an island called beautiful: February 2009

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Lantern, Night Market, and Birthday Photos

Lanterns, Night Markets, and a Birthday

I've been in Taiwan for more than a month and in my apartment for almost 2 weeks! That means that the "everything is new" awe I had when I first arrived is being replaced by a feeling of ownership (now I have "my neighborhood" and "my campus") and growing friendships.

But first I promised to talk about the Lantern Festival. Two weeks ago the plazas surrounding Sun Yat-sen (the first president of the Republic of China in 1912) Memorial Hall filled up with lanterns and people. There were some old-fashioned, round paper lanterns like the kind I had been expecting hanging from the eaves of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall itself, but mostly the lanterns were huge and shaped like cows/oxen (because 2009 is the year of the cow/ox) or pandas (because the Taipei Zoo is incredibly proud of their two pandas) and they were arranged on floats like parade floats. Most of the floats were created by elementary, junior, or high schools while a few were sponsored by businesses. Some of them were cute, many were strange, and all of them were entertaining. I went to the Lantern Festival with Tiffany one night and with Amanda and my host mom the next. It was really cool to participate in a traditional Taiwanese festival and admire the lanterns with hundreds of other people!

And now for another promise: night markets. One of my favorite things to do with friends (Tiffany, my church friends (who are Indonesian, Colombian, and Taiwanese), and my new friends Ulla, from Finland, and Maren, from Germany) is go to night markets. Taiwan is famous for its night markets: sprawling open-air markets that offer a dazzling array of clothes, trinkets, and food until about midnight. A night market includes established shops whose wares (shoes packaged in plastic wrap so they don't get dirty, t-shirts plastered with broken English, cell phone accessories, and umbrellas) spill out onto the streets, some of which become pedestrian-only while in others cars and scooters weave their way through the crowds. Some brave/crazy people set up shop in the middle of the street, selling sweatshirts off of blankets. Most importantly, night markets feature hundreds of carts from which entrepreneurs sell culinary specialties such as fried dumplings (careful! these are so hot that they will literally burn the skin off the roof of your mouth and make your mouth hurt for a week), candied strawberries and cherry tomatoes on a stick (I would not recommend the tomatoes- I still don't buy into the Taiwanese view that they're a fruit and thus a dessert), pig skin (tastes sort of like pork but is really chewy), pork sandwiches (they carve the meat off of a hanging carcass after you order), wraps with veggies, dried meat powder, and cilantro (a popular Taiwanese flavor), fluffy cakes smaller than your palm with red bean paste inside them (which is actually really good and might just convince me that red bean is a dessert- though red bean ice cream is still pretty weird), Taiwanese hamburgers (the "bun" is fluffy and white and inside there's meat, veggies, and cilantro), a flaky, crunchy sesame roll with a sweet filling, little donut hole-type things with vanilla pudding inside, and my favorite- deep fat fried mushrooms! You can choose from several kinds of mushrooms that I've never seen before, and they fry them up fresh while you wait and then shake a kind of cajun powder on them. You eat them out of a little McDonald's fries-type bag with a toothpick. Delicious!

I've been to four different night markets so far. The most famous one in Taipei- Shilin- was so crowded the first time I went that most of the time we couldn't move at all because of the pedestrian traffic jam. It's in situations like that (and rush hour on the metro) that I really like being a head taller than most people here so I can see and breathe above the crowd. Shilin also has a covered market which reminds me of the market in Antigua, Guatemala except that this one features an arcade and a pet store with adorable puppies in deplorable conditions- puppies that are too young crowded into cages that are too small. Gongguan and Shida are night markets in downtown Taipei near two of the best universities in Taiwan (my school, Chengchi Daxue, ranks with them in the top three) that have a fun, young atmosphere and aren't as crowded as Shilin. My favorite store (so far) in Taipei is in the Gongguan night market- it's a stationary store with cute cards and notebooks and post-its and on and on. I could spend hours just browsing. =) I also went to a night market in Shulin, the town where Amanda's teacher lives (a 45 min. train ride away from Taipei). I liked that night market a lot because it felt authentic- the whole town, young and old, comes out at night to walk through the streets and eat dinner or a snack from the food carts.

So, more about my friends: I spent last Thursday with my friend Tiffany and 5 of her friends (2 girls and 3 guys) and practiced Chinese (mostly listening!) for 11 hours with them. First we went to Yingge, a town a 40 min. train ride away from Taipei that's famous for its pottery and its cobblestone "Old Street" which reminds me a little of Europe. We had lunch (beef and noodle soup) and then made our own pottery (each person sat at their own potter's wheel). I made a big coffee mug that will be glazed espresso brown with a golden stripe in the middle. The pottery place will send us our pieces once they're fired. After wandering through Yingge a little, we headed back to Taipei to the "Apartment Cafe," which reminds me of the Tea Room in Siena, my favorite hangout there, because it has a cozy atmosphere. We sat downstairs on the patio (next to old bookcases filled with old books) and I ordered a pot of Earl Gray milk tea and shared a waffle topped with honey, fruit, and whipped cream with Tiffany. Then we shared a birthday cake that Tiffany had bought for me (it was called "Gateau boston au chocolat" and had chocolate mousse inside) and they even lit 4 candles on top -2 each for 22- and sang Happy Birthday to me in Chinese! They also gave me a birthday card that Tiffany had made and in which everyone had written a message in English. It was all really sweet.

I also love to hang out with the friends I've made at church: Joni, Felly, Teo, Harki, Tetuko, and Tirza (all Indonesian), Lisa, Sandy, Ashley (Taiwanese), and Daniel (Colombian). I met some of them my first week at church but it wasn't until Valentine's Day when Lisa's parents May and Jack invited me over with other students/young people that I really got to know them. We had so much fun- we each had to introduce ourselves in our second language so I had to use Chinese, though most of the day I spoke English (since some of the Indonesian students just came to Taiwan in September to study engineering in English and so they don't speak much Chinese yet). A few people brought guitars and Tirza played piano and we had a Valentine's themed sing-along with love songs like The Lion King's "Can you feel the love tonight?" Haha it was awesome- I've always said that I wished I lived in an era where friends just gathered around the piano to sing together, and that's what we did! Then we played Pictionary in English, which was hilarious not only because of poor drawing skills (like mine!) but because nobody but me was a native English speaker, and so when the word was "graffiti" everyone drew giraffes (I've never realized how alike those words look!). Next we had a huge dinner with homemade Taiwanese dishes and Domino's pizza (I had a piece of the Supreme and it tasted basically like pizza in the States). Lastly we played a game I'd never played before- it's like Charades meets Telephone. I suggested we make it a competition, so we formed two lines facing the front door, and the last two people in line turned around and read a word that Jack had written down. Then they each tapped the next person in line who turned around and watched the first people try to act out the word. Those people then tapped the next person and tried to imitate the first people acting out the word. And so the charade traveled down the line until the last person in line had to guess what the word was. It sounds a little confusing, and it is, as we learned when the word "Batman" ended up looking like a crying penguin. Don't ask me how that happened- we each blamed the person before us in line!

A few of us got together this past weekend to go to "Video Games Live": the biggest video game music concert ever, performed by the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. It was a free outdoor concert at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, in a plaza between several impressive temple-looking buildings with red roofs that commemorate Taiwan's former dictator and head of the Kuomingtang government. My favorite songs were a Mario Brothers sequence (classic) and the theme to Metal Gear (sad epic tune with battle drums). Then on my birthday, this past Monday the 23rd, eight of us went out to dinner at Forkers, one of my favorite restaurants here. When Tiffany introduced me and Amanda to this awesome burger-and-salad place a few weeks ago we met the owner, Joe, and found out he's half American and half Canadian, which explains why Forkers food tastes like good Western food (unlike the "Italian noodles" that are served everywhere but don't taste Italian). We laughed our way through dinner as we tend to do and they gave me a cute birthday card shaped like a castle that they had all signed and sang Happy Birthday to me in Indonesian, Spanish, Chinese, and English! A linguistics major's dream! I had made chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert so we ate those at a picnic table on the patio. It was awesome celebrating my 22nd birthday with them! One of my prayers before coming to Taiwan was that I would have friends to celebrate my birthday with and God definitely answered my prayer.

I'll have to talk about my apartment, neighborhood, and campus (classes start on Monday by the way) in the next post. Until then, I'll leave you with words I read everyday: my sheets say "Memory, Beauty," my comforter says "Lucky. Your Confidence," and my pillow says "True Love is Power, Forget Not Your Friends."

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Tidbits

"IS COFFEE" reads the Christmas-colored sign behind me, marking the coffee shop where I just enjoyed a strong cup of Caffe Americano. What "is coffee"? My post-lunch pick-me-up, or happiness, or just the pursuit thereof? I've discovered my favorite new hangout: a triangle-shaped park lined on two sides by tall palm trees and nestled in the shadow of five-story apartment buildings. My park bench, forest green metal and plastic made to look like wood, could be in any park in the world if it weren't for the red Chinese characters that mark it the property of Taipei. Preschool kids are shrieking gleefully from the playground on the right while the fountain in front of me gurgles hurriedly, in marked contrast to the college student across the way who's sitting slumped forward with one hand on his forehead and the other on his ipod.

Since it's one block off the main road, I wouldn't have known this park existed if I hadn't gone to church the other day at one corner of its triangle. Friendship Presbyterian Church's name is 100% Taiwanese English, a sweeter version of the t-shirts that assert "I'm cool" or label one as a "Gorgeous Girl." Amanda and I, having sought out its English service, stared doubtfully at its doors as hundreds of Taiwanese poured out at ten to eleven on Sunday morning. Unsure of how to proceed, we were relieved to see an older white woman (Amanda excitedly whispered "Waiguoren!" -foreigner- in a perfect imitation of the reaction we provoke in some parts of Taipei) whom we promptly followed into the building and up the curved staircase into the sanctuary, where we were given an English bulletin by a young woman too embarrassed to speak English to us. We sang hymns and did a lot of reading aloud together (a "Confession of Sin and our Dependence on God," "Our Father," the Apostles' Creed, and the Scripture reading for the day- the Parable of the Prodigal Son), and, almost to my surprise, I found myself liking the richness of the tradition, all of us joining to sing or speak words that have been spoken or sung for centuries if not millennia. I loved the fiery sermon about how there are two ways to get lost- by being bad like the Prodigal Son or by being good like his older brother- and how God loves both kinds of lost people with such a reckless love that he died (and rose again) so that we could be found. After church we joined in the coffee =o) hour and talked in a mix of Chinese and English with a few Americans, Taiwanese church members, and several Singaporean engineering majors. Some of them took us out to lunch at a Korean restaurant where Amanda and I enjoyed getting to know them a little. We liked FPC a lot and are definitely planning on going back.

This morning I narrowly avoided getting run over by several bikes, and I asked for a cow with my coffee. Just another day in Taipei. I was awoken at 8:22 by the jackhammers removing the outer layer of the wall outside my window, but besides the noise I've had a relaxing week-long stay with my awesome "host mom." I've enjoyed going with her to the observation deck of Taipei 101 (which is the world's tallest building with 101 stories) by way of the world's fastest passenger elevator and to the National Palace Museum, which houses ancient Chinese treasures (my favorites were the colorful clay bowls from the Song dynasty). My "host mom" is also a wonderful cook and every morning I'm greeted by a big breakfast. A few days it's been a Martha Stewart recipe: oatmeal topped with cinnamon, toasted almonds, flaxseed, raisins, and dried cherries and blueberries, as well as a plate of papaya, banana, and bell fruit. That's all washed down with Florida orange juice and homemade tea steeped in rosebuds, dates, and dried loganberries. That's just one breakfast among many, and it would take too long to describe the feasts that are dinners! Needless to say, I'm being spoiled before I start living on my own.

A few lessons I've learned so far:

-That boisterously noisy parade (complete with what sounds like the Chinese version of bagpipes) coming down the street is actually a traditional funeral, and if you run after the tantalizing ice-cream truck melody you hear in the evenings, you'll find that it's only the garbage truck announcing its nightly rounds.

-There is a 7/11 (or at least a sign directing you to the nearest one) on every street corner. These are the nicest convenience stores you've ever been in (with stacks of Red Sox playing cards at the registers- they heard I was coming) and most include ATMs, cheap cappuccino, little bakeries, fish balls floating in hot water, and/or a counter at the window to eat said fish balls.

-Something as mundane as walking down the sidewalk can be a bit of an adventure. In my soon-to-be neighborhood around Zheng Da (my soon-to-be school) the sidewalks hardly fit two people across and I constantly have to duck under the dozens of bus stop signs for the dozens of different bus lines that criss-cross the city. However, in the neighborhood where I'm currently living, in a more central part of the city, there are two sidewalks on each side of the main roads: pedestrians walk on one made of tile or marble that is sheltered from the sun by the buildings above, while scooters and bikes own the uneven cement sidewalk right next to it that's out in the open. Hundreds of scooters are parked along the major roads on the scooter sidewalks, but I tend to like to walk there to soak in the sun (the weather here has been gorgeous, low to mid 70s), so I keep having terrifying run-ins. There are as many scooters as cars on the road, which leads to my next lesson...

-Crossing the road is not as easy as the chicken made it sound. The Taiwanese have gone to great lengths to avoid crossing the road, by building skywalks and pedestrian tunnels over and under the busiest intersections. If you do need to actually cross a street, don't be tricked into thinking that the little green man walking briskly with the bomb-like countdown '60' '59' '58' flashing above his head means that you as a pedestrian have the right of way. What he means is that you have the right to rush into the road while looking franticly over your shoulder at the bikes, scooters, cars, and trucks that are making rapid right turns right into you.

-"Buhaoyisi!" (How embarrassing!) is like sprinkling sparkles over a bad situation, in the wise words of Amanda. Say you bump into a guy on the MRT (metro), or need to squeeze past a woman in a crowded market, or are told in a jewelry shop that you can't try on earrings once you already have, or missed a friend's call because your cellphone battery died- in all of these cases and many more, simply utter the magic phrase "Buhaoyisi!" to soften frowns and prevent people from saying "Mei you limao!" (No manners!).

-Always ask your friend's security guard how big a ping is. The answer you're looking for is that the Chinese unit of measurement is 36 square feet, but he just might ask you why you need to know, and if you tell him you're looking for a nearby apartment to rent, he just might go to the paper recycling bin and dig out a crumpled flyer from which he might tear a phone number and the name Mr. Wu. If you call that number, you may end up looking at (and subsequently renting) a spacious, brand-new apartment on the ninth floor of a building that also has a security guard. This apartment may feature a bedroom that has a huge window on one wall with a lovely view of a mountain as well as its own bathroom. Then again, if you ask your friend's security guard how big a ping is, he may just tell you 36 square feet.

I think the culture shock may be beginning, if it's a sudden craving for all things American. Even though McDonalds and Starbucks weren't a part of my daily life in the States, I'm tempted to frequent these "American Embassies" just to be on American (cultural) soil. It's like Pico Iyer says in his book "Global Soul":

The process of interacting with a place is a little like the rite of a cocktail party, at which, upon being introduced to a stranger, we cast about to find a name, a place, a person we might have in common.

However, then I go to the Lantern Festival (which I'll describe next time) and I'm awed by this bright new culture. Who knows what the next 6 months will bring?

Saturday, February 7, 2009

A Whole New World

It's been two weeks to the day since I arrived in Taiwan and I haven't blogged about it yet. So sorry! I've been really busy with a full social calendar =o) and practical settling in things such as buying a cell phone and finding an apartment t0 rent (both missions were successful, I'm happy to report!).

I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore as I waited for the plane in San Francisco and looked around to see that I was one of maybe 5 white people (and the only white woman) on the flight. After what felt like barely surviving the 3 plane flights halfway around the world (I didn't sleep as much as I'd hoped to on the 14 hour flight from San Francisco to Taipei), I stumbled into Taoyuan International Airport and tried to remember how to say baggage in Chinese but before I could a sign in English pointed me to the conveyor belt which would hopefully deliver my checked bags to me. That sign also contained the first Chinese characters I (proudly) read in Taiwan- "xing li," baggage. It took me 50 minutes to weave my way through the airport and wait in a long line at customs, where it was almost a problem that I didn't have a Taiwanese address. (I learned a few days later that the custom official raising his voice at me wasn't unusual- sometimes Taiwanese people sound a little harsher than Americans expect.)

I struggled to handle my two large rolling suitcases, duffel, backpack, and purse as I watched the Taiwanese effortlessly push all their luggage past me on little metal carts. I momentarily abandoned my biggest bags while I went in search of these handy-dandy carts, which I found in a logical spot that I had completely overlooked. Pushing my cart, I walked out into the waiting room that looked more like an indoor park complete with benches and potted palm trees. I flopped down on a bench and rested for a few minutes until I saw my friend Amanda, dressed in her usual pink and black, come bouncing towards me. It was amazing to see her after being apart for 8 months! She was an incredible help to me as I got ready to come to Taiwan and she has expertly guided me through what could have been the choppy waters of my first weeks in a foreign country. She helped me buy my first bus ticket into Taipei (the airport is actually an hour away) and she easily directed the taxi driver, in Mandarin, to her apartment. On that first bus ride to Taipei I noticed the lush dark green foliage of the hills and the old highrise apartment buildings, and I decided that Taiwan is sort of like a mix of Guatemala and Hawaii.

I experience everywhere I go in the context of where I've been and so far my Guatemala-meets-Hawaii theory has mostly held true, with the addition of a shiny efficiency and consumerism that I associate with Tokyo. I see Taiwan as a warm and rainy island with aspects of both a third-world and first-world country. Third-world-like is the fact that you can't flush toilet paper down the toilets and that while walking down a crowded street with terribly narrow sidewalks past homeless dogs nicknamed "Little Black" and "Handsome" you sometimes encounter startlingly unpleasant smells that make you wonder if that really is sewage pouring into the gutter behind the nearest deteriorating cement-and-tile apartment building.

However, the metro and bus system (connected by one easy-to-use card) are cleaner, safer, more reliable, and more convenient than any I've ever seen. Walking into a Taiwanese mall is like entering a marble-floored palace filled with Versace and Louis Vuitton boutiques. Everything you see is gorgeous and new. Even the underground food courts found in every mall remind me more of Disney World, with many specialty shops and fast food chains offering their own themed seating: Japanese MOS Burger has a sort of Splash Mountain-inspired country theme while a belgian waffle place has the feel of a little girl's playroom with pink tables and delicate china.

I'm currently sitting comfortably in a cream-colored leather chair on the third floor of a shop called "Ikari Coffee" in which I ordered a bagel and cream cheese for lunch. I sipped a hazelnut caffe latte and then a lychee yogurt smoothie while reading a book about the personal effects of globalization (The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home by Pico Iyer) and enjoying the coffeehouse's soundtrack of wordless, acoustic-guitar-and-piano versions of such songs as Sarah McLachlan's Angel, Fleetwood Mac's Landslide, and Sting's Fields of Gold.

So far my transition has been smooth thanks to God's blessings and Amanda's tireless help (she devoted her two-week-long New Year's break to helping me settle in). The food has, for the most part, lived up to expectations (it really is both cheap and delicious), though I can report that I have tried pig skin, pig intestines, and congealed pig blood and do not like any of them. As far as pig products go, my favorites are still ham and bacon. Some of my favorite foods here include kimchi (Korean spicy cabbage) dumplings (15 US cents each), long wavy noodles with thin beef strips in curry sauce ($2.50 US), and hot oolong tea with milk ($5 US). I am so glad my tastebuds have grown up since I survived on a self-imposed diet of baguettes and CocaCola in France when I was 14.

I didn't suffer from jet lag besides sleeping for about 10 hours each night. The first day I arrived, I crawled in bed at 2:30 pm for a "short nap." When Amanda woke me up an hour and a half later as I had asked her to, I (still half-asleep) asked, "Is it illegal if I sleep until tomorrow?" She laughed and said no, so I slept soundly until a bit before 7 am the next day. I think sleeping for 16 hours is a personal record!

My first two weeks here have been so full of new experiences that it's hard to choose what to write, but I'll end this entry with a brief account of my Chinese New Year celebration. Amanda (and I by gracious extension) was invited to spend Chinese New Year's Eve (Sunday Jan. 25) with a family who are friends of friends. Amanda and I took a bus to their neighborhood, arriving at around 6 pm, and were met by their 23 year-old daughter, Julie. Leaving our shoes at the door and changing into the slippers they had set out for us, we met the mother, Amy, who, along with some help from her aspiring-chef teenage son Jeep, had made over 10 different dishes for us (not including a big pot of sticky white rice): oysters with garlic sauce, shark fin soup, "Lions' Heads" ie meatballs, shrimp with their heads still on, drunken chicken, etc. One traditional New Year's food is fish, which the family doesn't finish because the word for fish in Mandarin, "yu," sounds like the word for abundance, and having left-over fish symbolizes one's hopes for abundance in the year to come. I occasionally fumbled my food because I wasn't terribly skillful with my chopsticks but was saved from any real disaster by the small bowl of rice that I held under my mouth. I am proud to say that I tried everything on the table while managing to save a little room for the traditional dessert of oranges (because they're the color of gold) and the modern dessert of expensive chocolates (presumably because they're delicious).

Our hosts consisted of the mother, daughter, and son already mentioned along with a father, Jim, and an uncle and his son. They were all very nice and welcoming and I loved my first experience conversing in Chinese with Taiwanese people. I especially enjoyed their shock when I told them I'd only arrived in Taiwan the day before. After dinner the father and uncle entertained us with magic tricks before we all put on our shoes and headed out to their apartment's courtyard where the women watched while the men set off fireworks- loud rockets that you can hear before you see and stationary sparklers that are almost as tall as I am. At the end of the evening, Amy gave us each a "hong bao," red envelope, filled with a lottery ticket that she said could make us rich women (unfortunately we weren't so lucky) and the uncle gave us a hong bao with money inside, a traditional New Year's gift given to children by adults. Amy was really nice and gave us a ride home as our festivities had lasted until almost midnight. It was a fun evening filled with laughter and learning about Chinese traditions.

Well, I'm trying to learn how to graciously stand out as a white-skinned, red-haired, tall "waiguoren," foreigner, in a sea of Taiwanese people, but Amanda's taught me that being stared at gives us license to stare back, and I love to people-watch, so it's all good. My spoken Chinese has a long way to go (and I'm largely illiterate) but I like speaking it and I now feel comfortable going out on my own. I'm enjoying Taiwan and I'm looking forward to telling you about night markets, the magic phrase "buhaoyisi!" (how embarrassing!) and the crazy way I found my apartment. Buh-bye (the Taiwanese version of adios) for now!