Day 6 -- Shopping, Protests, Our Neighborhood

Day 6 of our Taiwan odyssey was partly a recovery day, but was also a day of adventure and discovery.

We gave ourselves the morning off, with the kids catching up on their journals and the parents catching up on laundry, emails, and other chores.  It was a needed break.

We headed out just before lunch to do a some shopping and general wandering around.  We started by going to the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center -- four floors of Taiwanese handicrafts and gifts. The woman at the information booth inside told us we could get some good Chinese food at the National Taiwan University Hospital cafeteria and told us how to get there. Unfortunately, just as we were about to go into the cafeteria, a student walked by with a McDonald's bag. Ryan asked us for some familiar food and we agreed; we asked the student where McDonald's was and he pointed us down the street.

As we walked to McDonald's it became clear that a rather sizable protest was going to take place today. Concertina wire and barbed wire surrounded government buildings we walked by, and we saw police officers with shields and batons loading onto a bus. This, of course, worried us. But we noticed that we were surrounded by local families with young children who didn't seem to be worried in the slightest, so we proceeded with lunch. I should note that we didn't all go to McDonald's. Jonathan's teacher has asked him to be adventuresome with his food, so he bought a steamed bun at a nearby store. Unfortunately for him, he bought the extra-spicy version. To his credit, he ate most of it, but he did follow it up with a cheeseburger.

After lunch, we proceeded with our shopping.  I noticed an older gentleman in the book store wearing the same yellow ribbon I had noticed on the protest marchers a couple of days ago, so after confirming he spoke English, I asked him whether the protest would be dangerous. He told me that he was a professor management at the National Taiwan University and assured me that the protesters were peaceful. I mentioned that it wasn't necessarily the protesters I was most worried about. He again assured me, saying that the protest would be peaceful and there wouldn't be any trouble. Somewhat reassured, we finished up our shopping.

We made our way out of the store and started towards the MRT station when we noticed that our shortest route was blocked by a barricade stretching across a street from one building all the way to the opposite building. Our path blocked, we started walking back the way we came. We were close to the the main protest area, and we could see that it was filled with families and seemed entirely peaceful, so we decided to check it out.

I've posted about the anti-nuke protests before, and this was a part of that protest movement. The issue is the commissioning of a new nuclear power plant that has been in various stages of planning and construction for two or three decades. According to Kenny, a grad student (Berkeley undergrad) we met at the protest, the issues are partly general anti-nuke, but also specifically related to this plant. The plant has gone through two or three different designs and contractors over the years, and the latest design is a Japanese design that many are worried about. The government has promised extensive testing, but there is little confidence that the testing will, or even can, guarantee safety. In addition, because Taiwan is on a major fault line, the Taiwanese are worried about the potential for earthquakes and a Fukushima-type disaster.

By the time we arrived at the protest site, most of the protesters had already left to march to Taipei Main Station to occupy the streets outside. Some remained in a gathering area to converse and view the "occupation" on a big screen near the Presidential Palace. Here are some pictures of the remaining protesters outside the Presidential Palace:

 Kenny and I after he explained some of the issues:

Then this gentleman came along and explained in a very animated manner to both of us that he had proof that the design for the containment vessel was flawed and it, along with similar vessels in France and the U.S., may fail. He said he had the document proving that the design was faulty, but the government took the document and wouldn't give it back. Personally, I think Kenny's explanations were a lot better.

The barricade with yellow anti-nuke ribbons with the Presidential Palace in the background.

The boys at the protest.

The TV coverage of the protest.

The protest t-shirts for sale.

This saying was very popular at the protest.  I think it's fair to say that the protesters aren't fond of the current Taiwanese government.

On some of the shirts, you can notice a sunflower as part of the design. In addition to the anti-nuke protests, there are also protests against a proposed trade agreement with China that has been fast-tracked through the legislature here.  The issues in that protest revolve around whether a favorable trade treaty with China will open the door to eventual Chinese domination of the Taiwanese economy and then of Taiwan itself. The issues are different, but there is significant overlap in the protests and the root cause -- lack of trust of the current government. We've heard next to nothing about these issues in the U.S., but the protests have been large, with estimate of up to 500,000 protesters of the trade treaty and 50,000 anti-nuke protesters yesterday.

After leaving the protest, we headed to our hotel and then out to dinner. We'd heard that a street near our hotel called Yongkang Street had some nice restaurants to we decided to check it out -- boy, we should have done that earlier.  It's a ten-minute walk from our hotel and it is full of restaurants of all types. We could eat here every night of our vacation and not run out of great-looking restaurants to try. The neighborhood also has a great little park with attractive apartments surrounding it. We haven't seen all that much of Taipei, but this is the first neighborhood that I found livable. We will definitely be bringing Malia to this park in the next few days.

At Yongkang Park at 9:45 p.m.:

Walking back from dinner -- Shelley noted the juxtaposition of these two women:

Good night.