Uh...Space Confucius.

Yes, I did totally just head off my post with a snapshot of an adorable kitten to get your attention. Who can resist an adorable kitten? Nobody, that's who! And yes, I took the picture myself - that kitten, along with a more mature cat, are residents at Cafe La Boheme, one of our favorite haunts on Wenzhou Street.

Anyway, the weather's been crap all week - all cold and gloomy and not uplifting at all - and my posts of late have been similarly gloom-and-doom, and I feel like posting a pick-me-up because I'm fairly sure the steely skies over Taipei aren't clearing anytime soon (and when they do, it'll be so they can pour plum rains on us).

So, enjoy a few photos I've taken over the past few months but haven't posted that should give everyone a nice cheer-up, like a good Maker's sour.

This is the creepiest Santa Claus I've ever seen, made of recycled bottles, fairy lights and, uh, I'm not sure what else. Either way, ACK.

He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awaaaake...

One of the lovely two girls I have English playtime-class with on the weekend - we finished up our time by building a giant blocks/stool/cards/Japanese cartoon figurine castle.

Last weekend gave us brighter, though polluted, weather. For the last time the sun was seen in Taipei, we went to Da'an Park and saw all sorts of animals, including the big fellow above and the tiny guys below.

Just look at the sun hitting the grass and trees. Oh sun. How I miss you. I wish you'd come back!

The La Boheme kitten is fascinated by the Taiwan Pen Twirl (you know what I mean - that twirly thing that Taiwanese people do with their pens when they're daydreaming).

Yeah, uh, I don't even know what to say to this. We've seen a lot of great store names recently - there's this one, "Croissant de Louvre", "Versace Home Art", "Ho Mart"...but this store? It's for man!

"I guess I'm sleeping on the couch tonight."

On one of those warm-ish sunny weekend days we didn't know were numbered, we headed up to Wenhua University and had coffee at TBRC before watching the sunset by the university.

But now we're back to being freezing and glum, and all we want to do is this:

Reason #13 to Love Taiwan

Healthy Street Food!

At the corner of Heping and Fuxing Roads, near MRT Technology Bldg, there is a woman who sells the most delicious vegetarian lumpia (倫餅 － I think. Please correct my Chinese if not). No disgusting rou song (pork floss - ick) here: crushed peanut, alfalfa, some leafy green goodness, a few slices of apple, raisins, carrot slices and red lettuce all stuffed into a healthy wrap of deliciousness. Next to her, or sometimes down the road, is an old guy who sells super tasty red guavas when in season. Across the street, a woman sells dried fruit and nuts - including Taiwanese Irwin mango, which I love to eat dried.

A little bit west of MRT Minquan W. Road, there is a tiny stand inserted neatly into a little alcove with stairs leading up to...somewhere. Just steps from three different places to buy fried chicken, they sell vegetarian fantuan with that mottled purple sweetish rice, or sticky purple rice, full of more peanut powder, something pickled and a few other tasty things. They also sell a bulghur and chick pea salad, marinated tofu, a selection of vegetables, salads and veggie rice and bottled health drinks.

Near MRT Jingmei Exit 2, in the mornings there's a guy who sells vegetarian sticky rice (素油飯) from a large wooden rice bucket. He and his wife are retired, and they make a batch each day (I estimate about NT$1500 worth) to sell: I haven't asked directly but I think it's something between a hobby and a bit of extra money to pad out a pension and savings. It's really good sticky rice and it doesn't get more mom-and-pop than a retired couple making it and selling it from a big wooden bucket every morning. Near him is a woman whose family owns a farm in Zhanghua County - she sells the best baked sweet potatoes (starchy, but a great source of nutrients so you get a lot of bang for your carb-tastic buck) I've ever had.

These folks are scattered across Taipei - I've just named a few of my favorites, for whom I am a regular customer (in my neverending quest to just put down the sweet potato fries already and eat something good for me) and I love what they sell.

I love them because they're small businesses and I enjoy supporting that kind of entrepreneurialism. I love them because what they sell is actually good for you. I love them because what they sell is tasty, too. I love them because I have a good network of food vendors from whom I can grab a meal on the go - as someone who runs around Taipei to various offices all day often has to do - and know that I'm being good to myself, to the mom-and-pop economy, and I don't have to force down yet another 7-11 or Take-Out Sushi seaweed triangle (though I admit it: I like those too).

Finally, I love that Taiwan's economy and culture is such that they can do this, be successful and make a reasonable wage at it here. I'm not sure those Falls Church pupusa guys can say the same, and that's too bad.

All around goodness. The USA could use folks like these (not that I begrudge the pupusa guys in the DC Metro area...pupusas are great, just not healthy).

Re-defining Rape in Taiwan?

It's worth taking a moment to read Chen Yi-chien's editorial in the Taipei Times today: Rape law needs to be reformed.

I wasn't sure I got her point, exactly, in the beginning: it sounded as though the current law on the books is comprehensive and not anti-women's rights. This is a big change from how things used to be - a "crime against public decency" that valued chastity, and not the sexual autonomy of women. It's sad that the women of Taiwan had to wait until 1999 for that to happen - really? For serious? 1999? The old law sounds like something from the 19th century. It just goes to show that the advent of women's rights in Taiwan, which now make it one of the best - if not the best - country in Asia for women is a relatively recent reform in both culture and law. So recent that at times it still seems tenuous.

The reason for her writing of the editorial was that, after a bit of public debate and outrage last year due to "a number of" accused rapists being aquitted when they allegedly shouldn't have been, there was a proposed change:


...the Ministry of Justice and the Executive Yuan have seen fit to act in the wrong way, so wrong that I am very angry. They came up with a proposal to reform the rape law. One of the major revisions was the removal of a phrase that an offense was committed “against the will of the victim” (違反意願).

I completely agree with Chen that while this may seem to be a solution on the surface - that the prosecution would no longer need to prove that the act was against the victim's will, theoretically making it easier to reach a conviction - that what it in fact does is remove the idea of sexual autonomy from the law and make it again about chastity. If rape isn't about consent or will, then what is it about? As Chen says, "so are we heading back to the good old days of 'presence of force?'" Can we trust the proposed change or are they trying, as in the USA, to re-define rape and make it so that a woman has to fight nearly to the death - to the point where further resistance is impossible - in order for the crime to count as "rape"?

Being cynical as I am, I fall on the side of "can't trust 'em", especially in a KMT-led government.

Although I'm just as cynical about the DPP, the KMT has a lousy track record on promoting women's rights (and female politicians - ahem). It is true that a significant chunk of current laws aimed at women's rights were passed in 1998 and 1999 - just before the DPP took the presidency, which you think would speak well of the KMT: but I can't help but wonder if it was done in an attempt to court the female vote in 2000 and not necessarily out of a genuine caring for the rights of women (if it had been, why didn't they pass those laws earlier, when their tenure was not in danger)?

As a result, I am leaning towards interpreting the proposed change negatively, as Chen is. It reminds me of the recent debacle in the USA in which the Republicans sought to re-define rape, insinuating through language that there is a difference between rape and "forcible rape" (and, with clever use of language, making it so that an abortion will only be a procedure eligible for government funding if the rape is "forcible"). It sounds so similar that it kind of gives me shivers.

And yet, I was still wondering from where her desire for reform stemmed. Towards the end of the piece it became clear:

Through the so-called democratic process, the rape law can easily be changed; a phrase dropped here, or a few more years to a prison term added there. The legal culture will never change until we come forward and change the perception that just because a female does not scream herself to death or fight for her chastity until death, she has agreed to engage in a sexual act.

She is absolutely right - the law as it is now protects a woman's sexual autonomy and defines rape as a sexual act with a "lack of consent" - but it is all to easy to change that, and all too easy to do that without raising public ire if done quickly and quietly enough. The reform needs to be in the acceptance that rape is a sexual act with a lack of consent, is a violation of sexual autonomy (not chastity), is not so much an issue of "public decency" but is a crime against a person's body and has nothing to do with how much force was used and how much the woman tried to resist it. This needs to be immutable - this needs to be so obvious as to be a tautology. That's where true reform lies.

The scary parallel here isn't just the outdated and frankly misogynist attitudes behind attempts to change the law, but that we (both American and Taiwanese women) live in cultures where this could even be considered - in the USA the push to de-fund abortions in most cases was made by the conservatives and we all know that they're not exactly pro-women's rights (as much as Sarah Palin may disagree, she can go...well...you can fill in the rest). Here in Taiwan, the push to "re-define rape" ostensibly stems from a push to help women and further the cause of justice in the realm of women's rights. The fact that that is where this proposal would come from is far scarier, indeed.

Honeymoon Redux V: Panama!

And now we come, at last, to the beginning of our trip!

Exhausted, with me getting over a nasty cold picked up in New York (I think it was wedding stress finally come to a head - I also spent the first week of our honeymoon annoyed at the angry red line of zits marching across my jaw, a sure sign of burnout), we arrived in Panama City at about 11pm. Panama City is the safest and most developed of the urban centers of Central America, which is why we chose to start there. Regardless, it's not a place where you want to land at 11pm - although a friend of mine who not long ago landed in Manila at 3am had it much worse.

We caught a taxi into town, all of the collectivos being done for the night. Driving through the red light district that rings the old city at midnight, Brendan said, "Why do I have the sinking feeling that this looks like some of the nicest parts of cities we're going to see later?"

I grimaced, because I knew he was probably right. He probably was, but we miraculously managed to avoid spending a night in any of the other major cities save Tegucigalpa, and there we got ourselves to a decent hotel before you could say "thugs with guns are going through our luggage".

We stayed in the Hospedaje Casco Viejo ("hospedaje" being Latin American Spanish for "crazy cheap place that foreign backpackers stay in") which was pretty nice. Great location, safe enough inside Casco Viejo, with bare-minimum rooms that are fine for US $20 a night, good tourist info and free Internet and wifi. The bed felt like it was basically a square of styrofoam three feet deep, but hey.

We took our breakfasts in Cafe Coca Cola which, despite this guy bagging on it, has exactly what you think it has: cheap, filling breakfasts that deliver exactly what they promise and really good orange juice.

We spent the first day, still exhausted, wandering Casco Viejo, visiting crumbling churches and old colonial buildings. A bunch of children in a gazebo near the Cathedral of Panama were crunching on these things - I forget the name - so we got some too.

It was like Taiwanese shaved ice, only VERY VERY PINK, and it tasted as pink as it looked. Ask me what the "flavor" of it was, and I'll answer "Pink. Pink with sugar".

Brendan in the old city - yes, I posed him like that and he's such a good sport that he actually did it.

We never made it to downtown Panama City - I got the feeling it would look close up much like it does from a distance:

Whereas charming (and slightly grimy) Casco Viejo has a lot of back street charm.

...but isn't always all that nice:

It's advised not to wander too much at night, though as a pair we felt OK in this part of the old city. We enjoyed the Cathedral of Panama by twilight before heading out to dinner.

The next day we walked straight up the pedestrian shopping street leading out of Casco Viejo to Plaza Cinco de Mayo. Every other way out of Casco Viejo is, to be frank, a slum - this is the only reasonably safe way out on foot (which is why a lot of people who stay in Casco Viejo take taxis).

From Plaza Cinco de Mayo, you can catch a bus to a terminal way out in some urban offshoot, from where you can catch yet another bus to the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal. It's touristy, but totally worth it (and a bit of a long walk from the road).

Even today, it's still a technological marvel, and yes, the sailors on the cargo ships get a kick out of waving to people as they go through.

And yet, people still hang laundry from the sign.

The next day we caught a bus to David and transferred to a minibus to Boquete. We stayed at the Pension Marilos - a bit out of town but highly recommended. They have two friendly dogs and a parrot named Ricky (Me: "What's your name?" Ricky: "RICKY!" Me: "Are you a good bird?" Ricky: "RICKY!") and comfortable digs. Reserving in advance is a good idea.

Boquete is cooler, and in the hills. In the rainy season you get dewy, cool mornings and overcast, rainy afternoons every day. On our first day we trekked up to Cafe Ruiz past several homes owned by wealthy American retirees - it's not a myth: Boquete really is a major retirement hub. On the upside, it helps the economy. The downside? Areas that were once coffee farms are now gated communities for rich, old folks and the locals can't afford to live on their own land - a similar problem is cropping up in Costa Rica.

We took two tours with Cafe Ruiz - the coffee tasting, in which we drank a lot of coffee and discussed flavor profiles and such 'n such (I'm a total sucker for that stuff if it means I get to drink coffee), and then a coffee plantation tour.

We learned about coffee growing at Cafe Ruiz from beans...

...to drying and roasting.

We were given free coffee beans as souvenirs (their signature light roast which is delish) and I also bought some Panama Guessha/Geisha coffee - $10 US for a bag that would make one pot - which is one of the rarest and most expensive varietals in the world.

I had my buddy at Drop Coffee (滴咖啡) brew it for us (he did it for free - the "fee" was that he got to drink some, too) and I will say it was...basically...the best coffee I've ever had. Sorry, none for you!

Friendly dog at Pension Marilos - he matches the parquet

The next day we went zip line touring with Boquete Tree Trek, which was loads of fun. One of the guides brought along his five-year old, who's been doing this since he was about three (so it's perfectly safe):

Aww, isn't he just Mr. Happy?

...riding with his dad, of course.

Boquete has one of the longest zip lines in the world, with one stretch of line that is several hundred meters long and thoroughly exhilarating.

It's also exhausting, and my arms, legs and chest (chest?) ached for days afterwards, long after we arrived in Costa Rica.

Brendan recovered more quickly.

The next day we grabbed a bus back to David (a small city near the Costa Rican border which inexplicably has a TGI Friday's) and were at the Costa Rican border by noon - more on how we wandered into a band competition in my previous post.

I do wish we'd spent more time in Panama, and would definitely go back to explore everything we missed. The Golfo de Chiriqui, the Parque Internacional la Amistad, the San Blas Islands...maybe not Bocas del Toro, though. Or maybe just for a weekend.

It's not a commonly considered vacation destination in its own right, the way Costa Rica and Guatemala are, but I would say in many ways that Panama was as rewarding as either of those countries and worth a visit in its own right.

The Best Sweets and Desserts in Taipei

Ah, the Pacific Rim. So much about the food here is unparalleled - and yet it can be really hard to find decent sweets (and baked goods - no, I do not want my bread bun covered in mayonnaise). Local sweets can be "good enough" - I'm OK with Japanese chocolate, those caramel candies that come in different flavors, coffee, tea, mango and rose candies from Japan or Indonesia and maybe, just maybe, the "Italian" chocolate mousse cake from Cafe 85 (the only good thing they make, and it's not stupendous). On a hot day I love a good mango shaved snowflake ice, and on a cold day hot ginger dou hua (tofu pudding in sweetish broth) can be lovely.

But, let's face it, the sweets we all keep coming back to hail from the West. Asia may be neck-in-neck (if not ahead) with us when it comes to first-rate food, but we rule the roost in sweets. Not so in India, where I was amazed to lose weight considering the sheer volume of milksweets, samiya payasam, kheer, halwa and gulab jamun I ingested, but definitely so in East Asia. (There was one sweetmaker in Madurai who made these round Indian milksweets reminiscent of maple candy that would melt in your mouth in the most delightful way - if I ever find him again I'll import him to Taiwan).

There are places in Taipei to get your sweet on, however. Lots of them. This is a fairly small list of all that's available - just naming some of my favorites. I've put the two places to get fantastic high-end European-style noms at the top, with more common - but just as delicious - options below.

1.) Caffe Libero

#1 Lane 243 Jinhua Street, Da'an Dist. Taipei (near Yongkang St).

They close at 6 on Sundays (for shame!) and have good, but not mindbendingly tasty, coffee. In the back, however, through some darkly-lit rooms, there is a small French-style patisserie that makes some of the most delectable goodies in Taipei. We're talking the real deal, high-end Paris cafe goodies. The care and quality of the choices reminds me of when I was actually in Paris (for four days, with my parents, not some exciting and wild trip) and we stopped in a little pastry shop to try a few things - we did that a lot: we stopped the next day in a famous chocolate shop and bought chocolates, too. I picked out a little tart, glistening with apricot glaze, ringed by a crumbly, buttery crust and bursting at the top with plump strawberries in that ripe shade of red that screams "eat me", pushed down gently into a soft, forgiving custard.

I've never forgotten that tart, and though I didn't order the tart at Caffe Libero, the taste and quality of the dainties we did order brought back the memory. I especially recommend the blackcurrant-pistachio sweet - in alluring shades of of deep pink and soft green, it's unforgettably good.

2.) Johnny Cucina Italiana

#125 Zhongyang Road, Xindian (MRT Xiaobitan, Exit 2, turn right)

Go for the great Italian food, and stay for dessert. We had a plate of three - an Italian cheesecake, a brownie and a tiramisu. All three were over-the-moon delicious - I especially recommend the brownie. It was velvety on the inside, chock full of chocolate but not too sweet, with a slightly crisp crust that gives a delightful mouthfeel. We had them with grappa but you might prefer them with coffee.

3.) Cafe La Boheme: hot chocolate

Wenzhou St. just south of Xinhai Rd., Taipei

While not haute cuisine like the two listings above, this is undoubtedly the best hot chocolate in Taipei (the waffles are good enough, but the hot chocolate is truly memorable). It's as though they took six months' worth of a normal person's chocolate consumption and concentrated it into one mug. I'm not sure how they do it - with real chocolate or just lots of good quality cocoa powder and cream - but someone there has a magic recipe. They offer it in several flavors - try the Wild Aztecah, which features a hit of spice along with some alcohol.

4.) My Sweetie Pie

#3 Lane 93 Shi-da Road, Taipei

I know that Hungry Girl didn't care for the place, but I still go there as my main source of American-style baked goods (I go to Cafe Goethe, below, if I want more German-style sweets). The cakes are just the sort of sugar frenzies you'd want at a good birthday party, and are always soft and moist. They do a great apple pie with Grandma-style crust (sweet, a bit crunchy, puffed up from cooking) and a delicious, homemade filling dotted with raisins like sweet little jewels. Very good with espresso.

5.) Beard Papa - creampuffs

Breeze Taipei Main

This Japanese brand makes the best cream puffs I've tried outside Europe (and I've eaten a lot of cream puffs in Europe - no, I don't call them profiteroles). They're big and chock full of flavorful vanilla cream with a crust that is just the right balance of soft and crispy: almost so big as to be sinful. When my uncle was married (the first time) in England, they had a croquembouche as their wedding cake - the profiteroles stacked to create it were passed around with strings of spun sugar still attached and chocolate sauce for dipping, and it was divine. The puffs themselves, though delicious, were rather small - not a bad thing, but contrasting that to the giant Beard Papa creampuff you're eating might make you feel as though you are making a glutton of yourself with more than your fair share of the world's goodness.

6.) Alley Cat - tiramisu

Several locations across Taipei - best ambiance at Huashan restaurant

Be careful of overcharging here (it happened to us/people I know twice and while I can excuse the confusion over one bill - which we had to correct three times - as the result of a newbie in dire need of experience, I can't help but suspect it's done on purpose when it then happens to someone else I know at the same location), but as long as you keep a wary eye on the bill, be sure to try the tiramisu.

Tiramisu at Johnny Cucina Italiana is light fare of impeccable quality and layers of flavoring - cocoa, cream, coffee, liqueur. Alley Cat tiramisu is a big, soft, messy square of deliciousness often served in tinfoil. If made well, it's soaked with alcohol and can be enjoyed just for what it is: something you don't eat delicately with a tiny gold fork but something you dig into with vigor as you finish the last of your beer.

7.) Cafe Goethe - German cakes and pies

#11 Lane 283 Roosevelt Rd. Sec 3 (near Sai Baba pita bar)

Ever been to Cakelove in Washington, DC? The owner bakes is his cakes the way your German great-grandmother might have done. They're thick, they're heavy, they've got more butter in them than you care to think about, you can pick the slices up with your hand as you eat them and they are utterly delicious (and filling).

Cafe Goethe's cakes are made on much the same principle - they're as delicious as they are stolid. Where Caffe Libero's fare is a flighty French maid flitting about in Belle Epoch buildings, Cafe Goethe's sizeable cakes are pushing plows in the field.

My husband has never cared much for citrusy sweets (lemon cookies, lime bars, orange chocolate etc.) and even he thoroughly enjoyed a slice of their orange-flavored cake. Of their Sachertorte he said - "I have one word to describe this, besides delicious." "And what would that be?" "Structural."

Go for the cakes (and pies - they sometimes have good pies on offer), stay for the coffee which often comes as a deal with the cake. If your stomach can handle the onslaught, try some of their very good food and beer (I recommend the jagerschnitzel and the wursts sure look good).

Pick up some bread on the way out, too.

8.) Zabu - banana bread and chocolate brownie

#9-4 Pucheng Street Taipei (near Shi-da)

The desserts at this arty, indie-music supporting Japanese-style student cafe are served in Japanese portions: you don't get a lot, but what you get is high quality. The banana bread is stuffed with banana flavor, and the brownies are rich and chocolatey. The brownie comes with two choices: a brownie square a la mode, or two brownie squares (I always get the two squares).

9.) The Diner - cinnamon apple pancakes

#6 Lane 103 Dunhua S. Road Section 2 (and) Rui-an Street #145, Da'an Dist.

The Diner is often seen as the epicenter of good Western food in Taipei, and I'm not one to disagree (it's certainly better than Friday's - ugh). While they always tell me that they can't do coffee with whiskey although I know full well that they can and I have to argue with yet another new server, and while I wasn't blown away by their Eggs Benedict, I stand by their apple cinnamon pancakes as the best deal in town for sweet, syrup-drenched pancake goodness (I think it's fake syrup, though, which is sort of a crime).

10.) Taipei Snow King (台北雪王) - crazy flavored ice cream

#65 Wuchang Street, Taipei (near Ximen and Zhongshan Hall)

This place has its avid fans and its customers, unimpressed by offerings of Taiwan Beer, Kaoliang, pig's foot and chili pepper ice cream, who go away saying "meh", but I love the joint. It's small - easy to miss with no English sign and run mostly by a little old lady with a round, curly gray 'fro, and has the wildest ice cream in town (I'd say Movenpick has the "best" ice cream, but Taipei Snow King has the corner on uniqueness). Recommended: chili pepper, honey, wasabi, rose liqueur, plum wine, mint, cinnamon, ginger, carrot. If you try the Kaoliang (Gaoliang), get another scoop as a chaser. You'll need it - they use real Kaoliang in that stuff and the ice cream maker doesn't take away the potency!

11.) That German restaurant in Shinkong Mitsukoshi Xinyi: chocolate cake

Can't find the name or the address

I've never been able to find the name of this place and am too lazy to go back to Shinkong Mitsukoshi to check. It's a brewery-restaurant with decent beer (not as good as Jolly's brews), middling food (try Goethe instead) but really good chocolate cake. It's not heavy like Cafe Goethe or super sweet like My Sweetie Pie - it's just a soft, airy, chocolatey standard that you won't regret - and it goes well with dark beer.

12.) Taiwanese sweets: Mango Snowflake Ice and Hot Ginger Dou Hua

Mango Snowflake Ice: Sugar House @ Nanshijiao Night Market (entering the market from Nanshijiao MRT Exit 2, turn left at the T and it's on the right mid-way down) - Zhonghe, Taipei County

Hot ginger dou hua (薑汁豆花) - Sanxia Old Street, Sanxia, Taipei County (suck on that, KMT)

The Taiwanese do make a few local sweets worth mentioning. I'm not a fan of their sweet bread-based products, all the best chocolate is of course imported, the caramel candies are nice but not unforgettable, but they do a good shaved ice and dou hua.

Sugar House uses good fresh fruit (make sure to order in season though) - if you order mango or strawberry shaved ice in season you'll be in for a sweet treat. They also do good fresh smoothies.

I've always liked, but not loved, hot dou hua - the sweet broth is a bit too pallid for my taste and while the boiled peanuts, taro and sweet potato goo balls and red beans are nice additions, it doesn't bring it up to the level of true excitement. Add a little ginger juice, though, and suddenly it's one of my favorite things to eat during the gray Taipei winter. Sanxia is the best in northern Taiwan (Anping, one restaurant in particular on the old street, in an old brick house with a lion lintel, has the best all-around dou hua in Taiwan) and specializes in the ginger flavored variant.

13.) Bongo's - Sticky Toffee Pudding

The rest of the menu is at par but not really above-par, and there is better Western food to be had in Taipei (although I do enjoy their wraps). Really, go here for the used books and the toffee pudding - it's a cake-like thing, moist with soft boiled condensed milk toffee (the kind you'd find in banoffee pie) and topped with vanilla ice cream, and is generally just YUM.

14.) A bunch of places that surely exist, which I haven't tried yet

Among other places, you may have noticed that I didn't include Paul - a French bakery that actually bakes the sweets in France and flies them to Taipei. That's because I haven't been there - it's expensive as heck (more so than anything listed here) and I have heard that they bake the pastries in France and fly them in. I do think it is possible to make great sweets in Taipei and I find that flying them in from Europe is not only environmentally unfriendly, it's kind of pretentious. Why eat a pastry that's had time to go stale on a transcontinental flight when it is possible to make good pastries here? I'll stick with local and fresh, thanks.

I'm also a fan of Mom's Pies, but prefer My Sweetie Pie's apple pie and they're either back-of-a-van or delivery only. You can't go in and just have a slice of pie.

There are surely other places, as well, and I look forward to any recommendations you may have!

Reason #12 To Love Taiwan

Asian Pop Star Haircuts for Men.

That's all.

Let's Talk About Abortion in Taiwan

I intended to include this in a longer post about National Health Insurance, but that was far too big a topic to bite off in one post and I'll instead cover it in several, with a focus on women's health, but discussing the system as a whole (summary: it's a great system, certainly better than the "system" - heh - in the USA, but still needs some work and has flaws that ought to be addressed. That said, it's one of the best in the world).

I'm covering abortion first because I have more concrete information - I'm still looking into other aspects of women's health including contraception, health treatments and preventative medicine.

Anyway, abortion in Taiwan. No, not for me! I'm writing about this because it's a women's issue in Taiwan and it deserves some more recent coverage - most of the discussions and articles I found on the issue were severely dated and, honestly, didn't delve into the topic in nearly enough depth - the exception being a paper I found by David Sho-Chao Hung - a law student who may well have graduated by now - that discusses abortion law in Taiwan compared to the USA. The paper is not dated, however. Only Hung's paper discusses the moral, cultural and feminist issues surrounding the abortion issue, as well.

It is amazing how much misinformation there is among the general public in Taiwan. As I've mentioned before, my work brings me into the offices of many pharmaceutical companies, some government offices and other people whose positions could lend a general assumption that they are familiar with how abortion law works in Taiwan.

Sadly, that is not true. I've never been so shocked by public misconception of abortion in Taiwan since I started asking people about it.

The general idea seems to be that in Taiwan, abortion is "illegal", except in cases of medical danger to the mother or the child, but that it is quite common for women with healthy pregnancies to get abortions at "illegal" clinics or through legal clinics willing to engage in ethically gray practices - or through pills purchased illegally at dispensaries. One person I know described it as an "abortion wave" at the end of every summer, where young women go to clinics for abortions despite them being technically "illegal" (as I'll show later, they're not actually "illegal", just very highly regulated with a lot of workaround room, though not nearly enough), to doctors found through a social network or by distraught parents, often paid for by parents who want to make the problem go away.

A problem that could be greatly ameliorated if there was better sex ed in Taiwan in the first place. The solution to the "abortion wave" at the end of every summer is not to make abortions easier to get (even though I do support the freedom of choice) but to educate tweens and teens about safe sexual practices...I'd like to see the abortion rate go down to zero, but not at the expense of women's rights - but I digress.

This shocking misconception can be somewhat explained by different interpretations of the law, although that doesn't entirely excuse it.

The law in Taiwan is, in summary, that abortions are legal for:

1.) medical reasons - danger to the mother or fetus including deformities and defects - this includes psychological trauma to the mother

2.) rape or incest (which must, apparently, be "proven")

3.) "seduction" - meant to cover statutory rape but can technically be used as a reason by a woman of any age

4.) mental/psychological issues of the parent(s) that could be passed on to the child

...but are not a guaranteed right for all women, are not constitutionally protected, and are meant to be performed only in the extreme cases above.

That's where the misinterpretation may come in: women seeking abortions quickly learn that they are available - if you're single, it's fairly easy to claim "seduction" (it was meant to cover statutory rape but there is nothing stopping a grown woman from claiming it) or "psychological stress" due to inability to properly care for or raise the baby, or even claim an onset of depression (which is very morally gray).

It's harder for married women, even though there might be ways to slither around the provision.

I could see how someone who is not seeking an abortion and will never (or may never) seek an abortion (such as a man, or woman beyond childbearing age or a woman who would carry an unexpected pregnancy to term rather than terminate it) might interpret the above is "it's illegal unless it's a medical issue or rape/incest issue" - it wouldn't necessarily occur to them to claim "psychological stress" or "seduction" because they're not in that position, and so their view is more literal. I could see how making such claims could be interpreted as "illegal" under the spirit, though not the letter, of the law (I'd argue that the spirit of the law is sexist and wrong, so it's OK).

I'd go so far as to say that there is nothing wrong with claiming "psychological stress": I do trust that any woman making the drastic decision to have an abortion is a mature person - even if she may have been forced to become mature very quickly - who has agonized and considered every aspect of this decision before making her final choice. Abortion is serious business, and I do believe that any woman considering it knows this. Therefore, if she decides in the end to terminate her pregnancy, then she would know better than anyone that carrying it to term would cause her undue psychological stress.

Single women can get an abortion for any of the above reasons, mentally handicapped women need the consent of a guardian, an underage girl needs the consent of her parents and - most disturbingly - a married woman needs (or needed) the consent of her husband.

I say "needs or needed" because it's unclear: Mr. Hung's paper and other discussions online have mentioned that a married woman needs to obtain her husband's consent, and yet this Taipei Times article from 2006 mentions specifically that a husband's consent is not required (though he must be informed).

And yet in this 2009 article, it states that spousal consent is, in fact, required and that the age after which a young woman doesn't need parental consent is 20 (20!! Really! So we're all adults at 18, except for women, who are still children at 20).

That's almost - but not quite - worse. It's not even clear from a few hours' worth of Internet research whether or not a married woman can seek an abortion independently. How could that NOT be readily available information? What kind of oversight is that?

The information - at least in English - doesn't appear to be available, and yet it is something that every woman in Taiwan has a right to know.

If it is true, then argh. I don't know how it could get more sexist, patriarchal and paternalistic than that. You are free to disagree with me, and I respect that people have different views, but that's my opinion. It's of paramount importance to protect the autonomy and rights of a woman over her own body.

The possibility that - as mentioned in the Forumosa discussion linked above and below - any man could show up and sign a consent paper and nobody will check to see if it's truly the husband/assumed father doesn't really make it better. It does provide married women in abusive marriages with an option. By the way, I count any marriage in which the woman's autonomy is compromised and controlled by a "head of the household" as abusive. That doesn't include women who enter freely and purposely into marriages in which their husband takes charge, because presumably if she had a problem later on and the marriage were healthy, she would still have autonomy to deal with it. That said, the fact that the signature of a man - potentially any random man (I have no idea if the Forumosa discussion is based in truth or not) - is more important than the decision of the pregnant woman is unconscionable. I...I just....I 受不了！NO! NOT OK. How is that NOT sexist?

There are so many reasons for my views on this (I'm tempted to say it's not even my views, it's just true whether you like it or not) which are very well-addressed in Mr. Hung's paper - if I were to elaborate, I'd be basically parroting his excellent reasoning.

If it is not true, then the government has done a shockingly poor job of disseminating valuable information on women's rights. Also NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Don't even get me started on the fact that you have to "prove" rape or incest (pregnancy by anyone with whom marriage would be deemed illegal - which basically means incest) in order to get an abortion on those grounds. How traumatic! How heartless! How completely soulless and sick! Forcing a woman to produce evidence (what evidence, exactly, is what I'd like to know) of such a thing is like taking the trauma sticking in her heart like a poisonous arrow and plunging it deeper. It completely de-humanizes the woman and displays an unacceptable lack of empathy for women in such a situation. It makes my blood boil and my hands shake.

Taiwanese society has changed a lot since the law was enacted in 1985. There is still a lot of sexism and there are still patriarchal attitudes in the culture, but things have evened out considerably, to the point where I'd say that Taiwan is the most female and feminism friendly country in Asia. It's the most egalitarian regarding gender issues and is ages ahead of Korea, Japan, China or really any other country in Asia. A lot of the attitudes about husbands making decisions that impact their wives in such a cutting manner have been eradicated, and women are generally accorded respect, rights and a general assumption that they can make their own decisions and run a household as well as a man (at least in urban areas - the countryside is surely different). This is a generalization, of course, and there are certainly still lawmakers and citizens of urban Taiwan who still cling to outdated beliefs about a woman's place, but I'm conjuring the generalization because it is generally true.

There is, as a result, no reason for this law to continue in the manner in which it has. Attitudes are changing and the societal notions that helped frame the legalization of abortion in 1985 are no longer quite so valid. The law, therefore, needs to change alongside these cultural sea changes.

And yet, problems continue - as late as 2006, lawmakers wanted to add waiting periods and mandatory counseling to the abortion law for any woman seeking an abortion (I found a lot of news regarding the proposal and none regarding whether or not it was passed - if someone has info on that please let me know but I can hopefully assume that the proposal did not pass).

Give women in Taiwan true freedom of choice - allow them to seek an abortion without having to put up a weak claim to a medical reason, and clarify, publicly, whether married women require spousal consent. If they do, change the law - give them the ability to choose for themselves.

I do realize that abortion is not the hot topic of debate in Taiwan that it is in the USA. The deep conservative/liberal divide we have back home doesn't exist as such here. That said, it surprises me, as well, that more women's groups haven't been taking up this issue - the public misconceptions, the lack of accurate information and the ridiculous strictness of the law are all begging to be fought tooth-and-nail by feminists and women's rights advocates in this country.

Oh yes, and abortions are not covered under National Health Insurance, as far as I could find (again, the information is not clear

Here are some links for you, organized into one place from the spatter of linkings above:

PubMed

An excellent paper by David Sho-Chao Hung

Short discussion on the issue on Forumosa

Women's rights report on women in Taiwan

Women's rights activists fight abortion proposal

Decision over abortion should belong to women

I want to finish by saying that yes, I am pro-choice, and I have many reasons for that, which I don't feel I need to justify as that's not the point. I do respect that other people have other views and am not trying to force my opinion on them - someone who is pro-life is just as able to fight for his/her beliefs as I am for mine. As someone who believes that there are more gray areas in the moral and ethical realm than black-and-whites (though there are some of those, too), I do realize that my opinion is not the only one. I welcome your comments and civil debate.

Note: More thoughts in the comments section.