Updated: Indian food in Taipei

My long post on Indian food in Taipei, written with care and reflection to my time studying abroad in India and visiting several times since, has been updated!

Now with links and reviews for Balle Balle, Fusion Asia and Tibet Kitchen (which offers Indian food). Coming soon: Khana Khazanaa!

The rankings are still roughly the same: Mayur is the best, Balle Balle is also excellent with more of a Punjabi focus, Ali Baba and Aaleja are about the same, Kunming is still excellent (the coconut chicken and Burmese tea leaf salad - YUM), and Out of India would be pretty good if not for that damn fake garlic-butter spread on their naan, which has caused me to forever boycott the place.

Review: Fusion Asia Indian Restaurant

Fusion Asia
#34 Section 3 Heping East Road
和平東路三段34號
MRT Technology Building or Liuzhangli

Fusion Asia is easy to miss - just one more storefront along the busy eastern end of Heping Road past Dunhua as it veers toward MRT Liuzhangli. I'd actually walked by it several times thinking "we should eat there" (as a part of my nefarious plan to eat at every Indian restaurant I can find in Taipei and then compile it into one huge blog post - which will be updated with Fusion Asia shortly).

One rainy night when we were both unexpectedly free and planned to walk around the Yanji Street area and just pick something that looked good, we decided instead because of the weather to just go here.

The space inside is actually pretty large by Taipei standards, and we were one of only two sets of customers so it felt a bit empty and cavernous. The decoration was innovative, with musical instruments centered inside frames of PVC pipes draped with Indian women's bangles. I got the feeling, however, that they started out with this idea of being both a restaurant and bar (it advertises itself as such), but that didn't quite work out as the space is made out to really just be a restaurant. For that concept to work, your space has to be decorated and set up accordingly, and Fusion Asia really just screamed "restaurant" despite the full bar and drinks menu. As usual in Indian restaurants in Taipei and elsewhere, a flatscreen TV played Bollywood musical numbers.

We honestly weren't expecting much of the food despite the management from India - it was too empty, too unknown, too trying to be something it wasn't.

But we were surprised...the food was actually pretty good, especially the appetizers.

They were out of Kingfisher (BLASPHEMY!) so we got Taiwan beer, samosas and channa aloo chaat. I love a good chaat and I love any restaurant that can do one well. This was pretty good - chick peas and potatoes in a tangy chaat masala with chopped onion and tomato. I would have added a drizzle of yoghurt and then topped the whole thing in sev (crispy fried potato threads), but that's just me. The samosas were brilliant - the outside golden and crispy, the inside moist and very well-spiced, although the tamarind and coriander chutneys were lackluster and they also gave us some mayonnaise, which we didn't use, because that's gross.

For curry, we ordered baingan bharta (grilled mashed eggplant curry) and butter chicken (my favorite). The baingan bharta was very good - well-flavored with a grilled flavor that still let the freshness of the eggplant come through, and perfectly textured which is hard to do with eggplant.

The butter chicken was also good, but perhaps a bit too mild. I thought it might have just been the result of eating two spicy appetizers, but after washing all of the heat away with beer, the butter chicken was still lacking the bit of heat I like it to have.

The garlic naan, however, was quite good and unlike Out of India, they use real garlic, not crappy garlic butter spread.

The menu was standard north Indian fare - curries in sauces with naan or rice. Don't look for regional specialties here - those are really only to be found at Mayur Indian Kitchen or, for Punjabi specialties, Balle Balle.

All in all, I'll go back. It's not the best Indian meal in Taipei, but it's pretty good and close by. I might just go for samosas and chaat though!

The Tale of Lance Lightning

I've sort of hesitated in writing this post because it forces me to come to terms with my past.

That sounds way creepier than it really needs to, but it probably got your attention!

Back in 2002-2003, when I was living in China, I had a coworker who was teaching at another branch of our small provincial English language center. He had a very memorable name - we'll just change his name to "Lance Lightning" - and was an retired-military Englishman with a grizzled-in-a-wiry-sort-of-way air about him.

We traveled to Kunming and Dali together - this is not as weird as it sounds - we got along quite well (I tend to get along with grizzled-Englishman types, the more sarcastic the better) and generally hung out going to tourist spots together, meeting up after breakfast because I was a poor kid staying in hostels and he could afford proper hotel rooms.

At one point, Lance mentioned something about teaching - some educational concept I hadn't heard of - and I asked him about it and where he'd learned it. It was probably something I really should have known about before embarking on a year of teaching abroad, like classroom management. He said he'd taken a CELTA course before coming and, quite offhand, that he did so because "if I was going to move abroad to do this, I thought I'd better to it right or it's not worth doing at all."

That's just the sort of person Lance was. And although I was a feckless 22-year-old at the time, that attitude appealed to me. It's a part of why we got along - he didn't suffer fools (and I suppose that because he suffered me as his weird pink-haired coworker-and-traveling-companion, that I must not have been as much of a fool as I now see myself as having been, and I probably liked the validation).



Me and my weird pink hair in Kunming, late 2002 - it was way pinker than this old photo makes it seem.

Anyway, I remember wishing I'd had the forethought and money to have done it that way.

In Kunming, Lance and I stopped at one of the famous temples - either Yuantong or Golden, I don't remember which. It was cool and overcast, a bit drizzly. So much for the famous Kunming weather! Leading up to it was a very long staircase of marble or granite, really onerous to climb. Being a retired army guy, Lance jogged up at a comfortable pace and met me at the top. I climbed comfortably for some time but was huffing and puffing and pushing myself forward by the end.

"Well, you made it," Lance said. "The key to getting up a long stairway like this isn't how strong you are. It's got nothing to do with muscles. It's all about the respiratory and circulatory system. If those are weak, you won't pump the oxygen you need to give you the energy to get to the top. You're not fat" (at the time I wasn't overweight, now I am), "but it looks like you've got some working out to do."

My first reaction was defensiveness - hey, I wasn't that unfit! - but I tamped that down. He was right (I mean I'm not sure about the exact physiological aspects, but generally speaking, he wasn't off base).

In later years I would look back at that moment - it wasn't just about climbing stairs. I wanted to teach as well as Lance could jog up and down those steps. Confidently, knowing what I was doing and how I should proceed, seemingly effortlessly (though it's anything but). Just as one might work out to improve respiration and circulation, I wanted to work out my mental muscles to be a competent, trained teacher.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

Over the next few years I backpacked around Asia, tried to work in finance, couldn't bring myself to care enough about the field to achieve anything within it (and I did try - I just inherently wasn't interested), got an evening job teaching ESL to Korean immigrants, saved some money and moved to Taiwan where I taught English again without any sort of qualifications or credentials for a few years before finally getting my act together and getting a CELTA, then moving on to Delta and IELTS examiner training. Eventually, I will get a Master's. I need it if I ever want to work in this field in a Western country.

Fast-forward to now, and that offhand comment from Lance is quite possibly a part of why I've since swung so far in the other direction - I have the zeal of the converted. I know the CELTA course is a quality course because I've done it. It won't make you a star teacher, but it will give you the basic competency you need to move on to better performance - something you aren't going to get from experience alone.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

Here's the thing - Lance wasn't a career teacher. He wasn't a seasoned professional. What I respected - and still respect - about this worldview is that he saw a fairly affordable basic course that would allow him to do his "retirement" job with a basic degree of competency, and he shut up and took the damn course rather than construct some unrealistic narrative in which he didn't need it, a narrative that would have insulted teachers, the profession of teaching, and the generations of hard work and research in education, pedagogy and second language acquisition that people have put into the field, all to make himself feel better about not taking his new job seriously. You don't need to be a career teacher to do this. You don't need to plan to stay in it for more than a few years. Even so, you can do better than showing up and pretending your accent and face is enough.



A dragon carving somewhere in the Golden or Yuantong temple, Kunming, China, late 2002.

Now, I advocate pre-service teacher training (as in, taking some sort of English teaching course before you actually begin working as an English teacher), specifically the CELTA, Trinity or equivalent, and will go so far as to say that a.) I think this, or something like it, should in fact be a legal prerequisite for employment in ELT in all countries and b.) I do not view ersatz "English teachers" who lack such qualifications as professionals.

I'll go even farther than that - not only should all English teachers have to get a basic, respected qualification (CELTA, Trinity or equivalent) but that if someone wants to open an English language center, they either need to be, or need to hire, someone with adequate credentials in ELT in order to ensure that the training, curriculum, materials, hiring etc. are all in line with sound educational practice. In short, to ensure that the school wasn't run by businesspeople whose only concern was profit and who were not concerned with the actual quality of the product being provided.

Perhaps it would be acceptable for someone to go abroad and teach English for a year or two without a CELTA if and only if the school in question had a qualified head teacher on staff who trained all new hires, and whose training was examined and approved by a higher accreditation agency or a committee within the Ministry of Education of that country. After a few years, however, it should be required that they either get a CELTA or equivalent (or take the TKT), or leave the field in that country. Government incentives to schools that help sponsor their long-term teachers to gain these credentials would be a solid step forward.

"But Jenna," you're probably thinking, "you didn't do that. You started as a backpacker-teacher! How can you then say that you don't think others should be able to do exactly what you did?"

And you'd be right. So before writing this post I had to think long and hard about why I now feel the way I do, and if it's fair to do so when I benefited from a system that allowed me to get a pretty well-paid job (by Taiwan standards) without having even remotely close to the qualifications I should have had to get it.

Here's what I've come up with: if I could do it all again, I wouldn't have started teaching without doing something like the CELTA first. In 2002, after graduating from college, deciding not to go into Peace Corps (long story), and choosing instead to spend a year in China teaching English, I would have instead delayed my trip by 6 months, saved enough to pay for the CELTA and living expenses in a relatively inexpensive country like Thailand, and done that before moving on to that first teaching job in China.

After all, the CELTA course cost a pretty packet for 2 people to do, with an apartment back home to pay rent on, along with living in a fairly expensive city like Istanbul, but it wasn't so expensive that I as a singleton couldn't have pulled it off in, say, Chiang Mai at age 22.

22-year-old me would have been pretty pissed to learn that she couldn't go teach English abroad without first laying out a few thousand dollars for a basic teaching qualification.

22-year-old me was also an entitled, spoiled idiot. An spoiled idiot who did not understand that she was not so special as to not need basic teacher training before, you know, teaching. That professional fields require, by their very nature, some sort of training to be taken seriously in. That I might have a natural knack for teaching but that's not enough to make one a professional- level teacher, or a "teacher" at all. I was playing teacher, like a kid might "play doctor" or "play firefighter" (or "play lawyer" if kids were inclined to do something that dull to kid sensibilities). That being a native speaker did not qualify me to teach English, just as being "good at math" or even "highly educated in math" does not qualify one to teach math. That being a native speaker of a language is not the same as understanding the underlying systems of that language, and even if you understand those, being able to teach them using sound pedagogy is a different skill entirely. That teaching is so much more than knowing something - knowing how to impart it is equally if not more important.

So yeah, 34-year-old me would tell 22-year-old me to suck it up, save up the extra money and do the damn course. Then she could bum around for a bit, but eventually, if she were to get serious about the job, she'd have to find a job under a real director of studies and improve her craft before moving on to higher qualifications.

With that in mind, reading articles like this bring me back around to that thing about my past that I don't like to admit: that I took the easy route, and that I regret it. I should not have been allowed in front of a class of students who were paying (or whose parents were paying) for the experience. It was one giant facepalm, and I didn't get better until I got some decent pre-CELTA training. My entire professional existence was probably one huge facepalm, in fact, until approximately 2009 when my experience finally caught up with my training. I was doing alright by the time I did the CELTA, but I was not a professional:

"It can easily be the case that native speaking teachers working abroad, in large part because they do not speak the local language, are excluded from the decision making process at their schools. This leads to the native-speakers feeling frustrated because they are not being taken seriously as professionals, while the non-native teachers sit quietly thinking, “Well, you’re not really professionals, are you? You were only hired because you’re a native speaker.”

And that's exactly it. If you're only hired because you happen to speak a language (or in many cases, simply look like you do), then how are you a professional? Professional work requires training and development. It needn't be a teaching license if you're not working with kids. It needn't be a Master's, just as you can be a financial professional with Series 7 and 66 certifications but don't necessarily need an MBA or degree in Finance.

As such, no, I don't think that what makes a good teacher is necessarily the piece of paper to say that they did this or that course - although the content of the courses themselves help. It could be done through more informal on-the-job training, but, honestly, most schools don't even offer that and those who do offer training of such varying quality that it simply cannot be the basis of "professionalism" unless it's either standardized by an accredited authority, or there is a way to show measurable outcomes (in much the same way that a business professional may start out with an unrelated degree but proves themselves through measurable outcomes that lead to promotion). The only way I see this happening in teaching is for everyone, at some point, to take a similar training course just as, say, financial advisors have to do with those Series 7/66 licenses.

22-year-old me would have been butthurt to hear that she was not a "professional". 22-year-old me was an idiot. 34-year-old me accepts it, and is still worried that, not yet having a full Delta, she is not quite professional enough. Incidentally, the end of that conversation with Lance about some aspect of teaching practice entailed me admitting I had no training whatosever, and Lance saying "you're pretty smart. You'll be fine." I see no reason why others can't be "pretty smart" too, and have no problem with kicking those who aren't out of the field.

What worries me is that a lot of these "native speakers hired as teachers" isn't just that they aren't qualified, as I wasn't (and so I can only imagine that in the classroom a large number of them are variations of the walking facepalm that I once was), it's that, like 22-year-old me, they get super butthurt if you say so. They don't like to hear that they aren't professionals, that perhaps their opinions aren't as valid as teachers with training, that there is a reason employers view them as replaceable and interchangeable and don't take them seriously (although I also get the feeling that employers purposely look for "teachers" they don't take seriously as native speakers without qualifications are much easier to "manage". If you are some rando businessman who started a school to make money but you don't know jack about teaching, then it can be quite inconvenient indeed to have a teacher with some training challenging your decisions, most of which are pedagogically crap).

They want to construct a narrative in which one learns to teach by doing it - forgetting first of all that "doing" doesn't mean much if it's not augmented by training and feedback from a professional who can point out where you're going wrong better than you can, and so if you learn by doing without that meaningful feedback (which most teachers at these schools don't get, as most schools don't have a competent, qualified head teacher or Director of Studies), you'll just pick up a bunch of bad habits that you won't even know you have (and will get very defensive about being called out on). Second of all that if you try to "learn to teach by teaching", along your path to learning you've just stepped on a whole bunch of people who've paid you to learn how to do something, and not even gotten a quality product out of their investment. How is that fair?

A system like the ones I proposed above - force English centers to have some modicum of professionalism before they open or to maintain their business, and force teachers to either come in with a qualification or only allow them to work for businesses that can provide training, and even then only for a specified period of time - would not be onerous. The regulations would be quite manageable for any business that takes itself seriously - any business you'd want to have around, in fact. It would get rid of the bottom-feeders and barrel-scrapers, and free up a saturated market so that better quality schools could open, hiring better quality teachers. It would be a net win. Sure, some schools would go out of business but as I see it, good riddance. And sure, some foreigners would find the CELTA/Trinity requirement too onerous and not choose to teach English. Again, I'm fine with that. We could use fewer "native speaker backpacker-"teachers". Open up the market to higher quality. And it would be a definitive step towards improving the profession and maybe those of us who take ELT seriously getting a little respect as teachers for once.

And, come on, all you "native speaker teachers" with no credentials? You can be better than whiny-ass 22-year-old me. Almost anyone can. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. 

Black Garlic in Taipei!

I've been a bit busy to post actual longer posts these past few weeks, but I wanted to share my latest culinary find: black garlic! I had heard of it before but not had the chance to try it - it's an extremely flavorful ingredient made by...I guess by heating it on low, and perhaps steaming it then drying it (?) for a month or more. It turns the cloves shriveled and black and gives it a soft, spreadable texture and a taste that's somewhere in between soy sauce, tamarind and balsamic vinegar.



Well, there's someone in Taiwan who makes it - the store is just called 黑蒜頭 or "Black Garlic". It's made from garlic grown in Yunlin County and it is delicious.

To get some, take the MRT to Xinhai station. Exit and look almost immediately to your right (slightly away from the road, down another small dead-end road). Alternately, follow the smell of sweet roasted garlic that permeates the air for several meters in every direction. There's a small shop with a can't-miss sign (you can even see it from the MRT train if you take it past Xinhai) that says "Black Garlic" in English and Chinese and has a picture of black garlic on it for good measure.

Don't live in Taipei? You can also call them at (02)2934-0535 or visit their website. Apparently they do deliver!

This shop also has black garlic wine, vinegar and other items - I feel like black garlic wine would be a wonderful thing to cook with and I will eventually go back for some.

You can use it in a lot of different ways - it seems like it'd be really good in Italian, French or Spanish foods, and also work well in Chinese food (imagine a sauteed whole chicken rubbed down with the stuff, which also flavored the broth at the bottom of the pan, or on a fish that could handle its flavor). It seems to go especially well with vegetables, tomatoes, chicken and cheese. I think it'd be delicious as a lamb chop rub or with stuffed mushrooms.

But black garlic doesn't come cheap. One large bulb is NT100, a pack of 6 small bulbs is NT250, and a large pack is NT600. If you wanted to experiment with this ingredient or just eat it (it's delicious eaten straight), an NT100 bulb will do just fine.

Make sure you pick up a copy of their brochure for this little gem. Then stroll to victory with your black garlic!



Little additional note: If you take that main road to the right for a few minutes' walk you'll also come to Mr. Lin, who makes old-school tatami mats that are far higher quality than the ones sold at B&Q. He is the only guy I can find left in Taipei who still does this.

Get Me To The Greek Mediterranean THROWDOWN: Opa! vs. Yiamas

There are two good Greek restaurants in Taipei: Opa! Greek Taverna, formerly in a fantastic space near Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (now in the brightly-lit and utterly soulless ATT 4 Fun), and Yiamas Greek Taverna just off Anhe Road across from Far Eastern Shangri La Hotel (where Toast used to be - I'm sad that place closed, I liked their ceviche, but happy to be within walking distance of a Greek restaurant).

I want to review and rank these two places based on their actual food, but honestly, the food is about the same. A few notes:

Hummus: used to be fantastic at Opa!, now merely good. It is also good at Yiamas but my homemade hummus is still better. It was silkier at the old Opa!, but something has changed at the new one...mostly related to texture but it could use more of a kick generally. I'm wondering if locals didn't like the old recipe.

Lemon chicken: I haven't tried this at Yiamas yet but at Opa! it's as good as ever, and a huge serving.

Moussaka: Very good at both restaurants, but my husband says it was better when Opa! was still in its old location. It was like heaven, he said, and when we went to ATT 4 Fun, it was still good but had an air of microwave about it. Not surprising as they must have a much smaller kitchen.

Htipiti (or roasted red bell pepper and feta dip): excellent at both restaurants.

Lamb ribs: excellent at both restaurants. You get more lamb for your money at Yiamas, but the ribs at the old Opa! were more tender and less chewy. No idea how they are at the new Opa!

Desserts: more or less identical at both restaurants.

They are literally almost like two copies of each other. The menus are virtually identical and prices similar, to the point where I wonder if one didn't steal the other's. So you could really go to either and get a similar food experience.

This is where ambiance comes in. Opa! used to be in a neat space decorated with murals inspired by Grecian scenery. I happen to like street-level restaurants in atmospheric side lanes in bustling neighborhoods with vibrant street life. I am less a fan of large shopping malls (that is to say, I hate them, especially in Taiwan where the ceilings are low, the aisles are narrow, the teenyboppers walk around like they couldn't ever be in anyone's way, and the music is blasting and usually terrible). I also hate what they do to street life: walking down a lane crammed with boutiques, restaurants, cafes, tea shops and vendors is interesting. Walking by shopping malls, giant monolithic buildings and apartment complexes without street-level retail space is not interesting (even when they have street-level space it often lacks atmosphere and liveliness). For this reason Xinyi is my idea of Hell: wide roads full of cars and slow traffic lights racing between hulking shopping malls with almost nothing of interest going on at street level (I do not think the shops along the pedestrian walkways between the department store buildings are particularly interesting: I want to see local businesses, not Crocs and Krispy Kreme).

I do not like the mallification of Taipei.
I do not like it in any way.
I do not like it in a tree, I do not like it in Xinyi.
I do not like it on the road, I do not like it with a toad.
I do not like it in my hood, I do not like it, it's no good.

It's not just no good, it's destroying the city. If I wanted to flit between hideous monoliths crowded with teenagers playing terrible music, while the streets are dead to pedestrians, merely conveyances for cars and scooters, I'd have moved to fucking Beijing. YUCK.

And now Opa! is in one of those monstrosities. It is brightly lit, overly white, noisy and modern, and completely soulless. It sucks the joy out of the food. I didn't realize how much I valued being able to walk in from the street, open an actual door, maybe pass by a front garden with some plants or at least walk through a neighborhood with some liveliness to it to get to dinner in a comfortably lit, comfortably decorated space that isn't too hard-edged or bright and jarring...but I do care about these things.

Plus, if every restaurant is in a freakin' shopping mall, how are they going to have kitchens big enough to make quality food, and how are we supposed to enjoy eating outside on the few nice days we get in Taipei?

The Diner is in ATT 4 Fun too, though at least it has its own entrance. But I liked the Diner on Dunhua S. Road, where I had a shot at having brunch outsideand now it's closed, so I rarely go to the Diner anymore. (The one on Rui'an St. should still be there, but they once told me they didn't take reservations only for me to show up and be asked if I had a reservation, so screw them).

Anyway, enough of my rant. Yiamas is in a street-level space with moody lighting and a comfortable feel. It's not too bright, and it's not white at all. They have a full-sized, not mall-sized, kitchen. I don't feel like I'm a mannequin on display there, I feel like a person having a romantic birthday dinner with her husband. My glass of wine doesn't look like grape juice under the bright LEDs, it looks like delicious, murky wine. I want to eat the food there, because the atmosphere makes me want it.

So, in a head to head of the two Greek restaurants in Taipei...

Sorry Opa! - I really liked you once. Get a real location, not some ugly white box in a shopping mall, and I may like you again.

The match goes to Yiamas.

"We might actually lose, let's finally do a few good things"

Just a quickie here as I'm pretty busy this week.

Anyone ever notice that when the KMT has the presidency or is reasonably confident of keeping it, that they basically sit around with their thumbs up their butts, not doing jack squat for the country for years - or when they do do something, it's for their own benefit and tends to hurt, rather than be good for, Taiwan? (ECFA, I'm looking at you).

I mean, every party does this to some extent - if you think you're going to lose, you rush to pass politically popular or at least progressive legislation in the hopes that that will turn the tide somewhat before you lose your chance to take credit for it. Before that point, it's far more likely you'll milk the system to your benefit rather than do much good. It just feels more pronounced with the KMT.

In the very late '90s, there was a rush to pass a lot of women's rights legislation - if my memory serves, laws regarding abortion, divorce (though those were only changed to a degree), gender discrimination etc. were passed by the Lee administration...

...just before the KMT lost to Chen Shui-bian.

And now, we have the Ministry of the Interior starting programs to help the children of the children of Southeast Asian immigrants learn their native tongues, and to cap the work week at 40 hours. Both politically popular, or at least progressive (though as I've said, the work week cap lacks teeth and has some problematic language vis-a-vis gender roles), changes that don't remind people how disastrous the KMT has been in dealing with economic stagnation and Taiwan's relationship with China. All things designed to make the KMT look good. I'm sure they'll be trotted out in some sort of bluesplaining speech about how the KMT is the only choice for Taiwan because they know how to rule, or something.

It's not that these things aren't good, just as the women's rights legislation of the late 1990s was good. Helping children of immigrants know and understand their culture is a positive thing and can help Taiwan become a bit less insular vis-a-vis the foreign labor it needs.

It's just...it feels so politically stage-managed to all happen just as we start hearing the first twinges of election season. And I know, it seems like I can't just let the KMT have a good thing, or do a good thing.

And you're right. I can't. If they'd been passing good legislation like this - even better if it had teeth - throughout their reign as Supreme Lords of Cross-Strait Relations (because to hell what the people of Taiwan think once you're elected, apparently), and really worked to do something about, or even showed that they cared about, domestic issues such as treatment of immigrant labor, the over-examining of students, wage stagnation, marriage equality and women's issues, I might be kinder in my assessment.

But I'm not willing to wait 8 years a pop for changes to be made (or 16 years in this case). Do it throughout your presidency, or your gestures are worthless, GTFO, buh-bye.

"As mothers could leave work earlier to take care of their children"

Good news! The Legislative Yuan, apparently sick of being seen as a raving pack of fuckwits, has passed legislation that caps the work week at 40 hours, or no more than 84 hours (where'd those extra 4 hours come from?) for two weeks.

That's awesome, although I had thought that this was already policy in Taiwan, and the reason people worked such long hours was because basically every single company ignored the law (and many of them found ways to weasel out of paying overtime - my former employer did this to Taiwanese staff, making them clock in on time but not clock out, so there would be no time-stamp of overtime worked). Though perhaps I'm wrong about that? If I am, please weigh in.

And we do need this - assuming that companies will actually pay attention to it. They seem to have found ways to creep work into Saturdays, which were made a day off as a two-day weekend some time ago (along with the somewhat Faustian bargain that if an extra day off was declared to merge a national holiday with a weekend, that day would have to be made up the following Saturday. I feel people work so hard they shouldn't have to do that). People are overworked, sometimes to the point of death. Almost always to the point of it affecting the rest of their lives. I'm not even going to continue talking about that aspect, because it's so obvious and well-documented that I don't have to. This is what the free market hath wrought, and it sucks. It needs regulation. It's screaming for it.

Even though what is most likely to happen first is bosses saying "sure, you can go home at 6" and then just never promoting that person, ever, for daring to actually use the new law to his or her advantage. The real change won't come until workers, coming to this realization together (whether they're organized or not - I happen to be pro-union but it's not strictly necessary for this to take place), simply refuse to work at places where onerous or even unpaid overtime is expected.

Along those lines, why is this clunker buried at the bottom of the article:

These include an increase of the monthly limit for overtime from 46 to 54 hours, Liu said.

If you increase the overtime allowance, it hardly matters that you're capping the work week. Work hours will be the same. So this law, while a step in the right direction, is not really going to change much. (Thanks to my friend V. for picking that up - I'd missed the line completely, so far down is it buried). 

What stuck in my craw about this otherwise great new legislation was this:

“Flexibility is conducive to a more friendly working environment and the enhancement of female workers’ participation in the workforce, as mothers could leave work earlier to take care of their children,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏), who proposed to include the clause in the amendment.

Ugh!

I mean, I am happy that new laws like this, if followed* and enforced** will make lives easier for individuals and for families, and people who want to raise children will find it easier to do so.

But this calls back to all sorts of bullshit stereotypes that women are the nurturers, they're the ones who always care for the children, it's their job. Their husbands' reduced working time is less important, because raising children isn't their job, or something. Nope, we leave that to the ladies.

That? That's crap. Why bollocks on about women taking care of children rather than parents taking care of children or families having more time together? Why ruin perfectly good legislation that way? I know you're taking a stab at feminism, and that's cool, and you can have your own brand of feminism (no True Scotsman here) but comments like this hurt as much as they try to help. 

*fat chance
**hahahahahaha