Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It was 1am on a rainy day when the author got into a casually parked cab for a post-drinking ride home.  The cab driver seemed rather tired, prompting a question from the still energetic author to figure out the reason.  "I had like 3 rides from Xizhi to Banqiao just in half a day today."  The driver quipped, nonchalantly exposing the sense of surprise even after completing those 40km, 40min (without traffic), 20 USD (quite a sum for a single ride on a Taiwanese taxi) journeys.  "And all of them were young ladies by themselves...but during the day when the MRT is still operating."  The driver elaborated, referring to Taipei's subway system.

Two years ago today, this blog posted on the meaning of the Tiananmen Incident for the ethnic Chinese populations living around the world, noting that the failure for resolution, reconciliation, and above all, lack of official apology, continue to be a painful patch of darkness in the minds of millions.  Certainly, this point is all the truer today on the Incident's 25th anniversary than it has ever been.  But as that two-year post has also noted, today's China is no longer the China of 1989, a much more complex place where sheer weight of economic development has wrecked havoc on the very social fabric.

It is a disturbing time that people seem to live in nowdays.  The fury of one person is casually unleashed upon the innocent passerby, making them the cannon fodder for social frustration that are not only not caused by them, but not even really related to them in any way.   The bloody mess in a subway carriage in Taipei recently is followed by a drive-by shooting in the UC Santa Barbara campus in California, in both cases instigated by young man whose unique concerns with their own, rather different forms of social disgruntlement were suddenly exposed to a society unprepared to receive them in the way it did.

It has been a few days since one of the most talked about violent crimes in Taiwan's recent history took place.  A 21-year-old student, allegedly neglected by both parents and society at large, stabbed through carriages full of innocent commuters on Taipei's subway, killing four in what people can only dub as a psychopathic assault.  Since the incident, both mass and social media here are filled with speculative reports on the background of the 21-year-old, with discussions ranging from how to detect anti-social behaviors early in a person's life to how to properly punish violent criminals of this sort.

The on-and-off confrontation between China and her various naval neighbors over territorial disputes in the South China Sea has once again reared its ugly head.  The author previously reported being in the Philippines during previous clashes of Chinese and Filipino forces , and this time, it is Vietnam's turn to hate on the Chinese encroachment.  A Chinese building of oil rig in disputed waters led to heavy popular backlash on the Vietnamese streets, with vicious gangs targeting anyone Chinese looking for physical punishment in what can only be described as revenge attacks by vigilantes.