Viewing Category: Encounters
One thing that's new to me in Taiwan is the rise of the all you can eat buffet. We've been to about four of them, of varying quality. One of the best ones was a (I think) hotel-based eatery called "Las Vegas". It may be styled after the buffets in Las Vegas, but this one was interesting in that it had a lot of prepare-to-order stations serving a variety of cuisines. There are ice counters piled high with fresh fish, meat, and vegetables in addition to pre-prepared Taiwanese, Japanese, and Western dishes. A challenge for my sister and I was to identify which ingredients would be "safe" and which would freak us out. I stared at a pile of glistening rolls of grayish meat for several long seconds until I realized that they were freshly-skinned whole frogs. And my sister got fooled into filling a glass with salted prune juice, which was right next to the apple juice tea.
To control costs, there is a time limit on how long you can eat. There was also a warning that they would weigh any wasted food, bag it, and charge you for the excess. We didn't see anyone obviously breaking the rule, but I did notice that the general population in the restaurant was noticeably fatter than in years past. On the one hand, this meant that I blended in quite easily. I asked my sister if I stood out in anyway when I went to get food, and she said nope...I looked quite at home. We theorized it's the jawline (I think it might be the nose to eye proportions too).
My favorite all-you-can-eat restaurant was the shabu shabu place our Uncle Ezra (right) took us to. Shabu-shabu is a kind of Japanese hot-pot in which you add raw vegetables and thin slices of shaved beef. It's not unlike a meat fondue, except instead of oil you're using a light broth. Since the beef is sliced thin, it cooks very quickly and the savory results can be spooned directly into your personal bowl. In Taiwan, it's popular to have a raw egg in the bowl, which helps cool the meat. Taiwan used to be a Japanese colony after the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1800s until the end of World War II, so the influences live on in a lot of the popular traditions. Shabu shabu / sukiyaki hot pots are one such tradition. The traditional Taiwanese soy sauce is also more Japanese than Chinese; when I started cooking for myself back in the States, the Chinese soy sauce I was buying tasted "wrong" to me until I read about the difference on Wikipedia.
On a side note, I've had the most amazing fresh eggs while in Taiwan...yum! It's interesting also that the restaurant proudly proclaimed its use of 100% Certified Angus Beef, presumably from the United States.
I got a 50cc scooter last year, a cheap Chinese-built Keeway Venus. It's a small retro-styled scooter, similar stylistically to (i.e. ripped-off from) an old model Yamaha Vino Classic 50. I figured that it would be a good "starter scooter" that I could basically not worry about screwing up, but what I didn't anticipate was being chicken about riding it. I don't have any motorcycle experience, and it's been years since I've ridden a bike. On top of that, my experienced motorcyclists told me of the perils of gravel, leaves, ruts, blind motorists, slick roads in the first minutes of rain, getting hit by parts flying off of cars, pebbles kicked up by tires, legs snapped like twigs, hamburger, jaw destruction, decapitation, jellification...you get the idea. I got totally freaked out and limited my activity to the 2.5 mile Starbucks run from my house, when the weather was absolutely perfect and traffic was guaranteed to be light.
On this visit to Taiwan, I was rather impressed to see just how many scooters there were on the road. Traffic in Taiwan is much different than the U.S. because the expectation of drivers is that they are going to get cut off, so everyone is resigned to it. Everyone is highly aware of what's going on, and so long as people remain predictable in their motions and even in their speed, traffic actually flows pretty well. What was particularly interesting was the variety of people riding scooters.
Old women, young women, students, big guys, little guys, people in suits, delivery people for the propone company, entire families...everyone just puttered along. While most people wore helmets, few of them wore protective foot gear. I saw plenty of people wearing flip-flops or open-toed shoes. That is farther than I'd go back home, but what struck me was just how ordinary riding a scooter was here. The level of experience was high, but not exceptional. I'm thinking now I don't really have any excuse NOT to ride my scooter. I have to be vigilant, of course, and I'm still probably going to buy that armored riding jacket, full-face helmet and good shoes, but I'm feeling like I really should get over my fear and start puttering around. The New England spring and summer is all too short.
My sister and I have been in Taiwan for about a week, mostly staying at Dad's place in Taichung City. Although we both spent about a decade here in the 70s-80s, we lived in the capital city of Taipei, so we're not familiar at all with Taichung. Neither of us speak passable Taiwanese or Mandarin either, so we're almost completely dependent on Dad and our relatives for getting around. It's been interesting to reconnect with Dad and seeing how he's living his life. This really is his home, and it's good to see that he's got plenty of things to do to keep his mind engaged. He just celebrated his 80th birthday, and he's running around like he's still in his 50s. I hope I'm as spry as him when I'm his age.
So far, we've participated in several Taiwan-style banquets, which consist of multiple courses of local delicacies at special restaurants. Taiwan, being an island, is pretty heavy on the seafood. I don't mind fish, but shellfish makes me ill, which puts me at a disadvantage at these banquets. Still, I've eaten a few new things that I never would have tried with I was 12: deep-fried frog (tasted like a fishy chicken), jellied pig blood, some kind of squid ball that my sister tricked me into eating by saying it was fish, a slice of fish caviar cake, some sea cucumber soup, pig foot and a fruit called durian.
We also saw quite a few interesting things for sale at the local supermarket, like packs of chicken butts (considered a delicacy) and stewed pig tongue and stomachs. I haven't seen one thing that has resembled anything we'd have back in the U.S. at a "regular" Chinese restaurant. That's probably because we've been eating Taiwanese food because this is the preference of Dad and his adopted Taiwanese son (this is a long story, but it's not uncommon for good friends to give their "extra" sons to others, thus tightening the family bonds). The shock of all these weird foods was wiped out of us when were were little kids, though, so it's mostly been fun for taking pictures to gross people out back home.
I've been trying to figure out the essence of being Taiwanese through observation. Our families are proud of being Taiwanese, though I've never really felt a part of it. For one thing, I never learned how to speak Taiwanese even though I lived here for 10 years. We tried to learn Mandarin, which is a more universally understood language, but as a result we didn't learn either language well. On this trip I'm starting to think that I might be able to finally pick it up; I just need some structured language learning and drills, as there are some innate conversational patterns burned into my brain. Some of it is starting to come back, especially as I've been listening. There are apparently a lot of Taiwanese kids in the younger generations who don't speak Taiwanese either, so perhaps I am in good company. It's interesting that in terms of appearance we completely blend in. I'm used to sticking out a bit more in mostly-white New Hampshire, though I often go for months at a time forgetting I'm Asian. Everytime I open my mouth to talk, though, people think I'm from Hong Kong because my Chinese really sucks, but for the first time this isn't really bothering me. I used to be really sensitive about sounding like an idiot when I was a kid. I guess now that I'm larger, people are a little more polite about it. Or maybe my attitude is better.
Wednesday morning we went clothes shopping for my sister. This wasn't really my sister's idea, but it had been suggested that we do this because I had been taken to a local tailor to have some custom suits and shirts made. It's much cheaper to get such things done in Taiwan than in the United States, maybe one third of the price. Both Dad and A-bun (his adopted son) have a strong personal interest in the purveying and acquisition of the suit and shirts, acting as interpreters and bargainers. It's actually kind of expensive, way more than I'd spend for clothes in even two years, but I'm operating on the theory that it's far worse to NOT accept their kindness. The giving and accepting of gifts is quite important in the family; I'm already thinking of what I should acquire for them in the United States, though I have little idea what they would appreciate. If I were to guess, it would be any item that could be described in simple superlative terms: "beautiful", "wonderful", and sometimes "expensive" and "famous". I've noticed among my relatives, the qualification of the excellence of any particular item depends on who else has used it or whether it's a brand name of some kind. This may be a reflection on the importance of "face" in Asian cultures; reputation is very important and it's automatically passed from person to person in a kind of chain of recommendation from Pierre Cardin himself.
As the part of Taichung we're in is somewhat provincial, I'm wondering what the suits will LOOK like. A-bun was concerned that Emily would feel left out because she didn't get any clothes, and constantly suggested that we go look for dresses. He even called ahead and set up appointments before hearing, through Dad, that this was perhaps not a good idea. Dad later joked that the Taiwanese have genuinely good hearts, but it sometimes can come across as being more about what they think is good for you rather than you might think. So far, the suit looks OK (I got to do a rough fitting, which was cool to experience). Emily said it didn't look weird.
After getting back from the dress shopping, Dad and A-bun dropped us off with the key to the apartment so they could go run some additional errands. Instead of going immediately inside, however, we decided to walk around the block and see what was there. As I'd mentioned earlier, I'd never seen graffiti in Taiwan before. We also noticed later that despite the congestion in the street, there was very little honking of car horns. And, surprisingly, the streets are quite clean. Dad was home by the time we got back, and gave us our own key so we could go out. It hadn't occurred to him, I think, that we'd want to go exploring ourselves. It hadn't really occurred to us either, but it was an important step in just getting more comfortable in our environment and feeling less like we are 12 years old.
Tomorrow we were originally planning to go visit Taipei City, but we may just stay local and rest. There is a cultural center nearby we may check out; I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of design community they have.
On the second day of arriving in Taiwan, my sister and I had a chance to flip through two local newspapers over breakfast, the English-language Taipei Times and the Chinese-language Liberty Times. The English papers are rather thin, serving an audience that I would guess consists of foreign expatriates and local Taiwanese who are studying the language.
When I used to live here as a foreign brat, I could never pin down what exactly was missing from the English papers here until now: there's not much real analysis, and the surface presentation of data is rather thin, which makes home analysis more of an exercise in conjecture. Also missing are the pages of local commentary by knowledgeable community historians/busybodies. What is most striking, however, is the lack of advertising. The China Post, which is another English-language paper, may have more ads as they claim to have a circulation of 400,000, but I have not seen an issue in years. Anyway, check out this spread from the Taipei Times...it is eerie in its cleanliness:
The entire paper is like this, with the exception of a few hotel ads and a handful of classifieds in the back. That's what makes the paper feel unreal, because there is no sign of local commerce or community talk-back.
I started to wonder if the regular newspapers in Taiwan were largely supported by a subscription model. Considering that the whole of Taiwan is just a little larger than Massachusetts with a far-greater density of 24 million people concentrated along the western coast, perhaps distribution and demographics create a favorable economic climate for subscription-based media? I'm unqualified to say, but I've been noticing just how greater the density of people is here in Taichung compared to the typical US suburb or even medium-sized city, and the scores of tiny shops offering goods and services are apparently able to survive with whatever foot traffic they receive. Density of human traffic is one of those mysterious business factors that I've been thinking of a lot recently as I've been pondering my own business maneuverings; being in urban Taiwan has reawakened my interest in the subject. But I digress.
visual comparison
I can't read Chinese, but I found it interesting to try to visually compare the Chinese-language Liberty Times to the Taipei Times. Here's an inside spread of the Liberty Times:
I can't read any of this so don't take what I'm saying as authorative, but it's notable that the Chinese language layout allows for multiple headline directions. Not only can they be read vertically, a headline can also be laid out horizontally. Body copy can be formatted to read left-to-right or right-to-left, which creates the opportunity for really interesting layout possibilities. I'm going to keep an eye open for examples of this in other media.
The information density of this page is much higher than that of an English-language paper, because each character is a word. The Chinese characters are larger than what a single letter would be in an English-language paper, which reduces the comparative density advantage, so I'd say that the information density is maybe 2x or 3x. I don't know why that's interesting to me, but it is.
Dad had a couple other competing newspapers in the house, and they look a bit different due to the choice of different line lengths and font weights. I snapped these pictures quickly out of what I think are weekday editions of each paper: RSS readers: the small thumbnails won't be clickable in your feed reader, so you will have to visit the website to see the larger images.
The China Times is another of the major newspapers in Taiwan, and it has a somewhat looser and spacious spread, with increased white space between rows of characters, and seems to favor longer-flowing character lines in their paragraphs. Each page also seems to have a "visually dominant character direction", either horizontal or vertical. The overall result is a more tranquil feeling to my non-comprehending eyes. Dad says that the China Times is politically right-leaning in the Taiwanese political sense, and is one of the oldest newspapers. Perhaps the design is friendlier with an older constituency with fading vision, or the look is deliberately "traditional".
The other newspaper, The United Daily News, uses a layout that feels "chunkier" to me. I think this is because there's less space between character lines, and the lines seem slightly shorter than what's in the China Times. The character font seems a little heavier too. Dad says that this used to be a military newspaper, and it's even more right-leaning than the China Times.
The Liberty Times, by comparison, seems to allow headlines to run both vertically and horizontally on the same page. The other two papers seem to avoid combining directions on the same page (though not entirely). The Liberty Times also seems to use more font weights, providing an intermediate step of visual contrast that I find appealing. According to Dad, the Liberty Times was the first to use of color in all its pages, and the other papers are playing catch-up. If I had to pick a favorite purely on visual style, I like the layouts in the Liberty Times a little better for the dynamic feeling I get from their pages. I have no idea if it plays havoc with readability; perhaps an Asian graphic designer will let us know. Dad also comments that the Liberty Times is pro-Taiwan independence, a subject close to his heart, and that makes it a left-leaning newspaper. It's the one he likes to read, though he keeps tabs on other papers.
cultural differences
Like papers in the United States, the weekend editions include a lifestyle section or supplement; this is a quick way to see what's similar yet different. Here's a couple excerpts out of the Taipei Times:
One has to remember that the English language audience is international, and expressions like "a good knees up" slip into the articles. I have no idea what this means, but I gather it's good.
Then it's always good to see restaurant reviews that are open-minded about the specialty cuisine that's available here. You'd never see a review like this in the United States, but this is a different land. I wonder how the Taiwanese papers review western food?
Moving on to the Taiwanese newspaper's classifieds section, Emily found a series of women private investigator ads. She'd also seen these ads on the back of public buses, and we wondered if there was a reason behind these women-run detective agencies.
We asked our cousin June, who practices international law in Taipei, and she said that the women are hired by wives to check up on their philandering husbands. The women PIs are considered to be more observant of small-but-critical details, more insightful, and far more discreet than your typical blundering male.
The lifestyle sections are also pretty awesome, at least in the Liberty Times. This article appears to be about some kind of fanciful confectionery or cake:
I've been noticing on this trip just how advanced cake- and confectionery-making have advanced in the past 10 years. Taiwan has a culture of giving lots of small gifts on numerous occasions, and the level of craft and creativity blows away anything I've seen in the United States outside of small artisan shops. What's different about Taiwanese bakeries (which draws upon the Japanese bakery tradition, which itself draws from European influences) is that these are affordable everyday treats. Even the ubiquitous 7-11 convenience stores here are laden with imaginative amalgamations of savory sweetness. The Taiwanese appear to have an insatiable appetite for new and delicious things, and I suppose this could explain part of my personality.
There was also what looks like a guy's personal grooming section. Do Taiwanese guys read things like this, or do their girlfriends read it for them?
As for single Taiwanese guys with time on their hands, this mysterious spread of girls with URLs seems to offer albums of photos to browse.
At first I thought it was a dating profile thing, but I guess these are celebrities of some kind? If you look closely there's a URL for each profile, and there's some kind of diagram accompanying each photo.
Lastly, we came across a digital camera advertisement which seems to take facial recognition to the next logical step: facial enhancement. We have no idea what this feature is, or if it even IS a feature, but we're guessing it makes eyes look bigger. Large eyes are an essential component of cuteness, and I've heard that cosmetic surgery to reshape the eyes is popular among Asian females. I found this link to a similar camera, the Olympus u9000. The particular camera this ad was referring to is for a new Casio digital camera; the English press release doesn't seem to mention eye enhancement, so maybe this is left off the European and North American versions of the camera. UPDATE: it's called Make-Up Mode, and the new cameras also do up to 1000 frame-per-second movies! I might have to get one of these!
It's 4AM and of course I'm wide awake. My sister and I, along with all of our cousins, arrived in at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at around 4:30AM. The 15-hour flight on the EVA Air Boeing 777 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, because it's relatively easy to sleep for most of it. They also had a video-on-demand system built-into each seat. The seats, which I had been dreading because I remember Taiwanese airlines packing us into tiny spaces, were actually quite comfortable for my American-sized ass. With the privatization of a lot of industries in the 23 years since I actually lived in Taiwan, there has been a general uptick in the quality of services.
Upon arriving at the Airport I was struck by how different the Visa and Customs process was from how it used to be in the 80s and 90s. I remember it being a tedious affair, with a lot of double-checking of documents and searching of suitcases for taxable goods and forbidden media--Taiwan was under martial law at the time. This time, we walked right through the "No Goods to Declare Line", and to my surprise we were already out in the reception area. As a sign of how times have changed, there was a statue of a persimmon-headed "Free WiFi" man checking his email instead of an M16-toting Chinese soldier covering the exits. Our group, consisting of nearly all the US-based cousins, immediately converged upon the statue and started to check our various Internet accounts and busting out the digital SLRs. As I learned at my Grandfather's memorial service 9 years ago, apparently our obsession with gadgets is descended from Grandpa, who had been a leader in adopting new technologies in his Church, such as the use of amplification to extend his voice to large congregations. Grandma's memorial service will provide more insights on Saturday; an English-language program will be broadcast over an FM-radio transmitter for the benefit of the English-speaking grandchildren by one of our older relatives. We are in good company.
The high speed rail system in Taiwan cuts the trip between 208-mile Taipei-Kaohsiung trip from around 5 hours to about 90 minutes for about $15. The trip would be even longer by car. We took the train to Taichung, which is about halfway between, to be met by our Dad. This was the first time I've taken a high-speed train, and it's impressively smooth. The one downside is that they don't serve the boxed lunches based on Japanese BentÅ boxes, but I mentioned this to Dad when we got home and he got some for dinner. Not quite the same, but still part of what I had missed about the place.
There are little things that stand out to me. For one thing, the Taiwanese sense of color feels just a little bit off, slightly tainted by unappetizing hues. For example, the EVA Air uniform is this kind of muddy green color that is supremely unattractive. The plastics in the appliances and daily consumables aren't coordinated in pleasing ways, which was something that I'd noticed as a kid, and still am struck by as an adult. Maybe it has something to do with the awful fluorescent lighting that is in most homes and stores, or people here just don't notice this kind of thing. Every once in a while I'm struck by an exceptional use of color and material, but in the urban neighborhood I'm in right now it is fairly rare. I'll have to ask Dad if this is a typical neighborhood (we didn't grow up here, so it's still pretty new to me). When I overlook the color issue, though, I'm amazed by the vitality of the integration between small shops, services, and homes. There is an amazing variety of freshly-prepared food that's available from a seeming infinite supply of vendors, block after block, and they all seem busy with the daily routine of living. The emphasis of design, uniqueness, and stylistic expression that we have in nominal amounts in the USA is almost completely absent in this part of the island, drowned out by the visual noise of the utilitarian concrete and tiled buildings. All the building here seem to be covered with bathroom tiles, BTW. Every house, however, seems to have a kind of luxury goods shrine where the collection of finer things resides: bottles of expensive liquor, for example. Luxury brand names are well-known here when it comes to buying gifts and showing wealth. When it comes to everyday things, though, brand seems to be less important, but I may be jumping to a premature conclusion.
There are other things. Bath towels here are not as absorbent, perhaps because they contain more synthetic content. Toilet paper is thinner and tends to come in square packages like napkins in the US. Scooters are everywhere, ridden by people of all ages and physical prowess without fear of death as a practical mode of transportation. Appliances are lightly-built and scaled-down compared to what we have in the States. And yet it is all familiar and alive. I think back of our malls and office buildings in suburban America, and it all seems so rigid now. However, there is one import into Taiwan that I've never seen before: massive displays of graffiti and other signs of tagging. I don't ever recall public displays of anarchy before, probably because the former military government's imposition of martial law would have come down harshly on the perpetrators. A more permeable Taiwanese society is apparently allowing world underground culture to seep in.
Tomorrow we'll be taking the car to Tainan, where we'll meet up with the rest of our relatives in preparation for tomorrow's memorial service. For now, I'm going to try to catch some more sleep.
