Tainan Trashes Its Garbage Truck Classroom

Well, a short-lived English-teaching phenomenon is over, at least for the moment. It was in the news today that Tainan City garbage trucks had, six months ago, suspended indefinitely their broadcasts of English lessons. "The city government decided to temporarily suspend the service because it has so many other policies it needs to deliver to residents," said Environmental Bureau Chief Chang Huang-chen, as quoted in the Taiwan News (September 6, 2008). Well, considering that nobody could ever really evaluate the effectiveness of the service, it seems appropriate that the mobile loudspeakers now carry warnings of health problems in Vietnamese and Thai "for the benefit of foreign spouses who do not understand Chinese." Tainan City has, according to the news article, recently been struggling with a spreading crsis of dengue fever and enterovirus. In these circumstances, I think we can forgive the bureau's decision to "trash" the city's "English Time."

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Hello Kitty Hell

A couple of days ago I went to EVA Airlines ticket center to reserve my flight to California, and it was there I noticed a photograph on a poster showing an EVA Air jet sporting a Hello Kitty motif. It can't get much worse than this. Then again, maybe it can. Below are some photos of a car parked in the Costco lot. Note the bad taste in auto decoration. At bottom is a link to a pdf article on "Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan." Article: Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan (2000)

An Aboriginal Saturday

On a recent Saturday field trip I joined friends in visiting an aboriginal village, inhabited mostly by Bunun tribal people in the Nantou area. A kindly elder couple joined us in the evening and shared a traditional song. Video of the song is at the bottom of this posting. With us as "special guest" and "host" for the weekend were, respectively, American author Linda Hogan and Taiwan Bunun writer Nequo. The Sunday morning view of the Yushan range was refreshing, to say the least. The day before it had snowed on Yushan's highest peak, but that was invisible to us as the mountain was shrouded in thick clouds. Yushan's highest peak, still in the embrace of some lingering clouds.

Grateful for the Rain

The average annual rainfall in Taiwan varies by region, with Taipei famous for cold and wet winters while Kaohsiung enjoys cool and dry winters. Summers give the south more rainfall, while the north usually enjoys one month of afternoon thunderstorms. But for the entire island the precious system of dams relies upon typhoons to get filled for use all year. With climate change, however, we have been experiencing fewer such storms. This year we've had none at all. The dam in Tainan has become a grassy green playground. Fortunately for the north we have had over a month of almost daily downpour, so our dam is forced to release overflow. Always in terror of drought, I will not complain about the constant rain. I just wish my landlord would allow me to collect it in buckets and barrels on the roof, if only for keeping my garden going during the dry months that climate change threatens us with. We already were facing threats of water rationing before this current wet season began. ...

My Life as Adoga

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