This is the first of my 'Culutral Class Experience' entries. Today we have: Lotus Pond and the Night Market for your reading pleasure!
As part of my language course, every week we are given a 'cultural' class which corresponds with the lessons we're learning in my afternoon class on modern Taiwan life. Our first such group bonding experience was on Friday the 8th of July. There were fifteen of us in total, five French students, five Japanese students, three Americans (me included), and my two Taiwanese teachers (we decided not to bring the partridge and the pear tree as they were too 
heavy to carry onto the subway). We started at the school where we went to the neighbourhood 'ice' store and had a massive bowl of shaved ice, fruit, and syrup. It was big enough for all fifteen of us to share and it wasn't even the largest one on the menu! After our snack, we made our way to Lotus Pond, a
particularly misleading name as there are few lotuses and it's more of a lake, where there are twenty temples surrounding the water. 
The main attraction is theDragon Tiger Pagoda which, in contrast to Lotus Pond, is exactly what it sounds like: two pagodas one with a giant tiger and one with a dragon sticking out of it. In traditional Chinese temples the entrance door will have a tiger on it while the exit will have a dragon because you enter with burdens and bad things (tiger) but you leave all your troubles with the gods and exit with fortune and peace (dragon). At this relatively recently established temple (built in 1951), they've managed to cut out the middle man altogether and you just walk in through the tiger's mouth and out through the dragon's mouth. Next on the walk was the Spring Autumn Pavilion. 
The Pavilion itself is not that impressive, but the 30-foot long serpent guarding it, the giant painted shrines of some guy and Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, and large gold fish statues which also double as coin-slot operated fish food dispensers, tend to catch the eye. There's also a large Daoist temple called Beiji Xuantian Shang Di Pavilion, which has an enormous, ornate statue of the Emperor of Dark Heaven at the entrance. Although I admire their 
decadence and craftsmanship, due to the graphic colors and the scale of these statues, they look more like a holy mini-golf courses than reverent places of worship. The buildings were impressive, but it was hard to take them seriously as I kept looking for the giant windmill which would knock my ball into a water-trap. All around this temple were ponds full of fish; most Daoist temples keep animals of some sort, this one specialized in turtles (and I spotted a tiny pig across the road at the Buddhist temple). There were hoards of turtles all over the place. 
The only disappointing thing was that there was a huge turtle kept at the entrance to the temple in a tiny cage so it could hardly move. My teacher said it was so they didn't lose it and so they could take care of it, but I feel it would be better taken care of were it roaming free in the pond with the other turtles. This is representative of a huge cultural difference in perspective as I find the animal situation in Taiwan strange. There are loads of stray cats and dogs running around the place. People get puppies then dump them without getting them neutered once they become dogs, which of course then breeds more puppies. That happens in the West too, of course, but it seems a much greater problem here as there are no shelters or homes for these strays (aside from a few which have been started by foreigners in recent years). My American friend, Elizabeth, has adopted two cats; one was left abandoned on her school doorstep because it was pregnant. Occasionally I've seen dogs running around with collars on, but they roam the streets just like other dogs; I even saw a really cute dog with a collar and food dish on the sidewalk, but its tail and back legs were covered in mange and the poor thing had been chewing itself raw. It was clearly fed and kept as a pet, but not taken to the vet which I find odd. A friend said people would feed strays and put collars on them but not actually adopt them, just give them food and a place to hang out. This is better than them starving, but not as good as taking responsibility for them. Other dogs are kept on such short chains that they can barely walk, thus keeping them out of the streets but also keeping them stationary for hours on end.
Of course, there are also loads of dog owners who take care of their dogs and treat them as kids just like we do in the States, especially the little fluffy lap dogs and poodles which seem to be really popular here. They also take their dogs around on their scooters with them (like their children; even babies are put on the floorboard of the scooter in a car seat). The dogs will stand on the front of the 
scooter by the owner's feet, in the bike baskets at the front, or, in some cases for the exceptionally talented dog, they will literally (excuse the language) ride 'bitch' standing on the back seat of the scooter and balancing as the driver weaves in and out of the lanes. There is a great affection for animals here, but I miss our laws against cruelty to animals and our animal shelters. Animal tangents aside, after our walking tour of the Lotus Pond temples, we hopped back onto the MRT and made our way to visit another cultural tradition of Taiwan, the night market (after stopping briefly for tea and wantons, of course). The night market is, well, a market set up at night. (Not to be confused with the day markets, which specialize in fruit off of flat-bed trucks and clothing, and are of course held during the day...) Ansy's house is right next to two streets one of which acts a day market and one which acts as a much-less crowded night market. By my second week here, I realized that I had been living on nothing but carbs (noodles, rice, dumplings, buns, etc) and I was desperate for some fruit so I meandered over to the day market fruit-trucks. I found a pointy-looking pink thing which, upon enquiry, I discovered was the
elusive dragon fruit. I also bought some apples and what appeared to be round brown-ish apples, and some lychee. I then made myself a surprise-fruit banquet back at Ansy's since I didn't really know what anything I bought would taste like (apart from the apples which were refreshingly apple-tasting). I had made a point of asking how to go about eating my magenta dragon fruit, got a knife and sliced the top layer of skin from top to bottom. This was a remarkably unpleasant sensation, however, because the size, shape, and color of that particular fruit 
reminds me of a human heart, it fits in the palm of your hand and has aorta things growing out the sides. A bigger shock was that it bled after the first incision. Dark purple/red ooze filled the plate it was sitting on and I peeled back the thick, fleshy skin to reveal purpley fruit with tiny black seeds scattered 
throughout it. This may not seem strange to you, but it was definitely not what I was expecting. There's no pit, and it has a similar texture to mangoes but was slightly sweeter. Apparently there are also ones with white 'meat' in the center, but mine was a dazzling and confusing magenta. The brown apple turned out to just be a thick, round pear which was very pleasant, and the lychee, small round pieces of white fruit with black pits surrounded by a hard outer shell, were kinda sweet and chewy. The night market my class and I went to is nothing like Ansy's fruit stalls. Rui Feng market is one of several around the city, but it is the biggest and has far fewer tourists than Liu He (the up-scale one near the classy
part of town at Formosa Blvd). These are bustling, crowded centers of chaos and fried snacks. At this particular market, there are rows and rows of make-shift stalls with food and tables on one side, clothes, accessories, shoes, toothbrushes, anything you can imagine in the rest, and carnival games like 'Mahjong bingo' and ring tosses set up at the back. Kaohsiung is not Taipei; it is not the cultural center of anything so most of the time people dress just to be comfortable in whatever they want, they typically wear sensible shoes, and not a lot of make-up (if any). Not so at the night market. This is the time for teenage boys who have spent hours on fluffing their colored, permed, gelled hair to trot out their hot girlfriends who are wearing a baggy shirt with short-shorts so short in fact they become negligible, sparkly stiletto shoes which make me twist my ankle just to look at them, and long flashy fake-eyelashes in an attempt to make their eyes look more ‘Western’. It is a truly fascinating sight; no one seems to mind that it's a billion degrees and you can't stand anywhere without being in someone's way as the parade of flashy teens marches all around you. The best thing about these markets, since I don't fit in the clothes and can't wear the shoes, is definitely the food. There were fried shrimp cakes (my favorite),
fried squid on a stick (didn't actually eat it...), stinky tofu (have eaten it in China, didn't need a repeat), and a nifty little dessert called 'muaji' which are balls of some sort of rice dough in all different flavors sprinkled in powdered sugar. My teacher explained it felt like 'eating a baby's face' which wasn't really the best way to get us to try it (and I wondered how she knew what eating a baby's face felt like), but after eating it I have to agree the texture is 
what I would a imagine their skin to be like, very soft and gooey. (I am not now nor have I ever been a cannibal.) I have since discovered that the little shop below my classroom has muaji-filled rolls which are now my new favorite breakfast. 
We also tried our hand at mahjong bingo. You sit down at your mahjong board and you get to choose about ten tiles and then match the patterns on your board and then somehow you win...but we couldn't really work it out. My teacher did actually win one round but then she had to play again and lost that round and got nothing to show for it. None of us actually knew what was going on, so not surprisingly we all lost.
The weekend went by in a blur as I prepared my presentation and essay for class Monday. From the moment I arrived on campus I have been warned about the local monkey population (the title of this email comes directly from a sign on campus).
Apparently in the not-so-distant past
students had been feeding the monkeys, I believe they are Macaques, who now no longer fear humans and will take your sandwich even when it's not offered. Unfortunately, I came in a particularly hot summer (lucky me) and all the monkeys have been hiding up on the mountains where it's cooler. We had several weeks of near-typhoon weather starting that week, however, and the monkeys finally put in an appearance! 
I was heading to my bus stop which rests under a telephone pole and a big feathery tree and as I crossed the street I noticed there were three large monkeys hanging out on the telephone wires, using them as recliners. I managed to snap some pictures (since I always have my camera at the ready) and I continued walking towards the tree when they raced off the pole and swung into the tree and started yelling and 
shaking branches at me. I slowly put my camera back in its case since I didn't want it mistaken for lunch, and they stopped until I started walking towards my bus stop again when they aggressively defended their tree. So I stood awkwardly in the middle of the parking lot debating how worried they actually made me. On the one hand I am not particularly fond of monkeys or what they throw at people; on the other, I really needed to catch my bus. In the midst of this inner dilemma I didn't notice a guy sitting in his car who found my perplexed, motionless loitering a little unusual. He asked me what I was doing. I stupidly blurted out in Chinese: 'Monkeys!' and pointed to the tree. He raised an eyebrow and continued to question me saying, 'Oh. How many?' 'Three. Three big ones.' 'Just three? 
You're fine.' With an exasperated eye-roll he walked away leaving me to continue wondering why these animals weren't safely behind bars in a zoo where they belonged. Luckily as I was standing there, my bus stopped right in front of me, thus solving the problem for me. Since then, I have also seen baby monkeys and adolescent monkeys playing 'king of the hill' on the little roof top next to my classroom.The monkeys weren't the only animals sighted that
week. On Tuesday there was a giant lizard sitting in the sun on the steps of my school building; it seemed very unconcerned with me or my camera and gladly posed for my pictures. When I went down to the bus stop I went to lean my hand on the yellow/black stripped pole only to be shocked by a medium-sized black lizard cunningly 
suctioned to the black stripe; after letting out a brief yelp I retracted my hand then, after about five minutes of its inactivity, in a very grown-up, mature way, I dared my classmate, Tek, to poke it and make sure it was alive. He declined, but it wasn't there the next day. That's about it for me. In the meantime I have been acclimating myself to the typhoon rain and I have discovered I have to wear my Teevas not my Crocs as any sort of moisture on the tiles of the sidewalks and school halls and I end up on my back as my shoes have no traction. I fell thrice in one day and decided I had had enough, and retired my Crocs to dry-weather only. Remember how I complained about leaving Britain because I'd never see the rain again? I was wrong, and tropical rain is fantastic!!!
All the best,
Amanda
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