So, do I have a Taiwan State of Mind, or am I the weirdo here?

This seems to be making it big across the blogz and Facebook.

I'll admit, I liked it. Especially the first half. It was cute, well-done, fun, didn't take itself too seriously, and didn't shy away from political truths.

"You should know I bleed green, but I ain't that D-double-P though...Chinese Taipei? Fuck that, you got it all wrong. Taiwan Independence, yo, I'm from Taichung!"

Down with it!

But they lost me at the second half, which was basically a verse and a chorus all about Taiwanese women. 

I'm down with appreciating Taiwanese women. Nothing wrong with liking them. Nothing wrong with including them in a song. But did it have to be half the song? Half a verse would have been better. And of that, all of it was about their appearance (long legs, "city of skin", fake eyelashes). The parts that weren't were about them shopping and using smartphones out in public (I liked the part about the betelnut girls - they're such a part of the culture here that I don't have it in me to get a stick up my butt about them). Seems to me there's more to Taiwanese women than their appearance.

And anyway, what about Taiwanese men? I appreciate them in an "I'm married, so even though they can be good looking I'm not interested" way (I blog about 'em a lot because they don't seem to get enough positive press). You couldn't have half a verse about them?

And finally, they couldn't find anything else to say about Taiwan that could have taken up a bit more song space, so you had to devote half the song to Taiwanese women, their looks and their phones?

I guess, as a woman whose Taiwanese female friends are mostly very smart, independent, fun women whose whole selves total far more than their looks, and who didn't come here for the women (I'm straight), devoting half the song to dating Taiwanese girls (and how good Taiwanese girls look) just lost me. I don't relate. The first half of the verse was fun, but by the end I felt it was a bit objectifying. And I do feel at times the (mostly male) expat community tends to objectify Taiwanese women. Not everyone does this, and certainly not every expat man with a Taiwanese girlfriend or wife does it (I'd never imply that), but it happens enough that this made me a bit uncomfortable.

In some ways I guess my Taiwan experience hasn't mirrored the typical bullet list - if you asked me to write a song about it, first I'd laugh at you, but once I stopped laughing it would include little shout outs to festivals, more about food, Hakka culture, men's Japanese hairdos, weird-ass t-shirts, aboriginal culture and hanging out in mountain towns like Lishan with old people. This is a country in which some people get possessed by deities and beat themselves with spiked clubs, and they couldn't find anything else to rap about for the second half of the song?

It's not totally related to the topic, but close enough that I'll say it here: I do feel like a bit of an outlier in the "international" scene in Taiwan (I don't just mean expats, plenty of locals are in it too, for a variety of reasons). It does feel like it's kind of city-centric and party-centric - hopping between the major west coast points and occasionally visiting the touristy rural areas, without venturing far into the non-touristy ones. Where the main events in life are Ladies' Night, Friday nights out, partying in Kending in the summer, a couple of well-known bars, dating Taiwanese women, restaurants and clubs aaaand...that's about it. It's all "yeah, tonight it's On Tap, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Girlfriend wants to go to Barcode, maybe before that we can grab some tai-pis at 7-11...naw bro, next week I'm in Taichung, you know how it is, then it's Kending, that'll be awesome, my girlfriend's calling, talk to you later bro". In the interest of not sounding like a total loser, I won't dwell on how "I'm not anti-party! I go out too!" and stick with "...that's fun to a point, but it doesn't do it for me as a lifestyle". And the video, while fun and well-done, did sort of portray Taiwan through "international culture" rather than local eyes.

So maybe that's why I was all in toward the first half of the video and toward the second half my  usual feeling of not fitting in with that culture came back.

Dunno. Maybe I'm just boring.

Of Sympathy

Some background for those who don't know: the folks where I live are mostly veterans or veterans' family members, and those who aren't would have bought or rented their apartments from someone who was in the military. Before this complex was built this area was a community where only people who'd served in various branches of the military could live, and after the apartments were built on that site, only they could  get them (I'm not sure if they had to buy them, if there were subsidies or if it was a part of their pension). You can imagine that a community  still largely made up of veterans of the army of the Republic of China would be super deep blue. Once a person had an apartment he could sell it, let a family member live there, rent it out, whatever. That's how I ended up living here. Our landlady is a Buddhist nun. I don't know how she got the apartment  -  either she bought it from a retired officer before she became a nun, or she inherited it from a family member who had been in the military, or something. Now she lives in a monastery in Tainan, and the rent on this place (which is extremely reasonable for 25-30 pings in Da'an - everyone, rent from nuns!) is basically her income. 

Anyway. So y'all know that I would like to see an independent Taiwan. Someday, at least. I wouldn't be opposed to an independent ROC made up of what is now Taiwan and its various outlying islands, but my preferred outcome - not that I get a say in the matter! - would actually be an independent, democratic Taiwan completely divorced from any notions of being a part of China - like how people view the USA today.

My neighbors all fought for something very different in their youth. You could go so far as to say that they devoted their lives to their country, and by extension, their beliefs about what that country should be - which more or less correspond to the KMT's beliefs about what the ROC should be.

As my student said - when you meet someone like that, who literally devoted his entire life and livelihood to his country and beliefs, and you in four short words tell them that they're just plain wrong, that's not something they're going to take lightly. 

Even if you do believe they are wrong.

And I do believe it - I don't feel that there's One China, or rather I do feel that there's One China and it's the PRC, which will hopefully become something else - like a country that's not totally fucked up - someday, and that Taiwan is a different country altogether. I do not believe that the ROC "is" China - even if it "was" China, at least in some sense, for however short a period -  is a part of China, should rule Mainland China or any of that. I don't mind its continued existence, but it's not "China". Neither is Taiwan. This is why I wouldn't have celebrated the 100th anniversary of the ROC. It wasn't Taiwan's birthday. Nothing happened in Taiwan on October 10th, 1911. Well, maybe Old Chen bought a chicken. Or Miss Lin caught the local shopkeeper's eye. But that's about it. Certainly no country was born in Taiwan on that day. The ROC didn't even rule it at the time - the Japanese did.

 For this, I do have some sympathy. No, I don't think they've got a point - although they have just as much a right to their beliefs as the other side does - and no, I don't think they're right, but I can understand how it would feel to make your entire career about building, then saving, then rebuilding, something you believe in, and then having someone casually say that "nope, you're wrong, everything you've given your life for is wrong. Sorry you screwed that one up, Grandpa. Welcome to The Republic of Taiwan!"

Of course, Grandpa's not going to change his beliefs, but  I do understand the sting of "so this person really thinks I wasted my life?" Because that's what it implies.

This is why, while I won't  deny or lie about my beliefs - and I have some leeway being a foreigner and all - I tend to be more gentle about them where I live now. For a lot of them, it's more than just a few opinions.

It goes both ways, of course. People - people I agree with and sympathize with more - spent much of their adult lives in prison and many died for Taiwanese democracy and identity. It would be just as offensive to them to be told "nope, you're wrong". This is easier for me to accept, because I agree with them.

It's just good to remember that it's not always so easy as deciding the other guy is nuts.

I don't really have an American equivalent -  the wars we've fought in living memory can be debated, but  none of them deal with the actual provenance of the country. It's not quite the same: arguing US politics and foreign policy with a soldier returned from Iraq who genuinely believed he was "fighting terror", while testy and full of land mines (terrible pun, sorry), is not the same as telling a soldier of the ROC that he's just plain wrong, or telling an independence activist who spent her best years in jail and whose family was killed in the White Terror that she's wrong and that the KMT has "changed" so she should accept it.

Stabbing Foreigners, Moonlighting Strippers and Other Fun

There have been a few posts coming out about Taiwan that, while I wouldn't say I entirely disagree with them, I feel they present foreigner-Taiwanese relations in a light that is not entirely correct or fully realized, or skewed in some way.


A story coming out about five Taiwanese down south who stabbed a foreigner (an Indonesian worker in Kaohsiung) - and some commetary on it - is one.


My issues with this are threefold:


1.) Someone should really address the fact that many Taiwanese see foreign labor in working class jobs - the 外勞- very differently from how they see Westerners or Asians from developed countries. The former tend to be Indonesians, Thai, Vietnamese and Filipino (and some throw Chinese foreign brides into that category). The latter tend to be office workers, engineers, English teachers and other expats in better positions. Nobody calls them 外勞, often they get the more complimentary 外國朋友.


To this end, a friend of mine has mentioned something he once saw from a bus window: a protest against foreigners. I'm not sure if the signs said "Foreigners Go Home" or "Foreign Labor Go Home" - a big difference when rendered in Chinese, but it was pretty clearly aimed at foreign labor. They weren't telling the English teachers to hoof it back to Canada. It's racist and wrong, I know, but that's the attitude.


This isn't fair or right, and certainly not every Taiwanese person feels this way, but it is something that is sadly common. The foreigner stabbed in the case above was an Indonesian worker. I'm certainly not saying that this makes it less serious - far from that. It's just as wrong no matter who the victim is. My point is that this post makes it sound like roving gangs of angry Taiwanese youth are happily stabbing English teachers and foreign office workers in the street. They're not. Heck, they're not out stabbing foreign laborers, either - this is an isolated incident and not an indicator of widespread violence (although violence against foreign labor is a bigger problem than violence against Western/non-working-class expats).


2.) As above, this was an isolated incident. There are simply not wand'ring gangs of disaffected youth waiting to stab us in the streets. Michael Turton's link to this post made it sound like there are groups of angry Taiwanese gathering like the KKK to take out foreigners. Simply not true. No country is 100% safe and Taiwan has its share of crime problems (mostly mob-related, some two-people-in-a-feud or family related, some just random acts of violence), but Taiwan is relatively safe. You're almost certainly not going to get stabbed in the street for being a foreigner.


3.) I don't care for the first part of Ozsoapbox's post:

You’re treated differently (usually positively) simply because you don’t look Taiwanese, people stare, they’re perhaps more careful about what they say and of course there’s always the familiar ‘OMG WAIGOREN WAIGOREN!’ calls you hear randomly.
Calls to which the equivalent in the west would be going up to an Asian looking person, pointing and shouting ‘OMG ASIAN ASIAN!’ 

The first sentence is true - you are treated differently often positively, because you're a foreigner, but that's true around the world. It's not unique to Taiwan. It even happens in New York.

I haven't found that people are more careful about what they say - if anything I feel people say more outrageous things to me because I'm not Taiwanese, so people who hold their tongues among Taiwanese for fear of social exclusion will tell me their uncensored opinions because I'm different and can't exclude them in that way, or I might be more accepting. Sometimes these opinions are refreshingly honest and insightful. Sometimes they're downright racist or ignorant. Like people everywhere.

But mostly, it's simply not true that shouting "Waiguoren!" at a foreigner is the same as a foreigner shouting "Asian!" at an Asian person. Neither is a good idea, and I don't condone either, but c'mon. Our home countries are generally speaking far more diverse than Taiwan. "Asians" are not an anomaly or unique, at least not where I'm from. They don't stand out. Many people of Asian heritage were born and raised where I was from, meaning they're just as American as I am. It's very different to go up to an Asian in, say, Washington DC and shout "OMG ASIAN!" than to go up to a foreigner in Taipei and do the same thing. I'm not saying it's a good idea (I refuse to go down the "different culture, they don't know better" route because I don't believe it's true), just that it's not the same thing. We really do stand out. We are a relatively rare sight. It's human nature worldwide to notice things like that. I'd love to see a world in which nobody commented on it, but for now we're stuck with what we have.

Anyway, really, for those of us in Taipei - how often do you get the "WAIGUOREN!" treatment? Maybe from very small children who don't know better (true of children the world over - American kids say similarly embarrassing things) but from everyone else, including older children, does this happen at all in places with high concentrations of foreigners? I don't know where Ozsoapbox lives, but I have observed that once you get to an area where foreigners are not unique, not an anomaly and don't stand out, people stop commenting. Why? We're all still foreigners. We're still not Taiwanese. We still look different - it's because there are enough of us, like Asians in most American cities, that we don't stand out. And poof, the problem disappears, because it wasn't a problem of racism to begin with. 

There's also this post - and I'm commenting on it as a foreigner who doesn't feel connected to the foreign community. I'm not saying I'm "Taiwanese" or that I don't have expat friends, but there is a community of expats that I don't really feel I relate to or connect to.

Sure, one of the two people mentioned in the altercation was a foreigner, but I see nothing in the news item that indicates that the Taiwanese treat all foreigners as the same or as a cohesive "other". The same altercation could have taken place between two Taiwanese people and been largely the same, albeit without "illegal work status" issues (though "moonlighting as a stripper" would have been mentioned) or the word "foreigner" used. Otherwise, all I see is an indication that there was an altercation and one of the two happened to be a foreigner. Not any sign that all Taiwanese think of all foreigners in a certain way and treat them as such.

The same goes for the full article - I don't think many Taiwanese would think that moonlighting as a stripper is "appropriate behavior" for another Taiwanese, either (but that has more to do with conservative values). As for the guy in question, the law is the law. Just because there's a law that a foreign worker can only do for a living what his/her work permit states doesn't indicate that Taiwanese all think of us as One Big Group of Other. I also get the strong feeling that the government is more concerned with foreigners moonlighting in dodgy industries (such as stripping) or downright illegal ones. If you work as an English teacher and freelance teaching private classes, editing, doing IT work or whatever else, well, that's technically illegal but not something to worry too much about. Those aren't dodgy situations that are likely to get you deported. 

The article itself is kind of ridiculous, though. "Foreign workers to be targeted"? Um, so they're going to hunt us down in the streets and corral us into deportation cells? Hardly. Why the alarmist headline? "Good samaritan"? Say WHAT? Does that even make sense?

Culture Notes: Turkey

On Shopping

It's hotter but less humid here than in Taiwan. The sun beats down more fiercely but you don't sweat nearly as much. You'd expect, with the harsh sun pummeling the streets that they'd have a shopping culture more akin to Taiwan's, where everyone does their browsing in night markets: where old ladies get up at dawn to buy vegetables (and demand free green onions), where you might shop in a department store by day but street shopping culture really doesn't happen until the sun sets.

But it's not - we walked to the bazaar area of Gaziantep at about 8pm yesterday, just as the outside weather was becoming bearable, if not pleasant, and the whole thing was shut down...just as prime shopping time would be starting in Taiwan. We returned today in the blaze of the post-breakfast sun and it was buzzing.

On Restaurant Culture

It's fairly common in Taiwan to get a menu and be asked within thirty seconds what you want (or some similarly short period of time), and then the food comes quickly. It's not taken away until you are very clearly done and your plate is preferably clean, and the restaurant will offer to pack up as small an amount as two dumplings or five forkfuls of fried rice. Restaurants close at around 2pm and re-open for dinner - if you don't eat at normal mealtimes this can be very irritating indeed (and we don't eat at normal mealtimes, so we eat more 7-11 food than we'd like because everything's closed when we do eat). You pay a small amount for extra xiaochi - little plates not unlike tapas or appetizers, often vegetable or tofu based.

In Turkey, you might not even get a menu - the waiter will appear and ask what you want and only when you look at him questioningly might a menu appear (read: might). The food comes quickly, usually, but sometimes it has to be prepared: we once waited 15 minutes for a kunefe (white cheese covered in vermicelli, cooked and doused in sugar syrup). You  get a bunch of free stuff with the meal, usually salad and bread, possibly tea depending on the restaurant or if the owner likes you. We've also gotten free bulgur patties with tomato paste and a chicken stock flavor, free melon, free bottled water...if it appears and you did not ask for it, you can assume it's included. You are not expected to finish your meal: it's perfectly normal to push your plate away and have the waiter take it with plenty of bread and salad still there. With drinks, your glass might be taken away even if you have a centimeter of liquid left to drink.

The best part? Restaurants tend to stay open all day, and are even busy. You can eat when you want, even if that time is 2 or 3pm. We wandered into Imam Cagdas, a pretty famous joint, at 1:30pm expecting to hit the tail end of lunch, but instead business picked up straight through 3pm when we left and was hopping when we paid the check.

Women do not dine out as often though - other than in large, famous restaurants I find I am often the only woman in the restaurant (but they're still happy to cater to me). Not in Istanbul of course, but definitely in Gaziantep.

On Food

Oh, how I have missed baklava, pistachios, cheese, olives, yoghurt, good kebab and good bread! I love Taiwanese food and the various cuisines of East Asia in general, but really sometimes I need a good infusion of olives and yoghurt.

I have to say, though, the food. It is so good. It's like Singapore, or a particularly good night market like Keelung: it doesn't matter where you eat - everything is good. You have to try really hard to get a bad meal in Turkey. Even the oily bain-marie porsyon dishes we had in a bus station were good. I am not normally into chicken - I prefer lamb, pork or duck - but I just ate the most amazing chicken shish kebab, I can't even tell you how good it was. Earlier today I had ezme - a spicy finely-chopped salad of hot red peppers, cucumber, tomato and parsley topped with pomegranate molasses and olive oil, and I practically creamed myself it was so good.

On Nostalgia

Being Armenian from Turkey, or rather being of an ancestry that is Armenian from Turkey, it surprises me how many cultural "things" here remind me of that side of my family: expressions on women's faces that bring flashbacks to my Nana (great grandmother, who died in the early '90s) who had similar mannerisms and facial tics, bits and pieces of language that call to mind the Armenian polyglot that my older relatives used to speak to each other (it was Armenian, and this is Turkish, but the particular strain of Hatay Armenian they spoke was heavily influenced by Turkish). The hand-crocheted white doilies, the lahmacun and plates full of lemon, onion, tomato, cucumber and parsley, food serving vessels for sale in markets that look like the decorative serving dishes my family owns, the carpets that remind me of our carpets, the Turkish coffee cups that look like my mom's heirloom Turkish coffee cups, and so many other things that remind me of home and, although I can't explain it, make me feel like "yeah, I KNOW that".

As a kid it didn't occur to me that all the idiosyncracies and weirdnesses of my family, mostly food-related ("why do we have eight types of olives? All my friends just eat two - the black kind from a can and the green kind from a jar. Why are our olives all wrinkly, or too big, or purple?" Why do we eat hummus on Thanksgiving? Nobody else does that." "Why does my family eat pilaf when everyone else just makes pasta or rice? My friends don't even know what pilaf is") were actually cultural tidbits that survived the diaspora and generations that followed.

On Women's Freedom

In Taiwan I feel basically free to go just about anywhere, barring a few local gangster bars in which foreigners, let alone women, are not welcome. Here, we pass several tea salons per day full of men: I know that if we sat there and asked for tea that we'd be served, but I also know that I'd get Looked At Disapprovingly because women just don't drink tea in tea gardens. They socialize at home or just outside in doorways whereas men get chairs, tea and backgammon. I feel welcome in all restaurants but am often the only woman. So far going without a headscarf and wearing short sleeves has been fine, but tomorrow we head to Sanliurfa and I've been warned that I should really cover my arms and hair. I do feel it's restrictive - in terms of clothing more so than Bangladesh. In terms of going out, it's about the same (not in Istanbul or Goreme, but definitely in Gaziantep and, so I hear, Sanliurfa).

I do feel that I get more respect as a part of an obviously married couple, but at the same time I feel more invisible for it.

On Religion

It's odd, trying to compare secularized Islam in Turkey with the sort of "it's all good" approach to folk religion in Taiwan, but I do feel there are similarities. The religious practices are there, such as observing Ramazan (Ramadan) or headscarves and modest clothing for women, or not drinking, or praying when necessary...but plenty of people don't follow them. We've seen a lot of women even in Gaziantep in shirt sleeves with their hair uncovered, have eaten during the day around locals who were also eating despite the fact that it is Ramazan, and heard calls to prayer that nobody around us heeded. At the same time, the restaurants do fill up when it's time for iftar (breaking the daily fast), the news broadcasts the rolling westward of cities in which it is now time for iftar, and business hours do reflect it in some ways.

I feel similarly in Taiwan - the temples, fortune blocks, rituals and other assorted religious hoopla is there if you want it, but there is no great pressure to avail yourself of any of it (except possibly from your mother-in-law) unless you want to.

On Linguistic Incompetence and Being Mistaken for a Local

These two are related. In Taiwan, I am very obviously a foreigner, and yet high-functioning in the language. I still run into language snafus, but generally speaking I'm day-to-day fluent in Chinese now, and can slip into it without thinking (even if I make mistakes). This surprises people, because I don't look local and don't look as though I should speak Chinese so readily.

In Turkey, I've been mistaken several times for a local (usually when I have a headscarf on). This is odd to me, because I don't look even remotely Turkish or Armenian: I got the Polish genes from my dad's side. I was not surprised when nobody looked twice at me in Prague, but here I don't feel like I could pass for a local, but hey, apparently I can.

And yet I don't speak Turkish. The same surprise that crosses the faces of many Taiwanese when they realize I can speak Chinese crosses the Turks when they realize I don't speak Turkish at all, aside from a few basic words I've been learning as we travel. Here I look like I should be able to converse, but I can't - and it's frustrating and a bit of a shock, albeit an expected one.

It's been awhile since I've been in a country where I could pass for a local but don't speak the language - the last time was really Prague, but enough people in Prague speak English that it wasn't really an issue.

I'm also so used to being able to be in a foreign country (if I could still call Taiwan foreign - I'm not sure I can) and communicate easily that it's frustrating that now, I can't. We stuck to touristy places in Egypt due to time constraints, Indonesian was easy enough to deal with (super simple grammar) that it wasn't a problem, English is widely spoken in India and the Philippines, and in Japan we always spend time with our friends who speak Japanese. In Central America we could get by with our high school Spanish.



I have more to write about but will save that for a second post...

Reason #24 to love Taiwan

The lack of "backpacker ghettoes".

Although I’d like to see more tourists discover Taiwan, I have to say after traveling for a week in a tourism-heavy country that being relatively non-touristy has its advantages. Of course, those huge Korean, Japanese and Chinese tour groups muck up Sun Moon Lake, Alishan, the National Palace Museum and Taipei 101 but otherwise you can often enjoy the best of Taiwan relatively peacefully.

It also means that when you are enjoying what Taiwan has to offer, you’re enjoying the same things that the locals (or domestic tourists) are. You have more chances to interact with and possibly even befriend locals.

In both India and Turkey, it has seemed very much like the backpackers have their “downtown” and stuff to do, the upmarket tourists have their little private getaways and tour buses, and the locals have their own completely separate lives. I do feel that I’ve had more friendly interactions in Turkey than in India with locals not trying to sell me something, but generally speaking I feel like everything is split between “tourist ghetto” and “local area”. It’s very hard to cross between the two unless you’ve lived in that country for awhile. I did cross that line in India because I studied there and lived with a family, but in my travels around the country I did feel quite segregated.

Take the town of Puri in Orissa, India. It has, for all intents and purposes, two downtowns. One has a relatively clean beach, isn’t all that attractive but has upmarket hotels and a few temples. It caters to locals and domestic tourists on weekend trips from Calcutta. Down the road is the backpacker downtown, where there are hostels, pensions, Internet cafes, restaurants serving cheap food and bhang lassi and a disgusting beach. One traveler I met came across a dead cat on that beach. Almost all would talk about how every local walking the sands either wanted to scam you, sell you marijuana, or take you home for a “traditional family dinner”, at the end of which you’d be presented with a massive bill.

And ne’er the twain shall meet.

Hampi is similar – there seems to be an area where locals live, and an area where all the backpacker stuff is. There are a few local places in the backpacker area, and you never see foreigners in them (we went to one for breakfast every day because the food in the backpacker cafes was so lackluster. Give me good idli and dosa anyday over some flabby banana pancake). Cochin is just about the same.

In Goreme, there is more local life – I’m writing this in Word from a tea garden full of old local guys who hang out all day chatting and, seeing as it’s Ramadan (Ramazan), will start drinking and eating as soon as the sun goes down. That said, I do feel segregated from locals: the things I’m here to see aren’t the things they bother with, and the best you can hope for is a random friendly encounter or some domestic holidaymakers enjoying what their own country has to offer.

I don’t think I even need to start in on Bangkok, which has its “real” downtown and then it has Khao San Road, or Luang Prabang, where the entire main strip is hotels, souvenir stands and restaurants for tourists.

In Taiwan it’s really not an issue. I live there, but one could easily be a tourist in Taiwan, visiting Tainan, Taroko Gorge, parts of Taipei, Lugang or other points of interest and have plenty of chances to meet and mingle with locals. The downtown you visit is the same downtown they visit. Dihua Street is actually a market that locals patronize. Locals from Taipei County and beyond visit the same Old Streets and shop in the same places (including the artists’ market near Red House – nothing like a strip of souvenir stands in Turkey, Nepal or India. Not even close). Most of the people you meet in Jiufen are domestic tourists, and the temples are of course full of locals, not tourists looking to ogle (which is how I felt in some of the larger shrines in Tokyo – very few local visitors).

Yes, I do want to see more tourists, especially independent travelers, coming to Taiwan to see what the country has to offer. At the same time, as a long-term expat, I rather enjoy the fact that it doesn’t have backpacker ghettoes.

The New Taiwanese Traveler

The other day we had the pleasure of meeting some Taiwanese travelers here in Cappadocia. We chatted for a bit – they were sitting right outside our room (which was off the swimming pool and terrace lounge) and I asked if they were Korean – don’t jump all over me for that – come to Goreme first and see how many Korean tourists there are. I would say at least 1/3 of the tourists passing through are just that…so it stands to reason that most Asian tourists here would be Korean (and most are – these two just happened not to be).

When we learned they were Taiwanese, I got all excited and broke out my Taiwanese. We found out that they live about ten minutes away from us, in Gongguan (we live in Jingmei), and they were completely shocked that I speak some Taiwanese, that we’ve lived there for five years, and that I also speak Chinese with a Taiwanese accent. The woman’s mouth was practically hanging open.

They had just arrived and were recovering from the flight, but were planning to go hiking the next day – I told them about our long day hike under the fiery Turkish sun through the Rose Valley and Red Valley, and recommended it as well as the local sunset viewing point. I don’t know if they were planning to hike alone or hire a guide – I do hope they decided to try it on their own. We did and we survived!

We also learned that they are quite young: the woman was either about to graduate or had just graduated – she wasn’t quite clear on that point, perhaps between undergrad and graduate school – and the man had graduated and spent a year in Japan working in Logistics. Neither is working currently, which is why they decided to take this trip. Both were well aware that once they started their careers that they’d be working the grueling hours expected of most Taiwanese and didn’t seem too keen to start on that back-breaking path before they had to. I praised them for this: Taiwan needs more people who opt out, albeit temporarily. The only way the work culture will change will be if a majority of workers refuse to take it.

(I know. Good luck with that).

What lightened my heart was learning that they were traveling independently. “A tour group is relaxing,” the man said, to which I replied “Too relaxing! But most Asians seem to prefer taking tours. There’s no adventure!” He laughed…because it’s true. I don’t mean to judge too hard: it’s fine for people who like tours to take tours. I don’t want to prod them off the bus. It’s just not my preference and yes, I do find such tours interminable and lacking in local interaction, adventure and, well, fun. I do realize that my idea of fun isn’t everybody’s though, and your average Taiwanese tourist (or average tourist, period) doesn’t find language snafus, getting lost on a mountain, trying to figure out an insane bus station or taking an endless string of wrong turns that dump one in some crazy part of town that may or may not be awesome to be “fun”.

What this tells me is that maybe, just maybe, there’s another type of Taiwanese traveler emerging in the younger generation. Maybe, just maybe, while their parents sign up for all-Taiwanese bus tours of exotic locations, seeing everything as they sit under glass and listen to a bullhorn, or perhaps follow a little flag and wear hideous caps and t-shirts, that their children will set off on their own. They’ll buy plane tickets, read a guidebook (maybe even post on Thorn Tree?), plan an itinerary, and just go. They won’t freak out about how to communicate. They’ll learn the universal language of charades and maybe improve their English. Maybe they’ll even learn phrases in other local languages. I don’t mean to insult the current crop of thirty and fortysomething Taiwanese travelers here, but it has been my observation through talking to students – who always sign up for tours rather than going independently – that they really are nervous about speaking English abroad and even more nervous about learning phrases in, say, Spanish, Turkish, French or what-have-you.

I would really welcome this – a new generation of Taiwanese travelers who are not afraid of a few risks and a little adventure. Who just go, meet new people who are not Taiwanese and not souvenir shop owners or waiters, who try food at restaurants they are interested in rather than where the tour bus dumps them for a pre-fab meal, and who prefer to watch a sunrise or sunset without the endless nattering of some guide through a megaphone.

A more approachable Asian tourist: the kind locals and other travelers alike can get to know at the local coffee or tea haunt, downmarket restaurant, point of interest or hotel lounge rather than seeing them from a distance in a little color-coordinated group, herded to and from a bus. A tourist who might try hitchhiking, who you can see trying to bargain with a vendor using a phrasebook (or better yet, without one), or who sets off on a whim to see what’s around.

We have noticed this as well among Koreans in Cappadocia – there are a lot of them here, and yes, many of them are in groups, but the younger ones do seem to be traveling independently or in small cliques of two or three rather than this massive horde on a bus. We’ve seen them carting backpacks around Goreme and entering tourist sites on their own. They’re all younger – if this is a trend, it is a generational one.

Maybe that newfound sense of travel adventure will spill into other areas of their lives and we’ll see a new generation of intelligent, risk-taking Taiwanese who aren’t content with working 25 hours a day in an office. Who strike off to do their own thing and tell their IT companies and accounting firms where to stick it.

I realize this is a lot to extrapolate from a single pair of young, independent Taiwanese travelers in Cappadocia. Perhaps I hope too hard.  Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if this was the sign of a trend rather than a one-off meeting with a pair of unusual young kids?

Another video...because I felt like it.

I enjoyed making a video slideshow of Taipei photos so much that I went ahead and made another one for Taiwan, set to a different song by the same Taipei band.

Enjoy!

Geographically Polyamorous

(This is almost a stream-of-consciousness bit of writing - be warned.)

Me and the Boy at Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant in DC. If I look tired in that photo, it's because I was.

Reverse culture shock is a bitch.

Now that I've been in Taiwan for almost 3 years, it's doubly hard because I feel it on both ends of the plane ride. Both are home; I love them and I feel weird pangs for them. It's like having two boyfriends, Taiwan and the USA, and India as a fling on the side.

When we got off the plane in New York, I saw Brendan off to the SkyTrain and I took the bus into New York. It began with hearing familiar New York accents on cell phones and seeing the city skyline peep above the buildings as we left Queens (or did we skirt through Brooklyn?) and realizing that I am in a country where I am not a minority. Then there was the cold wind as I entered Grand Central Station and waited at the big clock to meet my friend (and former guy-I-dated) Matthew. The big clock isn't very big at all, and it sits atop an information kiosk in the center of the main hall. All around me, people were waiting. An Asian girl who chatted in flawless English on her cell phone until her friends arrived and the language shifted to Japanese. A tough-looking blond in a long red coat . She wore dark sunglasses despite the fact that it was evening and quite overcast, not to mention that we were indoors. A tall man in a yarmulke throwing staccato yelps into a phone when his business partner failed to arrive. And me, a chubby redhead, waiting for a tall, lanky guy in a suit. Without the benefit of a cell phone, I looked the most uncomfortable. I couldn't seem to stay out of the snake-lines unfurling from the kiosk. Kept shifting the bags at my feet - jute bag from India between my ankles, black duffel in front, awkwardly held backpack.

Eating Italian food as we chatted and heard the train announcements for the Harlem Line, the Hudson Line, the New Haven line. Happy in the security of my relationship, knowing that Brendan wasn't worried in the least about my meeting up with Matthew, who is now happily engaged.

The sounds and smells were all too familiar (I'd once waited in this station at midnight with a friend, avoiding a puddle of vomit on the stairs, as a late-night train took its sweet time to arrive). I'm not even from New York City and already I felt it.

The sound of my parents' white Honda as they picked me up in Poughkeepsie. The crisp, Hudson-smelling air around the train station.

The next morning I awoke with a fluffy black coon cat on my legs; Cinders wanted food and figured I wouldn't know that mom had already fed the cuddly little beasts. The same drafts from the circa-1910 windows, the same creaks of my parents' old farmhouse. I came downstairs to the smell of expensive coffee and the pontifications of some guy on Today Now! With Annoying Cute Blonde and Generic Handsome Man or Good Morning America or Morning Joe or one of those typical morning programs I always associate with a visit home. Why? Because thanks to jet lag, I am invariably awake at the unacceptable hour of 7am to watch them.

Side note: Indonesia has the same kind of programs. Imagine my double-culture-shock when, over breakfast in Sumatra, something along the lines of Good Morning Indonesia came on - complete with generically attractive hosts, trite guests, and rattan furniture set in a studio with large windows overlooking tropical ferns and hibiscus flowers.

Then, of course, there was Honey Bunches of Oats. Honey! Bunches! Of! Oats! With that unique farmer's market milk that my parents always buy. It snowed a bit - snow! Ice! Cold weather! Things I haven't felt or seen for years.

After I went shopping with my parents at Adam's Fairacre Farms (we got the usual - olives, Wensleydale cheese, White English Stilton with mango and ginger, goat cheese, truffle mousse pate, table water crackers, three other kinds of cheese, olives and a bunch of other food I can't remember), we came back and watched, of all things, Antiques Roadshow. Antiques Roadshow! Rainbow, the oldest and weirdest of our cats, curled up on mom's neck like a dead fox stole the way she always does.

My adorable cousin Nikola with plastic wineglass. He's training early in the family art of drinking like Europeans (his mother is an actual European, at least. The rest of us pretend with our wine and our cheese and our British comedies on PBS).

Then I thought: all these little things remind me of home far more than the big things. It wasn't seeing my parents - we talk on the phone often enough - or driving up to our house. It wasn't hearing spoken English around me or not having to communicate in a second language. It wasn't any of the major stuff; all of my reverse culture shock stems from 1910 windows, Honey Bunches of Oats, that particular shade of filtered light and blow of cold river wind that defines the Hudson Valley winter, Good Morning America, the announcements at Grand Central Station and Antiques Roadshow.

DC was another gauntlet of reverse culture shock. We used to live in a lovely wood-floored townhouse off Columbia Pike. My closest friend in DC, M. (her name is very unique so if I post it, it'd be too easy to identify her in real life) still lives on the Pike, but a little further up. The sound of Spanish, Amharic, Moroccan Arabic and other languages being spoken around me brought back some memories; the Ethiopian breakfast we enjoyed at Dama brought back others with its dark, jammy coffee and selse - spiced eggs with crusty bread. The Lideta Gebeya where we picked up berbere spice to make my famous Ethiopian chicken satay and the "Esoterico" store next door that sells Peruvian spices, plastic saints, old baskets, fifteen million kinds of dried beans, general religious accoutrements for your home shrine, and trinkets galore. The sushi restaurant next to the Cinema and Drafthouse, which shows second-run movies and cold beer. Mrs. Chen's Kitchen of Delicacies, serving horrific and wonderful American Chinese, Altacatl Salvadorean Restaurant, El Pollo Rey, Rappahannock Coffee, Bob&Edith's, Bangkok 54...and the #16 bus that cuts through it all. I love that neighborhood - the fact that it is not rich and nowhere near gentrified, it's cool but not hip (rather like Taiwan), it's honest and working class, and generally safe - you can tell from its age and diversity that it is very, very real. I can only hope it doesn't become chi-chi. Arlington does not need another Crate&Barrel or Wolfgang Puck, and I don't want to see it turned into a fake-funky U Street.

U Street - I love the place but it's gotten a bit gentrified. Lines of white folks at Ben's Chili Bowl! Overpriced Ethiopian food (whaaa?)! U-Sushi and Mocha Hut. Gah.

Brendan and his cousin David, who is showing off his $2.50 can of Coke. Two-fitty? What?!

We held a dinner party our first night there, with Dana and Ernesto as hosts and M. as the organizer. Whenever someone had a question - "what's this?" "Why is Jenna in the kitchen?" "There sure is a lot of wine, isn't there?", "What is that smell?"- the answer was inevitably "It's a Jenna Party!". These are the parties that have become iconic through the years: foreign food, a guest list that starts at 8 and caps at 15 or so, laughter and dirty jokes, horrendous board games for which we should never be judged in the afterlife, slight but becoming drunkenness that is funny, rather than embarrassing, the next morning. We made Ethiopian Chicken Satay served with injera, hummus, Iranian salad, Iranian rice, olives and a vegetable plate, brie and baguettes, and a chocolate truffle cake (triple the cocoa for any basic chocolate cake recipe, and add some liquor and extra cream. Make two. Brush with alcohol reduced with preserves or sugar. Spread the top of the first cake with a thick layer of truffle batter (chocolate, cream, butter, spices and alcohol), place second cake on top. Pour heated pure chocolate flavored with more alcohol on top. Allow to cool and decorate with confectioner's sugar, cinnamon, cocoa and truffles made with leftover batter. Use only dark chocolate. Any alcohol will do - I usually use Godiva chocolate liqueur and flavor with amaretto, Frangelico or Chambord.)

Me, Judy, Brendan and Beth in Crystal City.

I freaked out in a Target while I was home. It's just so...big. Fifty hundred jabillion kinds of moisturizer. An entire rack of different kinds of licorice. Do you want this kind of toilet paper, that kind, or one of the two hundred other kinds? We ran rings around the store looking for some basic items. Clothes that actually fit! Trying to get anywhere was like doing laps across a football field of merchandise through wide, pearly aisles. Whoa. I thought I might be coming down with Target-induced epilepsophrenia, so we finished up our shopping and left.

American airport security - "Why are you going to Taiwan?" "We work there." "So you both live in Taiwan?" "Yes." "Can you prove it?"...as we hand over our ARCs, which we are pretty sure the check-in clerk can't even read.

M., her boyfriend Tom and Beth at Dukem on U Street

The problem with traveling is that I like almost everyplace I go. That means I form attachments easily, and maintain them with several places. I'm describing reverse culture shock from visiting the USA, but the truth is I feel it almost everywhere I go for the second time. I spent a semester in India years ago and still feel a little jolt whenever I return; rickshaws and aluminum tumblers filled with foamy coffee, strings of jasmine and marigolds and masala dosa on flat platters or banana leaves. Milk sweets! Charmingly archaic Indian Newspaper English. Long-distance train trips in 3-tier sleeper cars. Shock when I see how things have changed; fewer people on the streets begging, more people looking as though they enjoy three square meals. More paved roads, more ATMs. You can buy train tickets and reserve mid-range hotels online now. More honesty. A glittering shopping center and a few funky bars off MG Road in Bangalore. At least there still seems to be livestock everywhere. I think I'd cry if that went away.

I felt it in Japan - we only spent 45 minutes in the airport, but in that 45 minutes a lot came back. White-gloved security personnel who maintained a brisk pace through the X-ray and baggage screening, and who had painstakingly memorized questions in English ("Are you carrying any riquids or flammable items?"). Bathrooms that smell of mint chocolate and sinks emit a perfectly warm stream of air and freshly cented foamy soap. Duty-free shops chock full of consumer goods - Chivas Regal for the men, Coach and Dolce for the women, and Japanese fans, jackets, kimonos, soaps, tea, shoes, dolls, paper, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. for the foreigners - all staffed by perfectly attentive sales clerks in pristine uniforms who beckon you inside. Signs that say "Welcome to Japan" in English, but "Welcome Home" in Japanese.

And I felt it again in Taiwan - Huanying Guanyiiiiiin! from the duty-free shops. The damp, cool air of midnight as we left the airport. Guo-Guang airport bus. That particular sound of traffic as it burbles around Taipei Main Station at all hours of day or night. The little beepy sounds that the taxis make, and the beaded seatcovers that drivers favor. Roosevelt Road late at night, light wind and the threat of rain. Even at night, you can tell its cloudy. Two quick dinners from 7-11, which is glittering and bright, unlike its ghetto brethren in the USA. Speaking Chinese at the cash register. The particularly whiny meow of Zhao-Zhao and the chicken coop down the street as its doomed inhabitants settle in for the night. The red-and-yellow glow of a Wellcome sign on the wet streets. Waking up to Coughing Old Man, Roosevelt Road traffic, chirping birds and Zhao-Zhao, who wants to catch them. The particular smell of apartments and cement that wafts in our window on the soft dawn breeze. I have jet lag again, and I can't sleep. This time, there is no Today Now! show to wake up to, and only one cat to feed.

It was a great trip, but I'm happy to be back...home? Is it home? I love all of these places and I'd like to call them all home. Is that even allowed? If I spend a month in Vietnam getting my CELTA certificate and love that too, does it qualify as 'cheating'? If we realize our dream (well, my dream but Brendan likes the idea) of volunteering for a few years in an Indian village as teachers, is that a betrayal of Taiwan? If I stay in Taiwan forever and don't move back to the USA, is that a betrayal of my native country? Is geographical polyamory acceptable?