Kaohsiung

We travelers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.- Mary Wortley Montegu

I am currently in the port city of Kaohsiung, having taken a three hour train ride through mountains, from coast to coast. The city is so different from Taitung and different from Taipei as well. Taipei is more modern looking, but it does not not have the same cosmopolitan feel. Here, I can tell from the way people dress, from the nice restaurant (nice and inexpensive) where I got pasta with pesto, that there is more youthful influence and perhaps a foreign one as well.

I’m staying in Mrs. Kao and Celeste’s Aunt’s home in a Japanese style room. Therefore, I have sliding screen doors, nice wooden floors, a low wooden table at which I sit on the floor and read, write, type, and do whatever other work I may have. My bedroom adjoins this little sitting room with its own set of screens and my bed is literally a mat on the floor. I prefer this though to the mat on a frame. If I’m going to sleep on a mat, it should be on the floor. It is much more comfortable that way, though I will admit, I had a little difficulty falling asleep last night.

I went out with Celeste and Shawn (who is back in Kaohsiung from Taitung for summer school classes) to see the new Harry Potter film in an incredible new complex. Much of Kaohsiung has been rebuilt for the world games being held Right Now in the city. How do I know they are being held here? Well aside from the plethora of commercials on television, the billboards plastered all over the city, and the new metro system that was built with its own world games stop (this system rivals Taipei’s, I think it is actually better), I have been running into random athletes coming back from training, perhaps events. I have yet to talk to them, but I might try to strike up a conversation next time.

There are a fair amount of tourists here for the games, so I am no longer the only white person in a million, which is kind of nice, but at the same time, I am not there just to see the world games. In fact, I am only passing through, and the fact that it happens to coincide with the world games is pure coincidence, and I like it that way.

I’m off to enjoy a day of relaxation and perhaps exploration in this new, hot city. If there is anything eventful, I will let you know.

Butterflies

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. -George Moore

I walked into a fairy tale the other day. I went for a hike with Cash and Jeff into one of the mountains along a trail made seemingly of old rail ties. There was not a single bird in the entire place, only hundreds of butterflies. As we started our ascent we were surrounded by groups of yellow butterflies that gradually turned into groups of black butterflies as we got higher and the light grew dimmer. We emerged into a pavilion that looked out on the ocean and the mountains in all their glory, made more powerful by the contrast with the dark mountain woods. As we began our descent down the other side, the butterflies changed to dark emerald and blue and were much larger than their yellow and black brethren. But as we got further down the other side, they turned again into the yellow butterflies that had welcomed us initially. It was very surreal.

Welcome the Harvest

A child on a farm sees a plane fly by overhead and dreams of a faraway place.
A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home. -Carl Burns

The past couple of days have been pretty eventful, though all days here are eventful really. But I’m pretty sure most of will you not have read about something like this before…I had certainly never done anything like this before. Yesterday we moved up to the fourth floor of the building since there was a meeting being held in our classroom that we weren’t told about until that very morning fifteen minutes before class started. No worries though. The fourth floor has good accommodations for the class, so we all piled into furnitureless room (it reminded me of home), pulled out chairs and cushions for the closet and laid out. We did some worksheets and vocabulary at first, but eventually we began watching Monsters Inc. in English with Chinese subtitles. It was a big hit.
That afternoon Mrs. Kao and Celeste went to work at the shelter for girls who had been physically and sexually abused. Concerned that my presence there may be more detrimental than helpful, we decided it was best for me to stay back at the center. So each afternoon I go downstairs and eat lunch with the other employees. Cash insists on getting or making lunch for me every day (like I said, coolest woman ever), and I have to struggle to let her let me wash dishes or help out.

Anyway that afternoon, since I had some free time, I met a couple of the secretaries from the second floor who were anxious to speak English with me. So we talked a bit in Chinese and a bit in English (our skills were fairly comparable) and then I was off with Cash to go shopping for ingredients for the next days baking. We went to an underground department store/supermarket to buy our supplies. Food is expensive here. With the exception of fruit which is grown locally, the prices are intimidating as Cash pointed out several times. Cereal, dairy products, chocolate, and especially peanut butter are all incredibly expensive. We bought eggs, butter, and some fruit for the pancakes and waffles we planned to make and headed back.

Cash explained more of the work that the TFCF does for the children, which was very tiring and difficult for her since she did not know many of the words in English, so I really appreciated her talking to me. I know exactly how frustrating it is to try and carry on a conversation in a foreign language and one as serious and technical as this one was incredibly daunting, but she tried anyway. We used Google translator actually to get some of the technical words.

So if I haven’t already explained this yet I really should. The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families provides a plethora of services all over the island and here in Taitung makes an incredible impact on the community. They provide health and nutritional aid, education services to young children, sponsor older children to go on to high school and university, take care of orphans, physically and sexually abused children, send out a mobile library to the surrounding villages in the mountains and much more. I could not possible explain everything that they do. But it is absolutely vital to these people’s lives. The people who work at the center are completely dedicated; the social workers are on duty twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Cash originally worked in the government but left to work for the TFCF and works to help teach parents about saving money and basic accounting and money management. It is this function that we are hoping to expand as well by incorporating a micro-credit venture in the existing infrastructure that offers the necessary education to support the project.
So hopefully you guys found that interesting, but if not I promise it gets more intense from here. We went to a village in the middle of the mountains today to celebrate a festival for the harvest with one of the tribes. The second we got there we were greeted by a drunk sixty-six year old lady dressed in tribal celebratory garb who grabbed Celeste and me by our arms and marched us to a nearby house all the way saying “I love you, I love you” (in English mind you). Cash couldn’t stop laughing at her, at me, at the situation really. It was incredibly bizarre. We asked her name but she said just to call her Ama (which means grandmother). We were thrown into a circle of people dancing around and left to follow everyone else. It was incredible, and awkward, and exciting all at once but we managed to escape after fifteen minutes. Of course, our escape was momentary.

We then ran into the village chief, equally drunk, who desperately wanted to give me “a huggie.” He only gave me a handshake fortunately but none of us could really understand what he was saying. And so we escaped yet again, walking past a house where children and adults were playing a drinking game where they stripped off their clothes. It was only the beginning of the game though I think, since no one was nude. Like I said, it was an interesting experience.

We went next to the only school in the village, an elementary school where there were children playing in the back. From what I could see, it was a good facility and it was nice to escape from the excitement of the festival for a little while. We met and played with the local kids, who were shocked by how white my skin was compared to theirs. They were really curious about me, about whether I could play baseball and drive a car. They also wanted my stuff. It was funny when they asked for my hat, a little less funny when one of the kids maybe five years old sincerely asked for my eyes.

Jeff, the guy from the mobile library who used to be in the military took us to the ancestral home of the village where there was a medicine women and the village elder. The medicine woman (who had a master’s degree and had just one an award from the government for being one of the most influential community activists in the country) performed a ceremony to the ancestors, explaining who we were and why we had come. Then things got a little tense. The village elder, who was also drunk, asked Jeff and Mrs. Kao what we were doing there and was worried that we would disgrace the ancestors. Jeff and Mrs. Kao explained why we were there, what we were doing, Jeff explained that he was half aboriginal and that we all worked with the TFCF and the elder said that he would give an offering after we left to appease the ancestors and apologize for us being in there. The medicine woman was from a younger generation than the elder and so though she tried to speak and explain that it was alright, he held rank above her. But then there was a rather rapid transformation and the man invited us to look around and take our time. It was very confusing. It was only later that we learned that the man was not the village elder but just a drunk man pretending to be and having a little fun. But since he was still from an older generation than the medicine woman, she could not speak out against him. It’s kind of funny actually, but it did reflect a change going through the community, a balance between modernization and tradition.

In the past, the tribes were self-sufficient, grew their own crops in the mountains, and hunted in the mountains for their food. After the government came in and introduced running water, electricity, even satellite dishes for limited television, there also came taxes and the hunting grounds were closed as nature preserves. Modernization has brought better living conditions, but the traditions are dying. The middle schools and high schools are both boarding schools in other villages or in the city, and once the children leave, they can never really come back and keep the traditions.

As we were trying to leave, Jeff and Mrs. Kao were approached by the principal of the school (also drunk, yes just about the whole village was drunk), who kept talking to them and wouldn’t let them go, asking why no one every came to his village to teach the children for the summer, they needed help, the village needed help. Mrs. Kao couldn’t promise anything, the TFCF cannot afford to send teachers out to every village, and she can’t speak for them anyway. It was sad that we couldn’t help them, but the principal kept talking and talking until both Jeff and Mrs. Kao were desperate to escape. We all did eventually and hopped in the van to head back down the mountains. They view really was stunning. I am still constantly impressed with the beauty of the peaks, or of the ocean peeking through a gap in the ranges.

Like I said, it was an interesting and unforgettable day. If any of you ever get a chance to participate in a traditional festival do so, but be prepared.

Farming

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. ~G.K. Chesterton

Ben the farmer, not exactly what I had in mind when coming here, and not really something that I have ever imagined, but it felt really good to just do some hard labor and to give back a little to Cash and her family for the food that they had given us. There were a few things to know about planting rice in her fields. One, it gets hot, so keep hydrated and be careful not to get sun sickness. Two, there are some pretty nasty snails that likely have diseases and eat the crops, so we don’t like them. Supposedly there were some bloodsuckers too, but I didn’t see any of them. Third, learn to walk through the mud, or else you will get stuck. Anyway, I learned a whole bunch of lessons on my morning of work. Cash and her brother Eric supplied me with boots, gloves, a poncho (for the first couple of hours when it rained) a thumb tool to dig into the grass and plant it, and Shawn gave me a long sleeved shirt to wear.

I did four jobs for the most part. Cash’s father ran the machine, which takes the rolls of grass and seeds and turns gears in the back to plant rows in the field. However the machine is not perfect, and turns around the field tend to mess things up, so it was our job (Cash’s and mine) to go through the paddies and plant by hand where the machine had missed. I can understand why this would be back breaking work when working from five in the morning until seven at night as Cash and her family did. I only worked four or five hours so I didn’t feel too bad. They were all worried that I might crumble, but I’m a bit tougher than that, even if I don’t look like it. So I planted a rice field by hand, that was pretty cool. After that I took a rake and walked along the fields and removed excess sticks and debris that would get in the way of the planting. Then I used a hoe of sorts to go through the fields and spread out clumps of mud so that the machine would not have difficulty getting through and planting. This work was pretty difficult, especially navigating through the mud while not stepping on any of the rice. I almost got stuck a couple of times, but I made it out and around without too much difficulty. The last job I did was the most difficult and probably the most frightening. I got on the back of the machine while Cash’s father was driving and fed the rolls of grass into the back as it planted them. That machine bucks and moves so erratically that I almost fell off several times despite having good balance. I really thought I was going to fall at first. It was terrifying. Fortunately, I never fell, and I got the feel of the machine after a minute or two and was able to help plant the field. I watched as the grass levels go lower and then grabbed a role, positioned it in the slot and fed it down a little chute. It was more tiring than bending over in the field.

The time went by fairly quickly. Before I knew it, we were taking a break for lunch and local motorcycle ice cream salesmen had come around to sell his merchandise. That is a brilliant idea. Going around selling ice cream to sweaty farmers has to be a successful method. I’m not sure what kind of ice cream I ate, it didn’t look normal, seeing as it was brown and purple and red, but it was cold and it tasted fine, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Cash, her father and mother, Eric, Shawn, Mrs. Kao, and I all sat in the shade eating bento boxes for lunch and chatting (they mostly chatted, I mostly listened), and then we were off. They would continue in the fields and I would continue on with my day.

Tonight had one interesting point. There was a parade and festival going through the city tonight honoring one of the local gods, (actually apparently the god is from China and is here visiting and the festival was a sendoff) asking for rain and good crops. It was really cool. There were trucks with lots of people playing traditional music with large drums, cymbals, and statues of the god. It was a really cool feeling to walk down a street with signs written in Chinese, a festival to a foreign god going by, and the sounds of a foreign city. It felt really surreal. Then I heard lots of pops. People from the trucks were sending fireworks up into the air about ten feet away from us. I’m really glad that woke me, otherwise what came next would have been too much of a shock.

I saw them before I heard them. Large brightly colored trucks with thousands of flashing lights and floats and animals and dragons and phoenix’s which would have been cool and traditional except that they were mixed with crazy looking pigs and reindeer and random assortments of things. And blaring from these trucks was intense techno music that was in complete contrast to the traditional part of the parade that had preceded it. The parade was circling the city, which is not too large, so I kept running into it wherever I went. And there was no escaping that techno music. Little children were covering their ears, people were just laughing. Even the locals thought that the techno floats were weird and ridiculous.

So yeah it’s been an interesting day. I planted three rice paddies this morning as an undocumented laborer and saw a festival that comes once a year tonight, so I’ve had a couple of unforgettable experiences. I don’t know if I will do any more farming in the future, but Cash’s family was nice enough to invite me back to work for the harvesting season.

School and More

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~Lin Yutang

Classes are going well, but I think my favorite work, albeit the most tiring work, is going out with the mobile library. We visited one village where about twenty-five to thirty kids came out too see us. They were all really excited to see me and kept asking again and again if I was really American. We had a lot of fun. A little girl read a couple of books to me, the boys jumped on my back and played around and they all drew pictures for me. They were a lot of fun, and they were so excited for the mobile library to come around. But at the same time, I had to put things in perspective. These kids who looked so happy, only got this experience once a month. When at home they were helping their parents with work and taking care of siblings. They live in small, often dirty homes, and they have an immense disadvantage to students in Taipei or other cities for pursuing careers in the future since their schools are under funded.

We went out for dinner that night with the director to a restaurant atop one of the mountains. It was a traditional aboriginal restaurant, so while we waited for our food, in the center of the place (it was all outdoors by the way) there was traditional music and dancing. I took more video, though not too much to be obnoxious, and sat and enjoyed the full moon, food, and dancing. It was a good meal. Once again, I was limited by the rapid Chinese being flying across the table, but I understood that the director was leaving for Mongolia, this coming week now to work at a TFCF chapter out there. He told us about a trip where he once hunted coyotes with the people there after Mrs. Kao mentioned that a coyote had once eaten one of her cats. He is a funny guy. Always joking and laughing, but he does very serious work and has seen some sad and terrible things with the children he helps.

The next day we went out with the mobile library again and there was one girl very eager to improve her English, so Celeste and I helped her read through an English storybook. She did pretty well. I liked this girl a lot and I really hope she can get out of the life she is in right now. If she works hard in school and gets into a University maybe she can, that’s why TFCF exists really. Her dream, or at least what I could understand of it, was to get into hotel management and to one day visit Finland. I don’t know why she wanted to go to Finland but why not, we all have dreams…her name was Winnie. I really liked Winnie.

Anyway, I thought I should share some of the food that I have eaten on this trip. Perhaps I have mentioned some if it before, I lose track, but I know there is a lot of stuff to add. I have eaten shaved ice with red beans (I personally prefer the mango kind, but this was pretty good), duck feet, fresh octopus, sea cucumber, “100 year old” black eggs, and chicken in a thick rice wine sauce that tasted…well it is an acquired taste and I have yet to acquire it. There are others as well that will come back to me I’m sure. I have eaten chicken heart soup (though I didn’t eat the hearts), numerous vegetables and fruits that I cannot for the life of me name, and just about every day I try something new.

Speaking of something new, Celeste and I tried drumming with the kids. The school has a set of snare drums, tom toms and bass drums that the kids and teachers learn to play from the only black person I have seen on the entire island. I don’t know where he is from but he looks like a stereotypical Rastafarian who teaches the kids to drum and dance in enthusiastic Chinese. Chinese with a Caribbean accent is pretty cool.

As different and incredible as all this has been, none of it would have been possible without Cash. Cash has driven us to every location, gotten us meals, made us meals, brought us food from her family’s farm, helped out with kids, equipment, everything. The other night, about seventy kids from the TFCF were going on a camping trip. So we went out to help set up tents and cook meals. I helped Cash prepare a soup in the largest pot I have ever seen in my life. It would have to be since it needed to feed 70 kids. She lit fires, played with kids, cooked; she’s awesome. That night was fun. I met Shawn that night, a TA from the school last year with Mrs. Kao and Celeste, and he came with us to camp. So after we helped to cook the soup, we set about cooking our own meal. It was fun sitting around our little campfire roasting meat and vegetables. All of the kids routinely brought us food from their fires and then ran away shyly, giggling. It was pretty cute. We tried to buy marshmallows to teach them how to roast them, but all we could find were fruity knockoff marshmallows that tasted more like candy. The kid liked them though, so we managed to give those out and everyone was happy.

We found out that Cash, who had just driven us up a mountain and made soup for seventy people, was getting up at four in the morning the next day to plant rice on her family’s farm. I really wanted to give back in some way, to thank her for all she did for us, so I started my next great adventure…I offered to help plant rice in her fields. I didn’t get up at 4:00 am with them; I started at 8:00 instead. I think they would have been too worried if I had started working with them at 5:00. They constantly worried I would collapse the heat, but I actually handled it quite well. I have a new, educated, respect for farmers and their work and for Cash and her family. But I should probably tell the full story.

Taitung

It is not down in any map; true places never are. -Herman Melville

The train ride from Taipei to Taitung was about 5 or 6 hours, but the scenery was beautiful. We rode between two mountain ranges and then along the ocean, passing small towns in the mountains, and islands on the coast. I loved looking at the mountains. Covered with trees and rising up from the foundations of the earth, they looked ancient but welcoming. The ocean was breathtaking. I have not had too many sights of the ocean, only from an airplane, and once from a car in Vancouver I believe, so I was really excited to see the immense expanse of water.

On an unrelated, but still interesting note, before I left that morning, I did everything I could to find an ATM that would give me money. It was 5:30 on a Sunday morning, every bank was closed and I went to 10 ATMs and not a single one would give me service. So I left for Taitung with 300 NTD (about 9 dollars). I was a little concerned about that, but I have since corrected that issue. I was borrowing against Mrs. Kao for a while but I have found an ATM that works. I can’t believe I found an ATM in a small city in Southern Taiwan when I couldn’t find one in its capital. But I digress.

So I eventually got to Taitung train station and was picked up by Cash, whom I would later learn is one of the coolest women on the planet. But at this point, I knew nothing about her, only that she spoke a little bit of English and asked often if things were OK. She drove us to the house where we are staying where met the owner. She had a pretty good story. The owner of the place went to the School where we are volunteering when she was a child and it had such an impact on her that she wanted us to stay here free of charge. It was really very nice of her. But I didn’t know this at first, so it was a little intimidating to begin with. She spoke very little English, my room was small, and my mattress was little more than a bamboo mat with a sheet. At least there was air conditioning though.
We were supposed to have internet, but the wireless doesn’t work with our American computers for some reason. My bathroom and shower though, now that is a sight. My shower is a hose that connects to my sink about 2 feet away from the toilet in a 3x3 room. So as you can imagine, showering is a bit of a challenge, however, it inspires me to take quick showers. We also didn’t have towels the first couple of days, so we had to improvise a little. We have since rectified that. There is the bug issue though. There are enough bugs here that we need to put on bug spray before we go to sleep, but unfortunately we also found flea eggs on the sheets on the beds. Fortunately I have brought my own sheet and so I’m not using the sheets or blankets provided, but that leaves me with little to sleep with at night, so I don’t sleep too much really. Celeste has also been getting mysterious bug bites every night and we can’t figure out where they are coming from. I recently got a couple myself but I’m not too concerned. We are managing as best we can; after all, these are better accommodations than some of the places around here.

I started teaching at the school the next day. The school is actually pretty nice with a large air-conditioned classroom with desks, AV equipment and the like. The kids speak very little English but there are some really good students who are miles ahead of everyone else. All of the students at the school are from single parent families, whether it is because of the death of a parent, or one is in prison, or abandonment, or several other stories. Also about 50% of the kids are aboriginals and the other 50% are either native Taiwanese or Han Chinese each with their own social worker. Cash in fact works as a social worker for the TFCF, but I don’t know if she works with any of my kids.

I work from 9:00 am until 12:00pm teaching the kids English, using Free Rice to give them random vocabulary and help them donate rice to other needy children, and then we do several projects, or read stories and such. Usually we throw in a movie too since it lets them hear English in a more entertaining way. In the afternoons, I go out with the mobile library to the surrounding towns. It’s an amazing trip to get there we. We usually drive along the coast up the mountains until we get to a town.

On my first day out with the library I met two inspiring people, both of whom are aboriginals who help run the project. All of the villages we have visited have been aboriginal villages. Apparently the library can only make it out to each village once a month since they don’t have too much funding, but they make do with what they have. They pack books and tables and chairs into an ingeniously designed truck. Anyway, the two guys who do a lot of the work have really interesting stories too. The first one was in the military but left to become a social worker for aboriginal kids, taking a 50% pay cut. He has a great personality and an infectious laugh. The other guy is the son of the Chief of one of the tribes (the Paiwan tribe) and he teaches the kids traditional weavings. He showed Celeste and I on the first day, and we did our best to weave with him. It was cool, but extremely difficult.

The next day was fairly eventful. I met the director of the TFCF who is a really goofy guy, but cares deeply about his work and the kids. We talked about plans to raise money for future endeavors and projects that they are looking into. More memorable that day, and more influential on our subsequent days was Celeste’s accident. She tripped on a step outside of a Starbucks and hurt her ankle pretty badly, so she has been unable to walk well for much of the past week. Her leg is steadily getting better though after a few days rest and a trip to the local Eastern Medicine doctor’s office. That was really…different. There were posters on the walls explaining Chi flow as a cause of health issues in different parts of the body. The doctor put a salve of some sort on Celeste’s leg (which she described as the ultimate icy hot) and then bound it carefully. It was a fascinating place.

I also went to visit our landlord’s shop in town. It has everything you can imagine, though I don’t think any of it was made in Taiwan. It has merchandise from the US, India, France, Mongolia, Nepal, you name it, but I’ve yet to see any special Taiwanese merchandise. But the owners, our landlords, are incredibly nice. The husband, Sonny, was really excited to meet me, and actually spoke decent English. He was really into Jazz so we bonded over that, and he lent me a bunch of great CDs to load onto my computer.

I’m constantly busy, so I’m really appreciating this down time, despite the hundred-degree heat. I have done so much in such a short amount of time it makes me wonder why I waste so much time at home or at school. I like the work and keeping busy. It makes me appreciate relaxation far more.

Last Day in Taipei

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road. -William Least Heat Moon

July Fourth in Taiwan meant little and I really should have thought about going to the American Institute in Taiwan for part of the day to see what they did. Maybe if I find my way in Taipei again I can go visit, but instead I wanted very much to go out and explore and take pictures. Not pictures for the sake of proof, but pictures for the sake of good, maybe even artistic, shots. I had gotten pretty good at getting around the city on my own. I could take the subway anywhere, I was good at wandering, meeting people, and when necessary, asking for direction. There is a lot of freedom in being able to go around a foreign city alone. It was fairly lonely at first, especially when everything was intimidating and difficult. But as I got used to the city and my terrible, terrible Chinese, it became more enjoyable and I came to cherish my time alone, traveling through the city. I don’t doubt that I would have had an incredibly fun time if I traveled with a friend or two; so if anybody wants to travel, or needs a travel buddy, let me know. I think traveling is a great way to really understand someone.

Anyway, so on July 4th I first went to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. It wasn’t too far from my hostel and I had studied Sun Yat-sen in my Modern Chinese History class so I thought it would be really interesting. It was, and it was also a beautiful place. There were gardens and trees surrounding the building where old men were doing Tai chi. My favorite sight from the whole place though was an older man standing in front of the memorial hall flying a kite hundreds and hundreds of feet up in the air. It was amazing; I’ve never seen anything like that before. Then again, there a lot of things that have been new to me, but that one particularly stood out for some reason. Far more unusual than that though were the teenagers gathered along the walkway outside the entrances of the memorial hall. They all had boom boxes and were practicing dance routines. I couldn’t figure out why they gathered where they did, but it was fun to watch. I filmed some of it if anybody wants to see.

The memorial hall itself is pretty much a giant museum. As I walked in a young woman approached me and asked if I wanted an English tour, so I figured it would be better than just exploring on my own. She showed me all of the exhibits on the main floor and explained some of the history of Dr, Sun Yat-sen. She was really surprised that I spoke Chinese (I thought rather poorly, but she was very nice) and thought that I was an American who lived in Taiwan. One of the coolest things that I saw in the place though was the changing of the guard ceremony. In the middle of the memorial hall is a giant bronze statue of a seated Sun Yat-sen and in front of it are two guards facing each other, perfectly still. It is very similar to the British guards I guess, and they only move once an hour when they change places. There was a rather elaborate ceremony that went with it and I was glad that I got a video of some of it. There was a lot of twirling rifles and marching in place and slowly moving to the pedestals where the new guards stood, equally still, for the next hour. It was pretty cool. My tour guide was surprised to hear that guards in the United States are allowed to move.

We parted ways after that and I explored the rest of the museum carrying the touristy souvenirs that she had given me. I say museum now because there were art exhibits covering that top two floors that had nothing to do with Sun Yat-sen. But they were really cool.

I had a little time before I was meeting with Professor Shih and his students, so I went to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall. If I thought Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall was large, it was nothing compared to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. It was massive, absolutely massive. It housed several parks, the large memorial hall, the national concert hall and the national theatre and large open squares. They must have been setting up for some festival or event since there were tents and inflatable everywhere. The memorial hall was the most interesting place by far. Underneath there was a large museum that had a lot of Chiang Kai-shek’s possessions as well as decorative war medals from a lot of countries. I don’t know if they were his or not, but it was really cool to see all of the different styles of medals of honor and such. Afterwards, I climbed up the steps to the memorial hall and saw a massive statue (it put Sun Yat-sen’s statue to shame) looking out over Taipei, also guarded by two men. The lack of subtlety was pretty amusing. I mean having a massive statue high above everyone else looking down upon all of the people is perhaps a little haughty. But he didn’t build it so I shouldn’t blame him. Anyway, the view from the top was spectacular, but I was running a little late so I had to rush home to find my way to Professor Shih

It was a little complicated finding his apartment. I took a train and a taxi to a local hospital that was supposedly nearby and waited for one of his students to find me, and it eventually worked. I went up to the apartment and met Professor Shih, who was an incredibly interesting person and very nice. He is one of the most connected Professors in the country and is the Chair of Taiwan’s Political Science Foundation. There were four other students there including the one who picked me up, all older than me. The one just one year older than me and I got along really well. He is working for a newspaper in Beijing this coming year so we had a good talk. One of the other students had just returned from Wales (where he got his PhD) and it was fun to ask him to try and pronounce Welsh words with a Chinese accent. He said it was incredibly difficult. The last student was the most interesting to me though and proved that no matter where I go, it is a small world. He had just returned from Cornell where he was pursuing his PhD and had just TA’d and shared an office with Danielle. I mean come on. I go to Taipei, meet a professor whom I have never had contact with before this summer, go to dinner with him thousands of miles away from home, and in attendance is one of my sister’s colleagues. I couldn’t believe it, but anyway, we obviously had a lot to talk about so we sat across from each other at dinner at talked about political science, all of us did in fact, Professor Shih as well, and it was a lot of fun. Sitting in a Japanese restaurant in Taipei talking about soft power with a professor and four other students is a memory that I will not forget easily.

(I hate doing laundry in a foreign country, with no dryer, and no clue how to read the washing machines…my clothes are going to be destroyed.)

Oh yeah, one of the topics of conversation at the dinner was the 1992 consensus in which the then Kuomintang government signed an agreement agreeing to the existence of “One China” though with little specific definition. Apparently the man sitting next to us at dinner was one of the men responsible for that agreement. He was a very high-ranking secretary who personally made about 10 secret trips to Hong Kong between 1991 and 1992 and negotiated the agreement. After the Kuomintang lost to the DPP (the Kuomintang is now once again the governing party) he slipped out of the limelight and quietly bought a company so as to avoid any attention whatsoever. So that was a really cool chance encounter.

I was really excited that night preparing for my next day of photo adventuring. However what I hadn’t remembered, since I hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Kao and Celeste for a couple of days, was that we were leaving for Taitung the next morning at 6:30. So I hastily packed and set a couple of alarms and trudged my way to the train station the next morning with my luggage. And thus ended my adventures in Taipei, very abruptly, but on a good final note with a good dinner, good conversation, and a few new contacts.

Back Briefly!

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. -Anatole France


I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post, I haven’t had consistent internet access for a week now, but I have so much to share. I’ve traversed much of Taipei, traveled from Taipei to Taitung by train, and done a lot of work for a week here now. There is a lot to share and I’ll do my best to write everything while my abundance of dirty clothes wash outside. (Now being shared from a local Starbucks…they are everywhere) Enjoy!

More from Taipei

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. -Mark Twain

So things have been incredibly busy here. There are a lot of things to talk about, dinners and adventures and random occurrences galore. Mrs. Kao happens to be old school friends with the CEO of a large electronics corporation, so I met him and went out for Thai food in the city. Not surprisingly, it was delicious. I really like family style dinners- lots of different dishes, and of course everyone wants me to try everything, and I am quite happy to oblige them. That comes with risks though, since I tried duck feet the other night. The soft-shelled crab was good though, and the curry. That dinner was interesting. Mrs. Kao and her old friends chatted the entire evening, all in Chinese. In fact, they spoke maybe two words of English the whole night, and though I wasn’t able to keep up with too much of their conversations, I was able to catch more than I would have the first couple of days here. So my listening is improving, if only a little so far.

Earlier that day I found myself in a bit of twilight zone moment. I walked out of my hostel/apartment only to find the streets completely empty and still. There were no people, all of the cars were parked, some abandoned in the middle of the street and others lined along the roads. I tried to walk to one of the main roads to see what was happening and I was whistled back by three police officers. So I wandered around in an incredibly busy city that appeared entirely abandoned. You know those movies where there is one person left on the planet and everyone else has mysteriously disappeared…yeah that was me. It turns out, every year, Taipei has a drill where they evacuate the vast majority of the population into a secure area to prepare for an attack from Mainland China. That’s not an experience I’m likely to forget any time soon.

The next day Celeste, Mrs. Kao, and I went to the National Palace Museum, which houses the greatest collection of Chinese history in the world. Apparently many of the exhibits were smuggled over from Mainland China right after the Communists took over. I think as a result the Taiwanese government is a little paranoid and they force mainlanders to visit only in specific tour groups going along specific routes under close supervision. There were a lot of tour groups, but I enjoyed the exhibits. I saw lots of jade and ivory and porcelain. After the museum we headed toward National Taiwan University and ate lunch around there. We went to a small sushi bar across from the campus. The sushi here is great; I got 12 pieces for about four and a half dollars. After that I met another of Mrs. Kao’s friends who is in publishing. He offered me any book off his shelf (he actually ended up giving me two) and they caught up while I perused his incredible collection. We left; I explored the campus on my own, found my way back to a train station, and went back to my place.

The train system is absolutely incredible. Supposedly it is the best system in Asia, and though I haven’t seen other systems elsewhere, I would not be surprised. I am able to get anywhere in the city quickly and with little difficulty because of the MRT. What is unfortunate about this large, busy city, is that it is/was impossible to find a new stick of deodorant ANYWHERE. I went into department stores, drug stores, convenience stores, I looked for hours, I even dedicated an entire afternoon of errands to hunting down deodorant, but to no avail. I looked everywhere for a Watson’s around me where Danielle said she found stuff in Beijing, but I had no luck around me.

I’ve spent a lot of my time doing my research for my meetings. Through a referral I have set up meetings with professors and even a member of the ministry of foreign affairs. So I did research, focused my questions, practiced, and prepared. In between my preparations though I had some nice distractions, especially last night. We went to another university to visit more of Mrs. Kao’s friends. They are all very nice, and all impressive. In fact every one of her friends that I have met is a US educated PhD and the couple I met last night were a dean of engineering and the vice president of a company. They were really humble and nice. I never would have guessed their occupations of levels of education from their demeanor, but that just goes to show that you can never tell who someone is until you get to know them. The husband laughed every other sentence and his laughter was infectious.

They took us out (yes the free meals are wonderful) for traditional Taiwanese cuisine at a small family owned restaurant. It was delicious, actually my favorite meal so far. It beat the delicious seafood, Thai food, and sushi; it was just very good. I couldn’t begin to name the dishes that I ate, only that there were rice noodles, a beef dish, vegetables, a fish dish, rice, soup, tea…like I said, family style dinners are fantastic. We also went out for dessert afterwards. I can’t remember the name in Chinese, but it was essentially a large mound of shaved ice in condensed milk with mangos on top. It was the most refreshing thing after a hot and humid day. I might try to make it back home if I can. It’s pretty simple, but so satisfying. As soon as we left to go back it started pouring (of course) so we made it to a covered bus stop while they went to get the car to drive us back to the train station. I didn’t mind the rain from our covering, but Celeste didn’t like sharing company with the mosquitoes and the largest spiders that I have ever seen in my life. I’ll have pictures up eventually, but they were about the size of a half dollar, and fat.

So far, I’m going over my experiences day by day, which while interesting is something that I had been hoping to avoid in my blogging. I didn’t want to trivialize anything that I did by writing a list of things that I did. But because everything is so new to me, it really is all experiential, whether its meeting new, humble and impressive people, or trying new foods, or finding my way around a city completely on my own with a pretty substantial language barrier. I have confidence in getting around the city on my own now but I am still a little nervous about trying to get to new places on my own, especially when it is for something important, like my meeting with the member of the ministry of foreign affairs (or MoFa as she called it).

I had an address and nothing more to go on and no contact with anyone who new Taipei, not Mrs. Kao who has had her own business, nor Celeste who has presumably been with her, or lounging on a couch watching television. I found the nearest train station, hopped a train until I got there and then grabbed a taxi relatively close to the address. Two things about that taxi ride. One, he was so happy to see that I was an American. He was confident that I would be a fare when he saw me, and it gave him an opportunity to play the country CD that he had in his car. I mean come on. He was whistling along to the songs as he was driving through Taipei, and nothing that I have experienced clashes more with Taipei than country music. The second thing that I saw, that made my day, was a Watsons a block and a half past the train station. I added that to my mental map and made my way to my meeting.

He dropped me near the place and I walked down a random street only to get to a large gate with a small entrance. All I could see was a tall building in the background, and a metal door with a small glass window. I peered in only to see a guard look back with immense confusion. He opened the door and I said the name of the person I was going to see and he motioned me inside. I walked into the building to see more guards and a large sign that essentially said the following:
2nd Floor: embassy of the Republic of El Salvador, 3rd Floor, Embassies of the Republic of Nicaragua and the Republic of Guatemala, 4th Floor, Embassies of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Saudi Arabian trade office, 5th floor,
Embassies of the Republic of Palau and St. Christopher and Nevis, 6tb floor, Embassy of Burkina Faso, 7th floor, Embassies of the Soloman Islands and the Republic of Paraguay, 8th floor, the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti, 9th floor, the Embassies of the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Honduras, 10th floor, the Embassies of the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe and the Kingdom of Swaziland, 11th floor, the Embassies of Belize and the Republic of Nauru, and floors 12 through 15 belonged to the International Cooperation and Development Fund, where I would be meeting my contact.

That is quite a bit, but obviously it caught my attention. This was my first time in a government building in Taiwan, and all by myself and was surrounded by embassies. I thought that was pretty cool. I went up to the twelfth floor, a little nervous to meet with my contact only to find that it wasn’t as intimidating as I had thought it would be. She (the project manager of the Technical Cooperation Department) technically works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I had sent her a list of questions the night before and we sat in a small lounge area drinking good coffee from somewhere in South or Central America, I don’t know where because she didn’t know where. But it was pretty casual. She was in her late twenties or early thirties and had been working on several development projects in Central America and Africa. Since she is technically an employee, in fact member, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she asked that I not quote anything that we discussed in anything that I write and I will respect that in my blog even though the readership is quite limited. But she provoked some very interesting thoughts on the roles of non-profit organizations and the necessity of working, successful development models for certain small countries without international clout. We talked for about an hour and while I haven’t cemented my thesis topic, she gave me a lot of ideas of things to research further when I get back home.

The most important part of my day was to follow though. As I exited the cab back at the train station I marched on straight past the entrance, down a block and a half and bought a stick of deodorant for the same price of my fifteen-minute cab ride. But it was worth it, it was worth just about any price, as I realize it is a rarer commodity that I had suspected. That or I am hopeless at finding things here. But either way, I am safe. Deodorant may be a small, unimportant comfort, but it is not insignificant. I feel so much better right now.
So needless to say I will continue this busy pace that I have set for myself, though tonight has been fairly relaxing. Tomorrow night I will be visiting a professors apartment to listen to a discussion on Richard Little’s The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models, and then discuss my topic with him and several of his graduate and PhD students. On Monday I head out to Taitung to teach for two weeks, which should be as different as going from New York City to Appalachia. I’m excited though. I’ll fill you in on everything when I get the chance.