Overseas readers.

Re last post. To be clear here in Taiwan kids don't trick or treat. If they happen to go to an after school cram school that teaches English, it's likely they'll have a Halloween party complete with costumes, games and candy, the appropriate seasonal decor, witches, skeletons and pumpkins and such. It's can be a sweaty affair dressed up in a costume surrounded by screaming sugar fed 6-10 year olds. I haven't done one in a while but Sandy did last Friday. I stopped to get the car (in order to pick up the boys from preschool) at couldn't find her for the throbbing throng of kiddies all shouting a random mixture of English and Chinese - English to the teachers in order to correctly answer the question and thereby be rewarded with a treat, and Chinese amongst themselves when congratulating each other and bouncing to the next candy filling station. Parents watching from the street. Good way to promote a small cram school competing with the much larger Hess English Franchise directly across the street. The great interloper. The Wal Mart of Bushibans, to this neighbourhood anyhow.

My students were surprised today when I told them that Halloween was not a holiday in North America. People go to work, kids go to school. After their initial outrage, they pulled themselves together and informed me that it used to be a holiday here.

"Yes Teacher. Our first president's birthday. But not anymore."

And I thought, yes, of course ol' Peanut Head himself, thug and gangster, general(issimo) and born again dictator asshole Chiang Kai-shek. Born 10/31.

The Taiwanese are methodically removing Chiang from view everywhere around the island and have been for some time. When I got here he was on the 1000 NT bill. No more. The high school where I've been teaching for the last four years removed his statue and put in more parking for the staff.

This is an excellent summary from the daily telegraph.