Cavorting with Canadian Cohorts

Greetings all,

My usual apologies for the lateness of my update, you know, study, work, stress, the usual; today I’m going to skip all that and talk about two day trips I took around Taiwan.

On Monday, December 5^th, I will be beginning my third semester here in Kaohsiung, but way back during the three week vacation I had in between my first and second semesters, Sarah (the other ginger who I went biking with in her home town) and I spent a day exploring a little island located off of Taiwan (the slightly larger little island). This island is called Qijin and the pier where the ferry comes to collect its passengers for the daunting twenty minute ride is a stone’s throw from my house (assuming you could get enough arc on it to make it over the buildings, which seems unlikely).

We met up at the MRT station at about 10, grabbed a dan bing (egg tortilla thing) for breakfast from the local sandwich shop which I have described in previous emails (though tragically when I returned from my trip to Hong Kong, I was informed the shop would only be open in the mornings when I’m still asleep; then last week I rode by and its being converted into a 7-11!!! It’s literally three feet from another 7-11 too, the signs are almost touching).  After our snack we wandered over to the ferry and grabbed a window seat. I enjoy being on boats, but since I get nauseous on a swing-set I was glad it didn’t last too long.

           

                                                There's a little village, shrine, temple, as well as collection of people who live and work on this island; according to Sarah there used to be a lot more people who actually called Qijin home, but now it’s mostly for tourists. There are some mountainy hills you wander up and at the top there are ruins from the Qihou Fort and a light house. This fort is a great symbol of Taiwan because it combines local people’s culture with Chinese, European, and Japanese influences; if there were an American baseball diamond there too then the image of modern Taiwan would be complete. 

History lesson: in the 19^th Century, there were aboriginal people who lived in the Qijin district, but fighting with Japan (and a massacre of 54 shipwrecked Japanese people by the locals during the ‘Mudan Incident’) led the final Emperor of China to restructure the forts put in place over a century before him. In 1875, Qing naval officers hired an Englishman to help design the fort/lighthouse to stave off Japanese invasions. Unfortunately, when the Japanese actually did attack, the Chinese lack of leadership at the fort led to a quick surrender in 1895. The fort was left in ruins after the Guomingdang took over and built a new base elsewhere (I’m sure you wanted to know this, because knowledge is power).

So. Sarah and I were two of the only people there that weekday morning and we wandered around the crumbling fort walls, wove in and out of the barracks, and looked out at Kaohsiung from the top of the hill. There’s something strangely soothing about ruins for me;                                                    maybe it’s the vines and tree roots seeping in to reclaim the land that ‘civilization’ borrowed. That was the best thing about living in Scotland, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting some long-forgotten piece of castle (not that I swing cats…). Unfortunately, the weeds and the bugs and the claustrophobic feeling of nature and possibly even velociraptors closing in on you can ruin the moment (I’d take an air conditioner and a sterile countertop any day).

We wandered back down and grabbed some noodles from a local shop, had an interesting plum tea, and then caught the ferry and headed home in time for Sarah to get back to work. It was a really pleasant day out.

The next day trip came a month or so later, I don’t really know when (I have no gift for remembering dates…or names…or places…any wonder why I’m a historian?). Sarah, as you may recall, grew up in Taiwan but her family and her passport hail from Vancouver (I feel I have to mention this to give my title more legitimacy). Bree and Luc Stone came from Alberta about a month after I arrived in Kaohsiung and we hit it off right away. They are super friendly, very inclusive people who have the same sense of humor and love of books as I do (and I’m not just saying that ‘cause they may be reading this!). They are much more adventuresome than I am, however, as they climb mountains and camp and explore and whatever else it is that outdoorsy people do, but they invited me to join them on a trip down to the almost southernmost tip of Taiwan to a town called Kenting and I enthusiastically accepted.

Taiwan, to state the obvious, is an island and as such has many, many beaches. Unfortunately, where I live there are only about two decent beaches and you have to pay to struggle through the hoards of Chinese tourists to find a spot to sit in the sun and blister, so I don’t make it to the sand very often. But Kenting is known for its long stretches of free beaches so we were all excited to get out of the city and play in the water. 

We were not excited enough to actually leave before 11, however, as we are all quite nocturnal. We met up at the train station at 10, grabbed some breakfast, and then went to find a taxi to take us the hour and a half journey down south. The bus apparently takes about twice as long and goes through very windy roads, and none of us were particularly looking forward to me throwing up, but luckily we discovered that it’s actually about the same price to take a taxi if you go in a group so we had to wait around at the station for enough other passengers to show up to make a full car.

Once we got to Kenting, we discovered that, apart from the main road with beach shops and restaurants, there’s not much to see so we decided to hire some scooters and go explore the beaches a little farther up the mountains. Luc forgot his international license and neither Bree nor I had one of our own, so we had to wander down the street ‘til we found someone willing to hire them to us in a less than legal manner (ironically, this shop was located right across from the local police station). I had never driven a scooter before, so Bree drove one and Luc and I hopped on the other one and we zipped along the highway that ran by the ocean.

 As we drove, Luc would stop sporadically so we could walk out to the edges of cliffs and look down at the beaches and the crags jutting up out of the blue water. It was really lovely, particularly because it wasn’t oppressively hot that day; we actually had some cloud coverage which was a relief.

We found one beach which seemed decent enough so we stopped, got sunblocked-up, and tramped down to the water’s edge, but there was a group of surfers monopolizing the big waves so we decided to take our body-surfing elsewhere. By that time, I was quite hot (clouds or no it’s humid like death here) so I just wanted to be in the water, but Luc remembered how to get back to a more isolated beach which we’d seen from one of our various cliff-side detours.  

Impressively enough, he managed to drive right to the little road which led down the mountain to the sand, but we couldn’t drive all the way, we had to climb down the pointy, sand-eroded craggy rocks to get there. I had been under the impression that we would be lounging on the beach all day so I wore my long green broom skirt and tractionless flip flops, which made this climb a more daunting proposition for me than for them. But they were patient and got me down the rocks without any mishaps, and the beach was definitely worth the struggle (Bree told me she learned quickly to always bring a pair of hiking shoes whenever she went out with Luc because they always managed to end up climbing something! I will remember this for the Nantou trip in December…).

  

There were only about two people on the entire beach and there were glorious waves rolling in and out on the soft shoreline. As soon as we dropped off our stuff we were in the ocean being slammed and carried by the waves, it was fantastic. During a particularly large wave, Luc and I were both knocked under and I came up to discover I’d lost my sunglasses, but just as I was going to tell him, he asked me to look for his actual glasses!!! We didn’t find them, though thankfully he had a spare pair back in Kaohsiung, but this Velma-moment meant that I was going to have to drive the scooter back to town…

Before we got to that, we continued to enjoy the beach; they found a little rivulet of fresh water running down the mountains and, since we’re all from some part of the Rockies, we all felt more at home playing in the cooler, softer fresh river water than the salty ocean. It was getting dark and we decided to head back so I didn’t have to drive in the dark. Climbing up the hill was much easier than going down, so we made it up to the scooters with little difficulty.

I climbed on the scooter and Bree explained all the buttons and everything. She also told me here in Taiwan as a general rule when you’re driving you’re in charge only of what’s directly in front of you, don’t worry about checking your mirrors or really even of looking left and right, just go straight and whoever’s behind you or next to you will deal with getting around you. 

I foolishly thought it would be better to try out the scooter on the little dirt path that led up a hill before I tried it out on the highway. I managed to make it up the hill, but as I was trying to turn around the weight of the scooter surprised me and it fell over on top of my leg, pinning me to the ground. After Bree picked me up and got the scooter back to the base of the mountain I decided that was enough practice, time to just do it.

Driving down the big, smooth mountain roads was unexpectedly easy, and the scooters don’t have gears or anything you just push the handles and they go (of course that’s the same as four-wheelers and I’ve managed to crash one of those just fine). When people pass here, they drive right up behind you, tailgate you ‘til there’s room to get around, then speed around you as fast as they can with the wind whipping your little scooter around and nearly running you off the road. I don’t even like riding my bike next to someone else and actually I’ve always been afraid of people riding behind me because I worry they’re going to hit my tire and knock me over, so when Bree suggested I should go first, I was reluctant.

It turned out to be a very wise plan, however, as I was going quite a bit below the speed limit when I first started out so I could hug the outside of the lane while Bree, at Luc’s suggestion, stuck to the outside of the lane right behind me so that in order to pass us the other vehicles had to go all the way around both Bree and myself. This made me feel much more confident, though I was gripping the handles ‘til my knuckles were white and praying all the way down the mountain! By the time we got to the flat stretch of road leading to town I was able to go the speed limit and even pass a few slow moving people so it didn’t take us too long to get back. Bree said she was proud of my driving, and I was just thankful I was alive. It was kind of fun, I’ll admit, but once we got back into Kenting during the rush hour and had to wade through other scooters and the night market crowds it lost its thrill. I definitely do not like riding it in a city! Bree took them back, and we went about finding a place for dinner.

My classmate from Hawaii, Ashley, and her friend were in Kenting the same night so we joined them for some Thai food. It was pleasant enough but the speakers were right by our table and they were blasting ‘look how fun our bar/restaurant is, come on in and have a drink’ music right into our ears which made conversation a little difficult. The bar was also hosting a transvestite performance of some sort, but we decided to skip it and check out the market. The night market was alright, but Luc couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t fit in any of the clothes, and Bree had to deal with both of us so we decided we were all funned out; we found a taxi and headed home.

This was the night I discovered that the subway closes ridiculously early here in Kaohsiung; this is a very nocturnal city. You can get food, clothes, pretty much anything you want ‘til at least midnight and a lot of places stay up even later. It’s the land of the night market. But the subway closes at like 11:30 so if you don’t have a scooter you can’t really enjoy any of it! I had to take a taxi home, which was a little irritating, but at least I learned my lesson. Besides, if the 5 USD it took to get me home that night was the worst of my money problems that week, I’d be laughing. The day we went out was a Saturday and, as you’ll find out in the next email, I discovered the following Tuesday that I already made an $800 mistake. (Is that a good enough cliffhanger for you? Since most of you already know what happens, probably not, but I tried my best…)

Hope you’re all well,

Manda

There’s No Place like Taiwan for the Holidays (Except maybe China)

Hi all,              

Since it’s Halloween, I decided to let you all know about the local Taiwanese/Chinese festivals I’ve been able to experience here.  (I’m sure those of you who know about my trips to Kenting and Hong Kong are anxious to hear about them, but at the moment I’m frantically running from class to work to home where I fill out grad school applications and do homework…fun fun fun. I already had this one mostly written, so you’re just going to have to wait ‘til I get some free time for the exciting stories!)

August, the seventh lunar month, was Ghost Month; in some ways the theories behind this are similar to the original Halloween theories in that it’s the time of the year when the souls of the dead can come back from the grave and/or hell to visit the living, but it lasts for an entire month not just one candy-crazed night. During this month, you want to avoid ghosts and their pranks; to do so, you’re not supposed to cut your hair, possibly because it cuts your lifeline (but I may be taking that from the Greek Fates…) and you shouldn’t look in a mirror (or peel an apple while looking in a mirror because you will see your own death). There are loads of these superstitions, but the main one you really have to look out for is swimming, especially in the ocean. The whole point of avoiding ghosts is to not encourage their wrath, but swimming has more sinister consequences because, apparently, ghosts will swim up underneath you, pull you underwater, drown you, then their soul gets to go free from hell and yours takes its place (the ol’ soul-switcheroo). 

The Taiwanese ‘soul’ is a bit different from ours in that it isn’t just one soul and one body, there are several spirits in you, one goes to heaven, one goes to hell (I think…). My teacher tried to explain it to us, but I’m not sure we ever quite figured out what she was talking about because soul and spirit are the same word and the terminology for ghost or soul was confusing as they can all be intermingled. From what I did pick up, however, if you’ve suffered a ‘bad’ death then one part of your soul will go to hell for a certain amount of time, so you become a ghost. (This is kind of like how our ghosts are the souls of those who have unfinished business or suffered in their final moments and are doomed to wander the Earth, etc, etc.). The ghost-souls aren’t necessarily bad, you can have some Caspers in the mix, but they aren’t all good either as demonstrated by the drowning discussion.

In order to persuade the unfriendly ghosts to leave you in peace, you have to give them food/drink/money offerings. While I have seen people burning paper money for their ancestors outside their houses since the day I arrived in Taiwan, the scale of those offerings was nowhere near that of Ghost offerings; the most surprising thing was that there was an official school sacrifice performed in front of the humanities building where I take my classes. One of my teachers is a believer, so we were all paraded down to catch a glimpse of them burning incense (my two classmates and I were also offered incense sticks, but we declined). 

The teachers set up a big table and put on it anything that you’d want in real life (usually your favorite foods) including cans of Coke, boxes of Oreos, and fruit. All of those are optional, but every sacrifice must have fish, chicken, and beef (I don’t know why). Then you put incense sticks into it and light them as an offering to the dead spirits. During this big celebration at the school, the teachers all grabbed their individual incense sticks and lined up in front of the tables; they bowed then stepped forward three times till they reached the tables then stuck them into the food.

My classmate and I (the only white people standing confused on the sidelines) were trying to figure out what they did with all the food afterwards. We both had the same thought: if they just throw it all away it’s gonna sit in a landfill for decades (and could we eat it instead, perhaps?). Finally our teacher over heard us debating it and explained that it’s not the actual products which are offered to the ghosts, ghosts are spirits they can’t eat or drink the food; it’s the SPIRIT of the food which is given to them, so by burning the incense it releases the essence of the food which is what they then eat. (Then the worshippers get to eat the actual food. Maybe that’s a clever way to make sure you don’t just offer the last tin can of sauerkraut you found stuck in the back of the cupboard like during Christmas canned food drives; whatever you offer you eat, so it makes you offer the best!)

Since the Chinese and Taiwanese prefer even numbers and believe they are more auspicious (in direct contrast to my own Pretty Number Scale), Ghost Month was in lunar month seven (our August this year)  which gave way to the luckiest month, eight (September), which is the month of the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival. For the entire month there were firecrackers popping on every street corner and talk of moon cakes lingering in the air. The Moon Festival commemorates the legend of a woman called Chang’e who drank an elixir of immortality by accident and discovered she could fly. Her immortal husband, Houyi, was angry at her so she flew through the heavens to escape his wrath and ended up on the moon where she coughed up half of the elixir. She asked the rabbit who lives on the moon (I’m not making this up) to make a new elixir for her, which it is still doing to this day. Houyi ended up living on the sun (so man is sun or yang and woman is moon or ying) and once a year they get to be together, which is the day of the Moon Festival. (I don’t know why he can’t just live on the moon with her, but whatever; far be it from me to criticize others’ cultures or their stupid traditions.) 

 
The actual Moon Festival date was Monday, 
September 12^th. While the meaning behind the festival couldn’t be more dissimilar, the festivities themselves remind me a lot of the Fourth of July, i.e. sparklers, family barbeques, and lots of fireworks! I’m so glad I live near the mountains and the temple because I had a great view of the fireworks shot out over the mountain tops, though I was wary of all the firecrackers being flung aimlessly in the street (one actually hit my shin and I had the black marks to prove it). In the actual temple, there was a stage set up with comedians performing in Taiwanese and kids with sparklers running around the booths. 

Since we didn’t have any family members nearby, all 
of the foreign people I’ve met through church gathered in a Japanese BBQ house and we spent two hours cooking the ‘all we could eat’ meat, including sirloin steaks and tiny little octopi, on the grills. We were also offered vegetables in the form of a soup, but the guys at the table were only interested in things they could grill, so we convinced them to grill the mushrooms and corn cobs we fished out of the soup so we could pretend we’d eaten something nutritionally sound.

 
                                                       
                                                                                                             After the BBQ we headed over to Ansy’s to play dominoes and Mafia, then we had some fancy moon cakes to celebrate the occasion. While I had experienced moon cakes in Beijing when my roommate, Shuxin, bought me one, I didn’t realize there were several different types. There’s a café down the street from my house where I always buy my dumplings, omelet burritos, and weird sandwiches (double-decker breakfast sandwiches: the outside layer of bread is dipped in egg like French toast; top layer has hash browns; piece of white bread; ham, American cheese slices, and occasionally small bits of hotdogs in the middle; another piece of white bread; chicken breast; final piece of egg-bread. In Asia, sandwiches are breakfast foods but this is so big I eat it for dinner instead!). 

The ladies there are really nice and talk to me about Taiwan culture and festivals and teach me new food words every time I come in. On one such occasion, we were chatting when a blast of firecrackers went off about ten feet from where I was standing and I jumped in spite of myself. They laughed and started telling me about the lady in the moon and told me I should try some moon cakes. When I came back the following day, I told her casually I hadn’t been able to find any as it was too early. 

  

The next day, after I purchased my sandwich, she handed me a little moon cake and told me she brought it for me! Then she said to come back on the actual day and she’d bring me a different kind. The first one was sweet, it had an amber colored soy bean paste in it (note the seals on the top, like the calligraphy seals!). The second one is more traditional, a better brand, and like the one I had in China; on the inside there’s bean paste but in the very center there’s a boiled egg yolk which represents the moon. While I like the pastry on the second one better, sort of in the shape of an English muffin but fluffy like a croissant, the egg yolk is really salty and isn’t the sort of thing I like in my desserts. At Ansy’s house, we had ones with bean paste and little chopped nuts. I think the first one the lady gave me was my favorite. 

To confuse matters, I was innocently meandering down the alley towards a 7-11 when all of a sudden I found myself lodged in the middle of a parade! I thought that this was in honor of the Moon Festival, being the Sunday before the actual day, but it turns out I wandered into yet another celebration for the birth of some god. This time, rather than having huge speakers and obnoxious music five feet from my room, they had little performances (two guys pretend fighting with knives, I dunno why) and a little alter on two poles they carried down the street. There were marching bands and fire crackers. I noticed another confused foreigner in the mix, Martin from Mexico, and we huddled in the corner and tried to take pictures (my camera doesn’t like night or smoke, so they aren’t very good, apologies). Apparently he was trying to get to some restaurant and got swept up in the festivities as well.  I saw him later at the school office registering for classes, but he’s in the beginner’s class in the mornings so I won’t see him very often.

After reviewing my posts, I have just discovered that I never actually told you about the first god’s birthday bash I wasn’t invited to (though I was ‘fun’ adjacent for three whole days!).  One weekend during the summer when I first moved in next to the giant temple, I woke up at 9 am on Saturday morning to loud obnoxious drums and a shrill woman ‘singing’ (and that’s being very generous of me) into a microphone at the top of her voice. I decided I may as well investigate since it was impossible to get back to sleep. I wandered groggily down the stairs to discover the little alley next to me was blocked by an enormous tent-on-wheels which housed a stage on which people were dressed in bright costumes and acting out a story in Taiwanese. This was extremely fascinating, apart from the two foot speakers lodged right next to my head.  They had a tent set up with a whole hog offered as sacrifice and a bunch of people bowing and burning incense. I asked one of the passers-by what it all meant since the stories were somewhat less than helpful and he said that it was ‘like Jesus’. Now, from my history classes at CC I remembered that anti-imperialists who hated the missionaries in southern China often depicted Jesus as a pig being tortured to death in really unsavory fashions (a pig because it’s insulting and because the words ‘pig’ and ‘Jesus’ have similar sounds in Chinese). I assumed that this was probably not what he meant, but the images of tortured pigs were difficult to escape. I asked him to explain that and he replied, ‘we’re celebrating the birth of a god, like your Christmas’. AHHHH. Cultural misunderstandings are fun! And the fun continued from 9 am to 9 pm for three days straight; I swear they found every single person in Taiwan who could neither sing nor dance, then threw them on a stage and made them sing and dance. Still, that’s what you get for living next to a giant temple! Actually, I'm glad I do because I never would've come across these festivities otherwise!

So that’s August and September festivities. In October people are aware of Halloween, stationary shops sell cheap witch hats and fairy wings, but it’s definitely not as popular or as widely celebrated as in the States. There was a funeral down the street from me; for about two weeks there were people constantly chanting at a little alter that had white and pastel pink lanterns and a photo of the deceased. At the end of that mourning period, the entire street was blocked off so they could set up a huge tent with rows and rows of white flowers in front of it (white, not black, is the color for death in Taiwan/China. For birthdays, New Years, and weddings people give family members and friends evenly numbered money (200, 800, etc.) in red envelopes, but if your family member dies people give you odd numbered cash in white envelopes), each with little signs which said things like ‘may you have a smooth crossing-over.’  The tent was for the actual service. The next day everyone was gone and the lanterns were removed from the house’s door posts. (No pictures, didn't really seem appropriate to be touring the funeral service.)

Well, I think this is long enough. I will talk to you all soon; my class ends after Thanksgiving so I will have a few days when I can hopefully catch up on all the blogs I’ve wanted to write. Looking forward to hearing from you all, and I hope you’re all well!

Love,

Amanda