The Home of the Brave?

People keep telling me I'm brave for coming here, a single woman all by myself in a big city in a VERY foreign country. Especially my Taiwanese friends. Chiawei keeps telling me she could never do what I'm doing, and Ned calls me at least once a day to make sure that I'm ok...

The thing of it is, I kind of wish they would stop saying it, because until people started calling me brave it never really occurred to me that there was anything to be afraid of in the first place. I mean sure there are emotional difficulties involved with being away from home for so long, but those are just annoying, not frightening. Really, living in a foreign country isn't that bad. Of course you find things that you dislike, but you just remind yourself that there are thousands of other people who have been living like that their whole lives and there's no reason that you can't do it too. Then you suck it up and move on. And there's always the benefit of making new friends and learning new things to make it worth the effort...

Still, it makes me wonder if I shouldn't at least be a little frightened, if there's something in my brain that kind of blocks the usually inherent need to be surrounded by the familiar, and whether I wouldn't be better off if that blockage could somehow be surgically removed. Is it possible that there could come a time when I'm incapable of forming an attachment to anything at all? Is my sense of adventure just damning me to a life of nomadic uncertainty?

Do I think too much?

Hooray for Malapropisms

One of the more amusing things about interacting with people whose native language is so different than your own is the occasional ironically misused vocabulary. Take, for instance, the following: during a recent conversation with my friend Chiawei and her boyfriend Chiachi, Chiawei became curious about my motivation for being a vegetarian. She thought it might be a religion thing - lots of people here are vegetarians because they're Buddhist - but she couldn't think of the word for it.

"Do you believe in booty?" she asked.

Chiachi, whose English is near-native and who is somewhat more familiar with American slang, chimed in "I definitely believe in booty."

It took us a while to explain to Chiawei just exactly what it was that she had just said, whereupon she flushed a bright color of pink. Thank goodness she had a sense of humor about it, though; since then it's kind of become a running gag. It makes me wonder what silly and/or meaningless things I've said to complete strangers without even knowing it...

Taipei 101 (Literally Speaking)

Taipei 101, the current tallest building in the world, at a height of roughly a billion kajillion feet. To be honest, in person it looks a little stubby for the title it holds. Then again, I of all people should know better than to automatically pass judgement on stubby things, seeing as how I'm not so tall or graceful myself...

I'm slowly starting to get settled in to life in Taiwan, and the initial shock of being here is wearing off a little. Ned went home to Taichung yesterday afternoon, leaving me with a large apartment and a lot of free time to myself, so a friend suggested that I ride the metro to a bookstore downtown.

I am no longer homesick.

This place was amazing. It was story after story of every kind of book you can think of in any language you could care to read. When I first walked in I had to stand in the lobby and let the shock wear off before I could even move. Suddenly a year in Taipei doesn't seem like long enough. Seattle? What is that? Never heard of it! Huge dictionaries, Tang poetry in the original and English translation, a whole wall of martial arts novels, and a New York Times Bestseller wall for the foreigners who are either less than inclined to be courteous guests and actually learn the language or who are courteous guests and simply need a break from going cross-eyed staring at Chinese characters. (I, by the way, belong to the second category.) This bookstore had everything. I probably could have slept in there, with a bilingual edition of Ding Ling as a pillow.

I spent the morning trying to get registered for classes, which proved to be quite a chore considering that (a) the school will only take tuition payment in cash and (b)no one working at a bank in the Guting district seems to have heard of a traveler's cheque before. ("Wait a second, I have to ask...Hey! Xiao Wang! Can we exchange traveler's cheques?"..."What? Who is traveler's cheque?" was how the general exchange went).

Usable funds finally secured, I had to go wait in line behind some fruitcakes from Nicaragua who had somehow arrived at the conclusion that it would be okay for the four of them to share the same scholarship certification letter, which incidentally belonged to a girl who wasn't even there. My patience was wearing a little thin by the time I finally made it into my placement test, which in itself was rather asinine. I suspect that even someone with only slightly higher than average intelligence who spoke no Chinese at all could have passed it:

"Mr. Zhang gave the book to you. Answer this question: who did Mr. Zhang give the book to?"

The experience was still better than the one I had at Fudan, though, in which the entire placement test consisted of a two-minute interview with a less than enthusiastic teacher who had been randomly chosen to teach over the summer.

And in keeping with this line of thought, I will hereby present a list of things that, at least so far, I like better about Taiwan than I do about the Mainland:


1. stinky tofu and the funny man who sells it on the corner who talks to me about everything under the sun every time I eat there
2. sit-down toilets
3. the bookstore
4. the bookstore
5. the bookstore
6. I can see, post on, and generally maintain my blog without difficulty, and do so without being labeled a selfish anti-communist foreigner
7. I have yet to be poked, prodded, elbowed, pushed, shoved, cut in front of in line, stared at like I have a foot-long beard, or be the victim of any other kind of physical, emotional, or mental abuse.

I like the last one best.

Taipei 101 (Figuratively Speaking)

I've finally arrived in Taipei, which is both relieving and a little frightening. I'm stuck here for a year, which means both that I finally have a semi-permanent home on the positive side and that I am stuck here for a year on the slightly more disturbing angle. I'm tired. I'm homesick. I'm emotionally spent. And I really miss Lindsey.

I do, however, have some very good friends here in Taipei. Ned, who is letting me stay at an empty apartment he owns here, drove all the way up from his home two hours away to pick me up at the airport. He's been staying with me and showing me around the city. We also met some other friends for dinner last night, and afterward we went to a night market. It was crowded and it was hot, but I had a good time. It's been nice to see some familiar faces in this place that feels so foreign to me.

And on that note, it's remarkable to me how not like China Taiwan is. I really think that somewhere in my mind I expected it to be just like a more modern Beijing or something, but it's really not. This city has its own personality, and I think the shock of it feeling so unfamiliar is something that I didn't really expect. It's probably why the homesickness is so much worse than I had anticipated.

I'll post more when I have pictures. Right now I'm still settling in and stuff (including my camera) is scattered everywhere...

Leaving Shanghai (Reprise)

I came home from taking Lindsey to the train station this afternoon to find that the maids had cleaned the hotel room and that there was a cherry pit stuck to the toilet seat in the bathroom. I am, and shall likely forever remain, slightly bewildered.

Lindsey left in what amounted to a panicked rush for Nanjing this afternoon; we left for the station two hours early and how it ended up being a rush seems a bit blurry to me now, though it had something to do with the fact that the fuwuyuan had taken Lindsey's luggage into a place where as a non-ticket holder I apparently couldn't go, and Lindsey was obliged to follow on their heels in order to keep adequate track of her things. They weren't the sort of people to stop while you said a sappy goodbye, so we ended up with a sloppy goodbye instead. Probably all for the best anyway. I'd hate to be the white girl standing lost and forlorn and crying alone in a sea of bustling Chinese in front of the train station.

I spent my last night in Shanghai with my good friend Max, who treated me to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant and then to a quiet walk along the Pudong side of the Huangpu River. It was a nice way to spend my last night here, even if it did make me sad to be leaving. I feel as though I didn't have nearly enough time in Shanghai. Still, I'm starting to wonder if any amount of time would have been enough. With all the friends I have here and all the little quiet spots I've carved out for myself in the city, I've started to think of Shanghai as a second home. It hurts a little to have to leave again.

I'm leaving my hotel for the airport at 4:30 tomorrow morning. It's 10:38 pm now and I haven't even started packing. My stuff is still scattered around the room, although there are hollow spots in certain chairs where the absence of Lindsey's stuff is a little too conspicuous right now. I'm excited to finally get to Taipei and to get settled down a little, but at the same time I can't help but drag my feet. I don't know if I'm prepared to go through any more changes in life. I'm sure that I wuld stay in Shanghai forever if I had the option...

Pondering a Child

It has come to my attention that until now my blog has not allowed for anonymous postings. I've fixed it, so those of you who don't have a blogger account can post things if you want to. Just no spam, please. I'm tired of serving as an advertisement for blogs about hair restoration surgery and rapid weight loss products. Any relevant statements - or even the irrelevant ones, as long as you're not selling me anything and they're not too bawdy for a general audience - are welcome.

We went to see a friend's baby yesterday. She's a month and a half old and absolutely adorable; it's so amazing to watch her sleep and wonder what it is she must be dreaming about when she scrunches up her little hairless eyebrows and bites her lip with her little teethless gums. Everything about her radiates trust and vulnerability, and I find it equally reassuring and discomforting. She lives in a VERY well-off family and will live a very privileged life, but she doesn't know that. She doesn't know about global warming, doesn't worry about whether she will die in her next cab ride, doesn't understand that there will be some days that the sunsets take her breath away and others when she despises the sunrises.

She doesn't know that someday someone will break her heart.


There was a small but persistent part of me, a rock-hard tumor of disillusionment tucked somewhere in a shadowy back corner of my brain, that yelled at me that someone should tell her these things, tell her how much life is going to hurt her and how people are going to abandon her, before she has to find out on her own.

And then I looked at Lindsey, who was holding the baby at the time, and I realized how ridiculous it was. The truth is, I'm so lucky. I've had friends like Lindsey who have stuck by me even when I couldn't get out of bed, let alone return the favor. I've traveled all over the world. I speak one of the world's hardest languages (kind of). I've met amazing people and seen amazing things. Yes, life hurts me sometimes, but I think it's just because there's so damn much of it. And the reality is, I can only hope this little child is as lucky as I've been, and that in the end she'll have the strength to pay the price that such good fortune sometimes ends up costing.

Yu Yuan and Lu Xun

One of the bad things about traveling with someone who also has a blog, who is on par with you in terms of writing ability, and with whom you are generally attached at the hip anyway, is the fact that whoever gets to her blog first has first dibs on the funny stories. This morning was Lindsey's turn. So I have nothing left that is either amusing or interesting to say. Maybe I can find a picture that she hasn't posted yet...(we're sharing all our photos too, so it might be a challenge):

This is us with some friends at a vegetarian restaurant near Huaihai Zhong Lu. Take that, Lindsey Victoria.

To get even with Lindsey Victoria - who I will address by her full name until I have finally forgiven her for not leaving me any amusing anecdotes to post on my own blog - I will hereby be the first to post about our day trip yesterday. We met with a friend for a tour of the Lu Xun museum and the Yu Gardens. Lu Xun, for those not quite so interested as I am in Chinese literature (and who I'm guessing comprises 99.9% of my readership), was a very famous figure during the literary revolution in the early part of the 20th century and, for my money, one of the more interesting Chinese people ever.

They didn't allow us to take pictures at the museum, but we went from there to the Yu Gardens and got some pretty nice pictures. It was beautiful, as most Chinese gardens are, and we did get some good pics there. At least I did; the zipper on Lindsey's purse broke halfway through the trip and her camera got stuck inside.

A Night on a Train

It's amazing to me how Chinese people can at once be so incredibly rude and so incredibly friendly. Take, for instance, our train ride from Beijing to Shanghai:

Lindsey and I have a plethora of luggage. That is the only way I can think to describe it. We both panicked a little at spending a whole year abroad and I think we both brought everything we owned. At any rate, upon arriving in our taxi with our abundance of baggage, an old lady met us at the taxi with a small hand cart and offered her services in taking us across the very busy intersection from the taxi hub to the station. We agreed, knowing that we would never be able to carry it all ourselves, and suddenly a male counterpart materialized, who also asked to be paid. We shrugged - it was only $2 US a piece, and they probably needed the money more than we did anyway - and allowed them to take our stuff. Then they abruptly stopped a foot away from the crosswalk and demanded payment. Lindsey adamantly refused and told them they would get nothing until we made it to the station, whereupon they angrily (and loudly, and two inches from our faces) responded that they had no way of knowing whether we would cheat them. We finally arrived at a compromise where we would take the money and hold it visibly in our hands until we got across the street. When we finally got there, we somehow got mixed up and Lindsey and I both paid them the full amount, which meant we were taken for what ended up to be a good five dollars.

Then another lady charged us ten kuai a piece for the privilege of putting our baggage on a cart that we had to get on in order to go into the station. Then another man charged us another ten kuai for physically putting our bags onto the train. Only he did it before he told us he was charging us. When we finally got to the train, we discovered that our tickets were for two different cabins in two different cars, and the "customer service" agents were less than sympathetic. Honestly, I think they thought we were crazy for complaining.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, were our cabin-mates, who ended up being the nicest people on earth. I shared my room with an engineer from Microsoft and two Ph.D. candidates from Fudan, who amused themselves for a good portion of the ride by asking me questions about the U.S. and practicing their English with me. They apparently found it utterly humorous that a dog in the United States would be so spoiled as to have a place on his master's bed at night. Lindsey's roommates were also quite entertaining, one of them even treating all of us to dinner in the dining car. When we finally arrived in Shanghai, all of them banded together to help us with our luggage, each one dragging a different suitcase. One even went so far as to help us all the way to the car.

The train itself was really nice, with the obvious exception of the bathrooms. The beds where comfortable and the rooms were clean. I highly recommend them if you ever have occasion to travel in China.

Shanghai is just as I remember it: hot, muggy, and full of life. It's nice to be back and to see my old friends again. Odd how the once-so-foreign Shanghai would be the only thing that really feels familiar in my life right now....

Kids on a Wall

Lindsey and I are quickly discovering that the best way to improve our Chinese is to practice with the xiaopengyou. Case in point: two of the kids on our hotel-sponsored tour bus yesterday to the Great Wall. One was a little ham of a boy whose surname Hou (which he explained to us in a very grave tone is also the word for monkey) fits him nicely. I don’t think he stopped moving until the last ten minutes of the trip home, when he abruptly fell asleep on Lindsey’s shoulder.

The other was a precocious little nine-year-old girl named Shuting who, although shy at first, quickly opened up to us and at one point during our tour of the Ming tombs actually reached out and held my hand. This was during a very heated conversation in which she was making it clear that she was absolutely certain that indigo (the English word) was a shade of green and that I must be mistaken in my assertions to the contrary. She entertained herself in the museums at the tombs by repeating “what do you want to learn? I’ll teach you!” and showing us how to read some of the more difficult characters on the signs; when we made tone mistakes in repeating it back to her she would respond with a disapproving grimace and immediately and sharply correct us. She also explained to us the phenomenon of foot binding, the fact that hats (maozi, not daizi) were worn by emperors, and taught us the word for comb. Her expression was so serious and intense that it was all we could do not to laugh.

We entertained ourselves on the hour-long bus ride home by both drilling them on their English vocabularies and being drilled by them on our Chinese. Both were very serious teachers. And curious, too: over the course of the day we were asked, among other things, whether we had chickens, whether we had ever eaten pizza or hamburgers or ice cream, how to say “shorts,” and where Seattle is. We were also instructed in such essential matters as Mickey Mouse’s Chinese name, how to say “crocodile,” and that a horse (ma) says his name (ma) when he speaks Chinese.

It’s a long, steep climb up the wall, and I got what felt like a life-threatening stomachache halfway up that would persist for most of the day. We were exhausted when we got home, and after going out for some food promptly returned to the hotel and literally fell into bed. An hour later, the phone rang.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Wei?” A small voice on the other end answered me in Chinese. “Who is this?”

“This is Becca. Who is this?”

“This is Shuting.”

“Who?”

“Shuting. I taught you some things this afternoon...”

“Oh, from the trip to the Great Wall?”

“Right!” She persisted to jabber away for a few seconds in a rapid Chinese that my half-awake brain couldn’t quite catch. Then she said, “So, what are you doing?”

“Lindsey and I were both sleeping. We are very tired from our trip today.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding a little disappointed. “Okay then. Good bye.”

And she hung up the phone.

Both children were absolutely adorable, and I think it was just what Lindsey and I, still a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of not only being in China but being here for so darn long, needed to help us settle in a little. Sometimes China is overwhelming, and in large groups the Chinese people as a whole can be even more so; it was nice to be reminded of the little things that make everything we’re doing worth it.

Worst...Jetlag...Ever...

So Lindsey and I, suffering from unusually intense bouts of jetlag exacerbated by what I shall henceforth refer to as boy trouble,* woke up at a severely ungodly hour this morning. It's barely six o'clock, and I'm already completely showered and dressed, simply because I really had nothing better to do, other than lay awake in the dark staring at the ceiling. Because yes, and I'll be the first to say it, Chinese TV sucks.

We went to the Forbidden City yesterday. It was a little disappointing because half of it was under renovation, so a lot of the big elaborate halls were completely closed off. It was a nice cool day, though - there was a huge thunderstorm the night before; you should see the video Lindsey took of the lightning from our hotel room - and the air was blessedly and surprisingly breathable.

While standing in line we were halfway accosted by a mother and her dauther, the mother repeating things over and over in English, prodding the little girl to use this rare opportunity to practice her language skills with an American, and the child hiding bashfully behind her mother's right leg. She was not, however, too shy to reach out and curiously rub at the tattoo on my calf. She finally did say "how do you do" to Lindsey, and in the end we persuaded her to take a picture with us. I don't think she ever really did trust us, though. We're freaky, large white women.

Plans for today include the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. If our nasty luck holds out, we might even get the chance to see a lightning storm from the top of the wall. I'm going to use Lindsey as my lightning rod.


*and which includes by definition any real or hypothetical situations which might be described using any combination of the terms "pity," "love," "China," and/or "waiting for one's significant other to finish her Ph.D. in another state and/or country"

Beijing (Again)...

So we're finally in Beijing, after what amounted to the longest flight in the history of airplanes. Seriously, I thought my last flight to Beijing was bad, but it had nothing on this one. I'm actually considering initiating a self-imposed moratorium on flights to the Chinese capital.

Of course, in keeping with my recent string of bad luck, terrorists just had to get caught smuggling liquid explosives onto an airplane on the same day as I was booked to travel halfway across the planet, wreaking havoc on airports worldwide. (I mean the terrorists wreaked havoc, not me, although I have been known to do so from time to time). As a result of the chaos I had to wait in the security line for almost two hours, which made me miss my flight. Lindsey missed it too - she arrived three hours early, just to give you an idea of the insanity - which was the only positive thing to happen all day. We were miserable, but at least we were miserable together.

So after we had waited for 2 hours in the customer service line - and we were in the front of the queue - they rescheduled us for a flight through Tokyo that left now. We had to rush to the other gate, only to finally get on the airplane and be told that the flight would be delayed for the people who were more important than us, apparently, and still waiting in the security lines. They delayed it three times, and all in all we were stuck sitting on the airplane for two hours before it finally took off. Which might not have been so bad, I guess, if the flight itself hadn't already been nine hours long. They didn't have our vegetarian meals because they rescheduled our flight. We almost missed our connection out of Tokyo. And to top it all off, because we hadn't already had almost 30 hours of sleepless, foodless hell, when we finally got to Beijing we discovered that they had lost our luggage.

Again.

This is a running record. Every time I've been to China, three times total now, they have lost my stuff.

But they always find it again (thank heaven for computers), and thankfully it just arrived. "Just" being more than 24 hours after we first arrived, and almost 60 hours since we first arrived at the airport in Seattle. The two of us are awfully stinky; they took away all of our liquids and semi-liquids, including toothpaste and deodorant, and I checked my second carry-on, which conveniently contained my extra change of clothes, in order to save time at security. Which, by the way, didn't help one iota. In fact, I had to go through extra security, because when you get married they don't issue you a new passport, they just print your new name on a page in the back. This, apparently, makes you a terrorist.

Our stress levels have gone down, however, with the arrival of our luggage, and we're hoping that we can make up for the day we lost today; with no deodorant or extra clothes and no idea where our luggage was we didn't dare brave the mugginess and smog of Beijing. So we took a nap in the air conditioned hotel room instead, which actually might not have been such a bad thing. We're having fun practicing our Chinese with the hotel staff, and we had some really good tofu for dinner. So maybe things will start looking up.

I can say this, though: trips to China are never boring.