a good indication of scale and the mass of rock and gravel surmounted by a perfectly even white strip cements the impression. This image was taken with the lens zoomed in slightly to avoid dwarfing the dam with the mountain to the immediate right and somewhat to the foreground of the image. The three gates to the top left of that picture, with their enormous concrete escape chutes, must be an awesome sight in action....

This image shows the gates from the rear at the top of the dam; they're about 100 ft high or so.


The resevoir itself is a fair size; whereas I thought I could have swam across the breadth (though not the length) of Nanhua in maybe 30-45 minutes, I can imagine taking quite a bit longer than that to swim across this thing (bear in mind that the distance will seem much smaller than it really is given that the lens is looking down at the water's surface from a 30-40 degree angle). Note that the vegetation line gives some indication of where the water level would rest when the reservoir is full...


... as corroborated by comparison with the water mark on the dam itself. Whilst I was pondering how to do something half-decent with the light, I spotted a buzzard over the blue of the water and then that was it - my amateur photographer's pensiveness went to shit as I started desperately changing over to the long lens and then snapping like a madman every time the bird banked and turned.



In the end I only managed the above two shots, which, though not at all "good" (as blurry as one of my saturday nights in Kaohsiung), at least allow a rudimentary identification of the bird: I'm thinking it might possibly have been a Black Kite (on account of the black win tips, and white vertical bars down the centre of the wings - compare with images here). Or perhaps it could have been a Eurasian Buzzard.


After a while, however, I got fed up with the heat and decided to head back and look for a waterfall in one of the tributaries in the surrounding mountains so I could take a little shower (I found one, but by then I couldn't be bothered with the camera, and just bundled myself [and the dog] straight into the water for a 5 minute cool off).


I'll write up my visits to Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) and WushanTou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) maybe sometime this weekend or next week. After reading this action-packed tale, I'm sure you're all dying to know what happened...