Food Shortages and Short Memories

Professor Lei Li-fen wrote an opinion piece worth reading. His essay arises from the recent scandal in Miaoli County, where the local nationalist government is dispossessing farmers so more land can be given to industrial expansion. People have short memories of the food shortages that hit many parts of Asia a couple of years ago. Read Lei's essay: "Agriculture Deserves More Support." (Taipei Times, July 24, 2010, pg. 8.)

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Police Motto: Make Study, Not Protest

Oh my goodness, the mess on my desk is that bad! I'm referring to the foot-high pile of papers and assorted documents that has been sitting there, well, for over a year according to the date on a news clipping I just unearthed midway through the pile. I see why I saved the article. I was inte rested in a front-page Taipei Times (4 December 2008) piece titled "Losheng Activists Block Demolition." The article is about the last holdouts of protesters and residents of the Losheng Leprosy Sanatorium in Taipei County (Sinjhuang City). The sanatorium was partially demolished to make way for an MRT line extension, despite protests and also despite promises from Ma the Incompetent who as a candidate promised to preserve the Japanese colonial era landmark (and the only home ever known by many or most of the patients). The quote that caught my eye was: "Sinjhuang Precinct Chief Hsu Yung-sheng said through a loudspeaker (to the students barricaded inside and protesters outside)...

Moonscape in Kaohsiung

The view of some rock formations that the locals refer to as "the moon," as seen from the window of a passing car on the Second Southern Highway. The Moon Worlds of Kaohsiung County China Post Article Speeding along a serpentine country road through the unexceptional, low rolling countryside of Kaohsiung County, our scooters round a corner when abruptly the mixed woodland bordering the lane ends, the ground on the left falls away steeply, and an extraordinary ravine of crumbly, light brown earth unfolds to the left. The Americans call this type of landscape “badlands,” but to the Taiwanese they’re more like the surface of the moon: “Lunar World,” as they call them. These strange landscapes of barren clay soil eroded into bizarre knife-edge ridges, sharp pinnacles and graceful, curved arcs are a strangely beautiful if surreal element of the landscape in parts of northern Kaohsiung and southern Tainan Counties. Badlands landscapes are by no means unique to this region of Taiwan...

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