December 2007 – The Foreigner in Formosa

Puttin’ Away The Christmas Music

As is my wont, I picked up another boatload of Christmas CDs again this year. Favorites were:

#1. We Three Kings – Reverend Horton Heat

Christmas tunes done in Southern Rock style – wow! Highlights include Frosty the Snowman, as well as instrumental versions of Jingle Bells, We Three Kings, and Winter Wonderland. But best track would have to be What Child is This – a bizarro musical cross between Greensleeves and Ghost Riders in the Night.

#2. Dig That Crazy Christmas – Brian Setzer

There’s no dishonor in placing second after the Rev. Great jump blues versions of Angels We Have Heard on High, Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!, My Favorite Things, and Jingle Bell Rock. In addition, Gettin’ in the Mood (for Christmas) has some very fun lyrics set to Glenn Miller’s In the Mood.

(Didn’t much care for Setzer’s version of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, but on the other hand, his ‘Zat You, Santa Claus? hits the spirit of the song a bit more precisely than Louis Armstrong’s.)

#3. The Venture’s Christmas Album

Instrumental Christmas music – 60’s surf style. Nice versions of Sleigh Ride, What Child is This (titled Snowflakes on the album), Blue Christmas, We Wish You a Merry Christmas as well as White Christmas.

#4. Cool Yule – Bette Midler

Pretty good stuff. The title track bops along cheerfully – but it’s Midler’s very fun Mele Kalikimaka that really knocks me out.

#5. A Perry Como Christmas

Taken as a whole, this album is far too slow for my taste, so it’s stretching things to call this a favorite. However, some tunes will sound great on my compilation CDs, including Christmas Dream, My Favorite Things, (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays, Here We Come a-Caroling and O Holy Night.

Postscript: Purchased A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra at the last minute, and only had time to listen to it once – so I can’t honestly rate it. Only mention it at all because there was this interesting bit of trivia in the liner notes:

The stirring music [to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing] is by composer Felix Mendelssohn, who originally had it written as part of a choral work commemorating the Tercentenary of John Gutenberg’s invention of printing.

Wikipedia confirms the melody was never intended for Christmas use. Well, I’ll be!

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this year. And if you’re living in Taiwan and you didn’t get any turkey, cheer up. Your local 7-11 might still have some of this DELIGHTFUL poultry-flavored substitute in stock:

Roasted turkey-flavored Doritos tortilla chips.

(Photo by The Foreigner)

UPDATE: There were other Christmas CDs I could’ve said good things about, but I’d hardly consider them favorites. (While at the opposite end of the spectrum, The New Andy Williams Christmas Album was just about the only purchase I completely regretted. Sorry – didn’t do anything for me.)

One final note: am I the only one greatly disturbed by the sight of Billy Idol singing Jingle Bell Rock?

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Not To Be Nitpicky, But…

Saw this Reuters story in one of the local Taiwanese papers sometime within the last week, and didn’t think this should go uncorrected:

Upcoming elections in Taiwan, with lawmakers keen to appear firm on defence, nudged parliament to pass the most extensive arms budget in years, including funds to produce a missile that can strike China.

[…]

The KMT initially threatened to slash the budget for the Hsiung Feng missiles but eventually passed one third of the T$3.84 billion (US$118 million) sought for 2008, and froze the rest.

The missile, early versions of which have already been built, is being domestically developed and is believed to have a range of about 600 km (400 miles), making it capable of striking cities as far away as Shanghai. [emphasis added]

The Hsiung Feng IIE is a cruise missile, and is probably pretty accurate, even if one discounts its advertised accuracy of one meter. Unlikely that something like that would be pointed at CITIES and employed as a crude weapon of terror against civilians.

By a democracy that cares about world opinion, at any rate.

Upstage ME, Will Ya?

Best Taiwanese photo of the year, IMHO. And the kicker is that someone told me the shot was taken when KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou was having a serious discussion with reporters about Sino-Taiwanese relations.

(Because nothing, but nothing says, "Gravitas," to voters more than a politician talking foreign policy…in his bright red Santa suit.)

Taiwan’s Top Quote of 2007

I nominate, "Don’t tase me, Ao," which people in the legislature must surely be saying now to independent lawmaker Li Ao.

(And please, no nitpicking that electric stun batons and tasers are two COMPLETELY different devices!)

Christmas At Sea

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every ‘long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves!

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she’ll never stand it," our first mate Jackson cried.
…"It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

What Does Santa Claus Say When He Gets To Taiwan?

Hao, Hao, Hao!*

Chinese terracotta warrior dressed as Santa Claus. From Taoyuan, Taiwan.

(Terracotta Warrior Santa from Taoyuan Furniture Store. Photo by The Foreigner.)

Those interested for related shots might also want to check out this fellow’s compilation of The Top Ten Strange Santas from Japan. Liked what commenter #4 at Neatorama had to say about them:

Wait a minute…we turn a Turkish bishop into a red-suited fat elf who lives at the North Pole and flies reindeer around the world and you wanna argue that the Japanese are the ones who got it wrong?

Touche’!

* Mandarin for good, good, good.

UPDATE (Dec 30/07): This December’s political correctness news was that a store in Australia insisted its Santas say, "Ha, ha, ha," because prostitutes might find the more traditional "Ho, ho, ho," offensive.

If this is true, then someone obviously needs to be packed off to sensitivity re-education camp. Because as John Derbyshire points out, the new laugh is **GROSSLY OFFENSIVE** to members of the Hha-ha ethnic minority.

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Spy For China? Get A Free Trip To The Fatherland!

From the Dec 21st ed of the Washington Times:

China’s intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

[…]

According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, China’s Ministry of State Security, the main civilian spy service, carried out the operations by setting up a Chinese translation service in Hawaii that represented itself as a U.S.-origin company.

The ruse led to classified contracts with the Navy and NSA to translate some of the hundreds of thousands of intercepted communications gathered by NSA’s network of listening posts, aircraft and ships.

[…]

China’s intelligence service used intelligence officers and supporters to identify Chinese Americans with access to secrets who would be approached and offered free visits to China, often to meet relatives. The Chinese would then use the visit to attempt to recruit the Americans as spies. [emphasis added]

Wretchard has more at the Belmont Club.

DPP Dirty Tricks Campaign Dealt Serious Blow

Gee, now that Taiwan’s Referendum on joining U.N. makes island more isolated, does that mean that the independence party’s SUPER-SECRET PLAN to poison their own candidates and blame it all on the KMT has hit a major snag?

I mean, wouldn’t the conspiracy have gone sooo much easier if President Chen had had access to Vladimir Putin’s private stash of polonium-210? Just how will Taiwan ever manage, now that it’s lost all of that INVALUABLE Russian support?

Psychoses On Parade

Doesn’t the KMT brag about being Taiwan’s foreigner-savvy party?

A senior US official with knowledge of the meeting earlier this month between American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) has described as false most of the statements attributed to Burghardt by Taiwanese media, especially that Washington favors the KMT over the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the presidential election.

But the official said Siew had talked about so-called "dirty tricks" that the KMT claims the DPP will use to influence the election. [emphasis added]

Exactly what "dirty tricks" did the KMT’s candidate for V.P. suggest Taiwan’s main independence party might pull before the election?

Provoke clashes between KMT supporters and DPP members during 2-28 commemoration marches or 3-14 marches protesting China’s Anti-Secession Law. Major violence would, in theory, provide President Chen with justification to declare martial law and cancel the elections.
Provoke a major international incident by detaining Chinese fishing boats somewhere in the Taiwan Strait. Another dastardly excuse for martial law.
Stage an assassination attempt on its OWN presidential candidate so that a man more to President Chen’s liking could take his place. (In American terms, this would be somewhat akin to a Democratic Party front-runner asserting in all seriousness that President Bush plans to off Mike Huckabee in order to give Mitt Romney a better chance at the nomination!)

Talk about overplaying your hand. In making prediction #1, I suspect the KMT was angling for an American expression of concern regarding the marches – anything to reduce local turnout for marches that would otherwise benefit the independence parties. And who knows, if the KMT had limited themselves to that point, they might have gotten what they had wanted. But with forecast #3, they can forget it. About the only thing Siew can expect from America now is a nice shiny tinfoil hat for Christmas. If he’s LUCKY.

Up until now, it’s been reasonable to assume that Washington preferred a KMT administration to take over in ’08, protestations of neutrality notwithstanding. But surely this little conversation must be giving some people pause. Learning that your favorite candidate for vice-president happens to be a certifiable loony-tune has been known to do that on occasion.

Thought this was a great line from Wednesday’s Taipei Times:

As with other meetings, Burghardt was "almost completely in a listening mode" about concerns raised by Siew.

Almost completely in listening mode. I’ll BET. I mean, what’s the guy supposed to do, ARGUE with the man?

UPDATE (DEC 30/07): Interesting, this:

[The coast guard from the Taiwanese island of Kinmen] yesterday seized 12 Chinese intruding into Kinmen waters and arrested 30 Chinese fishermen.

Whoa. Sounds like the KMT might be on to something here.

No, no, just a second:

Kinmen Coast Guard official Weng Shin-chi said Chinese fishing boats often intrude into Kinmen waters to catch eel alevins (small eel) in the wintertime, which has compromised the security of Kinmen and its water lanes.

So Chinese fishermen often intrude into Taiwanese waters, and they’re often arrested for doing so. And just how long does the law say they can be held?

…according to the Statute Governing the Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, Taiwanese authorities have the right to detain Chinese criminal suspects for five days.

Five whole days. Tough to see an international incident blowing up over that kind of "provocation".

(Quotes from Coast guard captures Chinese boats, Taipei Times, Dec 23/07. Sorry, no link available.)