Taiwan: Beginnings

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” -Cesare Pavese

Dear loyal followers, I apologize for the delay in postings, it has been quite a busy few days and I am always so tired at night that I haven’t had the opportunity to write entries.

So without further ado, from Taipei, AHHHHHH!

Okay so that was just the initial impression, but as far as culture shocks go, if you have never been to Asia, and you are traveling with two other people, one who is Taiwanese and the other who is Taiwanese-American, you don’t gain the full comfort of company. Not to mention that I am staying at a hostel by myself in Taipei, so I am literally alone, but I’m getting ahead of myself. From the beginning I suppose.

It started with a thirteen hour, or so, flight to Tokyo. Aside from a few terrible movies and bad courses of airplane food, the flight was uneventful. I had a three-hour layover in Narita airport in Tokyo, which was made far more eventful by the flashing TV screens covering Michael Jackson’s death. Everyone was shocked and chattering and trying to figure out what had happened.

After traveling for nearly twenty-four hours, I finally made it to Taipei. We took a taxi from the airport and eventually found my place. Fortunately someone (Joyce) else who was staying there was just coming back and let me in. She was actually my roommate for a night, rather unexpectedly, but it worked out well. She was from Tainan, here in Taipei for a conference for work. She helped me with my Chinese a bit and I helped her with her English, it was a good compromise. The next morning Joyce and I went out for breakfast. She was really eager to try this place that served American style breakfasts, so I ate a very good vegetarian omelet for my first real meal in Taipei. Not much of a culture shock there, but that came quickly. The woman who runs/lives in the hostel is very nice, but does not speak a word of English. Her name is Ling Mama, or at least that is what I’m supposed to call her. She is interesting from what I can tell of her. She apparently converted to Christianity after a leg injury of hers healed. She likes me because she thinks I look like Jesus, or so she said.

That first day I went out with Mrs. Kao and Celeste to an outdoor jade market and flower market. They were really cool. There was a ton of merchandise in large tents covering at least a block. I was clearly the only American in there, and I got some stares accordingly, but I’m getting used to those. As we were walking past a department store a little girl maybe ten years old looked out with the most shocked look on her face when she saw me. The stares follow me everywhere I go. We managed to miss a typhoon that was heading towards Hong Kong, but caught an outer thunderstorm, so we went and waited a few hours at Celeste’s grandmother’s before heading out to a couple of night markets.

The night markets are filled with random merchandise and lots and lots of food. There are sweet smells, bitter smells, and in a few cases, the most pungent smelling tofu that I have ever smelled in my life. We were out for a couple of hours and then made our way back to our separate abodes for the night. I meant to go to sleep as soon as I got back, but the girl who had been staying in the room next to me, Kellie, from Seoul, was up and we talked for a while. I was a little uncomfortable to be honest. My Chinese is not very good, and even though some people tell me that it is decent, I don’t believe them. I can’t understand half of what anybody says and I can’t really hold a good conversation. But I’m learning, and managing as best I can.

The next day I wrote some emails to get in contact with some professors to meet this week to discuss my thesis. I’m really lucky actually. I’ll be meeting with two professors at National Taiwan University and the man in charge of foreign aid at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the afternoon I met Mrs. Kao’s friend who drove us to her home in Keelung where she introduced me to her husband and her son Albert. If I got everything right, and I’m pretty sure I did, Albert is 24, just finished medical school at the top of his class, and is about to enter into his one-year conscription as a medical doctor. The family was very nice and after I had expressed interest in a shrine in their house, they took me to a temple nearby to show me around and explain things to me. It was very interesting, a large, and complex. After that, they showed us to a second home that they have nearby, and generously offered, should I ever come back, to let me stay there. But even more generous still, they treated us to dinner at a very nice seafood restaurant. I had never seen food quite like this before, but I’m always up for trying new things. I had lobster and crab and sea bass and duck, rice and sashimi, I just kept eating since they kept offering me food. They were very nice.

It was cool; at the same restaurant there was a wedding party. My hosts wanted me to go spy on them and see what a Taiwanese wedding was like. Supposedly the bride changes into three dresses during the, well I don’t know if it was ceremony or meal, but I saw her in two of them at least. Everyone was happy. After that, we were driven back, and I crashed for the night.

The next day I tried to meet with Celeste since Mrs. Kao was busy seeing people. We failed pretty miserably since we had no cell phones to get in touch with each other so I ended up going and getting lost on my own. I went to the Longshan (Dragon) temple and explored a bit. It was impressive. There were waterfalls in the outer courtyard and then a series of shrines in the interior. It was a beautiful place, but weird that it was surrounded by a very cosmopolitan area. It was like finding a large temple in the middle of the loop. After that, I was anxious to get away from all of the busyness, so I went on the train further west, off my map actually, until I got to woods, and parks. I was going to go to a nature preserve, but the weather looked a little questionable, so I figured I would head back. I was pretty tired anyway.

I had never navigated from the train station back to my hostel, and I entered the MRT in a different location from where I exited so I got fantastically lost on my way back. It took a couple of tries asking for directions, but eventually I made my way back. There is a whole underground infrastructure that is pretty impressive. Not just the subway, but there are underground pathways to get under busy streets, and malls under ground between subway stops. It’s pretty easy to get lost, but there is just enough English on the signs that I can make my way around.

This is all one crazy adventure. We’ll see where it takes me. I have 5 more days in Taipei and then I’m heading out to Taitung to teach English, so we’ll see how everything goes. I’ll do my best to fill in updates, but my internet is a bit patchy and I don’t know what my status will be in Taitung. But rest assured, when I do have time to write, I will have some crazy stories to share.

Zaijian!
Ben