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Published: August 28th 2007
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Taipei, from Taipei 101
"My" Taipei. At first the place seemed overwhelmingly Chinese, but I came to realize just how cosmopolitan and foreigner-friendly the place really is. It’s hard to believe that I’m actually getting paid for doing what I’m doing—getting free Chinese and tai chi lessons, not to mention teaching tips and cultural insights into Taiwan. As much as I have been enjoying myself in Sansia, I am really looking forward to going to my assignment in Guangfu.Not just yet, maybe. A couple more days will be good. There was an aboriginal festival in a nearby park the other night, so a bunch of us wandered over for a butcher’s. Formosan aboriginals were originally Polynesians, I understand, and the dancing reflects that fact. There was a stage set up beneath the stars and the beautiful sub-tropical trees, and with the balmy air it brought Hawaii to my mind. The major difference is, of course, that I’m getting paid to be here--instead of saving for ages beforehand and then paying off VISA afterwards as would have been the case with Hawaii.I might have really lucked out when I was assigned to Hualien County.Yesterday was a free day (for once), so a bunch of us filled two taxis and set off to Taipei. The Blue Line MRT is now extended several stops past Xinpu, so it was a snap
Big, Dirty, Polluted, Magic, Wonderful, Endearing Taipei
For all its crowds and pollution, Taipei has a grim and haunting beauty to it to get into the city. Since I know the place better than the others (except for Michelle who is from here but lives in Mississippi), I was the tour guide—complete with two-way radios and a list of suggested stops. It was actually a little bit stressful, because the consequences of anyone getting lost or even separated would have been very serious.We went to Taipei 101. It is a marvel of engineering. Not only the tallest building in the world, it also has the world’s fastest elevators. We went from the 5th floor to the 89th floor in 35 seconds, at 10.1 m/sec. The view is staggering from the top—I could see all my old haunts and I felt like I own this place.Food courts are lousy in most places in the world, but not in Taiwan. Jon (from Portland) and I had Korean barbecue in the food court at Taipei 101. The meat is sliced very thin and then steamed on a metal thing, with green vegetables and spicy tofu and the inevitable kimchi. It was quite a healthy meal, but good nevertheless. I wasn’t even appreciably more expensive than the omnipresent Macdonalds a few doors down.We then took the
My Carriage Awaits
Travelling all over the city all the time, I spent so long on the train I could have saved money on rent. Brown Line out to Taipei Zoo and back, for the elevated view of the city. The next stop was Lungshan Temple, where some kind of a Buddhist festival was going on. We had some beer to wash the incense out of ourselves, and I took everyone over to Snake Alley for the ritual gross-out. You know the drill, snake blood and kaoliung (I don’t know which of the two would taste worse alone —kaoliung is bad enough without adding blood to it). Booze and snake blood is supposed to be a male performance enhancer, but anyone in that position would be better off with viagara or mydixidud or ibepoken.The women wanted to go shopping, so I took them back to Taipei Main Station where John and I went off to get massages from the blind guys. Michelle (a different Michelle—from New York who is going to Kinmen to teach) went back to Taipei 101. John and I befriended a nice young Austrian couple (John speaks German). They looked a bit woebegone because the woman was vegetarian and they couldn’t find anywhere to eat, so we took them back with us to the night market near Lungshan. Disaster struck this morning. The cooks didn’t show up, for some reason, and there was no breakfast. I said to a few people around me that I was going to go out for bacon and eggs and coffee. At the mention of western food, a big gaggle followed me. I felt a bit like the pied piper. I ordered my “chow dan, pagan, re de café” and everyone else did the same in their new-found Mandarin.We will have a total of nine hours of classroom instruction in Chinese. It is very unlikely that many people will speak English where a lot of us are going.We have presentations to do, and a Chinese test tomorrow. The next day we push off. Sonia tells us that it takes five or six hours on the train from Taipei to Guangfu, so they might fly us to Hualien instead.My contact at Guangfu JHS tells me that there is a nice apartment at the school for us—not just a dorm room. There is a bedroom and a bathroom, and a living room and a balcony and a washing machine. Who wants to cook—you might just as well invite the ants and the cockroaches for dinner if there is food in the place.We might decide to just live there—unless we’re supposed to do dorm supervision in which case we’d never really be off duty. We’ll see. In any case, Lao-puo Suzanne will be joining me here as soon as she can get away. She will land at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, but the domestic flights leave from Songshan Airport in town. It might be as easy if she just stays in Taipei, and I’ll rent a car and collect her. This bachelor BS is for the birds.Things should work out well. Lao-puo can do Internet teaching to Korea practically full time from here, and she can handle all the private students I’ll be too busy for. She might have to go into Hualien City for her Mandarin classes at the university, but I understand that a lot of the public schools lay on free classes for foreign spouses in the evening. We can’t help but to learn anyway, just by being in the community.
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