I had the wonderful opportunity to tour Asia again this year. There were many highlights, such as biking to the Golden Triangle and up to Doi Suthep near Chiang Mai; visiting with Jason, Marie and Avelina in Taiwan; and touring Taipei with Bekkah. I also got to see the Angkor Wat which I set out to see 10 years ago, almost to the day. It was worth the wait and great to meet up and be toured around by bike with my friend, Paolo. The last time that I was in Asia, was January 2010, at my own expense (as well as the Sando's). This time I cannot thank the Sandtrio (and Backroads) enough for sponsoring my trip. I hope I get to do it again soon.
Below are a random collection of thoughts left over from my original visit (noted in Feb 2010):
Hong Kong is an incredible place where East meets West, Mountain meets Ocean, Island meets City and so on. It was incredible. And yet, what surprised me the most was the ever present bamboo scaffolding, even on large construction projects. Very complex and cool. (As a side note, for a very interesting movie set in Hong Kong see Kung Fu Shuffle).
In Taipei, Jason and I went shrimp fishing. It looked like a popular event (I have since seen it at a night market too). Think sitting in a chair, with a beer, by a clouded wading pool, and trolling with a very little hook baited with chicken liver on a little pole. Don't forget to set the hook when your bobber dips!
Chiang Kai Shek was not the most popular character, but seemed to be pretty effective. (We biked by some Nationalist Chinese villages in Northern Thailand this year as well). When he moved to Taiwan, he took a lot of institutions with him. It would be somewhat similar to the American communists of the 60's and 70's taking the government and the Smithsonian, along with a major university or two, and relocating to Puerto Rico, an island nominally under control but with a different language, heritage, and history. The example is even stronger, if you concede that much of the USA is Non-latin European stock.
One of the institutions that went is the National Palace Museum. Much like the Chinese equivalent to the Smithsonian, it captures the history of the people; however it ranges all the way back to their native, ancient dynasties. It is incredible, set high on stairs in a wooded hillside. My tour guide was the 8th grade history teacher in California of one of the other tour participants. The guy recognized him, and checked at the end of the tour. Small world.
Why would I say that Taiwan has a different language, heritage, history and people from mainland China? Well, a large Fujian Han-Chinese population came in the 13th-15th centuries. Fujian is a southern China province, closest to Taiwan, but across a very treacherous stretch of water; the natives of Taiwan were not very welcoming, which is another reason for the long conquest. There was also a rather recent and extended Japanese colonization, but the native Taiwanese, who are a small minority today are tribes of Austronesian people. From what I saw, they have some interesting traditions which are similar to Native American and Mountain Ukrainian/Ruthenian customs. Today they are recognized and protected. All this before Chiang Kai-Shek and his forces ever arrived.
PS. Delta was awful – the programming, reading material, and music, plus no newspapers or even lotion in bathroom!
My first day in Tokyo was one of great coincidences. I hope it sounds as great in written word as it felt. Shawn was a wonderful host; he let me sleep in and gave me a key. When I got going, I realized that everything I wanted to see happened to be in the area where I was supposed to meet him for dinner (home to the square from “Lost in Translation”, perhaps the world’s largest intersection). I had picked a shrine, architectural walking tour and small museum from my tour book; they were all right there, along with the Yoyogi National Gymnasium by Kenzo Tange which was the one thing in Tokyo from my favorite architecture book at home. Basically, it turned out that everything that I knew about Tokyo was located in one quarter...amazing... so off I went.
I got into the smaller of the two gymnasia (or http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Olympic_Arena.html), because they were having the finals for the Miss Japan Drill Dance Team. I watched a few acts while admiring the building from the inside. They were quite good. Then, I headed to the park across the street with on of the most famous Shinto Shrines. I got to see a wedding (though I am not sure how unusual this is on a weekend); the priest leading the procession was the same one from the picture in my Lonely Planet book. Next, as I followed along the architectural tour, I got a bit overwhelmed by all the consumerism of Japan, and searching for the closest exit in a hipster mall, I came right out in front of the museum that I wanted to see. I thought it was on another street, and I would have ended up backtracking without this little coincidence.
The museum was lovely, compact and you had to trade shoes for slippers inside. It was of Ukiyo-e which is the traditional Japanese woodcut art, like “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” (also a tattoo on my brother’s leg). After that, I continued on my walking tour and as I neared the end, I got crapped on by a bird. This hasn’t happened to me in my adult memory. Ukrainians say that it is good luck, but I tend to think that they say that just to make something good out of the experience. What WAS good luck is that I had my baseball cap on, and it fell squarely on the bill, so I took it off, to deal neatly with later, and had avoided getting it right in the face!
Finally, deciding that I had had enough walking, I checked the book to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything in the area before heading to meet Shawn, and in fact, just around the corner was the ikebana (flower arranging) school that I had wanted to see about observing. That was where my luck changed a bit though: they didn’t have any classes going on until after I left town. After that, I had trouble finding Shawn, but a nice young man lent me his cell phone. He did not speak much English (he thought for abotu 15 seconds on how to answer "Do you speak English?" To which his answer was "a little." Needless to say, I am sure it was a comical conversation to watch, as I tried to convince him that I was no scam artist.)
Next we went for dinner and they were out of eel, a Tokyo specialty, at Shawn's favorite sushi spot. However, then our luck changed again, and I was still riding high through all this, We went for a drink after dinner, and were just about to leave after one round, when a nice group of 3 young ladies, bought us another round! I think that was the first time that it had ever happened to me. They were pleasant to chat with along with their friend, the Brazilian bartender (I think he had set up the deal). We had to go after another couple of rounds though, because we had an early morning planned at the world’s largest fish market (I was going to put my photo of them bandsawing frozen tuna, but the photo on wikipedia is clearer!)
I don’t know where to begin for this last blog in the series. The Japanese surprised me in many ways, such as: they love donuts; the language is related to Turkish; it has a phonetic system (like an Alphabet. You never thought of how one might order a dictionary in Chinese, have you?!); they have so many coins; on the street, they hand out tissue packets with ads on them; the tea is different than Chinese; and they have Ukrainian-style pizza! (I thought I wrote a blog about this way back at the beginning, but I couldn't find it just now. Basically, one time I ordered this dough for lunch during training and thought it was quite good, so I tried out my new language skills to ask what it was. Pizza was the answer, much to my surprise.)
They also do everything on the left – drive, walk, stairs, escalators (though not completely consistently.) On the sidewalk, you must walk on the left and overtake people on the right; you must also walk past people on the stairs so they are on your right. You wouldn’t believe how ingrained the other way is. There are plenty of stairs between shopping malls, subways, and pedestrian overpasses, and I often had that little funny dance with someone, when you don’t know which way they are going to go; though in these cases, I was the one messing up. It even happened with a cyclist once or twice. I always wondered about this in England, but could never detect a trend in the general population. The Japanese are much clearer and for some reason if they want it the other way (which is occasional on the subway stairs), they clearly mark the floors and stairs with lines and arrows.
Japan has borrowed many words and symbols from Chinese, but usually if they have borrowed a symbol, it retains its meaning, but is pronounced completely differently, and vice versa. An interesting example is that one of Japan’s original capitals was Kyoto; this means “Capital of All”. Tokyo means “the Eastern Capital”. Although the Chinese don’t share these sentiments nor pronunciations, the symbols they use do reflect these definitions!
They have so many drink machines on the street – pretty much at every corner - but no trash on the streets. Trash cans are a bit easier to find than in the other two places, but still not common. Neither is grime or smog. My cough cleared up here. There are almost no scooters, which was a huge surprise, and I saw workers vacuuming up outdoor stairs and curbs; they don’t sweep. I didn’t see any dirty panty vending machines, either.
The Subway system is daunting and HUGE! There are several different companies that run lines, and the fundamental set up is different. Whereas, it seems to me, that most subways seek to consolidate people into the major city centers and common thoroughfares, the Tokyo one seeks to distribute everyone over the whole city. This can mean a lot of changing. There is almost always room to sit. I’ve never seen this before. There really are no major lines, and there are stops in just a couple blocks in several directions at almost any point in the city, but you have to pay close attention to which lines they are on, because walking 10 minutes in one direction as opposed to the other, could mean an hour’s difference in subway travel time to your destination because of the circuitous path that would be required by taking a neighboring line. And there is no lining up for the incoming trains, like in the other cities. This is one aspect of organization that the Japanese seem uninterested in.
I have never been in a city where I felt safer. There is almost no crime or shoplifting. I find this unbelievable, because they are almost inviting it. I mean they have a public toilet in every 7-11 (of which there are thousands) where you could easily hide something that you had picked up. The stores are busy and the attendants always busy at the counter, and there are racks of small merchandise items out on the sidewalk!
One thing that I didn’t find so admirable was the Museum of Military History. The samurai info was interesting, and they participated in WWI (which shows my ignorance and explains why it is called a World War). The vast majority of the museum (space wise) is on WWII, though. They call it The Greater East Asian War, and declare that it was on Britain and the USA. They make a (rather strong) argument, that we wanted them to declare war on us. The museum didn’t quite have the same feeling as those in Germany. Interestingly, but unimportantly, from their calendar's perspective, we were attacked on December 8th at Pearl Harbor.
Finally, they differ greatly in how homogenous their culture, religion, language, people and customs are as compared to my other two Asian stops. All the old cultural icons have deep currents in the culture, like Geisha, Samurai, Kabuki, No, Onoy-e, etc, but I didn’t see anything about Bonsai or Origami, though I did see thousands of folded cranes at one temple, and they sculpt almost every tree in their yards to some degree.
How living in Taiwan is dissimilar to a Peace Corps Experience
Everything works. Many things work differently, but efficiently. Such as elevators and building security, or recycling and trash. They don't have dumpsters, so there is a time each day when you take it down to the trash truck that comes to your apartment complex. Recycling does not seem to have caught on to quite the same degree.
There is a shop on every corner, and many are open 24 hours.
All signage is in English. OK, not 100%, but probably 90-95%. It is amazing. Even the little labels on the shelves at the grocery store for each product.
TV channels that come right with your apartments Internet cable are in English as well. Movies are subtitled into Chinese.
Ironically, it seems that less than 10% actually speak English. Even in a major museum in downtown Taipei, we were hard pressed to find someone that could give us simple directions. Anyone that does speak a bit of English, has an English name. It is a bit strange to meet Chinese Raymond's, Bruce's, Sarah's, and Sofia's.
[tangent: unbeknownst to me, Taiwan was a Japanese colony for a little while, so after Mandarin and Taiwanese, the next most spoken language is Japanese. In addition, Mandarin was largely unknown here before the 50's, when the mainland democrats relocated here, and yet today, very few speak Taiwanese]
The electrical plugs are the same.
people do where face masks quite a bit. They also used some sort of digital thermometer to check my temperature through my forehead upon entering the art museum I went to yesterday. However, no one seemed to concerned at the public baths.
Which brings me to what I find similar here. Mostly, that whenever introduced to a new culture, it doesn't take me long to get used to how they do things differently, but it takes me awhile to come to terms with how they break their own rules. For example, there are plenty of face masks, but yet there is a popular seed that people chew here, and spitting the juice all over the sidewalk is perfectly acceptable. Or people take their shoes off to walk into their home, and yet many eat at restaurants where the kitchen is on the street, and utensils are often kept in buckets on the floor where dogs roam by.
PS. Toilet paper goes in the trash can here too! Even to a greater degree than in Ukraine.
I had no adventure getting here (besides a 15 hour flight next to an elderly couple that never seemed to need to get up). I do think that I missed out on a narrow chance to upgrade to first class for $150 (and sit next to Sheryl Crow).
I have been to the top of the world's largest building and seen it's new years celebration. I have been amazed by the physical diversity of the breadth of ethnicity of the Chinese people. I have also been amazed by how approachable the Chinese language seems, and how friendly the people are. I can write Taipei in Chinese, largely thanks to the friendliness of people on the subway.
Yesterday we went to the public baths and dinner in the snack-bonanza of a central night market, and today to a temple on top of a mountain.
This website in no way reflects the feelings or opinions of the United States Government, Peace Corps, any foreign government, or its people.
In an ever more connected world, I feel a need to serve as a world citizen, and to continue the relationships that I have built through my adventures. This is my story, and I write it for you.
To read how this all started, see the first post; and then the one dated July 10, 2007
*Where have I been recently?
To see mermaids and monkeys in Central Florida. To see exposed Cypress trees in Cascades Lake. (last time I posted: working in Thailand, visiting friends in Cambodia and Taiwan, seeing Angkor Wat, and touring Taipei with Bekkah) actually, camping in Central Florida; taking foster son to GA aquarium.
**Where am I now?
In Tallahassee: working, gardening, parenting.
***Where am I going?
To speak at conferences in Florida.
