Discovery Channel features Taiwan "though a foreigners eyes"

FYI, the dragon boat races here in Hsinchu are not actually happening in the water - the water is too polluted. The local government here instead is organizing a race where boats of some sort are put on carts and people use one foot to row (or something).

Change agents?? Huh? :s

I’ve raced twice on the river … it takes at least a couple of years to forget how nasty the water can be. I’ve done it more than once because I feel that the enjoyment of being on these teams trumps the discomfort of the nasty water, but then I also thoroughly wash off after practices. I have also played softball, gone biking, etc. around there, so I have seen and smelled the river in many seasons. If you don’t believe the water is nasty, please let’s you and I go down to the river for a water-chugging contest. You go first. :laughing:

I can confirm that with 1 cm of water in the bottom of the boat, it was black water. The river water gets cleaner in the periods leading up to racetime, but in the first 1-1/2 months of dragon-boat team practices, it is very nasty. I have seen dead fish and at least one pufferdog floating on the surface, legs sticking up into the air.

Among the cleanup efforts in the couple of weeks right before the race are big compressors pumping oxygen into the river (on the news recently), as well as the shutting off of some of the sluices that bring pig feces into the river from hog farms upstream. Lots of motorized rafts also scoot about the river to take out huge piles of plastic and glass bottles, along with other assorted floating trash. The river runs different ways depending on the tidal flow, so there are certain times of the day when the stuff coming downstream bumps into the stuff floating upstream, resulting in the Keelung river becoming a big motionless pool full of trash.

While paddling the dragon boats in the first few practices when everybody is still a bit uncoordinated, it is common to get splashes up into one’s face and mouth from river water. It does not taste or feel good, and definitely at that point there have been no attempts by Taipei City to clean things up. Most teams bring bottled water into the boats with them – a good use can sometimes be to wash out one’s mouth and eyes right after a bad splash. The legs definitely get a bit of water onto them – some people have reported a reddening of splashed parts, but there have been temporary shower facilities there for the last couple of years or so.