The Big Bamboo

For weeks I have been trying to get a shot of the massive bamboo scaffolding on buildings under construction. But no luck. I think Taiwan has moved into the modern world and uses metal frames like these.

The best I could was an old billboard frame which had it's sign blown away and hasn't been replaced.

Mostly bamboo is seen as an ornamental plant in the parks.

Here the bamboo is shaped a "hyperboloid of one sheet". The same shape as the sodium channel in a cell membrane.

But bamboo has a long history in Chinese history from being the first medium on which characters written to the only food pandas will eat. Many new buildings have windows with anti theft bars shaped like bamboo. They are shaped cement.






















Here is a coffee/tea room use of bamboo. It's days as a building structural material seem over.

Death Stats

Using the statistics from the 2008 Taiwan Public Health Report I found some surprising(at least to me) results about the causes of death in Taiwan. They are in Table 9 of the appendix of that report. (I think it's considered unlucky to talk about death in Taiwan, good thing I'm not superstition.(Saying it will NOT make it happen.)) 

 

The leading causes of death(in layman's terms) in Taiwan are:

1. Cancer

2. Stroke

3. Heart Attacks

4. Diabetes

5. Accidents (Traffic mostly)

6. Pneumonia

7. Liver disease

8. Kidney disease

9. Suicide

10. Hypertension

These are diseases of a developed country.

Cancer is #1 by a long way and increasing, given that most cancers have an environmental component that's not good.

Stroke and heart attacks, #2 and #3 seem consistent over the years.

That diabetes, #4, is increasing points to a worsening diet.

I was surprised to see that death by accidents, #5,  is DECREASING. So for all my ranting about the traffic situation it has been worse! And it is getting better. I should thank my lucky stars!

Searching the web I found this table about the causes of death in the US. This time the day is broken down by age group and is for a single year, 2006.

The leading causes of death(in layman's terms) in the US are:

1. Heart Disease

2.Cancer

3. Stroke

4. Lung Disease

5. Accidents (Traffic mostly)

6. Diabetes

7. Alzheimer's

8. Flu and Pneumonia

9.Kidney disease

10.Infection

The first 6 are basically the same in both lists. The order is a little different and the categories might not be exactly the same.

I like the color scheme of the US chart. It clearly shows that homicide(red), suicide(green) and accidents(blue) are "diseases" of the young.

So what's the point? When it's time it's time. Except for diet and exercise there's not much any of us can do.

Confucius Temple

Confucius has always been popular with authorities everywhere  because Confucius says the authorities should be respected and obeyed. Whether they were correct or not didn't enter into his thinking. So now even in mainland China there is a revival of Confucius because the Communist Party is now the "Authority".  This is ironic because the Communist Party came to power promising to throw out the old ways. 


With this sceptical attitude that I went to the Confucian Shrine in Tainan. It's about a city block of park and temples. Even though Confucius dates  from 551-479BC and was Chinese through and through, the Qing Dynasty from Manchuria reconstructed the Confucian Temple in 1665 in Taiwan. (They were the "authority" at that time).

At these temples are displays where students hoping to to well on the National Exams post their wishes. They(or their parents)make some offerings to the spirits to do well. Save your money and time  and study a little more. Here we have a board of requests to the spirit Confucius to help with test results.

There are are some stele from the the 1600's when the Manchurian Qing Dynasty revived the Confucian Tradition of respecting authority.

As you can see, even in stone the characters are hard to read. Here is a close up:

So even the English phrase "written in stone" doesn't mean much when you consider Chinese history. In less than 400 years "written in stone" means "unreadable". These stele are granite not just limestone or shale.

Neon Everywhere

Just when I thought LEDs had replaced neon in Tainan, I seem to see neon every where I go! Here are some samples:


It must take a lot of skill to shape the neon tubes to outline individual Chinese characters.  I  know that for red, the tubes have neon gas in them and when the gas is excited with an electiric spark, it emits the red color.  Working with LEDs and a computer are less demandings.

 Here we have the hybrid display of both neon and LED and computer display time  and temperature. Here in Taiwan we're on the Centigrade system.

I heard that neon is in a tube of gas and when the tube has electric spark travelng the distance of the tube the  excited gas emits the red color. When the gas is argon the emitted color is green. But then how about white light, white is a mixture of all colors, so what is the gas that in the neon tubes? I don't know.

 This backward spelling of "Hotel" I vaguely remember from when I came to NCKU 15 years ago to give lectures in English at NCKU. I stayed in a Hotel near the train station that is near this sign. At that time, I was employed at the NCHC, the Taiwan National Center for High Performance Computing. I was sent out to sell the importance of computing to the four major Universities in Taiwan. Little did I know that I would one day be a student of the same university. Wow, fate works in strange and wonderous ways.

At NCKU in 1994 I gave two two hour lectures in English:

1. Floating point arithimetic.
2. High Performance Computing

It seems like eons ago, I was an expert it the second topic but I still know all there is to know about the first.

WHO statitics

I was searching the internet for statistics on traffic fatalities in Taiwan(a topic close to my heart) and found some interesting World Health Organization(WHO) statistics. Taiwan isn't a member of most international organizations like the United Nations (UN) because of mainland China's blockage. But Taiwan is a member of the WHO and dutifully submits health statistics.

Taiwan also publishes (in English) and annual report of the "Health of Taiwan". In the 2007 report of 130 pages it has appendices of comparative statistics accumulated by the WHO. Of course, the WHO doesn't collect those number, it relies on the member nations to submit them.

The table below has two interesting tables for the years 1995 to 2007:

"Life Expectancy"(for males and females) and the "Crude Birth Rate"





















What surprised me is that Taiwan now has a higher (slightly higher) life expectancy that the US! In a previous post, the per capita difference was like:


Country.....Ranking......Gross Domestic Product / Population
US...................13...................47.4K
Germany.........19...................44.7K
UK...................21...................43.7K
Japan...............24..................38.4K
South Korea....38..................19.1K
Taiwan............42..................17.0K

So it doesn't seem that health is directly correlated with wealth.


In the second table we see the "Crude Birth Rate", and we see that Taiwan has dropped into the same neighborhood as Japan. With no significant immigration (like Japan) that means, that Taiwan is now below the replacement rate and it's population will begin to decline. That has a lot of implications like empty schools, an aging population with fewer workers to support them, no growth, pressure for immigration, ...

I believe potential parents have children when their prospects for a better future are up. When babies seem a burden, they hold back. Especially in Confucius dominated societies where the burden of child rearing falls mostly on the mother. Long term trouble ahead.

The second second set of tables have:

We have the "Standardized Morality Rate" and the "Infant Mortality Rate"

I don't really understand the "Standardized Mortality Rate" but I know it is combined with the birth rate and the immigration rate to determine whether the population is increasing or declining.

What's interesting is that the US stopped providing statisitcs in the Bush Administation and the other nations just followed that example. When "Bush the Idiot" was president, the government routinely manipulated or hid data when it was unfavorable. Here's an example of the practice infecting the whole world. Probably in 10 years Taiwan will be the last country to provide a complete set of data to the WHO.

The other distrubing result comes out in the second part of the second table. The "Infant Mortality" in the number of newborns that die before their first birthday. That the US is behind Japan, Germany, Taiwan and the UK seems unconsciousable. But with Republicans blocking any Comprehensive National Health Plan that's to be expected. Republicans probably feel those infants are poor and will grow up to vote "democratic" so they don't care. It just burns me up when I think of those stopping the health plan. They got theirs and they think others are not their problem.


I'll have more on traffic fatalities in a future post.

Koxinga

The  Hero of Taiwan and Tainan especially is Koxinga. Koxinga is the Western name for Cheng Chen-Kung(1624-1662). In the middle of Tainan is a city block park with recreations of Koxinga's compound on Taiwan, an alter, a shrine and a museum. (He is the namesake of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), so I guess that makes me and him alumni members.)

He was a loyalist to the Ming Dynasty Emperor when the Qing Dynasty took over in the 1650s. He retreated to Taiwan and threw out the Dutch in 1661. So he is the hero because:

1. Loyal unto death
2. Defeated the barbarians from the West

The Ming Dynasty was the last Chinese Dynasty as the Qing were barbarians themselves from Manchuria. Koxinga died in 1662 and one of his sons took over and this son was eventually defeated by the Qing armies in Tainan.

Koxinga's rehabilitation began in the Qing Dynasty a hundred years after his death. He was known for his fealty to the Ming Emperor and with the Qing in command for a hundred years he was held up as an example of loyalty to the Emperor. His status increased in the Japanese time in Taiwan as again a model of loyalty. All Confucian societies depend on loyalty. Even when Chiang Kai-Shek retreated to Taiwan in 1949, Koxinga was high on the list of models to emulate (future blog).

The compound is reconstructed in Japanese time and again in 1961.

Here is altar, his grave was moved back to China.

I was one of the many tourists this Saturday, most of the tourists were from mainland China and Japan. They came in busloads. The Taiwanese came one family at a time. This cannon is a replica of the Dutch cannon at this time(1661), Koxinga did not have cannons, with a large army of spear toting soldiers he defeated the small garrison of cannon and firearms. The strategy was siege and the Dutch eventually sued for peace and left.

The park as many beautiful parts.

UFOs in Tainan

Recently we have had a UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects) here in Tainan. The spacecraft seems to like hovering over the baseball fields at NCKU.

It seems unafraid of detection as it has taken no evasive action. I may be the only human to notice its existence because the other students don't seem to notice it.

 

Here we have another close up.

I risked life and limb to get this close up shot. Obviously they have perfected the technology to concentrate individual lasers into a powerful "death ray". If only Ronald (Ray Gun) Reagan were alive to see this!

At just the time the alien space craft appeared, I no longer saw the gecko in my dorm. Some may think this is just a coincidence but I don't think so! The explanation is obvious:

"When the aliens first came to Tainan in September, they assumed the form of geckos to observe humans on Earth. After two months of observation, they decided humans were not able to stop their plans for takeover of the Earth. So now they have gone back to the mothership to prepare for the takeover planned for July 4th. (Will Smith are you still following this blog?)"

It rained today for the first time in a month! I will check to see if it has effected the mothership  tomorrow morning(Orson Wells are you still following this blog?) I'll keep you all informed but it's always important to live your life as if today is the last day!

Me within a inch of an alien! I shutter to think what might have happened!

CDs for Safety

 Most bicycles in Tainan have baskets in the front for carrying things. Speed is not really a big concern because with all the traffic nobody goes very fast. It's like in the US, what's the point of owning a Corvette if your stuck in rush hour next to a Chevette.

 Bicycles are a lower class than cars and motorcycles but at least they are above pedestrians. I'm not sure they are faster than walking though, I regularly set out walking from my dorm to class and my fellow students/dormmates start riding at the same time. I think we both get into the classroom at the same time, they just spend more of their time locking/unlocking, negociating traffic, avoiding motocycles/cars, ...

But safety is important and so is recycling so some of the bicycles are now sporting used CD/DVDs as reflectors. It seems a way of killing two birds with one stone. Below is the standard usage.

 This method can also be used with other types of vehicles.

They can also be used on delivery bicycles, this one has an attached mirror for added safety. I have to admit that this usage is mostly popular on old people vehicles.

 Below we have the Buhdist equivalent of the "dashboard Jesus". But I'm sure that neither Buhda nor Jesus gets involved with traffic control. And I know that on the mean streets of Tainan, it's every man, women and child to fend for themselves.

Why is Chinese hard?

I have been trying to learn Chinese since I got married a long time ago. It hasn't been easy, but at least now at NCKU as a full time student, I'm making progress.

There are many spoken Chinese dialects each with it's own pronounciation and tones. But they all share the same written language of characters. The dialect used for official business and education in both Taiwan and mainland China is the Beijing Dialect because Beijing was the capital of China at the founding of the Republic in 1911. In Taiwan it is called Guoyu(National Language) on the mainland it is called Putonghua(Common Speech). They are basically the same.
In what follows I will refer to this Beijing dialect as the Chinese spoken language.
 
I have some ideas on why Chinese is such a hard language to learn. I think it is because Chinese is two almost separate languages: the spoken language and the written language.

The Spoken Language

Like all languages, Chinese has a fixed number of sounds that make up words. In  Chinese there are 21 initial consonants and 16 final vowels. The consonants and vowels together make up an alphabet. Although there are several romanizations that specify this alphabet, they are all just different symbols for the same sounds used in the Chinese language. The Chinese spoken language exists independently of any romanization, all romanizations are just teaching aids for foreigners and children.

An initial consonant and a final vowel together becomes a syllable. Each syllable can have one of 4 possible tones. And a word is either one or two syllables with a character for each syllable. A good dictionary of Chinese might have 20,000 characters and 200,000 words or phrases, similar to the number of words in an English dictionary. 

There is a grammar for ordering words into sentences. And that is pretty much all that is needed to describe a spoken language. Every spoken language has to have these components: a fixed set of sounds, a vocabulary of words and a grammar for making sentences.

One difficulty with Chinese for foreigners is that the tones are difficult for those who mother language is atonal. Recognizing and reproducing those tones takes practice. But there are lots of tonal languages, all of the dialects of Chinese are tonal and for example all of the tribal languages of Liberia are tonal. I am particularly bad at tones.

The Written Language

For most European languages, words are written phonetically. Basically if you know the sounds of the alphabet, you can sound out the written word. Even for languages which had no written language, once an alphabet was devised, words could be written as they sounded in the spoken language.

Chinese is not this way. With a tradition of maybe 5000 years, the Chinese written language has developed with individual written characters for each word. At times there may be clues on how a word is pronounced from its character but that seems coincidental. So the written language has little connection to the spoken language. The grammar and vocabulary are of course the same, but the sound of a word is divorced from how it is written. So there is no "phonics" reading program for learning to read Chinese characters.

So whereas in a phonetic language, reading and speaking can reinforce vocabulary this is not the case with Chinese. The 20,000 characters of a good dictionary in Chinese each consist of one character and the literate person must learn to recognize each character and write each character. That's tough. And so you have a range of literacy depending on how many characters a person can recognize. I am one step above being illiterate.

Computers to the Rescue

Before the digital age, learning Chinese must have been the most tedious job on Earth. You have to be impressed by students that stuck with it and wonder about the people who did master the Chinese written language. On the other hand, there wasn't as many distractions as today, so maybe there was the time it would have required.

The tedium of looking up characters and memorizing them is just what computers do best. Nowadays a character can be searched for with just a few keystrokes of its romanization. Once the user enters how the word is pronounced, the computer, cell phone or PDA presents a list of possible characters. Frequency tables allow the device to present the list with "most frequently used characters" first. For non literary tasks like texting, this is all that is needed.

I have such a dictionary program on my linux box called Wenlin. It's more than enough for me. I also have a similar dictionary on my iTouch.

Homonyms

So why not just chuck the whole character world and just go with the romanizations? The problem is homonyms, these are different words that sound exactly a like.  For example, in English, "buy", "bi", "bye" and "by"  are all homonyms.

We can get a rough estimates about the number of homonyms in Chinese by doing a "back of the envelope calculation".

Number of distinct syllables in Chinese =

number of initial(21) x number of finals(16) x number of tones(4) = 1344

Some of these 1344 potential syllables are not used. So there are too few syllables to specify the 20,000 distinct characters in the Chinese vocabulary.

For example my simple student computer dictionary, Wenlin, has

                            distinct characters
yi(first tone)................27
yi(second tone)...........70
yi(third tone)...............36
yi(forth tone).............157

"yi" is might be a worst case senario but it illustrates the problem.

So no writing system as simple as a romanization will ever capture the complexity of the Chinese vocabulary. Chinese characters will be with us for as long as there are Chinese, so that means forever.

Of course in the spoken language there is also this problem of distinguishing homonyms but this is usually decided by context and the situation. It makes you realize just how much of communication is NOT verbal but situational. (Many jokes in Chinese are about misunderstandings about which homonyms the speaker is talking about.)

Advantages

Chinese characters have one obvious advantage, they take very little space to say a lot. Before the invention of paper this was a big deal but in the digital age it is less and less of an advantage. If you look at the two tourist signs below they are both in English and Chinese. The Chinese was written first and the translation probably says less than the Chinese. But the Chinese text takes up less surface space. Each character packs a punch. Once the initial investment is made to learn Chinese the precision and conciseness are it's benefits.

In this one the Chinese and Japanese explanation take half the space of the English explanation.

Plants

Saying: "Plants grow well in Tainan" is like saying "Chinese is a hard language to learn". Just the bloody obvious. If plants ever die in Tainan, it's because someone forgot to water them. The sun is good, the temperature hot, soil is no problem and carbon dioxide abundant. On the way to school, these peonies? are outside the Department of Chinese Literature.


















Here are orchids selling for 100NT($3US) the same as we could buy at Trader Joe's for $15US.


















Here are the same 100NT orchids being sold out the back of a truck.


















Here is a place that serves winter melon tea and this winter melon is at least 3 feet long. The marketing strategy must be that bigger is better.


















These monstrous zuchinis reminded me of some the zuchinis my Dad use to grow.
As big as they are I don't think they have much nutrional value and I know they don't have much taste. Just a filler.

Sewers

I think a modern city could exist without art but it couldn't exist without sewers. There has to be some way of getting shit from where it is produced to some other place far away.

Sewers in Taiwan are never far from the surface so the sewer covers have a particular effect on a street walker like me. Unfortunately the camera can't record the smells of the sewer.

The typical sewer in Tainan is a trough of cement with plates of cement or steel covered by a layer asphalt to even it with the road bed.

Here is an old style construction in progress.




































As it completes the coverings are readied.





































The manhole coverings are not what the "Ess Bros & Sons" would think as being adequate. But given how shallow they are I suppose it's good enough.


















In the end it looks OK, the problem is that the effluent is still pretty close to nose level.

















Recently I've seen a new construction method that replaces the trough molded in cement to flexible plastic tubes. In an earthquake prone area like Taiwan this seems an adaptive strategy. Broken cement troughs with leakage seems could be a big problem. Whereas the flexible plastic pipes will not break and the individual cement collection areas will float on the earthquake movements. To me it seems good engineering.






































The connection point of the sewer 'pipes'.

Plurals

Plurals in Chinese are done differently than in English so the translations cause problems. In English the plural is done with a suffix s added to the noun. In Chinese, the noun doesn't distinguish between one or many. It is prefixes to the noun that specify how many and which ones we are talking about.

I know in the US, the usual usage is "book drop" but I think you can drop off more than one book at a time so I like this translation at the NCKU library.
















In the image below, I'm pretty sure the owner wanted the sign to say:

Lilly's Fruit Store

but got a little confused about the s used for plurals and the s used for posessives. Even English speakers mess this up.
















But in English the situation isn't that clear how about.

1. That store has a lot of fruit.
2. That store has a lot of fruits.

1. Could mean: that store has 100 pounds of oranges and a ton of apples...
2. Could mean: that store has 10 kinds of apples, 10 types of grapes, 10 varieties of pears, ...

How about the noun fish.

1. That store has a lots of fish.
2. That store has a lot of fishes.
(This doesn't sound right but I'm sure the King James Bible has phrases like:
"All the fishes of the sea ... "
3. The store has all kinds of fish.

The last sentence is close to the Chinese way of adding prefixes to specify and use a general noun to represent both singular and plural.


The world "center" seems strange to pluralize. How many centers does an apple have? But here of course we are talking about different locations. We all have graduated from the many "Centers of Excellence". I think the usage is correct but it's a tough one. Of course, if this is just one such location then the usage is wrong.

Being in language classes gets you thinking about these kind of questions, others might not waste their time in this way. But I do.


I got a hair cut, here is the before image.

Here is the after image. I should learn how to smile more. This haircut costs 200 NT which is about $6 US. This has got to be the cheapest haircut I got since Liberia, but of course they were working with good material. Since this haircut I have seen street signs advertizing hair cuts 70NT adults, 50NT children.