Not Seeing The Trees For The Forest: Protests target Taichung science park and TSMC

     My wife and I have been followers of this "Tree Hugger" group's Facebook page for a while with increased frustration. The moderator and poster of the Facebook page posts rejects suggestions for better targets that create pollution in Taichung area. They act more like a cult than an environmental group.

     After all, Mayor Lin, who is blamed in the article below for the science park pollution, has been in office for less than a year and is not responsible for creating the science park or the eight chimney power plant on the Taichung coast that will create pollution with cheap coal to power the microchip producing science park. 

     The "Tree Hugger" group won't take our or other commentators' suggestions to protest against the central government that created the power plant west of Taichung with wind blowing eastward carpeting our city. Former thirteen year term Mayor Hu is responsible for providing the land on the low Dadu Mountain range west of the new science park. 

     The "Tree Hugger" group, is not connected with Global 350 environmentalist movement, nor are they targeting deforestation in Indonesia, currently destroying the air quality of millions of people in Asia. Their "seeing the trees for the forest," blaming Mayor Lin for a much larger problem created before he took office and out of his control, seems politically motivated. They blame him for pushing for the extension of the park when he was a congressman.

    Despite their claim to be nonpartisan, the "Tree Hugger" group and, according to the article, "41 other environmental groups" seem intent on blaming the DPP mayor and not the KMT Central Government that created the mess in the first place and should be the target of any demonstration against industrial pollution in Taiwan.

Protests target Taichung science park and TSMC

SHAM SORRY:Environmentalist Yeh Guang-peng gave a mock apology on behalf of Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung, saying that Lin had not fulfilled a clean-air vow

By Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter

People hold up an image of a tree at a protest in Taichung yesterday.

Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times

Protesters yesterday staged a demonstration at the Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung, demanding the immediate suspension of an expansion project for the park, which they said would aggravate air pollution and pose greater health risks.

Protesters and 41 environmental groups called for the suspension of the project and an overhaul of national development policies, saying that more than 20 percent of the nation’s science parks and industrial zones are underutilized, with the government not making good use of idle plots while rezoning a forest for the Taichung science park expansion.

The expansion was mainly based on a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) project to build an 18-inch wafer plant on Dadu Mountain in Situn (西屯) and Daya (大雅) districts, with the plan passing an environmental impact assessment in February.

Taichung-based environmentalist Tsai Chih-hao (蔡智豪) said the TSMC plan did not assess health risks in association with many carcinogenic pollutants, calling for an end to construction until proper assessments are completed.

Tsai demanded an apology from Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) for Lin’s part in soliciting TSMC investment, which Tsai said put city residents at risk of pollution-related illness, adding that the number of adenocarcinomas of the lung — a major type of lung cancer — in the area has risen to become the highest rate in the nation due to the city’s deteriorating air quality.

Impersonating the mayor, Taiwan Healthy Air Action Alliance founder Yeh Guang-peng (葉光芃) delivered a mock apology, saying that Lin in 2012 pledged to remove highly polluting and energy-intensive industries from the city to reduce air pollution and bring back blue skies.

Instead of blue sky, PM2.5 — airborne pollutants measuring 25 micrometers or less in diameter — is Lin’s legacy, Yeh said.

Taichung Veterans General Hospital respiratory physician Hsu Cheng-yuan (許正園) said each 10 microgram per cubic meter rise in PM2.5 is associated with an 8 percent increased risk of lung cancer morbidity, which, in terms of the population of Taichung, could lead to 220,000 residents being affected by the disease.

In a letter to TSMC chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀), who on Thursday said that power shortages and protests from environmentalists were the two major uncertainties for future investment in Taiwan, protesters said government-subsidized electricity for industrial development has cost the nation its environment and health, while residents and even TSMC employees, in addition to environmentalists, were among the protesters.

TSMC contributes to the condition of the sky and poisonous air in central Taiwan, the letter said.

Clean rooms in the company’s factories might be the only place where people could breathe clean air, it said, calling on the company to fulfill its corporate responsibility.

Protesters said they would be collecting signatures to launch a referendum on whether the expansion project should be discontinued.

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T.R Kitchen Fine French-Italian in Beitun, Taichung

https://www.facebook.com/trkitchen118/photos/a.511969535611565.1073741828.504678356340683/602840516524466/?type=3

     I rode home to my wife's consternation; why hadn't I seen her Line message? We were late to our dinner reservation! I forgot why it was so important to her to be at the restaurant on time; she had discount coupons that expired at a certain time. 

     T.R Kitchen, hurriedly built earlier this year in typical Taiwan Quonset hut style, is on a rented lot in the earthquake zone near the Dali River (take the new Highway 74 up Dong-Shan Road, turn right on Jin-Fu 13th Rd.) with pretty "Blue Sky White Cloud" steel bridge draped in LED lights a block away. All the lots around the newly developed area are empty weed gardens. This restaurant turned their empty next door to a heart-shaped sandbox for kids with parents for lunch menu. Just this one restaurant stood, a French-Italian menu, with an American fast-food strip mall name, "Time Relax" Kitchen, but the initials, T.R (missing the second period) made it sound debonair, if you use your imagination.

      You had to use your imagination a lot to enjoy the experience at this entry-level elegance Taichung eatery. One day, twenty years from now, if it hasn't been demolished for the landlord to build another condominium, and if I am still alive and able to eat more than Ensure supplement through a straw, I will remember T.R Kitchen when it was new. It could be the foundation of burgeoning scene of fine cuisine with the other starter-bistros on the street popping up in the new Taichung Eastside, a potentially formidable counter-balance to the overblown (and over-priced) affluent restaurant scene on the Westside. Welcome to T.R Kitchen!

   

      I have only one word to say about T.R Kitchen: tongue; Australian beef tongue, a tender topping of wine sauce over the risotto underneath. It had me taking out my smart phone to Goggle Junior's Restaurant in Brooklyn to remind myself of the Jewish-style hot beef tongue on rye (back of the tongue, please) but then, when I remembered I was in Taichung, and this was the only beef tongue in town, and it was accompanied by soft jazz, sometimes live, red wine, baby greens salad with a cube of head cheese, frozen citrus aperitif, braised fish appetizer, a basket of airy homemade dinner rolls with a dip of olive oil, cream of corn soup (the two weak spots on the menu), fresh brewed coffee, ice-cream and brownie-pudding dessert, with the cherubic teddy bear waitress trying not to look as green as the salad…did I mention you have to use your imagination to respect this restaurant? Imagination is all that you have to make it Paris, but at least the medallions of tender beef tongue in wine sauce were real. 

Chef Andy 

     My wife, meanwhile, had their seafood risotto, and loved it, too. The risotto was moist in seafood sauce and chock full of life-sized scallops, mussels, shrimp, squid, sautéed with flavor and taste. The price for the set dinner menu with a choice of entree was 750-1500NT, about $25-40 us. There was plenty of parking because there were no other buildings outside. Andy, the chef, a young man who learned his art at a four-star Westside hotel restaurant, got the idea of using beef tongue from his former master chef, but he added the vegetable broth and wine sauce that made it my future dream when something unusually good and Western are on my palate-mind. Nana, the maitre d’ was a lovely host with time in the casual un-crowded six table dining area to chat with us after dinner. She called out Andy who was honored to have his dishes so highly praised by two former New Yorkers, one of them a Westerner. 

Beef Tongue Risotto

     In Taichung,  a city with a long way to go to before becoming an Asian Western-cuisine gourmet refuge like Taipei, which is nothing compared with Shanghai, which is nothing compared to Tokyo, Hong Kong, or any other Asian or American city west of New York and excludes the entire European continent. I have my list of Western restaurants with the city's one-only authentic dishes for steak, lamb-chops, cold cuts and hamburgers (Belling’s), rye bread and sourdough (Finga’s), French bread (Dance of the Bread), and pizza and calzone (Palio) that keep this ex-pat sane in this wok-crazy culture. Add now to this list T.R Kitchen for their seafood risotto, dreamy tender beef tongue medallion risotto, and give me no lip. 

Abuse of foreigner on MRT sparks criticism of police

 I heard a Taiwanese man, fluent in English, cursed out a British ex-pat and his Taiwanese girlfriend on the MRT train in Taipei a few days ago. I also heard that the ex-pat, who passes his time filming and sending YouTube videos of Taiwan transgressions, etc., was in his sort filming the encounter that the Taiwanese commuter dared him to film.
     We don't know what happened before the smart phone, held by the ex-pat's girlfriend, started filming. Perhaps it is as the Taiwanese man said, that he was pushed by the ex-pat and was not apologized to. In three years living in Taiwan I have been apologized to perhaps five out of hundreds of inconsiderate times I've been offended or treated rudely by someone on foot or in a vehicle. More frankly, I have not apologized to anyone in Mandarin and have not had the opportunity to do so to anyone I offended in English; an apology doesn't see appropriate here. When someone is standing in your way, you say, "Stand aside a little," instead of the idiomatic, "Excuse me."
     I haven't watched the video. You watch it and tell me if what the Taiwanese man said rings true as I heard it does. I will not prejudice the case with my assessment of the quality of a Western-bred human being who professes to being an ESL educator in Taiwan nor will I comment on the probable reason for him being here and not employed in his own homeland.
     All I can say is, I agree with the police that the ex-pat should have pressed the emergency button on the train and not only the smart phone camera button. As a New Yorker, used to telling people what I think of them, I have no comment; only a stiff upper lip. 

 I also noticed that over 7,000 viewers have read the Taipei Times article; a very large amount of views. There is a reason for why so many English speakers find the article intriguing..I wonder. 

Abuse of foreigner on MRT sparks criticism of police
FOOT-DRAGGING?Police arguments about jurisdiction meant MRT security footage was deleted before police viewed it. A Taiwanese suspect was brought in for questioning

By Sean Lin / Staff reporter





A viral video of a Taiwanese man surnamed Liao, who is accused of hurling a torrent of racial abuse at a foreign resident on a train on Taipei MRT’s Tamsui-Xinyi line is pictured on Youtube.
Screengrab from Youtube


People First Party (PFP) Taipei City Councilor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday called for better communication between Taipei City Police precincts in handling cases that take place in the city’s MRT system, after a foreigner posted a video showing that he and his Taiwanese girlfriend had been humiliated on an MRT carriage.


During a Taipei City Council question-and-answer session, Huang showed a video clip recorded last month by Christopher Raymond Hall, a Briton, which Hall uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday.


The footage showed Hall and his girlfriend being verbally abused on a train operating on the MRT Tamsui-Xinyi Line by a man who subjected the couple to a barrage of racist remarks and personal attacks.


Huang questioned the efficiency of the city’s police system, saying that the police were unable to obtain footage of the incident from surveillance cameras installed on MRT trains because more than one week had passed before the police stations finally decided who had jurisdiction over the case, and the footage had already been deleted.


Quoting from Hall’s video, in which Hall said he was told by the police that he had to tell them which MRT station the dispute had taken place in before a case could be opened, Huang said the police were too slow to respond to the incident.


“No one involved in a fight will remember at which station an argument began,” Huang said.


“I hope that from now on [the police] will stop asking such idiotic questions as: ‘When did you start the argument?’” she said.


Taipei Police Commissioner Chiu Feng-kuang (邱豐光) told the council that the protracted time it took police stations to work out responsibility over the incident indicated that there had been a communication problem between the police and the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC).


Chiu said the case was taken by the Daan Precinct (大安), which forwarded the case to prosecutors.


He said the department would facilitate communication with the TRTC.


TRTC general manager Yen Pang-chieh (顏邦傑) said the police had difficulty finding footage of the incident because Hall did not inform MRT security personnel at the time of the dispute and chose to file a report at a police station instead.


Yen said that cases that involve incidents on MRT carriages are forwarded to precincts by location, but both the time and location at which the incident took place were found to be missing in Hall’s report.


He said that people should use the emergency button in the carriages when in danger, as the train would stop at the next station and police and security personnel could take swift action to address any problem.


It would also help investigators find the footage needed for investigation, he said.


The Taipei City Police Department’s Daan District (大安) precinct yesterday brought a Taiwanese man, a security guard surnamed Liao (廖), in for questioning and forwarded the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, recommending indictment for slander and defamation.


Liao reportedly told police he had been angry at Hall’s attitude, which is why he shouted at the couple, adding that he wished to apologize for causing a scene that led to social scrutiny.


Additional reporting by Chiu Chun-fu




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Paris in Taichung

     It has been a bittersweet French weekend in Taichung. Besides the French bread, which has turned to stone in the refrigerator, three cheeses from France made our tummies smile last evening, even if the wine was Spanish. With the reservations for the Paris Opera House and a few nights in Marseilles made, we watched the musical film version of "The Phantom of the Opera" Friday evening. 

     The phantom, Erik, was a terrorist at the opera for the love and respect he was denied because of the way he looked. In the book, by Gaston Leroux, his mother abandoned him. The Persian (not in the Broadway show) cared for Erik, saved his life, brought him to Paris, but saw how he had become a monster. The Phantom taught Christine Daae^’ to sing like an angel; she loved Erik for what he was, and for his loving her. The police hunted him. In the book, he died fulfilled, loved by Christine. In the musical, The Phantom escaped the opera fire and laid a rose at Christine’s tomb in the final scene.

Waking up yesterday morning to read about the carnage in Paris made me hate the U.S. and French governments for causing desperation in the Middle World. They protect themselves with banks made of marble with a guard at every door, so the desperate resort to the murder of innocent victims in frustration. Do terrorists harbor some ridiculous hope that public pressure will make our corrupted governments change their mind about forcing their economic will on the world? No; it is just revenge and frustration.

 I watched the 1973 version of "The Count of Monte Cristo" last evening, a film about French government corruption, by Alexandre Dumas. Revenge, with unlimited wealth, is possible, but one can never get back the wasted years, or the lover you lost. The Count's biggest motivation was that his father was starved to death by corrupt officials. It is still true for the families of terrorists. What else is there in the world to cherish but love and family? 

Who will lay a rose at the graves of the Paris massacre victims? Keep the governments out of this. Only those who cherish love and family can understand. 

Taichung coal-fired plant lowers output amid bad air quality

The air is so bad in Taichung that I always wear a surgical mask when I ride the bike. The mask only captures 30% of the pollutants from going into my lungs but it is better than nothing. It is a good thing I stopped smoking before we moved here. The pollutants come from the six smoke stacks of the largest coal-fired electrical power plants on the northeast coast of Taichung but also from the millions of motor scooters and cars in this city without a subway. The air pollution also comes across the Strait from China. Furthermore, most farmers burn their spent crop and practitioners of Taiwan Buddhism-Taoism burn their ghost money ceremoniously. The high mountains to the east keep the smog in the city basin. 

Taichung coal-fired plant lowers output amid bad air quality

By Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter

The Taichung Power Plant on Sunday and Monday lowered its output for the first time in its history to reduce emissions amid heightened air pollution levels in central and southern Taiwan.

The 27-year-old plant — the largest coal-fired plant in the world — reduced its power generation by 18 percent from 5.5 million kilowatts to 4.5 million kilowatts at the request of the Taichung City Government as the density of fine particulate matter under 25 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) had reached hazardous levels in the city.

Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), the plant’s operator, said the facility reduced its output on Sunday, when power demand was low, but continued to run at reduced capacity early on Monday at the request of the city government due to excessive PM2.5 levels.

PM2.5 concentrations had reached the purple level — the most severe degree of PM2.5 pollution according to the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) four-color categorization — due to a weather pattern that trapped airborne pollutants, the agency said.

The plant returned to maximum output later on Monday due to increasing demand and improved air quality, Taipower said.

The company said that it agreed to the city government’s proposal to establish a standard operating procedure to adjust power output when air pollution reaches a certain level.

A draft operating procedure suggested by the city government proposes reducing the plant’s output when more than half of the city’s 11 air quality monitoring stations report purple PM2.5 levels, the city government said.

Taipower said it is willing to replace some of its coal-fired electricity generation with natural-gas-generated electricity, which is more costly, though it produces less carbon, during times of off-peak demand, especially in autumn and winter, at the request of local governments — as long as the national power supply is not affected.

The Taichung City Government said it is pushing a proposed city bylaw that would limit the burning of petroleum coke and coal, which already passed a first reading in the city council, while it has also told 307 schools in the city to adjust their activities according to air quality readings.

Taichung's Elevated (Uplifting?) Vision

The mall under the new Feng-yuan train station due to open March 2016.

        Since there was no more Major League Baseball to occupy my mornings after the Mets lost the World Series, I got back on the bike to take a ride, but this time, I headed south along the Han River towards Taichung Park instead of north towards Feng-Yuan. I decided to visit the "First Elevated Railway Exhibition:Visions of a Future Life" building at 381 Dong-Guang Road on my way to the Taichung Confucian Temple at 30 Shuang-Shih Road, Section 2. I had passed by the temple many times and though their gardens would be a great shady place to relax and read a book.                          
     What could bring Taichung out of the doldrums of the 1990's? It was obvious that Taichung could not go on as it was. It was a city that had been teetering between the run-down downtown  business district, Taichung Train Station and Park. Something had to give.  The modern world had left Taichung stale and moldy; without a soul, and with an antiquated rail system. In 2006, The Executive Yuan approved the Taichung Metropolitan Area Elevation Railway Project. The project would also jump-start urban renewal near the Taichung and Feng-Yuan stations.  The exhibition hall opened in November 2012. For three years, I had been wondering what it looked like inside the long one-story building that resembled a train car. I parked the bicycle and headed inside.

I was the only visitor in the exhibition hall that morning. Two guides greeted me. They told me it was free to enter and they handed me a brochure in English; all the exhibits had placards in Chinese. Through a maze of 6,000 square feet, I circled the hall observing the scale model displays of the ten new railway stations, engineering technology, and audio-visuals of construction projects. It was pretty dry stuff but, for the price of admission, I couldn't complain. Occasionally I could hear the rumble of a train passing behind the exhibition hall. Overhead were the elevated concrete pylons for the new Taichung rail-line. Three years ago, before a station was built, the exhibition would have meant more, but watching the new line under construction in real time was far more fun than seeing the models.                      
      Taichung has needed something uplifting; more than just the face-lift that Mayor Hu gave to the Westside replacing  cemeteries and rice paddies with high rise condos and a new business district. It only made Taichung worse; not only was the old town still dilapidated but the quaint country feeling of the greenery was turned into soulless steel and glass. 

Besides reconnecting the parts of Taichung that had been dividing the city for over a hundred years, raising the rails above street level will have another very important objective: to save lives.  There have been numerous accidents involving vehicles and pedestrians on the grade level tracks through busy Taichung streets. Some accidents are deliberate, some because of malfunctions such as the one at the crossing just next to the exhibition hall at the end of Xing-Lin Road. 
     Go up Xing-Lin Road a few blocks to Shuang-Shi, Section 2. When you see the white church with the tall spire atop of which is a golden Mary holding baby Jesus, turn left. At that shady intersection, you can not only get pie in the sky but a blue plate special at the old Taiwan Railroad car converted into a restaurant; that's the kind of conversion I like! Soon, on your left, you will see the golden-tiled roof of the Confucius Temple. 

     Pray tell, there are no monks or nuns at the Confucian Temple. It is a memorial more than a place of contemplation. To me, the temple complex is an eerie place with more closed doors and gates than ones that are open. The property was a middle school for a while after an immense Japanese shrine was desecrated with the coming of the KMT. Beyond its far side lies a private garden and shrine to KMT soldiers who had fought in the war. The Temple complex, completed in 1976, is a replica of Song Dynasty architecture and is about as real as Cesar's Palace in Las Vegas, the difference being concrete vs. prefab gypsum board. Just pray your children pass their tests and get into a good college, I guess. 

   The temple was void of visitors on the morning I went; only a few middle-aged women playing ocarinas with a Karaoke. A large paper display board listed a number of events the temple was hosting, but all of them had passed.  

     As I strolled around the grounds and looked into the cold shrines, I became weary, and retired to the garden to read my copy of The Phantom of the Opera. It was there in the garden, under the banyan trees, I saw the plaque: "There are no shortcuts to attaining Confucian virtue," the plaque read. Ah; now I understood. It was like the gate in Monty Python's Holy Grail where no man (or woman, Confucius forbid) 
shall pass.                                        I sat on an uncomfortable cold stone bench in the courtyard not far from a tiny pond surrounded by a pointy wrought iron fence. The arched cement bridge across the pond was overkill. After only a few pages of The Phantom, I felt an itching at my legs; the mosquitoes guarding the temple grounds knew I was unworthy of sitting there and soon drove me away. I got back on the bike and rode further south on Shuang-Shi, Section 2 until I reached Taichung Park; my respite. On a rock by the turtle pond, with white pigeons flying around me, I found my peace.

      “Taichung’s Elevated (Uplifting?) Vision” is the double-entendre title of this article about the bike ride I took to the train exhibition and Confucius Temple. The point is that one was more uplifting than the other. 

      The lofty goals of Confucian philosophy are higher than Taichung’s new elevated train section but, since some people are fools that don’t stop, look, and listen for danger, and the crossing guard sometimes malfunctions, it is better to raise the stakes than risk a miscue at the pearly gates that would hold up the masses from getting to where they are bound. 

A replica of the Willow Wash near the old Taiwan rail line