Rocky Mountain Front

Growing up in Taiwan where there are more than 200 majestic peaks over 3,000 meters (or roughly 10,000 ft) above sea level within tens of miles wherever you live, the Rocky Mountain is one of my favorite destinations for vacation in U.S. and Canada. Among the parks of its 3,000 miles long range from New Mexico to British Columbia across U.S. and Canada, 99 years old Glacier National Park, one of 58 National Parks of U.S. with a size about 1/10 of Taiwan at the western Montana, certainly tops my list.

Geographically, Glacier National Park is a part of the Rocky Mountain Front which is often referred to the “Crown of the Continent,” an area over 100 miles from the central regions of Montana to southern Alberta of Canada. This is where the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains in an abrupt altitude rise of between 4,000 to 5,000 feet. North of Rocky Mountain Front is the Canadian Rockies that includes four popular Canadian National Parks: Banff and Jasper on the eastern side and Kootenay and Yoho on the western side. To the Southeast of it, famed Yellowstone National Park is about 250 miles away, mostly in the state of Wyoming.

We recently visited Rocky Mountain Front. The journey started from Florence, a small town 20 miles south of Missoula, Montana where a long time friend lives. Traveling north in Bitterroot Valley along the Bitterroot River, the scenery changes when one enters the Mission Valley with southern Mission mountains at the east. Through Flathead Reservation and around the Flathead Lake, one reaches the west entrance of Glacier National Park few hours later after seeing some vast golden rape flower fields (photo to the right) where Canola oil comes from. Flathead Lake itself (see photo below), approximately 30 miles long and 16 miles wide, is the largest natural clear water west of Mississippi in U.S. and a popular destination for many vacationers as well.

For those who enjoy sightseeing with the comfort of four wheels instead of with two legs, the memorable 50 miles long winding Going-to-the-Sun Road is second to none. It cuts through the Glacier National Park from its west to its east entrance that get you front seat views of some of its glaciers, large lakes, and impressive peaks and valleys. With its high latitude and elevation, portion of the road is closed between mid Sept and mid June that makes it most practical to visit the Park in the summer. At a little over half way point shortly after the Weeping Wall (yes, this wall off the roadside does weep; see photo to the right), one can take a break at the Logan Pass, approximately 7,000 ft above the sea level. One can enjoy a breadth-taking 360 degree view of surrounding mountain ranges and peaks of the Rockies. Occasionally, deers and mountain goats may pass you by while mulching on flowers and grass, ignoring your mere-human existence. You can also hike a little towards to the Hidden Lake below Mount Clement to stretch your legs (photo to the right).

As one continues east towards to the east entrance of the park at St. Mary, Triple Divide Peak gets closer at times where fresh water flows down three ways to: Pacific Ocean at west through Columbia river, the Gulf of Mexico at south through Missouri River and then Mississippi River, and Hudson Bay at north which is connected to Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean.

We stayed at the Many Glacier Hotel (see photo to the right; early reservation is essential to get a room here) which is one of the major bases at north-eastern part of the Park. A rustic hotel almost 100 years old built on the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake, one of over 700 lakes of the park, at the base of Mount Grinnell. One can sit all day long on its deck soak in the sun and the lake with reflections of mountains including Mt. Wilbur at the west and Mt. Gould at the Southwest. Occasionally, you may see a deer or a moose wondering around in the water few thousand feet away across the lake (photo at right)

There are over 700 miles of trails in the Park. One of the most rewarding hikes is an approximately 10 miles round-trip trekking with 1200 ft climb from the trailhead behind the nearby Swiftcurrent Motor Inn to the Iceberg Lake. Next to the trail, Beargrass (no, bears don't eat them), blossom wild flowers, and ripping berries of mid July welcome hikers before Grizzly bears descend for a feast of them.

At the end of the trail, Iceberg Lake, carved by glacier a long long time ago sleeps alone with its brilliant turquoise icy water and floating icebergs as the name promised. Under the protection of Iceberg Peak and flanked by the Ptarmigan Wall, one can have a leisure picnic while enjoying this rare and surreal scenery (see three photos below). If you are lucky like us, you may see some mountain goats came down the steep slope at a distance. Talking about glaciers, the bad news is with accelerated global warming, glaciers are retreating faster than ever. Current prediction forecasts that by 2020, all the remaining 27 glaciers will be gone from the park. Can you imagine how Glacier National Park would look like when that happens? Like a mountain goat without any hair?

Going north before crossing the U.S. Canada border at the Chief Mountain Customs and entering Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park, one gets views of the most well-known landmark of Glacial National Park – the sacred Chief Mountain (see photo at right). Its dramatic rise of more than 1,000 ft is clearly visible from far away. Its rectangular hat-like shape cannot be more different and reminds me of the famous Matterhorn of the Swiss Alps that has a pyramidal shape.

One way to enjoy the Waterton Lakes National Park is to take a 2.5 hours lake cruise of the upper Waterton Lake (photo at right) with a stop at the Goat Haunt Ranger station. The cruise takes you through one of the narrowest place of the Rocky Mountains with gusty wind easily over 20 miles/hour in a typical day. Few bald eagles fly from one tree top to another on the lake shores just to tease the tourists . In the south, Mount Cleveland stood proudly at 10,466 ft above the sea level, the highest peak of Glacier National Park. Short drives from the historical Prince of Wales Hotel overlooking the lake take you to Bison Paddocks, north of the park, where you can see Bisons roaming on prairie and beautiful Mountain Bluebirds parking on the fence (photo at left). If you go west from the hotel on Akamina Parkway, in 10 miles, you reach the end of the parkway and come to the scenic Cameron Lake at the foothill of Mount Custer (see photo to the right).

Of course, Mount Custer is named after George Armstrong Custer, the young, ambitious and controversial lieutenant colonel of U.S. Army who led his 7th Cavalry Regiment to death in the Battle of Little Big Horn (in today’s south-eastern Montana) in 1876, defeated by allied forces of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and a small band of Arapaho warriors commanded by Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull. Custer and all of over 200 of his men with him were killed in the battle, one of the worst disasters in American military history. Incidentally, the battle of Little Bighorn was the last victory of the American Indians against U.S. With the humiliating loss, U.S. government sent in more troops that overwhelmed the American Indians, drove them onto the Reservations and destroyed their spirit. Decades of American Indian Wars ended with Wounded Knee Massacre (in South Darkota) on December 29, 1890 when over 300 American Indian men, women and children of the last resisting Lakota group were killed.

Leading to that fateful day of 1876, Treaty of Fort Laramie (or Sioux Treaty) was signed in 1968 between U.S. government and Lakota people that included guarantee for Lakota's ownership of the Black Hills, a sacred area of Lakota people. Custer knowingly violated the treaty and entered the area with his expedition in 1874 that brought the Black Hills Gold Rush. Many skirmishes and two years later, Custer met his fate and died at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Tracing back in history, the inevitable conflicts with native American Indians began in early 19th century when Americans started its westward expansion, championed by the 3rd President Thomas Jefferson. In 1803, U.S. completed the Louisiana Purchase deal with France that includes areas all the way to the headwaters of Missouri River. President Thomas Jefferson subsequently obtained funds from Congress and named Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition to: find out and map exactly what the purchase entails territory wise, if there are waterways (for easy transportation) to Pacific coast, and to study the habitats and establish contacts with the Native Americans of the area. That is the famous and successful Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806.

With the challenge of the Rocky Mountains, the Expedition had spent most of its time in today’s Montana struggling to find their ways. Fortunately, Sacagawea, an Shoshone woman, agreed to be a guide and interpreter for the expedition and helped them out. She and her family accompanied the Expedition for the rest of their journey and was instrumental to the success. Who among the native American Indians including Sacagamea would have thought the friendship was returned decades later with invasions, forced assimilation, and cultural genocides?

Technically, native American Indians have some level of sovereignty or independence from the government of the United States since the very beginning, thus the autonomous "Indian Nations". But with the consistent assimilation (voluntary, induced, and forced included) policy of the U.S. government, the expectation and eventual outcome cannot be mistaken.

In 1829, President Andrew Jackson proposed in his State of Union address to drive American Indians to west of Mississippi River. A year later in 1830 American Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. In 1851, the Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act that places American Indians on reservations. With all these and with wars and treaties after treaties between the United States and various Indian Nations, nothing could stop the erosion of scattered native American Indians' standings when faced with a much larger and stronger power. Today, there are 562 officially recognized (by Federal Government) American Indian and Alaskan tribes, totaled near 2 millions. The estimates for the population of native Americans ranged from few millions to 18 millions before Europeans arrived. There are many similar experiences you can find around the world. One determining factor seems clear: those who have a stronger cultural bond and more matured civilization base survive better.

Montana has a significant number of American Indian population and Reservations. According to Year 2000 census, there are about 56,000 American Indians living in Montana with about 65% of them living on the Reservations. With a little less than 1 million population, plains on the east and mountains and valleys on the west, Montana still has much of its beauty just as what Lewis and Clark saw over two hundred years ago on their way to pacific coast. I wish it well and hope to revisit again and again.

Before I go, I would like to invite you to listen to the 1964 all time classic Four Strong Winds (... go out to Alberta ...) by the Canadian cowboy poet Ian Tyson, an authentic songwriter and singer whose work captures perfectly the spirit of the ranch land in the foothills of the Rockies in Alberta. According to my good friend Steve of Montana, it catches the brother state Montana spirits as well. Talk to you soon!

Four strong winds that blow lowly,
Seven seas that run high,
All those things that don't change, Come what may.
but our good times are all gone,
And I'm bound for moving on.
I'll look for you if I'm ever back this way.

Think I'll go out to Alberta,
Weather's good there in the fall.
I got some friends that I can go a'working for,
Still I wish you'd change your mind
If I asked you one more time,
But we've been through that a hundred times or more.

Four strong winds that blow lowly,
Seven seas that run high,
All those things that don't change, Come what may.
but our good times are all gone,
And I'm bound for moving on.
I'll look for you if I'm ever back this way.

If I get there before the snow flies,
And if things are looking good,
You could meet me if I send you down the fare.
But by then it would be winter
there ain't much for you to do
And the winds sure can blow cold way out there

Four strong winds that blow lonely,
Seven seas that run high,
All those things that don't change, Come what may.
but our good times are all gone,
And I'm bound for moving on.
I'll look for you if I'm ever back this way.

The Land of Oz

Many have seen or heard of the 1939 fantasy movie The Wizard of Oz 綠野仙蹤, based on a 1900 children’s novel by Lyman Frank Baum. If you did, you may recall Judy Garland played the schoolgirl Dorothy Gale who lives on a Kansas farm with her Aunt and Uncle but dreams of a better place "somewhere over the rainbow." The rest of the movie was about her journey returning home after she got to Oz as a result of a tornado. If you didn’t, that is alright as you probably have heard her song in the film with that title. Here it is to jog your memory.



Well, we had it easy compared to Dorothy; we flew recently by commercial plane to Wichta, Kansas to visit a dear friend of mine of 45 years. Wichita is located at the south central part of Kansas and is the most populous city of Kansas with a population over 350 thousands. With its strong aerospace industry history with Boeing (including portions of former McDonnell Douglas), Cessna, Learjet, Hawker Beechcraft, et.al, Wichita has earned the nickname of the “Air Capital of the World”. It wasn’t an accident that GARMIN, the world leading GPS navigation device manufacturer was started 20 years ago at Wichita by and named after GARy Burrell and MIN Kao 高民環.

Before people could drive and fly around, Wichita one time had the nickname of “Cowtown”, a wild place with lawmen for hire and rowdy cowboys who drove cattle all the way from Texas and Oklahoma to this railhead for transportation to eastern markets. Till mass American settlers arrived after 1854, the place was inhabited with Plains Indians such as Pawnee, Kansa, Wichita, and Apache with a few traders here and there. The first recorded encounter with the Europeans dated back to 1541 when Spanish explorer Francisco Vazques de Coronado arrived. French came 200 years later around 1750. A beautiful park is now established at the confluence of (Big) Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers in the city with a pedestrian bridge. Stood on a rock near the river bank is the famous 44 foot Cor-Ten steel sculpture “Keeper of the Plains” of 1974 by Kiowa-Comanche artist Blackbear Bosin that has since become the symbol of Wichita and was chosen to be one of the official emblems of 1976 American Bicentennial (see photo).

When you look at the map, Kansas is in the dead center of U.S. Indeed, the northern town of Lebanon, Kansas is the official geographic center of the contiguous 48 states. Social-politically, Kansas is full of interesting history with pivotal moments and events. Triggered by so-called popular sovereignty in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Bleeding Kansas, a series of violent events raged on in Kansas between anti-slavery Free Soiler and pro-slavery Border Ruffian elements over the critical question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state (the 34th state) that tilted the balance of U.S. Senate and gave badly needed support for President Lincoln who was facing secessions of southern states. Less than three months later on April 12, Battle of Fort Sumter at near Charleston, South Carolina ignited the Civil War.

Another significant event of Kansas in recent history is the well-known U.S. Supreme Court landmark civil right decision of 1954 - Brown v. Board of Education. The Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation of elementary schools by the Board of Education of state capital Topeka is unconstitutional (violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment), overturning rulings going all the way back to the Court’s 1896 decision and declared once-and-for-all that the justification and practices of "separation but equal" is simply wrong. This legal victory and Court’s opinion of "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" paved the way for the subsequent civil right movements and changed the American history.

In the state capital building of Topeka, you would also find (currently closed for renovation) the famous mural “The Tragic Prelude” by John Steuart Curry, one of the great American Regionalism painters who was born and grew up in Kansas. The painting shows a larger than life figure of John Brown with his arms stretched, one holding a bible and the other a rifle. John Brown was a famous American abolitionist who advocated and led armed insurrection against proslavery forces to end slavery (yes, he was one of the key figures of Bleeding Kansas). He was tried, convicted and hung late 1859 in Virginia for raiding Harpers Ferry Armory and killing several. Historians seem to agree that his martyrdom and escalation to violence did contribute directly to the start of Civil War, although President Lincoln denounced him as a delusional fanatic.

A highlight of our visit was the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (to confuse you, Kansas City metropolitan spans both Kansas and Missouri and the museum is in Missouri side where most business and commerce are). This museum may not be as well-known as some in big cities like New York, Boston, or Chicago, but it has one of the best collections of ancient Chinese artworks, especially thousand years old Song Dynasty paintings, outside China and Taiwan.

The benefactor William Rockhill Nelson was a successful real estate developer and founder of The Kansas City Star newspaper. In his will, he stipulated that upon death of his wife and daughter, his estate including his home be used to establish an art museum for public enjoyment that is where and how Nelson Gallery (later combined with Atkins’ to form the current museum) came to be. Nelson's donation of approximately 11 million dollars worth on his death in 1915 (about 200 millions worth in today's dollar) gave tremendous flexibility to his trustees and curators to buy fine arts all over the world. Further, with the Great Depression and depressed art market, the museum was able to acquire many treasures in bargain prices.

The fabulous collection of Chinese artworks in Nelson Museum was not an accident. One of its founding trustees was the legendary Langdon Warner (1881 – 1955), an art historian and Harvard Professor, who believed to be the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's popular movie character of Indiana Jones! Professor Warner is considered the first full-time teacher of Asian Arts of U.S. He and Horace Jayne of Museum of Pennsylvania arrived in China in 1923, relatively late compared to his infamous British and French explorers like Sir Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, and ”took” several masterpieces of DunHuang 敦煌 murals with a chemical solution. Some of these murals are now in Harvard’s Fogg Museum. Warner met and recruited his Harvard student Laurence Sickman in 1931 to help with collecting Chinese artworks for the museum. Larry Sickman later became a curator and then served as director of the Nelson museum from 1953 to 1977 till his retirement. One of his aclaimed successes was to have bargained for several ancient Chinese painting masterpieces from the last Emperor PuYi who “took” some of the palace collections when he was evicted from the Forbidden City in 1924.

To appreciate the quality of the Chinese collection of Nelson Museum, one can look at two pieces that we saw on this trip. One is a Chinese painting of Southern Song dynasty by Li Song李嵩. It is entitled The Red Cliff depicting great poet of Northern Song Su Shi’s 蘇軾 (the one in red color cloth on the boat in the painting) visiting the Red Cliff 赤壁 on YangZi river. Of course, Su Shi's poems on Red Cliff are still revered as one of the best in Chinese literature.

The other one is perhaps of more significance and unique in Chinese arts and history. It is the large (approximately 6x8 ft) limestone bas-relief entitled Procession of the Empress as Donor with Her Court 文昭皇后禮佛圖 (see photo on the right below). This 1500 years old masterpiece depicts a procession led by Empress WenZhao 文昭皇后of Northern Wei 北魏 dynasty for a worshipful donation to Buddha. It is one of the best artworks of the period and an important example of the fusion of Chinese arts into the Gandharan style Buddhist art of India whereby the figures are elongated with elegant strokes and curvature.

This relief was on the south side (right-hand side of the entrance) of the central BinYang cave 賓陽中洞 in LongMen Grottoes 龍門石窟 since around 500 AD near LuoYang city 洛陽. Note LongMen Grottoes 龍門石窟 is one of the three most important grottoes of China in arts and archeology (the other two are DunHuang 敦煌 and YungGang 雲崗.

While I was not able to complete the details of how the relief was brought to Nelson Museum, close involvement of Larry Sickman and his colleagues at MET (New York Metropolitan Art Museum) seems certain. The companion relief entitled “Procession of the Emperor as Donor”孝文帝禮佛圖 that used to be on the opposite north-side of the same BinYang cave is now hung in the of New York Metropolitan Museum of Arts MET (see photo on the left below. To reunite them on paper, I am including a photo of the Budha sculpture in the center of the cave from Google image database in the middle blow).

According to stories, a 14,000 Chinese silver dollars (one chinese silver dollar contains 0.8 ounce of silver) contract was discovered in 1953 by Communist China government between an unidentified American art dealer (the fence?) known by his Chinese name 普愛倫, and a notorious Chinese Art dealer Yue Bin 岳彬 of Beijing for (illegal) acquisition of the reliefs. Subsequently, Yue was prosecuted and sentenced to death with deferred execution. He died in jail two years later. By now all involved in the case directly are probably dead; we may never know all the facts and details. Clearly this is not an isolated case. It is not clear when and if this and other cases (with China and many other nations of the world) will be resolved and the stolen goods be returned to their rightful owners.

While in Kansas City, we saw statues of Winston Churchill and his wife (see photo on the right). It turns out that Missouri has a special tie with Churchill. In May 1946, after Churchill was voted out of the office, his good friend President Truman invited him to visit U.S. and accompanied him to Westminster College, a small but reputable four years liberal arts college in Fulton of central Missouri, 150 miles east of Kansas city. That is where Winston Churchill gave his famous Sinews of Peace aka the "Iron Curtain" speech that defined the era of Cold War for the next 46 years. In May 1992, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev gave his "The River of Time and the Imperative of Action" speech at the same place to close formally the curtain of the Cold War.

By the way, there is another important Kansas City citizen - Walter Cronkite who was a former CBS News anchorman and arguably one of the most trusted American journalist. He set the standard for all TV newsmen followed. His famous Feb 1968 report from Vietnam forewarned the tragic consequence of escalation of the un-winnable war and sealed the position in history for those leaders who did not understand it. President Johnson was quoted to have said, after Cronkite's report, "If I have lost Cronkite, I have lost Middle America". Walter Cronkite died on July 17th, 2009 at age 92, the day we arrived at Kansas.

Within driving distance from Kansas City, there are two American Presidents' hometowns and libraries. One is President Harry Truman's in Independence, Missouri, 15 miles east of Kansas City. Another is his successor - President Eisenhower's in Abilene, Kansas, 150 miles west of Kansas City. Both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower played crucial roles in ending WWII by defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Both set major postwar policies including Containment and "threat of massive retaliation" against communist expansion that placed U.S. in a strong leadership position of the free world. Both weren’t rated well in office but are now considered top 10 American Presidents by historians and many.

We visited the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas. Growing up as a small town boy (see photo of his home at right) with mid-western values and instilled with rigorous military training, Eisenhower’s low-key style is perhaps expected but it also earned him the criticism of a “do-nothing” president. He obviously was a brilliant planner and executive, judging from what he has accomplished in WWII. He has done great things for the country including the establishment of NASA and space program (that allowed for Kennedy's "going-to-the-moon" campaign) as well as the National Interstate Highway System starting in 1956 (I-70 pass through his home town that made our round-trip from Wichita to Kansas City and back through Abilene very easy!) What I am still curious about is what he really thought of Richard Nixon, his Vice President pick and father of his grand daughter-in-law.

Talk to you soon!

Taiwan 2009 (Part 4) – Taiwanese Salmon

My first encounter with Taiwanese Salmon was back in Feb, 2008. It was at the National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium at the southern tip of Taiwan when I saw few of them swam in a tank. I was shaken by the idea that a specie spent much of its life in the vast ocean could end up landlocked accidentally and survived somehow in the river since the ice age. I mentioned briefly about it in my blog entitled Memory deeper than Ocean back on Feb 14th 2008. During my recent trip to Taiwan, I traveled to WuLing Farm武陵農場 where QiJiaWan River 七家灣溪, the home of Taiwanese Salmon, flows through. It was exciting to see them in the wild.

Somehow I feel connected to the Taiwanese Salmon, being an immigrant who accidentally ended up staying in U.S. and witnessed our children born and grow up in this country. I am no poet, but the best way to record my feeling and thought seems to be in the form of a poem. Here it is.


鮭鄉
-訪台灣武陵農場櫻花鉤吻鮭


那年春天﹐
無邪天真﹐
牽著手走向山巔。
嚮往著雲端﹐
卻摘回朵野花。

那年夏天﹐
英氣勃發﹐
來到冰冷的殿堂。
學一片巧思﹐
也多了份矜持。

那年秋天﹐
遨游大海﹐
到了宇宙的盡頭。
前不見古人﹐
只有情人相隨。

那年冬天﹐
穿越群山﹐
如激流的鉤吻鮭。
百萬年後﹐
雖去了鄉音,
仍捨不得鄉愁。

附記:台灣櫻花鉤吻鮭原為大海洄游性魚類,冰河時期陸封隔絕於大甲溪上游一帶。現有少數存活於武陵農場七家灣溪野生動物保護區。

Rule Of Law vs. Rule By Law 法治與人治

Being an immigrant from Taiwan which has a very different culture and custom, it took me quite some time before I can appreciate the American legal system beyond what is portrayed in Hollywood dramas or reported and discussed in news. Born into Chinese society which has a long history of promoting the ideal of benevolent ruler who could see clearly right from wrong and uphold justice perfectly, it was not difficult for most Chinese to accept the notion of “Rule BY Law” as an ideal since the Republic. There is a significant difference however between the concept of Rule by Law and Rule of Law which is the true universal ideal today. The latter seeks to constrain government power and protect the freedom of people, while the former is merely one of the tools of government that can sometimes be abused to suppress people.

As a necessity, each civilization has obviously developed its own legal system or rules in history to allow its society to progress orderly and resolve conflicts as needed. For China, Legalism school of political philosophy法家was developed early and blossomed around 2500 years ago during the Spring-Autumn and Warring State 春秋戰國Periods for social, economic and political reforms. When the First Emperor Qin秦始皇successfully unified China in 221 BCE and adopted Legalism as the principle of its government, there is a far reaching and long lasting impact on Imperial China for the following 2100+ years. While Qin dynasty did not last long, it showed a way of rule by law by a supreme leader with a centralized government supported with harsh rules to force people into submission including techniques such as “collective responsibility and punishment”. Subsequent dynasties, learning from Qin’s failure, combined ideas of Confucianism and Legalism to rule the land in a far more sustainable fashion. Nevertheless, as Imperial China began its modernization and attempted to revamp its legal system in mid and late nineteenth century, it looked to the west through Japan who had imported the Civil Law system from Germany during Meiji Restoration in 1868. Till today, the legal system of Taiwan still follows mainly the Civil Law traditions with several evolutionary changes in last decade.

A little digression is in order. The philosophy of law or jurisprudence aside, design, implementation and practice of laws is equally important. Today, there are two dominant non-religious legal systems – Common Law and Civil Law, both are products of western civilizations with their roots traced back to Greece and Roman Empire. The representative countries where Common Law system is practiced include Great Britain and U.S. while Germany and France are representative countries where the Civil Law system is practiced built on the 1804 Napoleonic Code of France which was written in accordance with the principles of French Revolution.

While both systems accept the Rule of Law as the fundamental concept, they take very different philosophy and approaches to the substantive and procedures parts of law. First off, Common Law system is built on and balanced with the notion of equity and custom through case laws and procedural fairness. New rulings serve to continue enhancing and evolving the existing ones. In comparison, Civil Law system begins with codification of laws. New codes nullify the old and jurists’ function is to apply the existing laws to particular cases.

Further, in Civil Law system, an inquisitorial process is used where judges play a principal role who investigate the facts, uncover the truth, and figure out the most applicable statue and demonstrates through logical deduction how it applies to the particular case at hand. Meanwhile, the attorneys’ primary role is to argue before the judge what interpretation of the statute and facts lend themselves to best their clients. On the other hand, the common law system employs an adversarial process where persecuting and defense attorneys represent their clients and compete to “win” with possibly hostile cross-examinations, while judges serve as referee to insure the integrity of the proceedings and proper applications of laws; the hope is the truth shall be exposed through such a competing process.

There have been academic studies of pros and cons of each system, but the reality is both systems have been practiced for a long time yielding reasonable overall results in many countries in Europe and in U.S. For countries which look to borrow experience and adopt a system, the choice is often more of proximity and the familiarity of particular social customs and traditions. Today, Taiwan continues to follow the Civil Law system but the results appear to be less than satisfactory with a lack of trust and confidence by people (By the way, Japan doesn’t seem to do any better). To give you a feel for the maturity of the system, while there is no right number for number of lawyers in a society, the number does suggest the extent the practice of legal system is involved and embedded into the daily life of a society. According to American Bar Association, number of active lawyers in U.S. currently is over 1.1 million or one lawyer for every 275 people, the highest in the world. In comparison, there are about 6,000 active lawyers in Taiwan that translates to about 1 for every 4,000 people.

My suspicion of the first issue with Taiwan’s legal system of lack of credibility begins with the intuitive idea of procedural justice or the lack of. It has long been recognized that the best way to help achieving fairness outcomes from all angles and aspects is to have a transparent and fair procedure. With a well-designed procedure, the impossible and hopeless argument of if a particular outcome is fair (according to ME) can be shifted to if the procedure is fair for which one has a chance to fix and improve. This is particularly critical in Common Law system and is called by some Natural Justice. The importance of such a due process that protects individual’s right is in fact written into the constitution in U.S.

The importance of procedural justice cannot be understated. It is way too easy for us, rightfully so, to focus on the outcome and pass our judgment on moral question of what is just. In the recent Oscar winning movie The Reader, there is a scene of German law school class after WWII where the professor discussed with students concept of law: “It is not a question of right or wrong. It is the question of it is legal or not.” This may sound extreme, but I hope you would agree that only if we are willing to start from such a point of view, then we can hope to stick to the principle of Rule of Law. We will then be able to focus on fixing the root causes of the problems as opposed to the symptom of it in a particular case. Only then we can hope to incorporate compassion, custom, and common sense into a legal framework that people in the society can live by freely with acceptable balances. Only then, we can hope to escape from the unsustainable belief of “right” outcome can be achieved by having the “right” people.

By the way, one way to take a snapshot of a society’s attitude to the legal system is to watch popular TV legal drama series (excluding reality court shows like Judge Judy and SciFi or super hero stories). In U.S., Law and Order is the longest running prime time American TV legal drama series debuted in 1990 with 433 episodes. Indeed it is so successful that it has become a franchise with two successful spinoffs thus far and generates over 1 billion dollars of revenue annually. The show explores the human and societal issues from multiple perspectives: law enforcement – police and district attorney’s office, judges, and defendants and defense lawyers. The outcome is not always just to each of us but could left scars on all involved as in real life. It provides both the drama and challenges the viewers with issues that one may not have thought about before.
In contrast, the all time most popular TV series drama in Taiwan is Cases of Bao Gong 包公傳, based on stories of Bao Gong 包公 (999-1062ACE) who was the chief administrator and justice of the capital of Northern Song Dynasty about 1,000 years ago. The TV series debuted in April 1974 and aired for 350 episodes till Nov 1975. Each episode goes through a case story where Bao Gong and his assistants investigated cases, uncovered the truth, found the guilty, punished the criminals, and delivered or restored justice. Three themes were apparent throughout all Bao Gong cases: a)Bao Gong was never in err and used all interrogation and investigatory techniques including torture cleverly, b) equal justice to all except for the emperor from whom Bao Gong derived his absolute unequivocal judicial power, c)the victims and their families/friends and average citizens were extremely grateful and regarded him as God of Justice包青天. Incidentally, the popular symbol of western justice is the Roman Goddess Lady Justice who wears a blindfold (impartiality), carries a sword at her right hand (enforcement) and a scale at her left hand (fairness).

I was also one of those fans (that included Chiang Kai-Shek and the First lady!) before I left for America to study in graduate school. I still recall this series was so popular that one had hard time finding taxi during the prime time the episodes were aired. Almost two decades later, CTV (Chinese Television Service 中華電視公司) remade it in 1993 Feb which was met with another sounding success and ended up with another 236 episodes. To me, it reflected to some extend the slow progress of the understandings and practice of the Rule of Law in Taiwan. Judging from the never-ending political fights and media amplifications of the ongoing trial of former president Chen Shui-Bian, I would not be surprised if a show like Cases Bao Gong would still draw huge audience now.

Yes, you may have detected by now that somewhere during the last 35 years, I have been transformed from a fan of “Cases of Bao Gong” to a fan of “Law and Order”. I now understand the important difference of Rule Of Law and Rule By Law. I now understand that Rule of Law is very much a necessary condition for democracy and freedom of people. I now understand that one must get the basic concept right first and that one must focus on the question “is it legal?” before addressing seriously “is it just?”

Law is not a theoretical or an abstract notion or tool. It is an integral part of a society and as such, the implementation and practice of it tells us all our attitude and maturity. As long as we spent most of our energy debating and arguing the outcomes regarding simultaneous considerations of “Compassion, Rationality, Legality” 情理法, it suggests we are still a land of at best Rule By Law, away from the ideal of Rule of Law. We will then risk of being ruled by individual power and abusive government above the law under the disguised of law. As long as we continue to judge ourselves by the outcomes alone, evade transparency, and take short cuts to selectively apply laws to achieve “desired” outcomes, we will not be protected from abuse of power. Worse, the ideal of democracy and individual freedom will remain to be illusive and unsustainable.

Ok, enough of this serious discussion. Before I go, here is a Yotube video of the original 1974 title song of the TV series Cases of Bao Gong for your enjoyment. Talk to you soon!