Today is my birthday. Again. I'm another year older. Again. This might seem like the most obvious outcome of having a birthday, getting another year older, but I'm really rebelling. Maybe by the time I'm 24 + 6 (see last year's birthday post on Lindsey's brilliant math for old people) I will have succeeded in overthrowing the oppressive tyranny that is the onward march of time. Or at least the onward march of the persistent gray hairs that have suddenly started popping up on the top of my head lately. They're tenacious little soldiers, too, let me tell you; every time I think they're eradicated, more pop up. They're like roaches. I'm too young for this nonsense. It must be stopped.
Isn't it illegal to get gray hairs before you're thirty-five?
At any rate, the fact remains that today I am a very annoying 24+2. This is not a good number. This implies that I'm on the near side of thirty - or 24+6, for those who are adapting to the new and much more geriatric-ally friendly system - and the fact that I am on the near side of 24+6 also implies that I am on the near side of 24+death. This disturbs me greatly. I have not yet published my novel, finished my Ph.D., composed my symphony, run my marathon, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, or done anything else of note on my list of things to do before I die. Well except go to China, maybe, and I'm afraid that that might have actually helped to move me a little closer to old age by causing me to age prematurely. You try riding in a taxi cab in Shanghai and coming away without at least one new gray hair. I don't think it's been done. It might, in fact, be impossible.
And yet with as much as I joke about my impending demise, in reality I'm finding that in some ways this year my birthday is giving me a lot of opportunity to reflect on my life. So much has happened in the past year, it's absolutely incredible. I may not have run a marathon, but I did run two 5K's. I haven't finished my Ph.D., but I've been accepted to grad school and gotten a fairly decent fellowship to help pay for it. I may not have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, but....ok, admittedly I don't have anything for that one. But I'm working on it.
My point is, God, I love my life. I love waking up in the morning. I love breathing in and feeling the air pass through my lungs. I love the sunrises and the sunsets and the rain and the sunshine. How could anyone believe that life is anything but incredible? How could we not cherish every passing moment as the perfect miracle that it is? And along with it, cherish every person that passes through those moments? What if heaven is actually right here in front of us, and we're just not looking at it? I have been so, so blessed. I have so many people who love me and care for me, so many really close and beautiful friends. I was born into a world of limitless opportunities, where I've never gone hungry and I'm allowed to be educated and I have freedoms that most of the people in the world only dream about. I've seen so many things and places and met so many people. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person alive.
The only thing that depresses me is how powerless I feel sometimes to share that, to reach out to others who haven't had the same opportunities, the same love, the same enough-to-eat that I have. Am I doing enough? Am I doing everything I can to make the world a better place? This is the one thing that really does make me feel like I'm aging, I think: this feeling of impotence. There's so much good left to be done in the world, the thought of it exhausts me.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Spare some change?
Part of my uber-monotonous job at King County has recently been to courier documents to the courthouse down the street from my office. A couple of days ago I was passing the tiny convenience store in the lobby when I noticed a sign posted in the window.
No Change Without a Purchase, it said.
The wording struck me as being a little ironic, and the more I thought about it the more overly philosophical I became about it. I know it's a little melodramatic and backwards on my part, but my life of late has been nothing but change. The idea that I might have to make a purchase in return struck me as odd, if only for the fact that I had never considered it before.
Being back in Seattle has been simultaneously deeply gratifying and emotionally exhausting for me. I longed to come "home" - the semantics of which I have questioned before and, for considerations of length and reader boredom will ignore in this particular post, although I do reserve the right to return to the issue at a later time - but it's become painfully obvious to me that the Seattle I left in the summer is not the same Seattle I returned to in the wintertime. Or maybe it's a little more accurate to say that the Becca I left in last summer is not the same one I returned to in the winter. Everything is different now: Lindsey's not here, I'm strangely and quite frighteningly single, and - maybe the most horrifying thing of all - I've grown up in ways that I neither expected nor in many cases necessarily especially enjoy.
All that, and the emotional roller coaster of waiting for graduate school decisions is starting to wear me thin. I've been accepted back to the University of Washington but still haven't heard from them on funding, and I've been placed on a waiting list at Princeton. The result of this scenario is that it is well past March 15th, the technical deadline for most schools' admissions decisions, and I still don't know where I'll be living in six months. This was supposed to be over by now. I am tired. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that no matter what happens I have no option of standing still in my comfort zone. If I go back to UW, it won't be the same as when I was there before. Lindsey and Andy won't be there, the school work will be of a drastically different format, and my personal life will have drastically changed. On the off-chance that Princeton actually offers me admission there are a host of life changes involved with that situation as well, not the least of which would be a move across the country to a mind-numbingly different culture. I'm more scared of living on the east coast than I was of living in China. Roy, my friend in Taiwan, used to always give me the same advice: "Just keep walking." As great as that advice is, it appears that at this point I have no choice but to keep walking, and that makes me slightly resentful of the path. Sometimes I look around me and get so jealous of the "normal" people, those who can be content to stand still.
At the same time, though, I know that in the end I could never be truly satisfied with that kind of a life. I can't make copies for the rest of eternity. I could never be content with myself if I sat here wondering what it was I could have been. I have to grow up, because everything inside of me still screams that there are things I need to do, that there's a reason I'm here, and that it is absolutely vital that I find out what that reason is. That I keep walking. And so I make the choice to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to pay the price that entails.
No growth without sacrifice. No change without a purchase.
Sometimes I just wish they took returns.
No Change Without a Purchase, it said.
The wording struck me as being a little ironic, and the more I thought about it the more overly philosophical I became about it. I know it's a little melodramatic and backwards on my part, but my life of late has been nothing but change. The idea that I might have to make a purchase in return struck me as odd, if only for the fact that I had never considered it before.
Being back in Seattle has been simultaneously deeply gratifying and emotionally exhausting for me. I longed to come "home" - the semantics of which I have questioned before and, for considerations of length and reader boredom will ignore in this particular post, although I do reserve the right to return to the issue at a later time - but it's become painfully obvious to me that the Seattle I left in the summer is not the same Seattle I returned to in the wintertime. Or maybe it's a little more accurate to say that the Becca I left in last summer is not the same one I returned to in the winter. Everything is different now: Lindsey's not here, I'm strangely and quite frighteningly single, and - maybe the most horrifying thing of all - I've grown up in ways that I neither expected nor in many cases necessarily especially enjoy.
All that, and the emotional roller coaster of waiting for graduate school decisions is starting to wear me thin. I've been accepted back to the University of Washington but still haven't heard from them on funding, and I've been placed on a waiting list at Princeton. The result of this scenario is that it is well past March 15th, the technical deadline for most schools' admissions decisions, and I still don't know where I'll be living in six months. This was supposed to be over by now. I am tired. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that no matter what happens I have no option of standing still in my comfort zone. If I go back to UW, it won't be the same as when I was there before. Lindsey and Andy won't be there, the school work will be of a drastically different format, and my personal life will have drastically changed. On the off-chance that Princeton actually offers me admission there are a host of life changes involved with that situation as well, not the least of which would be a move across the country to a mind-numbingly different culture. I'm more scared of living on the east coast than I was of living in China. Roy, my friend in Taiwan, used to always give me the same advice: "Just keep walking." As great as that advice is, it appears that at this point I have no choice but to keep walking, and that makes me slightly resentful of the path. Sometimes I look around me and get so jealous of the "normal" people, those who can be content to stand still.
At the same time, though, I know that in the end I could never be truly satisfied with that kind of a life. I can't make copies for the rest of eternity. I could never be content with myself if I sat here wondering what it was I could have been. I have to grow up, because everything inside of me still screams that there are things I need to do, that there's a reason I'm here, and that it is absolutely vital that I find out what that reason is. That I keep walking. And so I make the choice to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to pay the price that entails.
No growth without sacrifice. No change without a purchase.
Sometimes I just wish they took returns.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Ghetto Starbucks
I am at Starbucks.
This is probably not surprising. I go to Starbucks almost daily, and sometimes even more frequently than that. I lug my oversized laptop here to think and to write, because nothing stimulates the brain like a half-decaf no-whip sugar free cinnamon dolce soy latte - a drink which, when the barista announces it at the bar, never fails to elicit a response from one of the other waiting customers.
"Whew," they whisper, almost invariably. "That's a mouthful."
What is a departure today, however, is the fact that instead of going to the Starbucks near Seattle University like I normally do, I headed the opposite direction from my apartment and ended up at a Starbucks that is much closer to my apartment, but at the same time sits precariously perched on the border between the posh newly-remodeled townhomes of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and, for lack of anything better to call it, the Ghetto.
The Starbucks near the University is always virtually silent, full of trust-fund kids who'd rather not talk to one another and law students huddled over piles of books that look really thick and really boring. But here it's bustling and noisy. Everyone is talking to everyone else. They're strangers, but they're not. I find this unsettling.
I'm sitting in one of the plush oversized chairs by the window so typical of Starbucks everywhere, my laptop in my lap, headphones in my ears. I'm enjoying the energy, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be a part of it. A large woman in a thin coat comes over and waves at me dramatically.
When I take my headphones out she motions to the chair next to me and says, "Is anyone sitting here?" I say no, and she sits down. I return my headphones to my ears and my attention to my computer. The woman next to me starts talking to a man at a nearby table.
Five minutes later she waves at me again. She asks me if I'm a student. She asks me what I study. She asks me what I'm doing sitting at Starbucks with a laptop. She tells me I'm a very nice lady.
I say thank you. I go back to my writing.
Another wave, and the lady motions to the man at the table. "He's drawing you," she says. And he is. He's got pastels and brushes and paints spread out around him, and he's going back and forth between studying me intently and scribbling furiously. I'm blushing. From time to time people are stopping to look over his shoulder. A man stops and looks at the drawing, motions to his own chin, and says something in a language I can't understand.
I love this place.
The artist asks me what my astrological sign is.
"Taurus," I say.
"Oh, you were born in April then," says the woman.
I correct her and say no, the early part of May.
"Hm," says the artist. "Do you know anything about your sign?"
"Not much," I say. And he says, "I think it's the money sign."
"Oh, is it?"
"I think so. Well I don't really know, but that's what my friend said. She said Tauruses are good with money."
I laugh because I am not good with money. Money involves numbers. Numbers are not my friends.
The woman has gotten up and gone across the street to Taco Del Mar where, after prodding me for every manner of information as to the nature of the food there, she has decided to purchase a hard taco. She's been replaced by a tall skinny man who sits holding on to the arms of the chair like it's a roller coaster car. The artist at the table just handed me a drawing of myself.
I think we miss a lot in life by putting up walls, by burying ourselves in books, by looking at everyone around us in suspicion. It's striking how much the atmosphere here, where in theory I might have reason to be frightened of the people around me, is so much more alive and friendly than it is in the "good" neighborhood a half a mile away. Right now I am the opposite of frightened. It's a good feeling.
This is probably not surprising. I go to Starbucks almost daily, and sometimes even more frequently than that. I lug my oversized laptop here to think and to write, because nothing stimulates the brain like a half-decaf no-whip sugar free cinnamon dolce soy latte - a drink which, when the barista announces it at the bar, never fails to elicit a response from one of the other waiting customers.
"Whew," they whisper, almost invariably. "That's a mouthful."
What is a departure today, however, is the fact that instead of going to the Starbucks near Seattle University like I normally do, I headed the opposite direction from my apartment and ended up at a Starbucks that is much closer to my apartment, but at the same time sits precariously perched on the border between the posh newly-remodeled townhomes of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and, for lack of anything better to call it, the Ghetto.
The Starbucks near the University is always virtually silent, full of trust-fund kids who'd rather not talk to one another and law students huddled over piles of books that look really thick and really boring. But here it's bustling and noisy. Everyone is talking to everyone else. They're strangers, but they're not. I find this unsettling.
I'm sitting in one of the plush oversized chairs by the window so typical of Starbucks everywhere, my laptop in my lap, headphones in my ears. I'm enjoying the energy, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be a part of it. A large woman in a thin coat comes over and waves at me dramatically.
When I take my headphones out she motions to the chair next to me and says, "Is anyone sitting here?" I say no, and she sits down. I return my headphones to my ears and my attention to my computer. The woman next to me starts talking to a man at a nearby table.
Five minutes later she waves at me again. She asks me if I'm a student. She asks me what I study. She asks me what I'm doing sitting at Starbucks with a laptop. She tells me I'm a very nice lady.
I say thank you. I go back to my writing.
Another wave, and the lady motions to the man at the table. "He's drawing you," she says. And he is. He's got pastels and brushes and paints spread out around him, and he's going back and forth between studying me intently and scribbling furiously. I'm blushing. From time to time people are stopping to look over his shoulder. A man stops and looks at the drawing, motions to his own chin, and says something in a language I can't understand.
I love this place.
The artist asks me what my astrological sign is.
"Taurus," I say.
"Oh, you were born in April then," says the woman.
I correct her and say no, the early part of May.
"Hm," says the artist. "Do you know anything about your sign?"
"Not much," I say. And he says, "I think it's the money sign."
"Oh, is it?"
"I think so. Well I don't really know, but that's what my friend said. She said Tauruses are good with money."
I laugh because I am not good with money. Money involves numbers. Numbers are not my friends.
The woman has gotten up and gone across the street to Taco Del Mar where, after prodding me for every manner of information as to the nature of the food there, she has decided to purchase a hard taco. She's been replaced by a tall skinny man who sits holding on to the arms of the chair like it's a roller coaster car. The artist at the table just handed me a drawing of myself.
I think we miss a lot in life by putting up walls, by burying ourselves in books, by looking at everyone around us in suspicion. It's striking how much the atmosphere here, where in theory I might have reason to be frightened of the people around me, is so much more alive and friendly than it is in the "good" neighborhood a half a mile away. Right now I am the opposite of frightened. It's a good feeling.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Becca's E-version of a Chrstimas Newsletter
So after a telephone conversation with my grandmother yesterday -
Grandma: (Telephone Rings) Hello?
Me: Hi, Grandma! It's Becca!
Grandma:........Where are you?
Me: I'm in Carson City!
Grandma:........Well how did you get there?
- I decided that I had better post another blog stat, so at least if I die my family knows where to come looking for my body.
I have finally returned to the States. I'm staying with friends in Seattle until I can find a place of my own and working in a somewhat monotonous but well-paying job at King County. Honestly, I'm not really sure what it is I do, except that it involves making lots of copies and playing around with MS Word. I've sent out my grad school applications, and have little to do but twiddle my thumbs while I wait to hear back on them in February or March.
In order to stave off the boredom of everyday life, to which I am not yet re-accustomed and with which I have never really been able to make my peace, I have subjected myself to yet another trip on an airplane. This time I'm on a weekend jaunt to my hometown of Carson City, Nevada, to "celebrate" Christmas with my brother (and yes I use the term loosely, my brother isn't exactly the most jovial Christmas celebrator ever, and Carson City isn't really a place that anyone would purposely go to celebrate anything). I've found that I've become more or less Zen about the whole airplane experience; while other people in the airport were freaking out about weather-delayed flights and the holiday crowds, I just shrugged, yawned, and fell asleep with the hood of my ski jacket covering my face. I wanted to stand on a chair and yell out the story of my last flight to Beijing, just for the purpose of telling people to chill out and that things could be worse, but to be honest I'm not sure anyone would have believed me anyway. The funny thing is that I don't really see my indifference as a good thing. I used to get so excited about flying that I couldn't sleep the night before a trip. Now I'm so used to it that even trips to China seem run-of-the-mill.
Flying into Reno was a strange experience, driving into Carson even more so. I rarely come home, and when we were hovering at 10,000 feet over the airport I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans I owned when I was twelve and have since massively outgrown. I've changed so much in the six years since I've been back to Carson that when I came back it was more like visiting a dream than it was returning to a past reality. Things haven't changed all that much, but I can't remember how to get anywhere or where to go to find anything. It's like I'm going back to someone else's past, and the feeling creeps me out. If this is someone else's past, then where is mine? If you don't have a past, can you even really exist? And isn't it a little strange that I feel more comfortable going to Shanghai than I do to my own home town?
Home....what a strange word. It has so many meanings that we never think about until we realize that we don't really have one, no matter how you define it.
Nate and I did, however, make the trek out to Fallon (if you don't know where it is, don't bother looking, it isn't worth the effort) to visit our grandparents yesterday, and had a nice visit. Pa was sick, but he says he's doing better now than he was before, so we pray for his quick recovery from whatever bug it is that's ailing him.
For all the complaining I do, I am grateful that my brother and his wife had me over for what would otherwise have been a very lonely Christmas for me, and I'm looking forward to a day of presents, navigating my way around the non-vegan food, and spending time with family members who I rarely see. It's not a white Christmas with a thousand people huddled around a huge tree and a fireplace, which is what I was really craving for the holidays (yet another definition of the word "home," I guess), but at least I'm with people that I love for Christmas.
Grandma: (Telephone Rings) Hello?
Me: Hi, Grandma! It's Becca!
Grandma:........Where are you?
Me: I'm in Carson City!
Grandma:........Well how did you get there?
- I decided that I had better post another blog stat, so at least if I die my family knows where to come looking for my body.
I have finally returned to the States. I'm staying with friends in Seattle until I can find a place of my own and working in a somewhat monotonous but well-paying job at King County. Honestly, I'm not really sure what it is I do, except that it involves making lots of copies and playing around with MS Word. I've sent out my grad school applications, and have little to do but twiddle my thumbs while I wait to hear back on them in February or March.
In order to stave off the boredom of everyday life, to which I am not yet re-accustomed and with which I have never really been able to make my peace, I have subjected myself to yet another trip on an airplane. This time I'm on a weekend jaunt to my hometown of Carson City, Nevada, to "celebrate" Christmas with my brother (and yes I use the term loosely, my brother isn't exactly the most jovial Christmas celebrator ever, and Carson City isn't really a place that anyone would purposely go to celebrate anything). I've found that I've become more or less Zen about the whole airplane experience; while other people in the airport were freaking out about weather-delayed flights and the holiday crowds, I just shrugged, yawned, and fell asleep with the hood of my ski jacket covering my face. I wanted to stand on a chair and yell out the story of my last flight to Beijing, just for the purpose of telling people to chill out and that things could be worse, but to be honest I'm not sure anyone would have believed me anyway. The funny thing is that I don't really see my indifference as a good thing. I used to get so excited about flying that I couldn't sleep the night before a trip. Now I'm so used to it that even trips to China seem run-of-the-mill.
Flying into Reno was a strange experience, driving into Carson even more so. I rarely come home, and when we were hovering at 10,000 feet over the airport I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans I owned when I was twelve and have since massively outgrown. I've changed so much in the six years since I've been back to Carson that when I came back it was more like visiting a dream than it was returning to a past reality. Things haven't changed all that much, but I can't remember how to get anywhere or where to go to find anything. It's like I'm going back to someone else's past, and the feeling creeps me out. If this is someone else's past, then where is mine? If you don't have a past, can you even really exist? And isn't it a little strange that I feel more comfortable going to Shanghai than I do to my own home town?
Home....what a strange word. It has so many meanings that we never think about until we realize that we don't really have one, no matter how you define it.
Nate and I did, however, make the trek out to Fallon (if you don't know where it is, don't bother looking, it isn't worth the effort) to visit our grandparents yesterday, and had a nice visit. Pa was sick, but he says he's doing better now than he was before, so we pray for his quick recovery from whatever bug it is that's ailing him.
For all the complaining I do, I am grateful that my brother and his wife had me over for what would otherwise have been a very lonely Christmas for me, and I'm looking forward to a day of presents, navigating my way around the non-vegan food, and spending time with family members who I rarely see. It's not a white Christmas with a thousand people huddled around a huge tree and a fireplace, which is what I was really craving for the holidays (yet another definition of the word "home," I guess), but at least I'm with people that I love for Christmas.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
蘇軾 - 水調個頭
江小宗。。。我永遠不會忘記了。。。
明月幾時有
把酒問青天
不知天上宮闕，今夕是何年？
我卻乘風歸去，又恐瓊樓玉宇，高處不勝寒。
起舞弄清影，何似在人間。
轉朱閣，低綺戶，照無眠。
不應有恨，何事長向別時圓？
人有悲歡離合，月有陰晴圓缺，此事古難全。
但願人長久，千里共嬋娟。
明月幾時有
把酒問青天
不知天上宮闕，今夕是何年？
我卻乘風歸去，又恐瓊樓玉宇，高處不勝寒。
起舞弄清影，何似在人間。
轉朱閣，低綺戶，照無眠。
不應有恨，何事長向別時圓？
人有悲歡離合，月有陰晴圓缺，此事古難全。
但願人長久，千里共嬋娟。
Monday, November 13, 2006
What I Learned in Hualien (or) Under the Table
Our devoted readers may have noticed a glaring absence of posts in myself and Lindsey's blogs of late. This is because of one single and absolutely annoying reason: it is graduate school application season. I can think of no worse way to spend my last few weeks in Taiwan than writing these asinine personal statements: advertisements that I crave the judgment of others and which do little more than re-package my long string of mediocrities until they shine like the brand-spanking-new attributes of a person worthy of studying at the world's most exhaustingly pompous institutions.
I have, due to some financial and personal reasons, decided to go home for some much-needed emotional down time and an even more desperately needed requisition of living funds. Determined that I have what she called "one really good memory before you leave Taiwan," last weekend Maini dragged me away from the rigor of selling myself for a trip to Hualien, on the eastern coast of the island. It is a beautiful place - pictures will follow, pursuant to the much-called-for truce in the war between blogger.com and the dial-up internet - and we had a beautiful time. We had foot massages, traipsed up and down the seaside on a rented scooter, and even had a personal driver (the result of some strange mix-up with the tour group regarding our vegetarianism; I still don't completely understand it) who took us on our own private tour of the breathtaking Taroko Gorge.
Over lunch at Starbucks on the second day we somehow found our conversation turning to the subject of censorship in the Chinese mainland. Fan though I am of the Chinese people (usually) no one will ever call me a proponent of communism, and I told her how sad it often makes me to think of my friends on the other side of the strait. China can get richer and richer, I said, but unless something changes I'm afraid that the friends I love so dearly still won't be free.
"Well at least they have you," she said, and with her sweetly innocent smile and in her sweetly innocent English she continued, "maybe you can make a difference under the table."
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to "make a difference," especially in the light of these retarded personal statements I have to write for grad school; why exactly is it that I want to study Chinese? I can vaguely remember wanting to use it to do some good in the world, back in the days before exhaustion, the GRE, and the Analects took over all of the free neurons in my brain, but is it really even possible? Or desirable? Who am I to preach the benefits of democracy or the delicious possibilities that arise when we focus on the good in people instead of the bad and actually give them the benefit of the doubt?
But when I looked at Maini sitting across from me, when I counted the amazing friendships that I have forged across some of the stiffest and most inflexible cultural boundaries in the world, I realized that yes, it was possible to make a difference. Not just me, mind you, but me and Maini. Me and Maini and everyone who makes the effort to step outside their own comfort zones and reach out to another person. Everyone who realizes that it really is possible to transcend our differences because we are, deep down, pretty much all the same. People like us, we're making a difference under the table. And if you're one of those power hungry war mongerers, if you think money is more important than world peace, if you're so attached to your own way of thinking that you find it impossible to love another human being not only in spite of their being different than you but actually because of it, then you'd better get out of our way. The best you can do is build the tables, but we're busy building bridges.
I have, due to some financial and personal reasons, decided to go home for some much-needed emotional down time and an even more desperately needed requisition of living funds. Determined that I have what she called "one really good memory before you leave Taiwan," last weekend Maini dragged me away from the rigor of selling myself for a trip to Hualien, on the eastern coast of the island. It is a beautiful place - pictures will follow, pursuant to the much-called-for truce in the war between blogger.com and the dial-up internet - and we had a beautiful time. We had foot massages, traipsed up and down the seaside on a rented scooter, and even had a personal driver (the result of some strange mix-up with the tour group regarding our vegetarianism; I still don't completely understand it) who took us on our own private tour of the breathtaking Taroko Gorge.
Over lunch at Starbucks on the second day we somehow found our conversation turning to the subject of censorship in the Chinese mainland. Fan though I am of the Chinese people (usually) no one will ever call me a proponent of communism, and I told her how sad it often makes me to think of my friends on the other side of the strait. China can get richer and richer, I said, but unless something changes I'm afraid that the friends I love so dearly still won't be free.
"Well at least they have you," she said, and with her sweetly innocent smile and in her sweetly innocent English she continued, "maybe you can make a difference under the table."
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to "make a difference," especially in the light of these retarded personal statements I have to write for grad school; why exactly is it that I want to study Chinese? I can vaguely remember wanting to use it to do some good in the world, back in the days before exhaustion, the GRE, and the Analects took over all of the free neurons in my brain, but is it really even possible? Or desirable? Who am I to preach the benefits of democracy or the delicious possibilities that arise when we focus on the good in people instead of the bad and actually give them the benefit of the doubt?
But when I looked at Maini sitting across from me, when I counted the amazing friendships that I have forged across some of the stiffest and most inflexible cultural boundaries in the world, I realized that yes, it was possible to make a difference. Not just me, mind you, but me and Maini. Me and Maini and everyone who makes the effort to step outside their own comfort zones and reach out to another person. Everyone who realizes that it really is possible to transcend our differences because we are, deep down, pretty much all the same. People like us, we're making a difference under the table. And if you're one of those power hungry war mongerers, if you think money is more important than world peace, if you're so attached to your own way of thinking that you find it impossible to love another human being not only in spite of their being different than you but actually because of it, then you'd better get out of our way. The best you can do is build the tables, but we're busy building bridges.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Hiking!
I wanted to create a post with all kinds of neat pictures - today's topic is really better described with visual aids - but at the moment I'm using dial-up, and apparently dial-up internet and blogger.com are at war with one another. Blogger.com has imposed sanctions upon said dial-up internet, disallowing the uploading of any cool pictures taken deep in the jugles of Isla Formosa or elsewhere.
So, at least for the moment, you'll have to use your imagination. I hope that isn't too painful for some of you; I know there are at least a few engineers and computer programmers who read this on occasion, and we all know what happens to them when they use their imaginations too much.
And, having thusly warned my readers, I shall hereby continue with the theme for the day. One of the cool things about Taipei is its close proximity to some very large and very forested mountains, making it a great place to live if you like to hike. Hiking here is a unique experience too. Never before in my hiking career have I encountered old men hiking barefoot while singing old folk songs in Taiwanese. Not to my recollection have I seen altars to the Virgin Mary and to Buddha standing side-by-side on a sheer rock face on the side of a next-to-abandoned path, cigarettes propped up on sticks burning quite literally as offerings below them. And I do not recall having ever before seen - not even in California! - any signs warning hikers to beware of the monkeys.
On Saturday my friend Jeff and I took our most recent excursion, to a mountain out of town at a place called Wulai. It was a rather long trek, interspersed with random staircases carved out of the rock face on the side of the mountain and bridges made quite literally of twigs that had been nailed together, some of which were already snapped in two. After a couple of hours we were tired and extremely hot, so when we came across a river we decided to stop and dip our feet in the water, whereupon we were promptly attacked by psycho man-eating shrimp.
The tiny river shrimp literally descended upon us en masse, nibbling on our toes and nipping the arches of our feet with their little pinchers. Never one to be enamoured by slimy things, I retreated to dry land (where I was not entirely safe, I might add; a dragonfly did dive-bomb into my head). Jeff, on the other hand, took his revenge by capturing several of the larger shrimp and confining them to one of his empty water bottles. He packed them along with him, intending to relocate them to another river and thereby put an end to the insurgency*. A little further up the mountain, however, the path got quite steep, and became more of a mountain climb than a hike. Somewhere in the violent shuffle between man and nature the water bottle fell out of Jeff's backpack, and the poor little shrimp went plummeting several hundred feet. I'm certain they either died of shock or were boiled alive in their tiny plastic cage. It was really hot that day.
On the way back down the mountain we encountered an old man sitting under a tarp near a hut on the side of the path. He informed us that some men were bathing in the river, that they were naked, and that - because apparently we weren't aware of this - I am a girl.
"Is that ok?" Asked Jeff.
"Eh," I said. "I'm sure I've seen worse."**
The old man then said in broken English, "Wercum to here."
"Thank you," I said.
"Where you fum?"
"I'm from America," I said, and then added in Chinese, "You speak English very well."
He beamed. "Is becuz you ah so bootiful."
Unsure what my appearance had to do with his language skills but willing to take the compliment all the same, I thanked him and turned turned to follow Jeff down the path. We did come across a river, there were indeed men bathing in it, and they were, in fact, naked. When they saw me they stopped, blushed momentarily, and then made cat calls at me as I crossed a twig-bridge above their heads. After we had passed I could hear them behind us yelling, "Hey! Why didn't you warn us a girl was coming?!"
It was quite an adventure, what with all the naked butts and the murderous shrimp. When I got home that night I went to bed at 8:00 and slept for nearly twelve hours, and I'm actually still sore two days later. I'm pretty sure that entire hike was 500 miles, uphill the whole way. It's funny how you never remember the part of the hike where you actually got to go back down...
*I'm not entirely sure I understand the logic here, but I imagine he was thinking it was something akin to taking John Gotti away from the mob.
**I haven't.
So, at least for the moment, you'll have to use your imagination. I hope that isn't too painful for some of you; I know there are at least a few engineers and computer programmers who read this on occasion, and we all know what happens to them when they use their imaginations too much.
And, having thusly warned my readers, I shall hereby continue with the theme for the day. One of the cool things about Taipei is its close proximity to some very large and very forested mountains, making it a great place to live if you like to hike. Hiking here is a unique experience too. Never before in my hiking career have I encountered old men hiking barefoot while singing old folk songs in Taiwanese. Not to my recollection have I seen altars to the Virgin Mary and to Buddha standing side-by-side on a sheer rock face on the side of a next-to-abandoned path, cigarettes propped up on sticks burning quite literally as offerings below them. And I do not recall having ever before seen - not even in California! - any signs warning hikers to beware of the monkeys.
On Saturday my friend Jeff and I took our most recent excursion, to a mountain out of town at a place called Wulai. It was a rather long trek, interspersed with random staircases carved out of the rock face on the side of the mountain and bridges made quite literally of twigs that had been nailed together, some of which were already snapped in two. After a couple of hours we were tired and extremely hot, so when we came across a river we decided to stop and dip our feet in the water, whereupon we were promptly attacked by psycho man-eating shrimp.
The tiny river shrimp literally descended upon us en masse, nibbling on our toes and nipping the arches of our feet with their little pinchers. Never one to be enamoured by slimy things, I retreated to dry land (where I was not entirely safe, I might add; a dragonfly did dive-bomb into my head). Jeff, on the other hand, took his revenge by capturing several of the larger shrimp and confining them to one of his empty water bottles. He packed them along with him, intending to relocate them to another river and thereby put an end to the insurgency*. A little further up the mountain, however, the path got quite steep, and became more of a mountain climb than a hike. Somewhere in the violent shuffle between man and nature the water bottle fell out of Jeff's backpack, and the poor little shrimp went plummeting several hundred feet. I'm certain they either died of shock or were boiled alive in their tiny plastic cage. It was really hot that day.
On the way back down the mountain we encountered an old man sitting under a tarp near a hut on the side of the path. He informed us that some men were bathing in the river, that they were naked, and that - because apparently we weren't aware of this - I am a girl.
"Is that ok?" Asked Jeff.
"Eh," I said. "I'm sure I've seen worse."**
The old man then said in broken English, "Wercum to here."
"Thank you," I said.
"Where you fum?"
"I'm from America," I said, and then added in Chinese, "You speak English very well."
He beamed. "Is becuz you ah so bootiful."
Unsure what my appearance had to do with his language skills but willing to take the compliment all the same, I thanked him and turned turned to follow Jeff down the path. We did come across a river, there were indeed men bathing in it, and they were, in fact, naked. When they saw me they stopped, blushed momentarily, and then made cat calls at me as I crossed a twig-bridge above their heads. After we had passed I could hear them behind us yelling, "Hey! Why didn't you warn us a girl was coming?!"
It was quite an adventure, what with all the naked butts and the murderous shrimp. When I got home that night I went to bed at 8:00 and slept for nearly twelve hours, and I'm actually still sore two days later. I'm pretty sure that entire hike was 500 miles, uphill the whole way. It's funny how you never remember the part of the hike where you actually got to go back down...
*I'm not entirely sure I understand the logic here, but I imagine he was thinking it was something akin to taking John Gotti away from the mob.
**I haven't.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Death is All Around Me!
People ask me periodically whether I ever miss eating meat. For the first couple of years, I'll admit, I did. I'd smell a steak at a restaurant or pass the rack of roasted chicken breast at Safeway and have momentary, albeit very spirited, argument with myself as to whether my activism was really worth anything at all and whether that chicken didn't really want to be eaten in the end anyway. When your imagination is wild enough to anthropomorphize animals in the first place, it isn't hard to expand the concept to chickens willfully lining up to nobly and knowingly sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Or whatever.
But any long-term vegetarian will tell you that after those first couple of years, your mindset really begins to change. At first you simply find yourself not craving meat at all. Your friends eat it in front of you, and you are surprised to find that you are not only not jealous, but that what you see between the hamburger buns is less tasty morsel than it is quarter pound of saturated fat. Pass another year, and the very thought of meat is so nauseating that you have to cross the street when you encounter a Burger King just so you can avoid the smell.
So this morning on my jog, I was suddenly overcome by the nauseating, gut-twisting smell of MEAT. I should add that the air in Taipei at any given time is an amalgam of every kind of aroma, most of them originating in a food stand, and I like it that way. It adds to the atmosphere. But this was the most overpowering smell I have ever experienced in my life. I never knew that meat could smell so strong.
Not thinking, I turned my head to look into the restaurant, wondering what on earth they could be serving that would give off such a pungent odor.
They were butchering a cow! On the table! This chick was sawing off its leg!
My knees almost gave way underneath me. I looked away as fast as I could, but the damage was done: I was so shaken up that I had to walk the rest of the way home. It was only a block, but still...
I'm still not sure what to make of this. Just because I'm a vegetarian - and super sensitive too; I'll admit it - it doesn't mean that I don't know that death is out there or even that I'm overly offended by it. But a little advance warning would have been nice! It was such a creepy sight, and I wasn't emotionally prepared for such an upheaval. I'm an American. I don't want to know where food comes from.
Right now, I am mad at Taiwan. Every time I start to think I'm getting used to it it throws me another curve ball.
But any long-term vegetarian will tell you that after those first couple of years, your mindset really begins to change. At first you simply find yourself not craving meat at all. Your friends eat it in front of you, and you are surprised to find that you are not only not jealous, but that what you see between the hamburger buns is less tasty morsel than it is quarter pound of saturated fat. Pass another year, and the very thought of meat is so nauseating that you have to cross the street when you encounter a Burger King just so you can avoid the smell.
So this morning on my jog, I was suddenly overcome by the nauseating, gut-twisting smell of MEAT. I should add that the air in Taipei at any given time is an amalgam of every kind of aroma, most of them originating in a food stand, and I like it that way. It adds to the atmosphere. But this was the most overpowering smell I have ever experienced in my life. I never knew that meat could smell so strong.
Not thinking, I turned my head to look into the restaurant, wondering what on earth they could be serving that would give off such a pungent odor.
They were butchering a cow! On the table! This chick was sawing off its leg!
My knees almost gave way underneath me. I looked away as fast as I could, but the damage was done: I was so shaken up that I had to walk the rest of the way home. It was only a block, but still...
I'm still not sure what to make of this. Just because I'm a vegetarian - and super sensitive too; I'll admit it - it doesn't mean that I don't know that death is out there or even that I'm overly offended by it. But a little advance warning would have been nice! It was such a creepy sight, and I wasn't emotionally prepared for such an upheaval. I'm an American. I don't want to know where food comes from.
Right now, I am mad at Taiwan. Every time I start to think I'm getting used to it it throws me another curve ball.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Taipei is Going to the Birds
I realize it's been a while since my last post. This is because a) I'm lazy, b) I've been busy and c) I've been having internet trouble. I wish I had more valid excuses than these, but that's all I can come up with for the time being. It's 11:00 pm and I'm not feeling creative.
There is a bird in my air conditioner. He lives there. He wakes me up every morning with a song that would be beautiful any other time of the day but at six a.m. sounds more shrill than a fire alarm. Ned, far from being irritated at the presence of a squatter in his appliances, explained to me that the presence of a bird at one's apartment is a sign of good luck, and that we should be thankful that it chose to rest its overeager little beak here of all places.
And in keeping with this theme, when I was out with my friend Roy a few nights ago a bus passed us while we were waiting on a street corner for the light to turn green. On the door of the bus was a huge red sign that read, "NO BIRDS." Roy, misreading the confused look on my face, quickly sought to explain the prohibition: "It's because of the bird flu."
"Ok, but....you take your birds on the bus?"
"Sure," he said, as though it were simply common knowledge. "Lots of old people like to take their birds for walks. It's especially popular in Hong Kong. People there take their birds with them to eat dim sum."
Seriously? Birds like to go to dim sum? What if someone mistakes them for food? If I were a bird, I'd be terrified.
And while I can't say I'd like to see someone eat my air conditioner bird, I don't think I'd mind if someone put him on a bus to, let's say, Kaohsiung or something. Maybe then I could get some sleep.
There is a bird in my air conditioner. He lives there. He wakes me up every morning with a song that would be beautiful any other time of the day but at six a.m. sounds more shrill than a fire alarm. Ned, far from being irritated at the presence of a squatter in his appliances, explained to me that the presence of a bird at one's apartment is a sign of good luck, and that we should be thankful that it chose to rest its overeager little beak here of all places.
And in keeping with this theme, when I was out with my friend Roy a few nights ago a bus passed us while we were waiting on a street corner for the light to turn green. On the door of the bus was a huge red sign that read, "NO BIRDS." Roy, misreading the confused look on my face, quickly sought to explain the prohibition: "It's because of the bird flu."
"Ok, but....you take your birds on the bus?"
"Sure," he said, as though it were simply common knowledge. "Lots of old people like to take their birds for walks. It's especially popular in Hong Kong. People there take their birds with them to eat dim sum."
Seriously? Birds like to go to dim sum? What if someone mistakes them for food? If I were a bird, I'd be terrified.
And while I can't say I'd like to see someone eat my air conditioner bird, I don't think I'd mind if someone put him on a bus to, let's say, Kaohsiung or something. Maybe then I could get some sleep.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Slippers (or) Here is Great!!
I went with some friends on a weekend trip to a place called Ilan, which is situated on the eastern coast of the island. This should give you an idea of how small Taiwan actually is: Taipei is more or less on the west coast. It took us less than an hour to get to our destination on the other side of the country. (If you're interested, you can take a look at the map at http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/asie/images/taiwan-map-admin.gif. I think it's a pretty decent one.)
At any rate, in order to kill time on what in Taiwanese terms amounts to the longest drive ever, my friend asked me if I had become accustomed to life in Taiwan yet. I answered that yes, for the most part things were ok. It was just the little things, I said, that still made me feel out of place.
"Oh," she said. "Like what?"
"Well, like, for instance, you take off your shoes when you enter the house here. In America we don't do that."
"Oh, I know," said her husband. "You wear slippers inside, right?"
"No," I said. "No slippers."
They paused and looked at each other.
"Then what do you wear?" he asked.
"Our shoes."
Another pause.
"What shoes?"
"Our shoe shoes."
"You mean your shoes from outside?" My friend looked troubled.
"Yeah, just our regular shoes. We don't take them off or change them when we go inside."
"Well that's weird."
The truth is, I really can't get used to what I am now referring to as the "slipper culture" here. They have slippers for everything. For example, in my apartment I have:
1. A pair of slippers next to the front door. When I come home, I have to take my favorite pair of Converse off and leave them vulnerable and alone outside the door, take an elephant step in through the door, and put on a pair of slippers. These are my Wandering Around the House Slippers. When I leave again, I must acrobatically and strategically find a way to step out of the house and directly into my shoes, since apparently walking outside in your socks - even if it's just in the hallway in front of the apartment door - is frowned upon.
2. A pair of slippers in front of the bathroom. They're bright pink with pictures of hippopotamuses (hippopotami?) on them. These are my Bathroom Slippers. When I want to use the bathroom I must first a) take off my Wandering Around the House slippers and b) replace them with the Hippopotamus Bathroom Slippers. This is due to another strange cultural phenomenon: the absence of any shower curtain in my bathroom, which leaves the bathroom floor literally in a puddle of water every time I shower. The Hippopotamus Bathroom Slippers both keep my socks dry and keep my feet from making muddy footprints on the floor, in the unhappy event that my Wandering Around the House slippers are not doing an adequate job of keeping my feet clean.
3. A pair of Semi-Outdoor Slippers for the enclosed patio upon which my clothes are hung out to dry. This brings to mind another cultural oddity: people here think clothes dryers are for sissies. It's not that most of them couldn't afford one; they just really prefer to hang the darn things up and let them dry naturally, which in the Taiwanese humidity can take three or four days. It drives me crazy, because not only do my jeans take a week to dry, but when they finally do dry they come out wrinkled and stretched out. And to add insult to injury, I must wear the Semi-Outdoor Laundry Slippers when I am hanging them up.
It sounds silly, but it's really those trivial differences - the no shoes in the house, the no shower curtain, the no clothes dryer - that make me feel homesick. This morning, however, when Ned sent me his daily message on the internet to check in on me, I told him I was missing home and he merely wrote, "No."
"No?" I typed. "No what?"
"Don't go back," he said. "Here is great!!"
I had to laugh in spite of myself. Here is, in fact, great. Even if I do have to wear pink hippopotamus slippers in the bathroom.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
A Small Request
I understand that there are people out there who disagree with me about a lot of stuff, especially in the area of politics. I also believe that these people have as much right as I do to express themselves. I don't mind my blog being used as a forum for political discussion either; as a matter of fact, I welcome it. Insightful, spirited debate is always a good thing.
But please, please, please, for the love of God and Pete and all that is Holy, don't post anything vulgar, offensive, uneducated, or rude. I've had to field a few nasty comments from mainlanders in the past few days, and I'm unimpressed. Educated, well-thought-out arguments are fine, but you're not going to win anyone over with snide, insulting remarks.
But please, please, please, for the love of God and Pete and all that is Holy, don't post anything vulgar, offensive, uneducated, or rude. I've had to field a few nasty comments from mainlanders in the past few days, and I'm unimpressed. Educated, well-thought-out arguments are fine, but you're not going to win anyone over with snide, insulting remarks.
Friday, September 08, 2006
You Know You're a Foreigner When....
Just about any foreigner who has lived here for any length of time will tell you that Taiwan is a great place. The people are super friendly, the food is amazing, and it has a certain charm to it that you can't find anywhere else. I would venture to say that there is not, however, a single expat who bears any fondness at all for the bureaucracy here. And it's especially bad for foreigners, because it seems like the government tries to make life as difficult as it can for us. You have to leave the country to renew, change, or generally deal with your visa. The rules regarding employment and studying are bizarre, unenforced, and nearly incomprehensible. You need a visa to come here, but in order to stay here you need to spend even more money and apply for yet another piece of paper. And really, that's all it is. Just a $30 piece of paper.
Today it was my turn to pay $30 for a piece of paper. I've been here for 15 days now, and it was the last day for me to apply for my Alien Resident Certificate - kind of the equivalent of a Taiwanese green card. So I got up early, collected my passport and some cold hard cash, and followed the directions in my student handbook to the police headquarters, which is apparently where they do that kind of thing here. The directions led me to a metro station, and then abruptly and dramatically ended. Long story short, the police station was nowhere near the metro station, and I had to ask a myriad of people for directions and walk around for two hours before I finally found it.
Then I had to wait in line for two hours.
Then the guy who helped me was watching TV while he was filling out my paperwork. Or should I say, instead of filling out my paperwork. While I was waiting for him I looked up at the message board on the wall and saw...
Pacman. Pacman was chasing some little monsters across the marquis at the foreign affairs office of the police headquarters of Taipei county.
So I left home at 9 am this morning, and when I was done with everything I had half an hour to make it to my 2 pm class. Sure that I would never make it in time if I took the metro - assuming I could even find the station again - I hailed a cab. The cabbie was super friendly and loved to talk, but he kept repeating over and over how pitiable he thought Taiwan was, as though I could do something about it just because I'm white.
"Lots of people thing we should join the US and become a state," he said, and whether he was joking or not I couldn't quite tell. "What do you think?"
They should change the official name of the country, he said, from Republic of China, which is too close to the mainland's People's Republic of China, to Taiwan. Taiwan is losing face because it's not allowed to carry its own flag in international sports competitions. It sucks to be a cabby in Taipei because all the business owners in Taiwan are moving their factories to the much cheaper mainland, which is affecting the Taiwanese economy, and it's all interrelated you know. These are the things I learned from my afternoon cab ride.
The problem is that in a lot of ways it's true. I haven't even been here that long and I can already feel it; there's a huge gap between the ambitious, optimistic attitude in Shanghai and the downtrodden, hopeless attitude I feel in Taipei. These people are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Most of their money now comes from the mainland: if they do something to endanger those ties, it would bode ill for the economy here. And yet their identities are wrapped up in their independence from the mainland. Most of these people see themselves as being as Chinese as much as Americans might see themselves as being British. They share a history, but in the here and now they are very much their own people with their own way of doing things and their own extreme love for their democratic independence, an independence which they see threatened by the potential of mainland interference. The differences between the two countries, and yes I'm being assertive when I phrase it that way, are overwhelming. Their traditions, their personal interactions, their ways of viewing the world, at least from my outsider's point of view, are not only disparate; I personally can't even see how they could be compatible.
Today it was my turn to pay $30 for a piece of paper. I've been here for 15 days now, and it was the last day for me to apply for my Alien Resident Certificate - kind of the equivalent of a Taiwanese green card. So I got up early, collected my passport and some cold hard cash, and followed the directions in my student handbook to the police headquarters, which is apparently where they do that kind of thing here. The directions led me to a metro station, and then abruptly and dramatically ended. Long story short, the police station was nowhere near the metro station, and I had to ask a myriad of people for directions and walk around for two hours before I finally found it.
Then I had to wait in line for two hours.
Then the guy who helped me was watching TV while he was filling out my paperwork. Or should I say, instead of filling out my paperwork. While I was waiting for him I looked up at the message board on the wall and saw...
Pacman. Pacman was chasing some little monsters across the marquis at the foreign affairs office of the police headquarters of Taipei county.
So I left home at 9 am this morning, and when I was done with everything I had half an hour to make it to my 2 pm class. Sure that I would never make it in time if I took the metro - assuming I could even find the station again - I hailed a cab. The cabbie was super friendly and loved to talk, but he kept repeating over and over how pitiable he thought Taiwan was, as though I could do something about it just because I'm white.
"Lots of people thing we should join the US and become a state," he said, and whether he was joking or not I couldn't quite tell. "What do you think?"
They should change the official name of the country, he said, from Republic of China, which is too close to the mainland's People's Republic of China, to Taiwan. Taiwan is losing face because it's not allowed to carry its own flag in international sports competitions. It sucks to be a cabby in Taipei because all the business owners in Taiwan are moving their factories to the much cheaper mainland, which is affecting the Taiwanese economy, and it's all interrelated you know. These are the things I learned from my afternoon cab ride.
The problem is that in a lot of ways it's true. I haven't even been here that long and I can already feel it; there's a huge gap between the ambitious, optimistic attitude in Shanghai and the downtrodden, hopeless attitude I feel in Taipei. These people are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Most of their money now comes from the mainland: if they do something to endanger those ties, it would bode ill for the economy here. And yet their identities are wrapped up in their independence from the mainland. Most of these people see themselves as being as Chinese as much as Americans might see themselves as being British. They share a history, but in the here and now they are very much their own people with their own way of doing things and their own extreme love for their democratic independence, an independence which they see threatened by the potential of mainland interference. The differences between the two countries, and yes I'm being assertive when I phrase it that way, are overwhelming. Their traditions, their personal interactions, their ways of viewing the world, at least from my outsider's point of view, are not only disparate; I personally can't even see how they could be compatible.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
A Student Once More
The Chinese - especially the Taiwanese, who tend to be more traditional - still use their original lunar calendar when it comes to defining the dates for special traditional events and so forth. It's lunar July now. Actually, it's the second lunar July; for some reason this year is special and has two Julys. Ned tried to explain why, but he tried to explain it in his broken English and two weeks later my head is still spinning from trying to understand it.
At any rate, lunar July is apparently Ghost Month, and although most Taiwanese will tell you it's just a silly superstition they all still seem to look back over their shoulder whenever the wind blows wrong. Ned, who is getting married in December, even decided to wait until after lunar July ends to go get his wedding pictures taken, just to be cautious. And wedding pictures are a big deal here.
And me, I'm a stupid white girl. I live in a rather big apartment, all by myself, and when I got home tonight I was a little creeped out because a door that normally remains permanently closed for some reason kept opening itself. Forgetting that it is Ghost Month, and forgetting further that I am in Taiwan, I mentioned jokingly to a friend:
"I think I have a ghost in my apartment."
"Oh!" he said in all seriousness. "Do you need to come stay at our place?"
I can't seem to adapt my sarcastically playful personality to the local culture. Every time I try to make a joke, even a small one, I end up freaking someone out.
In further news (I mean further than its being the second lunar July, which I'm very sure everyone at home cares about) I finally started school this week. I am overjoyed, because having nothing to occupy my mind was getting slightly dangerous. I was actually originally placed in far too low a class - whether it was due to some administrative mix-up or my own incompetence on the placement test I'm not really sure - and I've had to spend the past three days changing classes and filling out paperwork and negotiating with teachers and etc. etc. etc. trying to get in a class that was more suited to my level. It's been exhausting, but it's keeping me busy, which at this point is the general idea. The class I ended up in will still be a little easy for me, but I think it's just at that right level where I can review a little without being too bored.
At any rate, lunar July is apparently Ghost Month, and although most Taiwanese will tell you it's just a silly superstition they all still seem to look back over their shoulder whenever the wind blows wrong. Ned, who is getting married in December, even decided to wait until after lunar July ends to go get his wedding pictures taken, just to be cautious. And wedding pictures are a big deal here.
And me, I'm a stupid white girl. I live in a rather big apartment, all by myself, and when I got home tonight I was a little creeped out because a door that normally remains permanently closed for some reason kept opening itself. Forgetting that it is Ghost Month, and forgetting further that I am in Taiwan, I mentioned jokingly to a friend:
"I think I have a ghost in my apartment."
"Oh!" he said in all seriousness. "Do you need to come stay at our place?"
I can't seem to adapt my sarcastically playful personality to the local culture. Every time I try to make a joke, even a small one, I end up freaking someone out.
In further news (I mean further than its being the second lunar July, which I'm very sure everyone at home cares about) I finally started school this week. I am overjoyed, because having nothing to occupy my mind was getting slightly dangerous. I was actually originally placed in far too low a class - whether it was due to some administrative mix-up or my own incompetence on the placement test I'm not really sure - and I've had to spend the past three days changing classes and filling out paperwork and negotiating with teachers and etc. etc. etc. trying to get in a class that was more suited to my level. It's been exhausting, but it's keeping me busy, which at this point is the general idea. The class I ended up in will still be a little easy for me, but I think it's just at that right level where I can review a little without being too bored.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Lifestyles of the Taiwanese and Famous
I was having tea at a coffee shop with my friend Roy and his girlfriend Cherry tonight when Roy caught me ogling an extremely good-looking man sitting in a corner in front of a laptop.
"Handsome, right?" he asked, nudging me a little.
I flushed, embarrassed at having been caught staring, and admitted that he was indeed rather attractive.
Roy shrugged. "He's a singer. He was a celebrity." He leaned forward and repeated for emphasis, "Was."
I find the celebrity culture in Taiwan a little baffling, to tell the truth. Here this guy who apparently used to be quite famous was sitting off to the side of some nondescript coffee shop minding his own business, and all the rest of the people in the place knew who he was and were just kind of ignoring him. No one was pointing or staring or whispering behind his hand like they would have with a has-been in America. He was just another guy who at one point happened to have been famous. Roy would never have even thought to mention it to me if he hadn't noticed me looking at him.
The thing is that for as small as Taiwan is - the population of Taipei isn't much more than that of Seattle - they still manage to produce a thriving pop culture that's almost on par with our own, if on a somewhat smaller scale. They have the beauty magazines and the pop stars and the famous models, and it's a culture that extends across the strait and into the mainstream on the super-populated mainland. What the Taiwanese don't seem to have much of, however, is the culture of idolotry that we tend to. My sneaky suspicion is that the size of Taiwan makes it a little more difficult to be high-and-mighty, because at any point any of your fans could bump into you on the street...
"Handsome, right?" he asked, nudging me a little.
I flushed, embarrassed at having been caught staring, and admitted that he was indeed rather attractive.
Roy shrugged. "He's a singer. He was a celebrity." He leaned forward and repeated for emphasis, "Was."
I find the celebrity culture in Taiwan a little baffling, to tell the truth. Here this guy who apparently used to be quite famous was sitting off to the side of some nondescript coffee shop minding his own business, and all the rest of the people in the place knew who he was and were just kind of ignoring him. No one was pointing or staring or whispering behind his hand like they would have with a has-been in America. He was just another guy who at one point happened to have been famous. Roy would never have even thought to mention it to me if he hadn't noticed me looking at him.
The thing is that for as small as Taiwan is - the population of Taipei isn't much more than that of Seattle - they still manage to produce a thriving pop culture that's almost on par with our own, if on a somewhat smaller scale. They have the beauty magazines and the pop stars and the famous models, and it's a culture that extends across the strait and into the mainstream on the super-populated mainland. What the Taiwanese don't seem to have much of, however, is the culture of idolotry that we tend to. My sneaky suspicion is that the size of Taiwan makes it a little more difficult to be high-and-mighty, because at any point any of your fans could bump into you on the street...
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
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?
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...
"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...
Monday, August 28, 2006
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.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
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...
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...
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
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...
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...
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
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.
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.
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