Went to the conference today, and since I hadn't read the agenda in advance, I was surprised by seeing so many familiar faces; especially Steven Phillips and Lowell Dittmer. 

What a pleasant surprise! The two were here in Taiwan last year for legislative election observations and I was one of the students who took them for a field trip in Tainan and Kaohsiung. (series of related blogs are on the right side panel under title "2008 Legislative Election Observations") Professor Phillips later on helped me out tremendously with my applications and thus I owe him a huge debt. If I eventually end up at UVA, he would be one of the main factors that made it happen.

Day 2--1/12

• 9:45

We teamed up in groups of two, with Professor Phillips and I heading for one of the polling booths in North District, which was nearby my Tainan home, while Professor Dittmer and Wei-Chia headed for the polling booth close to his house in An-nan district.

Before arriving at the polling booth, which was a few minutes walk from my house, I thought it would be nice to stop by and introduce Professor Phillips to my parents. They got to know each other and had a wonderful conversation. My parents were curious of the reason why Professor Phillips picked China studies as one of his concentrations; they were also interested in knowing what he was expecting to observe on this trip.

Professor Phillips told us there were no Asians where he grew up, but he simply just picked the field and started to learn Chinese in undergraduate school. THAT was pretty cool! He also told us foreign scholars participate in election observation trips for a few reasons: One, to observe the legitimacy of the election or the government. Second, to get a closer look at the progress and outcome. Specifically, because we were using a whole new voting system, the two-vote system, they were interested in its' effect. In addition, he also told us that scholars usually don't accept continuous observation sponsorship invitations from the same party. In the case of Taiwan, they alternative between both sides, namely green coalition and blue coalition, to avoid being tagged as a "green" or 'blue" scholar. I think our whole family learned a lot from that conversation.

My parents also contributed to the observation trip by giving Professor Phillips one of the government issued election brochure, which has the names of the candidate, party, and candidate or party platforms. We did some quick research with it and it was quite useful.

By the way, I need to make an apology and clarification because I found out later on that apparently Chu-Yu Soong(Chinese link), the representative for the Hakka party, wasn't James Soong--even though they had exactly the same Chinese characters. Well, kind of misunderstood you here, Mr. Soong!

• 10:30

After a short walk, we arrived at the polling booth. Cell phones and photos weren't allowed, so I can't show any pictures here. I planned on asking the polling officials to let Professor Phillips have a closer look, but since they rejected, my dad and I went inside to cast our votes while Professor Phillips and my mom stayed outside to watch--they got to ask the booth policeman a few question instead. In the end, we got our chance to have a sneek peek on the inside from the exit, so Professor Phillips could have at least a clue of the process.

From my experience, the table where you get your legislative vote and the table where you get your referendum vote were directly next to each other. In addition, people in line in front and behind of me all took referendum votes. This is completely different from what I eventually heard from my friends in Taipei. They said the tables were far from each other, namely, situated across the the room at different corners, and no one would remind you to get your referendum vote. I think this contributes a lot to the results of the referendum.

• 11:30

After voting, all we could do was to wait for the results, so we went to An-Ping to meet with the others and have lunch.

An-Ping is an old harbor full of historical sites and delicious food(Here are some examples from the link. Starting from the top, shrimp rolls, marinated pork with rice, Dan-zai noodles, fish meatballs and shrimp meatballs soup, milkfish belly soup). They all taste great, but we didn't get to try them. But we got oyster omelets and shrimp omelets instead, which is also quite famous. Anyways, from all the food mentioned above, you can figure out that An-Ping is famous for seafood, especially shrimp and oyster.

By the way, although it was January, my guess was that the temperature was at least 30 degrees Celsius, so Professor and I got some shaved ice. This also reminds me of the preserved fruit that they sell at the "old street." Well, we had a tight schedule, so maybe next time!

Next, we took a tour around An-Ping Fort, which was built by the Dutch in 1624. Here's some pictures.

We were trying to find someone who would take a picture for us.

Professor Dittmer and Wei-Chia studying the history.

A picture of the old cannons--rebuilt models, not the original ones

After that, we went to see the An-Ping Tree House, which use to be a warehouse that stores salt for the Japanese. Eventually, the warehouse broke down and banyan trees grew on top of it. It was redesigned during the time I was studying in Taipei, and I haven't gotten to see it yet. Friends told me it was great for sight seeing--and for dating, too! Here's some excellent photos of it from another blog. And below are the photos we took walking through it.

Professor Phillips took a picture of me... and Professor Dittmer!


My secret photo shoot of Professor Phillips!


... and Professor Dittmer!

• 15:00

We were tired after all the site seeing under the hot, baking sun, and still had to wait until 16:00, which is the time voting booths start to count votes. So we went to Noah's ark for tea time and to kill some time.

We talked a little bit about our plans for the future, and a little more about the US presidential elections. We also tried to do some predictions on the results of the legislative elections. On the number of DPP seats, Professor Phillips guessed something closer to forty; Wei-Chia and I guessed forty to fifty, with me closer to fifty; Professor Dittmer was pretty optimistic and predicted a number in the early fifties. What would shock us later on was that we were all too optimistic! But right now, I'm going to save the results for the end.

In the case of electoral district redistribution, we all suspected some sort of gerrymandering. Geographically, the way Tainan electoral districts were distributed was awkward--although population distribution was quite even compared to other cities, with 378,000 vs 376,000. The Middle district and West district, which traditionally leans toward "blue" coalition because the population is constituted mostly by civil servants and veterans, were combined and included with the North and An-Nan district. This makes the First district(North, An-Nan, and Middle-West, ) more likely for KMT to win and the Second district(East, South, An-Ping) more likely for DPP to win. Whether this was a compromise made between both coalition requires further district tendency analysis.

• 16:00

We visited two vote counting booths in the East district. Both were situated near public housing, which is normally residence for veterans and their family, thus tend to vote for the KMT.

At the booth, there were representatives sent by both parties to supervise the process. While we were watching the counting, Professor Phillips did some quick predictions of the total amount of votes --by timing votes counted per minute multiplied by predicted counting time--and came up with approximately 1,200, which was pretty accurate. Wow, learned something here!

The first booth had Su-Po Kao (KMT) in first place when we left, and the second booth came up with him winning also, which was expected. We didn't see the first booth's results for the party vote, but the second booth also, as expected, came up with KMT winning.

Then we decide to see the election from another side of view, so we visited Su-Po Kao's opponent, DPP candidate, Ching-Te Lai's campaign HQ.

Outside the HQ, they were having this little vote-counting activity. Every once in a while, some booth would turn in their results, the host would then announce it, and if Lai won, even by the slightest votes, the crowd would explode in applause. See below:

Vote-counting activity for Lai supporters.


A closer view of the counting update.

A inside view of the HQ, with Lai's picture on the background.


Professors with DPP city counciler, Tsung-Yen Chen.

• 18:00

The professors had other plans for Sunday, so we took them to the bullet train station.

On the way, Professor Phillips joked around and said that we should give a reward to the person who most accurately predicted the result, and a penalty to the person who was way off. Fortunately, Wei-Chia and I picked a "safe" prediction, which was right in between both professors. And as later results showed, KMT grabbed 81 seats, while DPP could only manage 27. Therefore, I think I can formally declare Professor Phillips winning the bet!

Concluding my personal observations of the whole election, I think the DPP lost due to a few reasons(reasons other than that the DPP has been ruling for 8 years). First, they weren't solitary enough. They should of won a lot more in the south, but because of party fractions, they couldn't unite and play their "rally game," which they were so good at. Instead, the KMT made some improvements in rallying techniques. This, adding that they were so solitary compared to the DPP, helped the KMT gain a lot of ground in the south. The intense competition in Tainan is a great example because the KMT has never come so close despite losing.

Second, I'm still quite suspicious of the electoral district redistribution. As results turn out, the KMT got 51% of the party vote and the DPP got 37%. Either some of the voters voted for the DPP and didn't vote for their candidates or somehow the seats couldn't reflect the votes.

Both conclusions are equally interesting. I did find a few people that resulted in the former condition--voting simply for someone that could get things done or personal preference--but they were really a few. This then points to the latter condition. Without further research, I really can't be sure. It might not be gerrymandering in all electoral redistributions, but there might be in some. But again, without further statistics, I can't be sure which is true or has a greater effect.

I guess this observation trip is officially at it's end, and I want to thank all the people who has contributed to it. I also welcome further comments, especially if you have findings or explanations for the results of the election.

On President Chen's influence, Professor Phillips wrote:

From what I could follow, the most positive thing I heard about Chen's influence was that it would not hurt at the polls. Did anyone say that it would help DPP candidates obtain votes? Contrast this with several people we met with who said Ma would help legislative candidates.

Concerning the US and Taiwan independence, he wrote:

I tried to emphasize that independence activists were stuck with the fact that Americans are torn between realism and idealism on this issue--as we are on most major international issue.

Thanks for clearing up some of the facts!

Day 1--1/11

Our main observation objectives were legislative candidates Yuh-Chin Hong(洪玉欽) from the KMT and Yi-Ching Yeh(葉宜津) from the DPP. They were both in the First Election district in Tainan county, which was a really intense and rival competition. The day before we left for the trip, news came out that prosecutors were searching both parties for evidence of vote buying. Furthermore, both parties accused each other for violence and smearing. One of the questions that Professor Phillips and I were very interested in, was if they believed that the opposition really bought votes, and if so, how much were they paying for each vote. This was also the question we brought up during conversations with taxi drivers later on.

• 14:07

We boarded the 14:07 Taiwan High speed rail to Chiayi, which we simply just call the "bullet train," and arrived at around 15:30. Our taxi, which turned out to be a 9 seat van, was waiting for us outside. Our driver looked very "local"-- exactly what we asked for due to the destinations we were visiting-- until he told me that he was better acquainted with northern Taipei, especially Keelung area.

This is the part where I should tell everyone about the extremely exciting adventure we had with the driver.

We had three main destinations, Sinying city(Tainan county), Kaohsiung city, and Tainan city. The driver knew how to get to Sinying, but didn't "know" the city. Luckily my grandparents lived nearby, so I kind of knew how to get around. Fortunately, we got to the KMT HQ.

Later on, when we were going to the Kaohsiung KMT rally, he didn't know the intersection we were supposed to get off of, and neither did I. There were 3 intersections, so I picked the last one out of instincts and experience. It turned out correct. Then the driver simply froze at the bottom of the intersection. Although I used the word "froze", he was actually very calm. He softly asked me if we should take a right turn or a left turn-- with tons of cars jamming behind us at the same second. I totally didn't know Kaohsiung, and cars were piling up behind us. He repeated the question twice and looked as if he wouldn't budge if I didn't make the call. So again, I had to trust my instincts and sense of direction. I told him to make a right turn, which I hoped was really the right turn, to at least get out of the way. Then he stopped by the road to ask for directions. He asked me the destination twice and I told him twice. Thirty seconds later, he came back to ask me again because he forgot. If you want something done, you better do it yourself-- I got off the van, got the directions, and we finally got to the rally.

If you think our adventure came to an end, think twice. After the rally, our driver couldn't retrace our steps back to the intersection. Again, I'm glad my Mom gave me a great sense of direction-- once I get to a place I always know how to get back. I pointed out all the roads we took before, and successfully got to the freeway. Then again, the driver didn't know Tainan city, but since I grew up there, it wasn't a problem. We got to the hotel safely.

My Dad's suggestions to the driver: maybe he should bring along a map next time! Well, I totally agree with that, but no more "next time!"

Anyways, let's proceed with the trip.

• 16:15

We arrived at the KMT Tainan County HQ where we were supposed to meet with Mr.Tsai(蔡明顯), the HQ secretary general who was also our contact at the HQ. Unfortunately, since it was the day before the election, he was pretty busy. Therefore, he had Ms. Hsieh, a group leader to tour us around and answer our questions. She lead us to Yuh-Chin Hong's campaign HQ which was a few minutes down the street.

At the HQ, we met Mr. Lee, the campaign HQ director, who was a school principle. Ms. Hsieh and Mr. Lee answered Professor Phillips' questions for the next hour or so. The questions included their recent campaign status, strategy, HQ organization structure, and of course, the "vote buying" issue. According to them, they said the opposition campaign were paying 1,000~3,000 NT dollars per vote. Also, they said the DPP supporter were more "grass root", thus more prone to violence. My impression was that they seemed really confident and optimistic. In the mean time, since we were so busy talking, I forgot to take pictures of the HQ, Ms. Hsieh, or Mr. Lee. Thus, I don't have pictures for this destination. Seriously, trying to be neutral here. Not giving anybody preferential treatment or "dis-preferential" treatment!

• 17:30

We got back to the KMT HQ and met with Mr. Tsai who just got back. Professor Phillips and him had a short talk mainly about KMT's objectives for Tainan county. We got a lot of propaganda literature on the way out and took this picture below. On the right is Professor Phillips, and on the left is Mr. Tsai. On the background of the picture, you can also see the names of KMT candidate for each district on the poster. From Left to right: Yuh-Chin Hong, He-shun Li (李和順), Jian-Bau Wu(吳健保). As election results turned out, all of them eventually lost.

• 17:45

After the meeting with Mr. Tsai, I asked him to take us to someplace where we could take-out our dinner and then take us to Yi-Ching Yeh's campaign HQ. By the way, I acknowledged that they were rivalries, so I only asked him to help us get there. Anyways, he thought for a few seconds and came up with someplace he said was nice and promised us he would take us to Yeh's HQ. Since we were on a tight schedule, I was kind of nervous when it took us about 10 minutes to simply get to our restaurant. On the way there, I joked around with Professor Phillips and said that maybe Mr. Tsai was try to squeeze our time with the DPP since they were having this intense competition. Professor Phillips agreed and added that we were passing all these delicious food, namely a food stand called "God of food"(食神), which sells watery rice. He was so hilarious!

After our take-out, Mr. Tsai fulfilled his promise and took us to Yeh's HQ. Our driver gave us VIP status by parking directly in front of the HQ, and also right in front of a middle aged woman who turned out to be Yi-Ching Yeh herself! What an entrance!

Professor and Yeh talked for a few minutes, but since she was going to leave for street rallying, she seemed distracted and serious looking. My impression was that the atmosphere at the HQ was pretty tense, and they were in a difficult situation in comparison with Yuh-Chin Hong.

Then we met with the HQ director, Chia-Bin Hong(洪嘉賓). Again, we brought up the vote-buying issue, and he said that the KMT were paying 500~1,000NT per vote. Professor Phillips' impression was that they might be projecting the amount on the basis of their own capabilities.

We also asked him about the campaign status, DPP objective, HQ organization structure, and whether President Chen had a positive or negative influence now at rallies. He told us that Chen's influence wasn't as great as it use to be but still a positive one. (My memory is kind of blurry here. Maybe Professor Phillips could give us some input or corrections?)

Later on Mr. Hong and the Professor had a deeper discussion on Taiwan's independence and America's attitude toward it. My impression was that Mr. Hong couldn't differentiate the facts of realpolitik and his own belief of what is right or wrong.

Professor Phillips' perspectives were that the US couldn't decide whether Taiwan really wanted independence or not--due to the fact that the DPP and KMT influences are fifty fifty. Neither could the US decide on China's determination of consolidation for two reasons: first, pressuring Taiwan hasn't taken any major sacrifices--it was simply too easy for them, considering their enormous power now; second, whether supporting consolidation was only the way of expressing patriotism for elites or a consensus of Chinese people, which is less likely.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hong was talking about the right of self determination, and couldn't quite catch Professor Phillips' point.

Eventually, time ran out and we had to leave. The picture below is Professor Phillips with Mr. Hong and a extremely large photo of Yi-Ching Yeh in the background.


By the way, during our discussion, Mark Chen popped by and kept glaring at us, probably curious of what we were doing there.

• 20:00

Despite the confusion of our ride to Kaohsiung(mentioned above), we arrived at the rally at around 8:00 pm. We heard that Ma Ying-Jeou(馬英九) came and just left, so we were just starting to regret it when the hosts on the stage announced that Mr. Ma is coming back because his flight was grounded. A grounded flight? Sounded pretty conspiratorial to me. Anyways, he came back. Below is my recording of him entering the rally.

During the 30 second live connection with the Taipei KMT rally below, Mr. Ma told Po-Hsiung Wu(吳伯雄) the reason why he wasn't back in Taipei-- the grounded flight-- and said that he would be back in Taipei tomorrow to cast his vote. Also, Mr. Ma showed off some Taiwanese, which still needed some polishing if he wants to seek the identification of Ming-nan(閩南) population.

The picture below(by the courtesy of Professor Phillips) shows Mr. Ma, Jin-Pyng Wang(王金平), Vincent Siew(蕭萬長) supporting all the Kaohsiung city and county KMT Legislative election candidates. Come to think of it, the way they support the candidates are quite different than the DPP. Mr. Wang takes each candidate's hand at a time and shouts "Dong swan!"(凍蒜) separately, which means "elected"in Taiwanese. Whereas, the DPP candidates hold hands together and do it all at once. Well, I think doing it together creates a better atmosphere. So maybe the KMT can try that it the future.

I didn't record the "Dong swan!" part--because it took too long-- but here's the supporters yelling "Dong swan!" for Mr. Ma and Mr. Siew, which are the presidential election candidates. You can get a feel of the atmosphere.

The last film is the famous "wheel turning" of Mr. Ma. I though it was quite interesting. Creative idea for the KMT, which wasn't good at rallying in the past, but I guess the wheel turning was... kind of taking too long!

Later on, I learned that the DPP didn't have joint rallies for their candidates in Tainan or Kaohsiung during this election, which is pretty odd because the DPP were really good at it, and it really helped with their election results. Rumors were that the DPP were fractioned so that heavy weight people like President Chen, Frank Hsieh, and Tseng-chang Su supported different candidates, thus, didn't have a joint rally. Without the consolidation, this may be one of the reasons the DPP didn't do well in the south--except for Tainan where the DPP are supposed to win.

• 23:00

We arrived at our hotel at around 11:00 pm, thanked the driver, let him go. (Whew! What a relief!), and checked in.

This is the picture Professor Phillips took of my Senior, Wei-Chia and me.

To be continued...
(Maybe next weekend! I have to save my finals now!)

For those who are patiently waiting for my complete, "self-promoted" report of the Legislative election observations, I'm sorry to say that you might have to wait till this weekend.

Recently, I've been so busy tackling my final exams plus the official Chinese report which includes the calculations of receipts. But the good news is that I just finished one of my 7 final exams this afternoon, and the Chinese report a few minutes ago. Another good news is that I received some great photos from Professor Phillips. This will make the report look even better!

So, patience, everyone!

I'm back to Taipei.

Feels like I have been traveling between two different countries--reflecting on both the results of the legislative elections and the weather.

It was an incredible experience. Later on, I'll sort out all the photos and videos I've got and post an article with complete details and my thoughts(or maybe sometime after my final exams!)

First of all, I must express my gratitude to Professor Phillips. He's one of the most interesting person I've met. He's never hungry or tired, and is interested in every person or event we ran into. He had all sorts of good questions to ask--I stole a few of them and tested it on taxi drivers later on. It produced great results. Best of all, he was funny and easy to get along with, so that made the trip really fun.

Second of all, I must thank Professor Dittmer. Although I only got to know him for about a day or so, and he was also rather quiet, he always paid great attention to any person and their opinions--no matter if they were silly or not. He really respected the ideas of others. I've learned a lot from him.

Last of all, I must thank Professor Ho, Vicky, Chia-An(家安) and Wei-Chia(偉嘉). Professor Ho and Chia-An give me the opportunity to participate in this trip. Vicky gave us tremendous support and took care of all the annoying details. Wei-Chia really carried me along, handling all kinds of issues.

Meanwhile, I also met Professor Gold who was very fluent in Mandarin and Col Dennis Blasko who was incredibly nice to me. Looking forward to have the chance to know them better.

For the weekend, I'll will be accompanying Dr. Steven Phillips on his election observation trip. Our main focus will be Tainan County.

So, I'll be back on Sunday afternoon, take a rest, and do some debriefing. Hope everything goes well!