Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) handed me a Bullshit Gazette today

I was sitting at a picnic table in central Da'an trying to enjoy the balmy weather and a mediocre latte earlier today when I was approached by Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) -- not someone working for him, but Lo himself. He was handing out "newsletters" that, when folded, looked like a newspaper.

Beyond the top third, however, the rest was just generic campaign pap to make Lo look good. I mean, it's mostly nonsense, but it's also nothing we haven't seen before. It's the least interesting thing about Lo's weird fake newspaper and I don't have much to say about it. This Threads post critiques it if you're curious. Some of it is typical district stuff (budgets, social housing, helping the elderly), and some of it is playing up his worst acts as legislator as though they're praiseworthy achievements.

I almost threw the thing in the trash where it belongs, but the fake newspaper caught my eye. Why this design choice? It came with a real article, although the print was so small that it was almost impossible to read. I doubt any of the older people he was handing it to bothered to try. 

But first, a bit about the recalls.

Lo isn't running for re-election yet, but he is facing a recall campaign that has real momentum. Of course, the Bullshit Gazette failed to directly address this. The fact that he walked around in person to hand these things out in solidly KMT-voting Da'an, in a neighborhood where he should be very popular, indicates that he's worried that against all odds, the recall might actually succeed. 

While not particularly likely, it's also not impossible. Activists running the recall campaigns have achieved surprisingly strong results even in the deepest blue KMT strongholds -- including the public housing complex where I was enjoying my coffee.

Even KMT-affiliated pollsters find that the right to recall is popular, and Lo is frequently attacked for unprofessionalism, a lack of substance and prioritizing influencer-like drama over real policy chops. Here's an example: during a questioning session with the chairman of the National Communications Commission (NCC), he screams "do you know what question I want to ask?" and when the chairman responds that he doesn't, he screams "get off the stage!" repeatedly, like a bratty toddler who needs a nap. Apparently, he shouted for 19 full seconds. The Bullshit Gazette mentions his participation in questioning sessions, but not the temper tantrums.

One of his biggest platforms is something he calls "media freedom" (my words, not his), but is entirely limited to fighting for the resumption of CTiTV (中天), a pro-China news network that lost its license over repeated violations, including taking editorial direction from the CCP via pro-China businessperson Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明). CTiTV still has a Youtube presence.

This person in a T-rex costume holding a "recall Lo Chih-chiang" sign looks more professional than that. I'm also a fan of this diss track, though it doesn't have many views.

And that's not even getting into accusations that he's in deep with the CCP, like all of the KMT legislators targeted for recall. He served under Ma Ying-jeou, resigning over the judicial interference kerfuffle with Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). He tried to run for the presidency, and two city mayorships but the KMT, seeing him as a weak candidate, pushed him aside. He spent awhile in the Taipei city council before running in a district where it would be difficult to lose.

Now, between screaming at the NCC chair and fighting to keep the death penalty, he spends quite a bit of time defending the trips to China of convicted criminal, CCP collaborator and accused sex pest Fu Kun-chi.

In the last election, Luo faced stiff competition from Social Democratic Party candidate Miao Po-ya (苗博雅), who garnered the best result a non-KMT candidate has ever seen in this staunchly blue district, proving that Da'an doesn't have to be a KMT stronghold, per se. Lo should have been able to crush her, but he won by a narrow margin by Da'an election standards.  The DPP isn't doing terribly; they seem to be holding onto popularity better than the KMT.

Where did the article come from, though? Is The Commons Daily (民眾日報) still in print? I'd thought not. Hadn't it at one point taken editorial stances challenging the KMT's Martial Law? Why does it report on statistics with so much circumlocution? (We know the answer to that last one, of course). 

Technically it still exists, but the story is wild. Once a local stalwart, it was bought out by the deeply corrupt Pingtung politician Tsai Hau (蔡豪) who, in 2010, invaded the paper's office claiming ownership rights (it's unclear if he actually had such rights). It was then bought by a Hong Kong company called Yitong (一通科技股份有限公司), which apparently went defunct in 2022. Yitong apparently still owns it (how?) but control was transferred to someone named Tsai Yun-yin (蔡雲夤) under a company with no public profile to speak of. I don't know if Tsai Hau and Tsai Yun-yin are related. 

There are two websites with something similar to that name, neither of which try to hide their pro-unification stances and neither of which appear to have the workings of a whole newspaper behind them. 

They do, however, seem to make political donations and various government tender bids. Huh. 

It's not a lot of money by political influence standards, but I wonder where the money is coming from, and who it's going to.

The article comes from the first of these "The Commons Daily" links, but the logo comes from the second. Tsai apparently runs the first, but writes occasional local news articles for the second. I don't think there's any meaningful difference between them. There's also a barely readable third site with a similar name and content to the first, and probably more.

He seems to spend most of his time advocating for unification. It's just another example of Taiwan's media being intentionally hollowed out by unificationist forces creating pro-China "news" outlets. 

An article from this extremely sketchy source formed the top third of Lo's "newsletter" isn't proof of any direct connection, but it does perhaps imply one. Why choose this article from a shell newspaper controlled by a company that only seems to have one employee -- Tsai Yun-yin -- whose parent company appears to be defunct (so who's funding it?), and whose main activities seem to be running pro-China news sites using the 民眾日報 name and making various political donations? Where is the donation money coming from?

it does imply a level of "newsiness" to an otherwise nonsense article. Rather like the TPP deliberately choosing the name 「民眾黨」as a callback to Taiwanese history, this paper with a similar name and a long history in Taiwan makes a very deliberate implication. The name, the paper's history and the once-local focus give it an air of Taiwaneseness that it no longer has. This is intentional.

The header and article are both from March 2024 (note the year). It name-checks data from the KMT-affiliated Taiwan Public Opinion Center (TPOC or 台灣議題研究中心) which are AI-generated and based on online data -- it's a type of data, but not a poll or survey in the traditional sense. The "top ten" in terms of "voice" that the article references are not ranked in terms of popularity but some algorithm of online impressions and interaction. 

The March 2024 data is here, but what's more interesting is the 2025 version, and Lo doesn't rate. 2025 data also show the DPP has a lot more mobilization.

I found a similar poll from 2024, but from a different source, but Lo's favorability is shown as quite a bit lower than the article's claims (0.41 rather than 0.6). Not that data from 2024 means anything today -- a lot has happened since then.

That's not even getting into the odd presentation of the statistics. If Lo were popular, he wouldn't have to claim (questionably) that he had the highest favorability among this set of politicians in 2024. He could just say he's got high favorability now.  

There don't seem to be any statistics on his current favorability: at least, I couldn't find any after both searching and asking around. This poll from January says 60% of his constituents oppose recalling him, but the recall movement has gained momentum since then, and that's not a favorability ranking. What's more, it's from Lo's own think tank, so there's a conflict of interest there.

I did find this from the TPOC and it doesn't look good, but I doubt it means much: 

Let's talk a little about these think tank names. In a similar vein to using "people's" (民眾, not 人民 which has a bit of a "China" flavor) as a callback to a 1920s political party that advocated democratic reform and home rule, I can't help but notice that Lo's organization, the New Congress Think Tank (新國會智庫), sounds seemingly intentionally like the Taiwan Braintrust in Mandarin (新國會國智策庫). There are no results for Lo's think tank that I can find, but a search implies that the two think tanks are the same. They most certainly are not. 

The TPOC (KMT-affiliated, mostly uses AI-generated data of online influence reported widely by pan-blue media) and TPOF (an actual pollster reported widely by everyone else) have similar naming issues in English, but are more easily differentiated in Mandarin.

Lo's choice of article is also telling: nobody reads the newspaper he copped the article from anymore. It doesn't prove that Lo is in cahoots with the unificationists who hollowed out The Commons Daily to turn it into a pro-China mouthpiece, per se. It doesn't really matter, though; he has about as much substance as the website his "newsletter" quotes, and he's got similarly pro-China rhetoric. It doesn't matter if they're in the same circle of traitors and sellouts; their end goal is essentially the same. 

I'm not the only one to have noticed all this, but I am the only person writing in English who decided to go down this rabbit hole. 

It's quite a bit of effort to try to convince one's constituents that you're popular and influential and fighting for their rights rather than collaborating with Taiwan's biggest enemy. 

But if Lo needs to take an article from an extremely dodgy pro-China source from 2024 to help make his case, he hasn't got a case to make at all. 

How much danger is Taiwan truly in?

I don't know why this photo resonates vis-à-vis this post, but it did.

It doesn't matter if they're locals or immigrants -- more than ever, just about everyone I know in Taiwan is worried about a Chinese invasion. It's always been a question pushed to the far back of our minds: might it happen? If so, when and how? What will I do? Do I need an emergency plan?

The United States has a spotty record in global leadership, and that's putting it kindly. As an American, I'd argue that we've done more harm than good on the whole. However, abdicating that role in favor of screaming matches with world leaders, annexation threats against our closest allies, Nazi salutes, gutting our own government, conspiracy theory screaming, rape, felony convictions, arbitrary detention and deportation, other assorted screaming and low-budget car commercials has handed some of the other worst people in the world an unobstructed path to their own form of global domination.

In Taiwan, that's terrifying. Like it or not (and I mostly do not), the US is one of Taiwan's closest strategic partners despite the lack of formal recognition of Taiwan's statehood. The guy many people thought would be good for Taiwan in 2016 based on one phone call, some anti-China rhetoric and a few appointments of terrible people who happen to support Taiwan is now looking like...well, not a great bet. 

It's got a lot of us wondering what's in store for Taiwan, when our major strategic partner has not only become unreliable, but seems to have brain-hemorrhaged itself out of any sort of international stewardship. Since the 1990s if not earlier, and especially since escalating its annexationist rhetoric, the Chinese government can be reasonably assumed to operate under three assumptions:

1.) The ultimate goal vis-a-vis Taiwan is annexation.

2.) It is preferable for this to happen without war, i.e. convincing the people of Taiwan to accept unification by any means necessary, including political and media interference.

3.) If annexation without war is not possible, war is on the agenda once China believes it can win fairly easily. 

When Ukraine made a strong showing against Russia, China was very obviously watching both the Ukrainian resistance and global support amid the crumbling of Russian assumptions that this would be an 'easy' war and quick victory. Many of us felt a mixed sense of hope and foreboding: the buoy was Russia getting bogged down in Ukraine, showing that China might not have an easy time in Taiwan. The ballast was a global focus on not provoking China, rather than ensuring the CCP would not even be able to start such a war, along with general ignorance regarding how deep China's influence operations in Taiwan really go: 

Taiwan’s rugged terrain makes the country a defender’s paradise. If the Taiwanese people fight like Ukrainians, even a mighty PLA landing force would likely flail and be unable to kill its way into Taipei. With this in mind, CCP agents are working overtime to weaken resolve and soften up the “human terrain” of the future battlefield.

To enfeeble their victims, the CCP’s spy services, the shadowy Ministry of State Security (MSS) and PLA Liaison Bureau, are carrying out a sweeping campaign of covert operations. Their goal is to eat away at the Taiwanese government, military, and society from within. If their strategy achieved total success, they could subvert and overturn Taiwan’s democracy, leaving the occupation force to confront a short guerrilla war and American trade sanctions.

But even if the CCP’s dream scenario is unreachable, Beijing’s undercover operatives have already seduced, entrapped, and corrupted a sufficient number of opinion leaders to minimize a sense of crisis and pour cold water on public demands for action. Needed political and military reforms in both Taipei and Washington continue to be delayed.

“Let’s not forget the importance of one of the main targets of MSS influence operations: scholars, commentators, and non-governmental observers of China,” said Alex Joske, author of Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. “The degree of obliviousness and recklessness with which some of these people have treated the CCP is astounding.”

The distressing reality is that the CCP has an army of secret agents dripping poison into hearts and minds, and they have already been effective at making some seemingly common-sense policy changes appear unthinkable.

It's not just the media, and it's not just the KMT: that whole Ko Wen-je wave? A lot of that was China-backed. It runs deep, and Taiwan might be in big trouble if it doesn't counter these operations more effectively.

Even in 2023 when there was still hope that the world wouldn't be mostly run by fascist dictatorships, this was distressing. The writer of these chilling paragraphs? Ian Easton, a well-respected analyst, had been talking for years about how difficult it would be for China to actually pull off an invasion of Taiwan. But since 2020, even he's been saying a crisis might be on the horizon.

That war hasn't come quite yet, but the situation has gotten noticeably worse. The KMT/TPP-led legislature is full of traitors and bought-and-paid-for CCP agents, including the speaker (old DUI hand Han Kuo-yu) and caucus whip (convicted criminal Fu Kun-chi). Pro-China influencers retain audiences, although one of the worst offenders is losing her spousal residence permit over it. This problematic case, of course, has given the KMT the ammunition it needs to continue its attacks on the DPP as being 'fascist' and 'anti-democracy' -- which is quite the projection, considering which party oppressed democracy in Taiwan for generations.

The KMT even feels emboldened enough to propose a referendum that would seek public consent for bringing back Martial Law. Of course, if anyone would know how to conduct Martial Law in Taiwan, it would be the party that did so for the better part of the last century, but even I, a long-time KMT-hater, was shocked at their lack of remorse over their own history by proposing a sequel. There may be no constitutional court to stop it as the KMT is trying to gut that too. Cutting budgets that directly impact defense, especially the submarine budget, is another terrifying move. China seems very interested in Taiwan's indigenous submarine program, which means it's crucial.

On the China side, if anyone thought they were all talk and no game on invading Taiwan, the building of specialized barges for amphibious attack, presumably against Taiwan, they might want to sit down. This development should not be downplayed: if China will attack when it thinks it can win, it's obviously playing to win. Taiwan no longer seems to be a rhetorical device to them, something to be shouted about in speeches for effect and not much more. This is not a response to US threats or warmongering because the US is too wrapped up in its own self-destruction to warmonger much -- it's as simple as it looks on its face: we don't know when, but China is intending to invade Taiwan.

On the US side, all I can do is sigh. President Rapist and his tiny creeper screaming at President Zelenskyy was worrisome, yes. Blaming Zelenskyy for "starting the war" (fact check: Russia started the war, not Ukraine) should be chilling to anyone in Taiwan: if these jokers can DARVO the victim in Russia's invasion and say they started it, why wouldn't they do the same after a Chinese invasion? Honestly, they'd probably snark about how Taiwan shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt if she didn't want it. 

What scares me even more is President Rapist's own remarks on Canada. 

"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished fifty-first state" sounds a lot like the CCP's "Reunification with the motherland is inevitable", that it's the inevitable course of history and the only reasonable outcome for Taiwan.

Threatening Canada with further tariffs, which of course don't work as President Rapist seems to think they do, and shaking his ugly little fist in the general direction of the Canadian economy absolutely echo the ongoing CCP attempts to tank the Taiwanese economy and thus demoralize the people into accepting China's "inevitable" plans. 

Calling Prime Minister Trudeau "Governor" is basically the same play as China insisting on calling the Taiwanese president anything but "president", and saying it's a "nasty country" to deal with (may I remind you, he's talking about Canada. Again, Canada) are echoes of China screeching that the Taiwanese government and the DPP in particular are the troublemakers and not open to dialogue, which some people believe despite it being a lie without even a kernel of truth to ground it.

I'm not even going to get into his remarks on Palestine and kicking everyone out of Gaza. That's just too depressing. It does show, though, that the current administration doesn't care at all about human populations, homes or lives.

If Taiwan's closest strategic partner is talking about Canada in more or less the same way China talks about Taiwan, blames Ukraine for Russia's war the way China blames Taiwan for what China wants to do, and is absolutely gutting the US government both domestically and in terms of international diplomacy and outreach, what kind of strategic partner do we even really have? President Rapist and Chancellor Musk lead a gang of idiot thugs for sure, but are they even a gang of thugs who'll beat up their allies' enemies? Doubtful. 

Do they even understand the strategic importance of Taiwan? Also doubtful, as they appear to have a child's understanding of international affairs, geostrategy and the global semiconductor industry. 

After Rapey D and the Roofie Crew abandoned Ukraine, Europe began to show greater support to one of their own. That's fantastic, but if the same thing happens to Taiwan, will its neighbors step up in the same way? Japan might as it faces similar strategic concerns, but otherwise I'm not so sure.

What does that give China? Well, it gives it #3 on that list above: a window of opportunity to start a war that it might actually be able to win. If you're in Taiwan and this doesn't scare you, it should. It could quite literally ruin your life. It might well ruin mine. Without the income we need to sustain our lives in Taiwan and our only support network being friends, not family, I genuinely worry that economic pressure will render us homeless if we stay to contribute to the defense effort.

In Taiwan's defense (pun intended), everyone in government except the legislature seems to understand the scale of the threat. Civil defense and resilience are priorities, and have been for awhile. Military exercises are being extended. Improvements in military service training have been discussed since 2022, and I do happen to know it's a priority: the government is aware that the old approach to mandatory service, which was mostly marching around, sweeping offices and chanting slogans, is not useful. 

Crucially, despite China's attempts to influence Taiwanese public opinion, most Taiwanese still identify as solely Taiwanese, almost nobody identifies as only Chinese, and only a minority identify as both. As of 2024, those numbers are still going strong. Whatever you're seeing on Dcard or some talking head told you on TVBS, it's not really true: Taiwan doesn't see itself as part of China, and that doesn't look poised to change.

The US may be a lost cause in just about every other way, but on Taiwan there are some faint rays of hope. Joint efforts in military and naval training are ongoing. Taiwanese representatives absolutely travel to the US frequently to do their best to work with President Rapist's administration as well as key state governments. There is no way that TSMC's announcement of massive further investment in the United States wasn't the result of some high-level discussions with government officials -- I don't know that for a fact, but it's the only logical conclusion.

Most importantly, I hate Marco Rubio in every other respect, and he supports Taiwan for all the wrong reasons, but he does support Taiwan. I can't say I'm angry about the State Department changing its public wording on Taiwan policy. The line about 'opposing Taiwan independence' never needed to be there, as Taiwan is already independent. Avoiding provocation with China was never a reasonable goal, as they'll always find something to be 'provoked' by. And yet, President Rapist has a history of firing officials who stand up to him, and his Most Divorced Weird Loser Nazi henchman has been clear that he thinks Taiwan is part of China. I'm not sure which horrible person is going to win out regarding Taiwan policy, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

I hate the idea of Taiwan continuing to work closely with a country currently run by fascists (if government officials and pseudo-officials are giving Nazi salutes and arresting dissidents while ignoring court rulings, that government is fascist). I'd love for Taiwan to be able to defend itself to the point that China has no option but to take invasion permanently off the table. 

For now, though, Taiwan can't afford to ignore world affairs, and it certainly can't disavow President Rapist -- the world's most unreliable felon. 

China knows that. It sees how weak the US is making itself, and I do truly fear that something terrible is coming. 

Worst of all, every time I say this to friends of mine who Know Things, they nod and look sad, or admit they're worried too.

On 'free markets' (and other things), the Taipei city government is worse than useless

Here are some cops harassing Free Market participants for absolutely no good reason. I don't want to focus too much on the cops themselves, but I'm annoyed at a city government that things free markets are a bad thing. 

Most months, I try to participate in the free market in Da'an Park. It's often cancelled due to bad weather or wet ground, but when it happens, it's one of the great things about living in Taipei. Taiwan generally, too, as I'm sure they take place in other cities.

It builds community: the attendees are friendly and look out for each other -- among other things, letting newbies know about smart rules to put in place so re-sellers don't swarm your set-up and clean out everything before anyone else can have a look. It's good for students and those on a budget, as handy, gently-used household goods are frequently set out. It's good for the environment, as items not quite good enough to sell or give away online still have a chance at a second life rather than going straight into the trash. 

As far as I'm aware, it's also completely legal (if I'm wrong about this, please let me know). It's not commercial, which is prohibited in public parks for obvious reasons. It's a three-hour giveaway, a community activity focused on eco-friendliness and reducing consumerism. Similar activities take place at 228 Park, up in northern Taipei, and occasionally at the weekend farmer's market in Gongguan. 

At worst, I suspect there's no specific law against free markets, as laws regarding commercial activity arguably don't apply, and I've never heard of cops giving them trouble -- until today. 

I showed up at about 2:30 with a large IKEA bag full of items to give away. As I started setting up, some participants came over and gestured to the cops in another section of the market area. Everyone who'd laid down blankets for their items was told to pack up, and those who didn't comply were being ticketed. 

The fellow market-goers told me to just set my bag down and take out items one by one -- people would come over to claim them. So that's what I did, and as promised, a small group of people formed around me as I pulled out everything from a bag of unwanted Christmas decorations to various storage bins and baskets to a pot lid that doesn't fit anything to a shoulder bag Brendan no longer uses. 

I got the distinct impression the cops were avoiding me specifically, which I suppose is a kind of white privilege -- it's sometimes a curse, but I look like someone who doesn't speak Mandarin, and I didn't really want law enforcement to find out otherwise. And I'm not even particularly scared of Taiwanese police! I just thought it'd be a bit silly to be chastised for doing absolutely nothing wrong. 

So why were the cops there? Gossip among market regulars was that Mayor Chiang Wan-an, the useless marionette who "governs" Taipei, visited Da'an Park today, and the police didn't want the appearance of buying and selling in the park. It did not seem to matter that this wasn't buying or selling, and would have been a fantastic event for Mayor Chiang to not only see, but endorse as good for Taipei and its residents. 

Obviously, that's not what happened. I daresay it's because Chiang and his people don't actually care to consider what's good for the city. 

Chiang himself most likely didn't give the order, but someone who worked for him did, and it was the wrong one. Let's break up a free market because it 'looks like' commerce? Is the mayor too stupid or arrogant to listen to an explanation of what the free market actually is? What does it say about his leadership that his underlings thought this was the right move?

I don't know where the free market goes from here. Most likely, it just keeps meeting and tries to stay under the radar. Maybe if Mayor Marionette Chiang isn't visiting the park that day, the cops will leave it alone.

I suspect official complaints would only cause more problems. If there's no specific law against free markets, but they may technically be broken up under laws regulating commercial activity, there are really only three possible outcomes: the Taipei city government and their nepo-baby "I love my fascist maybe-granddaddy" mayor might decide to tell the cops to leave them alone. But Chiang doesn't actually care about the vibrancy of Taipei civic life, so they're more likely to respond with a "yeah...nah". Then the issue can either be litigated, or free markets stop. 

If you organize a free market just because you think it's a good idea, you probably don't have the money to hire a lawyer and take it to the courts, so I doubt the organizers will indeed complain. 

Now it's time for me to just rant semi-incoherently about how much Chiang Wan-an sucks.

While we're on that subject, I want to first put out a question: has he done anything at all for Taipei since assuming the mayorship? In what way has Taipei tangibly improved? If you can name even a single tangible thing that his administration specifically has spearheaded, please leave it in the comments. 

I've asked local friends the same question, and nobody's given me a single affirmative response. We're talking about die-hard Ko Wen-je haters who would nonetheless point out that Ko's first term was not that bad, by Taipei mayoral standards (that's not hard when the timeliest comparison is Hau Lung-bin, who also did nothing). So, these are people willing to see good works in a politician they otherwise dislike.

I do try to regularly read local news, and can also say I see...well, nothing about tangible efforts by the Chiang administration to improve Taipei. Just to double-check my assumptions, I glossed the city government's own announcements through 2023, which is where I got bored (they're not very interesting). There just doesn't seem to be much at all -- most of them read like this one, which is about Chiang visiting a trendy EasyCard machine in the Department of Youth. Yay. 

So either Chiang doesn't do anything, or the Taipei City government is terrible at hyping their guy. 

Just to double-check if I'd missed anything, I asked ChatGPT what policy accomplishments Chiang has had since assuming office. It gave me a bunch of boilerplate about international engagement, especially "cross-strait" dialogue. I asked it again about specific or tangible policies that have helped improve the lives of Taipei residents. ChatGPT will give you a list of its sources, so I figured at the very least I could check those. 

Here's what it said: 



I don't take ChatGPT very seriously, but...LOL. Even AI doesn't have much to say about the mayor.

I'm no fan of Ko, but under Chiang, I think Taipei has actually gotten a little worse. The only notable exception I can think of is air pollution, but that's improved a bit nationwide in the last few years. 

It's hard to find definitive traffic information, but anecdotally I've noticed that both traffic congestion and the number of accidents seem to be on the rise. There are elevated numbers for both the number of registered vehicles and overall accidents as of 2023 in these PDFs, but the rise was not large and might be explained by a return to some pre-pandemic behavior. Chiang would have recently assumed the mayorship in 2023, so there's not much insight to be gleaned from how he's handling this issue now.

However, if you asked me if he has done anything to improve, say, traffic, road safety and pollution, my answer would be no. 

This leads me to my final two complaints.

First, I don't know how much power the Taipei City government has over this, but I've found both the AI-rendered English translations of bus stops and the underground taxi ranks at transit hubs have become noticeably worse. 

The weird AI-voice English for bus stops doesn't affect me much as I understand the Mandarin, but it murders my poor ears to hear, very much against my will, that we are at "Chung-huh-seeaow Fuck-Sing", "Min-kwan West Road Station" or "Nanjing" (with a flat A) and "Jango" Road Intersection. 

That's probably a bus company problem, but could the city government not step in and ask them to fix this Saw-level assault on the eardrums? They don't even have to stop using AI, even though it's stupid and the stops as they were read by a real human voice were just fine as they were. They just need to fix it. It's so wrong that it's not even helpful for people who don't speak Mandarin!

Finally, have you tried in the past few years to get a taxi from the underground taxi stands at Taipei Main, the Taoyuan Airport MRT or Songshan Station? Do taxis even use them anymore? At Taipei Main, I learned my lesson after spending longer in line for a taxi than I did on the HSR back from Hsinchu -- twice. That one's not the biggest issue, as there's a well-serviced above-ground rank off the east exit, and the MRT is a reasonably easy transfer if you know where to go. 

Songshan, too, has easy access to the green line, and taxis are plentiful above-ground. 

Just don't follow any of the signs that actually say "taxi". You will be disappointed. There are no taxis.

But the airport MRT? The walk to the red and blue lines is far too long, and the green line is only a little bit closer. It's not fun to do if you have luggage, and impossible if you arrive at an odd hour when the MRT is closed. It's not even fun to do if you've been, say, on your feet for a few hours working in Linkou and just want to get home.

The B1-level taxi rank gets so hot in the summer that the 45-minute wait (as per the last time I tried to use it) is a literal health hazard. It takes longer to get a taxi than it does to take the train from the airport! 

And of course, there's no convenient place outside to grab one. 

It's annoying for me, and makes Taiwan look really bad for incoming tourists who thought airport train to taxi rank to hotel would be easy. Nah, instead you get heat exhaustion in a line that never moves, or you can walk 10-20 minutes to the nearest MRT.

In comparison, I was telling a student about my short trip to Japan in late 2023. We stayed in Osaka, but were able to catch a train to Koyasan, which isn't all that close by. You could even by a Koyasan Tourist Pack that came with a local bus pass and discount admissions to various sites. The train goes to a funicular, which waits for the train (and will even wait for you to use the bathroom). The funicular goes to waiting buses which will take you into town. Everything is timed beautifully, and everything works. I speak approximately six words of Japanese, but everything was clear. 

I don't expect Taipei to be like Osaka. It's always going to be smaller, a little funkier, a little more eccentric, a little more chaotic, a little more Taiwanese. That's fine. 

But I expect the free markets to be encouraged rather than raided by cops, the city government to actually care about things like traffic congestion and accidents, the buses to not murder the names of stops in their own language (it's not like "Min-kwan", "Fuck-Sing" and "Jango" are English), and taxi ranks to have taxis in them.

In other words, Mayor Nepobaby sucks. Maybe he should fix some actual problems and leave Da'an Park and its monthly free market alone.

The Parable of the Night Heron

Sometime around 1916, my great-great grandfather converted to Islam. 

Five generations later, nobody in the family knew about it. It wasn't some diaphanous secret, whispered in the old language that none of the kids spoke, banished over the years to successive coffins. It was considered so trivial a thing that it was unworthy of secrecy; it wasn't discussed at all. 

Stories don't die if somebody, in some language, tells them. In a twisted form perhaps, I would have heard about it. Or something like it. Instead I had to learn it from an old xerox of typed yellow pages, scanned and uploaded to the Zoryan Institute website. So I suppose stories don't ever necessarily die. The possibility of resurrection is eternal. 

Movses, a canny businessman from a family made rich by silkworms, sat in some filthy Turkish government outpost in Hamah and was handed a choice: your  family becomes Muslim, or they're deported further south to Jerusalem. He and his wife were in their mid-fifties and might not have survived the trip. His youngest childen were growing weaker. His young cousins, named after the fox, had already lost their mother, grandparents and sister to typhus in the death camps, their father presumed dead after being dragged off to some labor brigade (he was). 

He truly believed in the Christian faith, and he had scruples of sort. He might have refused the officials and taken his family's chances on the death march. But he was also rich, and that gave him a third choice: he converted, and then bribed the official to lose the paper. 

I don't really care about religion, so a lie like that means nothing to me -- one god is as fake as another as far as I'm concerned -- but it would have meant the world to him. 

At least one other wealthy family took Muslim names because they thought it would help them in business. The town pastor refused the "offer", was sent to Jerusalem, and survived. As far as I know, Movses took no names and may not have told any family members. If he did, they never spoke of it. For his trouble, he'd lose his youngest son anyway. 

I only learned of it because those two fox cousins survived and one of them told the story to the Zoryan Institute. 

In that moment, Movses was told to either lie for the possibility of saving his wife and children, or insist on truth and likely condemn them. Being a business type, I don't think he ever considered asking the Turkish official to make a more ethical choice. Why, after all, would the official do so?

So what? Well, a few days ago, a friend posted about an old story, a parable about a bird and a wise man. I think it might have been Biblical; it's certainly religion-scented. He has faith, I don't, but that's cool. 

He wrote about how he told this story to his children: a man holds a small bird in his hands and approaches a wise man. To trick the sage, he intends to ask if the bird is alive or dead. The bird is moving and singing; it is clearly alive. If they wise man says so, the trickster will kill the bird. If he says it's dead, however, he'll set it free.

In the story, the sage tells the man "the bird is in your hands." The man asks again if said bird is alive or dead. "The answer is in your hands," the sage replies.

We're supposed to learn from this that our fate is in our own hands, so we should make good choices. His daughter, however, answered that she'd say the bird was dead. Why? Because, she explained, the objective isn't to be right, it's to save the bird. The power -- the ability to make a choice -- remains with the wise man until he decides to abrogate it and ask the trickster to make good choices. 

This is the sort of online story that some would insist never happened, along the lines of three-year-olds who spout implausible wisdom. Like the mom who claimed her kid said "everyone dies, but not words." I know them, though, and I think it did happen. Honestly, I don't care if it didn't. It's not the point. 

So, okay, the objective isn't to be right, it's to save the bird. And that's within the wise man's power until he relinquishes it, unless the trickster grows impatient and kills the bird out of boredom, misplaced rage, or a need to assert dominance. The man with the bird is clearly a bad person. Can we even trust him to release the bird if we lie? 

Movses chose to lie, and his youngest son died of typhus in a death camp in Hamah.

For the longest time, I struggled to reconcile another, modern-day lie with the world I know: that so many people who so clearly support a free and sovereign Taiwan won't take the next logical step and call it a country. In Taiwan, they won't amend the constitution, they won't change the "Republic of China" name. It's a lie, and it can read as undermining the cause.

Though it's debatable whether China has Taiwan in its hands, the sheer scale of military buildup over the past few years is an argument that they do, or that it's their goal. 

Insist that Taiwan is sovereign and has never been part of the 'China' that everyone understands to be China, change the name, change the constitution, be right or die trying -- and maybe you get a war. 

Tell the Chinese government that the bird's fate is in their hands, and you've condemned yourself anyway. You can't trust someone to make good choices as they try to trick the world into either lying, or destroying Taiwan. They're already not making good choices, and they have no motivation to be better people.  You may as well condemn Taiwan to die.

Put off the answer, implying that maybe, just maybe, the lie is acceptable -- the Republic of China isn't the dead name of an ideology and national concept that's little more than a coma patient on life support -- and you might not save the bird, but you retain some of the power and some chance that perhaps it will fly off to some uncapturable state. 

Let's play Bad Pastor -- no, not like that, gross dude -- I mean like clunky metaphors and a bored congregation. Let's make the metaphor plain: 

The US is the self-righteous sage who thinks telling a trickster to make good choices might actually cause them to rethink their path and consider peace. It doesn't even matter who's in power, from Obama to President Rapist to Biden to President Rapist again for some goddamn reason. Not taking a position, committing only to a peaceful resolution of tensions between villain and bird, is telling the bird to watch its neck and not a lot more.

China, the bad guy, desperately wants someone to speak the truth. Saying aloud that the Republic of China is a lifeless shell with no future, but Taiwan is a sovereign and vibrant nation that is culturally and politically distinct from China gives them an excuse to try and kill it. 

The KMT is trying to outright lie -- to say Taiwan is dead so that the ROC may live on as "part of China." Now that they're mostly run by bought-and-paid-for unificationists and overt CCP agents and traitors, they mean that literally as part of the People's Republic. 

But tricksters can't be trusted; this will still be the death of Taiwan. 

The rest of us are just trying to figure out exactly how much we can grease the system. Imply a lie without stating it outright. Keep a dead name, a government system and constitution that's got some ridiculous bits, and our lives for as long as we can. Placate the trickster until we can find a way out.

The objective, after all, is not to be right. It's to save the bird. 

Perhaps it's not exactly the same as converting to a religion you don't believe in but rather than live a lie, bribe someone to lose a paper. It's not incomparable, though. 

It might not work. China might grow irritable or scared enough at any moment and use Taiwan's willingness to imply a lie without confirming it as an excuse to crush its neck. 

But between certain death, another kind of certain death, and asking bad people to be better than they are, it's just about the only path left. 

Taiwan has something going for it, though: China doesn't seem to know what kind of bird it's threatening. It sees Taiwan as a little sparrow, easily captured and held, its bones easily snapped. 

I think Taiwan is a Malayan night heron: hefty in history and culture and uniqueness, strong of bone, with a long, sharp beak and unwavering eyes. (Seriously, those birds will stare you down. They judge you. I swear night herons can see your soul.) They look like they can't fly, but they can. 

I've never heard of a night heron messing up an attacker. They mostly seem to like to hang around and eat tasty things. But it doesn't look easy to kill one with your bare hands. As though if provoked, it would go straight for the face. 

Books by frauds make for the wildest reviews

From Wikimedia Commons

I like to read old books about Taiwan, and it doesn't get much older than this. In 1704, a man named George Psalmanazar, claiming to be a native Formosan and Christian convert, published A Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. It took England by storm, creating what was apparently a "Formosa craze", with French and German editions to follow. 

The first half or so of the book appears to be a long, unscientific and unphilosophical proof about the absolute superiority of the Christian religion. This part is skippable; it's not at all related to Taiwan and it's hardly rigorous. Psalmanazar (not his birth name) keeps self-complimenting the irrefutability of his logic. I'd say it was refutable, but that would be deigning to categorize it as logic at all. 

Following that, a series of short chapters outline what Formosans wear and eat, how their islands and cities are laid out, some very improbable designs for Formosan boats, various customs, money, marriage rites, their relation to Japan, their social classes and their government. He includes some notes about the grammar of "the Formosan language" -- apparently tones signify grammar differences? -- with an alphabet and translations of various Christian verses into "Formosan", which resembles pig latin. 

Obviously, Psalmanazar was a fraud. He was probably born in France, and had never been to Formosa or East Asia at all. It was all completely made up, based on basically nothing -- although he'd clearly incorporated some basic knowledge of China and Japan, even that included a fair amount of fabrication --there was never a Japanese emperor named "Tampousama", for example; the Emperor of Japan during the beginning of their isolationist period was Go-Mizunoo, aka Emperor Kotohito, and he did not die as a Christian exile in Goa. 

But there's something really fascinating about the fraud. Not the expected banalities of why he did it, although he seemed to me unlike a lot of impostors in that he wasn't so much pretending to be something he wished he really had been as simply seeking a false identity almost for the hell of it. His original goal had been to travel to Rome; the fame and society-crashing came later. Still, who cares? 

What interested me was how his fake culture and language, including fake social classes and a fake religion said a lot more about what people really do when they fabricate knowledge about people different from them. In fiction, so many characters are based on people the author knows, tweaked to be more interesting or appropriate to the story. So it was with Psalmanazar, whose fever-dream of East Asia seemed mostly to be based on a twisted representation of European culture, mixed with a heavy dollop of orientalism and finished off with descriptions of Generalized Foreign Lands and a sprinkle of random nonsense. 

Take his descriptions of the social structure and religion: he describes an absolute monarch named Mariandanoo, followed by a series of nobles and their wives, with illustrations of their clothing -- they all pretty much sounded like European-style nobility and their clothing were just weirder versions of things Europeans have been known to wear. The religion seemed to include one God, with a bunch of other gods described more as saints, and a holy book called the Jarhabadiond, is just an odd spin-off of Abrahamic religion with an added pagan element of worshipping celestial bodies. The language sounds vaguely Indo-European: a general is a carillan, a poorhouse is a caa tuen pagot ack chabis-collinos, and fictional cities includes Chabat and Pineto. Marriage is Groutacho. Some words appear to be just weird-ized Asian-sounding things, such as the fictional islands of Peorko and Loctau. The alphabet looks like it sprang from the mind of someone who wanted to create a new writing system but couldn't quite get the Roman alphabet out of their head.  

Other words are just random nonsense: my favorite is the word for one hundred, ptommftomm (though taufb for the number one is fun too). You can read the extremely weird translation of the Lord's Prayer into fake Formosan on Wikipedia.

                           


In his later autobiography, Psalmanazar claims he was a linguistic prodigy in his youth and had considerable intellectual gifts otherwise. Perhaps -- his fake Formosan language does seem to have enough internal consistency to have come from a fairly intelligent mind. But it isn't particularly imaginative otherwise, and he was a known liar in other ways. 

Some elements, including close attention to astronomy and the name of the capital (Xternetsa) appear to be gleaned from what might have been public perception of Indigenous American cultures. A few ideas, coincidentally or not, are accurate to some of East Asia in general at that time, but not Formosa per se. One god-saint, Amida, is basically Japanese for Amitabha. 

Other elements, such as the descriptions of exotic animals and their uses, including the eating of snakes and use of skins as clothing, seems to be just generic foreign and exotic stuff. He claimed that Formosa had camels, lions, tigers, rhinocerots [sic], elephants and sea-horses, all tame and of service to people. Brendan and I agreed that by 'sea-horses' he probably meant hippopotamuses, but the idea of a tame seahorse that serves humans is more amusing. 

Showing that he hadn't even tried to do a little background reading to make his fakery more believable, he claimed that Formosans had "no knowledge of dragons". I'm not sure to what extent dragons exist in various Taiwanese Indigenous mythologies, but for the Chinese immigrants who were settling Taiwan by then, well...it's a bit weird to say they'd never heard of dragons.

So what does a spirited rando with some (but not a lot) of imagination do when he sets out to create a fake culture to pretend to be from? Apparently, it's to exoticize their own culture, throw in some random bits about far-away peoples circulating in the general social consciousness of the time, put the whole thing through a weird-izer and sprinkle some gibberish on top. 

At least, of course, when someone can't be bothered to think beyond what they already know to come up with something truly unique. 

Some of Psalmanazar's fabrications are weirdly true, if only by coincidence. For instance, he describes the capital Xternetsa as being near a large mountain "which abounds with many wholesome springs", which is technically true of Taipei. He describes an extremely sexist social hierarchy in which men can have multiple wives but women are restricted to the home without her husband, except for the first wife. This was actually the way many Chinese settler families operated in Taiwan at that time -- although I'm not sure if even the first wife could go out in those cases -- but that's because patriarchy is a common and unsurprising facet of many cultures. He wasn't describing something unique or exotic so much as pretty basic ingrained sexism. 

Once again, Psalmanazar shows us that most people, when trying to be imaginative, just end up repeating some distorted or lightly fictionalized version of what they already know. It's interesting, I suppose, at least for what that tells us about how we view the world through our own cultural lenses and often don't even realize it. 

The lack of curiosity from someone claiming brilliance was also, well, something. Here's a conversation I had with Brendan about it: 

Me: The thing is, he could have been so much more believable if he'd just read up a bit more on the part of the world he was claiming to be from.

Brendan: Do you think he really cared?

Me: Not rea---

Brendan: Well there ya go.

I suppose what surprises me is that this research, even if he didn't care, would have helped him perpetuate the farce awhile longer. Toward the end he starts discussing the massacre and general kicking-out of Jesuits from Japan around 1614, which did happen. It's so otherwise inaccurate, however, that it not only seems lazy to have not just included something based on verifiable accounts, but that it reads like a ticking time bomb with Psalmanazar's name on it: enough people knew about the Dutch in Formosa and the flight of Christians from Japan that eventually, someone was going to point out that he was talking nonsense.

The thing is, in the early 18th century, Taiwan would still have been predominantly Indigenous, no? While it's a stretch to say that the Austronesian cultures of Taiwan had gender equality, they were certainly more progressive in this way than many traditional societies. You may recall that Chinese writing about Taiwan called it an "Island of Women" for this reason. So of all the places he could have chosen to fabricate a backstory, he picked the one where in many parts, the sexist tropes didn't quite fit. 

I'm not even getting into the stuff that falls under Generalized Exotic Foreign Barbarity Tropes. Think child sacrifice (apparently thousands of younger sons were sacrificed in Psalmanazar's Formosa every year, and it's implied that the priests eat them), wearing metal codpieces, animal skins, being warlike, you know, all that stuff. The most insulting passage in my opinion wasn't about cannibalism or codpieces or the straight-up gibberish language, but the passage on music. It's hard to select quotes because, like many men of his time, he used insufficient periods. I'll try, though:

It must be acknowledg'd that the Art of Musick was not known for many Years in any of the Eastern Countries, neither had they any certain method of singing and playing upon instruments of Musick, though they had then such as resembled the Drum and the Tabor, the Trumpet and the Flagellet, the Lute and Harp: But since the time that the Europeans came thither, they have learn'd the way of making and using these Instruments, which are now made almost after the same fashion as they are here in England.

Which...what?

For when they heard the Jesuits play upon the Organs in their Churches, and sing Musically after the manner of the ROmish Church, they were mightily taken with it, and inflam'd with a desire of learning the At of Musick, which now by their industry and ingenuity they have attained, tho' not in perfection, yet to such a degree as wonderfully pleases themselves; and therefore they commonly use both vocal and instrumental Musick at theur Marriages, Funerals, Sports and Recreations, and at their offering Sacrifices, chiefly when they Sacrifice Infants. 

Okay then.

Thus it is in Japan, but in the Island Formosa, the Natives still observe their ancient method of singing and playing upon Musical Instruments, if their way of singing may be call'd a method; for except some few particular Prayers, which are sing by the Priests only, the People sing all other things, every one after a different manner, according to his fancy; which they do not look upon as ridiculous, because they know no better...

Screw you, dude. 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot -- the entire book claims and then assumes thereafter that Formosa was annexed by Japan and was for all intents and purposes Japanese, and the nobles there went to Japan to pay respects to the emperor. That's quite funny, seeing as Japan did try to annex Taiwan a century or two before, but wasn't successful because they couldn't find a king or emperor to demand tribute from. Ha ha. 

Don't they know they could have just contacted this guy? Apparently he's the King of Formosa!

On the one hand, one of the goals of this book appears to be encouraging missionaries to go to Formosa to "civilize the pagans" (scare quotes are mine). On the other, he treats Taiwan as wholly separate from China. That's honestly a lot more than I can say for some of the analysts today who claim to understand Taiwan. but then write their own fictitious garbage through a completely Chinese lens, and in some cases read as insulting and dismissive of it in a modern sense as Psalmanazar was then. At least this guy's nonsense treated it like a unique culture. 

That might be my most controversial take on this short, weird book. The West knows more about Taiwan now than it did in 1704, but that doesn't mean it understands a lot. A combination of people having their own lives and not a lot of time to learn about places they'll never visit along with relentless propaganda from China have harmed attempts at increasing understanding about Taiwan. Many will therefore read some utter nonsense in, say, Foreign Policy, by people passing themselves off as Taiwan experts, and take it as fact because they don't know better or don't care.

It's a perpetual problem for places that aren't as well-known (or face a well-funded war machine trying to take them down) -- there will always be someone looking to benefit from others' ignorance about these places, or create narratives about them that suit their own ends, rather than the place they're talking about. 

Some of these modern fraudsters are Taiwanese, some aren't. Arguably the KMT has it in their DNA: they, along with the CCP, have been creating twisted or wholly fabricated narratives about Taiwan for their own ends for a few generations now, and don't seem to be stopping anytime soon. They've convinced far too many people that Taiwan is Chinese (it's not -- I'd even argue that it's not just politically distinct from China, but culturally as well) or that the people identify as Chinese (they don't), or that Taiwanese schools are founded on Confucian thought, for better or worse (they're not). 

We can laugh at poor old George Psalmanazar, smart and eccentric but not terribly creative and clearly deeply, deeply racist. But really, British society believed him in 1704 for reasons not entirely different for why people believe nonsense about Taiwan now.  

Starting a bleak year with a little joy in Taiwan

I am grateful that I had the time to attend an exhibition of Sanyu (常玉) works in December

It doesn't matter how you spin it or even if you try to make it cute -- a snake is a snake. And when your government has been overtaken by snakes, there's no way to frame that positively without coming across as disingenuous, brainwashed, bootlicking or just garden-variety stupid. 

I'm talking about the US here, but something similar could be said of the KMT-created constitutional crisis in Taiwan. If you don't see the similarities in tactics between them and President Rapist's crew, you're not paying attention. DPP legislators seem to be putting up more of a fight than US Democrats, but I do with President Lai would speak out more. 

Because of how the world is, Lao Ren Cha is probably going to get pretty dark. Uplifting words require hope, and we're currently veering down a slope on which my hope finds no purchase. We're not only sliding into fascism, we're doing it electorally. People actually chose this. I have nothing to offer them but contempt. 

It may seem as though I've hopped straight to the rending of the garments without much in between, but I've actually been attempting to keep a gratitude journal. The world is in a bad way, but I can't point to many problems in my personal life -- call it privilege, luck, perhaps a few good choices, but if the US weren't in some freaky simulation of 1930s Germany and China acting kind of like the old Japanese Empire, I might even be something approaching happy? Who knows. 

What I can do, though, is practice a little self-fortification and talk about some of the little things I'm grateful for. They're random and pretty inconsequential, but it calms the mind to do this. 

That, and I can't follow the news as closely as I'd like without my stomach curdling, and I've gotten at least two migraines from it, so I can't be the Taiwan politics blogger I want to be right now.

Although it has its flaws, and I have my criticisms, I'm grateful that I moved to Taiwan back in 2006. I half-joked at the time that I was doing it to get away from "King George II", which seems adorable now. In 2025, as I see more and more Americans talking about 'getting out' and trying to start lives abroad, I started one almost two decades ago. I have permanent residency, a comfortable home built up over a decade, a freelance career that's solid even when it feels a little unstimulating, and strong social ties in Taipei. 

I do worry that China will start a war here -- President Rapist isn't smart enough to understand Taiwan's strategic importance, and he isn't empathetic enough to understand the human rights implications of this issue. China must know it has a lot less standing in its way now. 

And yet, being here has given me a greater understanding of this part of the world. If I'd stayed in the US, it would have been easy to read about conflicts like the threats China is inflicting on Taiwan, and despite feeling empathy, see it all as 'foreign' or 'far away' -- even though such a war would affect not just Taiwanese people but the world. Every issue that's far off to us is local to someone else. Not that I didn't already know that, but knowing something and feeling it in one's bones because the death count might include you or people you care about -- I'm not grateful for the threat or the fear, what kind of monster would be? But it sure does induce clarity. 

There's a small part of me that regrets that I can't do more to fight for the future of the US. Perhaps the US doesn't deserve a future -- again, the electorate chose this -- but lots of people in it do. It has brought further clarity, though, that the US might be the country of my citizenship, and it's had a major impact on my cultural norms, but it's not really 'home' anymore and probably never will be again. 

Taiwan is my home, and it's worth fighting for. I've heard people here talking about running, trying to get away from a potential war. I'm a lot less sure. I don't know what help I could be, nor how I'd be able to stay just in terms of supporting myself, but if I'm not willing to stand up for my values and beliefs in my home, then I'm not willing to stand up for them anywhere. I don't know how I could live with myself if I ran. 

That sucks, but I suppose there's a sliver of gratitude in being able to put it so plainly. Knowing it is...something?

Here's how much the US is not my home: I'm reasonably committed to not visiting again while President Rapist and his sex pest goon squad are in power, and I don't know how long that will be. Four years? Two or less, if we can get all 1789 up in the White House? Undetermined? I don't feel any sadness about not going to that country, just at what it will mean for visiting loved ones there. How feasible is my stance with a wedding in September, a father who doesn't take long trips abroad, and wanting to spend Christmas with my in-laws next year? 

                       

My face while judging supporters of President Rapist

A friend asked me what precisely I was afraid of in terms of not visiting. I'm not sure. As a cisgender, heterosexual white woman who's probably past childbearing age, I'm not very high on their list of people to actively persecute. They're content with passive persecution of women like me who are still there by eroding all of their hard-earned human rights. Yet my guts rebel at the thought of setting foot on American soil: the leadership of a country do influence the culture, and right now the Rapey D and the Roofie Crew are ushering in a culture of misogyny that gives me the willies. Which random Manosphere Bro is gonna decide it's suddenly acceptable to threaten or assault me, because his Dear Leader did it without consequences? 

I also just don't want to be around people who think it's acceptable to attack, say, immigrants or trans women. I have friends in both groups and would rather live near them than their detractors.

Besides, I don't really know what to do to support my trans and nonbinary friends especially. It feels like performative allyship, but they're mostly American, and if they can't go back for safety reasons, perhaps I shouldn't either. 

In fact, I'm curious: if you're an American living abroad, are you intending to visit the US during this "administration"? No judgement either way, we all come to our own decisions for our own reasons. I just want to know. 

What were we talking about again? Oh yes, gratitude. I am indeed grateful to have a supporting husband and loving family (biological and in-laws) who are supportive and understand how much this has bothered me, because it bothers them, too. I'm at the point of cutting off anyone who supports the literal fascism we're facing now, and I am grateful that nobody in my closest circles is, well, a fascist. 

Here are some little things I'm grateful for:

I recently started up a writing project I'd abandoned a couple of years ago. It's going better this time and takes me out of time and place a little. That matters. It also means I'll likely be blogging less. 

I have a lovely side hustle going writing for various Taiwan travel magazines. You can see some of them republished by CommonWealth's online platform (not all of the results here are mine). Writing is a way to look at some other thing critically for awhile, rather than freaking out at the news all the time. 

In fact, all I think I can read these days is Sweets Weekly. 


                  

Sweets Weekly, your trusted source for news from Taiwan to Hamburg, Germany, which was originally a kind of fried steak. 

Here's one of their better pieces: 

Typified plus thick warm and cheerful grandmother, Tainan alleys hidden in a delicious good material. this is the most memorable I've eaten grilled sandwiches, plus skillful technologies raging fire fried egg. still retain moisture egg, like iron palm flip grilled toast Ruannen delicious, simple but most charming. 

Flip to the other side to read an insightful editorial about how sandwiches is placed in the middle of the bread. 

I am grateful for Sweets Weekly. 

In April, I'll leave Taiwan for a little over a month. Starting in London where I'll work remotely from my sister's place for a few weeks, I'll then head to Rome where I'll meet Brendan and my brother and sister-in-law for the weekend. Then we'll meet my parents-in-law for a Mediterranean and Adriatic cruise. I don't know if I am a cruise person; my typical travel is public transit, mid-range hotels, lots of faffing about drinking things in cafes and exploring old bookstores, maybe seeing a castle or church and joking about how this or that bishop put rubies on his hat instead of helping the poor. 

But family bonding matters, and I don't hate large boats (only small ones), and I get to go to Malta and Montenegro. At the end, we'll spend several days in Slovenia and I'll work remotely a bit from Ljubljana.

That's a privilege, and I'm grateful...well, not for the privilege exactly, but for the privilege of being able to go plus the understanding that it is indeed privilege.

Someday I might switch to a full-time job that will make it harder to do things like this, so I'm grateful that I get to do it now. Besides, who knows whether we'll be in the throes of World War III before I get my next chance? 

For this trip, I designed an 'ideal' travel day bag. Made with sturdy Japanese fabric and a water-resistant middle layer, it boasts a thick cloth crossbody, a zipper top and magnet-sealing flap for two layers of protection. It slides onto a rolling bag handle and has outer compartments for airport necessities and a water bottle. Inside, there are inner zip pockets and a keyring that can attach to anything you may want to secure. It has a dedicated laptop compartment and Kindle pocket. I daresay it is perfect, and it came entirely from my own head. 

                    

                    
I'm grateful for that spurt of creativity in a time when I feel creatively dead, and grateful to have a tailor in Taiwan who made it for me at a reasonable price. 

My cat -- the one who had the heart attack -- is still with us. He costs about NT$15,000/month between vet visits and medication, but his prognosis was 6-9 months. It's been 9 months now, so every day we have with him is a gift. I know there most likely won't be many more. I'm grateful for that at any price. 

Lastly, I recently asked my Taiwanese teacher to help me understand the full lyrics to Hometown at Dusk (黃昏故鄉). The most famous version is by Wen Hsia (文夏), but this version is the meditative one that calms me down. I'm grateful to have a teacher willing to help make the lyrics accessible, and grateful to have learned it. 

In a life where, thanks to a decision I made two decades ago, when I travel, the place of golden-hour nostalgia that I think of when I'm homesick isn't my actual hometown, nor where I spent most of my adult life in the US. It's Taiwan. 

I'm grateful for this perspective shift, and how permanent it seems to be.  

Oh, I almost forgot.

Remember that earthquake not long ago that caused a Dictator Chiang statue to fall into a lake? 

That was awesome. I'm grateful for that.