2012Vol.42No.6

THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN TAIPEI

Taiwan Business

Topics SPECIAL ISSUE

Travel & Culture

TAIWAN BUSINESS TOPICS June 2012 | Vol. 42 | Issue 6 中華郵政北台字第 號執照登記為雜誌交寄 5000 6_2012_Cover.indd 1

NT$150

June 2012 | Vol. 42 | Issue 6 www.amcham.com.tw

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ADVERTORIAL

The Shin Yeh Restaurants From Humble Traditional Roots To Gourmet Culinary Heights

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ntil a few decades ago, Zhongshan (then spelled Chungshan) North Road was the busiest north-south artery in Taipei and the center of most international business activity. Visiting foreign dignitaries usually stayed in the Grand Hotel and their motorcades could often be seen proceeding down the avenue to the government offices downtown.

It was in that era and in that neighborhood that businesswoman Lee Xiuying founded the first Shin Yeh restaurant in 1977, just as Taiwan’s economic takeoff was at its beginning stages.

The location in a back alley not far from Zhongshan North Road had room for only 11 tables, but Li’s kitchen turned out such a succulent assortment of traditional Taiwanese dishes – such as panfried fragrant turnip omelette, roasted mullet fish roe served with turnip and leek, and golden fried cuttle fishball – that the establishment soon developed a wide reputation. Taiwanese traditional cuisine is very healthful compared to other regional Chinese cuisines which use heavy seasoning. The ingredients used in Taiwanese cuisine are often fresh and they are usually steamed or quickly stir-fried, retaining their natural nutrients. The enthusiastic stream of steady customers included many native Taiwan-

ese, who had returned from work or study abroad, and who longed for the authentic home-style cuisine that they remembered from their youth. Equally appreciative were foreign residents and tourists who previously were familiar with Cantonese, Sichuanese, and Beijing dishes, but gained their first insights into the delights of Taiwanese cooking by eating at Shin Yeh. Under Mrs. Lee’s direction, the restaurant’s chefs continuously developed new recipes to refine the traditional dishes, elevating them to new levels worthy of being incorporated into a banquet setting. She insisted on using only the best quality of ingredients, often working with suppliers on how to meet the highest standards. She also focused on the minutest details of food preparation, even specifying the thickness to

which green onions should be cut.

With a strong foundation firmly established, Shin Yeh’s expansion began. Besides the flagship store on Shuangcheng Street, just one block east of Zhongshan North Road, the restaurant now has four other branches in Taipei (including a second location on Shuangcheng Street). It has also extended the brand internationally by opening highly successful outlets in Singapore, Beijing, and Japan. And the group has developed new businesses domestically beyond the original focus on traditional Taiwanese cuisine. It operates four Japanese buffet restaurants (three in Taipei and one in Taoyuan), a Shabu Shabu restaurant, two Curry Champs.

The restaurant offering Taiwanese nouveau cuisine, plus the pride and joy of the group: the high-end ambiance restaurant way up on the 85th floor of the iconic Taipei 101, the city’s tallest structure, where the excellence of the gourmet delicacies is matched by the magnificence of the view.

Shin Yeh has come a long way over its 35 years, thanks to the enthusiastic patronage of its loyal customers.

No matter which Shin Yeh restaurant you choose, you can expect a memorable dining experience based on fine food and friendly, efficient service.

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ConTenTS

june 2 0 1 2

volume 42, n umbe r 6 一○一年六 月號

Publisher

Andrea Wu

發行人

吳王小珍

Editor-in-Chief

總編輯

Don Shapiro Art Director/

沙蕩 美術主任 /

Production Coordinator

後製統籌

Katia Chen Staff Writer

陳國梅 採訪編輯

Jane Rickards

李可珍

Manager, Publications Sales & Marketing 廣告行銷經理

Irene Tsao

曹玉佳

Translation

Zep Hu

翻譯

胡立宗 photo : tourism bureau

American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei 129 MinSheng East Road, Section 3, 7F, Suite 706, Taipei 10596, Taiwan P.O. Box 17-277, Taipei, 10419 Taiwan Tel: 2718-8226 Fax: 2718-8182 e-mail: amcham@amcham.com.tw website: http://www.amcham.com.tw 名稱：台北市美國商會工商雜誌 發行所：台北市美國商會 臺北市10596民生東路三段129號七樓706室 電話：2718-8226 傳真：2718-8182 Taiwan Business TOPICS is a publication of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, ROC. Contents are independent of and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Officers, Board of Governors, Supervisors or members. © Copyright 2012 by the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, ROC. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint original material must be requested in writing from AmCham. Production done in-house, Printing by Farn Mei Printing Co., Ltd. 登記字號：台誌第一零九六九號 印刷所：帆美印刷股份有限公司

8 Coming: a Huge expansion at the national Palace museum

The government has announced plans for a US$1 billion project that will more than triple the amount of exhibition space.

By Jane Rickards

12 out and about in historic lukang

This central Taiwan town, a repository of Taiwanese culture, is famed for its temples, shops, and picturesque charm

By Steven Crook

經銷商：台灣英文雜誌社 台北市105敦化北路222巷19之1號1樓 發行日期：中華民國一○一年六月 中華郵政北台字第5000號執照登記為雜誌交寄 ISSN 1818-1961

OFFICERS: Chairman/ Bill Wiseman Vice Chairmen/ William E. Bryson / David Pacey Treasurer: Carl Wegner Secretary/ William J. Farrell 2011-2012 Governors: William E. Bryson, William Farrell, Christine Jih, Steven Lee, Neal Stovicek, Carl Wegner, Bill Wiseman.

16 Yilan: Sights at the end of the Tunnel

The northeastern county of Yilan is now easy enough to reach to make a convenient day trip or weekend getaway.

By Steven Crook

photo : steven crook

21 Serenity and Cold War History on the Islands off matsu

This tranquil but still militarized cluster of islands gives visitors the feeling of being in a different time and place from modern Taiwan.

By Jane Rickards

2012-2013 Governors: Richard Chang, Sean Chao, Michael Chu, Varaporn Dhamcharee, Revital Golan, David Pacey, Lee Wood, Ken Wu. 2012 Supervisors: Agnes Ho, Douglas Klein, Richard Lin, Fupei Wang, Jon Wang.

COMMITTEES: Agro-Chemical/ Melody Wang; Asset Management/ Christine Jih, Winnie Yu; Banking/ Victor Kuan; Capital Markets/ Jane Hwang, Jimin Kao, C.P. Liu; Chemical Manufacturers/ David Price; CSR/ Lume Liao, Fupei Wang; Education & Training/ Robert Lin, William Zyzo; Greater China Business/ Helen Chou, Stephen Tan; Human Resources/ Richard Lin, Seraphim Mar; Infrastructure/ L.C. Chen, Paul Lee; Insurance/ Mark O’Dell, Dan Ting, Lee Wood; Intellectual Property & Licensing/ Jason Chen, Peter Dernbach, Jeffrey Harris, Scott Meikle; Manufacturing/ Thomas Fan; Marketing & Distribution/ Wei Hsiang, Gordon Stewart; Medical Devices/ (vacant); Pharmaceutical/ David Lin, Edgard Olaizola, Jun Hong Park; Private Equity/ William Bryson, Steve Okun; Real Estate/ Tony Chao; Retail/ Prudence Jang, Douglas Klein; Sustainable Development/ Kenny Jeng, Davis Lin; Tax/ Cheli Liaw, Jenny Lin, Josephine Peng; Technology/ Revital Golan, John Ryan, Jeanne Wang; Telecommunications & Media/ Thomas Ee, Joanne Tsai, Ken Wu; Trade/ Stephen Tan; Transportation/ Michael Chu; Travel & Tourism/ Pauline Leung, David Pacey. photo : rich j. matheson

cover photo : rich j. matheson

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photo : tourism bureau

photo : north dakota tourism

photo : time pigeon

38 Taiwan’s Feathered racers

With huge gambling sums on the line, the island has been one of the world’s leading locations for pigeon racing.

By Mark Caltonhill photo : rich j. matheson

42 Taiwan’s newest museums

26 Practicing Islam in Taiwan

Four waves of immigration have led to the presence of a Muslim community on the island.

By Mark Caltonhill

30 behind Fengshui ’s mystique

These principles, followed by Chinese for thousands of years, have recently been also growing currency in the West

By Mark Caltonhill

Some worthwhile new facilities have opened recently in various parts of the island.

By Steven Crook

46 Through the eyes of the Tour Guides

Foreign visitors find much to enjoy in Taiwan, including lovely scenery, good food, interesting museums, and extremely hospitable people.

By Aimee Wong

34 Drumming their way to respect

As shown in a new movie, the Chio-tian troupe turns troubled teens into accomplished folk-artists. photo : mark caltonhill

By Rich J. Matheson

50 Discovering America

In North Dakota, Reminders of the Legendary Old West

By Scooter Pursley

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Coming: a Huge Expansion at the National Palace Museum The government has announced plans for a US$1 billion project that will more than triple the amount of exhibition space.

BY JANE RICKARDS

T

raffic is practically at a standstill on the winding hill road leading to the National Palace Museum, home to the world’s most famous collection of Chinese art. The narrow roadway is clogged with taxis and several large tour buses. Inside the museum’s front lobby, the scene is even more chaotic. Chinese tourist guides wave flags and call loudly to their charges, who are milling among masses of other museum-goers. Throngs of people concentrate around the glass cases showing off the best-known treasures of ancient China, making it almost impossible to get a good look.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the museum, often compared with such leading Western institutions as the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is woefully overcrowded. The number of annual visitors has increased by more than 1.5 million over the last three years, with the currently daily average at 10,540 people. Chinese visitors represent the biggest increase. In 2008, the museum received 2.24 million visitors, of whom 64.31% were Taiwanese, 5.48% mainland Chinese, and 30.21% from other parts of the world. Last year the total increased to 3.85 million visits, consisting 42.8% of Taiwanese, 37.2% mainland Chinese, and 20% from elsewhere.

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“The ceiling of the building is not high enough, and the space is not big enough,” says museum director Chou Kung-shin.

“Currently there are so many people that it is having a big effect on the quality of the experience,” she says.

The museum’s collection of around 693,000 pieces is the world’s largest collection of Chinese imperial art, including scrolls, calligraphy, vases, and bronze utensils, spanning 7,000 years from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the end of the Qing dynasty. Many priceless pieces were removed from the Palace Museum in China’s Forbidden City by the Kuomintang to protect them during the turbulent 1930s, eventually ending up in Taiwan in 1948 after the Nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War. The museum is also home to around 200,000 ancient books, including rare block-print editions from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, as well as nearly 400,000 historical documents from the Qing Dynasty.

But a mere 3,000 of these objects can be exhibited in the museum at any one time, necessitating frequent exhibition changes, usually every few months. The bulk of the

artifacts are always in storage, Chou notes, either in the two underground levels under the museum’s administration building or in two long storage tunnels that extend into the mountains behind the museum, originally put in place to save the treasures in case of an air raid.

Most of the museum buildings, with their jade green tiles and yellow walls designed to evoke the Forbidden City, were built in 1965, when the museum opened in its location in Taipei’s northern suburb of Waishuangxi. The buildings have been enlarged and renovated several times, most notably in 1971 and 1984, she says, but at this point there is no way for architects to radically alter the shape or design of the original structures any further.

Fortunately for art lovers, the government is responding to the overcrowding with an expansion plan worth over US$1 billion. It will cover more than 20 hectares of museum land and create four times the current amount of exhibition space. The project was first announced by President Ma Ying-jeou last year as part of celebrations marking the Republic of China’s

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Pa l a c e M u s e u m

100th anniversary, and the government’s Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) gave the green light to a feasibility study last month.

Of the project’s total budget, which is coming both directly from government coffers and from a government foundation devoted to running the museum, half will be for constructing a new building for exhibitions, Chou says. The old buildings currently offer exhibition space of 3,300 ping (almost 11,000 square meters). The aim is to expand that space three- or four-fold, perhaps up to around 13,200 ping (43,639 square meters).

The size of the new building will all depend on the creativity of the architect and how he or she can utilize space, says Chou. The museum wishes to retain the existing buildings, which sit atop the hill, and expects the architect to work chiefly with the space in front, currently used for a park as well as the grand white staircases leading up the slope. Chou says the museum will hold an international competition at the end of next year to give talented architects the chance to come up with plans to construct a new complex that, once operational in 2024, will be in harmony with the old building while bringing the museum’s main entrance very close to ZhiShan Road below.

After the new building is completed, visitors will be able to see three to four times more artifacts, says Chou, with perhaps over 10,000 items be on display at

one time. It is also hoped that the enlargement will enable research and preservation efforts to be expanded.

Although Chou notes that all plans are still tentative, saying “We have just finished our feasibility study and things could change,” she also refers to plans to convert the current 3.8-hectare parking lot into a Cultural and Creative Industry Park in line with the government’s program to promote cultural and creative industries as one of Taiwan’s Six Emerging Industries. The area is envisioned as featuring exhibition halls, an industrial showroom, lecture halls, a performing arts auditorium, and space to hold workshops for developing cultural and creative industries.

Spotlight on calligraphy One of the highlights of this park, says Chou, is expected to be a Chinese Character and Ink Painting Museum, which will show off the development of Chinese writing and calligraphy from both artistic and educational standpoints. Instead of merely focusing on the history of Chinese characters, it will also serve to educate the public about the aesthetics of calligraphy and the fundamental elements that go into creating Chinese ideographs. The museum intends to utilize the latest technology to create interesting ways to help young people learn Chinese characters and appreciate their beauty and utility, Chou says.

The museum will also hold cultural

and creative workshops, which Chou calls industrial training, to help industries turn out products, with designs inspired by the National Palace Museum, that carry a distinctive Chinese or Taiwanese image for global marketing. “We would like companies to have cultural knowledge,” Chou says. “We will use National Palace Museum artifacts to help them create their own things.”

Chou says these workshops will build on an existing museum program, now in its fourth year, for private industry. The 60-70 companies and organizations that the museum has trained each year have included the Taiwan Textile Research Institute, I-Mei Foods Corp., bicycle maker Giant Manufacturing Co., and Insyde Software Corp.

The six-month courses are divided into three parts. First, executives from companies involved in design or R&D are taught a sense of aesthetics and art appreciation by museum staff, academics, and other experts. Participants are then introduced to National Palace Museum artifacts, such as bronzes, porcelain, and calligraphy, along with the museum’s digital applications relating to artifacts. The third stage involves brainstorming sessions where companies come up with derivative products that would appeal to consumers.

The workshops provide a platform for the museum to cooperate with private companies and make connections useful for marketing efforts. According to the museum’s 2011 annual report, last year 92 companies cooperated with the museum (whether through the workshops or in other ways) to create various cultural and creative products with an annual sales value of over NT$396 million (more than US$13 million). In addition, last year the museum had licensing agreements with 20 companies, including Taiwanese glass maker Tittot and the EasyCard Corp., to permit them to create products based on the digital images of the museum’s collection. The museum estimates the royalty revenues from licensing in 2011 to be NT$4 million, with the combined revenue from all contracts with the private sector as NT$366 million. It hopes that these kinds of business opportunities will greatly expand in the new park.

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workshops for young designers, Chou says, to help foster new talent. Overall, around US$500 million of the budget will be devoted both to the Industry Park, which is expected to be finished in 2016, and to renovating the existing administrative buildings and exhibition space.

In an April 30 statement, the CEPD projected that the entire project will generate NT$151 billion (around US$5 billion) in income over 30 years, including entrance fees, gains from land appreciation, and earnings from the cultural and creative sectors. By 2041, the museum hopes to reach a target of seven million visitors a year.

CEPD also estimates that an average of 6,500 jobs will be created annually up to 2024, including construction workers and employees in museum-related cultural and creative enterprises. After 2024, that number would be 2,200 jobs annually.

The ambitious new project starts another chapter in the museum’s tumultuous history. The National Palace Museum officially opened in 1925 as part of an effort by political figures in the then still nascent Chinese republic to prevent the restoration of the last emperor. The new museum was housed in what had been the Imperial Palace in Beijing, better known as the Forbidden City. When the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek became worried about a possible Japanese attack in 1933, it sent the crated-up pieces in the collection in wheelbarrows to the Beijing train station for transport into the Chinese interior. The treasures wandered all over China for almost 16 years before the first batch arrived by boat in Keelung in 1948.

Southern branch Under the rule of pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian, plans were approved in 2004 for a southern branch of the museum in Chiayi, to focus on Taiwan’s interactions with the rest of Asia so as to dilute the museum’s concentration on China. Aside from exhibiting rare antiques and art from throughout Asia, the Chiayi branch was also seen as enabling more of the treasures stored in Taipei to be shown to the public. The prestigious American architectural firm of APA under architect Antoine Predock was contracted to design the buildings.

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President Ma Ying-jeou announces plans to expand the exhibition space at the National Palace Museum more than threefold and have the southern branch of the museum operating in 2015 as part of his “Golden Decade” vision for the nation. photo :cna

But the southern expansion ran into numerous delays, and the museum eventually canceled the contract with APA. Chou says the budget APA asked for was too high, whereas an APA executive quoted in the Taipei Times in 2010 said the delays and squabbles demonstrated that the museum was not serious about the project. There were also numerous technical issues relating to the suitability of the site, such as its susceptibility to flooding. The museum later contracted with Taiwan’s Artech firm under noted architect Kris Yao to take over the project. Yao finished the final design in May, Chou says, and construction is scheduled to begin in September and be finished in 2015.

Since the election in 2008 of Ma Yingjeou, cross-Strait ties have become warmer.

Taiwan has opened up to millions of Chinese tourists, keen to see the treasures that their government still claims the KMT stole from Beijing – as well as to experience the traditional culture lost during the Cultural Revolution. This influx of mainland tourists is a main factor behind the plans for the museum’s expansion. Chinese tourists flock to see the museum’s famed jadedite cabbage, whose last known owner was the Imperial consort Jin Fei. It was probably a wedding present upon her marriage to the Emperor Guangxu in 1889. The Chinese visitors also love the miniature carvings of ivory, wood, and bamboo from the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

But more essentially, the museum is seen

by Ma as a repository of Chinese culture, Chou says. Cultivating that connection is a “soft” way of engaging with the mainland.

As a result, “we play an important role in President Ma’s cross-Strait policies,” Chou maintains. Under Ma, exchanges have begun with Chinese museums, including the Beijing Palace Museum and Shanghai Museum. Still, the National Palace Museum declines to lend many of its most valuable treasures in the absence of sufficient legal guarantees from China of their return.

In the meantime, there is still a way to escape the crowds before this enormous project is realized, says Liu Chun-chi of the museum’s public affairs office. Since July 2010, the museum has lengthened its opening hours to deal with the hordes of visitors. It now opens at 8:30 a.m. instead of 9 and closes at 6:30 p.m. instead of 5.

Liu recommends visiting between 4:30 and 6:30 when, she says, it is a bit quieter. Liu says the museum is also considering receiving tour groups and individual visitors on different days; for example Wednesdays and Fridays might be open only to individual visitors. “These plans are still being evaluated,” Liu says.

“What is most important is that we expand the space so that the quality of the visit improves,” director Chou concludes.

“We want to provide visitors with a good experience.”

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Out and About in Historic Lukang This central Taiwan town, a repository of Taiwanese culture, is famed for its temples, shops, and picturesque charm.

BY steven crOOk ph o to s: rich j. mat hes on

L

ukang, as every Taiwanese knows, is a place where the forces of modernization have failed to make much of an impression. In terms of architecture and genuine living, breathing tradition, much remains of the old settlement. If anywhere in Taiwan deserves to be called “a living museum,” it is this town, 155 kilometers south from Taipei.

In middle of last year, Lukang's historical importance received an unusual form of recognition. The Ministry of the Interior decided that because the spelling “Lukang” has been used by non-Chinese since at least 1842, road signs and official documents would continue to use that version, rather than “Lugang” – the town's name when spelled according to hanyu pinyin , the system of romanization adopted by the central government. Road names within Lukang are to be romanized according to hanyu pinyin , but as in many other parts of Taiwan, older signs often show different spellings.

Lukang’s heyday lasted about 100 years, starting in the middle of the 18th century. During that period it was a population, trading, and shipping center second 12

only to the then capital of Tainan.

Until the arrival of the Japanese in 1895, commercial and civic affairs in Lukang were dominated by three clans and eight guilds. According to American anthropologist Donald DeGlopper, who did fieldwork in Lukang in 1967, until the 1930s the three clans – surnamed Shih, Hsu, and Huang – had an unusual way of letting off steam: “The men... would gather every year on one day in the early spring, line up by surname, and throw rocks at their fellows of other surnames... The rock fight was a festive public occasion; women and children watched and cheered; vendors sold snacks. Blood was shed and teeth lost, but no one was ever killed. [Some people] believed that if blood was not shed in the spring, then the community might suffer bad luck during the coming year.”

Of the eight guilds, one consisted of merchants who traded with Quanzhou in Fujian Province Another comprised those who exported rice and sugar to, and imported timber from, the Kinmen archipelago and the Fujian towns of Xiamen and Zhangzhou. A third guild imported

salted fish products from Guangdong and Penghu; the others focused on oil, cloth, dye, sugar, and groceries.

Town elders are sometimes blamed for the passing of Lukang’s glory days. It is said that in the early days of Japanese rule, when the authorities were determining the precise route of Taiwan’s north-south railroad, town leaders lobbied against routing the rail line through Lukang. They failed to understand the economic importance of a rail connection. Perhaps, like 19th-century Chinese, they believed this new, noisy technology would upset the area’s fengshui .

A look at a map of Changhua County gives this explanation less plausibility. It is unlikely the colonial authorities seriously considered having the railroad veer toward the ocean, and then back inland, to link a town whose harbor had silted up – the main reason for the town’s decline – and whose leading businessmen had begun moving elsewhere.

Not many years later, trains were in fact running through the heart of Lukang. No one seems to have objected in 1911 when a Japanese-owned sugar company laid nar-

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row-gauge tracks and built a station within 150 meters of Longshan Temple, one of the town’s holiest sites. After World War II, the government-owned Taiwan Sugar Corp. operated passenger services from this point.

The building was abandoned between the 1970s and early last year, when it reopened as a visitor information center [110 Zhanglu Road, Section 8; Open: 9am-5pm every day; Tel: (04) 776-1739].

Lukang’s staggering density of historical and cultural attractions means a great deal can be seen in the course of a walking tour. Longshan Temple is less than a mile from the other shrine every visitor should see, Tianhou Temple, and almost everything of interest lies between these two houses of worship.

Like its namesake in Taipei’s Wanhua District, Lukang’s Longshan Temple is a shrine of island-wide renown. Its fame rests on its being a superb example of traditional religious architecture. Despite earthquake damage in 1795, 1848, and 1999, the temple retains a tremendous sense of antiquity as well as considerable beauty.

Originally located 600 meters to the north on what is now Dayou Street, the 359-year-old temple is likely the oldest Buddhist house of worship in Taiwan.

The main object of veneration is Guanyin, the Chinese female manifestation of the male Indian deity Avalokiteshvara. The

seated Guanyin was sculpted in 1928 to replace a Tang Dynasty original destroyed by fire seven years earlier. At the behest of Japanese Buddhists backed by the colonial authorities, the effigy was kept in a side chamber until 1945, when it took up what locals see as its rightful place in the main hall. The largest Guanyin icon in the temple was donated in 1962.

The most famous feature is not an effigy but rather the octagonal “algal well” ceiling near the front of the complex.

Designed to fool malign spirits into thinking the shrine is in fact underwater (and thus impervious to arson, a major hazard considering the amount of wood here), it is a dazzling work of art that converges on the whiskery face of a dragon. Be sure to study the intricately carved windows before moving onto the doorways. There are 99 of such doorways, some conventional rectangles, while others are octagonal or circular.

Moving northwest from Longshan Temple toward Tianhou Temple, one option is to follow Lukang’s principal commercial thoroughfare, Zhongshan Road. The other is to move through the side streets that run parallel with Zhongshan Road.

Muslims and museums If you take the main road, your first stop should be the Ding Mansion at num-

ber 132. This sensitively restored residence was built by Ding Shou-quan in the early 1880s, just after he passed the highest level of China's imperial civil-service examination to become a jinshi (“presented scholar”). A red and gold tablet signifying his status is fixed high above the doorway to the central chamber. If you leave by the back door, you will see the Lukang Folk Arts Museum [Admission: adults NT$130, students NT$70; Open: Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-5pm; Tel: (04) 777-2019].

The museum is housed in a French Baroque-style mansion built in 1913-1919 by the Koo family, then as now one of Taiwan's leading business clans. In 1973, the Koos donated the building to establish the museum; at the same time they also handed over a much older Fujianese-style house on the same site, plus many of the items now on display inside. The traditional clothes, furniture, and musical instruments provide a good introduction to the lifestyles of Taiwan's gentry a century ago.

The neighboring Ding family, who a r r i v e d f r o m F u j i a n i n t h e 1820s, i s thought to have been of Muslim descent.

There are no signs of this inside the mansion, however, where an ancestral shrine occupies a prominent position. The disappearance of Lukang’s Muslims was gradual. In the 17th and 18th centuries, migrants setting out from Quanzhou included some

Ding Mansion (left) is a stone's throw from Lukang Folk Arts Museum (right). Both were built by eminent local families.

The two-character inscribed board above the doorway in the Ding Mansion celebrates the success of one scion in imperial civil-service examinations during the Qing Dynasty. taiwan business topics • june 2012

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(Left) A descendant of the Lins – formally Lukang's richest family – earns a living by carving wooden panels.

(Right) One of Wu Dun-hou's apprentices paints a lantern outside the master's store.

of the many Middle Eastern merchants who had been living there for generations before the opening of Taiwan. Many were already semi-assimilated into Han society before reaching the island, where they gradually forgot their customs.

A few households reportedly still possess Korans, which they cannot read, but which they respect because they know their ancestors regarded it as a holy book. It is said these families still prepare deceased relatives for burial by washing them in an Islamic manner and wrapping them in simple white shrouds, rather than dressing them in multiple layers of clothing as decreed by Han Chinese custom. Lukang’s Muslim cemetery is long gone, and where a mosque once stood, around five kilometers north of Tianhou Temple, there is now a Taiwanese folk shrine. Aware of the site’s history, some of those who worship in Xincuo Changan Temple purposely exclude pork from their offerings.

Between its bank branches and bubbletea vendors, Zhongshan Road still has quite a number of traditional businesses.

Palanquins – the ornate wooden sedan chairs in which god effigies are carried during religious parades – are finished and sold along the southern end of the road. Except for its facade, which was built before World War II, the hardware store at num14

ber 149 is reputedly 200 years old. Peek inside and you will see wooden stairways and ceiling beams that look as though they date from the time when the ocean lapped at the back of this and neighboring properties. Nowadays, the nearest saltwater is about three kilometers away.

The herbal pharmacy at number 196 is quite photogenic, but the proprietor does not allow outsiders to take pictures inside.

At number 232, a store sells fishing nets of all sizes and types. The three-story building on the corner of Minzu and Zhongshan Roads is not as old as some of its neighbors, but it deserves attention for being an excellent example of the Art Deco-influenced shop-houses built along this road in the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the head office of Yu Zhen Zhai, a traditional bakery founded in 1877 (other branches are at 420 and 444 Zhongshan Road).

At number 312, near to where the road is closed to cars on weekends because of the crush of people around Tianhou Temple, the Wu Dun-hou Lantern Store [Tel: (04) 777-6680] showcases the handpainted bamboo-framed paper lanterns that have earned Wu an international reputation. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Lady Gaga are among those who have left Taiwan with a Wu Dun-hou lantern in their luggage. The award-winning artisan is now

in his late eighties and seldom puts in an appearance, but you have a good chance of seeing someone he trained working on the sidewalk, putting the finishing touches to a lantern.

Cheng Huang Temple Lukang’s Cheng Huang Temple can be found at number 366. Before stepping inside, take a close look at the stone lions out front. They are secured to the sidewalk by steel bars – to prevent them from being stolen, according to the volunteers who manage the temple.

Such fear is ironic, as the temple's resident deities are believed to be especially good at resolving cases of theft. One wellknown story involves the founder of one of Taiwan's largest computer companies.

In 1986, valuable proprietary items went missing from an Acer Inc. facility. Conventional efforts to find them failed, so the mother of Acer's then chairman, Lukangborn Stan Shih, visited the temple. She sought the help of the small, black-faced icon on the left as you enter. Via divination blocks, the god gave permission to be taken to Shih's Taipei residence. Within five days of his arrival in the capital, so the story goes, the items had been recovered and the wrongdoers identified.

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(Right) Not one of the town's more famous shrines, Lukang's Cheng Huang (City God) Temple is nevertheless patronized by the wealthy and powerful.

(Below) Lukang's famous "cow's tongue biscuits" are sold by several bakeries.

On weekends, Tianhou Temple gets crowded beyond belief, so filled with people that you might not notice the gorgeously weathered door-god paintings or the glorious ceiling. Taiwan’s most popular female deity, Mazu, the goddess of the sea, is revered here. The main gold-faced Mazu statue is said to have arrived in Lukang from the Chinese mainland in 1684.

S o u v e n i r-s h o p p i n g o p p o r t u n i t i e s abound in this part of the town, and if your preference is for things you can sink your teeth into, look for niushebing (牛舌 餅)–“cow’s tongue biscuits.” The shape of these vegetarian-friendly pastries does resemble bovine tongues. If you would like to try one before committing yourself to a whole packet, it is possible to buy individual biscuits, original or taro flavor, for NT$10 each from Tianhouhang [29 Zongshan Road; Tel: (04)777-2596].

If you came up Zhongshan Road, it makes sense to then go down Lukang's Putuo and Yaolin streets. Too narrow for cars, these thoroughfares – the southern end of Putuo segues into Yaolin – are packed with all kinds of vendors, but behind them you can see houses a century or more old.

The house at 12 Yaolin Street combines Fujianese architecture with Western elements, but almost every tourist pays more

attention to the famous “half and half” well that the household generously shared with the public. The first few generations who lived at Number 8 had a novel way of getting their sons to study. The youngsters were ordered to their books and calligraphy brushes to the attic, and the ladder that provided the only access was then removed.

Tranquility and antiquity can be found at Rimaohang (65 Quanzhou 2nd Street), 300 meters west of Tianhou Temple. Parts of this single-story compound, named for the trading firm once based here, are more than 200 years old. The forecourt, which served as a venue for opera performances, is paved with stones from Fujian that arrived as ballast aboard cargo ships.

Rimaohang’s founder, Lin Zhen-song, was 34 years old when he relocated from Quanzhou to Lukang in 1765. By 1840, the Lins were the town’s wealthiest family.

In addition to donating money to rebuild

Longshan Temple, they engaged in charity work typical of pre-industrial Chinese societies. They ensured that paupers got proper burials, subsidized the construction of bridges, and paid people to scour the streets for any paper on which words had been written, and then to take collected scraps to a special furnace for burning.

This practice reflected a deep reverence for learning and literacy.

Lin’s descendants still use the building as a workplace. At the time of our visit, a side chamber had been turned into a small factory where a half dozen antiquated machines were producing some kind of cable. Elsewhere, a 50-something man was busy carving delicate wooden panels for clients who pay him around NT$2,000 for a day’s work. There is something uplifting about seeing the survival of tradition in a corner of Lukang where tourists are few and far between.

GETTING TO LUKANG The town may have missed out on the railway age, but Lukang is very well served by buses, having several direct services per day to and from Taipei, as well as even more frequent links with downtown Taichung, the Taichung highspeed railway station, and Changhua. Those who opt to drive will be pleasantly surprised by the ease with which free parking spots can be found. Tianhou Temple owns a number of parking lots near Guangfu Road; Jieshou and Fuxing Roads are also good bets.

FURTHER INFORMATION The multilingual site www.lukanglbs.com.tw has maps and short descriptions of scores of attractions and businesses around the town. taiwan business topics • june 2012

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Yilan: Sights at the End of the Tunnel This northeastern county is now easy enough to reach to make a convenient day trip or weekend getaway.

STorY and phoToS BY STEvEn crook

Y

ilan County has always been a bit different. It is in the east, but fans of Hualien and Taitung belittle it as a Taipei suburb lacking true indigenous culture. To the politically aware, it is the part of Taiwan that was a green-camp stronghold long before the Democratic Progressive Party existed. And few places have had their prospects and character changed so much by a single piece of infrastructure as Yilan has been by the completion of Freeway 5 and the world’s fifth-longest road tunnel.

“One-day tourism is booming,” says Jack Cho, general manager of Toucheng Farm, a leisure farm in the northernmost part of the county. He points out that while the Xueshan Tunnel means residents of Greater Taipei can return home the same day – and are thus less likely to 16

spend money on a hotel room or dinner – at the same time it has made two- or three-day excursions to Yilan much more feasible for residents of central and southern Taiwan.

Freeway 5 is a godsend for anyone wanting or needing to travel between Yilan and Greater Taipei, yet some drivers find getting on it more difficult than expected.

Those starting their journey in downtown Taipei should take XinHai Road southward until it becomes Freeway 3A (in Chinese, 3甲). This spur is just 5.6-kilometers long and joins the main trunk of Freeway 3 near Muzha. Heading north on Freeway 3, it takes mere minutes to reach the interchange with Freeway 5. Care is necessary, however – just a few hundred meters before the two freeways meet, a quite separate turnoff veers east. Those who take

this road will find themselves winding over the hill to Shenkeng on Route 109. Rather than backtrack, anyone who makes this mistake is advised to press on until he or she sees signs pointing them to the Shiding Interchange.

Drivers coming from further south should be aware that some signs near Xindian that point to Yilan refer to Highway 9 – the old, slow Taipei-Yilan road. Cyclists, as well as those with tunnel phobia or a surplus of time, will find this route a highly scenic alternative.

Freeway 5, like Highway 9, enters Yilan County via Toucheng Township. Accordingly, this article focuses on Toucheng and other parts of the county most easily accessed via Freeway 5.

During the winter, the hot springs in Jiaoxi are extremely popular, but for those

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planning warmer-weather excursions, it is less alluring than the city of Yilan or the nearby townships of Luodong, Wujie, and Yuanshan.

With a population of 73,000, Luodong is Yilan County's largest settlement after Yilan City (which has 95,000 inhabitants).

Luodong’s night market is revered by Taiwanese gourmands, but others may find the Luodong Forestry Culture Garden [118 Zhongzheng North Road; Tel: (03) 9545114; garden open 6am-7pm daily; exhibition halls open 9am-12pm and 2pm-5pm Wed-Sun; www.luodong.forest.gov.tw)] more intriguing.

Logging used to be a major industry in the Yilan area, and the garden formerly served as a timber collection and processing plant. The Forestry Bureau began transforming this 16-hectare site into an ecological and industrial-heritage attraction in 2004, and opened it to the public in 2011.

The garden provides an excellent introduction to the history of logging in Taiwan, and the bilingual information boards extend to topics such as aquatic plants and the local dragonfly and amphibian populations. Even if you are not in the mood to read about ecology, it is a fine place to enjoy the simple pleasures of strolling beneath old trees, watching ducks, and taking photos.

Between 1915 and the late 1970s, Formosan Red False Cypresses and certain other types of timber were stored in the garden’s 5.6-hectare log pond. The water prevented the wood from cracking or warping during the summer, and also drew resins out from the wood, thereby lengthening its usable life. Semi-submerged tree trunks still dot the pond, making it look somewhat like a flooded forest.

The narrow-gauge branch rail line that carried felled trees down from what is now Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area terminated here. Two passenger cars are on display outside the reconstructed Zhulin Station, and among the six locomotives preserved nearby are U.S.-built models which burned wood rather than coal or oil.

The station is one of several photogenic wooden buildings in the garden. Not all of the Japanese-style bungalows and offices date from the colonial era; some were erected as late as 1962. Of the three small

display halls, the most interesting is the Forest Life Exhibition. Photos, antiques, and replicas depict loggers' living conditions. One panel, attached to a rice cooker, explains: “Rice was a luxury for the people on the mountain. In the cooking pot, it was usually mountain yam with a handful of rice. For variety, a ration of fish and meat was distributed once a month; for the New Year and special holidays, there might have been a ration of dried squid, salted fish and sake.”

Admission to the grounds and all the exhibitions is free, but parking a car in the garden's lot costs NT$30 per hour.

One of Yilan County’s best known places of worship has three names. What is commonly called Wanggong Temple is officially, according to the name tablet above its doorway, Zhenan Temple. A few years ago it gained the additional title of Erjiejhuang Life Culture Museum [98 Chiujie Road, Wujie Township; Tel: (03) 965-7788; admission free]. Woodcarvings typical of the Kavalan lowland aboriginal tribe are displayed inside. The museum should be open daily from 9am to 5pm; however, as the volunteers who staff it do not always show up on time, calling ahead

is a good idea.

Wanggong Temple is being preserved and at the same time replaced. Its icons are now in a temporary structure, and the shell of the old temple was dragged 40 meters to make way for the new shrine. Judging by posters and blueprints, the latter will be a radical departure from the conventions of Taiwanese religious architecture. At the time of writing, however, work had barely begun; it could be years before the new, auditorium-like building is ready.

Center for the arts Another attraction just outside Luodong is the National Center for Traditional Arts or NCFTA [201 Wubin Road Section 2, Wujie Township; Tel: (03) 970-5815; open: daily 9am-6pm; admission: adults NT$150 /students NT$100; www.ncfta.gov.tw], which provides easy-to-digest introductions to various art forms. Plan on spending half a day in this well-designed, 24-hectare campus, and expect to do quite a bit of walking.

The complex has four stages where shows are put on throughout the day. The program is revised every few months, but performances typically include glove pup-

Among Toucheng Farm's various attractions are a replica mud-brick building, complete with traditional bedstead (left) and a small herd of cattle which younger visitors enjoy feeding (right). taiwan business topics • june 2012

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petry, acrobatics, dance, Taiwanese opera, vernacular storytelling, and folk music.

Elsewhere in the center, artisans demonstrate Chinese calligraphy, gold and silver work, weaving, and woodcarving.

One of the center's 21 buildings is Wenchang Temple. It looks brand new, but actually it stood elsewhere for over a century before being reassembled inside the NCFTA. The principal deity, Wenchang Dijun, is a god of education and literature whose blessing is widely sought ahead of major examinations. To fully understand the temple's functions and decorations, view the short English-language video on the NCFTA website's “Experience Interaction” section before visiting.

A structure known as Scholar Huang's House was also relocated, having been built in the heart of Yilan City in 1877.

Externally, this sanheyuan (three-sided courtyard house) is little different from countless other old dwellings in Taiwan's countryside, but thanks to comprehensive bilingual labeling inside, visitors can learn a lot about the lives and traditions of 19thcentury Taiwanese.

The NCFTA is easy to find, being on the inland side of Highway 2, approximately five kilometers east of downtown Luodong. Car owners need to pay NT$50 for parking (unlimited time); for motorcycles, parking is free. Local bus services

The Taiwan Theater Museum in downtown Yilan displays costumes and other traditional opera paraphernalia.

241 and 261 head to the center from the back of Luodong Railway Station. The NCFTA is managed by a branch of the UniPresident Enterprises Corp. (whose website, http://art.pcsc.com.tw/ncfta/artpcsc_e/ index.jsp, has some information not found on the NCFTA site), so it is no surprise that the food court has branches of both Starbucks and 7-Eleven as well as several reasonably priced eating options.

One of Yilan County’s most underrated cultural attractions, the Taiwan

Theater Museum, is in the heart of Yilan City at 101 Fuxing Road, Section 2 [Tel: (03) 932-2440; open: daily 9am-12pm and 1pm-5pm; admission free. http://svr2. ilccb.gov.tw/theatre]. The museum devotes three floors to local forms of opera and puppetry. Most displays are bilingual, and the English-language explanation of the origins and differences between the beiguan and nanguan forms of traditional opera is admirably and succinctly well-written.

Musicians will be fascinated by the sheet music, which uses quite different symbols than modern Western scores.

Opera clothes and props are displayed on the third floor, where regular fullcostume rehearsals by local troupes begin at 3pm and 4pm on the second and fourth Saturday each month. Performers and musicians sometimes also practice on weekend mornings.

The second floor is a photographer’s delight. The 114 puppets on display include a dozen or so string puppets. Among the glove puppets are a few, dressed in ROC military uniforms, that were stars of government-sponsored anti-communist puppet shows in the 1950s and 1960s.

Dress rehearsals are a highlight at the Taiwan Theater Museum most weekends (left), while the number and range of hand puppets in the collection (right) is impressive.

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One section explains how glove puppets are made. The core of the puppet’s head is wood, but facial features come from a mold filled with resin or clay. Hands, forearms, shoulders, and feet are fashioned from wood; the puppets have neither torsos nor thighs. Clothes are cut, embroidered, and decorated with sequins. After the face is painted, beards and eyebrows are glued on. Finally, each puppet is given something to hold – often a sword or a staff, but sometimes a fly-whisk.

Whisky and wine Yuanshan Township, just inland of Yilan City, is home to Taiwan's first and only whisky producer, King Car Kavalan Distillery [326 Yuanshan Road Section; Tel: (03) 922-9000; open daily 9am-5pm]. The distillery is exceptionally popular with local tour groups and well worth seeing if you have an interest in alcohol production (or consumption).

The King Car Group is best known for its range of canned coffee and softdrinks.

The distillery released its first bottle of Kavalan whisky in late 2008, and now has a capacity of 9 million bottles per year. The malt is imported from Scotland and Finland, but every other stage of the production process – which is documented on site in English as well as Chinese – is done in Yuanshan.

According to Joanie Tseng, Kavalan’s Global PR officer, whisky matures more quickly in Yilan than in Scotland because of Taiwan’s much warmer climate, which is why Kavalan bottles do not bear age statements. Also because of the climate, some 10-15% of each barrel is lost through evaporation during maturation; in Scotland, the so-called “angel’s share” is a mere 2-3%.

The warehouse, which typically stores around 45,000 barrels, is not temperaturecontrolled, and gets as warm as 40 degrees Celsius in summer.

Tours end with a tasting, and all seven of Kavalan’s expressions – plus a coffee liqueur and other King Car products – are sold on site. The whiskies, highly rated by publications such as Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2012 , range in price from NT$1,500 to NT$6,600 per 700ml bottle. Kavalan is making inroads into Asia, says Tseng, with the mainland Chinese market representing

Because the owners have kept the local environment pristine, Toucheng Farm has an abundance of butterflies.

about 10% of total sales.

Toucheng has a slew of attractions, the most important of which is Lanyang Museum (see the article on page 42 in this issue). The township’s Wushi Harbor is the starting point for tours to and around Guishan Island, a hilly islet visible about 12 kilometers offshore. If you want to land on the island instead of cruising around it, you should apply in advance for a permit.

This can be done online through the website of the Northeast Coast National Scenic Area (http://www.necoast-nsa.gov.tw).

Information can be obtained by calling the Wushi Harbor Tourist Center [Tel: (03) 978-9078].

Just north of the kilometer 129 mark on Highway 2, turning inland takes you to Toucheng Farm [Tel: (03) 977-2222; www. tcfarm.com.tw] and a little further up the same road, Cangjiu Winery [Tel: (03) 9778555; www.cjwine.com]. The latter produces a rice wine, a kumquat wine, red and white grape wines, and a clear but potent blend of five grains called Wuliangye.

Both businesses are overseen by Jack Cho, whose family owns 120 jia (about 116 hectares) of land in the valley. Nine-tenths remains natural mixed forest, while small demonstration and DIY plots are devoted to rice and other crops. Many young guests take a shine to the resident pigs, goats, and chickens. There are also five cows. One, a former stray, was adopted by the farm earlier this year after being captured by police beside the coastal highway.

The valley hosts a range of wild creatures. Impressive clusters of fireflies can be seen between mid-April and mid-June.

Eagles, butterflies, and Reeves’ muntjacs (a species of small deer) are often spotted. As far as visitors to the farm are concerned, the valley's unspoiled state is a tremendous asset. However, it does mean Cho has to deal with an issue few other winemakers in the world have to face. The valley's wild pig population has to be controlled, he explains, as given the chance, they gorge themselves on oranges, butting trees (to make ripe fruit fall to the ground) so violently that the trees are sometimes toppled.

Getting Cangjiu up and running has cost around NT$50 million since 2005, Cho says. “We're now making a small profit,” he adds.

In addition to being sold on site, Cangjiu's products appear on wine lists in some hotels and restaurants. Bulk sales for wedding banquets and similar events are an important source of revenue; like some other winemakers, Cangjiu customizes labels for special occasions. The winery charges admission (NT$100 for adults, NT$50 for children) but visitors get this money back if they buy wine or order food.

Sampling the wines alongside a meal in the winery’s restaurant is especially recommended. The menu features light Taiwanese dishes with lots of the farm’s own vegetables, and their unpretentious, healthful, and natural character reflects some of Yilan County’s most attractive qualities. taiwan business topics • june 2012

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Serenity and Cold War History on the Islands off Matsu This tranquil but still militarized cluster of islands gives visitors the feeling of being in a different time and place from modern Taiwan.

BY jane rickards photo : tourism bureau

T

he view from a clifftop on Nangan, one of the islands in the Matsu group, is spectacular. The sea is dotted with craggy islets flecked with mist.

Waves slowly swell and break against granite cliffs. Colorful butterflies cluster over unspoiled grassy hills. And having just left the bustle of Taipei, I am unsettled to hear only loud birdsong instead of the noise of traffic.

photo : jane rickards

Then the sound of rifle shots from a firing range breaks out, reminding me of the thousands of Taiwanese troops stationed here guarding the ROC’s northernmost frontier. Such is the paradox of Matsu: it the country’s most combat-ready area, but also one of the most tranquil.

Strategically located one kilometer away from the city of Fuzhou at the mouth of China’s Min river, 210 kilometers northeast

of Taiwan, Matsu, with a population of only 10,172, is an archipelago of 36 rugged islands that are part of Fujian Province.

The inhabitants speak Eastern Fujian dialect or Mindonghua , unintelligible to the majority of Taiwanese who speak southern Fujian dialect or Minnanhua . The island group was largely ignored for centuries except for pirates who would ravage the fishing communities for plunder during the Qing dynasty.

That changed when the Kuomintang relocated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and President Chiang Kai-shek placed it under strict military control. Like Kinmen (Quemoy) to the south, it served as Taiwan’s military frontline against a mainland attack.

Chiang’s forces built underground tunnels, naval ports, gun platforms, and the like to make the archipelago an impregnable fortress that could spy on China and protect Taiwan proper from attack. Local residents recall frightening times when Matsu was shelled in the 1950s and 1960s. All men The Iron Fort, left, is an underground tunnel that was used as a training base for elite frogmen in the 1970s.

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photo : tourism bureau

One of the highlights of the Matsu archipelgo is its network of underground military tunnels.

and women aged between 19 and 45 were required to do military service. Martial law was lifted in 1992, a few years after the rest of Taiwan, and Matsu was fully opened to the outside world only in 1994.

Thousands of troops are still stationed here, creating much more of a military atmosphere than Kinmen. I rented a scooter to explore the islands of Nangan, Beigan, and Dongyin, and was frequently chased away from secret installations by machine-gun wielding guards. (For those who don’t drive scooters, it’s best to get a car with a driver or go on a tour, as buses are scarce, or in the case of Dongyin, nonexistent.) The islands of Gaodeng and Liang are still entirely controlled by the military and not open to the public. It’s also inadvisable to stray away from the roads due to military shooting drills.

At the same time, Matsu’s villages are incredibly sleepy by Taiwan standards. For example, the islands of Beigan and Dongyin each have only one 7-Eleven convenience store and other well-known chains such as Watsons are not present anywhere. Walking down the steep narrow lanes in Ren-ai village in Nangan felt like time-traveling back to the 1950s. Houses were decked with ROC flags and Matsu-style storm lanterns, made from bamboo frames and covered with white paper with auspicious sayings in red characters. They were traditionally used 22

by fishermen to let their families know they were safe at sea. Service at hotels and shops is also slow in a way that is most unlike the rest of Taiwan, so that a degree of patience is required from tourists.

One of the most striking attractions of Matsu is its tunnel networks. They were hacked through the granite cliffs by thousands of soldiers using only manual labor and small explosives. Countless servicemen lost their lives in the process. In Nangan, soldiers worked day and night for over two years starting in 1968 to carve out the Beihai tunnel, a subterranean wharf that could harbor 120 small supply boats if war broke out. A 640-meter water channel curves in the darkness under the cliffs, parallel to a path that takes around 30 minutes to walk to the sound of waves crashing outside. At high tide, the path is covered by water.

Nearby is the Dahan stronghold, constructed in 1975 with the aim of controlling sea lanes to the southern islands of Juguang, but not opened to the public until 2007. It has three layers of tunnels, with anti-aircraft batteries pointing out of holes in the granite cliffs.

Perhaps the installation with the most gruesome history is the Iron Fort further west, hollowed out from coral rock and with buildings on the surface painted in khaki camouflage colors. It was used as a

training ground for elite frogmen. At the nearby Matsu Story House, which houses the local paper, the Matsu Daily , along with historical archives, a guide told me that Chinese and Taiwanese commandos in the 1970s would vie with their comrades to see who could slit the most throats on the other side and carry back the ears of the victims as proof. Glass fragments are embedded in the coral rock to prevent the enemy from climbing in.

Also on Nangan is the Victory Tunnel, which looked rather plush when viewed on a video at the Matsu Story House. It was designed to receive Taiwan’s presidents and is still reserved for military use. Then there is Tunnel 88, set up as a storage space for spirits made by the nearby Matsu distillery.

Tunnel 88, for which the fiery local liqueur Tunnel 88 Mature Kaoliang was named, is open only on weekends so that its special humidity and temperature can be maintained to ensure the production quality.

Bottoms up The distillery, first built in 1956, turns out such products as Dongyong Mature Kaoliang, which was the official spirit offered at banquets during Chen Shuibian’s presidency, and Matsu laojiu (老 酒)liqueur. Ubiquitous in Matsu, laojiu is made by soaking glutinous rice in water, boiling the mixture, and then fermenting it with red rice yeast inside ceramic jars in a 30-day process. The red leftover dregs or hongzao (紅糟)are also used as a seasoning

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photo : tourism bureau

in many Matsu dishes.

Another major Cold War landmark is an enormous sign with red characters saying “Always on the Alert,” carved onto a large white illuminated wall facing the mainland. The phrase was originally penned by Chiang Kai-shek in 1958 and it is the first thing that can be seen when ferries enter the harbor to dock at Nangan’s main port of Fu Ao. In January 2001, Fu Ao became the first port to be used for ships traveling between Taiwan and China.

Many memorials to Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo can be found

throughout these isles.

Matsu is not just about Cold War history, however. Nangan also boasts the world’s tallest statue – a 29.6-meter-tall granite sculpture – of its namesake Matsu (now sometimes spelled Mazu), the goddess of the sea, who is believed to protect fishermen and sailors. It is also home to one of the most sacred temples devoted to the goddess, said to be the deification of a real person living in the area centuries ago. Legend tells of how Matsu’s body was washed up on Nangan after she saved her father from a shipwreck during a storm and was drowned in violent waves. Some stories say her body is buried underneath this temple, and some say it is only her clothes, with her corpse returned to her birthplace in Meizhou in China. .

Villages in Matsu, such as Jinsha on Nangan and Qinbi on Beigan, offer some of the best preserved examples of Eastern Fujian-style architecture. These square stone houses have wooden interiors and small narrow wooden windows to protect inhabitants from wind and pirates. I stayed in one of these houses in Qinbi; next to a sandy beach with sparkling waters for swimming, it had a Mediterranean feel.

(The location seemed like a good idea until masses of moths and glowworms swarmed into the room to escape a storm outside.)

A sense of the Cold War is always pres-

Tunnel 88, left and above, is used for storing brews made by the nearby Matsu Distillery. A set piece from the film Ripples of Desire, below, evokes the feel of an opium den in past times.

photo : tourism bureau

ent. In Jinsha, a sign on the coastal wall behind a fine swimming beach says “Kill Zhu, Capture Mao, Oppose Communism and Resist Russia,” while old buildings in Qinbi bear messages such as “Eliminate Mao and Zhu, Traitors to the Chinese Race.” These are references to Mao Zedong and Zhu De, one of his key generals. In Qinbi, one can also see signs in Dutch and Spanish advertising opium dens and an oldfashioned money exchange. They were put up as part of a set for a movie to be released at the end of this year called “Hua Yang” or Ripples of Desire (花漾), an art thriller

by Zhou Mei-ling, but local residents say they evoke Qinbi’s history.

For me, the highlight of the trip was

photo : tourism bureau

photo : jane rickards

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photo : tourism bureau

remote Dongyin, two islets connected by an embankment, marking the northernmost point of ROC territory. It is much harder to reach than Nangan and Beigan, with ferry service only once a day to those main islands. Dongyin can also be reached by boat from Keelung in a seven-hour trip.

There is a helipad but no airstrip. I took the boat from Nangan. Despite the voyage’s reputation of inducing sea sickness, the trip that day was very smooth.

Dongyin boasts precipitous cliffs with granite boulders plunging down into a sea so dark blue that the waters must be exceedingly deep. Dongyin’s harbor opened in 1988 and there is only one village on the island, Lehua. With its sparse population and expanses of natural scenery, Dongyin seems almost like a foreign country.

Among the various scenic spots around the island is Suicide Cliff, a 100-meterhigh precipice carved out by the waves. It is said that in the late 19th century, pirates threatened a woman with rape here, but rather than submit, she jumped to her death into the waters. But for me the most picturesque scene was the Edwardian-era Dongyong Lighthouse, designed and built by the British in 1904 to guide foreign ships during China’s unequal treaties era.

It can be reached by a vertiginous white stairway aside a sheer drop down to the sea below. Lower down on the cliff, reachable by a narrow path, are two fog cannons that were used to warn ships. The lighthouse is no longer in use.

The military’s presence is more obvious here than Nangan and Beigan. According 24

to website Globalsecurity.org and other media, Dongyin supports both 100-kilometer-range Hsiung Feng 2 (“Brave Wind”) anti-ship missiles and Tien Kung 2 (“Sky Bow”) medium-to-high-altitude surface-toair missiles.

Down in the tunnels Promotional literature from the Matsu National Scenic Area Administration also says Dongyin has the world’s highest density of tunnels. Its Andong tunnel is the most striking. Over 300 meters long, it contains a steep 206-meter declining road for a truck to drive down. It even contains a piggery: soldiers raised their own hogs since supplies by boat could get cut off by bad weather conditions. There are also barracks, bathrooms, a kitchen, an ammunition magazine, and a large hall. Several paths lead to holes in the cliffs that let in the sounds of crashing water and the cries of gulls. The Andong tunnel is the protected habitat of the black-tailed gull and black-naped tern; these protected birds can be viewed from the tunnel nesting on the cliffs.

In addition, the Chinese crested tern, a critically endangered species previously thought to be extinct, was found breeding in Matsu in 2000, causing parts of the archipelago, including eight uninhabited islands, to be set aside as a tern reserve. Other species under protection are the bridled tern, roseate tern, and red egret. There are also various plants native to the archipelago such as red spider lilies and brownie lilies.

In addition, Matsu presents some

unique culinary delicacies such as the ubiquitous jiguang pie (繼光餅), which look like (and which I mistakenly took for) a bagel. Reputed to be invented by Ming Dynasty General Chi Jiguang in order to prevent smoke from cooking fires from being spotted by enemy forces, these baked pies were tied around soldiers’ necks to be available for a quick meal. They are often filled with fried oysters, egg, and spring onions (繼光夾蚵蛋). Other specialties are steamed yellow croaker in laojiu liquor (老 酒烝黃魚) and various dishes cooked with hongzao seasoning such as an eel dish ( 紅 糟鰻魚) and hongzao fried rice (酒糟炒飯).

There are two ways of making hongzao chicken (紅糟雞), either dry or as a soup.

For both versions, ginger, sugar, and hongzao sauce are added to the chicken.

M a t s u c r u n c h (馬祖酥) a n d l o t u s crunch (芙蓉酥) are also popular. Matsu crunch was originally known as Qima crunch, but in 1961 Chiang Ching-kuo visited Matsu and was very impressed with the snack and renamed it Matsu crunch.

It is made with flour and egg, which is fried, mixed with barley and malt syrup, and then pressed and cut into slices. Lotus crunch is similar but the main ingredient is glutinous rice.

One final word: Matsu will hold a referendum on building a casino in July and the proposal is expected to pass. It will take some time before the casino is up and running, but for those who like travel experiences off the beaten track, it would be better to go to Matsu now rather than later, before the crowds arrive.

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Practicing Islam in Taiwan Four waves of immigration have led to the presence of a Muslim community on the island. sTory and PhoTos By MarK CaLTonhILL

J

ust as at any Taiwanese wedding, a large photo of the happy couple stands proudly at the entrance, red envelopes of cash are presented as gifts, and the bride, Ma Hsing-hui, appears in three different dresses during the course of the celebratory meal.

But here the similarities end, for Ma and husband-to-be Fan Hsiang-shun are members of Taiwan’s Islamic community, and their banquet is being held in the Taipei Grand Mosque.

Located opposite Daan Forest Park on Xinsheng South Road, the mosque has spacious grounds. Since its construction in the late 1950s, it has generally represented a quiet and largely forgotten corner of the city, as only around one-tenth of one percent of Taiwan’s population are Muslims.

Nevertheless, the presence in recent years of around 100,000 Indonesian domestic workers and laborers in the country at any given time, as well as other Muslims from Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, has not only re-energized this community – particularly on Fridays, the Islamic day of prayer – but has also transformed the congregation and the social role of the mosque.

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These foreign workers might be considered a fourth wave of Muslim immigration, says Ismail Wang, general manager of the mosque, before going on to offer a brief history of Islam in Taiwan. The first wave of arrivals came with Zheng Cheng-gong (known to the West as Koxinga), the Mingdynasty loyalist who expelled the Dutch from Tainan in 1661. On the run from the new Qing dynasty in China, Zheng’s forces included a sizable number of Muslims of the Hui (回) ethnic minority from southwest China. Zheng’s soldiers established agricultural-military garrisons in the south and west of the island while they waited for orders to retake the mainland and reestablish the earlier dynasty. When instead they were conquered by Qing forces two decades later, the camps were demilitarized, and the former soldiers embarked on careers in farming, fishing, and trade.

Over the next three centuries, although Muslim communities were formed – and mosques and cemeteries constructed – in Lukang, Tamsui, Keelung, Taipei, and elsewhere, few if any traces remain today. Similarly, their beliefs, practices and adherence to religious rules gradually waned.

Nevertheless, says Wang, occasional evi-

dence of this first wave is still encountered.

Most notable are members of the Guo (郭) family of Lugang, who although professing to follow traditional Chinese religious practices, do not eat pork on Fridays nor offer it to their ancestral spirits, and who like to keep their heads covered during rituals.

There are also two families in Keelung whose ancestral shrine contains a Qur’an and examples of Arabic script, although they did not understand the significance of these objects until contact with newly arrived Muslims in recent decades. Similarly, two or three families in Tainan are reported to observe funeral customs more associated with Islam than Daoism or Buddhism, such as ceremonial washing of the body and wrapping it in white cloth.

Then there are the many people surnamed Ding (丁) in Taixi Township in Yunlin County. Known as the “Muslim Ding” despite practicing Taiwan’s usual mix of Buddhism, Daoism, and local religion, they trace their origins back to a Central Asian nobleman named Sayyid Shamsuddin Omar who settled in China during the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1279-1367) when China was part of Genghis Khan’s empire. They later moved to Quanzhou in

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ISLAM

Fujian Province, hid themselves among the general Chinese population using “Ding” to represent the last syllable of “Shamsuddin,” and then came to Taiwan along with a great many others from that coastal area of China during the Qing dynasty. Given that “Sayyid” is an honorific title given to descendants of the prophet Mohammed, they may even be connected to the great prophet, the Chinese Muslim Association (CMA) has suggested.

The final vestiges of Islamic worship were wiped out under Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945), when all foreign religions were proscribed.

The members of the second wave of Muslim immigrants to Taiwan were also military personnel – particularly navy – accompanying Chiang Kai-shek to the island in 1949 in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. They too expected to return

home quickly, in their case to vanquish Mao Zedong. In the meantime, they met in private houses built in the Japanese colonial style, and most notably in a converted shop in Taipei’s Lishui Street not far from today’s mosque. Many of these adherents came from southeast China, and included Muslims from the military bases at Nanjing and Anhui who were also ethnic Hui with origins from further west in China.

They established local branches of the CMA and Chinese Muslim Youth League, and in 1976 inaugurated the Islamic Cultural and Educational Foundation. They also assisted the Republic of China to foster good relationships with Middle Eastern and other Islamic countries. Indeed, the CMA had been founded in Hankou, Hubei Province in 1938 specifically to unite Muslims behind Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist cause and to help it gain international support in its battles against the Japanese invaders and subsequently Mao’s Communists.

Building the Grand Mosque D u r i n g t h e 1950s, a s i t a p p e a r e d increasingly unlikely that Chiang’s Kuomintang-led forces would retake the mainland, Muslim friends around the world made donations to build a Grand Mosque in Taipei, which opened in April 1960. It was the first mosque built in Arabian style on Chinese soil, says the CMA, and in 1999 it was recognized as a historic site by the Taipei City Government, thus protecting it from previous threats of demolition

due to disputes over land rights. With a total area of more than 2,700 square meters and a prayer hall rising to a height of 15 meters, it is the largest mosque in Taiwan. The then Shah of Iran and the King of Jordan were major financial contributors, and the Saudi Arabian government continues to offer support.

There is one other mosque in Taipei, and another four in Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, and Jhongli.

A key force behind construction of the Grand Mosque was the CMA’s founder, General Bai Chong-xi, the ROC’s most famous Muslim. In 1924, he played a leading role in overthrowing the Guangxi warlord Lu Rong-ting to bring the province under KMT control, and he was chief of staff of the Nationalist army during the Northern Expedition (1926-1928). For most of the civil war period (1945-49), Bai was Minister for National Defense, but he was largely ignored by Chiang Kai-shek, who wielded almost complete control.

They fell out finally in 1948, and although Bai continued as a member of the KMT’s central executive committee, he lived in effective retirement in Taiwan from the age of 56 until he died at the age of 73 in 1966.

He was given a military funeral, and his mausoleum is by far the largest and most impressive grave in the Muslim section of the cemetery a short walk from the Liuzhangli MRT station in Taipei.

Bai and his family, along with the many soldiers under his command who made it to Taiwan safely in 1949 or shortly after-

The imam teaching a Sunday class on Qur'an and Arabic studies (above), and the exterior of Taipei's Grand Mosque (right).

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ISLAM The Muslim community has its own cemetery in the Liuzhangli area of Taipei.

wards, were part of the 20,000 or so Muslims of the second wave of immigration.

But many more Nationalist forces and other refugees took decades to reach Taiwan if they made it at all, having left China from the northeast to Korea and Japan, from the west to India and Nepal, or even more numerously from the southwest to Burma and Thailand. In these latter countries, Kuomintang forces set up entire villages, some of which exist to this day. Some people engaged in farming and business, others in smuggling and other illicit occupations, and some engaged in guerrilla warfare.

In 1953, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the KMT-led ROC government for waging war from Burma, and agreement was reached to evacuate around 5,500 of these irregular forces and their families to Taiwan. Mostly Muslim, they settled in the Jhongli area of Taoyuan County, which explains the presence of the Longgang Mosque (龍岡清真寺) in that city, which dates from 1964.

More non-combatant Muslim – as well as many non-Muslim – refugees from Thailand and Burma arrived during the 1980s, many settling in the Nanshijiao area of 28

the Zhonghe suburb of Taipei commonly known as Burma Street (緬甸街), as well as in Jhongli and elsewhere. These constitute the third wave of immigration. Mostly originating from China’s Yunnan Province, they are predominantly of Hui ethnicity, like most of those before them.

According to official statistics, the ROC currently has around 50,000 Muslim citizens, the result of these second and third waves of immigration, their descendents, and a small number of conversions. General Manager Wang says the true figure is nearer to 20,000, and many of those are culturally Muslim rather than religiously so. He estimates that around 90% of Taiwan’s Muslims are ethnic Hui, whereas just under half of China’s more than 20 million Muslims are Hui. Chinese Muslims are Sunni, rather than Shiite, and belong to the Hanafi school. Nevertheless, Wang says, this in no way presents doctrinal or practical problems with visiting Muslims of other schools such as Shafia Indonesians, Maliki North Africans, and Hambani Saudis. Differences are more a matter of mutual curiosity than conflict.

Social challenges A bigger issue is the perception of the Islamic community by the wider Han Chinese society, which tends to view the reli-

gion as alien to traditional Chinese culture.

Ironically, some Taiwanese Muslims criticize the nation’s freedom of belief, as well as what they see as its biased educational system, as directly contributing to the deterioration of Islam. Working and living in Taiwan, some Muslims find it difficult to carry out their duty to pray five times each day – salat , one of the Five Pillars of Islam – as well as the precept of sawm , fasting during Ramadan.

Moreover, since Saturday and Sunday are Taiwan’s days of rest, many Muslims cannot make it to their mosques on Friday, the Islamic day of worship, missing out on the teachings by the imam, elders, or international scholars held in association with the midday prayer.

Diet is another problem as Taiwan has few halal restaurants or butcher shops.

The competitive atmosphere in the schools presents another challenge for parents, who find it difficult to persuade their children to spend time studying Arabic or the Qu’ran when there are so many other subjects they must learn.

Further erosion is blamed on the smallness of the Muslim population, with members in isolated areas often marrying non-Muslims or converts who are unfamiliar with religious and social traditions. Elderly Muslims speak of their fears that the history of the assimilation of the Lukang families might repeat itself with

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ISLAM

the present generation.

One issue of great importance to Muslim Taiwanese, and which sets them off markedly from the majority of their fellow citizens, concerns funeral rites, says Wang.

Chinese burials often take place weeks, months, and occasionally even years after the person has died. But a Muslim should be buried within 72 hours of death, usually on the second day after “returning to purity,” as passing away is called.

No coffin is used, but after being cleaned, the body is wrapped in white cloths, three for men and five for women.

There is no ritual, no music, no prayers, no incense, no flowers, and definitely no praying for favors in or from the afterlife.

Prayers are said, however, to ask that the person’s sins be forgiven and he or she be admitted to paradise.

Cremation is not used, and burial in the ground is normal, although burial at sea is permitted if land cannot be reached within 72 hours. This was not the case with Osama bin Laden, Wang adds.

The mosque is open to visitors, and thousands of school pupils come each year. Wang says he is often asked about al Qaeda, the September 11 attacks, and Islamic terrorism. In what seems to be an attempt to justify those acts, Wang says he tells questioners to check the definition of “terrorism” and they will realize who the true terrorists are.

Wang estimates that about 40 to 50% of Taiwan’s Muslims will make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca at some stage of their lives. While it is each person’s duty, not everyone has the ability or means.

Charity (zakat ) is another of the Five Pillars, says Wang. This is not limited to giving money, and a group from his mosque visits foreign laborers under detention in Sanxia, Yilan, and elsewhere, usually for overstaying their work visas.

Volunteers help them with paperwork and other needs. Other groups visit elderly, ill, and poor people in the community, and yet others focus on visiting prisons.

The mosque runs a Qu’ran and Arabic class on Sunday mornings for children and a convert class once a month for adults.

Converts, of whom there are perhaps two or three dozen per year, consist either of those who became interested in Islam while living overseas or those who wish to marry a Taiwanese Muslim.

Neither participant in today’s wedding ceremony is a convert, with both families originating from the Jhongli Yunnanese community. The ceremony is being held in Taipei because so many relatives and friends now live in the capital (as do around 40% of all Taiwanese Muslims) and because the Longgang Mosque is simply too small to accommodate the large number of guests. Even here at the Grand Mosque there will need to be two sittings.

The bride will welcome the first diners in her first dress, see them off at the door in her second, welcome the next diners in that same dress, and see them off in her third.

Another noticeable difference from a typical local wedding scene is the large number of diners – many of Southeast Asian and African origin – enjoying lunchboxes in the garden. Both indoors and out, most of the women wear headscarves, and

a great many of the men sport beards of varying lengths according to their ages. The women and men head off separately when prayers are called; the men use the main hall, while the women go elsewhere.

Finally the food is served, with some distinct departures from the usual Taiwanese wedding-banquet fare. The second dish served, for example, Yunnan-style beef (滇式煨肉), derives from the newlyweds’ ancestral homeland, while the last dish, “South Sea dessert” (南洋風情), reflects their parent’s sojourn in Southeast Asia.

— Mark Caltonhill is the author of Private Prayers and Public Parades – Exploring the Religious Life of Taipei.

Wedding guests arriving and delivering their red envelopes (left), and preparation of the Halal dishes for the wedding banquet (above).

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Behind Fengshui ’s Mystique These principles, followed by Chinese for thousands of years, have recently also been gaining currency in the West. story and photos By MarK CaLtonhILL

W

ith its wind chimes, potted bamboos and no-clocks-in-thebedroom injunctions, fengshui (風水; literally “wind and water”) has grown in popularity in the West over recent years. People seeking to improve relationships, make money and enjoy their leisure time are increasingly applying ancient Oriental architecture and interior design rules to their homes and offices.

But beyond these well known “cures,” most people have little idea of what is involved in fengshui , nor whether it is an art, a science, or a religion, or perhaps simply a load of hogwash by which charlatans separate impressionable people from their cash.

Yen Jia-heng, a 36-year-old fengshui master from Taipei, who by day works in customer relations for Honda, says that fengshui can be considered a science that both finds and controls qi energy, but which also has religious aspects similar to fortunetelling.

He stresses, however, that while there are definitely “incorrect” ways to construct buildings, undertake interior design, 30

or plan roads and cities, it is not useful to talk in terms of “sick” buildings or to think of fengshui advice as a “cure.” The reason is that what might be unsuitable for one person might be perfectly fine for someone else.

The first stage of his fengshui practice is more like that of a fortuneteller, in that he needs to find out the year, month, day, and time of his client’s birth based on the lunar calendar, using one of the ten heavenly stems and one of the twelve earthly branches (天干地支) for each time element.

This exercise provides four pairs, better known as the “eight characters” (八字).

From these, Yen calculates a person’s balance of the five elements (五行) of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

For a home fengshui reading, Yen will work out the eight characters for each family member living there. For an office space, he limits himself to the boss’s time of birth, rather than those of everyone working in that location. Next, a fengshui master needs to analyze each space, or the various spaces of an office or home, and interpret the interactions of those spaces with their users.

Stephen Skinner, writing in the Keep It Simple Series – Guide to Fengshui , says “Fengshui is really about five things: qi energy, alignment, the Earth’s magnetism, the eight compass directions, and the Five Elements, particularly water.” Qi (氣) is the fundamental concept, but it seems hard to define. Skinner calls it “cosmic breath” and “the vital energy of the universe,” and says it moves with wind and water, hence the name of this science fengshui (風水; literally “wind [and] water”).

Yen merely says the basis of fengshui is accumulating good qi and removing bad qi . Bad qi can be either “cutting qi ,” he says, which is overly rapid and so needs to be blocked, deflected or slowed, or “decayed qi ,” which is torpid and needs to be dispersed.

Healthy qi should meander, thus it is the straightness of cutting qi that makes it bad.

Consequently, Yen suggests that in building a home or office, interior doors should not be aligned directly with the front door. If he finds that to be already the case when analyzing a property, he will recommend hanging drapes from the door lintels. Skin-

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Fengshui Art Koch explaining his diagnosis of the Coetzee house, a Buddha head in the Coetzee balcony garden, and a bagua mirror, often seen above a firstfloor door.

ner says that something as simple as hanging a wind chime or placing a potted plant between the doors can also help. Skinner and Yen agree that the usual design of modern offices is a fengshui disaster.

Flow of qi is also important to the siting of a property, with the ideal location being inside the bend of a river, or even the bend of a road.

Some fengshui masters specialize in working with architects before a building is constructed, some at the level of urban planning, and yet others on interior design of home and office spaces. Even grave sites should be planned carefully, ideally facing south and having a hill behind and water in front. In fact, some authorities claim that all fengshui developed out of the siting of graves.

Very poor locations for homes, offices, or graves are those with alignments pointing at them. These can be roads, or the pointed corners of other buildings, or even something like shelves in a room. Known as “poison arrows,” these enable qi to accelerate to speeds at which they impact people or buildings. One simple solution is to place a mirror to deflect the arrows back, which explains why it is common to see mirrors above doors in Taiwan, particularly on buildings located at the meeting point of a T-junction. Westerners can be particularly at risk from church steeples and satellite dishes, Skinner warns.

These mirrors usually have the eight trigrams (八卦) symbols around them. Each is composed of a different combination of three lines, either intact (_____), representing yang (sunny, male, active), or broken (__ __), representing yin (shady, female, passive). Two trigrams together form a hexagram, of which there are 64 combinations. An analysis of these is the foundation of the Yi Jing (易經; Book of Changes), which dates back more than 2,000 years.

Yin and yang This classical text is used by some fengshui schools, since as Skinner writes, the Yi Jing predicts changes, while fengshui allows one to make changes. The ideal balance between yin and yang is two-fifths to

three-fifths, as this ratio is the most dynamic relationship and encourages the effective flow of qi .

Mirrors should not be placed by the bed, Yen says, and indeed ideally should not be used inside the house at all. White is not considered a good color, so he recommends painting objects like bookcases if they are originally white.

The choice of colors is important and complex, since they should accord with a room’s function, as well as with its location at a specific point of the compass, or “segment” of the compass as fengshui defines it.

Another fengshui consultant working in the Taipei area is South African Art Koch. On the basis of geographic location, he subdivides homes into the relationship area, education area, new beginnings area, career area, family area, and so on. Each is associated with a different Element and hence with a different color.

An area manager with Hess International Educational Organization by day, Koch took a degree in building biology at the Australian College of Environmental Studies in Melbourne, which included a significant number of fengshui classes, he says.

Indeed, to judge from the school’s website, building biology, which seeks cures to the sick-building syndrome, is largely a repackaging of fengshui for Western audiences.

With this background, Koch says he

usually includes measurements of air quality, electromagnetic radiation, and microwaves along with his fengshui report.

Most of his clients are other Englishspeaking foreigners, but Koch says his confidence increased when a local woman not only entrusted him with analyzing her home to improve conditions for her sick child, but even more so when she secretly had a local fengshui master check his calculations and subsequently informed him that both readings were essentially the same.

When diagnosing compatriot Liz Coetzee’s home in southern Taipei, he found that a geomagnetic line ran directly through her house. His remedy for the negative effects on the human immune system was to design a metal coil to be placed on the line. Many people’s homes lie on or near such lines he says, but this is not all bad news, as they are good for rejuvenating cells, so he suggested Coetzee move her bed to gain its benefit while sleeping or resting.

Koch also discovered a “negative psychotic impression” – which he said could taiwan business topics • june 2012

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Like most temples, Taipei's Confucius temple (left) faces south. The Longshan Temple in Taipei contains a large moving-water feature (above).

result from something as simple as a parent scolding a child to something as major as an unnatural death – and for this he prescribed a ritual involving cymbals, candles, and the chanting of a mantra. This procedure derived from a unit in his degree curriculum titled “Creating a Sacred Space.”

Koch says he asks potential clients for their feelings about spirituality, so as to know whether they are amenable to this aspect of his diagnosis.

On the other hand, Koch says he does not deal with “superstitious” ideas such as mirrors and clocks, but limits himself to “orthodox” fengshui Oriental building biology, for which he uses a luopan (羅盤).

Also known as the fengshui compass, this device is the main tool of most schools of fengshui , including those practiced by Yen and Skinner. Although fengshui predates the invention of the luopan , once invented a little over two millennia ago, it became an indispensable part of a master’s equipment.

The luopan is usually combined with various symbols “arranged” (luo ) in concentric circles on a “board” (pan ), hence its name. It is composed of two parts, the circular heaven plate in the center, which rotates freely on the lower earth plate. The Chinese, who also invented the compass, call it a “south-pointing needle” (指南針), as they see it as pointing to the southern 32

magnetic pole rather than the north as in the West. Luopan are decorated with a great many symbols inside the circles, and a master may even design his own for use by his followers.

Having found the compass orientation of a house, office, or grave, and then allotted functions to the various rooms, fengshui practitioners then ascribe one or more of the Five Elements to each area. For example, Koch found that Coetzee’s kitchen was her relationship area, which is characterized by the earth element, and hence recommended she paint it with shades of yellow or brown.

Cycles of elements Elements are also arranged into a variety of cycles. These include the Production Cycle: wood→ fire → earth → metal → water → wood; Destruction Cycle: wood → earth → water→ fire→ metal→ wood; and Reduction Cycle: wood → water → metal → earth → fire → wood, though different schools have other variations on these themes.

Analysis of a building’s Five Elements might highlight shortages or excesses, and a master can then use these cycles to stimulate or reduce them accordingly. For example, Skinner describes a situation in which an office has metal filing cabinets

in an area that should be predominantly wood. Not only is the wood lacking, but the destruction cycle shows that metal will destroy wood. If the cabinets cannot be removed or replaced by wooden cabinets, they might be painted red, the fire color, since the destruction cycle shows that fire destroys metal. Even better would be to introduce a water element, since this helps to produce wood and reduce metal.

Introducing water elements could simply involve using the color blue, or hanging a photograph of a waterfall, but better still, of course, would be a real water feature such as a fish tank or moving-water decoration, such as a miniature fountain pushing around a rotating ball. Such a water feature is essential for restaurants, Yen says, seeing as there are not just symbols of fire but actual fire inside. This notion perhaps also explains the many water features, such as the “algal wells” (藻井) – a painted ceiling with lattice design – found in temples where candles and incense are lit, representing real threats to traditional wooden structures.

Yen recommends that clients use crystals to focus energy. Transparent crystals help clear bad energy, while purple ones aid in collecting positive energy, green crystals are good for garnering wealth, and pink for good fortune. With regard to flowers,

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Fengshui

he says that white roses are best for young people under 20 years of age who are looking for love, red roses for those over 30, and pink for those in between. The use of flowers is backed up by Western science, he adds, since looking at flowers makes one feel better, which in turn makes a person more attractive, which increases his or her chances of finding love.

Yen introduced a clothing store in Taipei’s Daan District for whose design he had been consulted. Apart from suggesting that the owner paint the north wall brown in keeping with orthodox rules, he recommended light colors to make the shop seem more spacious. This also allowed the colors of the clothes to attract customers’ attention. This, he admits, could be called interior design, or simply common sense, but that’s what fengshui is, largely the application of common sense.

He also recommended that plants be positioned at various points, and that the “wealth-bringing cat” (招財貓), which originated in Japan, be replaced by a more orthodox Chinese bronze toad (蟾蜍). For a water feature, he suggested a fish tank with nine fish. The owner says she is not

very good at rearing fish, and the number frequently falls until she replaces them.

Yen says that is okay as long as it is still an odd number.

Yen charges NT$6,000 for a consultation. Koch charges an hourly rate equivalent to what he makes from teaching, with a simple two-to-three hour consultation costing around NT$2,000. Famous masters can charge up to NT$250,000, plus NT$5,000 per ping (6 square meters), Yen says.

As for proof that any of this is true, that qi actually exists, that painting walls in different colors will improve one’s health, wealth, and happiness, Skinner’s book is full of what he calls evidence of fengshui ’s effectiveness. The centers of old cities, for example, located inside the meandering curve of a river, are often more prosperous than the suburbs, which have less good locations. Taoist masters of old were supposed to be able to make it rain, he writes, whereas Western science is unable to control the weather and cannot even predict it for more than a few hours or days in advance.

Yen, like Skinner, says it is only a matter of time before scientists find a way of measuring qi , thus verifying its existence.

Koch says that for him this proof is of a personal nature. For example, he recounted, after 10 years with his previous boyfriend, they moved into a new apartment in northern Taipei. Their bedroom had shelves all around at about head height, in other words, classical fengshui “poison arrows.”

Sure enough, their relationship ended soon afterward. Further proof of the reality of fengshui came within weeks of his disman-

tling the shelves and painting the bedroom, he says, when his current partner entered his life.

Perhaps fengshui is more like a religion with scientific ambitions, so that once a person believes in it, evidence of its existence can be found everywhere. To judge from Taiwan’s newspapers, local people certainly believe. Not only is fengshui reported on regularly, but many other articles refer to it as fact rather than conjecture. One often repeated account is that former President Lee Teng-hui, who broke the mainlanders’ grip on the Kuomintang to become the first Taiwan-born president in 1988, owes much of his success to the near-perfect fengshui of his ancestors’ tomb. More recently, Lee’s ailing health is similarly blamed on the erection of poles or other “poison arrows” in the grave’s vicinity.

Water features placed in a Taipei clothing store office, top right, and in a Tainan bakery, below, perhaps accounting for the success of those enterprises.

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Drumming Their Way to Respect As shown in a new movie, the Chio-tian troupe turns troubled teens into accomplished folk-art performers.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY RICH J. MATHESON

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low-budget Taiwanese movie was the big surprise of the 2012 Chinese New Year box office releases.

Din Tao: Leader of the Parade was filmed at a cost of NT$40 million (US$1.36 million) – less even than Cape No. 7 ’s NT$50 million (US$ 1.7 million) – and has already earned an unexpected NT$316 million (US$ 10.8 million) at the box office. The film is a dramatic comedy about a floundering traditional performance troupe (dintao ,陣頭) that breathes new life and creativity into this ancient and increasingly 34

marginalized performance art form.

The film is based on the true story of the Chio-tian Folk Drums & Art Troupe (九天民俗技藝團), a group of ordinary temple performers who rose to the level of an internationally acclaimed stage performance ensemble. The plot weaves strained father-son relationships and traditionalversus-modern themes into a story that all Taiwanese can easily identify with, while at the same time bringing respectability to traditional temple performers who are often disparaged by Taiwanese society and the

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D i n ta o

media. The essence of the troupe is captured well in the plot, even though it diverges considerably from the true story of Chio-tian.

Dintao , aptly explained in the movie title as meaning “leader of the parade,” is a native Taiwan phenomenon and one of Taiwan’s not yet fully recognized cultural treasures. In Taiwanese folk religion, gods are often paraded through the streets for pilgrimages, inspection tours, and celebrations. They leave the home temple borne on grand palanquins carried by bearers and followed by believers carrying incense. The accompanying performers who provide protection, entertainment, and the execution of religious rituals for the gods are called dintao .

Now in decline, the art of dintao was once an integral part of life in Taiwan.

Countless variations have been developed over the years, and each has a specific function. The familiar jiajiang dintao with their fiercely painted faces perform religious functions such as ridding the environs of evil spirits. Some dintao – such as lion and dragon dance teams or musical beiguan troupes – simply developed as a form of entertainment for the rural population.

Others once had military functions, like the Song Jiang Battle Array that derives from village militias.

Dintao continues to develop and evolve today with the recent appearance of techno santaitz popular with taike , a Taiwanese grassroots movement, and creative Song Jiang Battle Array competitions popular

with university students. There have also been fundamental shifts in dintao culture with professional troupes replacing community volunteer groups. Dintao was once a community pastime and the domain of volunteers. Villagers would gather at local temples after a day in the fields for relaxation and entertainment for Taiwan’s predominantly agricultural society.

After Taiwan’s rapid industrialization, the average person no longer had time to practice for performances, but more money was being spent on religion. Paid troupes gradually took over, often drawing members from the ranks of the unemployed or gangs. More recently, another fundamental shift is taking place as troupes attempt to cast off unsavory stereotypes through the refinement of performance and creativity, and often by taking the street performance onto the stage.

Chio-tian Drum Art Troupe is at the vanguard of this movement. The visionary leader took a bunch of delinquent kids and imbued in them his passion for traditional folk arts through hard training, strict rules, and education. The result has been to transform the group into an internationally recognized art performance troupe.

The group’s base, the Empress of the Nine Dark Heavens Temple, sits atop a small hill overlooking Taichung city to the east and the Taiwan Strait to the west, and is surrounded by red-earthen fields of taro and sweet potatoes. The temple is a simple tin structure with glowing red lanterns and

its name spelled out in neon-lit characters.

The steady beat of drums completes the mystical aura.

In making the movie about Chio-tian, acclaimed television director Feng Kai struggled against pejorative stereotypes of dintao culture. Sensational newspaper articles and television reports more often focus on fights, gangster affiliations, and other negative characteristics of dintao rather than its positive aspects. These reports are by no means untrue, as dintao troupes typically find their members among school dropouts and recalcitrant street youth.

Within the generally well-educated Taiwan populace, those without higher education are often marginalized. Opportunities for kids who don’t study well are few. In many other countries, those who don’t perform well scholastically can take refuge in sports or the arts, but these outlets are sadly underdeveloped and undervalued in Taiwan. Taiwan’s high school dropouts often look for sanctuary in dintao , doing little for its image. For this reason, Chiotian requires all its teenaged members to be enrolled in school, both to raise the respectability of dintao and for their future prospects. “Hsu teaches us to be open-

Mariah chats with Jason Hsu's wife, left, and Yu Zhu-ru practices his drumming, right.

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minded and study everything,” says Chiotian drummer Yu Zhu-ru, referring to Jason Hsu, Chio-tian’s founder and chief.

“Although I’m Christian, I’ve become versed in our folk culture and beliefs. We need to become educated ‘dintao ambassadors’ so we can break down harmful stereotypes.”

Led by a Taoist master Veteran Chio-tian member Cai Kunying dropped out of middle school and was drawn to the troupe with some dropout friends eight years ago. He admits that getting used to living in large steel containers wasn’t easy, but now he says “Chio-tian is my home and family – dintao was good for me and is good for Taiwan.” He is currently studying in night school, performs with the troupe, and also did the face painting and jiajiang dance for the movie. “If the leader is good, the troupe is good,” Cai says, and it is apparent that Jason Hsu is a good leader.

Hsu is a Taoist master and abbot of the Empress of the Nine Dark Heavens Temple.

Beginning in 1995 with a small house temple in Taichung that later expanded and moved to Shalu, the practicing spirit medium took in delinquent kids for his dintao troupe. One such teen was the charismatic and easygoing Mariah (Chen Shi-min).

Now one of the longest-serving members, Mariah recalls: “When I was a teenager in junior high school, I would pass the temple on the way to school and was intrigued.”

With a classmate, he dropped in and was soon drumming with the troupe. Today he is the troupe’s guidance counselor and calls Jason Hsu his “master, father, and brother.”

The troupe originally performed traditional kailugu (the drumming at the front of the parade to lead the way and clear the road), but the beat was slow and monotonous, so Hsu decided to speed up the tempo and create more innovative pieces, which the troupe members taught themselves to play. By 1997, they were performing publicly but still earning a pittance at traditional venues. It was not until 2002 – after many public performances, hard work, and making the difficult and innovative jump to performing dintao on-stage – that the troupe became economically viable. The turning point was recognition 36

by the Taichung government and then an invitation to perform in Canada.

According to troupe member Ah-Bei, it was a miracle when the group moved to its current location 10 years ago. The troupe was under pressure to move because city neighbors complained about the noise of drum practice, but it was short of money.

“Fortunately one of Hsu’s patrons offered this land free of charge and we built a modest temple flanked by five large shipping containers for housing,” recalls Ah-Bei. Today there are 11 shipping containerscum-housing of different sizes plus one for the storage of the more than 20 drums.

The walking pilgrimage around Taiwan that Chio-tian previously conducted annually demonstrates the group’s determination, dedication, and perseverance. Every year from 1996 to 2003, the troupe and followers would embark on a month-long journey carrying 25-kilogram drums and their taizi ye god puppet. Chio-tian’s executive manager, Li Guang-zhen, who spent his youth doing menial jobs and running with gangs, felt his life had no meaning until he joined the troupe. During one pilgrimage, he carried taizi ye for 13 hours, covering 60 kilometers in a herculean feat and setting a still unbroken record for the troupe.

Besides touring the world with Chio-tian,

Li now gives motivational speeches at universities and businesses while studying for a degree in visual communication.

Of Chio-tian’s 20-some current members (the number fluctuates between 10 and 30), the youngest is 10 and the oldest 55.

The troupe accepts any orphan, dropout, or abused child, but rigorously screens all other applicants. Jason’s wife explains that the kids are usually in their early teens, as “this is the age parents realize they have lost control, and after high school problems are too ingrained.” Girls are discouraged from joining (though not rejected), not because Chio-tian feels they don’t belong in dintao or are in any way less able, but rather because the living and travel arrangements can be difficult.

“For every 10 kids that come here, maybe three will run away and never come back,” she adds. Not every kid can handle the rigors, especially when they are sent there against their will. Many of them were dropped off by exasperated parents hoping to give their children a second chance.

Zhuang Yao-chang, for example, came to Taichung on a trip with his parents four years ago. He says he thought it strange that his parents were talking to the manager of this small temple, and “when I came out of the temple, my parents had

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D i n ta o The Nine Dark Heavens Temple, surrounded by taro and sweet potato fields, left, and the taizi ye god puppet, right.

disappeared and my suitcases were on the street.” It is not an uncommon way to become a troupe member, but Zhuang says he loves drumming and is getting set to attend university.

Strenuous training One area in which Chio-tian differs from most other dintao troupes is the discipline imposed on the members. All under-age kids are prohibited from smoking, chewing betel nut, drinking, swearing, and fighting. Failure to comply is dealt with severely. They are whipped with a rattan rod while kneeling in front of the temple’s god.

The daily routine is strenuous. Rising at seven, they do basic chores, eat a communal breakfast, gather for a daily meeting at 8:30, and practice from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a break for lunch at noon. After six and a half hours of strenuous physical training, they attend night school for another five hours.

Training consists of physical conditioning, learning performance gestures, and most especially drumming. Chio-tian’s newest member, 17-year-old Song Bochen, proudly proclaims after his first day of practice that “my hands are a bloody mess.” Although he is too proud to admit

it, it is evident when he stands up that his whole body is aching. “I’m still a little sore,” he understates.

Most of the troupe members take the arduous daily practice session in stride. No one complains. Zhen Yu-chen, 17, who was sent here from Taipei half a year ago, says he often goes through the sessions in a state of reverie. “I start drumming in the morning and before I know it, it’s time to knock off for lunch. The same thing happens in the afternoon session.”

I n 2004, t h e C h i o-t i a n m e m b e r s climbed Yushan carrying their drums on their backs, and in 2006 they walked around the island, performing in 23 counties and cities. Last year some troupe members competed in the Planet Sahara Super Marathon Race carrying their 17-kilogram santaitz god on a seven-day, 250-kilometer race across the Sahara desert. They have performed in Africa, Canada, the Czech Republic, the United States, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and all around Taiwan.

Chio-tian has won many awards for service and excellence, and for the past two years, the movie Din Tao, Leader of the Pack has kept them busy – epic feats indeed for a small Taichung dintao troupe.

Chio-tian’s considerable attainments can easily overshadow the sense of com-

munity and personal victories that troupe members have gained – achievements that show dintao to be a worthwhile contributor to Taiwanese society.

Su Xiang-wei’s mother brought him to Chio-tian when he was 14 and doing poorly in school. Now he’s 16, and while still not a great student, he is comfortable in the troupe and has been to Xiamen, Hong Kong, Fuzhou, and all over Taiwan.

Most importantly, he is no longer getting into trouble, and has good role models and an easygoing confidence that comes with his experience and hard work. The troupe’s youngest member, Chen Yi-wen, is still adjusting to a new school and life in the troupe, but he is no longer abused, is a great drummer, and has a promising future.

Twenty-one year-old Chen Guan-ying, whose story was dramatized in the movie as the character Min-Min, came to Chiotian three years ago after serving two years as a juvenile offender. Whatever her past and the circumstances that led to it, she is now a confident and well-spoken young lady and good student.

Mariah, who was a small-time drug dealer and gang member, has rocketed to stardom after a stellar performance in the movie and has just finished filming with the popular TV serial Holding Hands . Asked if he will pursue acting, he promptly and unequivocally replies: “No, Chio-tian is my family. I belong here.”

When asked where he would be without Chio-Tian, Ah-Bei, who kicked his dependence on drugs when he joined, pauses for a moment, then poignantly replies, “Probably dead.”

These are just a few, and not necessarily the most dramatic, examples of the hundreds of kids that have been touched

by Chio-tian. The troupe is reviving dintao ’s previous role as a cornerstone of the community and an integral part of society, while promoting and passing on the traditions of Taiwan’s rich temple culture and arts to the next generation. Beyond all its awards and recognitions, Chio-tian stands for hard-working kids dedicated to promoting their heritage – kids who can look forward to a bright future, definitely worthy of respect. taiwan business topics • june 2012

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Taiwan’s Feathered Racers With huge gambling sums on the line, the island has been one of the world’s leading locations for pigeon racing.

photo : courtesy of t ime pigeon

BY MARK CALTONHILL

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s usual, Taiwan will struggle for medals in this month’s Olympic Games, but there is one sport in which Taiwanese athletes excel, and which it would be a shoo-in for a medal if there were international competition.

Athletes begin training from around one month old, and after a few practice events, assuming they do not get kidnapped, and hopefully not pumped too full of steroids, are entered into their first and last competition when just a few months old. Many do not make it home, some get lost, some find greener pastures, and yet others die on route, either from natural disaster or shot by a rival athlete’s coach. And even if they do make it home, if their own coach is not satisfied with their performance, he or his friends might eat them. Meanwhile, the champion will be treated like a stud horse and, never having to race again, will spend the next decade or so siring offspring.

Such, in Taiwan, is the typically brutal and generally short life of Columba livia domestica , better known as the domesticated pigeon in English and as jia-ge (家鴿 “homing pigeon”) in Mandarin.

The pigeon was the earliest bird domes38

ticated by Homo sapiens , and its innate homing ability was harnessed for communication purposes at least three millennia ago in ancient Egypt and Persia. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century, following development of rail networks to transport large numbers of birds and sophisticated clocks to record and prove their speeds in returning home, that the modern sport of pigeon racing emerged in Belgium.

“Most birds racing around the world today derive in part from winners of those early competitions, not least the pigeons raced in Taiwan,” says Tony Wang, a pigeon racer and breeder from Zhongli in Taoyuan County, who also helps write the 1-Pigeon website (www.1-pigeon.com.tw) and associated magazine. “Taiwanese have been importing birds throughout the 60 years of the sport’s history on the island,” he notes. Wang himself makes a trip to Europe each year, with most of his birds still coming from Belgium.

The birds he brings back cannot be raced themselves – or they would try to fly to their European homeland – but rather form the basis of his new bloodlines,

interbred with his own best performing pigeons. “In Taiwan, our birds race only once in their life – at either four months old in the south or at six months old in the north,” Wang explains. “And with so many variables in determining the winner, it’s hard to know which pigeons are truly genetically superior. Pigeon owners talk a lot about genetics. Since we can’t see the bird’s brain, which is where a winner is truly made, we tend to look at details of the eyes and wing shape.”

“In Europe, pigeons race many times over three to five years or even longer,” Wang continues. “This makes multiple winners very popular for breeding, and very valuable.” Until recently, the top price for a bird was the equivalent in British pounds of about NT$6.7 million, paid by a Taiwanese breeder/racer in 1992. This figure was superseded in January this year by the approximately NT$9.3 million paid by a Chinese shipping magnate to a Dutch breeder during an online pigeon auction.

Wang considers that deal to be a watershed. “For about 30 years, Taiwan has been the world’s leader in racing, both in terms of the number of people participat-

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ing in the sport and the total annual prize money. After the law was liberalized in China around two decades ago, pigeon racing became possible there. Taiwanese breeders sold many birds and Taiwanese trainers went across the Strait to teach their skills. Now the tables have turned.

Chinese buy directly from European and American auctions, and our advice is no longer needed.”

According to Wang’s estimate, around 700,000 Chinese currently participate in the sport, compared with about 300,000 in Taiwan. The official figure here is around 30,000, with another 50,000 involved in breeding, training, selling equipment, feed and so forth, and in other supporting roles.

Most lofts are owner-operated, but some owners will employ a trainer to take care of day-to-day matters such as feeding and cleaning, but also to help design the training schedule, help select birds for racing, and even offer advice regarding breeding.

Furthermore, unlike Europe, where the prestige and prizes of winning are sufficient motivation – as well as the money to be made by selling or breeding from a multiple winner – in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia, it is the lure of gambling that underpins the sport.

chips used in racing, with the meeting to be held on Datun Mountain, north of Taipei beyond Yangmingshan. But the interview was canceled when the subject decided that “secrets of pigeon racing should stay within the pigeon-racing community.”

The races are organized through local associations, of which there are around 200 legal ones nationwide. Media reports suggest that two or three times this number of unofficial associations also exist.

Also “unofficial” are the prizes offered to the owners of winning pigeons. Typically motor scooters or cars are given out, since cash rewards would be taxable.

In addition, the government cannot manage to tax the huge amounts of money gambled on the races, at the events of both official and unofficial associations.

Wagers are said to total billions of NT dollars each year.

A pigeon trainer who gave his name only as Li (the Mandarin equivalent of saying “Smith” in English) says that at the end of a race, all interested parties gather at their association headquarters, results are calculated and announced, money is distributed, and any paperwork is destroyed so that within hours there is no evidence of anything untoward having taken place.

These gamblers are not necessarily the criminal gangs of popular imagination, Wang says, but largely ordinary association members who are also breeders and racers.

Nevertheless, with the stakes being so high, some people will do anything they can to influence competitions. This explains why birds are only allowed to race once, at the

Reluctance to talk Gambling is the sport’s raison d’être in Taiwan, and like all forms of gambling, it is illegal here. No wonder then that when a local TV crew visited a pigeon-racing event recently, the participants all made sure to keep their backs to the cameras or covered their faces. Similarly, it was very hard to find anyone willing to be interviewed for this article. For two months, this author was passed from telephone number to telephone number, appointments were made and then canceled, and no one wanted to be photographed. Even on the eve of submission of the article, a racing contact set up an interview with a representative of the association responsible for the timing Breeder Tony Wang releases his birds for an exercise flight. photo : mark caltohill

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Pigeons

photo : mark caltohill

A r e p r o d u c t i o n f r o m a Ta i w a n ese periodical devoted to pigeon breeding (top left), and two types of pigeon lofts. The elevated one shown above is typical of southern Taiwan.

photo : courtesy of Time Pigeon

Multiple risks

photo : courtesy of Time Pigeon

tender age of just a few months old. This helps prevent would-be cheats from engaging in too much hanky panky.

Each bird is ringed with an electronic band within the first seven days of life, and taken to the member’s association headquarters every week or two to have its identity and age confirmed, and to have an indelible mark stamped on its wing feathers. Each such visit must be paid for, all of which adds to the cost of racing.

At about one month old, birds are allowed to leave their home loft and explore the local area. The owner or trainer waves a large flag in the air to prevent them from landing for 30 minutes or an hour, and he will do this for increasing lengths of time over the coming days to build up the birds’ muscles and increase 40

stamina, just as with human athletes.

The science behind pigeons’ (and other birds’) ability to find their way home over long distances is not yet understood, but the earth’s magnetic field is suspected of being helpful over long distances, while visual and even aural clues are important locally.

Sex is a strong motivating force, with pigeons being keen to return to their nest and their mate. In European racing, where birds compete for several years, “widowing” is used for training. After their first clutch of eggs, pigeons get to spend time with their mates only as a reward at the end of a race or training session. Of course, this training method is of no use in Taiwan, where birds’ careers are over after just half a year.

Once pigeons are accustomed to flying near home, they are transported further and further away from home and released to find their way back. This is when an owner’s losses start to escalate. Birds might hit power lines or other obstacles, meet with hungry birds of prey, encounter bad weather, or even be kidnapped.

Comical as this last peril might sound, it is a serious matter and the situation is getting worse. Thieves erect huge nets in valleys to catch the birds, and in an even more sophisticated method, Wang says, they fly radio-controlled aircraft over the birds, thus forcing them down into waiting nets.

So maybe those guys playing with model planes in your local park are not just overgrown kids after all.

Within a few days, the owner will r e c e i v e a r a n s o m d e m a n d, u s u a l l y NT$1,000 to NT$2,000 per animal, but possibly as high as NT$10,000. Wang says he rarely has a complete season in which birds are not kidnapped. Having invested so much in their birds already, most owners are likely to pay, he believes.

Another threat is a direct raid, in which thieves enter an owner’s loft to steal birds.

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This is not for ransom, but because the thieves’ boss or client covets the birds for breeding. Not infrequently, he may have made offers to buy them, but been rejected, Wang suggests.

As the race date nears, birds are taken on longer and longer journeys away from their homes, and on the basis of their performance in training, the owner will select those to be entered into competition. This also depends on the weather forecast for race day; males generally fly faster unless the weather is bad, in which case females find their way home better.

Shorter, private races are also held between loft keepers to provide them with further information about which birds are looking good.

In reasonable weather, a pigeon flies around 1.2 kilometers per minute, and so will average 70 kph to 80 kph over the race distance. Due to Taiwan’s relatively small size and the dangers involved in flying over land, Taiwan’s races start out at sea, around 350 kilometers away. Races to northern Taiwan start in the Diaoyutai Islands (called the Senkaku Islands by the Japanese) to the northwest; those to the south begin from Dongsha (also known as the Pratas Islands) to the southeast.

A specially equipped boat is required to

enable release of the huge number of birds almost instantaneously. This boat is shared among the northern, central, and southern racing associations, and so their races take place at different times. The four seasonal races are held in April, June, October, and December in the north, and one month earlier in the south.

Distances from the release point to the locations of each owner’s loft are calculated using GPS, and the bird with the fastest average flight speed is deemed the winner.

Given this unusual situation, pigeon racing is known as the sport that has one starting line and thousands of finishing lines, which is the answer to a commonly asked pub quiz question.

While the winner can look forward to a good rest and a long life, are the losing birds really put on the barbeque and eaten? No, says Wang, that is just black humor, a joke pigeon owners like to tell about themselves.

Taiwan's racing pigeons are well taken care of, even though they only have the chance to compete once in their lives. photos: courtesy of Time Pigeon

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Taiwan’s Newest Museums

Some worthwhile new facilities have opened recently in various parts of the island.

BY sTeveN crook ph o to s: rich j. mat hes on

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ince the 1990s, new museums in Taiwan have, to use a Chinese idiom, been springing up “like bamboo shoots after rain.”

Undoubtedly the most important one to have opened in the past two years is the National Museum of Taiwan History or NMTH [250 Zhanghe Road Section 1, Annan District, Tainan City; open: Tue-Sun 9am-5pm; Tel: (06) 356-8899; www.nmth. gov.tw; free admission]. The opening of this 20-hectare complex last October was a major event – as it should be, because it filled a glaring gap. Taiwan has long had museums dedicated to the arts and sciences, and also to its ethnic minorities; countries of comparable size and wealth have had history museums for decades, if not longer.

But Taiwan’s peculiar history has meant that, until quite recently, building a consensus about the past – let alone the island’s future direction – was extremely difficult.

The project was conceived during Lee Teng-hui’s presidency and nurtured by the Chen Shui-bian administration, but the finishing touches were not made until well after the Kuomintang returned to power in 2008. As a result, many who toured the museum just after it opened were curious 42

to see if it presented a “green-tinted” or “blue-tinged” version of Taiwan’s past.

Anyone looking for a political subtext inside the NMTH will be disappointed, however. The museum has not attracted criticism of the kind leveled at Taipei’s 2-28 Memorial Museum, and it manages to be both thorough and engrossing. The standard of English throughout the NMTH is very high, even if the text is often too small for comfortable reading.

Rather than present history in a traditional text-heavy format, the second floor’s permanent exhibition, “Our Land, Our People – The Story of Taiwan,” is filled with images and models. It goes all the way back to the days of Taiwan's earliest known human inhabitant, “Zuozhen Man,” 30,000-year-old fragments of whom were found in a riverbed about 20 kilometers inland of the museum.

Of the several tableaux vivants on the second floor, two in particular stand out.

One is a recreation of Lukang’s waterfront as it would have looked in the 18th century, when the central Taiwan town was one of Taiwan's busiest harbors. The diorama features several lifelike waxworks figures, among them stowaways (who cower in the

hold of a single-mast junk, hoping to evade the imperial ban on migrating to Taiwan), the vessel’s captain, stevedores, and an official wearing a traditional mandarin’s gown.

Another depicts a traditional religious parade. Anyone curious about the roles played by Bajiajiang (fierce-looking young men with painted faces who prance menacingly in front of the palanquin bearing the effigy of a god) and others during such events will appreciate the clear and concise information – even if they have to kneel on the floor to read some of the panels.

According to a museum spokeswoman, more than 200 waxwork figures (actually fiberglass) were crafted for the museum, and the physique and face of each one was modeled on an actual living person – including, in one case, NMTH Director Lu Li-cheng.

Elsewhere on the second floor, displays look at the role of irrigation, camphor, and sugar in Taiwan’s development. Financiers will be interested to read that in the mid1600s, four currencies – Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese – were in daily use in those parts of Taiwan controlled by the Dutch East India Company. Exchange rates were, by modern standards, very stable.

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New Museums

The old maps and books on the second floor are replicas. Many of the originals can be seen on the fourth floor, where the lighting is softer and, unfortunately, the labeling less comprehensive. In several instances, antique books are displayed with a note giving their title in Chinese and the original language. In many cases the latter is not English, meaning visitors who read neither Chinese – nor Dutch, German, or French, as the case may be – are left in the dark.

George Psalmanaazar's An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa is an important book in the history of Western perceptions of Taiwan, but the English note beside it fails to mention that a few years after the book was published in London in 1704, it was exposed as a shameless hoax. The author was not a Formosan, as he had claimed, nor had he even visited the island.

Anyone with a serious interest in Taiwan's history should expect to spend at least two hours in this museum. Local bus no. 18, which runs every half hour, links the museum and Tainan Railway Station.

tion in the Land Bank concerns dinosaurs and fossils, but in the old vaults there are some fascinating snippets about the history of banking and land reform. (The Land Bank was established in 1946 to manage the assets of the outgoing Japanese colonial authorities and facilitate land reform).

One panel explains that because Taiwanese people were accustomed to using silver and copper coins, when the Bank of Taiwan was set up in 1899, it initially issued bank bonds convertible into silver, not gold as was usual at that time.

D e p e n d i n g h o w o l d y o u a r e, t h e mechanical calculators twice the size of

typewriters will evoke awe or nostalgia.

Oddly, the short biography of Yen Chia-kan, the bank’s first president, fails to mention his subsequent career in politics. He served as Chiang Kai-shek’s premier and vice president, and upon Chiang’s death in 1975 acceded briefly to the ROC presidency.

Within walking distance of the NTM, and open to the public since National Day 2010, the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Artifacts Museum [2 Changsha Street, Section 1; open: Mon-Fri 9:30am-4:30pm; Tel: (02) 2316-1000; free admission] is a niche attraction.

Political junkies who can read Chinese

From bank to museum The oldest museum in the ROC, the National Taiwan Museum [2 Xiangyang Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City; open: Tue-Sun 10am-5pm; Tel: (02) 23822566; www.ntm.gov.tw; admission: adults NT$20, students NT$10] was established in 1908 and has been located in its current building since 1915. In 2007, it took over the colonial-era bank building across the road and began a renovation effort which lasted until February 2010, when what is now called the Land Bank Exhibition Hall (25 Xiangyang Road; same opening times; use the same ticket for admission) was opened to the public.

Displays in the NTM’s main building continue to focus on zoology, botany, and anthropology. Among the exhibitions is one about Taiwan’s indigenous creatures; another, which runs until October 14, is called “Come to Our Future: Climate Change Exhibition.” The central exhibiA full-size model of a Qing Dynasty junk can be found on the second floor of the National Museum of Taiwan History. taiwan business topics • june 2012

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will be engrossed by the information about the six presidents who have been in office in Taiwan since 1949, their achievements, the constitution that limits their powers, and the oath they swear when taking office.

Hundreds of photographs show the six presidents meeting with dignitaries from around the world. If you look closely at the pictures of Chiang Ching-kuo (president for a decade until his death in 1988), in several you will notice a youthful Ma Ying-jeou in the background. Ma served as Chiang's English interpreter in the mid-1980s.

Apolitical visitors will prefer the section devoted to gifts received by ROC presidents and vice-presidents; it also has better English labeling. It features a traditional desert robe presented by Saudi Arabia, an outrigger canoe from the Marshall Islands, plus scores of medals and paintings. Several gifts came from the Holy See, the only European state still maintaining diplomatic ties with the ROC. The elephant tusks from (Top) The National Museum of Taiwan History has a spacious and eco-friendly design.

(Below) Fiberglass figures make the past come alive in the National Museum of Taiwan History.

44

Chad were given in 1969; the label fails to point out that this was a full two decades before the United Nations banned the international trade in ivory.

Ballot papers and election certificates are also displayed, and there are replicas of state seals that visitors can handle. Two of the latter weigh more than three kilograms each; it is said their heft serves to remind the president of his weighty responsibilities. In addition, there is an interesting assortment of flags, bank bills (the ones

with Arabic script were used in Xinjiang in China's West), and coins – but visitors who do not read Chinese will find the labeling inadequate.

The museum shares a 1924 building with the main office of Academia Historica, an archiving agency under the direct supervision of the Office of the President across the street. The museum does not have a website of its own; some Chinese-language pages devoted to it can be found on Academia Historica’s site (http://www.drnh.gov. tw). The nearest MRT station is Ximen (one stop west of Taipei Main Railway Station on the Blue Line). The museum is about 400 meters away; leave by Exits 2 or 3.

Architectural award-winner Lanyang Museum [750 Qingyun Road, Section 3, Toucheng Township, Yilan County; open: Tue-Sun 9am-5pm; Tel: (03) 977-9700; www.lym.gov.tw] bears many similarities to the National Museum of Taiwan History. A big-ticket project (NT$1.02 billion spent on building and fitting out) that took a decade to complete, it is crammed with high-quality models and convincing mock-ups, among them a tra-

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New Museums

ditional Atayal hut and a human-powered “dragon’s backbone” irrigation pump. The latter is made entirely of wood, with pegs instead of iron nails. The largest genuine heirloom is an ocean-going vessel formerly used for catching swordfish. Visitors can climb aboard and pose with the waxwork figure standing at the bow, 4.8-meter-long harpoon in hand.

Name notwithstanding, the museum’s coverage goes beyond the Lanyang Plain on which it is located, extending to the highland and maritime parts of Yilan County.

Unlike the NMTH, large parts of Lanyang Museum are devoted to natural history, fauna, and flora.

Architect Kris Yao scooped three major awards, and anyone visiting Yilan County should make an effort to park near the museum and walk around it, even if they lack the time or inclination to look inside. Yao was inspired by the color and angle of nearby rock strata; aware that the weather hereabouts is often inclement, he selected materials that do not become drab when wet.

The visiting direction for the permanent exhibition is not obvious, but that does not detract from the experience. Many people begin on the fourth floor. Devoted to the mountains, the exhibits there touch on the county’s now-defunct logging industry. The third floor describes how the plains were settled and turned into productive farmland, while the second floor describes the coast and ocean in great detail. The first floor is given over to a timeline.

The museum includes a great deal, yet there is no mention of James Horn. From a Westerner’s perspective this is disappointing, as Horn’s Yilan venture is a fascinating if minor part of the area’s history. Bankrolled by foreign merchants, among them a German called James Milisch, Horn arrived on the coast in 1868. Milisch had forged a Prussian consular permit granting Horn permission to fell timber. The Qing authorities, alarmed when the Englishman married the daughter of an aboriginal chieftain as a step toward founding his own colony, asked the British to order Horn out. They

did so, but Horn drowned when wading out to the vessel that was going to carry him away from Yilan.

The museum is fully bilingual, and English-language guided tours can be booked through its website. Those arriving in Yilan County via Freeway 5 should exit at Toucheng Interchange, then follow Highway 2 northward for more than a kilometer; the museum is easy to find at the km134 mark on Highway 2. Toucheng Railway Station is almost two kilometers away, but taxis are invariably available right outside the station.

Typhoon Morakot, in addition to killing hundreds of people and destroying several communities in the mountains of southern Taiwan in 2009, obliterated a little-known but pioneering museum – the first anywhere devoted to the culture and history of Taiwan’s pingpu (lowland aboriginal) people. A replacement, Xiaolin Pingpu Culture Museum [50 Wuli Road,

Jiasian District, Kaohsiung City; open: TueSun 9am-12pm and 1pm-5pm; Tel: (07) 676-1455] opened in March this year.

With just 1,478 square meters of exhibition space spread over two floors, the museum is relatively small. A more serious problem for international visitors is the complete lack of English. Those who read no Chinese will recognize the tiny banjos and the equipment used for making mud bricks, but are unlikely to know which of the many bamboo utensils on display is a mousetrap, and which was used for carrying water. The museum by itself does not justify the long drive from downtown Kaohsiung, although the area’s superb scenery and ecotourism possibilities certainly do.

The museum is at the km223 point on Highway 21, about 10 kilometers north of Jiasian, a small town that can be reached

by Highways 20 or 21.

Of major new museums in the pipeline, the best known is the delay-plagued National Palace Museum Southern Branch in Chiayi County’s Taibao Township. As a landmark, the New Taipei City Museum of Art looks to be every bit as exciting as Lanyang Museum. According to the architects, the design “sweeps up out of the ground in a dis-array [sic] of fluid elements, curving and crossing like the waters of the converging Yingge and Dahan rivers.” The project closest to completion is Chi Mei Tainan Metropolitan Park Museum. Due to open in Tainan City’s Rende District in November 2013, it will reportedly be the largest privately owned museum in Asia, with almost 30,000 square meters of exhibition space.

Mock-ups in the National Museum of Taiwan History recreate life in urban areas during the Japanese occupation (above) and in the countryside during Qing rule (right). taiwan business topics • june 2012

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Through the Eyes of the Tour Guides Foreign visitors find much to enjoy in Taiwan, including lovely scenery, good food, interesting museums, and extremely hospitable people.

BY AIMEE WONG

A

s Ta i w a n’s t o u r i s m b u s i n e s s increases in importance, so does the role of the country’s tour guides. For many foreign visitors, tour guides are often their chief source of information and one of the key factors in determining the impression they receive of the island. With the warming of cross-Strait ties in recent years, visitors from mainland China have emerged as the fastest growing area of tourism, although demand for Japanese and English-speaking tours is also rising. In fact, tours of the island are available in various languages, including Japanese, Chinese, English, and occasionally French and German.

Even long-term residents of Taiwan, including local nationals, can benefit from the services of tour guides, who can introduce little-known places that one would have difficulty learning about without their help. And even old familiar places can be viewed with a fresh eye with the help of an experienced, knowledgeable guide. Yet another reason for foreign residents of Taiwan to see the island by booking a tour is that hotel rates tend to be higher for foreigners than for locals – which is the reason hotels often ask to see your passport. But travel agencies have the volume to be able to demand reasonable prices.

For this article, a number of veteran inbound guides were consulted to get their insights into the Taiwan travel scene and

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how visitors from different countries regard the travel opportunities on the island.

Vincent Chiang offered his observations shortly after finishing taking a group on a three-day golfing trip that involved playing courses at Shimen, Donghua, Bali, and Beihai. It also included a stop at the Sise Golf & Country Club, where Yani Tseng won an LPGA championship.

Chiang notes a big difference in the approach to Taiwan tourism between his mainland Chinese and Western customers.

“People from mainland China eat fast and move fast – they have so many stops in their itinerary because they want to fit in every single possible site.” Tourists from Western countries, on the other hand, typically prefer to stay in one place longer and enjoy the moment, Chiang says. “Once I took a group of Swedish lawyers to Hualian and they said, ‘Wow, this is amazing.

Let’s just spend more nights here.’ Guides for the mainland Chinese tours can get bored with the job because Chinese tourists all tend to adopt the same six- or eightday itineraries,” even when the tours are offered by different companies.

He considers the best time to visit Taiwan to be spring or autumn when it’s not so hot. “But if you like surfing or outdoor activities, come in the summertime,” he suggests. He notes that many Canadians and Russians, seeking a warmer alternative to their homelands, express surprise at how

cold Taiwan can be in the wintertime.

Whatever their nationality, women travelers usually like to spend time shopping, says Chiang. The downtown district of Ximending is quite popular, and of course night markets, though some guests are put off by the strangeness of the food. “It’s quite different from their usual menu and many aren’t brave enough to taste it,” he notes. “I like the night markets in southern and central Taiwan, like Kaohsiung’s Liuhe Night Market. The air is so much better than Taipei’s Shilin Night Market, and it’s much less crowded.”

Chiang says the National Palace Museum used to be his favorite destination to bring foreign visitors. “With 650,000 of the best Chinese relics in its collection, the content is wonderful. But recently, especially after Taiwan opened the door to tourists from China, there are so many people visiting the museum. It’s like a marketplace – crowded and noisy. If you want to go, you have to choose your time carefully, for example after 4 p.m. or at noon on weekdays.”

Jenny Lin, who studied Fine Arts at the University of Missouri Kansas City, decided to become a tour guide after she realized she didn’t enjoy having an office job. “I like to travel, I like to be outdoors,” she says. “When I was working in an office, in the wintertime it was dark went I left for work and by the time I was ready to go

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tour guides

home it was evening. I never saw the sun.”

Now working as an English-language tour guide for a few different companies, including Lion Travel and Golden Foundation, she can pick her assignments. She mostly leads inbound groups, including cruise excursions and corporate tours.

“For a seven- to ten-day around-theisland tour, the over-two-million-year-old Taroko Gorge amazes visitors the most,” Lin says. “The scenery really stands out from the rest of the landscape here. And for those who want to see and photograph traditional Chinese architecture, Bao-an Temple is one of the best-preserved temples in Taipei. The best spot from which to take pictures is the very back of the second floor.

But if you want to see a busier temple, bustling with action, Longshan Temple would be the choice. I usually demonstrate how to pray to the gods, and explain the symbolism of the red and white flowers in front of the fertility gods. I’ve found that Westerner visitors in general are really into temples because they are very different from their home countries’ culture. They’re always surprised that we have a deity for so many different things, including taking examinations.”

Off the beaten track Asked about interesting but little-known spots, she mentioned the Guangxin Paper Mill near Sun Moon Lake. “It’s a fun place with an hour-and-a-half tour on which you can make your own paper and paper fans, boiling down tree roots and combining it with other materials. They also offer tastings with papers made out of carrots and other vegetables. It’s popular with locals, but it would be a fun experience for foreigners as well. Both kids and adults love it.”

The younger crowd enjoys clubbing, and in the first week of April every year, the Spring Scream in Kenting at the southern tip of Taiwan draws large numbers of attendees, especially those from other parts of Asia. “It’s an outdoor music festival like Woodstock or Coachella started by two foreign English teachers living in Taiwan,” explains Lin. “It started out with mostly hard rock bands and alternative music, and now they also have hip hop and trance.

About 50,000 people show up.”

Lin notes that “adults, especially

North American visitors, love visiting Taroko Gorge, but kids get so bored.”

She recommends that families with young children stay at the Promised Land Resort & Lagoon, which offers canoeing, horseback-riding, and ceramics and bread-baking classes. “You can take a boat around the whole hotel, and there’s a small area for swimming, with little rivers and paddle-boating in the lake.” Back in Taipei, she would direct families to the Miniatures Museum (B1, 96 JianGuo North Road, Section 1. Tel: 2515-0583) that offers miniature dollhouses and other diminutive replicas.

We next sought the guidance of Felix Chen, who worked for the Tourism Bureau for many years, including an eight-year stint in San Francisco, before he eventually tired of office work. He has been a freelance tour guide for the past seven years, leading tours for the Golden Foundation and the Tourism Bureau.

The first subject Chen brought up is birdwatching. “British visitors in particular are fond of nature and like to observe insects, flowers, or go birdwatching,” he notes. “The island of Taiwan has six endemic species of birds and 13 more subspecies, so many birders like to come to Taiwan to look for birds they’ve never seen before. The best time to do birdwatching is early in the morning or else late in the afternoon, so we have to get up early. We usually stay in places far from fancy hotels and tourist amenities, like Cingjing Farm up in the mountains of central Taiwan, or Zhu-an Creek where only birders go. Mostly we travel through the mountainous areas near Alishan or in eastern Taiwan along the southeast highway, but we also visit some places along the shore in the wintertime when migratory birds come to Taiwan.”

Chen has also had good experience taking customers on train tours. “Last year I led a group of about 50 train enthusiasts from Australia and the U.K.,” he recalls.

“We took the Taroko Express train, as well as the High-speed Rail and all three branch lines of the train system: the Pingxi, Jiji, and Neiwan lines. We made a special arrangement with the Tourism Bureau and the Taiwan Railroad Administration to ride an old steam-powered train. The group really wanted to ride the Alishan alpine

A Day in the Life of a Tour Guide What is it like to work as an inbound tour guide in Taiwan? Most English tour guides in Taiwan operate on a freelance basis because the market is not large enough to work exclusively for one company.

Here’s a typical day in the life of one inbound tour guide, Jenny Lin. 5 a.m. – Wake up and get ready to be at the company for pickup.

7 a.m. – Arrive at Keelung to meet passengers disembarking from a cruise ship.

“They want us to be an hour early to wait for the clients, so we hang out and chitchat with the other tour guides. If it’s a big ship, it’s fun – you have about 20 other tour guides, a lot of whom, especially the foreign tour guides, are very interesting. Then you get on the bus with your group of cruise-ship passengers.”

8 a.m.- 5 p.m. – Escort the group to major sights around the Taipei area before returning to the dock.

5 p.m. – Help the tour members get their stuff together. “They’ll forget sunglasses, their iPad, or an earring. It doesn’t matter how many times you announce it, people will always forget something.”

Then it takes an hour in traffic to return home. “I don’t stay out too late because I have to get up pretty early in the morning. English tours start later, which is better for me. Mainland Chinese tours start earlier because they want to maximize their time to go to all the different places.

Westerners are more into having their coffee every morning.” taiwan business topics • june 2012

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— By Aimee Wong

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train, but it was under repair at the time.

All in all, the tour was very interesting, but quite tiring because you have to combine so many different transportation systems and you couldn’t miss a single train or you’d mess up the whole schedule.”

Aboriginal culture In Chen’s experience, foreign visitors enjoy the chance to interact with Taiwan’s indigenous population. “There was one time when we happened to join part of a wedding ceremony for the Paiwan tribe in southern Taiwan,” he says. “According to the itinerary, we were supposed to visit the Maolin National Scenic Area (茂林國家 風景區) and on the way there we passed by quite a few people wearing the Paiwan ceremonial dress, and so on the way back we decided to check it out. I remember the princess sitting in the sedan chair as the procession went into the activity center and the ceremony began. The Paiwan people wore heavy costumes with beads and flowers for the ceremony. They not only allowed us to watch this personal event, but they even asked us to sit down and have lunch with them, although we already had plans for lunch in another town.”

Another veteran tour guide, Richard Wu still holds the world record for being the youngest person (21) to hold the position of chief radio officer aboard ship.

Now he serves as a freelance inbound/outbound tour guide, mostly working with the Golden Foundation.

Wu believes the National Palace Museum should be Taiwan’s number-one tourist

attraction, and he notes that until about seven years ago, it always appeared at the top of the Tourism Bureau’s Internet survey of foreign visitors. In more recent years, the Museum has been pushed out of first place

by Taiwan’s night markets. Whether that downgrading is the result of the crowded conditions at the Museum mentioned above and elsewhere in this issue is uncertain. Wu thinks it may also have to do with the increased publicity given to night markets lately, as well as the inconsistent quality of the guided tours at the Museum.

“The Museum’s content is deeper, more difficult to penetrate unless you’ve got a good guide,” he says.

Negative comments from travelers are rather rare. “The travel agencies have already done a lot of study in advance, so the programs are all very close to their interests,” says Wu. The taboos mainly have to do with certain “awkward” foods like stinky tofu and preserved egg. “I know that groups from mainland China sometimes refuse to eat fried oysters (蚵仔煎) because they say the color and the consistency of the starch used in making it resembles what comes out of a runny nose.”

Wu recommends that visitors “stay longer and take a slower pace when traveling because Taiwan is not a place where you can see the beauty in a few days’ time.”

His advice is “take local transportation, meet local people – that’s really the core of the beauty of the Taiwanese.” If you get lost, “ask anyone on the street and, unless they don’t understand English at all, I bet they’ll be more than happy to show you the way and sometimes even take you there

themselves,” Wu continues. “I’ve traveled around the world to more than 130 nations, and this kind of friendliness is very rare to see in the world.”

Other tips include taking time to walk through a local traditional market “because that’s where you can really see the local life and lifestyle,” and renting a car and traveling around the island on Taiwan’s excellent highway system. “Try different foods in different places. Don’t eat your breakfast in the hotel every morning. Every neighborhood has a lot of local breakfast shops. See the countryside, stay in our bed and breakfasts, and visit the leisure farms that were originally agricultural but now cater to receiving guests.”

Inbound tourism is an opportunity for Taiwan to showcase its strengths to the world. “With proper support from the government, Taiwan could be a much bigger tourist destination than Hong Kong, Singapore or many other Asian destinations,” says Patrick Lin, assistant to the chairman of Lion Travel. “Where Singapore and Hong Kong have the advantage is they are dual language systems, English and Chinese. Taiwan is bigger, with more people and more diversity of culture. We have Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and aboriginal influences represented here.”

“The Taiwan tourism industry hasn’t been fully developed yet,” says Lin. “There are not enough hotels, not enough budget going into promoting Taiwan, and not enough development of tourist destinations within Taiwan.” But that is gradually changing, he says, and the tourism industry in Taiwan is “getting ready for take-off.”

Before returning to their cruise ship, a group of tourists poses with their guide (left), while another group tries on some aborignal attire (right).

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2012/6/27 6:10:45 PM

In North Dakota, Reminders of the Legendary Old West

BY SCOOTER PURSLEY phot os : co urt es y o f N o rt h Dako ta Di vi s i o N o f t o uri s m

T

he story of the American West has fascinated people around the world for ages. It’s a tale of triumph and tragedy, life and death, friend and foe; a place where many of the legendary figures lived out their larger-than-life existence to the fullest.

Today, North Dakota prides itself on its epic past and unlimited future.

Sprawling bonanza farms of the 1800s have been replaced by vast oil and gas reserves that make the state No. 2 in the United States, behind only Texas, in oil production. At the same time, the state leads the nation in the production of many agricultural products.

While North Dakota continues to look toward a strong economic future, it maintains historic sites throughout the state in order to keep a link to its colorful past. The relationship between those harvesting surface-based products and those pulling resources from deep below the surface are sometimes strained. But North Dakotans find ways 50

to put their differences aside for the betterment of the people.

It’s been that way since explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first stepped foot in what is now North Dakota and struck up a lasting relationship with the Native American inhabitants of the land.

Lewis and Clark and the men with them became friends with nearby tribes, and the two captains happened upon Sakakawea, a young lady who would aid them on their journey to the Pacific Ocean.

The tribes living at what is now Knife River Indian Villages at Stanton helped the team survive a long, brutal winter on the banks of the Missouri River. The friendships created were so strong that chief Sheheke accompanied Lewis and Clark back to Washington D.C. on the return trip.

What followed the Corps of Discovery was a series of adventures by legendary figures like Sakakawea, Lt.

Col. George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Each played key roles in making North Dakota what it is today.

North Dakota was the epicenter of westward expansion. As the influence of European settlement swept over the continent, conflict was inevitable. Skirmishes between those occupying the fertile land teeming with bison and other wildlife and those wanting to till its soil left both sides bloodied.

The U.S. government saw this expansion as manifest destiny while Native Americans saw it as an invasion into land they had occupied for many years. While fur trading outposts like Fort Union coexisted peacefully in this sometimes hostile world, military forts were viewed differently.

Along with settlement came railroads, and to protect railroads and their crews the government built a series of forts that still dot the North Dakota prairie. Fort Abercrombie, Fort Totten,

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discovering america

Fort Stevenson, and Fort Abraham Lincoln can still be toured.

Fort Abercrombie is along the Red River near Abercrombie. It was the first permanent U.S. military fort in North Dakota and was besieged by Lakota warriors for six weeks in 1862. Fort Totten served the military until 1890 when it became an Indian boarding school.

Perhaps the most prominent post on the prairie is Fort Lincoln, which was home to the U.S. 7th Cavalry leading up to, and for a time after, the battle at the Little Bighorn. It was there that Custer and his entire command were killed by warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

The U.S. Army had pursued the tribes across the plains until they found the large campsite at the Little Bighorn River in what is now Montana.

Through a series of military blunders and overconfidence, the Army found itself trapped and terribly defeated by the warriors.

But the victory was soon followed by an overwhelming response that ultimately led to the end of life as the nomadic Plains Indians had known.

They soon were placed on reservations and the West was open for the taking.

Bonanza farms were taking shape.

They were made up of thousands of acres of cropland and spread out in the lush Red River Valley as far as the eye could see. Bagg Bonanza Farm near Mooreton remains as a reminder of how life once was on the vast spreads.

The city of Fargo dominates the Red River Valley, which separates North Dakota and Minnesota and is one of the few rivers flowing north into Canada. The largest city in the state, Fargo boasts a vibrant arts and university culture. But at the time, it was just a stopover for European settlers anxious to claim their piece of the American dream. Pioneers flocked here to lay claim to 160 acres. German, Russian, and Scandinavian towns began springing from the prairie. As settlers moved west and land became less suited for crops, cattle became a source of wealth.

A y o u n g N e w Yo r k a d v e n t u r e r

noticed what was happening in the Badlands of western North Dakota and took off for the rugged frontier way of life. President-to-be Theodore Roosevelt loved the Badlands and the vast amount of wildlife to be found there. It prepared him for the tragedies he would soon endure and for his role as 26th President of the United States.

Roosevelt returned from his first trip to North Dakota in 1884 but watched his first wife and mother both die on Valentine’s Day in 1884. He returned to North Dakota, but a number of factors led to the collapse of his cattle business and Roosevelt returned home. In 1910, Roosevelt proclaimed he would never have been President had it not been for his time in North Dakota.

Roosevelt’s legacy lives on in North Dakota and the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Hall of Fame honors prominent North Dakotans in the halls of the state capitol building. The list honors journalists (Eric Sevareid), athletes (Roger Maris), authors (Louis L’Amour), soldiers (Master Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Keeble), entertainers (Bobby Vee), and more.

Those enshrined in the hall of fame were influenced by the state in achieving honor in their fields.

North Dakota continues to influence outside decision-makers, like those calling for energy independence.

The latest Bakken oil play is one of the largest oil finds ever discovered.

The process of extracting oil from the Bakken Shale Formation consists of a relatively new process called “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing. The process allows for the recovery of previously untapped resources.

Agriculture maintains its hold as the top industry in North Dakota, but oil production is projected to surpass agriculture in the near future.

Meanwhile, tourism remains solidly entrenched in third place. North Dakota’s scenic beauty and fun things to see and do make it a must-see destination for travelers from around the world.

International travel to North Dakota remains strong due to events like the annual Norsk Hostfest and United Tribes International Powwow. The Hostfest in Minot is the largest Scandinavian festival in North America and includes entertainment, food, and arts and crafts. The powwow brings hundreds of Native American dancers and drummers and thousands of spectators to Bismarck each fall.

Fall also heralds a new hunting season, and airline flights from all around the country are booked to the wingtips with hunters anxious to try their luck at pheasants, waterfowl, and deer. And few people know that fishing season never closes in North Dakota.

Don’t let an opportunity to visit North Dakota slip by. To find out more about North Dakota, go to NDtourism. com.

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s e e i n g ta i w a n

It’s Time for Taiwan!

T

ravelers around the world are beginning to realize that when it comes to attracting tourists, Taiwan holds an unbeatable hand. The Republic of China (Taiwan's official name) is a country of stunning natural beauty inhabited by hospitable people who revel in their rich culture. And because the ROC government has been putting its money where its mouth is – funding dozens of bicycle paths, for example, while creating multilingual brochures and websites for visitors' convenience – there can be no doubt that now is the time to see Taiwan.

The Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s “It's Time for Taiwan” campaign focuses on six of the country's strongest cards: Romance and Weddings; Culture; “LOHAS” Breaks and Cycling; Shopping; Gourmet Experiences; and Ecotourism.

The Romance and Weddings theme derives from the fact that Taiwan has long been a popular destination for honeymooners from Hong Kong and Japan. Especially romantic evening spots include Kaohsiung's Love River and the teahouses of Maokong on the

outskirts of Taipei.

Sun Moon Lake, located in the very center of Taiwan, 748 meters above sea level and ringed by verdant mountains, has also been hosting newlyweds for several decades. In recent years, The Lalu – a lakeside landmark hotel – has emerged as a favorite, and not only for its super-luxury accommodations. The hotel is also a popular backdrop for the photo sessions most Taiwanese couples take part in just before tying the knot.

Couples from Singapore, Malaysia, and other places are increasingly eager to travel to Taiwan and make use of the island's wedding-photography experts.

Wedding photography in the ROC is very different from that in the West.

Rather than simply taking pictures and video footage at the wedding itself, Taiwan's wedding photographers spend hours shooting in studios and at outside locations like Yeliu Geopark. In one picture, the groom in his tuxedo and the bride in her white wedding gown might be holding hands on a beach; in another, they may gaze into each others' eyes while sitting on the lawn in front of Tamsui’s “Little White House” (actu-

ally the 142-year-old former residence of the port's chief customs officer).

In addition, Taiwan's population of 23.2 million includes half a million aboriginal people of Austronesian origin. Pingtung County in southern Taiwan, which has a sizable indigenous population, is the place to go if you want an aboriginal-themed wedding ceremony. Since 2006, the Maolin National Scenic Area Administration has been organizing nuptial events that incorporate tribal costumes and rituals – not to mention unique wedding gifts such as locally crafted glass-bead jewelry.

Each of Taiwan's 14 aboriginal tribes has its own language and traditions. Maolin's Rukai inhabitants hold their Tapakarhavae (“Black Rice Festival”) each November, while the summertime harvest celebrations of the Amis in eastern Taiwan are an excellent opportunity to meet tribe members and join their dances.

Twenty-first century Taiwanese culture includes many strands. The Han Chinese majority reveres deities their ancestors brought with them from

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s e e i n g ta i w a n Fujian – the mainland Chinese province closest to Taiwan. Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, and the Japanese legacy includes a fondness for sushi and some splendid Japanese versions of Art Deco and Baroque architecture.

When the ROC government relocated to Taipei in 1949, people from every part of China followed, adding further multiple dimensions to local society and cultural offerings.

F o r c u l t u r e v u l t u r e s , Ta i w a n ' s 450-plus museums offer rich possibilities. Every guidebook rates Taipei's National Palace Museum, which displays the cream of private collections accumulated by China's emperors over the past thousand years, as a must-see.

Just across the road stands the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, a superb introduction to the artistic and material achievements of Taiwan's indigenous peoples. The Tainan-based National Museum of Taiwan History, open for less than a year, has been widely praised. There are also major art museums in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung.

Taiwan is an open-minded society served by cutting-edge technology, yet faith remains at its core. In this respect, the island offers the curious much food for thought. Most Taiwanese follow a blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and folk beliefs. They are comfortable with murmured prayers and silent meditation – and also with the thunderous drumming and firecracker eruptions that characterize events such as the parades honoring Mazu, the goddess of the sea.

Taiwan has thousands of religious sites. At least one, Fo Guang Shan’s Buddha Memorial Center, is emerging as a pilgrimage spot of international significance.

Houses of worship can be so crowded, and the rites within so raucous, it is little wonder that on their days off a growing number of Taiwanese would rather hop on a bicycle or engage in other “LOHAS” activities.

This acronym stands for “lifestyles of health and sustainability,” and it describes those who are concerned not only with personal comfort and wellbeing, but also with environmental and social issues. Such people seek out enriching experiences and authentic flavors; many, not surprisingly, are also recreational cyclists.

Foreign visitors are beginning to discover that Taiwan provides a superb bicycling environment. The island has every kind of landscape a cyclist could desire. Hill climbers can tackle roads that reach an altitude of 3,000 meters.

By following Highway 11, oceanlovers can stick close to the blue waters of the Pacific. Among other advantages, cyclists in Taiwan are never far from refreshment or, if they need it, assistance.

However much they love cycling, or visiting museums or temples, holidaymakers are sure to do some shopping.

Retail attractions range from swanky department stores to artisans' modest workshops. Most of the former belong to a tax-refund system, so foreign customers can reclaim the 5% sales tax before boarding their flight out.

At the other end of the spectrum are Taiwan's night markets. In these places, you can find all kinds of merchandise, including a wide assortment of cute items that make good souvenirs.

Night markets are also a central part of Taiwan's culinary scene. The biggest bring together hundreds of food vendors, many of whom specialize in a single, ready-to-eat delicacy. Eating at night markets is a gourmet yet inexpensive experience. For those who prefer air-conditioned comfort, however, Taiwan has an unbelievably broad range of restaurants. The cuisine of every region of China is represented – a consequence of 1949's influx of mainlanders.

Taiwan's ecosystems are every bit as varied and fascinating as the foods served in its restaurants. The island's fabulous biodiversity is a result of its breathtaking topography. The plains s te w thr ough ho t sum mers, w hi l e winter sees snowfall on some of the 258 peaks that rise above 3,000 meters.

Macaques, deer, and bears roam forests where rare ferns hide far from humanity. Taiwan has 418 butterfly species and 589 bird species, and much of its fauna and flora is found nowhere else on Earth. A quarter of Taiwan's 4 , 3 0 0 v a s c u l a r- p l a n t s p e c i e s a r e endemic, as are a third of its reptiles and 70% of its snails. For nature lovers, “made in Taiwan” has a very special meaning.

For more information about visiting Taiwan, please contact the tourism hotline at 0800- 011-765 (toll-free inside the ROC) or go to the Tourism Bureau’s website (www.taiwan.net.tw).

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