Nastiness in Kaohsiung

The DPP primary for Kaohsiung City Mayor has turned nasty.  Kaohsiung County executive Yang Qiuxing 楊秋興, who everyone thinks is trailing by a significant margin, has launched a barrage of attacks on Chen Ju 陳菊.  The main thrust of these attacks is that Chen has been using her control of the Kaohsiung City government to keep tabs on Yang’s campaign and supporters and to subject his supporters to various sorts of pressure.  For example, Yang accused Chen of sending a policeman to a year-end banquet held by one of his supporters and reporting who showed up, how long they stayed, and whether they spoke.  In another case, Yang claimed that after he visited a temple and obtained their support, the Kaohsiung City government sent an inspector who found that the temple was in violation of various laws.  These are precisely the kinds of tactics the KMT used to use against the opposition during the authoritarian era, so DPP supporters are quite sensitive to these charges.

Chen, of course, denies all these charges.  She has answered them with a classic appeal to trust, “You know me, you know my history, and you know that I wouldn’t do those types of things.”  Chen, of course, has a long history in the democracy movement dating to the 1970s, and she spent several years in prison for this.  One would not expect to see her engaging in these types of dirty tricks.  On the other hand, her campaign has also said that she is governing according to the law, which is exactly what she would say if the charges were true.  (No one doubts that temples violate zoning laws and so forth.  If city officials were to suddenly enforce all the laws on the books, they would have quite a bit of business.  However, many laws are simply ignored.  The charge is that Chen is selectively enforcing laws based on who supports Yang.)

I don’t know what is actually happening, and I am trying hard to resist my initial instincts to assume that Chen is innocent.  After all, I have a professional obligation to consider the possibility that Yang might be telling the truth.

As I see it, there are three possibilities.  First, Chen might be doing exactly all the nasty things that Yang is accusing her of.  This seems unlikely.  The only way it would make sense is if Chen’s campaign is far more paranoid than us outsiders realize.  They would also have to have far different beliefs about how close this race is than everyone else, since everyone else thinks that Chen is winning comfortably and has no need to resort to dirty tricks.  (Of course, having an easy race didn’t stop Richard Nixon.)  I think this scenario is highly unlikely (but not impossible).  Second, Yang could be deliberately making everything up.  Yang is losing and needs to do something to dramatically change the race.  Going negative might be his only chance.  What would discredit Chen more in the eyes of DPP supporters than a story about how she uses secret police state tactics?  Moreover, Yang has a clean and honest reputation, so coming from him, the message has some believability.  My judgment: still unlikely, but a bit more possible than scenario one.  Third, Chen is not callously engaging in dirty tricks and Yang is not telling bald-faced lies.  In many hard-fought intra-party races, people who have been friends for years suddenly find themselves at each other’s throats.  Remember, their careers are on the line, so it’s easy (especially when you are losing) to see injustice, cheating, and backstabbing in small things that you normally would just ignore.  Both sides tend to overlook when they step a little over the line while the other side tends to exaggerate those infractions.  My money is on this one.

I think the best way to judge which of these three possibilities is the correct one is to look at the DPP’s response.  After all, the DPP central office should have very good information about what is going on among its members and supporters.  This weekend, party chair Cai Yingwen 蔡英文 went to Kaohsiung, met with Chen and Yang, and basically told them to cool it.  Secretary General Su Jiaquan 蘇嘉全 suggested that if the campaign looked like it might do serious damage to the party’s image, the party might simply hold the telephone surveys now instead of waiting until mid-May.  Neither Cai nor Su publicly sided with either Chen or Yang, but the threat of moving the primary date is clearly aimed at Yang.  Remember, Yang is losing right now and needs more time.  In essence, Cai and Su told the two to start playing nicely or we’ll do something that is bad for Yang.  They clearly do not have much sympathy for Yang’s claims of dirty tricks.

Yang is playing a dangerous game, and has probably already done considerable damage to his future prospects.  He is largely considered to have done a good job in his two terms as county executive, and he would likely have found a place somewhere.  If the DPP wins the presidency, he would have been on the short list for a cabinet post or some other plum job.  Even if they don’t, the DPP will win some direct municipalities this year, and he might have been able to get a top post in one of those.  Now, a president or mayor will have to think twice about appointing him.  After all, he’s either very paranoid or an outright liar.  Yang has put all his poker chips on winning this year, and it doesn’t look like a very good bet to me.

The most interesting thing about this case may have to do with national politics, not local Kaohsiung politics.  I am fascinated by Cai Yingwen’s response.  Under the guise of conciliation and negotiation, she went in and cracked some skulls.  The ability to find compromises and build coalitions is the most important attribute a political leader can have, but sometimes it helps to be tough as well.  I will be interested to see if the two candidates do actually back off, and, if they don’t, how Cai reacts.  She has made a threat, but I’m not sure she has the guts and/or power to enforce it.  I’m also not sure if it would be wise to break the rules of the game.  If candidates learn that there are ways to force an earlier primary date, this could cause headaches down the road for the party chair.  At any rate, this might be a crucial step in the evolution of Cai Yingwen as the DPP’s leader.  Only two years ago, she was seen as a transitional figure with no real power of her own.  Now I’m wondering if she is so powerful within the party that she can tell candidates (and powerful party leaders in their own rights) deep in a hotly contested campaign to back off.  As of today, she seems pretty powerful and pretty tough.

Musings on Mayoral Nominations (Part 1)

The races for mayoral elections at the end of this year are starting to take shape.  While we don’t know for sure just who the nominees will be yet, we’re starting to get a pretty good idea.

One thing that is looking increasingly likely is that all five races will have only two serious candidates.  None of the smaller parties look to be girding themselves for a battle, and it seems less likely by the day that one of the nominations will go so badly that the loser will launch an independent bid.  Of course, there will be a couple of turkeys, such as Fang Jingjun 方景鈞 in Taipei City and Lin Jingyuan 林景元in Kaohsiung City.  (Fang has run in everything for as long as I can remember.  I wonder if he thinks he gets to count his cumulative votes.  He’s probably well over 10,000 for his career.)  Overall though, these are looking like they will be straight one-on-one slugfests.

So there are ten nominations to be had.  Let’s look south to north.

In Kaohsiung City, there is a monster battle going on between two strong candidates for the DPP’s nomination between Chen Chu 陳菊, the incumbent mayor of Kaohsiung City, and Yang Qiuxing 楊秋興, the incumbent executive of Kaohsiung County.  Both are considered to have done very well in office, but the polls say that Chen is significantly more popular.  TVBS put out a poll on Jan. 25 that had Chen leading Yang 45-21.  She led in every important category, including in Kaohsiung County.  This has not been a dirty fight, as both are running on their very strong records.   They also have pledged that the loser will serve as the winner’s campaign manager, so it looks very unlikely that the loser will launch an independent bid.  I expect them to campaign hard until the telephone polls are held in May (the DPP determines its nominations by telephone surveys), and I expect Chen Chu to win a clear victory.  I also expect Chen to win the general election.  Kaohsiung is not an unwinnable race for the KMT, as many analysts seem to assume.  The two parties are fairly even in Kaohsiung City, and the DPP has a slight edge in Kaohsiung County.  Overall, the DPP would have a slight edge in a generic election in a generic year, but only a very slight edge.  This year, however, the national trends are in the DPP’s favor, and either Chen or Yang is better than anything the KMT has to offer (with the possible exception of Wang Jinping 王金平, who is not running).  So odds are good that Chen will win the election, but don’t put it in the bank just yet.

Who will the KMT’s nominee in Kaohsiung be?  Lots of names have floated around.  Huang Zhaoshun 黃昭順 has been the most active in seeking the nomination.  Huang is a six-term legislator whose father was a member of the Control Yuan way, way back in the 1980s.  (I have a pencil holder on my desk with her picture on it, a souvenir from her 1998 campaign.  According to the Jimmy Carter theory of campaigning, now I have to support her.)  Another KMT legislator, Hou Caifeng 侯彩鳳, announced that she was ready to fight for the KMT nomination a few days ago.   My initial reaction?  Landslide!  The KMT has made inquiries to Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jinping 王金平 as to whether he would run.  He would have the best chance of anyone, but he’d still be fighting an uphill battle.  Besides, his current position is arguably better, and he is firmly ensconced there.  There is no risk for him.  (A lot of people think that Ma is trying to remove Wang and replace him with a more compliant Speaker.  To which I ask, is there anyone else who can forge compromises as well as Wang?  And, more compliant???)  There are a couple of legislators in Kaohsiung County, Zhong Shaohe 鍾紹和 and Lin Yishi 林益世, who I have a fairly high opinion of.  Both won their seats fairly easily in tough districts, and I think both would put up a competent, if not winning, campaign.  However, neither seems to be getting much airplay.  The latest person to float up is former Penghu County executive Lai Fengwei 賴峰偉.  Having a Penghu politician is not such a stretch since Kaohsiung traditionally views Penghu as part of its hinterland.  On the other hand, I don’t know that Lai has any more support than any of the others.

The TVBS poll used Premier (and former mayor) Wu Dunyi 吳敦義as a stalking horse in their poll, even though there’s no way he is running.  He beat Huang Zhaoshun 29-25.  Both of them lost head to head with either Chen or Yang by a lot.  The closest pairing was Yang over Wu, 47-30.  The biggest landslide was Chen over Huang 60-20.

So what do I think?  There are currently five realistic names (Huang, Hou, Zhong, Lin, Lai).  Other than Hou, I think they are fairly interchangeably.  Any of them can get 40%, but not much more.

Everyone expects Tainan to be a DPP landslide, and with good reason.  The DPP has a small but clear edge in Tainan City and a huge edge in Tainan County.  This year, when everything is trending toward the DPP, Tainan is a steep, steep climb for the KMT.  To make matters worse, they really don’t have anyone capably of making the climb.  The names that keep floating up here aren’t members of the B team, they’re much lower than that.  Two former Tainan County legislators, Li Quanjiao 李全教and Guo Tiancai 郭添財, have announced their availability.  Guo lost his re-election bid in 2004, and Li tried but failed to win a spot on the party list in 2008.  I read somewhere that Minister of Education Wu Qingji 吳清基 is outpolling both of them, but he still loses by large margins to any DPP candidate.  Today, the TV told me that the KMT leadership’s favored candidate is Xie Longjie 謝龍介, to which I asked my TV, who the hell is Xie Longjie?  Turns out he is a former member of the Tainan City Council who won the nomination for Tainan City mayor last May before the election was cancelled (due to its being upgraded to direct municipality).  This is not impressive.  From the KMT’s side, there are no reasons to expect anything other than a DPP landslide.

From the DPP’s side, there is one.  The DPP nomination is far from settled, and there is a chance that the losers won’t agree to lose.  I don’t think it is a big chance, but a divided DPP is the KMT’s only realistic scenario to win Tainan.  Promising races attract candidates like flies, and six local heavyweights announced that they would make all the heavy personal sacrifices necessary to ensure the protection of the people’s welfare.  Three have since dropped out, but three remain.  The youngest, Lai Qingde 賴清德 leads the polls.  Lai is a legislator elected from Tainan City.  He has been a solid, though perhaps not spectacular legislator.  Su Huanzhi 蘇煥智 is the Tainan County executive.  Su came up through the New Tide Faction, and made his name by refusing to compromise on several environmental issues.  It is this stubborn streak that makes me wonder if he will not accept defeat.  Hsu Tiancai 許添財 is currently mayor of Tainan City.  Hsu has a history of flouting party discipline.  He was lured back to Taiwan from the USA in 1992 to run in the legislature.  When he was not re-nominated in 1995, he ran anyway and caused the defeat of Zhang Canhong 張燦鍙,[1] one of the DPP nominees.  In 1997, Zhang ran for mayor as the DPP nominee, and Hsu ran against him.  Zhang won, but Hsu pulled a lot of votes.  After Zhang’s corruption-ridden term ended in 2001, the DPP pulled Hsu back into the fold and nominated him for mayor where he has served since.  Su and Hsu have both been good in office, but where I think of Chen and Yang in Kaohsiung as roughly A and A-, my impression of Hsu and Su is more like B+ and B.[2]

On Jan 5, TVBS published a poll on the DPP nomination.  (They didn’t bother asking about the KMT nominees.)  The result was Lai 22%, Hsu 15%, Chen Tangshan 陳唐山 11%, Su 10%, Li Junyi 李俊毅 3%, and Ye Yijin 葉宜津 1%.   They used Vice Premier Zhu Lilun as a KMT stalking horse, and all three of the remaining candidates beat him handily.  Lai and Hsu won 46-30, while Su won 42-34.  I don’t know how the polls have changed in the last month and a half, but I’m pretty sure that the KMT isn’t going to be putting up anyone nearly as good as Zhu.  May is still a long way away, and the three are close enough in the polls that any of them could win.  As long as the others agree to lose, it really doesn’t matter which one actually does win.

The Taichung race is officially over.  Jason Hu 胡志強 has agreed to run.  Taichung is a blue-leaning area that can only go green when everything goes right for the DPP.  The national trends are in place, but they can’t beat Hu.  One amusing poll found that Hu was the KMT’s best candidate not only in Taichung, but also in Tainan and Kaohsiung.  In Taichung, the only other candidate being seriously mooted is Liao Liaoyi 廖了以.  Liao was Taichung County executive from 1989-97 and has been working in various high-level party and government positions since then.  He is also a leader of the Red Faction in Taichung County.  The current county executive is Huang Zhongsheng 黃仲生, who is a member of the Black Faction, but I haven’t heard much about him running.  I think the Black Faction is probably throwing their lot in with Hu.  A TVBS poll of Jan 8 gave Hu an overwhelming 59-11 edge over Liao.

The DPP does not have a good candidate for Taichung.  The most active candidate has been Lin Jialong 林佳龍.  Lin is a Yale PhD in political science.  His advisor was Juan Linz.  He specializes in semi-presidential systems and … oops, I drifted back into my other life there.  Besides Lin effectively left academia about five years ago and is now a professional politician.  He has already gotten trounced once by Jason Hu, losing the Taichung City mayoral race in 2005 by a 58-39 margin.  The one thing I’m pretty sure about is that no one in the DPP is very enthusiastic about a rematch.  The only other name that I’ve heard is Qiu Taisan 邱太三.  Qiu also lost in 2005, losing the Taichung County executive race by an equally embarrassing 59-39 margin.  Well, someone has to represent the DPP, right?  The TVBS poll used Frank Hsieh as its DPP stalking horse.  Hsieh beat Lin 31-21, but both lost to Hu by wide margins (57-22 for Hsieh, 62-17 for Lin).  Maybe Hsieh will actually run; he’s developing into the DPP’s designated candidate in hopeless races.

For me, the more interesting question is about Jason Hu’s future as a presidential candidate.  Hu was born in 1948, and the KMT nominee in 2012 will be Ma.  In 2016, Hu will be 68 years old, so that is his last shot at the presidency.  The question is whether Taichung City is a suitable platform from which to launch a presidential bid.  In the past, I would have said that it is not.  However, the new and expanded Taichung City is a different animal.  It has roughly the same population as Taipei City.  It won’t have as big a budget as Taipei, but Hu will have a significantly larger amount of money to throw around than he has now.  Most importantly, mayors of direct municipalities have broad appointment powers, and Hu will be able to put together a team that can work toward the presidency.  The importance of putting together a team cannot be underestimated.  Both Chen and Ma brought lots of people from the Taipei City government into the national government.  Lian Chan built his network of cronies as governor and then premier.  Soong did the same as governor.  Taichung is also the prime battleground, the place where the-DPP dominated south and KMT-dominated north meet.  Whoever wins Taichung will almost certainly win the election.  The one are in which Taichung is really deficient is in media.  Taipei, as the center of everything, gets a lot more media attention than anyone else.

Taipei City, however, will probably not be producing the KMT’s nominee in 2016.  The current mayor, Hau Longbin 郝龍斌, has probably eliminated himself from contention with his lackluster performance.  Hau will certainly contest and probably win another term, but the Taipei City mayor in 2015 will almost certainly be someone who has just started a term and is not ready for a run at the presidency.  As things currently stand, it similarly seems unlikely that a KMT presidential candidate would come from either Tainan or Kaohsiung.  That leaves either the mayor of Sinbei City or someone in the central government as the only other possibilities.  Vice-President Siew is too old, and Premier Wu doesn’t look like he’s going to make it to the end of Ma’s first term, much less to 2016.  Ideally, I think Hu’s best bet is to serve most of this term as mayor of Taichung, and then move up to premier two or three years before the election.  You don’t want to become premier too early, since premiers tend to have short shelf lives.  In other words, another term in Taichung seems like an entirely reasonable path to the presidency to me.

---

[1] Zhang Canhong 張燦鍙, one of the godfathers of the overseas Taiwan movement in the 1970s and 1980s, would probably be horrified at my use of the (PRC) pinyin system to romanize his name.  I think he preferred George Chang.  Too bad, I’m in a pinyin mood today.

[2] Just for reference, I’d give Hau (Taipei City) about a C+, Zhou (Taipei County) a D, and Hu (Taichung City) an A-.  Not that I have anything objective to base these grades on.  Giving out grades is just a hard habit to break.

New municipal council sizes

With the passing of the amended Local Government Act 地方制度法 last month, we know the sizes of the new city councils for the five direct municipalities.  Since these are the highest level SNTV election left in Taiwan, I’m enthralled by them and will be paying far more attention to them than anyone else of the course of the next year.

But first, a bit of background info.  Taiwan used to have a four, maybe five tier system of government.  Under the central government, all territory was separated into provinces.  After the ROC lost mainland China, all that was left was Taiwan Province 台灣省 and a teeny slice of Fujian Province 福建省.  Under the provinces, territory was separated into counties and county-level cities.  So Taichung City 台中市 and Taichung County 台中縣 were of equal status underneath Taiwan Province.  Fujian Province had two counties, Jinmen County 金門縣 and Lianjiang County 連江縣.  Actually, most of Lianjiang County is still on the mainland and the ROC governs only a couple of islands with about 5000 people, but it still counts as a full county in ROC organizational terms.  Under the counties, territory was separated into township-level governments.  Depending on how urbanized it was in the 1950s, it was classified as either a city 市, town 鎮, or village 鄉.  So Nantou County 南投縣 has 13 townships, including Nantou City 南投市, Caotun Town 草屯鎮, and Mingjian Village 名間鄉.  The county level cities also have township-level entities, called districts 區.   However, unlike cities, towns, and villages, which elect their own mayors, district heads are appointed civil servants.  Finally, underneath the cities, towns, villages, and districts, you have cun 村 and li 里 (which are often translated as wards, boroughs, and/or villages).  Cun and li are usually have 1000-5000 people, and don’t have any real independent powers.  Rather, they are organizational units that the higher level governments use to implement policy.  Their heads are elected, however.  Villages have cun, and the other three have li.  (English simply doesn’t have enough words to translate all these terms well, so in the previous sentence I might as well have written, “villages have villages underneath them.” Sigh.)  Oh, and the provincial government was gutted in 1998.

Are you still awake?  Well, in 1967, the government decided to elevate Taipei City 台北市 to a direct municipality, with status equal to a province.  In 1976, Kaohsiung City 高雄市 was also elevated.  Direct municipalities are different from county-level cities in several respects.  First, under the old non-democratic regime, municipality mayors were, like the Provincial Governor, appointed rather than elected.  That, however, changed in 1994, so now all are elected.  Second, direct municipalities have much better funding.  They get a different set of tax revenues and end up with a much larger budget than county governments.  As such, direct municipalities have much better public infrastructure.  Third, mayors of county governments can only appoint about four people.  Everyone else is a civil servant.  In contrast, mayors of direct municipalities can appoint lots of people, including the heads of all the city government departments and districts.  So life is much better as mayor of Taipei City than as mayor of Hsinchu City 新竹市 (county-level city).

This year, after years and years of political wrangling, three more direct municipalities will be created.  Taipei County 台北縣 (which has a larger population than Taipei City) will be elevated.  It is also changing its name to 新北市, which the Taipei Times (my favorite source for translations) is rendering as Sinbei City.  I would have preferred New Taipei (a la New Delhi).  The new Taichung City is being created combining the old Taichung City with the old Taichung County.  Similarly, the new Tainan City combines Tainan City and Tainan County.  Finally, the new Kaohsiung City will expand the old Kaohsiung City (which was already a direct municipality) to include the old Kaohsiung County.

New entity	Old entities	Eligible voters (2008 LY list tier)	% of electorate
Taipei City	Taipei City	2037601	11.8
Sinbei City	Taipei County	2870678	16.6
Taichung City		1900142	11.0
	Taichung City	767549
	Taichung County	1132593
Tainan City		1430245	8.3
	Tainan City	576785
	Tainan County	853460
Kaohsiung City		2114221	12.2
	Kaohsiung City	1161599
	Kaohsiung County	952622
Rest of Taiwan		6935664	40.1

Maybe now I’m finally ready to get to the actual post.

The Local Government Act also set the guidelines for determining the sizes of the direct municipalities.  (All this is preliminary, since the final determinations will be based on populations in June 2010 (I think), but we don’t expect too much change between now and then.)  So here’s what I think we have (updated June 17):

		current	new
台北市	Taipei City	52	63
	北投士林	10	12
	南港內湖	7	9
	信義松山	9	10
	大同中山	7	8
	萬華中正	7	8
	大安文山	11	13
	平地原住民 Plains Aborigines	1	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	0	1
新北市	Sinbei City	65	66
	板橋	9	9
	中和	7	7
	永和	4	4
	土城樹林鶯歌三峽	9	10
	三重蘆洲	10	9
	新莊五股泰山林口	10	10
	淡水三芝石門八里	3	3
	汐止金山萬里	4	4
	瑞芳平溪雙溪貢寮	1	1
	新店深坑坪林石碇烏來	5	5
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	2	3
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	1	1
台中市	Taichung City	103	63
	中西區	6	3
	東南區	8	4
	北屯區	10	6
	北區	7	3
	西屯區	8	5
	南屯區	6	4
	后豐區	8	5
	潭雅神區	9	6
	東勢石岡新社和平區	4	2
	大甲大安外埔區	5	3
	清水沙鹿梧棲區	7	5
	烏日大肚龍井區	7	5
	大里霧峰區	9	6
	太平區	6	4
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	2	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	1	1
台南市	Tainan City	91	57
	東區	10	6
	南區	7	4
	中西區	5	2
	北區	7	4
	安南區	9	5
	安平區	3	2
	新營鹽水柳營	6	4
	白河後壁東山	4	2
	麻豆下營六甲官田	5	4
	佳里西港七股	5	3
	學甲將軍北門	3	2
	大內新化山上	3	2
	善化安定	3	2
	玉井楠西南化佐鎮	2	1
	仁德歸仁關廟龍崎	8	5
	永康新市	11	7
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	0	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	0	1
高雄市	Kaohsiung City	98	66
	鹽埕鼓山旗津	5	4
	左營楠梓	10	8
	三民	10	8
	新興前金苓雅	8	6
	前鎮小港	10	8
	鳳山	14	8
	大樹大社仁武鳥松	7	4
	林園大寮	7	4
	岡山橋頭燕巢梓官彌陀永安	10	5
	田寮阿蓮路竹湖內茄萣	6	4
	旗山美濃六龜甲仙杉林內門茂林三民桃源	6	3
	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	2	1
	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	3	3

So the new law means that Taipei County essentially retains the same number of seats, and everyone else adjusts to that standard.  I haven’t heard how Sinbei City will be apportioning its seats to individual districts, but I don’t see any reason for changes.  The only difference is that they get one more seat for Plains Aborigines.  (I don’t know if this is because the population has increase or because the apportioning rules are different.)

The Taipei City Council will actually be increasing in size from 52 to 63.  This means that each district is going to get one or two extra seats.  Hooray!  It’s a great time to be a candidate there.  Incumbents have a little more breathing room, and new candidates will be able to get nominations.

Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung are exactly the opposite.  They will be bloody.  The number of seats will be reduced by anywhere from a third to a half.  A newspaper article gave the plan for the new districts in Taichung City.  They were debating on whether to use the legislative districts, each of which would have around eight seats or keep the old districts and simply cut the number of seats in each.  As of now, they have decided to keep the old districts.  As you can see, a lot of incumbents are going to become unemployed at the end of the year.  For new candidates, it will be next to impossible to get a nomination.  It will be hard enough for the incumbents to get nominated.  I don’t have the district by district breakdown for Tainan and Kaohsiung yet.  Tainan will almost certainly have to redraw its districts, since the current ones are fairly small.

This certainly was a long-winded way to say Taipei—easy; Sinbei—normal, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung—meat grinders.