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.
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…
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 :)
...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...
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!
