曾 (Tseng)

"An elderly man doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire in front of the Presidential Office early yesterday [Tuesday - ed] to protest what he called “judicial injustice.”

This brief item appeared in Wednesday's Taipei Times, and has so far had no follow-up story. As to what it was that had moved this man Tseng (曾) to set himself on fire in front of the head-of-state's residence, we learn only that:

"Tseng’s neighbors in Greater Kaohsiung told investigators that he had been upset by real-estate disputes and had pleaded for help from government agencies, but to no avail."

What had happened to this old man down in Kaohsiung before he went to Taipei on Tuesday? Which part of Kaohsiung county was he from?

Humility: Commentary Is Not Command

J.M.Cole has an editorial today urging expats to express their opinions on political affairs in Taiwan with greater humility. Perhaps I was one such expat he had in mind.

It's true that, as I fire-off my typical blogpost responses to the latest inanities and tragedies documented in (and even demonstrated by) the Taipei Times and elsewhere, my frustration sometimes shows in how I express myself.

That being said however, these are my opinions and other people are free to ignore them (and I daresay that is the norm). Three further points:

(1) Whether an abstract discussion* indicates a lack of emotional connection is a contingent truth, not a categorical truth. To merely presume it is true is an error. To put the same point in a less abstract way: just because I do the math, doesn't mean I have a CPU instead of a heart.

(2) Although many (perhaps most?) expats here in Taiwan eventually return to their native countries, that option is not so easy as it sounds for those of us who have been here for many years now and are either married or otherwise have significant emotional investment. Criticism should not be based on presumption.

(3) There is a difference between commentary and command. Command requires delegated authority, commentary does not. To wit:

"On my way home this afternoon I saw a car speed by on Minquan E Road atop which a large People’s Republic of China flag was flying, to the accompaniment of communist propaganda on a loudspeaker... Who am I, as a Canadian, a journalist, to get angry at such acts, and to presume to have the authority to tell Taiwanese that such displays are unacceptable and that something should be done about them?"

You do not have the authority to demand that "something be done about them", Mr Cole (and in my view nothing should be done about them), but the authority you exercise over your own actions is sufficient to voice your disapproval of such things. Whether Taiwanese people listen to you or not, or agree with you or not... is entirely up to them.


*I don't know whether it was I, in my response to a question put by someone who had elsewhere claimed to be a Taipei Times journalist, or the anonymous commenters at Turton's place recently, who provoked that remark, but for what it's worth I should point out that, in my opinion, deterring annexation will depend on political reform first and foremost, with military preparedness by the MOD an emergency measure - the idea of a guerilla campaign in the event of invasion is a distant, highly contingent hypothetical and as things stand, it would almost certainly be crushed within a very short time.

Robert D. Kaplan

"...“The trend line suggests that China will annex Taiwan by, in effect, going around it; by adjusting the correlation of forces in its favor so that China will never have to fight for what it will soon possess,”..."

Robert D. Kaplan (this one) as quoted in the Taipei Times today.

Of course, he is entirely correct.

This is why the primary strategic focus of Taiwan's defence policy must be one of depoliticization - with the repudiation and removal of those government powers and responsibilities, of systemic importance (e.g. monetary policy, education etc), which an incoming PRC-controlled puppet government could take advantage of.

This ought to be obvious to anyone seriously concerned with preventing or undermining the de facto annexation of Taiwan by the PRC.

Ambient Panic

"I myself am a pessimist and I feel that by 2050, 2080, 2100 for sure, the Earth’s population will have been decimated by catastrophic climate events that will see more than 8 billion people die and leave only 200,000 souls eking out a sad existence in those regions above 45 degrees latitude."

That's Dan Bloom in a letter published in the Taipei Times today.

With fairly precise 100-year predictions like that conditioned by the expression "I feel that... for sure", he has clearly spent too much time listening to Radiohead records ("We're not scaremongering, this is really happening!"); even the IPCC themselves estimate sea level rises of only a foot or two - with over a century for people to adapt.

The constant repetition of this kind of argument in newspapers and TV shows - essentially, that the bad effects of global warming are not only certain but that they will also be catastrophic and far outweigh any possible benefits - is surely intended to induce an ambient sense of panic. Ambient panic is necessary to build up local popular support for the participation of local, national governments in a systemic attempt to manage the global economy so as to mitigate this "certain" and "catastrophic" externality.

Yet the Left have never learned from the collapse of Soviet Communism**: attempts by governments to manage the economy in a top-down fashion always necessarily induce distortions that, the worse they become over time, make systemic collapse more likely*.

Since people all over the world will be affected by global warming differently (some negative, some positive), and will need to adapt in different ways, the meta-contextual solution to the problem is simple: freedom. People will need freedom to adapt to any climatic changes just as we require freedom to adapt to economic and social changes now - the necessity of freedom to the human condition is not "ahistorical", as some "scholars" would put it, but rather, trans-historical: people have always needed freedom and have usually sought to deny it to each other. This evil has got to stop. We must de-engineer the Statist apparatus everywhere to allow more political-economic freedom.

The longer people cling to this idea that an expansion of State powers is necessary to prevent catastrophe, the more distant will the value of freedom become and the more likely it is that little pools of freedom like Taiwan will be sucked up in the drought imposed by newly calibrated forms of the fascist impulse.

And freedom is the only real defense policy for Taiwanese people.

*We are seeing this now as a consequence of debased monetary systems having been rigged to fiscal expansionism for decades. The Left will of course simply lie about it and blame the coming chaos on "evil bankers" and "evil consumerism" and so on.

**I think it is because they have a blindspot; a very specific form of madness: the sociopathic need to control other people's lives. The proposition that society (i.e. other people) must be managed is simply axiomatic to them - I can only suppose this is because of that psychological blindspot they seem to have, which enables them to denounce slavery in one breath and then argue for capital controls in the next.

Almost Worthless: The October 2011 Arms Package

J.M. Cole reports here. Aside from the radar kit, it's strategically almost worthless - even the F-16 C/Ds were a bare minimum (of course F-35Bs would have been closer to adequate due to their VTOL capability), and yet the Obama administration has not even allowed Lockheed to sell those to Taiwan's Airforce. Instead there is an upgrade package for the existing A/B fleet to be carried out over the next decade. Had the C/Ds been approved, not only would they have increased the size of Taiwan's Airforce fleet, but they could have been delivered immediately rather than over a decade.

To hell with the U.S. and the quisling Left - Taiwanese people must develop their own domestic deterrants, and the days when air superiority was the dominant strategic element of military conflict may be coming to an end anyway.

According to this Wired article from June this year (when the Senate effectively cancelled the Navy's railgun and laser programs), the U.S. Navy spent U.S.$211 million on their railgun program from 2005 onwards. That's NT$6.4 billion. The arms package the Obama administration has just agreed to allow Taiwan to purchase was valued at U.S.$5.8 billion (NT$176 billion). Given sufficient determination, a working railgun with a respectable rate of fire could surely be developed at a fraction of this cost - perhaps a few tens of billion NT dollars. Manufacturing and deploying such guns on land at coastal positions with some concealment would naturally cost a bit more, but their tactical and strategic value as point-defense weapons would be incalculable.

Of course, the current KMT administration is never going to go for that, and a prospective DPP administration could well end up being bullied out of it or otherwise making a mess of it. We have to get away from having our military defences slaved to a centralized political system easily manipulated and bullied by people who would see Taiwan annexed to the PRC.

Midweek Trip To 少年溪 Waterfall, Taoyuan District, Kaohsiung County

I took a day off on Wednesday to drive east through Tainan County, down and up again into the further reaches of Kaohsiung County. What I had in mind was to find the 少年溪 watefall I had spied on a trip out to the same area back in June, and to see how far I could get along route 20 (e.g. to the border with Taitung County) before having to turn back. After leaving the Nanhua District (南化區) of Tainan County on route 20, I passed through three Kaohsiung districts - Jiaxian (甲仙鄉), Liugui (六龜鄉) and Taoyuan (桃源區)...






In the signs above, notice that the first one says Kaohsiung "City" rather than Kaohsiung "County", which is a consequence of the recent administrative restructuring. I didn't like the decision itself, but whatever its' demerits may have been it is undeniably absurd to be way out in the sticks and yet confronted with a sign telling me I am in the city. The other thing of note there is the misspelling of "District" as "Aistrict" in the Taoyuan sign. That sign actually appears long after route 20 has made its way into Taoyuan District, and indeed, after it has passed through the village of Taoyuan itself. Road signs in Taiwan are often a bit weird.


Here is a map of Kaohsiung County strung up at the police station in Taoyuan village itself. Taoyuan district is the big one at the top, with Liugui and Jiaxian the slightly yellow and pinkish districts to the immediate south-west of Taoyuan. Before getting out into Kaohsiung however, I stopped to check the water level at Nanhua Reservoir...


This bridge, from which people had been fishing last time I was here at the end of June, was now completely submerged. So naturally, my four-legged friend decided to check it out...










Driving up around the reservoir, I stopped to get a long-lens shot of the damn itself. Although the high-water mark hasn't quite been reached, the water is only a few feet from disappearing over the spill-over lip - the reservoir is full.


The drive down to Jiaxian is relatively short - about 15 minutes - and usually I would stop for lunch here, but as I wasn't hungry and mindful of the distance I decided to keep going and stop to eat later in Baoli (寶來).


Up in the mountains, perhaps 10 minutes outside of Jiaxian, there is a section of route 20 which seems to be constantly under repair every year. It was no different this time...






As the road surface is little more than a dirt track, it is nightmare to cross in the dark when it is raining (which was something I would have on my mind during the return leg later). In the bright sunshine though, it's not a big deal.


Water seeping through rock fissures by the side of the road.


The sign in the top left here is the Liugui district sign, which greets you on your exit from the constantly-dodgy section of route 20. The roads are mostly superb after this point...


... until you get on to the approach to Baoli that is...




I stopped for lunch here: in all the times I've been through Baoli I've never stopped for the hot springs. Even though I've lived in Kaohsiung and Tainan for years, the only hot springs I've ever been in were in Taitung and Taipei (memory fart: I remember being with the girlfriend and wanting to go into a hot springs in Taipei, but for one reason or another we didn't). It's the mountains and the drive itself I come for...




Broken bridge about ten minutes outside of Baoli.


Every so often, route 20 allows you distant views of the small waterfalls down on the other side of the river...










Taoyuan village itself.


Looking back the way I had just came at the entry to Taoyuan village (note the characters for "Taoyuan" on the rock to the left of that image).


Cricket on the village green? No. I'm on the other side of the planet, so it's baseball practice for the aborigine kids.


The sign in this image above points rightwards for Shaonianxi Waterfall, however, the suspension bridge which used to connect this little village to the waterfall has long since been washed away (very likely by Typhoon Morakot in 2009).


Clicking on this image, you should be able to make out (toward the bottom right of the image) the partial remaining structure belonging to what was once the suspension bridge. The waterfall itself isn't visible in that image, but it is just off out of shot at the top right. Of course with the haze being as bad as it was, many of these pictures are a bit lousy.


For this image, I strolled around behind one of the village buildings to try and get a direct shot of the waterfall from a distance as I was a little worried that I may have some problems later in trying to get close to it. It is dead on in the middle of the image and barely visible as a tiny streak of silver.


Far clearer in this shot with the 250.


Anyway, so off I went until I came once again to the Big Cliff which so enthralled me last time I was here. On this occassion however, the road was closed to allow earth movers to clear up the mess of a recent, minor landslide.




When I arrived it was just after 3pm, which meant I would have to wait until 3.50pm to get through. Not likely. While I was there, I fell into conversation with an Aborigine lad. He told me two very interesting things. First, when I mentioned the lake on the other side of the cliff and wanting to take a break there with the dog again, he told me the lake was gone! Of course I wasn't going to hang around for nearly an hour just to check whether this was true, but when I mentioned that I was hoping to cross over to the lake so as to access the mountain road on the other side of the river to take me back towards the Shaoniansi waterfall, he mentioned a little road going out there from Taoyuan village itself. Instantly persuaded, I thanked him and set off to drive back across the broken roads to Taoyuan village and find the little road he was on about. I did indeed find it, and it was indeed "little" but it reached right up to the edge of the cliff just about visible (despite the excess light) to the mid-left of this picture above. Here are the views down from about 200-300 ft up on the mountainside...


This is the little village past Taoyuan and just before the Big Cliff - where I snapped that sign for the former suspension bridge to cross toward Shaonianxi waterfall. Just before arriving at the precipice, I had to turn down a little farmer's road from another little village above Taoyuan itself. A dog came trotting out all snarls when he saw Tinkerbell on the bike - realizing I'd got myself into a cul-de-sac and that I should take the little farmer's road down to where the precipice would logically be, I made to turn the bike around but he was already onto us, so I gave him a kick in the chops with a heavily accented "f*ck off" - which did the trick.


The views would have been spectacular without the awful humidity. In this image, the aforementioned Big Cliff, is just beyond the last clear green hill on the right. You can also make out where the lake would be, but the haze means there's nothing but a grey, indiscernable fuzz. Of course the remarkable thing that this image shows is just how swollen the river would have been during Typhoon Morakot in 2009. It's no more than a comparative trickle now.


This mountain road is very bumpy, very steep and very narrow on its winding approach down toward the farms below Shaonianxi - you wouldn't want to try it on anything other than two wheels.


This is the sign on arrival.


There is a clear stream running down from the waterfall and passing under this long-ago broken bridge. Notice the ladder propped up alongside it on the left - there's nothing up there, since the road is severed on the other side too, so it's not obvious what it's there for (I didn't bother climbing it, but looking back now maybe I should have...).


This was the spot, there was nowhere left to drive to, but I was still some distance away from the waterfall itself. I'd have to treck my way upstream, which only gave me pause for half a second to register my hunger and the fact that my bottle of alcoholic cough medicine was nearly empty by this point. Whatever.


It was a good twenty to thirty minute hike as the stream had to be forded again and again and again and I was always mindful of my dog so as not to allow her to stray too close to any of the minor waterfalls as I reckoned the current to be just about strong enough to take her down.


There was also an eerie noise, which I quickly realized was the sound of pressurized water escaping at irregular intervals from holes in the rubber and polymer pipes stringing their way overhead from the waterfall to feed the farm down behind me. There was only that and the sound of the stream and the odd bird or two. Girlfriend wouldn't have stood for it, unless perhaps she was part of a group. I like this sort of thing though.


Upon reaching the summit, I was disappointed by the size of the pool - so much so that I didn't bother going down to check it out. Instead I snapped away at the fall itself, transfixed. The fall looks about 80 odd feet high (about 30m), and the water hits the pool at such a speed to put you in mind of the rippling airflow out the back of a jet engine... good stuff.






I didn't stay for too long as it was now 5pm (I had left Tainan City at about 10.30am), the light was beginning to fail and the sky was clouding over and threatening rain. And I was hungry. The thing to do now is to make a return trip, but to leave Tainan at a ridiculous hour like 3am in order to arrive at Shaonianxi just after the crack of dawn - I suspect that, with the sun in the east, the waterfall might at some point get fantastic sunlight streaming down upon it.


Until next time...