An interesting comparison

This comparison between the Neihu Line and Kaohsiung MRT was interesting.
Ma Ying-jeou's public works record is looking a lot shabbier now than it did a year ago, with the Maokong Gondola still out of order and the Neihu Line having all these troubles, in addition to the wasted effort to revive Jiancheng Circle. To be fair, the KMRT's construction was hardly smooth, and the KMRT is now very underused, but on the other hand Kaohsiung is in some ways a much nicer place to live than Taipei, after nearly a decade of DPP rule there.
Regardless of who's to blame, the main moral of this is that the only way to prevent such fiascos is for the people to keep a close eye on any and every politician- apathy has never helped anyone. This is as true in the US as it is in Taiwan, or anywhere else.

Taiwan's Best Places to Live

There are no big surprises, though I wouldn't have expected Keelung to be so low.

Promoting Taipei Food

The NYT (via IHT) gives Taipei cuisine a shout-out. I think they could have been a bit more adventurous, and focus a bit more on street food, but it's nice to see Taipei get some acknowledgment- especially at the expense of Beijing, a city with perhaps the most segregated food scene in East Asia.
Also interesting is that the name of the article has been changed from "Feasting at the Table of the Other China", to "Feasting at the Table of Taipei."

Emperor Ma

Unsurprisingly, fitting modern politicians into Confucian ceremonies is turning out to be controversial. People may call Taiwan a "Confucian democracy", but what does that mean exactly? Is Confucianism possible with no emperor?

Taiwanese minorities and Ma Ying-jeou

This article doesn't actually say much, but it provides some insight into the relationship between the Hakka, aborigines and the Taiwanese government.

Polluting ghost money

The issue of pollution caused by burning paper money is getting a lot of coverage lately. On the 15th of this Ghost Month (which happened to be the 15th of August) much of Taipei was filled with billowing smoke and the smell of incense from all the stores burning ghost money and making offerings, so it seems they still have a long way to go to stamp this tradition out. I suspect handing ghost money over to the government for a mass burning is less meaningful to many people than burning it themselves, to say nothing of burning it online. I personally would be sad to see this tradition disappear, since it's part of what makes Taipei interesting- you can see Chinese tradition in action. A more ideal solution might be using a less-polluting paper to make ghost money.
Incidentally, there were similar criticisms of sky lanterns back during Lantern Festival, but I think there's even less of a chance of sky lanterns disappearing- especially if the only replacement the environmental bureau can think of is releasing sky lanterns online.

Impressing Your Hick Relatives

Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin has decided that Taipei's supposedly dirty night markets will bring shame on Taipei when mainland tourists really start flooding in, so he's decided to take action.
I don't think any Taipeier I ever met thought there was a problem with night markets to begin with. If they did, they wouldn't eat at them, and then the night markets would go out of business and disappear.
Even if there was a problem, why is Hau Long-bin fixing it only when mainlanders are coming to Taipei? Shouldn't he be improving night markets for the sake of the native Taipeiers who elected him, not to impress mainlanders who come from a country that's nowhere as clean as Taiwan to begin with? And why is he only concerned with impressing several tens of thousands of mainland Chinese, as opposed to the millions of Japanese, Koreans, Americans, Australians, Europeans and others who have been coming to Taiwan for years?
This sort of thinking reminds me of the mainland Chinese government's way of thinking- they are obsessed with building huge, futuristic buildings that will supposedly impress foreigners, but put little thought into things that will make people's lives easier. Until now Taiwan has been the opposite- other than 101, there are very few attempts to impress outsiders, but life here is remarkably convenient, even more so than in the US. That's what will impress foreigners (including Chinese) the most about Taiwan.