美國生日快樂！！！

Happy Birthday America!!! I'm the only Yank in my class that remembered the Fourth though; the rest are slightly hippie-ish.  Ex-pats are an odd group; sorry about that.

I think it's been exactly one week since I was here last, and it's been a pretty busy time.  Let me fill you in.

First, and most awesomely, my apartment now only has three housemates.  The two college kids (for more information, see this post) moved out on July 1st, and its been nothing but piece and quiet since.  Fittingly, they did little to clean up after themselves, as their living space was unswept, and the wall stained with dirt from their feet.  We'll be repainting soon.  Punks.

Additionally, I had a pretty enjoyable Sunday, mostly because I met up with and British guy I know, and spoke nothing but English the whole day.  Lovely.  We decided to head north to Taipei's most famous museum, the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院), which houses the thousands and thousands of artifacts the Guomindang took from the Mainland when they retreated to Taiwan starting in 1948.  This fact apparently irritates the Chinese to no end, since Taiwan played little to no role in ancient China's cultural development, and there's not the slightest chance Taiwan will give up the museum's wares.

Once inside, there are three levels to the main building, and the first exhibit rooms feature picks, trowels, daggers, etc. dating back almost 8,000 years.  Museum officials are quite proud of this longevity, and they let their feelings be known publicly.  In the first room, there's a large sign proclaiming the glories of Chinese culture, the world's "longest, most vital, and most important."  Take that, Smithsonian.

The exhibition halls progress chronologically, and begin, as mentioned, with the pre-dynastic times, transition into the Zhou Era (周時代), the Spring and Autumn Period (This is when the classics of Daoism emerge), the Warring States Period (Confucius, Mencius, and Lao-tse), and finally into the 2,000-year Imperial Era.  It's pretty cool.

The museum‘s most famous piece is a piece called, roughly, "The White Cabbage Jade:"

The picture's not mine (note the watermark at bottom right), but you still get an idea of how cool this thing is.

After the museum and after some food, the Limey and I decided to hit up "Kung Fu Panda," or 功夫熊貓, at the main movie theater in Taipei's XiMenDing area, the city's rough equivalent of Times Square.  It's hilarious, and highly recommended to all and sundry.  Fat noodle-selling pandas trained by rodent kung fu master to defeat world's greatest tiger warrior makes for some seriously good viewing, trust me.  I'm not going to say anything more.

I'm about to wrap this up, but I'm feeling the itch to write about some of the still-visible remnants of the Guomindang's "One China" pretensions, as well as about some of the funny English one sees around town.  I'll be taking some pictures to help make my point.

Now we've got evidence

ALERT:  This is an all-cars notice on two (three?) John Does suspected of annoying the living crap of out Bryan.  Biographic data is as follows:

Suspect Names: We've never bothered to find out.

No. of Suspects: Two.

Sexual Orientation: Other dudes.

Current Location: In Bryan's living room, watching his TV.  Or in Bryan's dining room, sleeping.

Offenses: Being the most two annoying people this side of Bryan's other roommate in DC; signing and giggling until the wee hours of the morning; always being around; being 19 years old and making me fear that maybe, just maybe, I used to be that annoying.

Evidence: Thanks to some stellar sleuthing work, we've turned up photographic evidence of the crime scene.  Due to high risk of contamination from the enormous amount of useless junk piled up, all officers are advised to enter with restraint, and not until having received proper protective gear and vaccinations.  The evidence is in the form of two photos, which are to be treated as classified:

This just in!  Photos of the perps at the crime scene, taken at 7 p.m.:

Verdict: Suspects are to be considered guilty until proven innocent.  Use of force authorized.  Station OUT.

A long-delayed update

Apologies to my readers - all three of you - for my many, many day absence.  There's no excuse; were this a reputable news outlet, I'd most certainly have long since been fired for neglect of professional duties.  Thankfully, it's not.  I'm still the boss of me.

Also, before I jump into this, a note.  I just a massive plate of "chicken leg rice" at a restaurant down the street, and am about twenty minutes into a carbo-coma.  So, please have patience with any typos or incongruous sentences.

By now, I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this is aware I've started classes, and switched into the intensive class Friday before last.  I'm still struggling to get back on my feet after the initial full-body language blast of the first few days.  It's a no-holds-barred, all-Chinese-all-the-time, ego-bruising three hours of fun.  Last week, we turned in our topics for the semester project, which is a full-length report on a series of street interviews we are to do on a selected topic. Mine is a semi-awkward mix of the topic I originally chose, Sino-Taiwanese relations, and that suggested to me by my teacher, Taiwanese views of foreigners and foreign nations.  The latter seems like it might simply degenerate into a topical study of Taiwanese prejudice, and I'm not too interested.  So,  I'm hybridizing.  Our list of proposed questions is due to the teacher tomorrow.

Speaking of school, as I walk to and from everyday, I pass through an all-Chinese neighborhood on foot and, while most people ignore me or stare at me when I'm not looking, there's one fellow at an appliance store who's taken a (non-homosexual) shine to me.  It started with an innocent "Ni hao," and by this past Friday, had progressed to a point at which he feels comfortable talking to me about all sorts of inappropriate things.  That day, as I ambled past, he stopped me to talk, and shortly thereafter began asking, "you have girlfriend Taiwan?"

Nope, I don't.  Nor, since seems to be offering his matchmaking services, am I interested in anyone he might plan to send my way.  He was amazed that I was/am single, and expressed with certainty that getting a lovely lass at my side would take little more than a snap of the fingers. As he was saying this, he attempted to reinforce his argument by pointing out the hair on my chest, a sure sign of a "real man," he said, and a big draw for the ladyfolk here.

Then, strangely, he switched the conversation to the the topic of corn.  Yes, the delicious vegetable.  I couldn't figure out why, but after he began a long series of vulgar gesticulations and started grabbing his crotch in a most gruesome manner, I finally understood his meaning. He believed himself to be pointing out one of the physiological advantages of Western birth. 

Yikes.  At this point, I'm hideously weirded out, and more than a little wary of what might be coming next, so I forced a graceful dismount and walked away, beet-red in the face.  As a parting shot, the fellow tells me about his old college major, "zuo ai,"  or "love-making."  I might have to find a new route to school.

* * *

What else, what else...

Oh, the language.  Also known as "The Reason I'm Here."  I think I've been making some decent progress, especially recently, since I'm able to understand ever more of Taiwan TV broadcasts, and am become much more adept at eavesdropping on the conversations of passersby.  Why, just this afternoon, as I went for a sweltering, muggy, cramp-inducing run in a riverside park, a young kid scooted past me on his training wheels, turned and saw me, and started singing.  The song had only one word: "Laowai, laowai, laowai."  Or, when translated, "foreigner, foreigner, foreigner."  Classic.

Like I said, to boost my language abilities, I've been forcing myself to watch a lot of TV. Recently I found a pretty cool sitcom, very popular here on the island, called "mingzhongzhuding wo ai ni," or "I Was Predestined to Love You."  It's a standard story of the meek, beautiful girl rescued by the super-cool-but-confused Mr. Right, except that in the first episode, she got dizzy from cold medicine, and he from being poisoned, and they mistakenly ended up in the same room (they're on a cruise, but don't know each other) and and lost their respective virginities.  Each assumed that the other was their lover, and not, as it turned out, a total stranger.  Oops.  The second episode involves an unwanted pregnancy, so I'm stoked to see what happens next.

* * *

Ok, that should be enough to satisfy the critics.  I'm exhausted, and still have to get some more work done on my questions for school, as well as recommence the vocabulary and grammar review I started earlier.

Bryan, out.

I though I felt this last night...

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/351292/1/.html

Dinner failure

I just wanted to write this down. I live with two guys, both of whom are in the habit of sleeping past 11 a.m., even after going to bed at midnight. There's not a yet a real, grown-up trash can in the place, even though they housemates have been living continuously here for nearly two years. Readers may have also noticed that there is no furniture in the place.

None of this bugged me at all, not one bit, until tonight. At 10 p.m., I walked down to 7-11 (there is literally one every two blocks in this city - 3,700 in all of Taiwan) to pick up some instant noodles, figuring I'd heat up some water in the apartment microwave to make them when I got back. Well, oops. There's no microwave. There's a contraption above the sink where the microwave should be, but it serves no such purpose.  I, with both my BA and MA, am totally at a loss as to this thing's purpose.  I tried to heat water in it, but to no avail.

After casting about for some minutes, I finally broke down and used the hot water from the bathroom faucet.  BTW, I don't want any comments on this - if I get cholera, it'll be sufficient punishment.  The noodles were delicious.

I'd have taken pictures to document my frustration, but, as we all now know, my camera is throwing hissy fits.

I'm eating out from now on.

Breaking News...

...my camera seems to be broken.

I just got back from a half-day trip to a place called WuLai, which is a village southwest of Taipei that's famous for its hot springs.  It's tucked away several mies up a winding valley, with verdant mountains that shoot straight up several hundred feet from a clear, swift-flowing river.  

I took a lot pictures of the scenery and of the food but my camera chopped off the bottom of most of them.  I have no idea why.  So, while this was going to be another long, entertaining entry, I'm just going to post some of the pictures that haven't been mangled and then try and figure out what the ___ is going on.  I think maybe the moisture is the air is making it angry.

So, with no further ado...

WuLai is thee name of the village in the language of the original Atayal aborigines, whose ancestors came to the island either from southern China or Southeast Asia perhaps 7,000 years ago.  The town's name means "hot and poisonous" in their language.

I mentioned the mountains in the valley.  Here's the only, only shot I have left of the many I took of the cloud-wreathed peaks:

Finally, lunch.  Each little village and tourist stop has its own specialty food.  WuLai's is a cool little thing called zhu tong fan - "bamboo tube rice" - which is a mix of super-sticky rice, nuts, and what seemed like mushrooms.  It's steamed, and served in a foot-long tube of bamboo:

It looks a little bit odd at first, but it's delicious.  I had proof of its tastiness (a photo taken five minutes later than this one with an empty bamboo tube), but, convienently, 80% of the photo is gone.  Meh.

New apartment for the hairy foreigner

Breaking news - I've got a new apartment, and its awesome.  I moved out of the hostel this morning, much to my relief.  It was getting a bit tiresome having a dozen people around at all times, with too few fans to offset the massive body heat and a landlord unwilling to use the A/C.

I did, however, meet some pretty interesting people.  There was a French couple staying in the hostel that fitted to a T every silly stereotype about the French, ever.  They'd been traveling the world together for about 2 years, having already been to the U.S., the Caribbean, and Taiwan, and on their way to the mainland to work the Beijing Olympics.  After zat, zey do not know.  They both sallied about in varying stages of undress, and the guy seemingly had few compunctions about full nudity.  I made a few restrained guesses about the couple's socio-political views, which were delightfully confirmed during a conversation in which I was told they were traveling to "de-program" themselves of French "social conditioning," and integrate themselves more fully with the broad masses of humanity.  I neglected to asked if, in their regression, they were going to forsake their healthy bank accounts.  Ah, the spoiled children of capitalism

Although the nudo-anarcho-nihilo-vagabonds were my favs, I made a couple friends that I'll probably keep in touch with later on.  There's an Ed from England who's a cool guy, just arrived in Taiwan a month ago from the mainland to improve his Taichi.  Warren (notice that I don't have any last names...) is a Kiwi who's something of a peripatetic, and who now wants to settle down in Taiwan and teach for a little while - and perhaps follow up on a few love leads in Taipei.  There's no one else of real note, although one of my readers has already noted that I've already reached my natural friend quota, and am likely incapable of making any more.  Wiesz, którzy jesteś.

Back on task - my new apartment.  It's a goo bit further south of the hostel, and is right on the Danshui River that bisects Taipei from west to east.  This is great, because there's usually a strong breeze on the river that softens the press of heat and humidity here, and because the view is pretty good.

The Common Room:

My room (during unpacking):

The view, looking south, from west to east:

My room also has A/C, which is absolutely phenomenal.  A fan cools one off a little bit, but it doesn't stop perspiration, and it's no fun waking up in a sweat pool.  Another great thing about this place is that the neighborhood is more authentically Taiwanese - every block has row after row of small shops, there are spiderwebs of lanes and alleys (xiang and nong, respectively, in Chinese) connecting the major roads, and, most importantly, there is next to no English, anywhere.  This a pleasant change, since in the center of Taipei, almost every sign has the English translation beneath it, and a good many of the residents have passable English.  Here, this is not the case.

Readers may by now be wondering about the second half of this entry's title: "I get the new apartment bit, but why is he pointing out that he's hairy?  We already know that."  Well.  I had my first experience two days ago with the famous Chinese fascination with the Western body.

I was in the Taipei MRT Station (the metro), sitting between two elderly men, who, so far as I could tell, didn't know I was there.  We were all comfortable on our three-man bench when a young fourth arrived and sandwiched his way in unceremoniously.  Not restrained by the usual Taiwanese reticence around waiguoren, he immediately launched in a conversation with me, of which I understood little at first.  After a few rounds of "speak more slowly, please" I finally understood the words "shenmao hen duo," or "a lot of body hair." Ohhhhhh.  He was tickled to death that my arms were hairy, and explained (in Chinese, he didn't speak a word of English) to me the all-too-obvious point that Asians are different. Thankfully, the train showed up, and I made a point of walking two or three cars down, so that he got the hint.  Once inside I double over in laughter, and everyone was staring at me.

It's a curious thing, the way the Taiwanese relate to Westerners.  In many cases, they're thoroughly intimidated.  I did my first language exchange this past Monday, and one of my partners had never, ever talked to an American before, and couldn't even finish her sentences.  She was having problem remembering how to write Chinese characters, and kept getting up from the table.  There's a real difference in emotional confidence between the average American and Taiwanese I think.  We're bred to be robust individuals, and they are taught deference and piety, and seem to have a fantastical view of the West, and of the U.S. in particular.  They treat us like VIPs.

* * *

There's more coming later, including photo documentation of the hilariously bad English on signs in Taipei.