I got some good news today; I got someone to cover for me at work for a week, so I called my friend Lorenzo at the travel agency and booked a flight to Shanghai on the 6th, as well as one back from Beijing on the 16th. I plan to take the train from Shanghai to Beijing at some point.

Some things I’m not sure about:

-How the people at immigration will reconcile the sight of me with my Taiwanese travel documentation

-If or how my ATM card will work there

-If my phone will work there, how much it will cost or what numbers I should tell people to call

-Whether I’ll be able to stay at cheaper “local only” hotels with my Taiwan ID (”Hey, Mr. Hotel Manager, is Taiwan part of China or not? Huh? HUH?”)

-Whether I should bother lugging my big 20D or just relying on my little Canon IXUS

-How well I’ll understand people/be able to make myself understood due to the different accents after 13 years of not being there

-Just how much cash to bring and how

-If I should spend any time in Hong Kong on the way

-Just how to buy a sleeper ticket on the Te-kuai train to Beijing, how much in advance I need to go, or even if they have food on board

And so on. Still, despite all the things I don’t know, I feel excited to finally be going somewhere, especially to places I’ve never been. I have a little under a week to find these things out, get a new, larger backpack, perhaps get some traveller’s cheques (another thing I’m not sure about) and figure out just what it is I’ve forgotten in all of this.

Tomorrow (Saturday), we (the Muddy Basin Ramblers) will be playing in public for the first time in a while (a couple of months) at the Daniel Pearl Day festivities held at Treasure Hill (near Gongguan MRT station).

UPDATE: The band as a whole can’t make it, but Sandman and I will probably attend the festivities anyway, possibly with instruments (just in case).

I’m feeling very parenthetical today (must be the weather).

The stage is apparently on a rooftop up the hill, in fact the very rooftop where we filmed the chase scene with Maurice and Sandman. I’m not sure how it’s going to work, as only a couple of bands are going to be up there on the accoustic stage, and it’s a bit of a climb. At least there will be a great view.

Badminton practice last night was disappointing. Everyone else was fine; I was disappointed in myself. The reason is that I’m just not as good a player as the rest of that group, and I always feel as if I’m somehow dragging them down. It’s hard to get into a game when you’re feeling apologetic about it. Playing on Mondays with the Pug-nosed Women is much easier, but the play is much slower and not very challenging.

I think it all comes down to this: if you’re whining on your blog about how you suck at badminton, you really need a vacation. Also if you’re taking pictures of your bathtub drain thinking Ooh this is a nice shot. This I will admit. I’ve been trying to set up a trip to China (Shanghai, then train to Beijing, a la Mark, but without the spitting) over the Double-ten/Moon Festival holidays, but the pieces aren’t falling into place fast enough and I might miss that opportunity.

In other news, they’re putting up barriers on the platform at the Taipei Main Station MRT stop, either as an experiment or a very slow implementation of a new system to keep people from falling/jumping onto the tracks. It’s one of several upgrades to the existing MRT system, such as new “sliding door” turnstiles at Shandao Temple station (they open fast enough, but only just, which is causes some fear of balling oneself) and new “open plan” cattle cars with no seats that look like someone just moved out. I shouldn’t laugh, though; I love Taipei’s MRT system and am glad they’re making efforts to improve it.

Autumn is settling in after a really hot summer. The people in the building next door decided it was time to burn a metric shitload of ghost money on their roof, i.e. just outside my apartment, and the smell was seeping inside. I can’t stand staying indoors in weather like this in any case, so rather than do one of the many things on my to-do list on Sunday, I decided to go explore the ;latest and greatest MRT line, the one out to Tucheng.

I took the MRT all the way to Yongning Station, at the end of the line. Only a couple of blocks after exiting the station, I was in the countryside, with old abandoned brick houses and forest roads. I walked down a street lined by silent factories, their sides papered with ads, and happened across a shattered car windshield on the sidewalk, which occupied me for several minutes as I took macro shots of the glass. Then I visited a temple that featured a huge black dog statue, as well as the empty factory behind it.

Then back to Jincheng road and up to Tucheng Station, where city hall and several other government buildings are located, as well as a couple of temples. I passed by a blond foreigner smoking a cigarette out on the street and nodded to him. No doubt we were both thinking to ourselves, “Damn, I just can’t get away from these frellin’ foreigners!”

After touring the more interesting of the two temples (one looked too new and boring), I walked past the abandoned KMT HQ to a major intersection that was downtown Tucheng, where I found via a realtor shop that house prices weren’t any cheaper than Xindian, and then back to the station, where I took the train to Haishan Station. I’d noticed on my way down that most of the passengers got off the train at this station. After an abnormally long escalator ride to the surface, I found that the station is located in the middle of a park, itself sandwiched between various schools. I walked around the neighborhood and liked what I saw: tree-lined streets, a good amount of newish apartment buildings, and just a general good feeling to the place. If I had to live in that part of town it wouldn’t be a bad choice.

By this point I was feeling a bit tired, though, so I took the train to the Far Eastern Hospital Station, in the hope of finding a bench by the river (it’s next to a river on the map) and watching the sun go down, but by the time I arrived the sun was already gone, and there was no obvious way to get to the river (referred to as a “ditch” on the station map), so I just set out towards Fuzhong Station, taking pictures of intersections and neon signs as I proceeded. After stopping to ask directions once at a motorcycle helmet shop, I found myself at the Lin Family Garden, which I visited once many years ago. I took pictures of a red neon cross I saw before, though it was kind of ruined by the blue sign underneath. Then it was around the busy streets across the square. It reminded me of Taichung in my student days; lots of young people and various foods available on a stick (the food, that is, not the young people).

So that’s all the stations; I’ve been to each and every one and explored the areas around them, and now the MRT system can resume it’s boring, known reality once again. Until the next line opens, that is.

It’s been a while since I took the Crazy Bike out for a spin, due to weather and various engagements. As Saturday dawned I still hadn’t gone to bed, having gone out drinking to celebrate Dean’s return to Taiwan and consumed a long line of rum and cokes. The coke kept me up and the rum kept me drunk, not the best combination. I went home and spent hours posting inane messages all over the Internet and chatting until 7am before the buzz and wakefulness finally died.

When I got up at noon, the weather outside was fine, not too hot, and only slightly cloudy. I took the Crazy Bike across the street to pump up it’s flat tires and set out up the river. The wind was at my back and I made good time, reaching the Xinhai Bridge across the Dahan River at about 4pm. I decided to explore some unfamiliar territory and crossed the bridge, heading upstream. The path ascended the floodwall and continued, interrupted by sporadic crazy dips around floodgates. Markers set in the pavement read “Yingge-Danshui Bike Path” and had kilometer markings that indicated Yingge was about 10km away from the bridge.

The path passed through residential sections and a park, and then past a recycling complex that featured a huge silver dome as well as a range of foul odors. Beyond that, the developments thinned out, with nice new apartment buildings and parks. The path followed the train tracks, which skirted the edge of the hills to the north. The kilmeters on the markers counted down as I cycled past fishing ponds and tumble-down embankments dotted with fishermen, nearly crashing as I watched an express train pass me up.

The path ended abruptly at a construction fence, apparently just short of Yingge, along the river. (see this picture for satellite location map). There was no way around or any other path to follow. I got off and took the above picture, then turned around. It was 5pm and the sun was starting to set, the shadows of the hills spreading across the path.

The reason for my speedy progress quickly became apparent as I pushed against a fairly strong wind. The going was a lot slower. After dark the path lights came on, but certain sections were completely dark, so I strapped on a headlamp I’d brought along for just such an occasion. Then it started raining, so I hurridly stowed my iRiver and donned a convenience-store plastic raincoat.

The rain lasted until I got back across the bridge and well on my way back down the Xindian River. I don’t usually ride that late, and there were fewer people out and about, which made for nicer riding in general.

I got back home at about nine wanting a big hot meal, so I ordered a couple of pizzas. Remind to never again eat that much pizza in one sitting. Urgh.

It’s interesting to compare the protests currently going on against Chen Shui-bian with the ones held against the National Assembly and then Premier Hau Pei-tsun in 1990, which I also witnessed. For instance, both were rumored to have been instigated from behind the scenes by Lee Teng-hui in order to get rid of someone he couldn’t officially be seen getting rid of. In 1990 the student protesters kept to one side of CKS Hall, while the Democratic Progressive Party protesters kept to the other side, near the concert hall, one often calling on the other to “Hey, keep it down, we’re protesting here!” Some of the student leaders of the “Wild Lily” protest hold high-level government postitions today.

Back then, the DPP was known for its protests and sometimes violent tactics against the ruling party, but now it is the ruling party, and believe me, the hypocrisy is running high as a result of this strange juxtapostion. After about a week of ignoring the protesters, led by former DPP Chairman Shih Ming-teh, and issuing news releases about how protesting hurt society and social order and were to blame for the common cold, the Chen administration changed direction and started its own protests. This, after all, is an art form they’ve been honing since before the party was founded. They told Annette Lu to shut up, bussed in thousands of pro-Chen demonstrators to Taipei last weekend to the same spot of the Shih protests, shouted slogans and attacked a TV tower or two when they didn’t like what they were reporting. I’d like to think they were shouting “Democracy!” as they were pulling the plugs out, but that might be too ironic even for me.

The anti-Chen protests have continued, having moved to the square in front of the train station, while the pro-Chen protesters (what a strange label) occupied Katagelan Blvd. After the pro-Chen demonstrations, however, several attacks have been reported. Pro-Chen groups attacked Anti-Chen protesters in southern cities, which, though not a big surprise, is disappointing. I wish the DPP had simply continued to ignore the anti-Chen movement and let it lose momentum on its own, rather than fueling the fire even more, but the DPP couldn’t resist trying to show that it is still the king of protesting, which has become a kind of industry in itself over the past few decades. Of course some of the media have tried, though either concerted effort or pure laziness, I don’ tknow which, to re-label the pro-Chen/anti-Chen conflict as “ethnic conflict”, despite the fact that it’s simply not. I suppose it sounds more “exciting” that way.

I also find that many pro-Chen advocates are emphasizing that Chen has not actually been formally charged with anything. This is perfectly true, as president he can only be convicted of treason. Yet the same people, (admittedly mostly foreigners on websites so what knows how it’s even remotely relevant) think James Soong is the Devil Incarnate, though Soong has only been fined once for campaign contribution irregularities and wasn’t charged with anything in the Chunghsing Bills incident people so love to bring up. The answer, of course, is inevitably “but everyone knows that James Soong is (fill in the blank)”. Ok, but why does one side’s “everyone knows Soong is _____” trump the other side’s “everyone knows Chen is _____”? How can one be a certainty and the other dismissed?

Because, man, everyone knows.

In short, it’s regular partisan politics in Taiwan. Both sides huffing bottles of raw indignation at the other in their attempts to get the masses on their side. A democracy of sorts, I suppose.

‘Mos on a Plane

Every time I hear some ‘tero say something like “Homosexuals already have all the rights we have…what more do they want?” in the same breath as “I have nothing against gay people; I just don’t want to know about it,” I wonder if they realize how hyprocritical they’re being. Probably not, as they take things like having their spouse’s picture up at work, mentioning their spouses or girlfriends in normal conversation, holding hands or even kissing in public for granted, not realizing that for us, the very same behavior is “flaunting it,” “rubbing it in their faces,” or “forcing it down their throats” (the last two are always an interesting choice of words). I saw one example of this double standard in the news today of a gay couple on a plane told to stop “touching and kissing” each other (one dude was asleep with his head on the other dude’s shoulder….eeeewwww! cooties!) or the captain would divert the plane, terror-threat style.

Maybe we should all just travel in bear suits.

In this age of protests, rioting demographics and terror on all sides, I think we’ve all lost sight of one important truth: the theme for the 60’s cartoon Underdog is just about the coolest piece of music ever written for TV*.

I mean, it has a plucked-bass beginning with an ominous-sounding accordian, mostly in a minor key breaking into an exhilerating, brave majoresque chorus and then retreating back into the stealthy minor before repeating the process at the end. In this it mirrored the plot of every episode of the show, a musical interpretation of Underdog’s unassuming identity as a shoeshine dog (not bad for a dog, when you think about it; most dogs would have trouble holding down a job that required thumbs, much less rhyming) as well as his transformation into the brave subtext-beating hero we all knew and loved, and then back again into a mild-mannered minor key. Yet at the same time it was far too good for the questionable quality of the animation and storylines it preceeded. Most cartoon themes were just good enough for the shows the accompanied; the Underdog theme was major motion picture material. I even dare hope that the movie they’re reportedly making does it justice.

I wish I could find a higher-quality version of the theme; in any case, I’ll probably be humming it for some time to come now that it’s lodged in my brain for the first time since 1972.

*Well, for a TV cartoon, anyway. The theme for Hawaii 5-0 is still the best-sounding theme on TV.

It’s been pouring rain every day recently, making any plans for travel or outdoor exercise impractical this weekend. Although the rain brought with it a pleasantly cool breeze wafting through my apartment, the thought of all that shiny wet pavement lying unphotographed was too tempting, so I got on the train out to the new section of the Banqiao MRT line to do some exploring.

After I got off at Yongning Station, the end of the line, however, I was faced with a solid wall of wet people huddled at the station exit. Beyond them was only more wetness, a wet street, splashing cars and not much else in the darkness. I exchanged my old broken umbrella for a new one at the 7-Eleven across the street and started walking around the neighborhood, but it quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to get anything good under those conditions, at least not without getting my equipment soaking wet.

Depressed, I went back and got on the next train back to town, and then getting off at Banqiao Station to see what they’d done to get ready for the impending opening of the High Speed Rail system next month. Banqiao Station is quite large and grand, but strangely unadorned. The HSR ticket counter looked alarmingly small. I wandered through the warren of tunnels in the complex and then around the exterior, taking shots here and there of various wet, shiny things. Not many came out. It was disappointing. I got back on the train.

As we neared CKS Hall Station, I noticed an abundance of people wearing red shirts, and recalled that the Anti-Chen Shui-bian sit-in, instigated by former Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Shih Ming-te, was starting that day, so I got off there and went up to have a look. The halls were filled with red-shirted people, and I ascended the stairs to find that the streets had been closed off in front of CKS Hall. A few small stages had been set up with bright lights, surrounded by people chanting “Chen Shui-bian Step Down!” both in Mandarin and Minnan. On the other side a small psuedo-shrine had been set up next to a poster with “Conscience Revolution” written on it.

I proceeded to the East Gate, where people were milling around under several balloons with slogans written on them. The main demonstration stage was between the East Gate and Gongyuan Road, and a great number of people were crowded into that stretch of Katagelan Boulevard, with a large stage and a fleet of media vehicles behind it.

“The whole world is watching!” the woman on stage was saying. “Let’s say our slogans in English! Everyone repeat our demand that Chen step down in English after me, like this: ‘Chen! Depose! Chen! Depose!’” Each slogan was followed by a loud amplified BOOM! and the drawing of a hand, thumbs-down, on the giant screen. I wondered if I should go tell them that their English could stand some correction, but I couldn’t get close enough to the stage to talk to anyone who would be able to pass the word along, so I abandoned that idea.

Behind the stage were some reporters and a handful of policemen standing in front of a single barrier across the road to the Presidential Office. I circled around the other side of the rally back to the East Gate, taking a few more pictures, and then back to the MRT. Some friends of mine said I should be careful at the rally, as they’d heard that the DPP was planning to start something, but it all seemed under control, peaceful, even cheerful and optimistic. Many people smiled at me, and nobody seemed even close to violence. Not long ago one DPP lawmaker said he wished Shih had been killed in his activist days, and lots of stories about his various character flaws, most notably from his ex-wife Linda Arrigo, have surfaced since he started the campaign. It’s not surprising; I would expect the same thing to happen to anyone in Shih’s position. I was half expecting Shih to do a 180 after all the arrangements had been made and turn it into a pro-Chen thing, but he’d have to have a terrific exit strategy if he pulled that now.

Someone told me James Soong was there, but I didn’t see him. Soong seems to be pushing Ma Ying-jeou to join in their campaign, but Ma, caught between the more radical and the more moderate camps of the opposition, doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about it. He apparently doesn’t see any reason for Chen to step down, and frankly I agree. I also suspect that most of the protesters didn’t actually expect the president to step down and were just trying to express their dissatisfaction with him. If Chen steps down, they’ll have dealt the DPP a serious blow. If not, they’ll have made their point. We’ll see how things work on, but while 2008 is still a ways off, I don’t see the point of spending that time under Annette Lu’s leadership rather than Chen’s.
This might not be about the current president, however. One person to watch in all of this is Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, who could be in line for a premiership if Su is taken down, either as a result of Chen stepping down or a concession if he doesn’t. Wang, who has the backing of not only Soong but also former president Lee Teng-hui, has never liked playing second fiddle to Ma, and some reckon he might make his own run for the presidency in 2008.

All of this, however, depends on what happens in the next few months.

The rain continued on Sunday, and I spent the afternoon drinking tea at the Wistaria teahouse with Prince Roy, his wife and her friend, and Wayne, who showed up soaking wet with his Canon 30D not recognizing his lenses for some reason. He fiddled with the equipment, trying to get it to work as we chatted over a couple different kinds of teas and listened to the driving rain outside. As usual, the mixture of Chinese and English at the table left me feeling slightly sub-par in both languages. I usually try to stick with either one or the other. This is probably a habit leftover from when I was studying Chinese and refused to allow myself to lapse into English when I encountered an idea or term I wasn’t familiar with. Instead, I would force myself to think of a way to explain it in Chinese without actually using the term I didn’t know.

After the tea, PR and I got some sandwiches, and I trudged back to the station through the ankle-deep puddles. The band was practicing at the Sandcastle, and I didn’t want to be late. It turned out I was earlier than everyone except for David. The rehearsal went well, though we had to stop too soon, just as I was working out some nice harmonies with Sandman on one song. Ah, well, next time. I think our next gig is the Daniel Pearl Day party at Treasure Hill on the 30th. See our website for more details when we know more.

I was standing in front of the movie theater on Linsen on Friday night, after taking a lengthy stroll around town with my camera to try and capture a wet night-time version of Taipei. I hadn’t been there in years. After Warner Village opened there wasn’t much of a point.

But I used to go there all the time. Mindcrime and I would see movies there when I got leave from the army, and it was what I looked forward to most when I walked past the guards and off base to get on a bus to Taipei. I’d even write down when certain movies were premiering in my little notebook, just to take out and look at when I needed a pick-up in the barracks.

As I walked by this time, it was like the last decade had never passed; nothing had changed except for the movie posters on the wall. Vendors were selling smoked sausage, and clothes on sale were strewn all over the sidewalk.

I half expected to see Mindcrime and Janice standing there waiting with tickets to the next show, after which we’d go to a coffeeshop and wonder about the new Star Wars movies.

After hearing that a friend of mine found some unsettling news concerning a close aquaintence of hers after a Google search, I thought I’d do one myself to see what came up.

Alas, it seems I am not the complete angel you thought I was. From this ESL site, way back in 2003, a user by the telling handle “B-S” wrote this about me:

“This ignominious and obviously rather desperate-to-get-out-of-America (why? who really knows?) individual´s last claim to fame was slagging foreign teachers in Taiwan in the debate over the proposed “Taiwan JET” scheme. He wrote in the Taipei Times that foreign teachers are lazy and greedy, so a big chunk of their salary under the scheme should be held until their contracts have been completed satisfactorily!

I don´t know, do you want to become one of those????”

At first I thought: Oh noes! My carefully hidden past existence as the infamously heartless Mexican bandit El Mono Feo has finally come to light! But hold on a minute, I can’t recall ever having anything published in the Taipei Times, much less anything about English teaching, which I know next to nothing about.

Reading on, it appears I also have a suspicious, possibly criminal past:

“I think it is humiliating for anyone to receive citizenship in such a way (except an orphaned child, of course). The R.O.C. officials wondered what Locke was running away from in America and such questions would certainly crop up in your case too.”

I can’t seem to add any more comments to the thread, and my email to the webmaster just bounced back. But wow, this guy knows so much about me! Except for the thing about the Taipei Times, my past, exactly what happened in Hong Kong, and, well, just about everything else.

Next thing you know he’ll be going on about those traffic tickets…oops, I’ve said too much already! Forget I wrote that!