Eating fish

Yungnane is working on two projects that he wants me to be involved in while I am here.  One of them is not really related to what I am interested in or have much expertise about, namely, changing NCKU's governance structure by creating a new Board of Governance that will provide oversight of the University's activities, thereby removing it from direct oversight by the country's Ministry of Education, which currently is officially "in charge" of all the National universities in Taiwan (and probably all public universities, which may be an even larger set).  The basic idea is to give the University greater autonomy from the government, which would give it greater flexibility to make decisions and take actions that it believes will enhance its effectiveness and competitiveness.  It would give the Board, rather than the MoE, responsibility for holding University officials accountable, while freeing up the University from some of the constraints associated with being essentially a government organization.  Resistance on the part of some of the faculty stems from the fact that they are afraid of losing some of the benefits associated with being a public servant, which in many if not most countries around the world is seen by people as one of the better job/career options, given typical job security and pension benefits associated with working for the government.  Of course, all that is changing, around the world, now that the banksters have successfully bankrupted most governments, forcing them to reduce their scale of activities and reneg on their pension commitments since all their investments turned out to be the "toxic" securities sold to them by the banksters (among many other problems, of course).  Yungnane is hoping to draw on my expertise in organizational change to help him figure out how to get this plan implemented.  I'm happy to give advice, but I don't anticipate this being anything I'll write about.

The other project is more interesting to me from a research perspective.  Back when the Japanese were in control of the island, starting in the late 19th century and up until WWII, they were operating a plant making poison gas that many people believe were used against Chinese citizens.  After the Chinese regained control, they continued to use the plant site for chemical production of various kinds, the net result being that lots of mercury and dioxin was making its way into the surrounding water and then soil.  Of course, this also means it makes its way into the fish that the people eat, and maybe the air they breathe and some plants that they eat -- in short, their environment became toxic.  Awhile back, information regarding the extent to which the toxins had found their way into the local population began to surface, and once it became clear that there was likely a correlation between the presence of the toxins and higher cancer rates in the nearby communities, a decision was made to set aside 1.3 billion NTD (about $40 million) to compensate people for the damage.  There is also, I believe, another 1.4 billion NTD set aside for some remediation efforts in the area, but not much has happened on that front yet.  It's not entirely clear that anything can be done.

Yungnane has been studying this situation for awhile, and has written a few papers on the case that I've read, plus I've been having some conversations with him to learn more about what has been and is happening in this situation with regards to the citizens being involved in the process of figuring out how to allocate the compensation money or how to deal with the task of remediation.  The bottom line is that the citizens haven't been too involved, even though Yungnane has been working some to try to get them more engaged.  My professional career has been motivated from the beginning by an interest in creating organizations that are more amenable to a broader range of people participating in organizational decision-making, so a relevant question here is why people haven't gotten more involved even when the opportunity to do so was there.  A related question is whether or not the  decisions being made regarding how to allocate the compensation and remediation money are less effective than they might be if the community members were more actively engaged in the process of figuring out what to do.  I will probably end up working with Yungnane to write a paper addressing some of those issues, so now I/we have to figure out more specifically what the focus of that paper might be.

Tuesday afternoon Yungnane took me out to meet Mr. Che-Gin Lin, one of the community leaders who is Chair of the management council at the Luermen Matsu temple located there and is familiar with all that has been going on as this process has unfolded.  Here's a photo of Yungnane (on the left) and Mr. Lin, and one of me in front of the temple.

We chatted for awhile, and Yungnane translated some questions I had, as well as his responses.  It was clear he was frustrated -- Yungnane kept starting his translation of the responses with, "He criticizes..." such and such, going on to explain something the man wasn't happy about. One aspect of the story that we find interesting, and that may be the focus of our paper, is how the stigma associated with the pollution -- both for the community as a whole (lowering property values) and for particular individuals with high dioxin counts -- affects their responses to the situation and their attitudes about being engaged in the process. 

We left the temple and drove around the area a bit, which is fairly near to the Taijiang National Park that I visited with Jose, Yu Li, and Wesley a couple weeks ago.  We drove along the Luermen river and saw all the illegal oyster-farming going on there, and finally came to a spot where I was able to get my first view of the ocean, with the first few hundred yards also filled with the oyster-raising contraptions some locals have built and maintain in an effort to eek out a living.  In contrast to the rich California coast, it was a little weird to see the coastline here inhabited by folks living in pretty meager conditions and struggling to stay alive. 

We headed back into town and joined Yungnane's wife and two boys for dinner at "barbecue" restaurant, which means you have little grills at your table and cook your own meat.  This place was a one-price all-you-can-eat restaurant, and I sat down with a big plate in front of me filled with a few raw, whole fish, shrimp, and squid, the two boys already cooking away on the two grills and a big pot of soup boiling away over a little burner in the middle of the table.  Yungnane asked me if I wanted some beef, and I said yes, so soon there was another plate there with some thin and thicker slices of meat ready to cook.  I had also told Yungnane in the car that, while I was OK eating meat, I preferred having vegetables with my meal as well, so soon there was a little dish covered in tin foil with some leafy vegetables inside cooking away, as well as another big plate filled with an assortment of other vegetables to grill.  Along with some of all of the above, I also ended up eating a little goat meat and even some dove, declining on the oysters (didn't feel up to that after just seeing the oysters being grown in what I presume is a fairly polluted river), the chicken hearts, and a couple other things that I'm not sure what they were and didn't look all that appetizing.  I'm not a super big eater, but felt like I ate quite a bit, yet I was done long before the four of them were.  I was pretty impressed by the volume of food cooked and eaten by the two boys (6th grade and 4th grade) and by Yungnane's wife.  There were a number of times I figured we were done and out came another plate of stuff to cook.  His wife left to take the oldest son to "cram school" for his English class, but she came right back and started in again, and even when Yungnane and I left for him to take me home she and the younger son were still grilling up some more meat.  Yungnane paid for the meal so I don't know how much it cost, but whatever it was I'm pretty sure they all got their money's worth!