2 months -- Foreigners in Taiwan

I've now been in Taiwan for two months. It's been great and I've been treated very well. I've learned a lot and my Chinese has certainly improved, although I'm still quite the novice.

Although I may have experienced a slight racist experience today, I want everyone to know that I have been treated well here: in many ways better than I deserve.

My coworker and I went out to lunch at a local steak house. This is a nice looking place, although it is affordable (for steak, keeping in mind that there are no cows in Taiwan). It had just opened about a month ago. My coworker and I were led around by the hostess, she first brought us to the left and, despite seeing an open table quickly turned around and led us to a larger table in the back. We were the only ones there.

Later a large group came in and sat next to us... but got up before settling and presumed to change their seat. I was baffled: did they just request not to be seated next to the foreigners? Was there another explanation? I wondered and conversed with my colleague. Later, an older man and his wife sat, briefly on the other side of the room and then had the same reaction. No way! I must have been a coincidence or something we were overlooking. But the feeling was that we had been stuck in the back of this restaurant and no one wanted to sit next to us.

As a white male I've been exposed to very few racist comments. A black girl called me "White boy," with a snear once or twice. I distinctly recall hearing this once with her friends reply saying, "Leave him alone." Regardless, any kind of racism can really make your blood boil. Just thinking that we may have been segregated to the back room and that people didn't want to sit next to us... the idea infuriated me. Of course my ignorance of the situation was more than enough to calm me down, but...

Let me remind you, we were in a steak house. We ordered NEW YORK STYLE STEAKS! I am a New Yorker!

I encourage everyone to rid their lives of racist actions, to the best of your abilities and within reason. I also thought the steak was okay, at best. If you plan on traveling to Taiwan, get your fill of steaks before your trip.

Taiwan Vs China

There are many differences between Taiwan and China. There are also a lot of interesting similarities. Whatever your opinion on Taiwan's independence is, you cannot argue that Taiwan is a Chinese place. I've heard mainland Chinese people say that Taiwanese were more traditionally Chinese than those in the mainland. I've also heard from a rather educated tourist, that people in the mainland will see a foreigner and try to put up a front... basically they want you to think they are very traditional. Likewise the people in Taiwan had no need to put up a front, they simply lived and breathed traditionally.

This is interesting because Taiwan is more modernized, and has developed faster than China.

But the difference I want to focus on is one my friend often received in her emails. She is Taiwanese and would often receive chain letters comparing Taiwan and China. They always depicted China as a crazy backwards country that new no manners. For example, pictures of kids peeing on a tree in the newly built Disney Land. Or photos of the most disgusting toilets you could ever imagine, with captions like, "Do you really want to go to the bathroom in mainland China?"

Today, as I was walking home from a main street I passed by a toy shop for children. I heard a woman's voice behind a car parked right in front of the shop. She muttered something and then... "right here" (I'm translating of course). I looked over and in plain sight I saw her son with his pants down around his but as he was aiming his pistol. What the hell!? This was two feet from the stores front door and on the side of the road. They didn't even take the couple steps to get all the way behind the car. I was tempted to take out my camera and take a shot right there, but, well, that would have been hard to explain.

In any event, I'm a bit critic of how childish and absurd politics and national judgements are made these days. Think twice before you make a racist or nationalistic statement looking down on another place; and take a better look at the people around you first. This is a valuable lesson for everyone, not just Taiwan.

All things aside, Taiwan may not be the most sophisticated place, especially since I'm living out of a major city, but it is still a great place to live. The people here have all been great.

功夫 -- update

I try to keep this blog more meaningful than a simple list of updates on my life... but there may be some people interested in my Kung Fu training and if not, well I'd love to talk about it anyway.

I've continued to practice Kung Fu on weekday mornings before class. I finished learning the general movements of the first form some time ago, maybe 3 weeks ago by now, but I've only been working on that thus far. I have no complaints whatsoever: I'm being taught really well about the movements and their meanings. I also get two points of view to learn from: my teacher who teaches me a more traditional style, and his grandson who practices a more elegant and modern style. I'm thinking the difference is primarily that the older style is more focused on actual use and the modern style is more focused on competition. Either way it has been great to learn so far. Here is a video clip of Huang Po Sheng practicing the entire form in a performance:

Too bad this video isn't better quality. Po Sheng actually gave me a few vidoes from differnet performances. Here he is doing a different form:

This was the form that they originally started teaching me. After one day Huang Grandfather said this was for children and that Po Sheng would finish teaching it to me, but that he would teach me the above form. Keep in mind my Chinese is still limitted so the message your getting from me is a weakly translated one.

Here is one more video of some guy I don't even know, but he looks good throwing down this open hand form:

I don't know if I'll learn any weapons myself, although they did mention it. As for now, I prefer just to learn the open hand forms, but if anything develops I'll post it. Of course I'll post a video of me doing the form once I have learned it well enough, and then can find someone to video tape.

Typhoon Morakot hits Taiwan

The end of last week was full of rainy days as Typhoon Morakot approached the island of Taiwan. A typhoon is basically nothing more than a hurricane, just located on the Eastern Hemisphere... same thing, different location and therefore a different name. Morakot ended up hitting the island on Thursday night and schools were shut down all across the island, for both Friday and Saturday. Now the storm, as I experienced it, in Taichung (on the western side of the island and near the middle in terms of latitude) was not impressive at all. There has been a lot of rain and there were some strong winds on Friday. However, this is nothing out of the ordinary, we didn't lose power and while I stayed inside all day, there were some people out and about, not many, but a few.

It was a serious storm, but nothing I haven't seen before from living in New York or Boston. Based on the wind speed, it would have been classified as a level 1 hurricane back home. Nothing to shake a finger at, but nothing to get too worked up about either... not in Taichung any way.

The Typhoon was actually quite devastating. It was larger than the entire island of Taiwan and came from the South East -- heading North West. The East side of Taiwan was devastated as well as some places in the South. Since the center of Taiwan is so mountainous, that provided a great deal of protection for the East and the location I am in as well. With that said, most of the damage was due to flooding from intense rains. In one particular case some flooding rose up from a low level drainage path... and then eroded away the foundation of a building on one side. The building ended up collapsing on it's side.

The flooding was really serious in many places and caused a great deal of trouble. Some people did die, too. If you're interested in reading more about the typhoon just do a google search for Typhoon Morakot and you'll be sure to get the updates. Photos are available through the following link:

http://tw.news.yahoo.com/photostory/morakot.html?p=63

Two sides to every story

It's important to remember, when you're reading anything at all, that there are two sides to every story. When you come across an emotional article, or an emotional person, and you start to get caught up in the content of their story... perhaps it seems too outlandish to be true... take a step back, it probably is.

In fact, I've found myself reading serious articles in well known newspapers and then said wait, this is crazy, it can't be true. You're left with a "the sky is falling" sense of the world. So my habit is to go back into the article and find the sources, what in this article is solid truth that they have evidence of and how much is speculation.

I'll give you a brief example of an article I only read briefly and am by no means an expert on. It was in the Taipei times last week and had a headline that really caught my eye: "US says Taiwan should be prepared to stand alone in case of an invasion," I am certain this was not the actual title of the article, but it had this sort of feeling, at least when I read it.

So my first impression was holy crap, why... who is invading... mainland China? Now? Shouldn't the world be more focused on North Korea? Wait is North Korea attacking Taiwan... why? So I started to read and I got to the statement from the US. It said something along the lines of Taiwan should be prepared militarily to stand on it's own for at least a little while in the face of an invasion.

This doesn't mean the US is abandoning Taiwan, it means be prepared, just in case. Of course what would happen if Taiwan was invaded by mainland China? I asked my boss, he's a hard core Taiwanese patriot.... that would never happen. That wasn't my question.. you can't just make up answers for stuff like that (my girlfriend does the same thing when she's upset ;)). But what would happen?

Well, my point is if you read this article and take it as it is written you may find yourself extremely paranoid, not only of an upcoming invasion, but also of a lack of support from the US. What the hell? But in reality there's a lot more gentle politics going on behind the scenes and this was a comment that was blown out of proportion and made into a real spectacle, for what purpose? To sell magazines. Such is the power of the almighty $.

It's not that you shouldn't read the news, or the opinions of others, in fact you can read them and learn a lot from them. You just need to learn how to separate truth from reality with everything you are exposed to, especially if money is involved.

Once again, as a disclaimer, I only read the article in passing and really only skimmed over it, before realizing that this was probably a comment that got blown out of proportion and then dismissed the rest of the article. My statements on the actual subject matter are therefore subject to be completely erroneous, but my purpose here was not to critique the article, I was merely using it as an example.

Henceforth I will try my best to clearly distinguish between fact and opinion in my posts so that you all have a clear idea on what I am actually observing here, but do remember that I still have my biases.

Solar Eclipse

I never posted photos from the partial solar eclipse in town the other day:

Actually I took oversized photos and the moon was rather small so when it's this size, actually seeing the moon is quite hard.

Here is a photo from Kaohsiung, courtesy of Sandra's family:

For more photos check out my galleries: http://picasaweb.google.com/TMDurk

This is where all the good shots go.