Someone took a P on 4th Street

The entire 25 years of our residence in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, from 1982 to 2007, were near to that city’s Central Park. Nowadays it is a pleasant oasis of green. We watched it “green up” over the years. When we arrived in Kaohsiung, the park was home to a stadium, an indoor arena, an olympic size swimming pool, and a flower garden sponsored by the local Rotary Club which promoted the political philosophy of the Nationalist Party and glorified the military dictator Chiang Kai-shek. On one corner of the park there was an anti-aircraft artillery battery with quad 50-calibre machine guns on top of a tower, and on another the city’s Nationalist Party Headquarters. Those structures were removed and not replaced. Nowadays the park is green and clean.

Across Chung Shan Road, on the southeast corner of the park, the biggest department store in town stood until one Saturday in 1996 it burned. The park corner had several hedges, some of which led pedestrians to gates, and others of which led to dead ends. Wandering into one of those sometime in the early 80s I was driven out by a very strong odor. Apparently more than one of the men of the city had turned the spot into an improvised urinal. 

I was reminded of that spot while on a walk in Holland, Michigan, my retirement home, recently. We went along 4th Street between Pine and River Avenues. The street passes along one side of the giant Padnos Iron and Metal Company. On the other side there’s another industrial building and an open piece of land where the chipped remains of trees are piled. Apparently the 4th Street side of “Padnos” used to be more active. The buildings there appear to have once been more central to the scrapyard’s commercial activities. One wall is graced with the company’s name spelled out with individually attached metal letters. But time has not been kind to that building. What is left of the sign reads, “ADNOS IRON AND METAL”. 

Apparently, as in Kaohsiung in the 80s. Someone took a “P” there. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Scrappy South-East Asian Nation

The land is still there, but the ship-breaking which once polluted it long ago moved to Bangladesh. Kaohsiung was once world famous for the practice, having outbid the breaking yards in Europe and North America for the raw material (old ships) and being right next door to steel mills that reprocessed the scrap into the steel that built Taiwan. The nation and its industry eventually moved up the feeding chain, and after an industrial accident that resulted in 14 deaths late in the 80s, things began shutting down in 1987.  Sometime late that year I participated in an “environmental awareness” tour of the facilities. As the yards closed down, among the last ships scrapped there was the former high-speed English Channel ferry, The Herald of Free Enterprise, in 1988.

There was an ancillary benefit for us. Kaohsiung was hardly an “international” city in the 80s. Ships that were brought for breaking came from all over the world. The food in their galleys was a mix of things that wound up for sale in a place known to foreigners as “the ship store”. When there was cheese in the cooler there, word went out, and we cheese-starved foreigners descended upon it like locust.   Once I picked up what appeared to be cheesy. It was labeled in Greek, though, which I deciphered and discovered was a 3 kilo block of Halvah from Thessalonica. Over the next few weeks, I gained about 3 kilos.

We recently went for a walk towards the bridge that funnels south bound traffic into Holland, MI, where we now live. Generally when we pass through that area we’re in the car, and because the road there has no shoulders, we have to move at 35 MPH or we’ll get rear-ended. On foot this time, we could take our time as we walked through the scrap yard that all who enter the city across the bridge must traverse on the way in.  The road passes between fenced off piles of scrap brought in from local factories and junk yards for processing, shredding, and shipping out by railcar or barge to those who will make it into new things. Both sides of the street are lined with colorfully painted sculptures made of welded together bits of former equipment: a massive crankshaft, derricks, springs and gears. And there’s the mascot, Rusty, the scrap yard dog made of steel. 

Seven thousand miles from home, and more than 30 years removed from Kaohsiung’s ship-breaking heyday, we can still “get the feeling” of what once was home.   

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

That’s Not Quite What I’d Said

Through the magic of Facebook I spoke with a former student last week. He’s still in Taiwan (lucky man) while I’m overseas and doing little that is of use. I enjoyed our conversation, which was totally in Taiwanese and lasted for 20 minutes. The man seemed happy in his profession (Protestant ministry) and his wife who joined in the conversation, seemed cheerful, too.

He mentioned that he was doing something that I had taught him.  I always get a little nervous when I hear that from a former student. Eventually, when the time comes that he catches some flak for doing what I taught, I’ll be the one who gets blamed.  Though I don’t recall him being in the course “Platform Presence for Pastors” that I taught, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. I do recall widely recommending (and requiring in some classes) that students to video-record themselves in normal public speaking situations. He mentioned that he was doing that. Good! But then he went on to say that he posted the recordings to his church’s web site so that people who had missed church could hear the sermon, and those who liked what he had could listen to it again.  That’s the kind of thing that (I used to tell people) would come back around to bite you in the butt.  

Photo by Lianhao Qu on Unsplash

And even worse, it’s NOT what I taught.  My object was that students should video-record themselves for private and rigid critique of what they saw. I even suggested that they turn off the audio and just watch the video so that they could see how they looked. This has been difficult for me to do myself. I have too many bad habits with self-presentation. Had I seen those 40 years ago, I might not be doing them now.

The ubiquity of security recording any and ALL of us wherever we go means that we’re all on camera all the time and could potentially be on screen with just the right search being done. Most of us don’t need to be concerned with that so long as we’re not doing something “in the middle of the road that scares the horses.” But folks like church leaders who actually place themselves on the platform up there need to pay attention. 

There. I’ve taught the lesson again. Let’s get it right this time. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Banners

It’s not unusual in Taiwan to hang banners outside of buildings for grand occasions or for “campaign” purposes. I recall one hanging from a fence in Kaohsiung back about 1985 that was part of a public courtesy program, imploring passersby to say “please and thank you”. There was a widely ignored placard in Tainan’s main train station, where stairs go down a tunnel from platform one to give access to platform 2 and the rear station entrance, exhorting high school students to behave properly.

The person who hangs the banner or posts the sign has done their job. In some places the signs are taken down or replaced, in others they just fade in the sun until the time for the next campaign arises. For the time they are up, they lend color to what can often be a rather grey urban environment. 

When we were awarded our citizenship and identification cards at a ceremony in 2018, one feature was a large red cloth banner, about 10 meters long and nearly a meter high. After 30 minutes of hoopla, it had no further use. It was given to us, rolled up, and now sits in a closet with other pieces of Taiwan memorabilia. It will never hang again, the sun will not shine upon it, and the wind will not whip it to tatters.

In our current neighborhood, winter slowly ebbs and spring is occasionally in the air. The trees may have received the news, but the leaves have yet to appear. Glancing upward, we still see only sticks.   I’ve taken to tying colorful bits of cloth onto young streetside trees which have yet to turn green. In the absence of leaves to gladden hearts and wave in the breeze, these are about all we have for the time being.

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

The Wake of the Tugboat

Our first apartment in Kaohsiung, into which we moved early in April of 1982, was within half a kilometer of the Kaohsiung waterfront. When the wind blew from that direction we would hear the blasts of horns from ships in the harbor. The waterfront in those days was surrounded by walls and guard towers. One rarely saw ships from where we lived. As Taiwan became a democratic society and less afraid of outside attacks, walls came down. Now, in 2020, you can walk right up to the ships unless they are involved in international customs and immigration status issues.

Living in the middle of America since retiring, we don’t get to see many ships. Within a mile of our house there’s a park on a lake that directly connects to “The Big Lake” (Lake Michigan) and there are various industries here that rely on lake shipping; an occasional gravel carrying freighter or some barges.  On a recent windless day we walked down to the shore for some exercise. The water’s surface was glassily smooth (it’s too early in the season for motor boats and jet skis). The only thing moving was a truckable barge pushing boat. There was no barge attached, just the pusher itself chugging in from the big lake for a reason that was absolutely irrelevant to this story. On that still lake the boat left a gentle but perceptible wake which set me to thinking. “The Wake of the Tugboat”, what story would go with that title? What characters would be in it? Where would it be set, in what time period?   Would it be a mystery, a romance, an action novel, a psychological drama?

When I run out of Taiwan-connected things about which to write, I’ll think about some of these possibilities.  I bet that the entire world of literature hopes, along with me that such a day never comes. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Samplers

During the initial 3 months of our lives after leaving Taiwan in 2018 we were on the road (or on a train) every weekend, visiting churches that had contributed to support our lives and work there  since 1982. We went out to say “thank you.” After those three months, we made monthly ones for the next 6 months or so. On many of these weekends it was our joy to spend a night or two in guest rooms or to share a meal in a home. In several homes where we slept or shared a meal in Wisconsin, families had attractive appliques on the walls of a room or two. The words were Bible verses or inspirational thoughts about home and family.

In previous generations, these kinds of statements would be cross stitched onto cloth, framed and hung. Times change, styles change, and size changes, too. The sentiments were quite obviously heartfelt.  (Some of the appliques filled far more space than a framed sampler could.)  

I read a few verses from the Bible almost every day. It seems that I’ve been working through Jeremiah for a LOOOONG time.  This morning I landed in the middle of chapter 51, where I found the following sentence: “Everyone is stupid and without knowledge.” (17a) 

I have my doubts that I’ll be seeing THAT verse on anybody’s wall or sampler, but I can imagine, can’t I?

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Likes and Upvotes

Towards the end of our long sojourn in Taiwan we befriended a lonely Canadian woman who taught a little English here and there, basically just hanging on from week to week before she returned to her parents’ home on the prairie.  With too much time on her hands, she increasingly depended on social media for human connection. A trap into which she fell was checking earlier posts several times each day to see how many of her friends had liked something she had posted. I think that in these recent days of plague, I may have fallen into a similar trap.

I have  a few “go to” internet places where I put things which others can “like” or “upvote”.  The first is this blog. I post things about 5 times a week. They go up on the blog and a notification (with an attractive, subject-related photo) goes to Twitter. In the past week I’ve had email notes from a couple of friends and a phone call from another saying that they read and appreciate the blog. On the blog itself, though, there are neither comments, likes, nor evidence in the analytics section that ANYONE has gone to the page at all. I guess they must be getting it by email (or angelic messengers).

Another place is Khan Academy, where I answer learners’ questions in the fields of Grammar, US History, World History and Art History. If I respond to, say 50 questions a week, I might get replies saying “thanks” to 7 or 8. That’s polite. It shows both effort and appreciation. But I don’t garner a lot of upvotes. I’ve begun, when I see a question or another’s answer that is particularly good, to upvote and send a note saying that I’ve done so.  I tell myself that I’m educating people in “upvoting”, but I fear it’s the wanting-to-be-liked trap.

 

(Image from Pettyson on Pixaby)

Then there’s Twitter. Enough said.

I’m generous with “likes” and “upvotes” because I find them easy to give. So easy that I regard them as almost meaningless.   That being the case, why do I crave them so much?

David Alexander lives through these days of plague in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Sometimes, You oughta’ Touch Your Face

Some years ago, probably mid-way through our 11-year sojourn in Tainan, we spent several months in America.  Time in America was usually associated with weight gain on my part, and weight gain often led to noisy sleeping. Neither the weight gain nor the noise were welcome to my bedmate, who would poke me out of deep sleep, and sometimes eject me from the marital bed. 

I searched for a product to help (anything is easier than losing weight). I discovered snore strips, pieces of flexible plastic with glue on one side. When these are applied to the nose before sleep, they pull nostrils open, leading to easier breathing and, perhaps, quieter slumber. They worked for us.  Upon return to Taiwan I carried a supply. My weight went back to normal, so many of the strips remained “in reserve” in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

When, for various reasons, weight was gained and sleeping became noisy again, I was drawn to the medicine cabinet to what I knew could help there.  You might think that having something glued to one’s nose would be a give a strange feeling, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But after a few minutes you drop off to sleep anyway, so you forget it’s there. 

One morning after a night of undisturbed slumber I woke, cleaned up, breakfasted, dressed and went to work. My first job was to provide simultaneous translation from Taiwanese to English at morning prayers in the college chapel.  As I got settled into my seat and put my headphones in place, I happened to brush my fingers across my nose, discovering there an adherent strip of plastic to which I’d become anured overnight. 

I still swear by these things, and hear fewer morning imprecations from the one whose sleep I’d otherwise have disturbed. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

I Wanna’ Go Home

When I served in Vietnam as a US soldier in 1970, a popular country song that even I (a pop music top 40 kind of guy) knew was Detroit City, the refrain of which repeated the phrase “I wanna’ go home” 3 times in 4 lines.

Lately, I’ve been feeling similar, especially after reading things like the below:

https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/how-taiwan-battles-the-coronavirus/

The whole world is fighting against the coronavirus pandemic. Facing a new virus, infectious disease experts as well as government officials gear up to implement measures to control and mitigate its damage. Several Asian governments have been touted for their relatively successful control of the first wave of the epidemic: Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong. What’s left out in the discussion is what a small Pacific Ocean island the size of Maryland has achieved in fighting COVID-19.  The reason? The island of Formosa, or Taiwan, is not a member of the WHO. No explicit data from Taiwan has been shown in the WHO daily briefings.

Hit hard by the 2003 SARS epidemic that claimed 73 Taiwanese lives and affected another 346, Taiwan undertook serious preparations for a future epidemic. Thus the country became hypervigilant once the first case of mysterious pneumonia was reported in Wuhan, China. On January 20, Taiwan established a Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) composed of medical and public health experts and spearheaded by Vice President Dr. Chen Chien-jen, himself a well respected epidemiologist, and  led by Dr. Shi-Chung Chen. Surveillance, contact tracing, and isolation/quarantine were implemented straight away. Taiwan has managed to maintain a low case count through vigorous public health measures. There has not been any shut down of theaters, department stores, and, most importantly, schools although large gatherings are discouraged.

Taiwan saw a surge of cases March, mostly among students or expatriates returning from Europe and North America. While it put additional strain on the system, a strict quarantine was executed. Today a total of 80,000 people are under isolation and monitored with daily temperature and symptom checks, which are tracked by phone. Should the GPS data from a quarantined person’s phone indicate movement outside of a certain range, a follow-up phone call will be placed to confirm the person’s location.

Taiwan started COVID-19 RT-PCR tests in January. At the beginning tests were applied to people returning from the epidemic area or symptomatic patients with relevant travel history. When there was a surge of case numbers in neighboring Asian countries, health authorities did a retrospective screening of patients reported as having a severe flu. This identified the first case without any travel history (it turned out that the patient was a cab driver who had given a ride to a passenger from Zhejiang, China, another epidemic region). The CECC swiftly adjusted its criteria for surveillance and testing based on the development of the epidemic. Most recently, any patients who report a loss of the sense of smell or taste are mandated to be tested.

There are 373 cases as of April 6. In contrasts to previous reports from China, the patient demographic in Taiwan is much younger (with a median age of 32) with more female than male patients (57 to 43 percent). Of note, only 49 percent of patients presented with fever while 37 percent had rhinorrhea (commonly referred to as a runny nose). Only 7 percent of patients presented with full-blown pneumonia.

In addition to requiring physical distancing of more than 1 meter in public, as of April 1, face masks are mandatory when taking public transportation. As early as January, Taiwan’s government ramped up the production of face masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) as well as critical medical supplies. Sophisticated plans have been mapped out to triage patients to better utilize negative pressure rooms in preparation for any surge of community acquired patients.

We are cautiously optimistic, with sporadic community acquired cases without travel or contact history.

Fighting the coronavirus is an all-hands-on-deck effort; CECC leads the effort with very effective coordination between government agencies. A “epidemic fighting fleet” has been assembled by the Department of Transportation to pick up passengers returning from epidemic areas to facilitate contact tracing. Apps were developed to streamline face mask buying. The virus might mutate fast, but our trans-agency effort also responds swiftly.

In addition to strict public health measures, we also strive to develop point of care diagnostics and antibody assays, hoping to advance the science as well as better identify patients. The thriving biomed industry in Taiwan is taking part in the development of therapeutics and vaccines; Silmitasertib (CX-4945) is one promising candidate being investigated right now.

Taiwan is not only a beacon of democracy, but also living proof that control of an emerging virus can be achieved through science, technology, and democratic governance. No draconian autocratic measures are required.

Christine Chiou is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases working at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. She trained and practiced in Taiwan and participated in Taiwan’s efforts to fight the SARS epidemic in 2003. The views expressed in this article are hers alone.

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

 

Photo Review

Watching television news in these days of plague, one sees many familiar faces in unfamiliar homelike places far from studios. The same is true for experts who, instead of coming to studios, address us from home. It’s easy to determine the level of professional support they’ve been given by the camera angle. Professionals look straight into a camera lens at eye level. Amateurs seem to have a web-cam at chin-level aimed up.

A camera-angle issue popped up for me in a picture I scanned last week while I was scanning some of the photos we’ve collected over our 60+ years of life. I sorted all of the snapshots and other things got into discrete annual collections. After they’re further processed, someone with a greater need for detail than myself will scan them into archive quality files. Just for something to do, I began tossing them onto a cheap scanner and hitting, “go”. I got  my childhood, adolescence and 20s, onto a .usb drive first, then proceeded to the oversize stuff. 

Wedding photos revealed something that I hadn’t been able to see or admit at the time. Once before I’d looked at them and recognized that, at age 28, my hairline had begun to recede. It was hard to admit then (and it still is). Just before my 40th birthday someone took a photo from the back of a classroom where I was among the students. That was the first time I noticed that I’d  grown a bald spot. The spot and the hairline met a few years later. 

Among the wedding photos there’s one taken when my head was tilted downward to share a kiss with my beautiful young bride. Last week, for the first time,  I noticed how thin things had already become on top. 

Reviewing and scanning old photos may be a worthy project, but this week it was not good for my soul. 

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.