Taiwan photos 8

At the book store.



A ship my daughter made. I asked whether it was a castle, but no, it's a ship :-)



The fancy Humanities and Social Science Library at Academia Sinica.







I'm off tomorrow to Shenzhen for another BGI meeting.

The mystery of height

Academia Sinica (where I am on sabbatical) has a small bookstore that my kids always drag me to. Ordinarily I am happy to spend embarrassingly large amounts of time at a bookstore, but this place has only a small collection of English books. Over time, I think I've flipped through most of them! Yesterday I was looking at The Formosan Encounter: Notes on Formosa's Aboriginal Society, A Selection of Documents from Dutch Archival Sources. The Dutch came to Taiwan (then called Formosa) in the early 17th century and these translated documents record their impressions of the Austronesian natives. (Both the Dutch and Chinese settlers traded with the natives during this period.)

One report states that the aboriginal men were taller by a head and neck, on average, than the Dutch. (The average Dutchman came only to the shoulder of the average native?) Another report describes the aborigines as tall and sturdily built, like semi-giants. This paper on historical Dutch height suggests that 17th century Dutchmen were about 170 cm or so on average. Holland was the richest country in Europe at the time, but nutritional conditions for average people were still not good by modern standards. So how tall were the aborigines? Presumably well above 180cm since "a head and neck" would be at least 20cm! (Some Native Americans were also very tall when the Europeans first encountered them.)

But, strangely, the descendants of these aborigines are not known for being particularly tall. This paper reports that modern day aboriginal children in Taiwan are shorter than their Han counterparts. On the other hand, the Dutch are now the tallest people in the world, with average male height exceeding 6 feet (183 cm). This kind of reversal makes one wonder whether, indeed, most groups of humans have similar potential for height under ideal conditions, as claimed here. (Note the epigenetic effects -- several generations of good nutrition might be required for a group to reach its full height.)

In the nineteenth century, when Americans were the tallest people in the world, the country took in floods of immigrants. And those Europeans, too, were small compared with native-born Americans. Malnourishment in a mother can cause a child not to grow as tall as it would otherwise. But after three generations or so the immigrants catch up. Around the world, well-fed children differ in height by less than half an inch.* In a few, rare cases, an entire people may share the same growth disorder. African Pygmies, for instance, produce too few growth hormones and the proteins that bind them to tissues, so they can’t break five feet even on the best of diets. By and large, though, any population can grow as tall as any other.

* I'm not sure where this statement comes from, since, for example, Japanese still seem to be a few inches shorter than, say Europeans. But it's also true that even the modern Japanese diet is lower in protein and calcium than the corresponding European or American one.

Back to work

Now it's back to work in Taiwan. I still had several administrative issues to take care of this morning (health insurance, travel reimbursement, opening a bank account, etc.), which made me stop and estimate the total amount of effort that it has taken to set up this sabbatical. I'd guess we expended a person-month of work to book travel, sublet our house, move in, set things up here, enroll the kids in a new school, etc., etc. It's pretty daunting considering our planned stay here is slightly less than a year!

I've had really good luck with jet lag in the last month. I adjusted fairly rapidly from Pacific to Taiwan time (-9 hrs), then to Spain (-6 hrs), and now (seemingly) back to Taiwan. I find melatonin works well for me, although individual responses vary. (I learned about it from a Japanese physicist who travels a lot.)


Below are some photos of my office and the Institute of Physics here. I've gotten in the habit of taking photos all the time using my iPhone. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it helps me remember what I've been doing during this life. ("The days are long, but the years are short.")

Taiwan photos

Still recovering from stomach bug. Click for larger versions.


First day at kindergarten.




The walk to school.





Humanities and social science building.




Update: a few more photos -- click for larger versions.

Exploring around campus:








One of many big bookstores in Taipei. This one occupies several floors of a shopping mall tower. About 10-20% of the books were in English.

Taiwan, week one

Some miscellaneous thoughts on my first week in Taiwan.

I have done no physics or serious thinking, other than while lying in bed :-( Instead, I've been busy with mundane things like:

visiting Carrefour several times
visiting Costco twice
visiting IKEA

registering for cellphone service

getting the kids started at kindergarten

getting an ID card

getting a $3 ($100 NT) haircut -- nobody is cheaper than me :-)

catching a stomach bug ...

Most of these things were accomplished with two kids in tow, which makes the degree of difficulty significantly higher :-)


We are living on the Academia Sinica campus (flickr photos; the photo up top is of the languages and literature building), within a short walk of the gym (olympic size pool!), the kindergarten, libraries and our offices. The weather here is hot and humid at the moment (the climate is technically "subtropical monsoon"), so even a short walk in the middle of the day leaves me sweaty. It will be a tough adjustment from the mild conditions in Eugene, although I must say the vegetation here has a lush beauty which is very different from Oregon.

Our apartment is quite small compared to the 4000 square feet we occupy in Eugene. So far the kids seem not to mind -- they have been very adaptable throughout this trip. Anyone who wants to live green should try urban Asia -- the per capita carbon and energy footprint here is a fraction of that in the US -- but most Americans would have a hard time with the sacrifices.

A major motivation for choosing to come here for sabbatical was to enhance our kids' language abilities. They are fairly bilingual already, but I don't have a good feel for exactly how much Mandarin they really understand (although they do already make fun of my pronunciation :-). Their kindergarten is conducted entirely in Mandarin, and so far they are getting along just fine.


Kids eating at the cafeteria.






Lego creations.