The View from Taiwan

"     ...But we have crossed millions of miles of nothingness. We have visited another world. And our Locar had said `Why bother? What is the worth of it? It is all vanity, anyhow.'
And the secret is," I lowered my voice, as at a poetry reading, "he was right! It is vanity, it is pride!"...

Yesterday was first nice day in weeks. I hit the mountains. It was wonderful.
This week brought us a sloppy and potentially libelous headline from Taiwan News on Mayor Ko and Ethan Gutmann's book on organ harvesting in China: Book claims Taipei Mayor transplanted organs from Falun Gong prisoners. To wit:...

An address sign in Guocuoli
Time once again for our regularly irregular feature on a scholarly paper about Taiwan...
While I was looking at the complicated ethnic history of Quanzhou in Fujian, where 45% of the pre-1949 immigrants to Taiwan came from, I ran across this fascinating paper by Oded Abt entitled "Muslim Ancestor, Chinese Hero or Tutelary God:Changing Memories...

A KMT candidate dominates a Taichung intersection.
Another day, another collection of colorful election posters. Rode around in Changhua this week, a key battleground that is currently leaning KMT. You can click on any photo to be taken to its Flickr page if you want to zoom in on it. Click on READ more...