Taiwanese woman marries self

I guess this one made it all the way to ABC and other real news channels, but the article in the China Times is most detailed. This is clearly a stunt, but it really is getting pretty difficult for successful Taiwanese women to get married (to another person, that is), something that's come up in several of my classes. My uncle's company does some business in Taiwan as well and the woman in charge here recently decided to quit, since making too much money was making her undateable!

This topic deserves a lot more consideration, but for now I gotta go learn some things/ruin my chances of ever finding a good man

You are flower: photo essay

Today's trip to Xinbeitou, from the hot spring themed el-ride to soaking in the river. Along the way, a surprise photo shoot, indigenous artifacts and art, ancient and modern, plum garden, a geo-thermal valley - and flowers of all kinds.






Crab trap
Modern art



"You are flower"


what is a beautiful thing?
just budding flowers
already withered flowers
the feeling of wind blowing upon your face
at times when your spirit is exhausted and in front of your eyes appears a slice of blue, blue sea

beautiful is
you (you) patient one, your contemplating eyes and black, black skin
you (you) beautiful one, your smiling expression
you're just like a bouquet of the most beautiful flowers

"I wish I would have a real tragic love affair ..."

"...and get so bummed out that I'd just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway." - Deep Thoughts, Jack Handey

Just kidding. Not being a bum, though the following posts about my fun weekends may make you doubt that.

One weekend, Nick bailed on me for Pinglin because he was feeling under the weather, so I took off to the Pingxi Rail Line instead (since I've been to Pinglin before and didn't want to bike around in the rain).

The Pingxi Branch Rail Line is a tourist rail line not far from Taipei which runs through a beautiful gorge and stops at several small villages, all with to-die-for scenery, "old streets" for buying yummies, and various historical coal-mining related sites. I took the MRT to Nangang, the express train to Ruifang, then got on the Pingxi line with tons of other Taipei citizens (Taipeians?) ready for a fun weekend trip:

This cute family, pretty representative of the average riders on the Pingxi, kept their eyes glued to the streams, woods, mountains, and cliffs we went by.

I often describe Taiwan to people as large-scale real-life Candy Land. Pingxi was very much the epitome of this. The whole thing is a playground, there for your enjoyment:

On the train/jungle-gym.

On rare occasions, it tried to pretend to not be a playground, for example by posting a rule or two:

But it turns out that rules don't apply in Candy Land:

There were literally dozens of young couples or families with young children playing on the tracks at every single stop. The rail ticket lets you hop on and off so that you can see as many of the stops as you want, this sometimes means a long wait at the station, so you play on the tracks or eat. At Jingtong, the end of the line and my first stop, you can also write your wishes on a bamboo roll thingy and hang it up:

I guess there is some famous local story about forbidden love between a post office worker and a villager ...don't actually know for sure because I couldn't read the sign very quickly. Sadly, I will have to wait until next time to read the whole story, and until my own real tragic love affair to write a bamboo roll myself.

I ate delicious chicken pieces in a bag and walked around Jingtong for awhile. I've heard this a good place to go river stomping. There are also some historical sites in the area, dorms and houses from the era of Japanese occupation and coal-mining.

My next stop was Shifen, famous for the Shifen waterfall. The walk to waterfall made me very aware that I was in rural Taiwan, and it also started raining pretty heavily:

A father and his two sons stopped to ask me the way to the waterfall, and I admitted that I was also kind of lost. We figured out the way together:

Past the kite, over the suspension bridge:

Past the eye-glasses waterfall:

And some crazy mountain scenery:

Finally, the waterfall! Way more impressive than I could capture with my dinky camera - huge mountains towering above the waterfall, spray in the air, the trees are green green green:

I guess with my lack of rain-preparedness and admission that I was lost, I really pulled the kid's father's heartstrings:

What do you think, do I look that pathetic? Besides us figuring out together how to reach the waterfall, he kept checking to make sure I wasn't lost, then paid my entrance fee! When I tried to pay him back, instead he gave me some yummy deliciously warm hard-boiled eggs. I was super grateful to have met such a genuinely nice guy and it was too bad I couldn't do much in return beyond helping them take a family photo. Although I was pretty soaked from the waterfall and rain at that point, was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy on the inside. Especially because, the guy never figured out that I wasn't Taiwanese! None of the typical questions asked of people whose Chinese sounds weird, and he was totally not surprised when I said I lived in Da'an qu. I've gotten some really nice treatment for being small and Asian in America and the DR (flight canceled during the holidays? No problem, I don't even gotta cry), but never before in Asia! Guess I should just try to look like a drowned rat more often, or just run into some more really nice people.

It was really truly my lucky day, because I found FRIED ICE-CREAM in Shifen!!! So so delicious, I would go there again just to eat more!

Mmmm...

Even though it's not lantern festival for a while now, lanterns are still a big thing in Pingxi:

A lantern flies high in the air above Pingxi.

For only 100 NTD, you can get your own lantern and write your wishes on the surface before you release it into the air:

Getting ready to let it go:

It was really cool seeing the lanterns released, although with all of the wind and rain a couple of them seemed to get dangerously close to (flammable wooden) buildings:

There were lots of stops that I didn't make it to since it was getting dark and I was getting cold and wet. There are also many hiking trails/swimming holes that it was too rainy to attempt, and it's supposed to be possible to walk between the stations if you know the correct route. Would like to get back to Pingxi (and fried ice-cream) sometime!

Still have a few weekends to catch you up on, but it's time for bed. Even Princess Lolly (hello, Candy Land character) needs beauty rest. It's been raining like crazy for four days straight because of the typhoon that's hitting the Philippines and heading for China. I don't think I've ever seen this much rain in my life, but 1) this is creating a real sense of solidarity in my classes, as we have shared being assigned speech after speech on top of so much dreary weather 2) reviewing my Pingxi trip has been a good reminder that that many fun things are still possible in the rain :)
-kt

Jumping on the bandwagon

Even though I will try to be open minded about exploring another culture (hey, I've eaten chicken hearts you know), not doing the following:


Getting married at McDonald's. The new thing in HK, Michael sent me this awhile ago and since Hong Kong did it first I wouldn't be surprised if other parts of Asia follow. Who wouldn't want Happy Meal toys and soft drinks on the happiest day of their life? Apparently this happens in America every once in awhile too, but Mickey D's is a big deal enough deal here that they can have a special wedding package.


Eating out of a toilet. Modern Toilet, a popular toilet themed chain restaurant in Taiwan. There are ten or so locations in Taiwan, including in ultra-hip Ximen, meaning this a cool place to eat. The bowls and dishes look like toilets, all different kinds of toilets. The food looks like...you guessed it. Just never mind. Not going to eat here. Not until I sink so low as to get married at Mickey D's, at which point I will just give up and celebrate anniversaries at Modern Toilet.

This doesn't mean I'm not immersing myself in Asian culture though. On the contrary, one of the things I've been thinking about is how this year could be a really good lesson in passive-aggressive behavior. I'm (overly) direct about my thoughts and opinions and don't really deal well with people who aren't. Generally speaking, I see not telling the truth or avoiding confrontation as something you do when you are lazy or cowardly, rather than thinking of it as being tactful or clever. I'm not sure how valid it is to say that Asian people in general or Taiwanese in particular are passive-aggressive, or how much this is importing a Western psychology term to a situation it only partially fits, but Asian culture definitely has a different take on conflict than I do.

As an example, someone in class pointed out, and I thought this was really interesting, that when an American dad is angry at his kid and starts to lecture him or her, if the kid is too ashamed or scared to face him, the dad will say "Look at me when I'm talking to you" (heard that one before? yep). On the other hand, if while a Chinese dad lectures his kid the kid looks him right in the eye, to him this is a form of rebellion - you're supposed to listen with your eyes down to show you are obedient.

Having received the former kind of upbringing, I have real issues functioning in an Asian family. I have to constantly remind myself that it is no good to say what you think or why if you are told to do something one way and not another. You just have to say yes (and then do whatever you want when you are out of sight), otherwise people will be confused and not happy with you. Don't ask strangers for directions (because they are dangerous and will hurt you, even if they look like college aged girls)? Ok, never, yes that sounds really dangerous and thank you for warning me.

Danger: someone in this crowd could be planning to despoil you. That little girl looks suspicious...

My uncle is having a huge freak out about the importance of changing the lock to my apartment since apparently there has been a huge rash of old tenants making copies of keys and then breaking into apartments (ESPECIALLY THOSE OF YOUNG SINGLE GIRLS...AHHH) and raping people and robbing them etc. etc.

Since it would be totally of no use to explain that (in addition to just not being as receptive to scaremongering as most Taiwanese people) I don't have any valuable stuff, there's a chain lock for when I go to sleep, I live really high up with lots of stairs between me and potential thievery, and I'm pretty sure based on what was in the apartment when I got here that the last tenant was a foreign student that is probably back in California by now - I'm just going to not respond! This is a huge step forward for me. Though it goes against all of my instincts, I think it will work out.

One more bandwagon I'm not completely opposed to jumping on: targeting China in political ads (also thanks to Michael). Ok, the gong-clanging is a little cheap. Most of it is pretty cheap. (But so are China's labor practices?).

Speaking of which, I sent in my absentee ballot today. Besides the absentee voting procedure having the most complex and contradictory instructions of all time, which I still am not sure I followed correctly, OH YEAH, Taiwan doesn't have an American embassy because America does not officially recognize it as a country. It has a building that used to be the embassy until it was abandoned in 1980, which is now a "historic structure", and it has something called the American Institute which would have mailed my ballot for free had I not missed the two week deadline by a few days. AND THEN the post office worker asked me about the envelope since it had all of this official election stuff on it and I dumbly said that it was my absentee ballot, which threw the WHOLE POST OFFICE into disarray, since they were worried that it wouldn't count since America doesn't think Taiwan is a country. Though I begged and begged them to treat it as a normal letter and just mail it for 50 NTD like the helpful email from the American institute instructed me to do, they insisted on making several phone calls, then told me I should call Fed Ex and have them COME TO MY APARTMENT AND PICK UP THE BALLOT (!??) because they have a special arrangement with America. Um. Forty minutes later, I finally convinced them to just let me mail it. If my vote does not count I'm seriously going to flip out. It had better also be the deciding vote concerning whether or not to annex Mexico or put Rich Whitey into office or something important like that.

Gotta go write about Reconstruction and sharecropping in the American South using all our new agriculture and industry vocab. O yay. Til next time,
k

take your headphones off little girl

"Freedom" - xkcd.com

This week's theme is: freedom. Partially because I think this is outrageous: Flag sparks controversy at Taoyuan basketball match. Now Taiwanese students can't display the ROC flag in their own country? There's nothing more unsympathetic than a whiny, authoritarian government and its citizens being "offended". Banning Miley Cyrus from all of China was one thing, at least that had entertainment value. Anyway, go Taiwan for winning the basketball tournament anyway. (And for having an awesome 10-10 day, which I'll post about in the near future).

I'd like to discuss briefly what it is I'm even doing in Taiwan, since I should have done that a long time ago. This is supposed to be my senior year at Yale, instead I'm exactly on the other side of the world doing...what?

When I first found out I had an opportunity to come here this year, I honestly was too scared to even consider it. It took awhile to realize that I actually had a choice to make. It's easy to forget about all the choices you have and to fall back instead on habit, prejudice, pure mental laziness - and this is what I tend to do when I am really busy or under pressure. That is, unfortunately it's something I tend to do at school.

Last year, despite having a number of bright spots (especially my wonderful friends - hi guys!), actually really sucked in a big way, from being sick pretty much all of fall semester to really just wanting to be anywhere else from March until finals. Before junior year, I was looking forward to the Best Year Ever: I had really great (and also not difficult) classes and teachers, a light extracurricular load, a great living situation, the best friends and teammates. That instead I had to drag myself to the finish line makes it pretty clear that, though some things totally out of my control also caused unforeseen problems, I still didn't make the choices I needed to make to have a good year, let alone the best one ever.

So this year is going to be about making choices, something I think defines us as human beings and deserves being worked at all the time. Mainly, living a balanced life style (healthy food, daily gym trip, time with friends, other fun/positive things like hikes, cooking, reading, attending performances, sleeping, maybe even TV). These are things I struggle to do once midterms roll around (weeks 3 through 11 of the semester) and I start getting closer and closer to living a life more suited to a robot than a person, where even fun is something that has to be squashed into my schedule and stressed about. I want to be busy and constructive here, but as a person not a machine.

Secondly, learning outside of a test tube and with a different attitude. Somewhere I remember Light encouraged fellows to aim for an A-, I think this will be a really good skill to cultivate. Not the grade or underachieving so much as aiming to learn 90% of what the class thinks you should know, instead of the 110% I automatically aim for. That way you have an extra 10% left over (yeah ok, math is not my strength, clearly) to learn things that the class doesn't think is important. And let's face it, classes are never completely correct about these things. I need to remind myself that although the teacher sets the goals, I get to choose to what degree I want to adopt them as my own.

I've heard some students here, especially those that attended Harvard in Beijing and memorized 150 bazillion characters daily with tests and threats of beatings or whatever, complain about not having enough work at ICLP. To me, that's just silly. Not only is there plenty of work, if you really learn the material and how to use it (not just how to reproduce it on a test), there is also so much to do in Taiwan! Language study is less about hours locked in a study cubicle than about applying what you study, and I'm really happy that this is how I get to learn for the next nine months. If I feel like I don't have enough classwork, I'll learn something I want to learn, like how to order the most delicious dishes in Chinese, what is going on in the news, what kind of television programs Taiwanese people like to watch and where they hang out - these things will all improve my language, and none of them involve becoming a pale, atrophied book worm.

Lastly, I hope to really feel at home somewhere besides home. There are many ways in which I really feel at home at Yale (in particular at Yorkside, obvi), but sometimes it's hard for me to know how much this is me feeling at home or Yale-me feeling at home, if that makes any sense. I'd like to really get to know Taipei, the people, the places, the culture (AND THE FOOD)! And, figure out if I could really live in a big city for any length of time, if I could really live in a Chinese-speaking country for any length of time, and for that matter, what I can do with the rest of my life that incorporates all the new things I'll learn about myself this year. Freedom is about adjusting yourself to your environment, making Yale-you or Taipei-you a real part of your identity, but it's also about choosing the environment that best suits you, how to view it, and how to influence it as much as it influences you. Got to start doing a little more of that.

I've had similar goals for every year at college so far, but always at crucial points in the semester failed to see that there were still choices, even concerning things that felt as though Yale pre-determined them. I do not have to live like an over-committed robot person at Yale - all of the opportunities there made me feel pressure to do so, my life got more and more robot like, but giving in to the pressure/robotizing was my (dumb) choice. I think this year, with a new environment and entirely different kind of pressure, I will really be able to work on balancing my life and not feeling boxed in, all of this just by remaining aware that everything I do involves a choice. And I'm really excited to get back to Yale next year to see how I will pass my last year there and how much I've really changed.

So far things are going really, really well. I'm already a lot more comfortable in Taipei than I expected I'd be. Thanks to the gym, you can no longer tell I spent the summer in blubbery carby gym-culture-less England. Every time I've gone out has been a success, or a failure that taught me something. Classes have largely been really great: newspaper class is sooo useful and surprisingly interesting, radio plays is really fun, even when I have to write my own script, and my core class, Talks on Chinese Culture, is kind of really boring but completely necessary for activating all my forgotten vocab and sentence structures. I think I was placed perfectly, despite taking the written test 8 hours after I got here. I'm actually pretty sure the teachers had already decided what level I was without even looking at my test results, since they knew me from the summer before (it's also been so nice to see them again!). Half of the "oral exam" was actually the head teachers just asking me about Cameron. It was really sad but nice that they were direct enough to bring it up and were thinking about him. We still miss you, Cam

I guess this turned out to be more of an adverb-heavy diary entry than an entertaining blog post, so if you've made it this far, here are a couple of interesting and purely entertaining things I've seen:

Since Chinese chengyu are so important to sounding intellectual, Chinese people try to learn English by learning (often way weird or obsolete) idioms and quotes from dead people. This book is actually better than most I've seen - Pony Up and Party On!



Chinese version of an ice-cream truck:



The huge ice-cream cone I got from it (ok, lying, it was from Danshui) that was SO BIG I couldn't even get a picture of the whole thing and looked like a weirdo trying to take it (cf. face of guy in background):



I am SO eating here ASAP:



Since I take this Irish proverb very seriously:



One huge ice-cream and a ton of potatoes later, I realized the gym was a little quiet - no grunting or loud noises allowed. In fact, try to avoid exerting yourself at all:


Adventure updates coming soon, promise.

Katie