The quality of life for a dog in Taiwan depends entirely on it’s owner. That is no different from most places in the world. It just seems that the range of peoples attitudes to dogs has greater extremes than the culture in which I grew up.
Because it was Chinese New Year, because we have children and because we were visiting family in Tainan we went along to the Candy Factory/YoYo TV/New Year exhibition in Tainan county.
Because it was Chinese New Year, so did a lot of other families. In fact, it seemed like all the families in Taiwan were there!
Of all the modes of transport all over the world it seems to be the fishing boat that maintain a localalized style. Airplanes, cars, ships, motorbikes and even bikes may have slight national differences but for the most part, there all tend to blend to the same globalized shape and style. I suspect fishing boats are different because they are built locally for local needs. The Taiwanese fishing boat highlights just how distinct a regional style can be.
These boats look quite unstable as they rock from side to side in the water. As if a push from one side would topple them over and expose the hull. But these are the boats that keep the local fish markets full.
Living on the heavily populated and industrialised plains around Koahsiung it is difficult to believe that just 25 km away there exists a great mountain range that is hardly populated, clean and mostly untouched. That is not to say they are completely covered in virgin rain-forest. No, all the really good timber was removed years ago through logging, any flattish area is used for cultivating something and many of the slopes are covered in betel nut plantations or orchards. But large tracks of the Taiwan mountain area are completely isolated and only accessible by foot.
For the southern two thirds of the island there are really only two roads that allow west to east travel through the mountain range. The middle road passes over at Hehuan shan at 3200m . The southern road passes over at Yakou at 2722m.
Travelling these roads it is easy to see why there are only the two. Much of the roadways hug closely to the rock walls, or pass over large gullies and streams. There are continuous teams of excavators and rock clearers keeping the road passable. When a typhoon passes through, the roads are normally closed for a few days to weeks at a time as they clear the rockfalls, rebuild the washouts and carve new tracks into the walls that have slid away. A drive along highway 20 is a drive along a geological work in progress.
We travelled on a weekend when a north easterly had drawn cold and dusty air down from the Gobi desert in northern China. The dust made the vista views of mountains quite misty. The cold made us realise we needed warmer clothes.
Back in the late 80’s and 90’s Kaohsiung harbour ranked the third busiest container port in the world. In 1989 I remember being able to count 20 to 30 ships at anchor off Chichin island awaiting entry to the harbour.
Today much of the manufacturing of Taiwan has moved to China and Kaohsiung has dropped rank to sixth busiest. Though total containers have increased over the years, Kaohsiung harbour today does not have the same hustle and bustle feel as it had back in 89.
Being the resourceful and industrious people they are, it is hardly surprising that the “ex-shipping container” can be seen all over the Kaohsiung country side. Of course this is not anything particularly unique to Kaohsiung or Taiwan. It is simply the prevalence of the twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) that make them so striking as you wander around.
Now I am not a demographer, an academic or a politician. But the observation I make here should be obvious to all of those professions here in Taiwan.
Wandering around Kaohsiung I have seen that many universities are undertaking construction. This at a time they are struggling to fill courses and the population demographic for future students is looking grim.
The recently opened Dream Mall in Kaohsiung has allowed this city to claim having the largest shopping mall in Taiwan and probably the largest in Asia.
It contains 9 floors of speciality shops, restaurants, a cinema complex, an entertain complex and to top it all off, a roof top fun park with a giant Ferris wheel.
It must be said that the range of beautiful insects in Taiwan is truly amazing.
Not much survives the blanket spraying practised on the agricultural lands. There are few really interesting insects in and around our street. But if you move away from the betel nut groves and rice fields into the forests in the mountains you are overwhelmed with the range insects.
After six months of threats and promises I have finally made good on them all and published my blog.
I recently bought a Nikon D40x camera and hope to make good use of it filling the web with photos of life in Taiwan.
What better subject for my camera’s first photo than the salesman… [Read more →]
