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16 Nov 09
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Symphony of birds and banshees Our feathered friends were singing, warbling, chirping and chattering on Saturday at the Phoenix Valley Bird Park in Nantou county, central Taiwan. But bird songs do not create adequate atmosphere at a bird sanctuary. So the park also offers outdoor... |
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12 Nov 09
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Prescribe me another six-pack already No bellyaching about it: Brews like these cure stubborn pains.My wife, born in China and who I've sworn not to blog about, once said that a certain Chinese ointment suddenly wiped out a pain in her back side after nothing else could ease it. She also... |
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06 Nov 09
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Low-grade China dissident to reinvent self in suburbs Li Chunming, a former central TV reporter, said in October he would take his political dissidentary, a common social disease in fast-changing China, to the hilly Beijing suburbs as early as next year to farm the dry land and open an underground journalism... |
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30 Oct 09
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Scores fall as teacher works overtime at elite school Student sits out a class in ChinaWhen schools in China push children today to learn English with no self-evident reason except to pass tests because we said you had to pass, the students tune out, a break from the more study-hard, ask-no-questions past.... |
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24 Oct 09
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Is China North Korea's hip older brother? Guess where the photo was taken.Is or isn't it true, an ever-curious Chinese friend asked me in Beijing last week, that people from this country look at ultra-Communist North Korea the way foreigners in democratic countries look at Communist-Lite... |
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20 Oct 09
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Beijing: Signs of real progress? Traffic moves on one side of the road, up from no side of the road, while the construction project (right) was there last year, as opposed to a new start, at Dawanglu where I lived for three years.On Oct. 17, the logo for Beijing Capital International... |
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12 Oct 09
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Livejournal works in China After hearing years of rumors that China has blocked access to Livejournal, I came to a dark, smoky (is there any other kind?) Internet cafe in Beijing to test it. This post is being written in that cafe.What was I going to say? A friend last night read... |
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06 Oct 09
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It all makes sense now As I ready for a Beijing vacation (oxymoron noted) from Oct. 10-17, meaning no access to the blog or much else online, I recall an night out in 2005 that reminds me of why Taiwan is suddenly so keen on its arch-enemy China.Sure, Taiwan doesn't want to get... |
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03 Oct 09
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Quick fixers outnumber problem solvers The guy in the stroller oversees major repairs.Tsai You-ming, owner of the Taipei shop where I bought my $180 Giant Boulder in mid-2006, looked with his customary nonplussed silence at my front derailleur, which won't shift between gears 2-3 without... |
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27 Sep 09
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Community policing: look, Mom, no cops Tao member and default copWe Tao people are so close that we can police our own crimes, an 82-year-old member of the Taiwan aboriginal group told me during an interview about the disappearance of his race, pop. 3,100.If someone steals or starts a fight,... |
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21 Sep 09
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China's neo-materialism: a view from India A friend who returned to China after studying in India said this about the welcome home: "Two of my cousins came to live at my parents' home now, and I had some talks with them and came to know that the whole China has one mind, seems everyone thinks the... |
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13 Sep 09
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Result of living on fast food in Taiwan |
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07 Sep 09
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News blast: President ordered deadly Taiwan typhoon President caused this mess in south Taiwan.He might as well have.When the Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou tried to sway an almost universally pissed-off public by deflecting blame for his island's latest typhoon to the weather, the allegation just didn't... |
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30 Aug 09
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Have a seat and let’s read some tealeaves The white letters on green identify a tea shop in Taipei.I usually pack off into the wilderness when in the states on summer breaks. Last year, on account of forest fires, I went instead to a camping supply store in Redding, Calif., to get a chest strap... |
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23 Aug 09
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A shady way to be Asian for a day When I covered SARS from the frontline Chinese city of Taiyuan in 2003, I got most of my interviews just by asking for them. No one arrested me. Staff members at the government-run SARS hospital even considered letting me and a photographer, also a white... |
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17 Aug 09
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What no one said about Taiwan's deadly typhoon I saw it at this rescue center (see photo) for victims of the typhoon that swamped southern Taiwan last week, but I seldom saw it in local media or heard it in conversation. My editors had no interest in it at all. That is, most of the people killed,... |
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10 Aug 09
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A friend indeed is indeed a fiend Foreign friend walks animal friend for Taiwanese animal shelter.A press release on Aug. 6 from Taiwan's agriculture council warned its "farmer friends" to be mindful of crop damage from the typhoon that just blew through.The same press release outside... |
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03 Aug 09
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Taiwan applauds the whole world; China calls shots Taiwanese women prepare to give World Games awards to Scandenavian, Russian orienteering champsMy news agency assigned me to the Beijing Olympics last year and the World Games in Taiwan last month. If you asked, "what the expletive-deleted are the World... |
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27 Jul 09
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Based overseas, blogger fails high school international studies Blogger takes on the Chinese, becomes themIn high school, when America's global competitiveness falls behind as agile-minded adolescents study Shakespeare instead of how to make money, I took a four-year self-guided course, name long forgotten, under our... |
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20 Jul 09
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Can't focus on this post? You may be Western Someone's personal alter mixes well at public wilderness area in Taipei.In the Changchun Road high-rises near my flat, travel agents do business wall to wall with mini-brothels and common Taiwanese families. I can imagine the falsetto shrieks of... |
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15 Jul 09
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Whatever you did, ain't your fault. You've forgotten to tell a guy what steps he must take to renew his visa as his do-it-or-leave-already deadline approaches. You tell him, hey didn't I already tell you what you're supposed to do?You don't put the shaving cream in a guy's bag as he pays... |
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28 Jun 09
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Blogger on annual leave Like a good beer, Laowiseass will put itself on ice for the first two weeks of July and travel to the United States, its first time under Obama and recession.But first, an unwitting commentary on today's Taiwan from the Kaiser Chiefs.Average day in Taiwan |
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22 Jun 09
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Easy-to-install age bullshit detector You know when people in Taiwan say you look ten years younger than you really are and expect you to believe them? Like earlier this month an older couple called my grisled 40-year-old ass 28. We all gained face at the moment, but I flung the ugly truth... |
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17 Jun 09
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Blue plastic bathroom slipper sale The only footwear a real Taiwan man ever needsSurveys show that eleven out of every ten native Taiwan men over 40 wear blue plastic bathroom slippers at least 192 hours a week. Here are some of their testimonials:* Perfect for going next door for your... |
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11 Jun 09
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20 mln protest hair dye quota in Taiwan TAIPEI - More than 20 millon people in Taiwan demonstrated on Thursday against parliament's passage of a first-ever hair dye quota that limits each person on the island to one treatment per year on health concerns.Protesters from middle-school students to... |
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08 Jun 09
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Severed calls to Tiananmen Mothers: for my own good? News coverage of the ballyhooed 20th Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary this month reminds me of covering earlier, lesser anniversaries.Around June 4 every year while living in Beijing I'd try to reach Ding Zilin, a leader in the Tiananmen Mothers... |
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29 May 09
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A case for ending English-language news conferences Lai Shin-yuan, center, Taiwan's China policymakerA year-in-review news conference by the Taiwan government's China policymaker wasn't just the normal bust because she told us nothing new. The mid-May event was a big bust because it was held in English for... |
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23 May 09
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The clusterfuck: finding safety in chaos Chinese tourists, Taiwan travel agency workers and media clusterfuck at the port of Keelung in March.Chinese culture is at least 5,000 years old and has produced inventions such as gunpowder and noodles. I'd like to add one more, the clusterfuck.Who does... |
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16 May 09
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After every white face, auto-insert English Uniformed race sensors guard the doors of massive hotels like this one in Taiwan.Yeah I know I've beefed on this subject before but goddamn I'm going to do it again.My Nokia mobile phone automatically prints a capital letter after every period in a text... |
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10 May 09
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Taiwan breaks ground on fulfilling Chinese manifest destiny One or two of these heroic deeds highlights about every block in Taipei.When the cabinet decided this year to dig Taiwan out of recession with a New Deal-style, job-intensive infrastructure development plan, I knew the moral of the story before the gavel... |
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01 May 09
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June 4, 1989 anniversary: 20 years of tired clichés Snapshot of Tiananmen Square on June 4, 2004: Foreigner laughs with friendly local, life goes on.Bloodshed, massacre, crackdown and cover-up. We’ll hear those words in the approach to the twenty-year anniversary of whatever happened on Tiananmen Square ... |
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27 Apr 09
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Pigs feast on boar I expect to hear about more of the following as mainland Chinese tourists steam into Taiwan, pushed by governments on both sides to spend tourist money here:On Sunday night in the southern city of Taitung, about 10 middle-aged men, officials from Hubei... |
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18 Apr 09
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One in a billion stories from the Naked City "There are a billion stories in the Naked City, this has been one of them," my friend Roger wrote from Beijing last week. "Two days ago, I jumped in a taxi at noon to head down to Kempinski Deli for my coffee break, and as we got close to the intersection... |
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13 Apr 09
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Electable, delectable There's something new to fight over in Taiwan’s hotpot parliament: babes. Local TV reporters are shoving for the chance to catch the legislature’s "spicy sisters”, Taiwan slang for a group of exceptionally babe-a-licious female lawmakers ... |
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08 Apr 09
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Anti-ennui recipe: crabs, salt coffee, Mao paperweights Barista makes sea salt coffee at Taiwan's 85C coffee shop chain.Taiwan invents nothing. Businesspeople shun the risks. Office workers in conventional creative fields can’t stand standing out. Government officials panicked by recession preach "innovatio... |
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03 Apr 09
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The yellow snow IS vanilla shaved ice When I visited the south coast of Taiwan last year to look into a nuclear power plant that shoots extra-warm cooling water into a recreational patch of ocean, I interviewed a woman who said, sarcastically, "If a Taiwanese person can't see the danger,... |
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26 Mar 09
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Laowiseass constipated? Livejournal is blocked again in China, along with Youtube and porn sites, an informed expatriate friend in Beijing said today. Why, he asked me. Either for technical or political reasons, as usual, I assured him, and we'll never know which for sure. |
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23 Mar 09
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BASEBALL-World competes in World Series Taiwan's team high-five in the Doha Asian Games, 2006A headline in Asian media on March 23 said Japan had beat the United States in baseball and would face South Korea in a final round in the World Baseball Classic. Whoever wins the Classic, which has... |
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18 Mar 09
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Official spokesman and cookie horker When the top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan got the munchies (whether he was stoned I'm unsure) during his news conference last week, he excused himself from the head table to snag a saucer of cookies from the refreshment table a few paces away. Two spokespeople... |
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11 Mar 09
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A cause you can fight for: shopping and seafood? Taiwan women make clothes for Barbie dolls just 'coz they can and want to. They sell a few costumes, but that's not important. The women stand out.In a book I just finished, Miss Garnet's Angel, the main characters, from England, share the goal of... |
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06 Mar 09
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Ugly Americans or just an ugly American? Taiwan police arrested a 58-year-old American man last month because he was wanted in California on child molestation charges, a cop on the case told me. Local TV showed police dragging him into a paddy wagon bound for a foreigners-only jail in the Taipei... |
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27 Feb 09
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As a fellow ignitizen, here's my 2 million RMB's worth A former student now working for the China Central TV in Beijing sent me this note last week:The interesting thing I want to share with you is the FIRE of CCTV's new building. I guess you've known it in every detail. It's set by us officially with a... |
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22 Feb 09
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Symbolic hole in the ground In China, a construction project goes like this: You wake up one day and find that a bunch of buildings that you're used to seeing have been walled off, scaffolded over and swung at with wrecking balls. Your supermarket might have there. A restaurant you... |
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19 Feb 09
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Will the shark please rise from the pool A wild pig crossed our path in the trash-strewn backwoods behind our Malaysia hotel earlier this month. We saw monkeys raid a dumpster. Thousands of beetle-sized crabs raced across a beach toward some brown weedy deposit. Five hornbills ate half of... |
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14 Feb 09
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President, CEO and board chairman too I am about to move again, from one Taipei warren to another, which reminded me of a brief story.When I first moved to this city, a young Taiwanese dude with the international moving company that helped ship my stuff from Beijing, asked me why I was... |
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06 Feb 09
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We are all the same with sauce January 26 onward has been year of the bull. It's supposed to symbolize wealth through hard work or some bullshit like that. Last year, year of the rat, was supposed to auger protection and, wouldn't you know it, disaster. Each of the 12 beasts on the... |
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04 Feb 09
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In Taiwan, free shopping spree for people who matter Taiwan's government gave free shopping vouchers worth 3,600 Taiwan dollars (about $107 US) to every one of its citizens, any age, last month to stimulate consumer spending during recession. I should have written the back story about these vouchers,... |
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24 Jan 09
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MIA notice Laowiseass blog expected to be missing in action from Jan. 25 through Feb. 4. |
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22 Jan 09
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Old-school lessons about Old World losers Per protocol, reporters, right, and aides, left, wait for host and big cat Taiwan parliament speaker Wang Jin-pyng to enter room before sitting down.Joe Yueh, the guy who runs Taipei's chess club, also trains boys how to play in international tournaments.... |
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18 Jan 09
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Fear of a five-day work week Yesterday was a Saturday. It was a work day in Taiwan, mandated by the government to offset an extra day off for Lunar New Year. Saturday, Jan. 10, was also a work day. It offset a day off on Friday, Jan. 2, giving us all a four-day Western New Year... |
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