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25 December 2010

Greetings from Asia - 26 December 2010

Some More Thoughts on Asian Success...

As noted in our last comments here, we are currently writing about the so-called "Asian success story". Again, we are posting these thoughts in several parts, linking to an article we wrote for the online publication Broad Street Review. This article provides another personal perspective on "Asian success", with a particular focus on China:

"How Chinese is China’s Success Story?: China vs. the West: Who has Conquered Whom?", Broad Street Review (25 December 2010)

Enjoy!

22 December 2010

Greetings from Asia - 23 December 2010

Some Thoughts on Asian Success...

Well, while Europe and North America are having a nice cold winter holiday, here in semi-tropical Taiwan, the sun is shining and Santa could go out in no more than a red hat if he wanted to...

Our current entry concerns the so-called "Asian success story". We are posting these thoughts in several parts, and due to copyright agreements, our first entry on this subject is a link to an article we wrote some weeks ago on a few aspects of the strong economy in Taiwan. Taiwan, where this author is currently posted, has weathered the recent economic crisis relatively well. The following article provides some a personal perspective:

"Economic Lessons from the Far East: I Have Seen the Future, and It’s in the Far East", Broad Street Review (4 November 2010)

Stay tuned for more...

23 November 2010

Greetings from Asia - 23 November 2010

Tutto il mondo è un cheesesteak / 世界很小

There’s been no entry here in this blog for about a month, and the reader has my apologies. Too much going on: life never stops in Asia. Well, it was that, and then weeks of depressing rain. There is a fall and a spring rainy season here, and both are irritating. Yes, they do, however, lead to wonderful semi-tropical foliage, so one shouldn’t complain. Also, unlike in our dear old U.S.A., there is no Thanksgiving break, nor even Halloween (although they do celebrate the latter here a bit in the local schools, just for fun). Otherwise, it’s work, work, work...

Since it’s been rather dreary here, and we don’t feel like writing about existentialism or other philosophical topics, we shall turn to lighter subjects... Well, not really that much lighter, since we are going to talk about cheesesteaks.

Cheesesteaks in Taiwan? No way!

But yes.

It was all very odd. A fellow teacher here, from Michigan, had his father visiting. We were heading into Taipei for a day of sightseeing, and as we were sitting there on the bus, the gentleman was talking to me, and heard that I was from Philadelphia. “Hey,” he said, “Isn’t that where they have all those cheesesteak places?” “Yup,” I answered, and I began to explain to him the subtle rivalries and differences between the various cheesesteak places in Philadelphia — Pat’s Gino’s, Jim’s, and so on. All this talk was making me hungry, but before you knew, they we were in Taipei. No cheesesteaks, just noodles and tofu.

We split up, with me heading through the west side of the city to do some errands. But having gotten off the bus, I hadn’t gone more than four blocks, when there it was, as if posited by some Jungian synchronicity, from my consciousness to hard-and-fast culinary reality: a cheesesteak place...











The people working there, though all Taiwanese, wore that same vivid, horrid orange that is the color of one of those cheesesteak places in Philly. It was as if a piece of South Philadelphia had been ripped out and transplanted — through a strange Asian inversion — into Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Inside, there was even a mural of the city of Philadelphia, complete with the Ben Franklin Bridge, Liberty Place, and that awful building next to 30th Street Station.

I went in and tried the cheesesteaks. And you know what? They were pretty good... In fact, they were less greasy than most of the cheesesteaks in Philly, and the french fries were not bad either.

So, what about the title of this entry, “Tutto il mondo è un cheesesteak / 世界很小”? Well, the first part is a riff on the Italian expression, “tutto il mondo è un paese” — that is, “the whole world is one country”. It’s their way of saying, “It’s a small world”, or as we say in Chinese, “/ 世界很小”. Indeed, it’s a very small world, if I can talk about Philly cheesesteaks miles away from Philly, and then somehow they magically appear...

15 October 2010

Greetings from Asia - 15 October 2010

High-Speed Bullshit
Even far away here in the “mysterious East”, I find myself missing Philadelphia. I am one of those expatriates who, believe it or not, does indeed admire the country I was born in, even though I find myself consistently disappointed in the direction it has decided to head. Former President Jimmy Carter correctly called it a “crisis of confidence” in a famous speech he gave during his presidency.

Particularly when one is overseas, it is easy to spot the foibles, if not out-and-out absurdities of one’s own country. At this point in U.S. history, it has become outright embarrassing at times. Without even trying, one finds such news reports as this:



A close examination of the piece reveals how stupid this issue is in the U.S. Indeed, even reader comments on the piece were quick to point this out:



And yes, from an overseas perspective, it’s easy to see how crazy the ideas presented in the article are. In France, Germany, Japan... hell, even in Taiwan, there is high-speed rail. Real high-speed rail, not the ridiculous “Acela” nor the “somewhere in the distant future” high-speed trains that may — may — be built some time in the coming decades. What is ridiculous, too, is that people in the U.S. are subjected to this strange kind of propaganda that somehow, someday, we are going to have what is considered “normal” in other countries. If you want to see real rail systems, take a look:

The European TVG: http://www.raileurope.co.uk/tgv.aspx
The Japanese Shinkansen: http://english.jr-central.co.jp/about/index.html
The Taiwanese HSR: http://www.thsrc.com.tw/en

Now, I’ve heard one of the key counter-arguments: that countries like France, Germany, Japan, and so on can afford these systems because we bear so much of the burden of military defense. But if we wanted to, we could also have afforded to build a proper rail system decades ago — indeed, we had a good rail system — but we decided to let it go to ruin. And all the pronouncements in the world will never bring it back.

03 October 2010

Greetings from Asia - 4 October 2010

The subject of safety is a complicated one here in Taiwan... On the one hand, this is one of the most dangerous places you could imagine... that is, in terms of traffic. Drivers here are, for the most part, impatient and reckless. This is odd in that it runs counter to the generally low-key attitude of the people here. But there are cultural reasons why the driving here and in places like Cairo, and so on is like this, and I can provide that explanation if readers are interested.

In Taiwan, although the driving habits present significant danger, this is one of the safest places in the world, with very little street crime. It is a particularly safe place in terms of the kind of crime one finds in the U.S.: gun crime. It disturbs me that in the U.S., we have become inured almost to the point of ignorance about how unusual our situation is in terms of shootings and violent crime. In Philadelphia, there is some kind of gun crime virtually every single day of the year. When you live in a place like Taiwan, you suddenly see how aberrant this is. My favorite such story is how, a few weeks ago, after I had dropped our child at preschool, I came home and saw this news report from my hometown:

One could not even imagine such an incident here. But even back in Philadelphia, for the most part we don't even really care — after all, the shooting wasn't in OUR neighborhood...

People in the U.S. have questioned my critique of the violence in the U.S., noting that place like Brazil have much higher crime rates. But this misses the point in several respects; for one, another country having a higher crime rate does not somehow "forgive" us for being so prone to violence in our country. But more profoundly, it is interesting to look at the nature of crime and violence in a place like Brazil versus a place like the U.S. In Brazil, much of the violence can be directly tied to enormous class tensions in the society. There is violent crime connected to the drug trade (as in the U.S.), but also propensities to violence from an underclass which is clearly marginalized in the society. By contrast, in the U.S., although one could argue that the same dynamic exists, one also finds very bizarre crimes, violence that seems to spring from nowhere, or from some kind of "mass psychosis". As violent as Brazil is, one does not find so often what one finds more and more frequently in the U.S.: reports of shootings on university campuses, shootings in the workplace, and so on.

Finally, it should be noted that all societies have to reckon with violence, but it is worth comparing where the violence springs from in each culture. Resorting to violence because of social class or political frustration may be repugnant, but at least it fits in the framework of human nature. Shootings in the workplace in the U.S. may fit into that category, but the figures involved are usually quickly marginalized as unrepresentative of anything but a personality disorder.

26 September 2010

Greetings from Asia - 26 September 2010

More cultural observations... For readers who don't know: I have lived in Taiwan before, from 1993 to 1996. The place has changed a lot, but much has stayed the same, particularly the peculiarities and peccadilloes of the place. In terms of what — to an American — is peculiar, one place to start is the schooling here. On a previous visit here with a friend of mine, he was shocked to see some elementary school students cleaning the school. In fact, in Taiwan and Japan, there are no school janitors; the children clean their own school. Even here at the university, the other day I noticed a team of students who were repainting the main gate. Students are asked to do this not as a form of free labor for the school but because the students are imbued with a feeling that the school belongs to them.

I noticed another peculiarity the other day when we enrolled our daughter in a local preschool. On one of the forms we had to fill out, my wife pointed out that the school gave families three options for their children to return home at the end of the school day: (a) the school bus; (b) parents coming to pick up their children; (c) relatives coming to pick up their children; or (d) children returning home by themselves. That's right: kindergarten-age children can walk home themselves here. That certainly tells you something about the state of the society here...

In terms of peccadilloes in Taiwan, I'll leave the reader with a simple one: "Copyright 個屁!" I won't translate that at the moment, but it basically means that for all the tortuous negotiating the U.S. has done with other countries, one can still find copyright violations all over. It's not as egregious in Taiwan as it used to be, but one still finds (sometimes humorous) examples. Not far from where we live, I found this great place that serves quite delicious fried chicken:


The place is called "KLG"... Hmmm, that sounds familiar. Looks kind of familiar, too... But let's take a look at their packing:


Totally original? No. Good fried chicken? You bet...

If some of you are still uncertain about where this cool KLG restaurant might have found its "inspiration", we can provide a quick comparison:





















Check out how much the KLG chicken looks like the good old KFC colonel; they even have the same bow tie!

03 September 2010

Greetings from Asia - 4 September 2010 (ES)

Why There Are No Existentialists in Taiwan
I had promised my colleagues in a study group back in the U.S. to use this blog to discuss some ideas related to the group's work. That group, based in Bryn Mawr College, is called the Evolving Systems (ES) group, and can be found at http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/evolsys/home. What's the group about? To quote from the group's "Overview" page (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/evolsys/overview):

An inquiry into emergent relationships among randomness and form, meaning, and aesthetics... with particular attention to
  • What would be the implications for scientific method and the various sciences of recognizing emergent interdependent relationships among randomness, form, meaning, and aesthetics?
  • What would be the implications for cultural studies and the human sciences of recognizing emergent interdependent relationships among randomness, form, meaning, and aesthetics?
  • What would be the implications for intellectual activity generally of recognizing emergent interdependent relationships among randomness, form, meaning, and aesthetics?
  • What would be the implications for artistic activity of recognizing emergent interdependent relationships among randomness, form, meaning, and aesthetics?
  • What would be the implications for religious and spiritual activity of recognizing emergent interdependent relationships among randomness, form, meaning, and aesthetics?
  • What would be the implications for day to day practical life of recognizing emergent interdependent relationships among randomness, form, meaning, and aesthetics?
In the group, we've discussed everything from deep time and earth history to object-oriented ontology. Now that I am ex-officio, living overseas here in Asia, the group's Project Organizer, Dr. Paul Grobstein, asked me to participate via a blog.

So, here is my initial post for the ES group, and it concerns an observation I had the other day. To begin, let's look at the title of today's entry, the rather hyperbolic, "Why there are no existentialists in Taiwan". Taiwan has grown from a primarily agrarian society to a highly-industrial society within the space of one generation. As can be seen in my earlier entries in this blog, in fact, the old and new co-exist in very interesting ways here. But my concerns here are not the fact that I can buy the latest computer hardware in a certain neighborhood in Taipei and then in the same neighborhood walk around the corner and buy roast squid from a street vendor who only speaks Taiwanese and who grew up on a farm somewhere in the south of Taiwan. My concern here, rather, is that in any agrarian society, be it in Asia or elsewhere, the people tend to be pragmatists.

As I have commented before, even in this blog, the Chinese are paramount pragmatists. Pragmatism and existentialism don't go well together. Pragmatists just "get on with it", while existentialists reflect on the fact of our existence. Of course, pragmatists and existentialists do share one important quality: that in the end, one must just live. But the Taiwanese do that without the torturous reasoning beforehand. No Taiwanese would ever have written No Exit. Of course, the Taiwanese struggle with the vagaries of existence all the time, going to the various temples scattered everywhere here, praying for good health, for prosperity, and so on.

But even that "spiritual" side is profoundly practical, focused on potential pragmatic benefits to one's life. As I have also noted before, this is one reason that the Taiwanese do not worry so much about work as we do. Naturally, parents here would rather have their child become a doctor or some similar profession, but even the "lowest" (note quote marks) forms of work, such as street vendor are considered perfectly fine here; the only criterion in judging one's work, in fact, is whether one can provide for one's family. Work is a necessary evil, a means to earning money to provide a comfortable life. Work is virtually never a vehicle for some kind of abstract fulfillment as it is in the U.S.

In short, the Taiwanese do not suffer from the existential "angst" one finds so often in the West.

But I want to end with a caveat, because in another way, one could say that Chinese culture actually founded a kind a existentialism, since an important strand in Chinese philosophy looks at the very question of the meaning of existence. The Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi, which as some readers here know are two of my favorite works, look directly into the mysterious question of the existence of the universe. I will talk about this further in a later post; the point I wish to make here in my conclusion here is that this kind of "Chinese existentialism" does not seem to have entered the popular consciousness. In the West, by contrast, particularly through the work of Jung and Freud, the "larger questions of life" became part of personal therapy, not to mention part of popular culture. More to come...

30 August 2010

Greetings from Asia - 1 September 2010

We have been seeing many members of Charlotte’s family, and have been taken out to so many great dinners that today we finally had to take a break and just eat a sandwich for lunch! Charlotte’s father took us out for a lavish dinner, as did her second brother. There are certainly many great places to eat here: there seems to be a restaurant or cafe or food stand every hundred feet or so along the street — seriously. Chinese are, as a Chinese-Canadian friend once pointed out to me, very id-oriented, and part of that is having food available wherever they might go. For the Chinese, eating is good, and that's that. Here are some views of the meals we've been treated to...










I read somewhere the other day that the people in Taiwan consider eating to be almost a hobby, in addition to being a necessity. That would explain why one finds food everywhere, and why people talk about eating all the time...

Greetings from Asia - 30 August 2010

So far — and, of course, this is based only on a week’s experience here — we have had a very positive impression of life here, in the sense that Taiwan still embodies the best of the new and the old. There are modern transportation and other facilities, along with the great night markets, vendors selling food from outdoor stalls, and a general relaxed pace of life in many respects. The efficiency of the immigration office was amazing, too, and even when service is not particularly friendly, it is well-organized.

We have also noted that even as Taiwan has modernized even more since we left in 1996, and even as the new generation differs so much from the old, the youth have also turned back to tradition in some ways. For example, there are many more museums and archaeological exhibits now, books on old architecture, clothing, and so on, and there are even shops that sell updated versions of traditional Chinese clothing. Moreover, of course, even as one sees young people with weird hairstyles and modern garb, one also sees that they behave with a certain modesty still. On the train, for example, you don’t encounter anyone talking loudly on cell phones, or yapping with their friends. As my friend Don Denton noted when we were travelling in Turkey, people here have some sense of reserve still.

It is also great to still see the school uniforms, the children cleaning their own schools, the continued importance of family and education, and other Confucian values alive and well here.

Naturally, the traffic is still a nightmare, with everyone driving at top speed and ignoring all the rules of the road. I guess this is where the Chinese take their (naturally human) aggressions!

We had to go the office here that handles immigration, both for my working papers, and for other processing. The service was amazingly efficient, and we were in there and out of there within a half an hour. Readers might be interested in the following document that I noticed there. See below...

29 August 2010

Greetings from Asia - 28 August 2010

HinterNet is off to Asia... This album comprises photographs and notes from our journey to Asia, 2010-2011. The primary subject is Taiwan, our base, along with some excursions... Click here to read about Taiwan in the CIA World Factbook. Click here to read information about Taiwan from the Lonely Planet guidebook. Naturally, all information in external websites is beyond the responsibility of HinterNet. That information is just for background for you, the reader.

Some initial images from Taiwan... Street scene in 台北市 (Taipei): the covered sidewalks are a feature one finds all over the Pacific, from Tahiti to Taiwan, as well as in other tropical and semi-tropical climes... even in New Orleans.
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Another scene in Taipei... Note one of the many contrasts here between the old and the new: on the left, a traditional food stand next to an ultra-modern store selling Canon cameras. The contrast is highlighted by the fact that the vendor sells 豬血糕 (zhu xie gao), literally, "pig's blood cake". Although the term "cake is used", it's actually shaped like a popsicle (as it's served on a stick); it's sticky rice, cooked in blood, and then rolled in ground peanuts, with a touch of cilantro. For a further description, click here.
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Another contrast of old and new... This is in the town of 鶯歌 (Yingge), not far from Taipei. In the foreground are the remains of a traditional Chinese house, while just behind are modern apartments. I have only encountered one case in Taiwan where the owner of a traditional house modernized the interior rather than just sold the property and moved into an apartment. The person I met did a lovely job of fixing the house, and then air-conditioning the interior, putting in good plumbing, etc. If I had the money...
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Street scene in Yingge, the hometown of my wife... This street has become a tourist destination (primarily for Taiwanese tourists), and each shop sells teapots, teacups, and other ceramic items, both low-end and high-end. Yingge used to be the main ceramics center in Taiwan, and while it still is important in some sense in its original identity, it has some aspects of a simulacrum... See Jean Baudrillard. Regardless, as tourist destinations go, Yingge did a good job of preserving itself...
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Astrid and I in front of the 布政司衙門 (Bu-Cheng-Shih-Szyamen / Bu Zheng Si Yamen), an old government building and now a museum in the Taipei Botanical Gardens.
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Taiwan is still in many ways a very conservative place, in the real sense of that word. This sign is outside the girls' dormitory at the university where I work. Very clear...
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Some of the rooms in our apartment; it's actually a hotel, run by the university for their Travel & Tourism Program. So, we are living in a hotel suite... No complaints! Our kitchen and dining room...
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The view from our window, looking down on the campus and the town of 龜山 (Guishan), which means "Turtle Mountain". The entire area of northern Taiwan has these kinds of low mountains, which have some great hiking trails. Larger mountains are in the eastern portion of the island...
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A picture of myself (between Charlotte and Astrid, with arrow) with some of Charlotte's family members, at one of the several welcome banquets we were greeted with... From left to right: Charlotte's father and step-mother; Charlotte; me; Astrid; Charlotte's niece Juliet; Charlotte's second sister-in-law, and her two sons and her husband...

All images and text are the property of Benjamin B. Olshin, and are protected under United States and International copyright law. They may not be copied, reproduced, stored, or manipulated without written permission of the artist.