Saw this new piece of graffiti on the border of the Zhongzheng and Wanlong Districts of Taipei. It reads 「民不聊生」 (“The people have no way of making a living”) and across the top in a slightly different shade (possibly added by another person?) is 「發現金」 (“Issue Cash”), suggesting the government give out cash for stimulus.
Taiwan is back in heightened Level 2 restrictions, meaning that while restaurants and other venues are gradually opening up, bars and clubs and many entertainment venues are still closed. Not going to jinx it, but cases have been down for several days now, so hopefully life can return to normal soon and business owners will be able to start making some money again.
The NHI-funded COVID-19 vaccine appointment booking website has been released.
First of all, if you haven’t already downloaded the NHI app and logged in (the same one used to book masks) you can find instructions here.
If you’ve already got the app, the steps seem incredibly simple. When the system is operational, you can click the COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment on your app:
After checking your system requirements are up to scratch, it will prompt you to enter you ARC/ID number, the OTP code from your app and a captcha code:
To access the OTP code, you just go into your NHI app and click the OTP password option:
The fun thing about Taipei is that political opinions are often very in your face, whether it is a taxi driver going on about how the ruling party is driving the economy into the ground or a random bit of graffiti scrawled on a traffic box about the Taoyuan Mayor that piques your curiosity as to the context:
太子鄭文燦 Crown prince Cheng Wen-tsan
The frame of reference for this fantastic piece of “artwork” dates back to the words of Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) back in May. He suggested that there were double standards going on, in that the 1st Mayor of Taoyuan Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) had received special treatment when it came to the Novotel outbreak of coronavirus because of his favorable position in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, as Lo put it he is a 「綠朝太子」 “the crown prince of the Green dynasty” – here green is a reference to the colors of the DPP vs the blue of the opposition KMT (Lo’s party). The accusation is that Cheng was able to push all of the responsibility on to the central government because of this special treatment, while other mayors got lambasted for doing the same. Lo then went on to taunt Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), asking him if he was jealous of this special treatment (an attack based on Ko’s tumultuous past relationship with the DPP).
Ko–who always seems to have a quip at the ready–.replied that if he’d pushed all the the responsibility to the central government, the situation would have been f*cked long ago and he doesn’t have it as easy as some (pointing no elbows at Cheng I’m sure).
Did the one-night stand you’d rather forget leave his/her charger in your room last night? Or is the parcel you just received from Shoppee not as advertised? Instead of queuing at the post office during working hours or making a shameful trek to the yellow line and having that awkward, “Wanna do it again?” “No, thanks! Here’s your charger! Bye!” chat in person, you can just send whatever you’ve got to a 7-11 near them.
You don’t have to buy a special bag or anything, just wrap it in a paper bag or reuse a box. You’ll need the recipient’s name, phone number and the name or number of the 7-11 of their choice, along with NT$60 for goods worth NT$0-1000, or slightly more for more expensive items (see below).
Step 1: Open the app:
Step 2: Click the 「服務」 icon just to the right of the bottom center icon:
Saw this anti-American rant on my way to the shops today. Clearly someone’s out for attention. As the punctuation is a bit of a mess, I’ve tried to interpret the most likely meaning, but welcome any corrections.
If the US thinks Taiwan is a force for good, and a beacon of freedom and democracy in Asia, they should treat us as equals. We shouldn’t accept the Medigen vaccine, just because they sent the health secretary. Everyone should resist Medigen and resist the US strong-arming its way into interfering in domestic vaccine policy and not halting Taiwan-US trade negotiations during the pandemic. Boycott Medigen, resist US medicine’s bullying of Taiwan, resist unequal trade, resist the right to life being exchanged for other interests; See the fake kindness of the US for what it is.
To be honest, this kind of rant is not uncommon on social media platforms in Taiwan, I just thought it was interesting to see it posted over a traffic box.
I also thought it was slightly ironic that the poster used the Japanese variant of 「亞」(亜), given that people with this kind of anti-American stance, are usually very anti-Japan too.
The views expressed above are just an observation, and do not represent my own views.
The internet has brought us all sorts of newly coined terms, like 「五毛」 (Wumao/Five centers/internet users paid to promote PRC talking points), 「小粉紅」 (young jingoistic Chinese netizens) and others. But one that keeps coming up recently is 「反串」fǎnchuàn which is actually a repurposed opera term, originally meaning to play a character deviating from your normal repertoire.
But in the hostility-laden world of cross-strait social media interactions, it’s used to indicate deliberately posing as the enemy or opponent online, either to discredit their arguments, destroy their image or go so extreme that even the people on their side get put off. This is the social media equivalent of a bad guy impersonating Superman and kicking a little boy in the shin on camera. An alternative use is satire, mocking of the way the other side argues their case.
The latter seems to be what Lin Wei-feng, the husband of the deputy director of the DPP’s social media operations center, is claiming he was doing when he took to Taiwan’s popular bulletin board system PTT (which has been closed to new registrations for a while now due to suspected infiltration by Chinese trolls) to tell people to block or delete the Centers of Disease Control’s Line account on their phones and spreading a range of other disinformation. In what some (the KMT mostly) presume was a stage-managed gesture, DPP Legislator drew attention to the posts stating that PRC collaborators had infiltrated the platform and added that fake versions of the CDC Line app were being used to spread disinformation online. Lin’s apology refutes the idea that this was a DPP plot in a “so cringy it has the ring of truth” apology he posted to Facebook, which includes lines like “In fact, my partner has often expressed annoyance at my use of social media, and has advised me not to get caught up in wars of words on the internet.”:
This whole story was summarized recently by one of my favorite Taiwanese internet celebrities Potter King, in which he rightly states, that just because in this case it was a Taiwanese person behind the “disinformation,” doesn’t mean that China isn’t engaged in disinformation campaigns against Taiwan. Lin’s actions have made it all the more difficult for the DPP to make this case without the political baggage that he’s added to it being brought up over and over again.
The moral of the story is, even if you think you’re being extremely witty on the internet, don’t spread anything that could be interpreted as disinformation (especially when your wife works for the party currently in power).
I was quite surprised to get this leaflet through the mail earlier today. At first thought it was an advert for a vegetarian restaurants, but looks like it’s just aimed at promoting vegetarianism/veganism in Taiwan:
“After animals die, their flesh contains germs which are the leading cause of tumors and cancer in the human body. So eating a vegetarian diet and exercising to expel these toxins is really of the utmost importance.”
Interesting to find out who is behind this propaganda effort, as there are no clues on the leaflet itself.
This post is not an endorsement of the message of the leaflet or the pseudo-scientific claims therein, purely posted for curiosity (which killed the cat and subsequently led to toxins infecting said cat’s flesh…).
I spotted this intriguing-looking character on a signboard on a road I have walked down a million times before. It looks like a cross between 「優」(yōu/excellent) and 「收」(shōu/to receive):
Google tells me the name of the company–which sells office supplies and prints name cards–is 「猷美」(yóuměi), so the other two characters on the sign seem decorative. If anyone has solved this mystery before or has any suggestions, let me know.
I tried the variant dictionary already and there does seem to be a wide variety of different forms of 「優」, none I saw though replaced the 「心」and 「夂」 with a 「收」though:
Update: Thanks to jdmartinsen for resolving the mystery, stating that the 「丩」 is likely a stylized 「忄」:
劉炳森寫的優
The 「優」 in the sign seems to resemble the style of calligrapher Liu Bingsen, as shown in this calligraphic database.
You can see that the 「有」 also employs a variant form, with 「𠂇」 written 「㐅」, similar but not identical to one of the variants listed below:
Another sign in a shop two streets away had this (rather more common) variant of 「價」(jià/price):
This simplified version of 「價」 is also the Japanese kanji version of the character, 「価」(か/ka). Cool to see the use of variants in action and perhaps Japanese usage influencing choice of shorthand in Chinese.
In endless time and space Each person Is just a speck of dust But a speck of dust
I’m a piece of lint Light as a spore Swept by fate Swept by the wind On to your clothes
(An extract)
Shaky hands, sorry!
Hsu Hui-chih (許悔之) is a poet and calligrapher born in 1966 in Taoyuan in Taiwan. He graduated from National Taipei Institute of Technology (now National Taipei University of Technology) in chemical engineering and has worked as the editor of the supplements of the Liberty Times and China Evening News and the chief editor of literary monthly magazine Unitas.
As you might be able to tell, I was feeling kind of sheepish when I took the photo, hence the blurriness, so had to Google parts of the poem to make it out. That’s when I discovered that the poem has a final verse that wasn’t included in the MRT version as below:
微塵眾啊 微塵眾 如此眾中 遇到你
In a cloud of dust Amid the dust In this swirling mass I came upon you
I liked how the poet was able to convey that sense of wonder at finding a kindred spirit at a certain point in the infinity of time and space. There’s also a recognition of the relative insignificance of humanity in terms of the universe, similar to Carl Sagan’s reflections on planet earth being portrayed as a pale blue dot in the Voyager 1’s pictures of the solar system:
Mountains May Depart (《山河故人》 Jia Zhang-ke, 2015) depicts the breakdown of small town culture and a family unit in China, the price paid for the pursuit of the Chinese Dream and ‘going West’.
The film opens with a surreal scene of a group of people dancing to the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of ‘Go West’ by the Village People. Although this appears jarring at first glance, the symbolism of the song when sung from a Chinese perspective, ties in with the stated ambition of one of the protagonists, Zhang Jinsheng, to bring the object of his affection, Shen Tao, to the US. In the small town of Fenyang in Shanxi Zhang has a violent falling out with his friend Liangzi over the pursuit of the female lead, Shen Tao. There are then successive jumps through time, from 1996 to 2014 and finally to 2025.
We follow Zhang Jinsheng as he wins Tao’s affections (attempting to bomb Liangzi in the process), they get married and have a baby together, while the spurned Liangzi travels to another province to work in mining. As we jump again, we learn that the marriage has failed and Zhang has taken their son to live in Shanghai, while Shen Tao remains in her hometown. She has limited contact with her son, Dollar, and they have several tense and awkward exchanges when he returns from Shanghai for her father’s funeral.
With the next jump in time, Liangzi returns home after being diagnosed with lung cancer and meets again with Tao in Fenyang where she offers to pay for his treatment. An increasingly unhinged Zhang Jinsheng has taken Dollar to live in Australia, where he has all but forgotten his mother. Zhang himself hangs around with other people from his province, unable to return due to ongoing corruption purges back home and largely unable to communicate with his son, having to resort to Google Translate to hold a conversation. Dollar subsequently develops a romantic attraction to his Chinese teacher, an older woman from Hong Kong (and mother substitute), and announces that he is leaving his father. The film ends with another rendition of ‘Go West’, this time with Tao dancing alone.
As Michelle Huang’s (黃宗儀) points out in her book ‘New Feelings Between China and Hong Kong: The Politics of Emotion in Dreams of Development’ (《中港新感覺：發展夢裡的情感政治》), the culprit in the eventual misery of each of the characters in the film seems to be globalism and new iterations of the “Chinese Dream” that spur people on towards an illusory upward mobility. Contrary to popular representations of the nouveau riche in China as an aspirational identity, Huang suggests the film’s subversion of the conventional perception of the nouveau riche (「新富」) stating:
In Mountains May Depart, the nouveau riche aren’t purely represented as smug members of the developed world, or as those who have forgotten their roots, on the contrary, impoverished people and the nouveau riche become the ‘kitchen waste of history’, with societal development they lose their desires and sense of orientation.
Zhang JinSheng ticks all the boxes of the Chinese success story on the surface, but in reality, he is unmoored in Australia (which although in the cultural west, is ironically east of China), hanging around with a group of fellow exiles from his home province and isolated from his son. Huang talks about how Zhang Jinsheng is never really able to make the conversion from small town mindset to global or international point of view and part of this is represented linguistically. Part of this small-town mentality, is Zhang’s (rather clumsy and over the top at times) hypermasculinity, whether it is his incel-like plot to blow up his friend and rival for the affections of Shen Tao, or the collection of guns he keeps in Australia. This association of small town mindset with traditional gender roles also applies to Dollar, who Shen Tao scolds for the effeminacy she perceives as Shanghai (metropolitan/cosmopolitan) affectations, which she contrasts with the 「爽快」 (lit. frank and straightforward; read masculinity) values of small towns. She angrily removes his cravat and tells him his use of the Chinese equivalent to “Mummy” (媽米) instead of “Ma/Mum” (媽) isn’t manly enough:
-Dollar, why aren’t you speaking to your mother? Call me ma! -Mummy -Mummy? Who taught you to say that? You should be more straightforward, and call me ma. -Ma -Are you a boy or a girl? Who put this thing on you?
The distance between mother and son is also emphasized through the latter’s use of Shanghainese on the phone to the woman we suppose is his step-mother and his inability to speak the local dialect. Huang states that Dollar’s ultimate unhappiness also subverts the conventional portrayals of the 「富二代」 (second-generation wealthy) in China:
Conventionally portrayed as the final victors in the social transition spurred by China’s rise and globalization, the second-generation of wealth in the film is portrayed as rootless. Dollar feels constricted and exasperated by post-socialist development.
Huang points to Tao as the embodiment of the small town culture that we see eroded throughout the course of the film, represented in the decline of Chinese New Year traditions (and Tao’s role in them at the start vs. when Liangzi returns from the other province):
In Mountains May Depart, Jia Zhang-ke uses the character of Shen Tao to embody nativist affection and values, to reflect the small hometown of his memory (or more accurately his imagination).
This evoked for me Shen Cong-wen’s portrayal of the border regions of China, chronicling an era on the brink of its own demise.
Some parts later in the film, particularly those parts filmed in Australia felt a little more melodramatic and corny compared to the rest of the film, but overall the film was well-paced and moving.
