Four hundred years ago, Portuguese rode the wind and waves to the Orient. Upon arriving at an innocuous island in the Pacific, its rich and verdant forests caused them to exclaim,"Formosa!" (beautiful isle).
Taiwan, this island that was so beautiful in the eyes of Westerners, is only 36,000 square kilometers. Yet it has a diverse topography and rich natural resources: plains, coast, forest, rivers.... Geologic metamorphosis four million years ago twisted and molded this island into a place suitable for human habitation. It's shape being similar to that of a yam, the local people were left with this grass-roots nickname.
Nevertheless, this piece of land has been changing shape again--this time due to human action. Taking the western coastal fishing village of Ketsai Liao for example, its beach, line of trees which stood as a windbreak, and finally its land have disappeared one after another over the past twenty or so years. The Pingtung coastline has also been steadily moving inland, up to 200 meters at its farthest point. In the last ten years, Pingtung alone has lost enough land to cover nearly 50 football fields.
Overall, Taiwan's coast was formed by steady land accretion, which had continued naturally. But with the construction of dams, land has begun to seriously erode. Of course there's nothing wrong with the idea of building a dam, but Taiwan's topography may not be able to stand the strain--many rivers are unsuitable for dam construction because of looseness of the soil or constant silting.
Besides dams, unrestrained excavating of gravel from river beds is another reason for the retreat of downstream sections. This is verified on the northern Taiwan coast. At the same time, nature has not stopped its routine activity of topographic transformation. This double whammy has led to a collapse of 2.54 meters in Pingtung in the last ten years while Yunlin is lower by l.5 meters.
In reporting on this subject, Sinorama reporters travelled to Ilan, Hsinchu, Yunlin, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hualien. They saw with their own eyes more than ten locations of tidal land with dikes under construction, and couldn't help get a shock: "In the future there will be no beach, and our kids won't have any beaches to play on."
Mankind lives as part of nature, and should try to do so in harmony with all living things, respecting the "rules of the game." Taking for example development of natural resources, if a dam is built upstream, then it will be necessary to do conservation and repair work downstream in order to achieve the principle of "sustainable use." Unfortunately, people see the trees without seeing the forest, and don't take into account the overall situation, thus destroying nature.
In fighting with nature, are people finally gaining the upper hand? Or will people not stand in opposition to nature? Can we survive failure ? For Taiwan, which has created an economic miracle, this is a question that must be considered.
With progress over time, the room for development for modern women exceeds that for their mothers and grandmothers. Women are active in all fields and professions, and have performed outstandingly. Still, career women face the dual pressures of home and office, and it is not easy to be like the goddess Kuanyin, who has 1000 hands. The best alternative is to trade time for money when the economic situation is not so stable, and then to squeeze some dividends in time out of the material products one acquires. As for how to handle the next generation which is still too small to start nursery school, the best way is to find a "nursemaid."
Perhaps this nursemaid will be the parent of the mother or father of the child, a relative, a neighbor, or even a child care professional. Statistics show that among child-bearing-age women (25-39) in the Taiwan area, more than one half are in the labor market, rather than staying at home to take care of the kids. Thus there must be a large number of children given to someone else to raise. With society still unable to provide suitable day care institutions, parents have no choice but to hire babysitters to help out.
These conditions have produced an interesting phenomenon--more and more "unlikely children."
Chinese have always wanted their children to be hsiao--like their forebears. Particularly for families with a certain status, parents have always hoped that their children would follow in the family line and enhance the family honor.
Modern "unlikely children" are not necessarily less able, but are simply unlike their parents. Some say it's because it's always anyone but the parents with the children as they grow up, so of course they are not like their elders.
Some people point to children speaking Mandarin Chinese with a Philippine accent. One Christian mother discovered that her daughter insists on worship each time they pass a Buddhist temple. And some parents begin to feel put out when "the baby only gets to sleep when it sees grandma. "
Leaving aside for the moment the problem of different customs and lifestyles, whether personality, values, and other elements of character can be affected is even more deserving of attention.
Turning the kids over to grandparents may indeed "carry on the family traditions," but there are many "gaps" in how children are raised across generations. For example, parents tend to be rather demanding of the children in terms of their education, while grandparents may be more indulgent. Elderly households have less going on, which could affect the child's activity and behavior. And the children lose contact with the object with which they should by nature identify.
Of course, giving the children to someone else to raise has its good side, such as not being intimidated by strangers, developing the ability to get along with others earlier, and so on. This positive impact cannot be overlooked.
Writing about modern "unlikely children" is perhaps not so much a warning as it is a reminder. In the pursuit of excellence, don't forget to look back at the children now and then, and don't miss out on the all important stage of growing up.
