The Foreigner in Formosa

Great By-Elections, Kid

Now don't get cocky.

Technically Speaking

Doesn't this count as "Desinification"?  A Cultural Revolution even?

Births have traditionally dropped during the Chinese Year of the Tiger, as many believe that [Year of the] Tiger babies could be vicious and bring harm to relatives.

[KMT] Education Ministry official Yang Chang-yu challenged the belief that it is inauspicious to have babies in Tiger years, and noted many successful people are Tigers. People should try to have babies during this Year of the Tiger, insisted Yang.

And in order to debunk the traditional Chinese belief that Year of the Tiger babies are vicious and harmful, Yang presents Exhibits A and B:

People born in the Year of the Tiger include President Ma Ying-jeou, born in 1950, and Vice President Vincent Siew, born in 1938, Yang said.  [emphasis added]

Honey, pass the prophylactics.

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Stevie, what are your thoughts on all this?

(Direct YouTube link here)

The Foreigner's Guide to Formosan Food

It must be said that on the whole, I'm not a big fan of Taiwanese cuisine.  So for that reason, I find myself agreeing with Michael's first comment on this thread.  Nevertheless, it got me to wondering:  What Taiwanese food DO I like?

The answers are on this short list I threw together.  (Which I may add to later if I recall other things.)

Main courses:

1)  Steamed fish. 

Zhun yu in Mandarin, I believe.  Westerners will have to get over the aesthetics of fish being served with head & tail intact.  But do that, and you'll find a dish utterly amazing -- hot and tender which melts in the mouth like butter.  The very top of my list.

 
(Image from FoodMayhem.com)

(Caveat:  About 10-20% of the time, the restaurant will substitute some kind of cheap, oily fish for the usual one they use.  And when that happens, zhun yu is kind of revolting.)

2)  Stir-fried prawns with basil or garlic. 

I don't know if these count as specifically "Taiwanese" food, but a couple of restaurants in the city of Zhong-li do these really well.  I was never disappointed with them.

3)  Stir-fried squid. 

At least, I think they're squid.  Little guys, about 2 1/2 inches long.  Nice, salty taste.  Not oily, but a bit rubbery at times.

4)  Five-flavor octopus. 

Thin slices of octopus served on a bed of shredded cabbage.  Sweet, salty, sour, and spiced with ginger as well. 

This one was hit and miss -- I preferred it on the sweet / sour side, but the restaurants sometimes overpowered it with ginger.

Vegetarian dishes:

1)  Pickled cabbage. 

When I used to tell my friends in Taiwan that this was my second favorite Taiwanese food, they'd politely point out that pao t'sai, as it's called, is Korean, not Taiwanese.

No, no, I'd say.  None of that red, garlic-flavored kim chee for me.  I'm talkin' about the Taiwanese kind, sans garlic and with three simple ingredients:  cabbage, a few carrot strips, and a sprinkling of chili pepper slices for color and kick.

(Pao t'sai's a real gamble, though.  The first time I had it, it was sweet and sour and spicy and incredible.  But usually it was unpalatable, being either too bland or too salty.  Let the buyer beware.)

 
(Image from Wikipedia.org) 

2)  Japanese eggplant in chili sauce with garlic. 

Completely changed the way I felt about eggplant.  But if I ever find the recipe, I'd cut back on the oil.

Fast food:

1)  Deep-fried squid tentacles. 

These are about 4 inches long, with some kind of powder sprinkled on them.  Superb.  About the only Taiwanese fast food that I could stand.  (Sorry, all you chicken feet and stinky tofu vendors!)

Desserts:

1)  Strawberry rollmop cake from the 85 deg C cafe. 

Taiwanese cakes and pastries were usually too bland on my palate to ever be a real temptation.  Not so with this one.  The cream inside?  Made from real berries.

2)  Kinmen peanut brittle. 

Pretty good.  Could be sweeter.

3)  Sour green mango slices on sweet ice. 

(Probably out of season, but oh man, I wish I were in Taiwan having some of THIS right now . . .)

Miscellaneous:

1)  Eggs scrambled with tomato slices & tomato sauce. 

Not my absolute favorite, but deserves an honorable mention, nonetheless.

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Postscript:  Now that I look at it, this list is longer than I thought it'd be.  But since I'm finished "accentuating the positive", it's only fair to point out a couple Taiwanese dishes I used to avoid:

1)  Stir-fried chicken with bone fragments.

If there was any truth in advertising, that'd be the name.  Apparently, Taiwanese chefs like to take a cleaver to meat on the bone, believing the resulting meat chunks will acquire taste during the cooking process from the tip-of-the-pinky size bones they contain.

Now, this may in fact be true, but the meat also ends up containing an unacceptably high number of tiny bone chips.  Which must be murder on dental work and healthy molars alike.

My personal motto while eating out in Taiwan was always, "Just say, 'No,' to broken teeth."

2)  Dong Po pork.

Mmmm . . . coronary on a plate.  Picture a two-inch thick slab of pork.  No -- picture a two-inch deep ocean of corpuscular animal fat, sparsely populated with a few lonely islands of edible brown meat.  That's Dong Po pork.  One of the first dishes I ever tried in Taiwan; just recalling the experience is enough to provoke a case of psychosomatic angina.

When eating Dong Po pork remember:  No matter how carefully you trim it away, you will be eating lots of sickly, translucent, artery-clogging fat.  MOUTHFUL upon MOUTHFUL of it.

Best pay close attention to those gag reflexes, diners.  Your body is indeed trying to tell you something.

 
(Image from EatingChina.com) 

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UPDATE (Feb 20, 2010):  A couple other favorites . . .

1)  Hualien aboriginal BBQ pork.

Great smoky flavor.  Best pork I've ever had.

2)  Small abalone in the shell.

Has a red sauce with a sort of sweet & sour taste.  Very nice.

I'll Huff and I'll Puff and I'll...Shamble Away Somewhere

Dalai Lama Heads for Washington As Beijing Seethes  (Feb 18, 2010)

Seething?  Certainly the image China's been trying to project.  But you'd hardly know it from the next headline:

Five U.S. Warships Dock in Hong Kong  (also Feb 18, 2010)

LOL

Bye Bye Johnny

While living in Taiwan, I was a big fan of Johnny Neihu in the Taipei Times.  Breezy, well-written stuff.  So I was very saddened to read last week that his weekly column has come to an end.

I'm sort of scratching my head over his final piece for the Times, though.  I know he's saying something beneath the surface, but it's all a bit impenetrable to me.  Whatever it is, my condolences on the death of your mother, Johnny.

Bye bye.

(Direct YouTube link here)

There is No Soviet Domination of Eastern Europe

Likewise, there's No Finlandization of Taiwan.  And there never will be under a Ma administration!

And finally, just so's we're clear on this, there are No Dissidents in China.  Never had 'em, never will.

That is all.

Birds of a Feather

Surprise, surprise:  Chinese Sino-Imperialists arm Iranian Islamofascists with lots and lots of shiny new Dalian riot control trucks.  ("Tiananmen Square" brand billy clubs cost extra, apparently.)

(Image from Popular Science.)

She's a beaut, ain't she?  I'll bet Chiu Yi is kickin' himself he didn't have one of THESE babies during the KMT election riots of '04.

Cheer up, Chiu.  You've still got 2012 to look forward to.  Why, in a few years time, you'll be out there crackin' heads with the rest of 'em!

And moving not so far off topic I see that Iran has joined China in their jihad against Google.  (Good news indeed, for China's new Google substitute.)

Tom Friedman Throwdown

Dr. Jerome Keating did a pretty good job last month.  But for bust-out funny, Iowahawk's the man to beat:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. For example, some argue that one-party autocracies might not always do stuff Thomas Friedman agrees with. But this risk can easily be avoided if the one party is a reasonably enlightened group of people, such as China, and/or Thomas Friedman. Only through this one party system can we impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward into a thousand-year empire of benevolent, iron fisted enlightenment.

Come to think of it, Iowahawk sounds like Sino-Imperialist Bev Chu over on Lew Rockwell's site.

(Only difference being Iowahawk has tongue planted firmly in cheek, while Bev is dead serious.)

Chinese Securitate Get REALLY Tough on Google

Heh.

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UPDATE:  Wow.  The Chinese Communist Party's fiendishly clever Plan B:  Operation Create Google Substitute.

Which come to think of it, strongly resembles their campaign over at Topix:

 
When the Hokklo Taiwanese came from China 400 years ago they didn't learn the Aboriginal languages!!!  Why??? 

 
When the Hokklo Taiwanese came from China 400 years ago they didn't learn the Aboriginal languages!!!  Why??? 

It's the way of the future . . . the future . . . the way of the FU-ture . . .

Whoops, sorry.  **Phew**  Well, that's a good question I asked.  I mean, you -- YOU asked!  ...Uh, three times.  Anyhoo.  Anyhoo, I'll tell you why.  They didn't learn the aboriginal languages because they're nothing but a bunch of no-good racists!

 
No-good racists, you say?  I did not know that, my clean-shaven friend.

Shouldn't Beijing then discipline those wayward, spoiled children?  As they say in the Han race-nation, blood is thicker than water.  So why, oh why, don't the Chinese invade and mass deport all of those Taiwanese racists back to China?

 
  
Ethnically-cleanse all 23 million of them?  As punishment for not learning a language 400 years ago?

Hmmm . . .  That's tough, but fair . . .

 
I second the motion!  A capital idea!  And then, once the People's Liberation Army promptly leaves (as we can surely trust them to do) then we can set up a Naruwan aboriginal Republic under UN auspices!

 
Hee-hee!  With my amazing Moktar Stealth Haze, no one can tell they're all just me!  Do da do da do . . .  Just a wild and crazy anarchist -- like that V for Vendetta guy!  (Images from Patterico.com)

Bravo, Topix.com, for a site that's so bad it's actually kind of awesome.

UPDATE 2:  Unrelated, but fun nonetheless.  Feng shui:  Is there anything it CAN'T do?

Q: Why Did Taiwan's Premier Take a Vacation With a Mobster Convicted Of Double Murder?

A:  Because O.J. wasn't available that weekend.

Yeah, yeah -- the story's a few months old: 

Amid allegations over his relationship with a convicted double murderer and former Nantou County gang boss, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said he would resign if the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could provide any evidence of irregularities in their relationship.

[...]

The DPP has continued to question the premier’s links to Chiang since local media on Wednesday reported Wu and his wife were caught on camera vacationing in Bali with Chiang and Lee Chao-ching.

(There he is, clean as a whistle.  Taiwan's KMT Premier, Wu Den-yih.  When he's not taking vacations in Bali with his double-murdering, Chinese mafia pals.  Image from Daylife.com.)

And in more recent (and somewhat related news), World Uygher Congress president Rebiya Kadeer has received a second invite to visit Taiwan.  Saturday's Taipei Times has the story, and recaps how Chinese Nationalist Party sycophants in Taiwan prevented her visit last year in order to curry favor with their Communist Party overlords.  (And note that "sycophant" is employed here in both the modern and ancient meanings of the word.) 

The government [in 2009], however, denied Kadeer entry to Taiwan on the grounds that her visit would harm the national interest.

At the time, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), should not be allowed into the country since she had “close relations to a terrorist group.”

So my question is:  If Kadeer's entry in 2009 was deemed harmful to Taiwan's national interest because she had "close relations to a terrorist group" *, shouldn't Taiwan's second highest political office-holder be similarly blacklisted from the halls of government for his PROVEN close relations with a double murdering gangster?

"The new administration will push for clean politics and set strict standards for the integrity and efficiency of officials."

-- Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's Inaugural address.  May 21, 2008

Epic fail on those "strict standards for integrity" there, Hoss.

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*  Unsubstantiated charges made by the Butchers of Beijing and repeated uncritically by the Toadies of Taipei.

Nice Little University Ya Got Here

Be a shame if anything happened to its accreditation...

Three months [after awarding an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama], the University of Calgary [in Canada] was dropped from the Chinese Ministry of Education’s accreditation list of universities for Chinese students desiring to study abroad, the Calgary Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Hotline for Overseas Studies Service Center in Beijing had the following advice for Chinese students: “If you don’t already go to that school, it is better not to go because you will face risks.”

[...]

About 600 students from China and Hong Kong are enrolled at the University of Calgary.  [About 2.5 % of the student body -- The Foreigner]. On average, tuition for foreign students is three times higher than for local students.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan.  Except for the fact that the Chinese Nationalist Party government has previously stated it wishes to "flood" Taiwanese universities with students from China --rendering Taiwanese higher education prone to similar political domination.  Not over the Dalai Lama -- the Communist Party collaborationists within the KMT will make sure THAT one never steps foot in Taiwan again.  More likely over curricula or the presence of China sceptics within the halls of academe.

Set a course for the Borg tractor beam, Number One.

Full speed ahead.