Farmers bring struggle to Forestry Bureau

“Give me back my land.”

Those were the words, in big block letters, printed on banners accompanying a farmers’ protest outside my apartment earlier today.

According to the United Daily News evening edition (Chinese), a number of farmers groups are leading a large-scale protest against the Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau. Today, as about a thousand protesters surrounded the bureau’s doors, some shed tears as they demanded their land be returned to them; others carried signs saying they weren’t afraid to shed blood.

The land, they said, was tilled by their ancestors and now is rightfully theirs.

The Forestry Bureau, for its part, maintains that the land belongs to the government, which can no longer make concessions to the farmers after years of offering compensation and aid for them to move off the land and onto other livelihoods.

For now, it seems, other livelihoods aren’t an option for these farmers. They plan to bring their protest to National Taiwan University next – the university also makes use of land they claim is theirs – if the Forestry Bureau doesn’t budge.

A snake a snaaake a snaaaaake!

Snake’s meat, pardon the cliche, tastes like chicken – if a little more chewy.

On Taipei’s Huahsi Street, where vendors hawk discount goods and karaoke blasts shamelessly, is the infamous “Snake Alley,” which apparently once teemed with vendors selling snake blood, venom, and the like for those interested. It might have been a real-life scene from Indiana Jones.

I wouldn’t know. The most shocking snake vendors have disappeared. The alley’s been roofed over, cleaned up – gentrified – for a rising tide of tourists. But even gentrification has an outlandish face here; we saw a young tattooed woman titillating a gawking crowd with her python-handling performance.

“Can you fold a snake? Can you bend it? Is it OK? … Yes, it is!” she exclaimed, explaining further that a young woman could carry a small snake on her and fling it at potential rapists for self-protection. (Apparently keeping live snakes on you is more practical than pepper spray.)

A few steps down from her, a middle-aged man stood in front of his restaurant, charming a cobra perched on a table before him and inviting passersby in Japanese, Korean, English, and Mandarin to try his snake soup.

The cobra, hovering, occasionally lunged at him, hissing.

Snake meat is not, in itself, nauseating. Its color is chickenlike, its texture is perfectly palatable. For animals that slither around without legs though, snakes have a surprising amount of bones. But it was the still-snake-shaped meat floating in our broth (and probably the I-just-barfed-a-little-in-my-mouth look on the faces of passersby) that had me mentally, and often physically, gagging as I picked meat off its delicate bones.

Thanks, snake, but I’m sticking with real chicken.

Of small, and micro, nations

Ever since Taiwan was kicked out of the U.N.’s club, it’s had to endure ever-diminishing recognition as a sovereign, legitimate state. Poorer developing countries, eager to curry favor with China, have forgotten Taiwan in exchange for greater aid and investment from the new 800 lb. gorilla. According to Wikipedia, only 24 countries currently have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan. They do manage to fake embassies with places like the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S.,” but life in the wild can be lonely.

There’s hope now, in the world of micronations.

Back in November of last year, BLDGBLOG interviewed Simon Sellars, co-author of “Lonely Planet Micronations.” Micronations are half-ironic, sometimes symbolic, quasi-legal, tiny countries started by independence-minded people, often in their own backyards or apartments. As Erwin S. Strauss, author of “How to Start Your Own Country,” writes, why be king of your own castle when you can be king of your own country? Sellars, on his own childhood micronation:

I founded the Independent Republic of Bentleigh, declared myself President, and claimed the whole of Bentleigh as territory. … We were beaten – the IRB was invaded by Poland. The Polish kid next door already hated me, but when he saw me poncing up and down the back yard draped in my IRB flag, he was enraged even more than usual. He jumped over the fence, punched me in the mouth and stole my lunch money – and that was all the IRB’s assets gone, just like that.

Recently, YKON, a self-described “advocacy group for unrepresented nations, experimental countries and utopian thinkers,” was approached by a Taiwan-based group to see if they could get any of the world’s micronations to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country.

Out of a few dozen, 10 micronations agreed. Among them: Westarctica, The Principality of Snake Hill, and The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.

In return, YKON is encouraging Taiwanese citizens to sign a petition pushing the government of Taiwan to accord recognition to these micronations. From what I’m guessing, the petition is only at MOCA Taipei.

Certainly Taiwan has something in common with these treehouse projects. Like them, Taiwan is small and struggles for recognition on the world stage. Unlike them, of course, Taiwan lives not in a world constructed half from farce and half from delusions of grandeur, but in a world where denial from the World Health Organization could mean countless lives lost.

I wonder if mutual recognition among micronations, then, detracts from Taiwan’s serious aspirations toward international recognition, rather than boosting its standing among countries with unassailable legitimacy? Without international standing, is Taiwan just a glorified micronation?

See:

• The MOCA Taipei exhibit on YKON’s Taiwan project
• YKON
• Wikipedia list of micronations

A fast train for a mega-city

(Photo: Chao Yang-Chen/New York Times)

Taiwan’s west coast, stretching from capital Taipei south toward Kaohsiung, is sometimes referred to as one of the world’s megalopolises, densely populated urban areas made up of several large cities.

The designation is about to get a lot more attention when tomorrow Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. opens its 180 mph commuter trains (comparable to Japan’s Shinkansen) to the public. The trains, in the making for two decades, will give Taiwan’s megalopolis an artery that outruns cars and trounces buses in energy efficiency.

Three trains a day will take passengers a 215-mile distance in 90 minutes, while the rest of the day’s trains will make more stops, lengthening the trip to just over two hours.

A one-way coach ticket from Taipei to Kaohsiung, according to the New York Times, will cost $44.

The trains will initially be driven by French and German operators, then replaced in three years by Taiwanese operators after they’ve been properly trained. The best part about the new trains? They seem to harken back to old-time train operators of the silent film era: the Times story describes one French driver as “sporting a magnificent handlebar mustache.”

2007 at 101

Taipei 101 Firework, originally uploaded by swanky.

The countdown was less than obvious, the crowd was massive and churning, and our cell phones didn’t work until 2 a.m., but it was all worth it to watch the tallest building in the world light up like a Roman candle.

Happy New Year’s, everyone.