New museum documents foreigners influence in Taiwan

New expat museum documents foreigner influence in Taiwan

By Franz  Lin-Brandmaer
Category : Travel (General)


TAIPEI -- Perhaps not at first glance, but certainly on closer inspection, it is clear that foreign and expats influence is ubiquitous in Taiwan.

There's a town in the south called Alien. There's a 7-11 at every corner, and a McDonald's fastfood calorie intake emporium on every block, or so it seems. KFC, too. There are replicas of the Statue of Liberty standing tall in almost every town square around the island, and some even stand atop love hotels and massage parlors around the nation.

Yes, expat influence in Taiwan is strong, and a new museum dedicated to showcasing this influence is now up and running. Called "The Expat Heritage Museum of Northern Taiwan", the museum documents more than 400 years of expat influence on the Beautiful Island, from the first Portuguese sightings of land here to modern cram schools dedicated to passing on the heritage of the Queen's English.

About one-sixth -- about 4 million people -- of the nation of 23 million are expats now, with more to come. While most TV newscasts are still in Chinese and Taiwanese, more and more cable channels are doing English-language broadcasts for the nightly news shows and some are in Japanese, Vietnamese and French now.

MORE HERE:

Some places had so many expat settlers that they were dubbed Expat Towns. .......

Write your own caption here!

防蠅水袋 - Taiwan's amazing "Black Fly Water Bag Door Scaring Contraption" - "Fan Ying Shui Dai"

小小挂水袋 轻松驱蚊蝇

http://www.shazhang.com/uploads/allimg/c090216/1234K3D9530-13158_lit.jpg
小小挂水袋 轻松驱蚊蝇



It's not a fly catcher per se, and in fact, it's not a fly-catcher at all. What this bag of water hanging down
in the sunlight above a door to a restaurant in Taiwan or around a food seller's table at an open air market  can do is this: SCARE THE FLIES AWAY.

HOW DOES THIS AMAZING PIECE OF LOW-TECH FLY SCARING EQUIPMENT work?

The flies' eyes are attracted the sunlight reflected and refracted in the bag of water, and they STEER CLEAR of the area, sensing DANGER, even though there is no electric shock danger and in fact no danger at all, just the light reflected in the clear water bag hanging from a rail or a door frame will scare them away. I saw this amazing technology for the first time today while dining at a local buffet shop in Chiayi.



Subject: 防蠅水袋

''fan ying shui dai''

昨日，有市民在深圳论坛上发帖晒自己的惊奇发现。这位市民说，随朋友一起到位于沙井和公明交界的一家“农家乐”餐厅吃饭。车刚停稳，就发现这家餐厅平台栏杆上整齐地挂满了一个个装水的袋子，很是惊奇。经向店家询问，原来这还是个“高科技”呢——此店位于山坳，蚊蝇较多，为了不让漫天飞舞的家伙败了食客兴致，店家在栏杆上挂满了水袋，里面装的就是普普通通的自来水。水袋反射光线，吓跑蚊蝇，食客们就可以安心就餐，不用担心坏家伙的骚扰了。记者在就餐期间果然没有发现蚊蝇。








昨日下午，记者询问位于南澳一带的几处“农家窑鸡”食档，向他们请教水袋的作用和原理。在龙岗区半坝村一处山沟多年从事“农家乐”经营的黄先生说，这种办法家家都在用，也不知道是谁发明的。方法非常简单：只要随手取个结实一点的塑料袋，灌上自来水，沿食档四周悬挂起来就行了。







至于驱蝇的道理，黄先生说，苍蝇的眼睛有放大镜的作用，而水袋折射出的光线又会像镜子一样将苍蝇自己的形象放大很多倍，同时，水袋发出的亮光，刺激了它的眼睛——是苍蝇自己吓倒了自己，所以不敢靠近水袋四周。



深圳福田中学生物老师田穗兴说，可能因为透明水袋有凸透镜的作用，光线在透过“凸透镜”时一定会对周围的光强、温度产生改变，而这种变化正好刺激了苍蝇的某种敏感器官，于是让苍蝇敬而远之。对于是否“放大镜”的作用吓跑了苍蝇，田老师说，理论上并不成立。



实际上，挂水袋驱蚊蝇并非深圳“农家乐”独创。在港澳台地区，很多肉档、水果摊档都会在经营场所四周吊水袋驱赶蚊蝇。实验表明，水袋中水的折射作用的确可以达到驱赶蚊蝇效果，并发现袋中用紫色的水效果更好。

http://www.shazhang.com/html/chuhaizixun/20090216/1196.html

http://www.netnoease.com/image/200805/20080512113748951.jpg

Peter Hessler on Twitter, tweets one simple word: ''WRITING'' -- cute!

May 10, 2009

WRITING, he tweets, WRITING.

http://twitter.com/peterhessler


Writing.
7:20 AM May 14th, 2009 via web

Phebe Gray tells me some intersting things about the relationship between the Chinese words "crisis" and "opportunity".....

She writes from Cleveland, Tennessee, where she teaches at Lee University:

"Crisis is made up of two Chinese characters, Wei and Ji; Wei means danger; Ji means opportunity; many westerners use this phrase as an example to illustrate that in the midst of a crisis, there is always an element of opportunity. Are you familiar with Taoism? This is also one of the fundamental concepts in Taoism.

Crisis doesn't just mean opportunity; it is a crisis indeed, with both elements of danger AND elements of opportunity; Ji, on the other hand, also means mechanism. In the midst of crisis, one needs to understand how the mechanism of the dangerous situation works, and if they can operate the mechanism, they will be able to solve the crisis; Mechanism is the root meaning of Ji, opportunity is the derived meaning of Ji; therefore, opportunity is all relavent; to one who understands how to operate the mechanism, it is opportunity; to those who don't understand the way of the mechanism, the crisis is still a crisis.

Does this make sense?

I feel so fortunate to be of Chinese heritage and having learned Chinese and fell in love with classic Chinese before the critical period (another linguistic hypothesis about language acquisition which argues that it is easier to learn a language before puberty); I think Chinese language is not only a treasure for Chinese civilization, but also it is a treasure to humanity. Glad it is becoming more and more a popular foreign language in the west. Hope many people will start to study Chinese, and all brilliant minds can work together, like iron sharpening iron, to understand Chinese language in this century and put the puzzle together for the human story,

Thanks for asking and thanks allowing me to share with you."

[NOTE: Dr Gray told this blog that she may publish this one day in a book form.She has lots of ideas related to our perception about the world, philosophy, history, humanity, even science; all from a Chinese linguistic perspective. Dr Gray did her PHD work at the University of Tennessee, Knoxvile, graduating in 1997 with a
Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education.]

The world's first "musical obit" for snailpapers?

The world's first "musical obit" for snailpapers?

by Dan Bloom


I've been working in and around newspapers for most of my life,
beginning as a newspaper delivery boy in western Massachusetts in the
1950s. During my teenage years, the massive edition of the Sunday New
York Times would arrive at the doorstep with a welcome thud, and I'd
spend the rest of the morning devouring every section of the paper,
lying on the carpet of the living room.

This was a good 40 years, of course, before the Internet shook up my
world, and maybe your world, too. You see, this print newspaper that
you are holding in your hands right now is headed for the garbage heap
of history by 2025, maybe sooner. Well, that's what the doomsayers say
as the Digital Age stands up proud with its
Kindles and state-of-the-art iPhone e-reading apps and says good
riddance to paper.

But wait a minute, I want to say, hold your horses! Print newspapers
are not dead
yet, and they don't have to die. As the American writer and newspaper
publisher Dave Eggers has said, there's no reason that print
newspapers and online news sites cannot co-exist together.

I love newspapers, this thing you are holding in your hand right now
as you read down the page.

[Note to online readers of the Projo website: lean in close to the
screen on this one because I want to make this very clear: I love
digital newspapers, too.]


Now the reason I love print newspapers so much is because, yes, of
course, I grew
up with them. Early life in Springfield, college years in Boston.


For the young generation today growing up with Facebook and Twitter
and YouTube, it's a totally different story, and I understand that
story, too.

I also have a Facebook page and a twitter account, so I am not against
pixels or E Ink or screengrabs. I just love "snailpapers", that's all,
and I use that word as a term of endearment, as you will see.

Recently, I wrote a novelty song about newspapers called "I Just Can't
Live (Without My Daily Snailpaper)". You can find it on YouTube.

The reviews have been mixed. First the good news.

Diana McClellan, the retired Washington DC gossip columnist who rose to fame
at the now-defunct Washington Star -- defunct, in fact, since 1981 (it
had a good 128-year run, beginning in 1852, and then its print run
ended) -- listened to the video and told me: "This is the world's
first musical obit for newspapers!"

Carl Bernstein's in the song, in the second verse (along with Bob
Woodward. and Ben Bradlee, their boss during the Watergate days), and
after he listened to it, he told me in a brief email about a week
later: "Your newspaper love song is delightful, the message is right
and your voice is on target."

Full disclosure: the dude singing the song is not me. I hired a
retired dentist in Texas named J. Gale Kilgore to record the song in
his home studio and a video firm to make the scrolling lyrics video.


Jeffrey Jolson-Colburn, publisher and editor of the online news site
"Hollywood Today (and the grandson of Al Jolson, by the way)," said
the lyrics resonated with him. "I've been publisher or editor of 12
newspapers, about half of them print newspapers and half of them
online news site. I wish all were print papers, I've got ink in my
veins. However, online is only way to stay alive now."

But not everyone agrees with the song's intent. Every song has its critics.

I asked a young woman in Australia, screen name Bella Kyee, who I met
by chance on Facebook, if she reads any newspapers Down Under and if
had any advice on how to help the song go viral on the Internet. She
replied in a succinct one-line note, which I reproduce here in its
entirety, verbatim: "Noooo!.... I don't do newspapers .....HAHAHA!"

Will print newspapers survive the current onslaught of the Digital
Age? I don't know the answer, but I sure hope they do.

I am not anti-Internet and I am not a Luddite, all humor in my song
aside. I embrace
digital as much as I embrace paper and print. E Ink is amazing. The
blogosphere lights up my life 24/7. I can't imagine a world without
computers or screens or iPods or iPads, and while it's possible that
the coming roll-out of Apple's iPad will put several more nails in the
coffin of print newspapers, as one pundit recently opined, I still
want to stand up for newspapers and say: "Long may they live!"

So what is the purpose of my song? Hopefully, it will prod newsroom
people and news consumers and Brown and Tufts professors to reflect on
just where the future of good journalism lies. Like Dave Eggers, I
feel it lies in both paper and on screens.

As for the term "snailpapers" that I coined for the song, Paul Gillin
of the Newspaper Death Watch blog said it well: "[Bloom] thinks maybe
if newspapers poked more fun at themselves instead of getting all
righteously indignant about
new media, they would generate more sympathy."

It's true, print newspapers arrive on our doorsteps in the morning
with news that is already 12 hours old. That's a snailpaper, by
definition. Snailmail, snailpapers.

But as the song says, "I just can't live without my daily snailpaper!"

Can you?



ON THE WEB
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZKIk1Krp8

A Lever Scale

A Lever Scale
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Weili Village is to the south of town.* Villagers are mostly hard-working, frugal farmers. They can endure much suffering. They are peaceful, obedient people. Aside from a few influential families and petty officials, most of the people in the village are poor. But these families can peddle influence, nonetheless, thanks to their connections with government officials. 　One wretchedly poor family in Weili is that of Qin De-san's.** By the time he was born, his father was long dead. While the elder Qin was alive, he was able to lease a couple of acres of farmland to till. On death, he left behind a poor baby and its mother. Had the landlord bestowed a little gracious favor, the widow might have kept the lease on the patches of farmland, where she could hire workers to continue to farm so that she might eke out a living for herself and her poor baby. Well, the rich never will share anything good with anybody else; otherwise, they wouldn't be rich in the first place. That's why the landlord took back the lease and rented the land to a new tenant farmer, from whom he could exact a few more dou of unhulled rice as rental.*** The elder Qin took with him all the money he had earned with sweat and blood while he was alive to his grave where he was buried. So after his death, his widow and her baby were hopeless and helpless.

　All their neighbors were very sorry for them. Some elderly neighbors tried to make arrangements for the widow and the baby, for the possibility of their starving to death was something they could not take lightly. As a result, they made a match for the widow, arranging a marriage to a Qin family in-law **** A stepfather, as a rule, never takes good care of his stepchild. The new husband of the widow saw her as a mere child-bearing machine. Consequently, De-san's childhood wasn't a happy one. More often than not, he was chided, scolded and beaten. For that reason his mother wasn't able to remain on harmonious terms with her second husband.

　Fortunately, she could endure suffering. She could also plan for a future. So she started making rice straw sandals and raising chickens, ducks, and hogs. She worked so hard as to earn a somewhat decent living for the family now headed by her new husband. It wasn't an easy life but finally, she was able to get De-san to tend a water buffalo for a neighbor when he was nine years old.***** The boy was to do farm chores on a daily basis as well. It was then that his stepfather all but stopped taking care of the family. However, the mother and son could now resort to their labor for warding off the threat of a chill and starvation.

　 When De-san was 16 years old, his mother asked him to give up his chore-boy job.**** She wanted to lease a few acres of farmland for her son to till to make a living. But it wasn't the right time. Farmland could scarcely be leased for rice farming anymore.


*Weili (威麗) means “Dignified Beauty.” The name of the village is fictitious.

**Qin De-san (秦得?)

***Dou (斗) is an old unit of dry measure for grain equal to a quarter of a bushel. It is often translated as peck.

****A man can be married into his wife's family in China and Japan. In such case, he has to change his family name to that of hers. Arrangements can be made to get one of his sons to carry on his original family name.

*****A water buffalo used to be kept by a farming family to drag the plow to prepare rice paddies for transplanting seedlings. Tractors are now in use.

****Not exactly 16 years old. A baby is one year old when it was born. It was one sui (歲) old.


The China Post serialization is sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs.

Lever Scale 2

Lever Scale 2
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The time was not right for renting farmland because a sugar company monopolized it. It paid to grow sugar. The tenant rice farmers at Weili didn't want to plant sugarcane for the simple reason that the company was exploiting them. The company, on the other hand, raised the rents that the landlords collected from their tenants. Mindful only of their interests, the landlords then ignored the pains of their tenants, of course, and re-leased the land to the sugar company after ending the rice farmers' tenancy. Even those not-so-greedy landlords who would lease their land for rice-farming demanded a raise of the rental prices to the level the sugar company had set. As a result, De-san couldn't lease even one single acre of rice paddies in his home village. Should he work for the sugar company, he would have to work like an ox or a horse, and his mother didn't like it at all. So all he could do was to stay at home, waiting for a chance to get some work on the few remaining small rice farms. Because he was strong and could work hard, he would be able to have work every day. He could now labor less but earn more than as a rice farm chore-boy. He began to gradually save some money, thanks in part to his mother's frugality. Time flies like an arrow. Three years easily passed. When he reached the age of 18, the only important thing his mother thought she had left undone was to get him to take a wife. She knew she had enough money saved, through her hard work and frugal housekeeping keeping, for her son to get married. So De-san married a farmer's daughter in Weili. It was very fortunate of the family to have a bride who soon became a hard worker and her husband's partner at work. She worked like a man. And there were a number of good rice harvests at their village. The family had no hard time making a living.

De-san's mother had a grandson when the rice farm pieceworker was 21 years old. She was contented. She was able to let go of her sense of responsibility, because she had already discharged her duty as a mother. But 20 years of hardship made it impossible for her to sustain her meager, overworked body any longer. As her sense of responsibility was let go, her mind lost the strain; and the demon of ill health took advantage of her weak moments to get her. She lay on her sick bed for days and then went back to Heaven fully contented and seemingly happy. De-san's stepfather, with whom he had only a relationship in name, left the family after his mother's death. They became utter strangers again.

Poor De-san. His happiness was lost along with his beloved mother who was dead.

In the year following his mother's death, De-san had a daughter. Without her mother-in-law at home, his wife had to take care of the baby girl and her son herself, unable to go out to work together with her husband. The income of the family was then reduced by half. One result was that De-san was compelled to work twice as hard to make ends meet. Such a hard life lasted four years. Overwork eroded his health, making him disease-prone.

The Lai He Fiction serialization, is sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency

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A Lever Scale 3

A Lever Scale 3
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- While helping harvest the first rice crop of the fifth year after his mother's death, De-san suffered an attack of malaria.* He lay sick for four or five days, during which time he went to see a Western doctor just once.** He paid two yen for that one visit. He was better after the visit, but his limbs were not strong enough for work. Yet it's harvest time. Every farmer was busy. An industrious De-san, though weak, dared not stay idle at home to nurse himself back to health. So, despite pain, he went to work in the field one day. When he returned home from work after nightfall, he felt ill at ease. He slept until midnight and had an ague again. When he could not get up on the following morning, he thought he could not afford to see a Western doctor again. Well, he thought, the pay he could get for three days' hard work wasn't enough to buy a dose of (Western) medicine he could take. He just wondered where he could earn that much money to spend on his medication. At the same time, he could not continue to lie sick. So he had some medicinal herbs brewed. He took the concoction for which he did not have to pay, as well as very cheap Chinese medicine. The stopgap medication wasn't altogether inefficacious. An ague came back once every two to three days, but in the end, he ceased to have any malarial relapse quite a few months later. But his belly was swollen. Some said he had a swollen belly because he had taken too many medicinal herbs. Others said his taking Western medicine caused what was known as a swollen spleen. De-san could care less. All he cared was that he could not go to work. That's what he was worried most. While De-san was sick, his wife couldn't but leave home for work. She had to leave her two children crying and sobbing at home in chorus with the moaning of her husband. The family was forced to have one or two meals a day. They were not starving to death but all of them soon suffered malnutrition.

The two children, in particular. Fortunately, however, she did not get pregnant.

It wasn't until after the end of that year when De-san was capable of doing some light work again. He needed some adequate work as the weiya or behgeh was soon to be celebrated.*** He was afraid that he could find no work when the New Year arrived, because there was no piecework for anybody during the long New Year festival. He knew he simply had to stock enough foods for the family to last at least a half month. He worried all the more. He was scared.

*Two rice crops are harvested a year in most rural villages in Taiwan. The first crop is leaped around October.

**The Japanese introduced Western medicine to Taiwan shortly after the beginning of the last century. At the time of Lai He's writing, most of the poor ethnic Chinese on the island took cheap medicinal herbs to cure their diseases. A schoolteacher's pay was less than 40 yen at that time. A pieceworker made about 30 to 40 sen (100 sen to a yen) a day.

***Weiya in Mandarin and Behgeh in Hoklo or Amoy (尾牙) literally means “last supper.” One definition of Ya is yamen (衙門) or government office. A feast was held at yamen on the second and sixteenth day of every moon on the Chinese lunar calendar. It is known as ya-ji (牙祭), the second logogram meaning “celebration” or “to make offerings.” The yamen's last supper took place on the sixteenth day of the last moon or 13 or 14 days ahead of Chinese New Year's Day. The custom was later adopted by merchants and shopkeepers with employees.

The Lai He Fiction serialization, sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency.

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A lever scale 5

A lever scale 5
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- On his first day in business, De-san did quite well. When the market in town closed, he would be able to chalk up more than one yen in sales. So he bought some rice, which his family would consume during the Chinese New Year Festival. A few days later, he thought, he would be able to buy all the rice needed for the long holiday and he would then buy something more. “Our family hasn't had much luck this year,” he told himself, “and so we need to give the family a new look for next year. First, an icon of Avalokitesvara has to be bought to replace the old one on the family altar.* The men lian have to be replaced, too.** Votive papers, and fragrant candles that are indispensable have to be purchased as well.” After enjoying brisk business in the following few days, he thought he would have a thick layer of New Year cake steamed.*** So he bought sugar and glutinous rice and brought them back home. His wife could not resist warning him: “The money (spent on sugar and glutinous rice) could be saved to redeem that hairpin with a gold flower at the head. Isn't it more urgent?” “Yes,” De-san replied. “I haven't forgotten that. But it's only the twenty-fifth day (of the twelfth moon). I don't think I won't earn enough money to redeem it. Even if I can't, the seed money is still there to be redeemed (within a month). The pawnshop would charge you a month's interest anyway (regardless of whether we redeem it now or later within the month).” It was late in the evening a couple of days afterwards. De-san was about to go home after the market was closed. He thought of his two children. They would need new clothes for the New Year. It's the duty of a father to make his children glad if he cannot make them happy. So, De-san spent all of a few days' earning to buy a few yards of printed cloth and brought it back home.

Again, it's near high noon one day when a police patrolman on his beat appeared before De-san who was waiting for customers right behind his two baskets of vegetables on a street. The eyes of the cop were riveted on the vegetables in the baskets. De-san politely asked: “Sir, anything you need?”

“Your stock is fresher,” the cop said.

“Yes, yes, Dailin,” De-san said.**** “People in town do know more about how to enjoy. Those things that are not of top quality are not for your consumption.”

“How much are these cauliflowers?” the cop asked.

“Dailin,” De-san said, “what you need, you don't have to ask to know its price. I count myself lucky if you only prefer to ask for my ware.”

Then De-san picked a couple of nice-looking cauliflowers. He tied them up with a thin bunch of rice hay and politely presented them to the cop.


* Avalokitesvara is a bodhisattva, known in China as Guanyin (觀音) and popularly called in the West as the Goddess of Mercy

**Men-lian (門聯) means literally “door couplets.” The poetic couplets, pasted prior to Chinese New Year's Day on either side of the door, with another line above the lintel, are supposed to usher in a more prosperous year.

***New Year cake is made of glutinous rice and sugar. The rice is first soaked in water overnight and ground with water. It is then drained of water and the dough so made is mixed with sugar and steamed. It is eaten ritually during the long Chinese New Year Festival, which is considered to last until the fifteenth day of the first moon on the Chinese lunar calendar.

****Dailin (大人) in Hoklo literally means “great man.” It is a respectful salutation for one's seniors. A rough equivalent in English is Sahib.


The Lai He Fiction serialization sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency.

A lever scale 5

A lever scale 5
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- On his first day in business, De-san did quite well. When the market in town closed, he would be able to chalk up more than one yen in sales. So he bought some rice, which his family would consume during the Chinese New Year Festival. A few days later, he thought, he would be able to buy all the rice needed for the long holiday and he would then buy something more. “Our family hasn't had much luck this year,” he told himself, “and so we need to give the family a new look for next year. First, an icon of Avalokitesvara has to be bought to replace the old one on the family altar.* The men lian have to be replaced, too.** Votive papers, and fragrant candles that are indispensable have to be purchased as well.” After enjoying brisk business in the following few days, he thought he would have a thick layer of New Year cake steamed.*** So he bought sugar and glutinous rice and brought them back home. His wife could not resist warning him: “The money (spent on sugar and glutinous rice) could be saved to redeem that hairpin with a gold flower at the head. Isn't it more urgent?” “Yes,” De-san replied. “I haven't forgotten that. But it's only the twenty-fifth day (of the twelfth moon). I don't think I won't earn enough money to redeem it. Even if I can't, the seed money is still there to be redeemed (within a month). The pawnshop would charge you a month's interest anyway (regardless of whether we redeem it now or later within the month).” It was late in the evening a couple of days afterwards. De-san was about to go home after the market was closed. He thought of his two children. They would need new clothes for the New Year. It's the duty of a father to make his children glad if he cannot make them happy. So, De-san spent all of a few days' earning to buy a few yards of printed cloth and brought it back home.

Again, it's near high noon one day when a police patrolman on his beat appeared before De-san who was waiting for customers right behind his two baskets of vegetables on a street. The eyes of the cop were riveted on the vegetables in the baskets. De-san politely asked: “Sir, anything you need?”

“Your stock is fresher,” the cop said.

“Yes, yes, Dailin,” De-san said.**** “People in town do know more about how to enjoy. Those things that are not of top quality are not for your consumption.”

“How much are these cauliflowers?” the cop asked.

“Dailin,” De-san said, “what you need, you don't have to ask to know its price. I count myself lucky if you only prefer to ask for my ware.”

Then De-san picked a couple of nice-looking cauliflowers. He tied them up with a thin bunch of rice hay and politely presented them to the cop.


* Avalokitesvara is a bodhisattva, known in China as Guanyin (觀音) and popularly called in the West as the Goddess of Mercy

**Men-lian (門聯) means literally “door couplets.” The poetic couplets, pasted prior to Chinese New Year's Day on either side of the door, with another line above the lintel, are supposed to usher in a more prosperous year.

***New Year cake is made of glutinous rice and sugar. The rice is first soaked in water overnight and ground with water. It is then drained of water and the dough so made is mixed with sugar and steamed. It is eaten ritually during the long Chinese New Year Festival, which is considered to last until the fifteenth day of the first moon on the Chinese lunar calendar.

****Dailin (大人) in Hoklo literally means “great man.” It is a respectful salutation for one's seniors. A rough equivalent in English is Sahib.


The Lai He Fiction serialization sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency.

Lai He : stories translated from the China (sic) Post newspaper

The Lever Scale

part 4

[translated by Joe Hung]

De-san recently heard that selling vegetables at the outdoor day market in town would be a good gig for him. He then thought he had better get into this produce vending business himself, but the problem was that he had no money to start the business. Indifferent to money, he dared not borrow from any friends. All he could do to raise some seed money for his planned small business was to ask his wife to go to her father's family to ask for help. It only stands to reason that the wife of a poor pieceworker peasant has no rich father who could offer big help. But the wife of her elder brother was especially kind to her. She let her poorer sister-in-law take her sole precious accessory, a hairpin with a small gold flower at the head, to a loan office in town to pawn it for a couple of yen, which De-san could use for the time being as the seed money for his vending business. De-san's wife felt it's a risky way to raise the seed money for her husband, but she had no other options. She had to do what her sister-in-law intended her to do.

One very early morning, De-san brought home two large basketfuls of fresh vegetables which he intended to carry with his carrying pole to the market in town to sell.* He planned to have breakfast first before going to town. Then, his wife found out her husband did not have a lever scale to weigh the produce he hoped to sell.** “What shall we do?” he asked himself. “To buy a lever scale? It's a government monopoly, which isn't cheap at all. Where can I get that much money (to buy it)?” His wife hastened to a neighbor to borrow a lever scale. The neighbor was very kind. She was able to borrow an almost brand-new lever scale from him. De-san had to have one; otherwise he might be punished for illegal vending. Japanese policemen never fails to find faults with small fries like De-san to improve their track record on the beats. The more “crime” the cops can crack, the faster they can get promotions. Untold thousands of people have been thus accused. The crimes they have been falsely accused of include traffic offense as well as violation of street regulations, food-vending rules, traveling regulations, and the weights and measures decree. As a matter of fact, everything the people do in their daily lives is interfered with and placed under control of (Japanese colonial) laws. De-san's wife borrowed the lever scale from the neighbor to guard against a one-in-ten-thousandth possibility that cops may arrest and detain her husband.


*A vegetable vender in Taiwan used to fill their ware in two open large bamboo baskets, which he carried with a bamboo carrying pole on his shoulders. The two baskets had to be matched in weight so that he would have no trouble with the lopsidedness that would interfere with his normal walking gait.

**A lever scale in use in Taiwan in the past has a hook at one end of a wood rod, marked with catties. The produce to be sold would be tied up with a string and hung on the hook. The vender would use one hand to grasp the loop attached to the brass head of the scale, which he would lift up, adjusting the weight with the other to find out how heavy the produce to be sold was. All lever scales were issued by the bureau of weights and measures of the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan.

The Lai He Fiction serialization, sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency.

Dr. David Landsborough has passed away; God rest his soul.-- (1914 - 2010)

The well-known Dr. David Landsborough, a longtime Christian medical missionary in Taiwan [who was born in Changhua, Taiwan, in 1914] passed away on March 2, 2010. Dr. Landsborough's funeral in the UK is set for March 12. The hospital in Taiwan where Dr Landsborough worked for many years will most likely have a memorial service as well, according to Miss Chang, director of nursing there.

The funeral will be held on March 12 at Redhill URC, Shaws Corner, Redhill, Surrey, UK, at 10.30 a.m. The burial will be at 11.30 a.m. and refreshments will be served in the church hall at Redhill URC sometime after 12 noon. The family has asked for family flowers only. If anyone wishes to make a contribution in Dr Langsborough's memory, it can be sent to the CWM either direct or in care of the funeral directors, J Stoneman & Sons.

Dr Lansborough passed away in the morning on March 2 at around 6 a.m., very peacefully and with his family around him. He had recently been gravely ill, not eating and scarcely drinking and having lost a great deal of weight.

"[In Dad's last days] ...he does not open his eyes, although I am sure he is aware when I speak to him and sometimes there is a hint of his old smile. He is a real fighter but I am very sad that I believe he is near the end of his long and full life. Our family is confident that he is getting the best possible care at Trembaths nursing home. The staff are immensely thoughtful and caring. Yesterday when David (my brother) and I visited, we arrived so find the tea lady holding Dad's hand and comforting him – this says alot about the depth of care at the home and the quality of the staff and this is a great comfort," said Don Landsborough in an email to friends and relatives.
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SMILE TAIWAN