Last Thoughts

So, I'm at my hotel in Tokyo on the way home (!), I have no cell phone and thus no alarm clock, so am worried about oversleeping my flight - I guess now is the perfect time to reflect a little on what I've been doing this summer.

The first place to start is that I've had a lot experience traveling independently in other countries (thanks to my wonderful parents :) and study abroad experience from last summer in Rome. So I had a lot of pretty firm expectations, a lot of which were disappointed. Or modified is a better word.

In my experience traveling, one often gets to know the place one travels to for 2 months very well, in many ways better than the locals. In Mississippi I volunteered with my friend in a small town, two towns really, that combine to make one town almost big enough to be called a town, Farrell-Sherard, a satellite town of Clarksdale. When we would go into Clarksdale, a lot people we would talk to had never heard of this town. Though it was only 15 minutes away, it was just too small, and no one local (especially in the white community) thought of volunteering there.

You can take your home for granted, but when you travel somewhere else you can't. You need to find out where to eat, what to do; your perspective as an outsider gives you a fresh look at the people, the culture, the institutions. I've found this in Rome, in the Dominican Republic, in Hangzhou, in MS, all of which I 'know', in many ways, even better than my home. Whereas in my hometown, where I've lived for 20 years, I still get lost (bad sense of direction) and wouldn't know what to do with a visitor (uh...we have a mall? and a movie theater?), I know all the weird little tourist sites in MS, am super familiar with the public transportation in the DR, and still have a map of Rome in my head from only 2 months spent there.

So that was what I was expecting. Going back to Taiwan, this time not (completely) under the wing(s) of my relatives, really 'getting to know' Taipei, finally getting out of the city, finally not taking it for granted like I can a home, but learning how to get around independently, learning everything everyone who lives there should know but is too close to the situation to realize.

It's not what happened. First of all, getting out from under the wing of relatives is harder than it looks. More on that later. But getting there I didn't really have the spirit of exploration that I usually approach a new place with. Maybe because I'd already been to all of the major tourist sites (which are not all that impressive in the first place), because I was already in the mode of taking Taipei 'for granted'. I still haven't gotten out of the city (a combination of the impossibility of planning things with Taiwanese people and the weather).

I wasn't confused that the garbarge trucks here play midi versions of Fur Elise, I wasn't surprised to see 3 year olds being transported on motorcyles, I wasn't overwhelmed by the number of cute things. That people who grow up speaking Chinese can't spell has finally ceased to be amazing or too hilarious. Daily afternoon rains, the appearance of a typhoon, the earthquakes, were noteworthy but also business as usual.

I guess the thing that did really stike me about Taiwanese culture, that I knew before but had never really worked out completely, is how childish everyone seems to be. I've noted here before how impossible it is to be around Asian relatives - everything about you is criticized, from your posture to your make-up to how much you eat. "Sit 'well'!". And why don't you go to Harvard, again? You can't be or do anything right, every little step of your life requires some comment or adjustment.

Well, imagine that continuing well into your 60's. Your parents still tell you how to do every little thing. No do it this way not that way. You raise your kids wrong. You wear the wrong clothes. It never ends.

The respect for elders and authority has many, many good points, but as far as I can tell it also leads to a general lack of responsibility. Everything happens as inefficiently as possible with tons of communication errors (that have absolutely nothing to do with my language abilities). Everyone is babied by someone, their parents, aunts, uncles well into adulthood, their children when they become elderly.

That this is a 'cultural' phenomenon is clear by my mom's behavior. My parents have always tried to allow me maximum freedom and maximum independence. That's not to say that I was always ready for it, but I at least learned to take responsibility for the consequences of my own actions and to live...independently. But for some reason when my mom comes with me to visit Taiwan, she - forgets that I've been living on my own for awhile now? that I'm 20 years old? And suddenly she tries to manage my life on ridiculously small things or obvious things, like, "did you shower today?". Seriously? Of course I did. Are you going to call me everyday at college to ask if I showered? When I point it out to her she finally gets it. But so strange. [Boin says her mom does the same when they visit Korea from Germany, where they live - maybe this is an Asian phenomenon]

It's just really easy to regress when returning to Taiwan. Everyone wants to take you everywhere, no one wants to allow you independence of any sort, and they don't take it for themselves either. Anyway a lot of times this offends my fiercely Western spirit. I feel like I'm surrounded by a bunch of individual manques, and where are Petrarch, Shakespeare, Descartes, when you need them?

To the typical Taiwanese mind, there is danger around every corner, one foot is always in the grave no matter how old you are. Don't drink cold stuff and hot stuff at the same time. Microwave popcorn is dangerous. Asking strangers for directions is dangerous. The same long commute I did everyday this summer? My cousin has been doing for 3 years because her parents won't let her live in the dorms at college. If you have a boyfriend before you're 28 your grades will all be C's. If you exercise too hard at the gym no boys will like you anyway. The acid rain will make you bald.

Well let me tell you about that last myth. It never made sense to me. How could it be any worse than showering in orange juice? Turns it it's not. Turns out ignoring this advice and getting soaked after your run?

Feels like freedom.

So I resist this aspect of Taiwanese culture, fiercely, and am not interested in appreciating it, ever. In fact I intend to corrupt my cousins with my American influence as much as possible.

I normally hate this kind of reactionary bs. When I first went to the Lin Yu Tang house, the house of a famous Taiwanese intellectual, I was annoyed that he had painted his house the color of a masoleum just to be contrary. I didn't get why the tour guides were so excited that he would let people sit "however they wanted, on the floor, the couch. He himself would sit with one leg up on the table".

But of course, when your parents/culture/society dictate your every move, you don't have to pierce your tongue to be reactionary. You don't even have to date someone from another ethnic background. You just have to ...sit however you want. Eat at whatever time you want. Have a blue and white house.

I am still against being revolutionary for it's own sake, but now I can understand how situations can exist that seem to ...call for some prodding, in one direction or another.

A lot of things have changed in Taipei since I first started visiting. People are less scared of cold drinks and the sun. (I used to joke I would come back to Taiwan and open up a smoothie stand - perfect for the weather but would take the local health gurus some time to get used to. Now that is a no go, about 1000 people beat me to it). Serving spoons at family style meals make more frequent appearances. Mini-skirts are ok, kind of.

Some things haven't, and sometimes that's unfortunate. "Black person" or "darlie" (spelling issues, I guess. or attempt to cover blatant racism) is still a popular toothpaste. Racism is alive and well. The government still hasn't standardized the way of naming bus stops or prefered method of turning Chinese into English, making traffic occasionally a mess for English and Chinese speakers alike. Motorcyles (in chinese, "meat covers iron" instead of "iron covers meat") are still ubiquitous, and dangerous. The 'news' that you can't just leave food out in the heat for hours and then eat it apparently is still news to the average housewife.

But there are so many things I love. I think the Taiwanese really have an appreciation of the classics, much more so than Americans. My American grandpa is my favorite for their practical knowledge and understanding of American history, my Taiwanese grandpa is my favorite for being a scholar of Confucious. The bookstores here have so many more good English books than in America, ridiculous I know, but I guess when you only have a small selection you pick carefully and you pick the classics:

To hear our children recite the classics so fluently, like the sound of water pouring from a vase. Ah, is this not happiness?
-- Chin Shengt'an's Thirty-Three Happy Moments

I could go on about the food forever, of course. But even more, Taipei is a city of entrepreneurs. I don't mean the rich old professor that gets a loan to make 'his own company', working on the university's time to develop ideas he can claim as his own intellectual property. I don't mean the rich kid who gets money from his dad to open what is essentially a branch of daddy's business. I mean real, stick your neck out entrepreneurism. I am always impressed by the number of shops that are literally everywhere, making eating so convenient, giving you so much choice in shopping. I don't know how Taipei can support so many, but I do know that for many Taiwanese families this is their livelihood, what puts them over from living comfortably to retiring comfortably, or being able to take a vacation or two.

So I guess my experience in Taipei has been as more of an insider than I'd expected. And the view from the inside-outside has been an interesting one. And though there are certainly good points to approaching from the perspective of an outsider, as I know from my hugely enriching experiences traveling elsewhere, I'm so glad that Taipei has started to feel like a second home.

You may have noticed that I haven't sugar-coated things or particularly paid my respects to political correctness all summer. Part of this is my general irreverence and low tolerance for psuedo-social science 'well I don't want to make generalizations' bull. [Of course I'm not an expert on anything. Of course what I say about Taipei is just 'my experience' and not law, of course generalizations only go so far. Of course we should be careful about our personal biases and prejudices. If I have to say that to you you should go read something less dangerous, like Goodnight Moon. good book btw]

But a large part of it is really feeling that in some way I am actually 'from' Taipei. In the same way I feel that I can say "American teenagers spend too much time texting" or "Yalies spend so much time in the liberal secular bubble that they are surprised when they encounter the real word", I also feel that I can comment on the harmful effects of too much parental authority and control, of everything having a 'right way' of being done - and I can stick by it.

And honestly I think a lot of this isn't just my mom being from Taipei, which is pretty meaningless in and of itself, but my experience here. And particularly learning the language. This has made Taipei a "home" in a way it couldn't have been otherwise.

When I first applied for Light and they told us to write about our interest in the language, not how much we want to eat Chinese food, I will admit I had trouble. From previous travel abroad, what I was really looking forward to was exploring! New experiences! All that wonderful priveleged teenage stuff. Chinese to me was in the first place an embarassment, that I hadn't learned it already, and in the second place a 5 day a week class that took up too much of my time. Chinese was interesting but the class couldn't ask any of the big questions, like my seminars could, and it mostly invovled 'memorization', not real thinking.

Well, I have learned a lot. Language study obviously involves a lot of memorization, but more importantly it is about the experience - what gives you a sense of the language. You can memorize all the words in the dictionary and all the grammar in the world and you still won't 'know' Chinese. I think of the attention Michael Oakeshott draws to learning a 'craft' or skill - you can't read the manual on how to paint a picture, you have to go DO it! and you have to learn from a master of it. If you crazy children of the Enlightenment want to say this isn't real "knowledge" but a "feeling", fine. Feelings are important! Your sense of the language is what matters most, and what you can get from an experience like Light that all your studying in Bass Library can never get you.

Qualitatively, from the placement test, my Chinese has improved from a 55 to a 100 something. I am proud of my 50 point jump! but I'm even happier that I have learned, slightly, how to 'think' in Chinese. In the end this trip really did become about the language, even if utimately the language is more valuable as a means to understand Taiwanese people, classics culture.

And so even though EPE will try to take my life away with ridiculous requirements next year, I can't imagine not continuing my studies. And I can't imagine not coming back to Taipei, many, many times in the future. Maybe I'll finally get out of the city :) -- definitely. for real this time.

Well this became much longer that I'd expected and I didn't really know where I was going when I started. But I'm glad I got here. I think I originally had a hard time finding my voice in this 'blog' - my aversion to technology and just a hard time imagining who my audience was. I think in the end it was really just a way to get me to think :)

A few notes on the program, if that's why you're reading: the teachers at ICLP are priceless. Really treasures. ICLP is as relaxed or stressful as you want it to be. If you aren't self-motivated you may want to seek out a program that forces you to memorize 100 characters a night, but I'm so glad I did it this way instead. It really did give me more time to get a 'sense of the language' (see rant above) -- and, have a real summer!

ICLP sucks at administrative stuff and I wouldn't recommend going on to many of the trips they organize. The racial profiling that placed me into too difficult of a class was a blessing in the end. I had the same books as another kid from Yale that had an entire year of Chinese more than me, and had a two person class with someone who could read the TOCC book for the next year - but it turned out to be great because other students couldn't keep up with the pace of the 'core' book and because I really wanted to push myself on listening-speaking. It is what you make it, and what really dictates the pace of the class is who your classmates are - I would recommend paying more attention to that than to what texts you are using. In a 2-4 person class, one person who is too far behind really affects the entire class. Try to be with people who grew up around Chinese if at all possible, or at least people whose tones/pronounciation won't make yours worse. And if you think you were placed incorrectly based on evaluating your classmates, be super insistent about switching.

Anyway time to head off to the airport and no time to check for typos. Thank you so so much to the Light Fellowship for a wonderful summer, an amazing experience, and an opportunity to finally learn Chinese as it should be learned. This summer really did become about language study, and I finally have a sense of what that is really all about -- I loved my summer and would do it all over again.

Catch you back in America! 明天見！

Religion Post

I've been having a lot of computer wenti as well as getting sick last week, but I've still been thinking a lot about what I want to write about here. Or, less about what I want to write and more about what the purpose of this blog is.

The natural first place to start, after the pictures Boin sent me of our Longshan trip, is religion. Longshan temple was extremely crowded when we went to visit. It was fun to guess who was there for what - who's getting ready to take the college entrance exams? who's deciding if they should get married? Everyone had brought food to offer or incense sticks to pray, some were tossing these red wooden blocks which function kind of like less sophisticated magic eight balls. The place felt more like a bustling night market than a Western place of worship, but still a hint of solemnity that marked it as the serious business of religion.

The most interesting thing to me, besides the popularity of the temple accross age groups, was how different the atmosphere was from a Western church. My impression from Rome was that the most popular churches for tourists were not often the most 'sacred' feeling. Famous churches that were always crowded with tourists tended to be less popular with truly religious locals, whereas smaller, less attended, simpler ones really felt the most like actual churches.

Locals at Longshan, which is also "cross-denominational", seemed unbothered by the tourists. That is, the presence of tourists didn't seem to affect their own sense that the temple was a place of worship. And regardless, they were their to get in and get out: pray, get fortune told, go take test/get married/attend other major life event.

It seems every foreigner you meet in Taipei is there to: 1. learn Chinese, 2. teach English, or 3. convert people to Christianity. The other day while I was studying in a froyo place, one woman from a group of missionaries tried to introduce me to Jesus ("Oh, are you trying to learn English? well let me tell you about our Lord and savior..."). I finally got out that I was from Illinois, so that took care of that. But I still got to listen into their conversation with a Taiwanese girl that was there talking to them, obviously more interested in the opportunity for language/culture exchange than finding her faith:

So do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?

Well...I don't disbelieve...I just don't really have any strong feeling about it

But - do you want to have a strong feeling about it?

Well...no, I can't really say that I do... But tell me more! [Sweet happy Taiwanese girl smile O:)]

Etc.

I don't envy the job of the missionaries. The general Taiwanese attitude to religion seems to be a kind of blithely luke-warm collect-'em-all suibian. I can't help but think of the distinction Hobbes draws between superstition and true 'religion', though I don't know if this is fair or not. From Ethan's language exchange family, who go to church on Sundays, but actually for the music and fun, to my cousin, who hasn't pierced her ears because she wants to "come back as a man", but doesn't really observe any Buddhist rituals, the lack of zeal but general willingness to try anything that might work seems to be the exactly opposite attitude of the Christian missionaries who come here to save souls.

Lastly, a conversation over dinner:

Me: So do you beleive in a religion?

Uncle: No. In history religion has always led to corruption, wars, etc. People who don't beleive in any religion are better people, do you understand?

[I think: ah! secular liberalism has reached here as well. he should go to Yale]

Cousin: Haha...how can you say that? -- When I take the college entrance exams, you go to the temple to pray!!!

[I think: oh.]

So I feel like that conversation really sums it up. Some are willing to identify with any religion that they think may help them out somehow or make them a better person, those who identify themselves as not 'religious'...are still something, at least on exam day.

I don't know if this is a Pascal's wager type of thing or maybe just the force of habit and culture. I'm also not too clear on why religious institutions have played such different roles in the East and West, or why such a free love approach to belief is so much more okay here than back home. Things to think about later.

Longshan Pictures

Typhoon Morakot

明天停止辦公、停止上課! wooo - almost as exciting as a snow day!! :D

reflections

yesterday there were 2 more earthquakes. earthquakes are more fun on the 10th floor, but i bet the top of 101 is better. the first one was last week or so, and i had just seen Drag Me to Hell, so waking up to that was interesting to say the least

no typhoons yet

everything smells weirder after rain. not in a good way

everything translated from American 'culture' to Chinese is soooooooo corny. Taiwanese television, as far as I can remember (which is 15 years), has always been super cheesy - think that awful competition thing on ABC where people have to jump around on big floats and stuff (i've only seen comercials) but dorkier and lower budget. and more noises (waaaaaaaaaaa! 哇！)

my uncle has a great sound system, every retired American's dream, right? but uses it to blast these absolutely awful, karaoke-quality covers of classics like "American Pie" or Beach boys. It's like listening Weird Al, if his second language were English, but without the tongue in cheek quality and without being funny on purpose. I can't listen or even think about it without cringing. My whole soul is cringing right now. 真受不了！

eating really unhealthy frozen food is also just so much more morally objectionable when there are so many delicious, cheap food shops everywhere. sometimes i feel like the more 'modern' households are absorbing only the worst parts of modernity. that's until i remember the joys of toilet paper (http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/07/07/mf.toilet.paper.history/index.html)

my other uncle's apt is a lot older and a lot more 亂. there is a Buddhist shrine that constantly plays a recording of a prayer at a volume just low enough for you always to be aware of it...this used to drive me totally nuts but i really am starting to like it, much more than the Taiwanese version of "Roxanne" in any case (bet you didn't know that song could get any cheesier)

the Taiwanese are kind of half-way between the U.S. and Mainland in everything. i feel like i'm jostled a lot less than in Beijing but there's still not so much of a sense of personal space. The brown line MRT has these big blue bucket seats that are much too wide for the average Asian, but still they are only meant to seat one person, there is a large and uncomfortable-to-perch-upon ridge meant to separate your butt from the butt of the person next to you. No one seems to get this, people will just squeeze right in there with you. It's nowhere near as bad as the DR or Beijing but still so weird

Another example, one of the first weeks here I was riding the MRT with some girls from ICLP. Anyway one girl was sitting in a 'priority' seat for the eldery, pregnant, handicapped, etc. Being a 老外 she didn't really get it and kept talking to us when an elderly woman and her husband got on. The woman sat down, stared at her, and when she didn't get up, hip checked her so that there was room for her husband to sit, 3 people to 2 seats. Anyway the 老外 finally got it but what an awkward way of handling things...

Older people here expect younger people to give up their seats for them, even when it's not a 'priority' seat. This happens a lot on my bus ride, someone old will get on and stare down their target until they are (usually very quickly) guilted into offering their seat.

This reminds me of something I studied in my east asian studies course back at UofI - the abnormally high suicide rate among the older demographic in Asia. Because Confucian doctrine and Chinese culture dictate that you take care of your parents when they age, often the elderly who are taken care of commit suicide because they don't want to be a burden. Or, if they aren't well cared for, they kill themselves out of shame that they have such ungrateful children. The worst kind of Catch-22

Whining is definitely easier and more fun in Chinese. I don't know if the words for 'terrible', 'boring', 'awful' are actually more expressive or if they're just fresher to me, but they are 很有用。

Also if you know anything about Chinese you know there are a lot of cool idioms that are really untranslateable. When you turn them into English they just sound like fortune cookies (cf. my cousin's resume, which has a section translated from the Chinese: “positive attitude”, “efficient execution”, etc. - actually in quotes。 and completely unfixable).

finally, if you are too young to be considered Generation X - get off the internet! but first enjoy this gem from my textbook:

草莓族：this class of people are like strawberries, good-looking but cannot endure any stress/pressure

picture dump

'desert' of sugar cane with mayonnaise and sprinkles...do not recommend

Falun gong demonstration

random intersection

making xiao long bao

開夜車

ok so half way there and mid-terms coming up.

my 'don't study at all on the weekends' policy is once again not working very well. with tests on wednesday i really could have benefited from starting earlier than..well, now.

in my defense, i've been feeling weirdly lazy and sleepy lately. this could partially be appreciation of the climate and culture but i reserve all blame for the lack of fresh vegetables. i am seriously dying for a salad.

it's not that there's any shortage of vegetables, the taiwanese love their qingcai, but they are all soooo greasy. eating uncooked vegetables is uncommon because they are often dirty. according to the women of my family (who, let's be clear, have a tendency to exaggerate), eating a salad that's prepared anywhere but home is asking for food poisoning or some weird asian virus. my aunt occasionally makes salad (for my benefit, i gather...i'm the only one who eats any at dinner. awkward) - she washes it three times. with boiled water. making salad an uncommon dish at dinner.

if you are reading this in america and munching on a fresh carrot stick...think of me. better yet mail me some veggies

some notes on the program at the half-way point:

immediately after i whined to you, the Internet, about my one-on-one class, my teacher figured out that i was bored out my mind with the green book, said something like 'o well, i'm sure you know this lesson already', and spent our entire class talking about completely unrelated things. so now we've talked about japanese fashion, our dislike of skinny and feminine asian men, scary movies, prejudice against people with country accents, our favorite TV shows...yea pretty much everything except the lesson.

this beats mindlessly repeating sentences, though again i'm not really sure how much i'm learning. guess i'll find out in three days.

iclp really emphasizes speaking/listening over reading/writing. this is so unique in Taiwan, where everyone 'knows' English, can read and has a huge vocabularly, but can't speak a word without a heavy accent and ignoring all rules of grammar. i really like this approach but it makes the time right before exams cram time. we haven't been tested on writing whatsoever thus far and the several papers i've written i haven't gotten back (iclp's strong point is not administrative details), and suddenly i'm supposed to write a composition for my midterm?

another example is my blue book class, which has a workbook. well we haven't touched the workbook since chapter 2 and suddenly the teacher remembered that we were supposed to be reading and writing as well - guess what our assignment is this weekend? chapters 3-6 of the workbook and some kind of quiz tomorrow. ridiculous!

but instead of starting those chapters ahead of time, this weekend i spent a lot of time exploring. will upload pictures later. saturday went to longshan with boin and cameron, but of course i would forget my camera, so hopefully i'll get them from boin and put them up soon. we wandered a little far from the tourist area around longshan and ended up in the old (and seedy) part of taipei - cam and i are pretty sure we met some nice Taiwanese prostitutes. anyway story later with pictures (not of the prostitutes. sorry)

off to study. feeling sleepy already ~~

In which Katie discovers her latent superpowers

I absolutely love the weather here. I know that sounds nuts, I am in a bowl of moistness and humidity and stifling heat but I love it. Right now I am sitting in my 10th floor room with the breeze blowing in and looking out over the lights of the city…beautiful

I also realized the other day how conveniently located NTU is. And this is coming from someone that spends 90-120 minutes a day commuting. Not only does NTU have wonderful facilities for exercising (gym! Oh how I love you), eating (student activity center. Complete with bakery and yummy smoothies and drinks), and napping (the library. It’s like being at Yale again – I can’t study for more than 10 minutes before falling asleep. Never fear, Kelly, this is in fact just me experiencing Taiwanese culture, a national pastime even, as dozens of overworked Taiwanese college students doze nearby) – BUT, it has waffles. In bags.

Another BUT, slightly more serious (I'm pretty serious about the waffles) - BUT, it is right next to Gongguan. Gongguan has tons of bus routes, a subway station, a super famous milk-tea stand, bookstores, shopping, AND – MY FAVORITE FOOD EVER. Guotie. Long, skinny, fried dumplings. Beautiful, yummy, scrumptious guotie with kimchi in them. So spicy. So greasy. So delicious.

While I sit in class I think constantly about how I want to go eat them, how I shouldn’t go eat them (they can’t be very good for you…), how I absolutely must not go eat them – and then I go. Three times this week. After the gym. But still very bad of me.

Friends, you likely know that I can never get enough of spicy food at home. In fact, I usually can’t tell that the ‘spicy food’ available in America is actually spicy. Maybe it hopes to be spicy when it grows up, but it never actually is spicy. I am completely utterly addicted to this guotie place and will likely eat them as often as possible until they make me physically ill. (It’s a 20 minute walk. That’s how much I like them).

There is also really nothing more empowering than successfully ordering Chinese food in Chinese (and nothing more crushing than having absolutely no idea how to communicate to the lady at Starbucks that you want a mug, not a ‘to-go’ cup. Yes, I do want a cup. Oh 'tall' is 'medium'. No not that kind of cup. I have a seat upstairs already. Yes I know it's very full, but I already have a seat. Isn't there another kind of cup? Like a...harder cup? It's not made of paper? And is hard? Ugh).

Also of note is that I have had infinity mess ups with units of measurement. Such as when I told my aunt that it cost around $500,000 a year to go to Yale instead of $50,000. Even though I’ve known how to count for a really, really long time, using numbers is still really unnatural to me. Also time. And directions. (When I was in preschool I could not for the life of me figure out the difference between before and after, in English. Ah hah, say friends who have known me for a long time, so that’s why she can’t even remember where she lives. And I still can't tell time...)

Anyway maybe Chinese directions will take me 15 years to figure out as well…but I hope not.

I have also been setting the A.C. to 28 degrees Celsius. I use it mostly because the city is just too loud to listen to all the time, not because I think it’s that hot, and a lot of times I wake up freezing. So we are learning about climate in class this week and it finally occurred to me to look up how cold 28 C actually is. Well, I have been setting the air conditioning to the low, low temperature of…82.4 degrees Fahrenheit. I have seriously adjusted to the weather here.

Also found out I’ve been lifting in kgs .This is good, good news.

罵人

This is going to be a short post because I haven't really started my homework for tomorrow yet (oops). I figure if I'm going to work so hard during the week I might as well take the weekend to relax and just learn the words that come up during daily conversation. I can now quite confidently describe someone as the Chinese equivalent of 'hot' depending on if they're male or female, tell someone in Cantonese slang that they will "die on the street", as well as understand several other unpostable but useful phrases. That's still learning, right?

This is the view from my 10th story room - what I'll be looking at for several more hours as I finish my essay. (Depending on how difficult this turns out to be, may end up using some of my newly learned phrases...). Coming from Illinois I really appreciate how Taipei is basically a city in the mountains. Humidity is terrible but it's so beautiful!

It's been two weeks and I still haven't really figured out how to approach my classes. The book I'm supposed to be focusing on is way too easy. It is the book used in my one-on-one and core class and contains a lot of important vocabularly, but I know most of the vocab and the sentence structures are way easy. Furthermore, the class doesn't test us on reading/writing at all and the speaking/listening level of some of the other students in the class is relatively low. Finally, I had to switch one-on-one teachers because someone else had a scheduling conflict, and my new teacher is super nice and cool but 1) does not strike the fear of God in me as the last one did 2) unlike the other teacher who forced me to use the vocab in meaningful ways, teaches class by saying really long sentences and having me repeat them. Nearly the entire class is me repeating sentences that she thinks up. It not only does not feel very helpful but also makes it very hard to concentrate for the entire hour. By the end of class I doubt I could accurately repeat an English sentence.

Anyway I'm still confused as to why this is my core class when the other book is much much more interesting. The other book has more difficult vocab ('plastic surgery' instead of 'pineapple', 'fellowship' instead of 'soap') and more interesting sentence patterns that I haven't seen before. I want to spend most of my time on this book, especially since the only other student in the class is much better than me (already speaks Cantonese and has been going to Chinese school since he was little) and the teacher came into the class with a new faster-paced syllabus. But I'm supposed to spend most of it on the core class? Or something. And end up feeling pretty bored in my core class and like I'm drowning in my other class.

Anyway I have no clue why I'm supposed to be spending most of my time on the easy and slow moving class and not the challenging and interesting one. It makes sense to me to build a base but the very low expectations of listening/speaking in this class are not helping me improve very quickly. I've tried to talk to the teachers about it but my Chinese isn't good enough to explain my confusion. Or rather, it is but it's not good enough to pursue the issue after they blow me off once...

Anyway off to study until I feel like these poor fish:

Hope everyone had a happy July 4th! Some Yale kids and I had a successful America Day complete with bacon and salad, but I missed the fireworks :(

Post about frequent weekend activities, favorite foods, and Cool Asians coming up soon.

workin' on my fitness

I have had some of the best work-outs of all time here. NTU gym is great, big, air-conditioned, and I can go every single day. The only downside is the pretty nasty showers (I think the main locker room is under construction). So when I ride the bus home to shower people tend to give me a wide berth:

Just kidding. I don't smell. I hope.

But yea, I've almost completely adjusted to the weather and think I might try running outside soon. A lot of times I am cold in the air-conditioned bus and when I get off I keep my jacket on - just like a real Taiwanese person! I remember when I first got here looking at all of these jacketed women in 90 degree weather wondering if they were insane. But now I'm one of them!!!

My workouts being super excellent here is funny because in general Taiwanese people seem to have no concept of intensity. Of course there are the expected muscle heads as in any gym, but there are also a lot of people who seem to be just purposelessly drifting through the gym - walking on the tread mill, lifting but stopping far short of failure, etc. Less sweat per capita than a normal gym, I bet. The other day what I think was the NTU girl's tennis team came in, and despite their coaches' presence mostly giggled amongst themselves as they walked at 15 minute mile pace on the treadmill or kind of randomly waved 3 lb weights in every direction. (People watching at the gym is more fun than watching the TVs, which are completely silent because everyone else can just read the Chinese captions...)

In fact, the most intensity I've seen in exercise was last Friday when I went to play ping-pong - crazy!! Do not challenge Chinese people to ping-pong, your ego will never recover. Ever. It hurts too much to talk about right now, wait a few weeks and call if you really want to know...

But I think this generally lax attitude towards strength/endurance training is due to the concept of qi. For a lot of people, exercise is about getting your qi (your life force, if you will) flowing, not building strength.

This would explain the people outside my window at 7 PM everday who do some kind of coordinated clapping exercise. They clap very loudly, all at the same time. They clap everywhere. They clap to music. They clap to the instructor's shouts. They just clap. At any given moment when I'm doing homework, I could look outside and see dozens of Taiwanese clapping themselves on the butt in tandem. Really. (Will try to get a picture up here soon, may require code red stealth operation).

And finally, a picture to complement my reflections on Chinese exercise. Getting this picture required a code orange stealth operation, so I hope you appreciate it:

That's right, he's running on the track. With a bright pink umbrella. Only in Asia.

Some say Khaled, some say Khaleed

It’s my third week here and classes have finally begun. This is good news for a few reasons:

One, I’ve finally escaped the local accent. I actually kind of like it in general, but especially in men it sometimes assumes this very heavy icky sound that I can’t stand much less understand.  The teachers at ICLP speak very clearly and make me feel like a genius at Chinese.

Two, I finally have a schedule. Wake up at 7, catch bus before 8, grab breakfast if hungry. Arrive at ICLP before 9, and study until classes from 9-12. Then lunch with friends or lecture or straight to the gym. Library or Starbucks all afternoon, evening, and night, depending on how much work I have. Gym, bus ride home, and staying in touch with people online are excellent times to not think about Chinese at all and recharge.

Three, I get to see fellow ICLPers everyday. Sorry Light Fellowship, but it is so so nice to have other people who actually speak English around. Complaining about how much work we have a few minutes a day is extremely therapeutic, and a good bonding experience, especially in English.

Four, I am learning a lot! I think. There is a huge learning curve for me since I don’t know any traditional so I feel far behind on characters, but I’ve picked up a lot even in the last few days. The sentence patterns we’ve covered so far are pretty basic, all really easy to understand though harder to employ on your own -- the tiny class size lets me get a lot of practice using them.

My classes begin with my one-on-one, which is HARDCORE. I think I spoke more Chinese in the first class than I had in the 10 previous days since first arriving. My teacher doesn’t let anything escape – if a single tone or ‘de’ or ‘le’ is wrong or misplaced, I hear about it. It’s like a celebrity roast, except in Chinese and I’m not famous (yet). From speaking to other students I don’t think their one-on-ones are similar – they seem to mostly cover whatever the student feels he or she needs to cover, like a tutorial, and help prepare for the other classes. In my case, I don’t really get a say in the matter. Though I dread going to this class first thing in the morning, I think it’s my best chance to improve my Chinese.

My second day of class, I walked into the one-on-one classroom and my teacher started jabbering away in Chinese. Then I figured out she was asking me to put my paper in the folder on her desk. Uhhh…what paper??? Apparently I had totally missed that part the previous day. So it finally occurred to me yesterday to read my syllabus (durr). I think normally I get a syllabus and read it automatically because it’s in English; I’ve never actually had to *decide* to read my syllabus. This will fix a lot of problems…(though, the paper isn’t on there? And she said it was on a topic of my choosing and due Monday, but then Wednesday mentioned a paper about my trip to Taiwan due Friday? Is this the same paper? How many papers am I going to write???)

My other classes are good but not as intense. One has two other students and is with a very animated Taiwanese man who wears a lot of plaid. He has decided his job is to overturn everything we ever thought we knew about Chinese – how to say tones, categories of ‘le’, sentence patterns, etc. He is a linguist. This really just emphasizes what I already feared – Chinese people don’t really understand Chinese grammar. No one does. Whatever point of grammar you want to learn, if you ask a linguist, a Chinese linguist, and 5 native speakers, you will get seven and a half different answers. At this point I don’t really know who to believe, so am I suspending judgment (my other group class has a completely different tone chart and a different opinion on the ‘shi…de’ construction. My one-on-one teacher has different ideas on ‘le’. Oh and everything I learned at Yale, about ‘dei’, about half third tones, about everything, is wrong. GET IT TOGETHER CHINESE PEOPLE).

 The other class has just one other student and is taught by a young Chinese woman who is super nice, though when she sends our homework assignments via email Gmail deletes them as spam (oops). The last class uses a different book than the other Yale students who have only studied one year – I think this is some kind of racial profiling because I should know the same amount of Chinese as they do, and my two original classmates were both ABCs (one of which dropped to a lower class because she didn’t actually know anything). Oh well, at least I get to learn the following noises: hai (like hi), ou (oh!) and m (mmm!).

Beyond the noises, I've also learned some of the finer points of Chinese culture, such as "Chinese people still believe that effective study will lead to a successful future, bringing honor to oneself and one's family. Therefore study is of primary importance."

My current method of studying might kind of be overkill, even in Chinese culture. I’ve basically been memorizing the lesson and learning to write all of the new characters I encounter, whether they’re from the new vocabulary list, example sentences, class, or wherever. Plus I’m playing catch-up with characters. Being prepared for class feels great but I am worried about burning out already.

The most obvious short cut would be to just learn the new vocab as it appears in the book (as two or more characters used together) instead of also learning the individual meaning of each character and other ways it can be used [e.g. learn that dúlì means independent instead of learning every nuance of dú, alone, and lì, stand], but I think this really defeats the point of trying to learn Chinese. Nevertheless I hope to strike a better balance between learning everything and doing the minimum, hopefully ASAP before my brain explodes.

Anyway I am off to go write this mysterious paper on a topic of my choosing, whatever that is. A lot of homework tonight, looking forward to this weekend…

 

Xi Shuashua

This is my new hot pink little mp3 player, bought for about $20 US from a small electronics store in Guanghua Shang Chang. Guanghua Shang Chang is basically a huge building with a lot of little shops that have everything from DVDs and computers to iPods and iPod knock-offs. They sell everything you could ever want and cheaply too, if you know how to bargain.

The music quality is about what you'd expect for the price, but I'm really relieved to have something to listen to on the >30 minute bus ride to school and in the weirdly silent NTU gym. Maybe I'll even load my AV lessons onto it to study or use the record function in class to review later, as recommended.

More likely I'll strike a half-educational half-fun compromise of using the FM function to listen to Taiwanese radio :)

So nice you just want to kick 'em

...how the super-intense Dutch ICLP student described the Taiwanese in his presentation. Profound.

The people in Taiwan are super nice…especially when they find out you're American. I've had a lot of conversations with strangers, mostly about what I am doing in Taipei when I can't speak Chinese and how Taiwan compares to America (Chinese people love comparing things...). I feel a little like I'm in Disneyland or Neverneverland where you never have to grow up. Most bizarre are the Chinglish T-shirts that the kids wear here - in America, they would just be nasty, but in Taipei they betray this strange innocence. A 20 year old wearing a T-shirt declaring "SEX POT" or "An awkward merning [sic] beats a boring night" probably knows what it means, kind of, but to wear it in public with otherwise extremely conservative dress is just weird. Here's a T-shirt I found in my last trip to Taipei:

GIRLS WILL BE AWAKEN HOT. It tries so hard to be sexy, but what does it mean? It's like how every store and restaurant here, including the super chic and expensive ones, still haven't gotten over the radio hits of the last 20 years, and furthermore insist on adding in awful songs that never made the charts because they're awful, plus bubbley Chinese pop. This is a song I remember from Beijing a few summers ago. It was a big hit and JUST SO HAPPY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxo_2PrKJco


My dad likes to remind me that all Taiwanese women are spoiled: true, if not P.C. Anway, yea, I'm in Candyland!! As soon as I get back to my laptop I'll post a picture of a rainbow at Danshui - even with it raining every afternoon, still Disneyland-esque:

[Edit]

Everywhere I go, once it becomes apparent I can't speak Chinese I get absorbed in conversation with locals. Including, in the ICLP building, this college student who identified me as American (maybe from the way I dress?) and detained me for 20 minutes because he wanted a language exchange partner. He was either really nice or really creepy, maybe both. I have enough cousins to not be interested in language exchange (honestly the whole thing sounds a little sketchy to me? maybe just because my first experience with someone who wanted language exchange felt like being asked out on a date). So contact me if you're still looking for a partner...(he was probably just creepy to me...really...)


Best exchange by far, in the NTU library when I was looking for books (thank you John Dewey, for standardizing the way books are shelved! Your horrible Enlightenment ideas sometimes scare me but turns out they are very convenient when you can't speak Chinese and want to find a book!):


Old man: mwop mwop mwop mwop [I have no clue…are you asking me for directions or something?? Why do you sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown?]

Me: Uh…shenme?

Old man: mwop mwop mwop!!

Me: Uh..duibuqi, wo bu hui shuo Zhongwen. Tingbudong. :'( [I can't speak Chinese! Sorry! I can't understand.]

Old man: O! Ay Bee Cee, ma?

Me: Mm! [Yes! I'm an ABC! How do you know that term?!?]

Old man: o! Jialifonia, ma? [California?]

Me: Mm. Bye-bye! [I'm not from California, but this ambiguous noise will let me escape from your horribly accented Chinese which I cannot understand and will not disturb your deeply ingrained stereotypes!]


Smile. Nod. Walk away. Sign on forehead: lazy ABC.


My Chinese has not actually improved in this weird interim period ICLP gives us between classes, mostly because it's so tempting to get away with nodding and smiling and making noises (Chinese people love making noises). My English is getting worse however: Ma! Close the light! Open the computer! Meaning, of course, shut off the light and turn on the computer. I'm starting to think in Chinese grammar patterns, even when using English, but my actual speaking hasn't improved. I can't wait for classes to get started so I can have some structure and finally learn something. The aforementioned Dutch presenter mentioned that Chinese, unlike European languages, can't be learned by osmosis. This really made me feel better because I've been trying and utterly failing the osmosis method for the 19 years before Yale's Chinese program. I want to learn real Chinese, not just nodding and smiling. On the other hand, the Dutchman studies 7 hours a day...augh...


I got my textbooks today, they look hard. One says it's for use after 2 years of Chinese (uh...) plus I never actually brushed up on Traditional like I was intending, so class Monday should be interesting...will report soon...

test

if i were in china, this is how i would circumvent the evil government

Week 1

This is my blog for the Richard U. Light Fellowship - Summer 2009 in Taipei, where I'll be studying Chinese at National Taiwan University through the International Chinese Language Program. Thank you so much to the Light Fellowship for making this possible!

I have been in Taipei for 4 days, where I've set up temporary residence with my grandparents. They live in an apartment in a southern suburb of Taipei, Nanshijiao, the farthest South still reachable by Taipei's subway system. Losing most of their possessions in the move from China during the Cultural Revolution, their house in Taipei was then knocked down by Chiang Kai-Shek's government and they were moved to the apartment building they live in currently. Eminent domain, Taipei style. Now close to 90 years old, they are extremely hard of hearing, though my grandma still wakes up at 5:30 am everyday to do taiqi on a nearby mountain.

I have managed to borrow a camera from one of my many relatives, but stepping out the door I almost immediately ran out of batteries. So, we have pictures only of the first 5 minutes out of the door from my grandparent's.

The front door:

The actual apartment building:

Not the prettiest place ever, but it's where I've been visiting my grandparents since I was 5.
And here's a neighboring street, complete with litter, a 7-11, and dozens of motorcycles:

All of the motorcycles make Taipei extremely noisy, even for a city, and not very pedestrian friendly. It is hot, extremely hot and humid, but I was born for this weather. It rains frequently. One can expect 'plum rains' (the title of this blog) in the afternoon from May to June. Umbrellas double as "rain umbrellas" (yu san) and sun umbrellas (yang san). The weather also makes for extremely varied and delicious fruit.
Dragon fruit and lianwu - my favorite looking fruit and favorite tasting fruit, respectively:
(Dragon fruit is the one that looks like a dragon).

My aunt likes to make fruit juice out of fresh fruit, a favorite obsession of Chinese people everywhere. For some reason they think that squishing fruit into a juice along with other fruit makes it better for you. Despite directly contradicting conservation of energy laws, it does make for some extremely delicious drinks (and strange ones - I don't recommend green beans and soy milk, for example).

This is all I have time for at the moment. I'm looking forward to tonight, which I'll be spending with my cousin. We plan to go to a movie (hopefully in English), out for dinner, and then to her friend's birthday party. And, tomorrow my aunt is making crab!

AHHHHHHHHHHHH

I am leaving for Taiwan tomorrow!

Thought of the day: Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. (Thoreau)