Taipei Diversions
Back in 2008, on my first visit to Taiwan, I was so amazed by the holdings in the National Palace Museum that I requested a second-day, follow-up visit. Since I’ve spent most of the Fall semester in Taipei, I had a chance to re-visit the museum yet again – along with numerous other sites & diversions in the city (both returns and first-time visits).
One treasure in the museum, for example, is a Bailu Wucai porcelain. “Bailu” means "One Hundred Deer," and it is a homonym (i.e., same sound, different spelling) for words that convey the benefits of a prestigious government position. Thus, a gift of such a porcelain conveys a powerful message to the recipient. The porcelain shown in the photo has only 89 deer, not one hundred – and I originally thought that this was perhaps a bit of Chinese hyperbole (e.g., the 800 Heroes only included 414 soldiers). But I learned it’s just a descriptive label and not a literal one, in the same sense that the wucai (five color) porcelain vase actually has more than five colors.
Other museums and landmarks on the agenda included the 228 Park and Memorial Museum, which memorializes the February 28, 1947 rebellion (leading to almost forty years of Martial Law on the island); the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial; the National Taiwan Museum’s Main Building & its Natural History branch; and the Changing of the Guard at the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.
On a rainy, overcast night by Taipei 101, I almost thought I was in a scene from Blade Runner! And the Financial Times published an article entitled “Architecture to See in 2023” which included the Taipei Performing Arts Center…. but I decided to get a head start, and saw it in late 2022 instead.
One particularly interesting site was the Nanmen Branch of the National Taiwan Museum, which was the site of a chemical factory producing camphor and opium products. Camphor is a substance that was historically derived from certain trees found in Taiwan and East Asia, and used in traditional medicine, scents, foods, and religious rites. Both the Qing Dynasty and the Japanese established monopolies in Taiwan, and the factory – now a designated historic site – traces the development of that industry, as well as opium-derived products.
During my visit at the factory site, there happened to be an exhibit about Taiwan’s electrification – with one rather disturbing historical application. Camphor trees were located in the mountainous center of the island, near the home ground of indigenous tribes. The Japanese monopolists wanted to control access to the forestry resource, and so set up electrified fencing. Local tribes were obviously unfamiliar with such technology, resulting in both deaths and electric shock injuries, and ultimately the loss of their ancestral territory. The display noted it reflects “…the dark side behind the civilization achieved by new energy.”
National Cheng Kung University
The Poet at NCKU
Thanksgiving break brought an opportunity to head down to Tainan once again, to visit my former student Tzu Yuan Chao and her colleagues and students at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). As noted in the posting below, Prof. Chao now heads the Urban Planning Department at NCKU, and she arranged a busy schedule for my visit – including lunch session with an educational group promoting climate change instruction; a three-hour lecture for one of her courses; and a half-day meeting with one of her research groups working on a significant problem: Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) for Taiwan’s energy future.
Like many others, Taiwan sees a solar future – but the siting of significant solar (and other renewable energy) units is contentious in an island with protected national parks, valuable agricultural land, and crowded urban density. IRP is an attempt to deal with the demand as well as the supply side of that energy future – and Prof. Chao’s multi-year, government-funded project is wrestling with numerous siting, political and socioeconomic factors to help make that future possible.
The visit to Tainan was lots of fun, and I had a chance to see The Poet, the sculpture at the entrance to the university which was created by the artist Pu Tian-Sheng. It was inspired by Lu Xun, the writer discussed in a previous Shanghai posting -- although I was told that it was more closely modeled on the artist’s own son! I was too late to see the large NCKU mask that had been placed over it, to fit in with recent campus ambiance – but the IRP team did its part in the photo below.
National Taiwan University
I’m very fortunate to be spending the Fall 2022 academic semester as a ‘Visiting Scholar’ at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei. Our international HNC students miss the Chinese immersion so important in Nanjing, and NTU has graciously agreed to host both HNC students and faculty to make that a reality, given zero-covid difficulties on the Mainland. It’s also great to be in the same time zone as our Nanjing-based HNC students -- so those Zoom classes don’t approach midnight, like last year’s efforts!
I’m especially lucky to be based in the NTU Engineering School’s Graduate Institute of Building & Planning, headed up by Professor Liang-Chih Chen. Prof. Chen is an engineer/architect with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and his group is exploring a range of important green energy and sustainability concerns; technological capacity building; and their linkage to economic geography. And you can tell from the beautiful photos that this is not exactly a hardship posting!
This Taiwan visit was coordinated by Professor Tzu Yuan Chao, who heads the Urban Planning Department at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). For those of you with a truly exceptional memory, Tzu Yuan was a former (Penn) student of mine who similarly coordinated my previous Taiwan visits in 2008 and 2009. More about her & NCKU in a future posting!
U.S. Civil War Tour — II
I was in DC for the Hopkins-Nanjing Center’s 35th Anniversary session in June, and took advantage of the visit to see some nearby Civil War battle sites. Last summer I did a U.S. Civil War “bookends” tour, heading to where it started (Fort Sumter) and ended (Appomattox Court House), and that in turn led me to read the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, by Princeton University history professor James McPherson.
What a stunning piece of work that is! Vivid and erudite, well-researched and exceedingly well-written, it provides a cogent description of a conflict that we are still living with. I took in three battle sites that played a major role in the war, as Confederate General Robert E. Lee tried to move the battle from Southern territory into the North, to pressure the Union to sue for peace.
Manassas is in Virginia, and was the site of two major battles – the first early in the war (in July, 1861), and the second a little more than a year later (in August, 1862). The Confederates won both battles, and it was in the first that Thomas J. Jackson was given the nickname “Stonewall.” That was provided by a southern general who observed Jackson, but it isn’t clear whether the term was meant to be indicative of his formidable solidity in battle, or instead his lack of movement and action. The general was soon killed, so his intention couldn’t be determined – but the sobriquet held, and his troops were thereafter known as the “Stonewall Brigade.” His statue, along with one of the earliest battlefield monuments (erected in 1865), are shown below.
Harpers Ferry is located in West Virginia, and was the site of a famous incident led by the Abolitionist John Brown. In 1859, before the Civil War started, Brown was hoping to foment a slave insurrection, and he and small group captured the armory in that town – and then waited for the U.S. Army to arrive. They did arrive the next evening – led by two officers who would later play a key role in the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart. Brown was captured, and he was hung in December of that year. Later, the song John Brown’s Body became a favorite marching tune of the Union army.
After Lee’s victory at Manassas, he headed north into Maryland, but the Union still had a large contingent at Harpers Ferry. Lee sent Stonewall Jackson to deal with that situation – and Jackson’s rout of the incompetent Union commander there resulted in the largest surrender of U.S. Army troops (12,500) until the Bataan Death March of WWII.
Lee moved into Maryland, and met the Union Army at a battlefield named for the nearby Antietam Creek (by the North) and the nearby town of Sharpsburg (by the South). This was the single bloodiest day in U.S. history. More than 6,300 soldiers were killed, and total casualties (killed, wounded and missing) were estimated to be approximately 23,000. One especially ferocious site, documented in post-battle photographs, became known as "Bloody Lane" ; the photos showed that it was possible to walk along the sunken road without touching the ground.
While many know about the battle of Gettysburg, Princeton’s McPherson has also written a book more narrowly focused on Antietam (which I purchased at the battlefield site). That book states:
Union victory at Antietam, limited though it was, arrested Southern military momentum, forestalled foreign recognition of the Confederacy, reversed a disastrous decline in the morale of Northern soldiers and civilians, and offered Lincoln the opportunity to issue a proclamation of emancipation. In a war with several crucial turning points, the battle of Antietam was the pivotal moment for the most crucial of them all.
Belfast & Northern Ireland
The postings immediately below describe a six-week trip to Europe – and I ended my travels (perhaps not surprisingly!) in Northern Ireland. You’ll notice a similar pattern, with stops there in 2016 and 2018, to see my cousin Bryan and his wife Mary. Bryan was my college roommate back in the 1960s, and this week-long stopover became our usual family affair, with Mary’s siblings and relatives joining us for a lively dinner, her cousin Anne showing us around Belfast, and my brother Mark flying in from the States.
Anne lives near the university area in Belfast, and so our visit included a stop at the Ulster Museum, which has a whole section dedicated to ‘The Troubles,’ as well as local history, art and other collections. The museum is located in the Botanic Gardens, and so we also visited the Tropical Ravine House, originally built in 1889, which features a sunken ravine running the length of the building, with balconies for viewing on each side.
Given my recent extended time in Italy, I was also shown the statue of Galileo housed in nearby Queen’s University (Mary’s alma mater). Sculpted by Pio Fedi, a well-known nineteenth-century artist, the work was brought back from Italy by one of the University’s medical professors. It too spent time in the Ulster Museum, but was moved to its present site in 2001. Supposedly, rubbing Galileo’s foot before an exam brings luck…. a rather strange belief, given his rationalist leanings!
Bologna/Ravenna/Padua
I spent six months in Bologna last year, but the red and “dark orange” lockdown criteria (the latter because officials were obviously very reluctant to go to red!) meant that I couldn’t really travel very much. To make up for that, I headed to Bologna again -- not only to check in at SAIS Europe, but also to see all of those sights I missed last year!
One attraction in Bologna itself was an environmental-infrastructure edifice: a cistern built in 1563/4, and designed to provide water for the Fountain of Neptune (seen in a previous posting) near the Piazza Maggiore. The Valverde Cistern was mis-identified as a Roman bath when it was re-discovered, and hence is sometimes still labeled the ‘Bagni di Mario’ – but it is a fascinating piece of infrastructure in the hills just south of the old city.
The mosaics of Ravenna are world-renowned – and justifiably so, as I found out on a day trip to the city with an art-history guide. We visited the five major UNESCO World Heritage sites there, as well as Dante’s Tomb and other nearby historical locations. Galla Placidia’s Mausoleum, one of the five sites, is especially notable, and her fascinating story is told in Judith Herrin’s 2020 book Ravenna. An orphaned princess, she was captured by the Goths when they sacked Rome in the year 410, and after three years captivity, ended up marrying Athaulf, the Gothic king successor to Alaric. He was quickly murdered, and she ended up being traded back to Rome for 600,000 measures of grain. A later marriage to a prominent general eventually led to a son, who became Emperor at the age of six…. and Galla Placidia moved the family to Ravenna, where as Empress she ruled in the name of her son and played a key role in building the churches and in developing the city.
Back in 2014, I wrote in one of my Florence postings about the Victorian-era art critic John Ruskin, and his appreciation of the artist Giotto. That of course led me to want to visit Giotto’s famous work in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua – and Ruskin’s 1850's critiques of its thirty-eight panels. The works themselves were completed in the early 1300s, when the artist was not yet 40 years old. Another day-trip from Bologna finally fulfilled this aspiration, meeting up with a guide in Padua who also provided a walking tour of the city. We had to spend 15 minutes in an air lock before entering the chapel, because the temperature and humidity are now tightly controlled. The video shown during that period helped to prepare for what we were going to see, but the fifteen minutes spent in the chapel (before the next group entered) was hardly sufficient for the riches on display. Still, reading Ruskin’s guide beforehand was very valuable – and the color prints in this printed version far surpassed the black-and-white woodcuts that had to be used in Ruskin’s day!
Sicily & Malta
For many years now, Sicily has been on my ‘bucket list’ of places to visit…. and this year that trip finally came true! I arranged a week-long tour, which had an option to go on to Malta – which I didn’t hesitate to add.
This is not the place for a detailed travelogue; I would only note that the tour turned out to be everything I hoped for…. and more! I was worried that there would be very few tourists because of covid, and that the tour might therefore be cancelled. Instead, I was amazed to find that fully 23 people signed up: 22 Italians, and me! We spent a week traveling around the island, seeing all of the major sights. Just a few pics:
I’m sure it’s easy to guess my reading list for this trip! Number one, of course, was Guiseppe Di Lampedusa’s The Leopard. This classic novel describes the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy in the 1860s, as Garibaldi landed in the west of the island and spearheaded the unification of Italy and demands for democracy. Its famous line appears quite early: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” I was quite moved by the book, and especially the chapter set in 1888 when the Prince passes away. Lampedusa wrote the book when he himself was very ill, and died before it was published. It is truly an astonishing work – and led me to both the 1963 movie (starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale), and a more recent ‘second-order’ novel by Steven Price entitled Lampedusa (a novel about the original author writing his own novel). Both were enjoyable, and paid suitable respect to the source.
Other obvious Sicilian reading material includes the Inspector Montalbano mystery series, authored by Andrea Camilleri. Thirty-one of these books were written before the author passed away, and they became a staple of Italian television – so much so that our tour guide frequently pointed out where specific scenes had been filmed, and his Italian audience was well-attuned to the series. I was playing catch-up, and so far have read only the first half-dozen novels – but look forward to reading remaining ones, as well as those television programs.
Then it was on to Malta – a nearby set of islands with an equally complicated history. I was able to explore Valletta and Mdina with a local guide, as well as the islands of Gozo and Comino. Everything about Malta seems…. well, the word I would use is “solid.” It’s central location in the Mediterranean has obviously provided a contentious history, and all of its buildings seem prepared to endure an extended siege. Luckily, my sister had a childhood school-mate who lives there – and so I was also able to spend a wonderful evening with Tessa & Josef, who not only treated me to a delightful dinner overlooking the harbor, but also provided a very knowledgeable mini-tour and commentary!
Rome
The last time I was in Rome, I had my wallet stolen….. so I was especially careful on this trip to guard my possessions. The city was packed, because I went on Easter weekend, and stayed for a week in a hotel very near the Forum. It was a chance to re-visit well-known sites there, as well as take in some new ones (the Capitoline museum, Hadrian’s villa and the Tivoli fountains outside of town, etc.).
Some were a bit more ERE-oriented, however: my engineering instincts led me to the site where the Cloaca Maxima fed into the Tiber River – and you can see from the pictures that I didn’t have to fight the crowds in that case! The Cloaca Maxima (Great Sewer) was quite an engineering marvel of its time, and Livy’s first-century history of the city suggests that it was a work “for which the new magnificence of these days has scarcely been able to produce a match.”
I also used the opportunity to follow up with what I’ve previously called my “ongoing, lifelong, never-ending Michelangelo appreciation tour.” This included first-time visits to see Moses at San Pietro in Vincoli – which often gets attention because of the horns on his head (a result of the then-prevalent biblical translation of Exodus). Another was the Risen Christ in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. That one was not finished by Michelangelo, but was sent to Rome to meet contract terms, and had a mixed history. An apprentice (called “clumsy” by the church’s visitor guide) made the first attempt to finish it, and a local sculptor then took on the task -- “unsuccessfully,” according to that same guide. But other critics have been much more generous, and some even effusive. Unfortunately, the work suffered even further when a prudish bronze drape was added in 1546 to cover the figure’s genitals.
I prepped for this visit with several books: Anthony Doerr won a Pulitzer Prize for his fiction, but I picked up a copy of his Four Seasons in Rome in a used book shop in Paris earlier on this trip. It’s a memoir about a year that Doerr spent at the American Academy in Rome, with his wife and newly-born twin boys. My visit was certain a lot more restful than his stay! My youngest daughter had brought home a copy of Mathew Kneale’s Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, which suggested why the city is such a palimpsest…. with layer upon layer built upon previous (often shattered) remains. And Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome definitely made the city’s past come alive! It was one of the books I carried on last year’s visit to Bologna, but didn’t get to explore with all those red & “dark orange” lockdowns in effect.
Tuscany Retreat
More than twenty years ago I met Janosch Ondraczek at the UN, and our current meetings have now evolved into a very sweet deal for me!
Both Janosch and his wife, Jana Stoever, are Ph.D. environmental economists, and whenever they come to visit me, I put them to work giving lectures to my students. I’ve tapped into their expertise at both Penn and HNC. When I visit them, however, it seems I always manage to do so at vacation time – and they’re very, very kind to include me in their family outings. They also pick some really wonderful locations! A few years ago it was the south of France, and this year's choice was the hills of Tuscany, just south of Siena.
Daughters Anni and Suna are growing up very quickly, and this year we were joined by another family from Berlin, whose work is similarly linked to environmental matters. There was horseback riding and swimming, we all headed into Siena on a day trip, and had dinners in the evening watching the sunset and drinking local wine. A truly memorable experience…. and I very much appreciate these invitations!