On Traveling Solo or Coupled

Abu Dhabi International Airport

I'm currently hanging out in Ab Dhabi International Airport awaiting our flight to Istanbul. The trip has begun! This means that until October, you can expect lots of pictures and travel stories from Turkey, but not a lot about Taiwan. I hope you enjoy it anyway. In late October I'll be back in Taiwan and back to blogging on my more usual topics.

For now, some thoughts on traveling alone vs. traveling with my husband.

Not to brag or anything (OK, fine, TOTALLY to brag) but in years past I did a fair amount of travel by myself. Sometimes to perfectly safe places like Prague and Hong Kong, sometimes to places where people would blink a bit when they realized that I went alone, as a woman not yet 25 years of age. Laos and Thailand (totally fine for a solo female traveler, but would still earn some double takes), India (requires a bit more precaution but still fine) and Bangladesh (which seems like a place a young white woman shouldn't go alone but actually I found it to be safe and hospitable).

My point isn't to be all "look how tough I am" but to say that when I did these trips alone, locals in those places did accord me respect. Especially in India and Bangladesh, people went out of there way to accommodate a young foreign female - friendly ticket agents booking me in train carriages with families who would look out for me on long journeys, student groups inviting me along on field trips, hotel owners keeping an eye on me to make sure nobody dodgy was on my trail. I booked my own hotels, picked up my own boarding passes, talked to people as me, alone. All things that we Western women do when we travel and don't think twice about.

And all things that I had taken for granted in Taiwan. I write a lot about women's issues there, and sometimes I may make it out to have more problems in that realm than it does. For the record, compared to the rest of Asia and much (if not almost all) of the rest of the world, Taiwan is pretty damn good when it comes to women's equality and rights. Not perfect - there are some discriminatory practices and laws I'd like to see change - but pretty good.

In Taiwan I never feel like an accoutrement - an accessory - to my husband. I feel addressed in equal measure; generally whoever we talk to will address whichever one of us speaks first. If it's clear I'm the one making the plans (which I usually am because I'm good at it) or I am the one who speaks better Chinese (which, sorry sweetie, I love you, but I do) people will talk to me. There is no underlying assumption that I am subservient to or deferential to my husband, or that he is the de fact head of the "household" to whom everyone should speak. There is no assumption that he will speak for me or make decisions for both of us.

Instead, in Taiwan I very much feel that there is an underlying acceptance that while clearly a couple, that we are two people and either of us can be addressed initially without taking away respect from the other. If the person approached is my husband, I get some eye contact or at least acknowledgement. If it's me, he gets the same.

Now, we're on the road. I've mentioned our upcoming Turkey trip and here we are, waiting for our connection to Istanbul in Abu Dhabi International Airport. When we landed in Manila for our first leg, the person who picked us up didn't even look at me. "Are you Mr. Brendan C.?" he asked my husband.
No asking who I was, no eye contact, not even a hello. He didn't even seem to notice I was there until I said hello to him and asked him to confirm that our luggage had made it through. When he answered, though, he answered my husband. I am used to, you know, having someone answer me if I ask them a question, not automatically answer my husband.

If that were a one-off deal I wouldn't be writing about it, but the truth is that the same thing happened in India in 2009: I booked hotels online and received confirmations reading "Dear Sir", and proprietors, agents and other people we interacted with once again talked to my husband, not to me. I would occasionally, but not always, get eye contact or at least an acknowledgement (I do know that eye contact between men an women in India is a cultural issue). Never an extended and unless I extended mine first (and before you go all "India is traditional, some men won't touch women they aren't related or married to!", well yes, some Indian men adhere to that but where we were in the south it's not really an issue. When traveling alone in southern India or major cities I shook plenty of hands).

I specifically remember booking some hotels through one agent - my name on the e-mails, I said hello first when we went to his office in Bangalore, and yet he looked right past me at my husband and shook his hand and asked him about our trip. My husband, bless his heart, replied "you should ask my wife, she's really the one who planned it." The agent looked surprised.

Which, you know, not to devolve too far into a feminist rant, but GAH! I'm not used to that - I'm used to equality. Especially as a woman who traveled alone for years before Brendan and I started traveling together, my "normal" is to be treated like a human being. I have stayed in Taiwan for so long because it's one place where I can live abroad and still enjoy basic equality (even though I came alone, I did not feel in China as though I was seen as equal to a man). An American background, more than five years in Taiwan, have created that expectation, although I would bet good money that a Taiwanese woman abroad with her husband would be just as taken aback.

It's quite a shock, and not one that I care to "get used to". Rather one that I politely resist without - I hope - being rude. As Rachel DeWoskin noted in Foreign Babes in Beijing (not an exact quote but a paraphrase): it's condescending to accept bad behavior in a foreign country that you'd never condone at home. I can't condone sexism, and treating me as unequal to my husband is sexism. I'd rather "be the change I want to see in the world" and politely demand more equal treatment (although I'll make allowances for men in other countries who feel that they are being disrespectful to me by looking me in the eye or shaking my hand - I do expect to be spoken to as an equal person, however).

That's not to say that traveling with Brendan is all disadvantage: it helps to have to brains, especially when one or both are cranky, exhausted and/or confused. I love being able to say "honey, I'm totally dead. We need to get from A to B - can you take care of that because I'll just get us lost?" I won't lie - traveling alone meant that I have been the victim of sexual harassment (entirely in India. Sorry India, but you kind of suck in that regard). With Brendan it has not happened and I can say with confidence that it probably won't again, or if it does it'll be the exception rather than an ongoing problem as it was on my solo sojourns in India. I don't have to worry about being the only woman in a sea of men - which doesn't bother me per se, but it is true that it can be a dangerous situation. I can try more food because we can order different things in restaurants and share. Hotel rooms are a better deal, often the same price as hostel beds for two would have been. We have in each other a companion, someone to experience things with and mull over the stories at the end of each day or over breakfast.

I would say that the good parts of traveling with a husband far outweigh the bad. It's just that this one issue looms over the whole shebang. I do hope that by the time the next generation of brave women starts to travel that they can do so alone without having to constantly be on guard against wayward hands, and they can meet wonderful life partners and travel with them - and if those life partners are male, they won't ever feel like a second-class citizen when on the road together.

Reason #24 to Love Taiwan

The Beijing Duck Truck.

That's really all there is to it. The Beijing Duck Truck ROCKS.

And you'll never see one in the USA (although as my friend J noted, food trucks are catching on in urban areas and are even a new indie wedding trend for food service). So maybe in a few years you will be able to get pretty good Beijing Duck from a truck in New York.

I mean I love the other street vendors too - I love that I can pick up a fantuan or some vegetarian sticky rice or a plastic box of Cantonese duck, a tasty and fresh roasted sweet potato, steamed dumplings, roast chicken or sausage just walking down the street. But the Beijing Duck Truck holds a special place in my heart.

Tastes of Childhood II: Making Fish Cookies in Taipei

In my younger years, whenever I'd go to a family gathering my Aunt Rose (who has since passed on) made these cookies. They were sweet, filled with a soft walnut center and, justifying their namesake, were cut into a herringbone pattern. They were coated with a sugar syrup and were so tooth-achingly sweet that you could only eat one or two.

Aunt Rose would show up with a Tupperware in hand, or, too frugal to buy tupperware, a regular baking tin that she'd wash and bring home. Inside would be layers and layers of sticky-syruped parchment paper separating layers of buttery walnut fish cookies. She'd set them out on a side table and through the gathering people would walk by and swipe a few.

Most of my relatives didn't care for them - too sweet - but as a kid I loved them (exactly because they were so sweet)!

Having recently obtained the recipe or something along the same lines from my mom, I tried to make them today, knowing that they should keep until next week's party if refrigerated well.

Mine turned out delicious, although much softer and more crumbly than Aunt Rose's cookies (and slightly less overwhelmingly sweet - I think my aunts and uncles would like my version more, in fact).

I can't link to a website for this, so I'll give you the recipe. 

The ingredients are: 

Filling: 3 cups of walnuts, finely chopped (cups of walnuts before chopping, not after)

5-6 tablespoons of sugar

1 flat tablespoon ground cinnamon

Mix together and set aside (and walnuts are easy to chop if you can't find pre-finely-chopped ones).

 Dough: 

4 1/2 cups of flour (you could make very buttery cookies with 4, but the extra 1/2 lends them needed cohesion)

2 cups of butter (yes, you read that right)

3 tablespoons of sugar

A dusting of cinnamon powder to taste

1 cap-ful of vanilla extract (my own addition, not in the traditional recipe)

1 egg

1 cup milk (I used goat's milk)

2 teaspoons baking soda

Syrup:

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

Some lemon juice to taste (don't overdo it)

pastry brush (silicone ones are best)

Glaze:

One egg and 1/3 cup milk beaten together

                                                                                    Different pastry brush

First mix the walnut mixture and set aside.

Then mix dry dough ingredients. Mix sugar into softened butter and then beat an egg into that. Slowly add the dry ingredients and when added and well-mixed, add milk. Mix and knead longer than you usually would for cookies (usually you don't want the gluten in the flour to do that thing it does when you over-mix cookie, cake and muffin dough but for these it adds cohesion). Don't knead as long as you would for bread, though. Allow to sit in a cool place or in the refrigerator as you would sugar cookie dough.

Preheat oven to 375F, or 190C.

Now, make the cookies by rolling small balls (a little smaller than golf balls but larger than walnuts) into ovals, flattening them with your palm and sprinkling a line of walnut mixture down the middle. Then push the ends together to create a dough "packet" filled with walnuts. Like this:

Take a pastry brush and brush them generously with the egg glaze. Take a small pair of scissors, like manicure scissors, and cut thin, close herringbones across the top - pull up a bit as you go to really get the right look (as you can see I was not entirely successful - I think I'll get better with practice).

Bake for 15-20 minutes and, while baking, mix the water, sugar and lemon and boil for 5 minutes. Allow to cool and set aside.

The old recipe calls for you to use tongs and dip the cookies into the syrup while hot, but if you make them super buttery they'll fall apart easily (as with the one above). You can do just as well brushing them with syrup with a pastry brush while still hot. 

What I love about these is that the sugar in the walnut mix melts in the heat and creates a sort of sweet walnut paste filling that is just delectable and not bitter (as walnuts can be).

Allow to cook and separate with parchment paper (you do not want to be wrapping plastic wrap around these babies).

And voila! Mediterranean sweet walnut cookies! 

And while my Aunt Rose's cookies always looked spectacular, not all falling apart like mine, I'd say that mine taste pretty damn good.

Food!

Just thought I'd post this for fun. The full and confirmed menu of what I'll be cooking next week to share the food of my homeland (Armenian Musa Dagh) with my friends. All I can say is: yum yum yum!


lahmacun - a flavorful "pizza" topped with ground lamb mixed with onion, tomato, mint, parsley and other delicious things, topped with raw onion, tomato slices, parsley and lemon juice

stuffed grape leaves - assuming I can get grape leaves from Yi Wei foods in time. My grape leaves are stuffed with white rice mashed a bit with ground pine nuts, salt, black pepper, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and a touch of black pepper (I also cook the rice with some of the tattered grape leaves to imbue a full flavor).

If I can't get the grape leaves I'll make something else - possibly yoghurt kofta (meatballs in yoghurt sauce), possibly something with phyllo, maybe stuffed tomato dolma

muhammara - a zesty red pepper walnut dip

hummus - chick peas ground to a fine dip with sesame paste, garlic (both raw and roasted), cumin, paprika, lemon juice, olive oil salt and pepper and topped with a dusting of fiery cayenne powder

babaghanoush - the same, except with roasted eggplant instead of chick peas

All of the above served with baguette rounds (cheaper and tastier than imported pita in Taipei, my relatives would appprove of the change considering that pita sold here tends to be stale) and assorted vegetables

cucumber mint yoghurt salad - just what you think it is, with some raw garlic and spices to give it a punch

tabbouleh - bulgur salad with mint, parsley, bell pepper, cucumber, onion and tomato among other seasonings

pilaf - rice cooked with fried pasta in butter and chicken broth with a few spices

fish cookies - named for their herringbone design, these syrup-dipped butter cookies are filled with a walnut-cinnamon sugar mixture

Some Thoughts on Having Children in Taiwanese Culture

Thought #1 - the preference for male children is going to end within one generation.

I recently had a conversation with someone who is recently married and about to try to start having a baby - and one of the things we talked about caused me to do some thinking.

She said that because she wants to have only one child - although she admits she might change her mind after having that child - that she would prefer it to be a boy.

Oh no, I thought, so this whole 'preference for sons' thing is still alive even in the younger generations? (I realize it's culturally motivated but I don't care - a preference for sons is something I will not condone. You can get rid of a societal preference for male children and not destroy the culture).

She clarified - she wants a boy because her mother-in-law wants a grandson* to carry on the family name and lineage. It's OK if she has a daughter, but the mother-in-law will then pressure her to have a second baby and try for a boy. If she has one baby and it's a boy, she won't get the pressure because the male lineage would have been assured.

[sarcasm] Of course, it is clearly unthinkable that a granddaughter might carry on the family heritage. Everyone knows women can't do that. [/sarcasm].

I want to say that my first thought was uuuuggggghhhhhhh but that I tempered it: in some ways, this is actually a good thing. The person I was talking to - a member of the current parent-aged generation - doesn't personally care if she has a son or daughter. When she has a child of any gender, she won't care if that child has a son or daughter (I didn't ask what she'd think of a child who wanted to children of his or her own).

It's a member of the older generation that cares, and that makes all the difference. It sucks for my acquaintance, who has to deal with that pressure, but the fact is that the older generation is done procreating and their influence can really only stretch into the current generation (maybe - maybe - the next one if they try to pressure their grandchildren, but given the later ages to which couples are delaying parenthood, I suspect most Taiwanese grandparents won't be around to see their great-grandchildren. I'd add that my grandparents' expectations of me never changed my life plan one jot, although I love and respect all of them, but then neither did my parents'...and Taiwan has a different family culture. My reactions to family expectations don't apply).

That means that if this is a trend, and I believe it is even though I'm only illustrating it with one example, that the whole 'preference for sons' thing is going to die out with the next generation and we will hopefully see a more egalitarian, sexism-free take on procreation. I don't mean that all preference will be eradicated, but that preferences will be individual and will include parents who want girls, not just the social mandate to prefer boys. I'm seeing a lot of "we don't mind either way" or "actually, I want a girl" and "my mother wants me to have a son but I don't care personally" in the current generation of parents, and very little "I want a boy who will take care of me in my old age/carry on the family name". This is a good thing.

We then had a great discussion on how one handles parents and in-laws post-marriage, when you become your own family unit. I had little to say because these aren't problems I have (my in-laws thankfully don't do this, and while my parents do, we are close enough that I can tell them to shove off - in those words - without any loss of love, because that's the kind of relationship we have). I shared how I handle pretty much anyone who gets in my space who is not my husband, by at first deflecting and then, if it persists, telling them that really that's a personal issue. If that doesn't work, flat out saying that I'll do as I please and my decisions are not theirs to make, and their opinions are their own but I don't want to hear them. I'll end with an unapologetic "I'm sorry you feel that way" and do as I please anyway, without explaining myself, because why should I have to?

She admired the approach but admitted she couldn't practice it - it's my mother in law! I can't say that!


(Sure you can, maybe more politely but you can. But yes, I do understand that there are cultural issues at play).

Which might all lead to another post on dealing with family in Taiwan once you are married - when I have more time I'd like to expand on that.

*note to my mother-in-law - thank you so much for not being like that!


Thought #2 - I'd really like to see the demise of the assumption that it's best to want kids, but it's not going to.

Heck, it hasn't gone away in the USA. I still have family who pressures me about this. But here...well, this may be TMI but it's a women's issue in Taiwan so I think it's worth sharing. I was visiting my doctor and discussing various options and she said "So you can take this for a year or so, and then when you have a baby..."

"I'm not planning to have a baby."

"Really?! But...why? You really don't want to have a baby?!"

Because for this particular doctor it is kinda, sorta her business when she's dealing with my health, instead of telling her to shove off I said "Yes. I really don't."

In the USA I would have dumped her right away and gotten a new doctor, but this is Taiwan and I can't expect the same attitude here. I did see a different doctor only because it was more convenient to work, and got a similar reaction. I get the feeling that I'd get that reaction no matter who I saw - because I also get it from taxi drivers, new acquaintances, random people, the old ladies in the lane, you name it. I don't tell them my plans mostly, because it's not their business, but I get that shocked expression when I tell them I'm 30, married and yet do not have a child (I'm not sure why - the Taiwanese are marrying later and later and also delaying childbirth, if they have children at all. "DINK" is actually a word here, too). They are shocked when I say I have no immediate plans for a child (something I wouldn't divulge in the USA but the boundaries for personal questions here are different - if I had not been influenced by the culture here I wouldn't even be blogging about this). I don't tell them that I don't have any plans, because that's just not a conversation I want to have with perfect strangers.

I don't see this going away anytime soon. It's a shame - people (especially doctors) really should respect others' decisions to have or not have children. Unlike a preference for sons, however, I think the expectation that having children is the best route, the correct path, is not going to die out within a generation. Too bad.

My Beautiful Island: Snoozefest Edition

Some thoughts on this film, which is making a bit of a splash across the Intertubes (it's appeared a few times in my Facebook and Google+ feeds accompanied by discussion of the promotional video's merits).

I have to say, overall I don't care for it. As one person said, it's got smashing production values and is visually stunning, but as a video to promote tourism it fails (not my words, but I agree wholly). I am not sure what the viewer is supposed to take away from this about Taiwan. I liked the idea of four different journeys, which represent four different kinds of tourists (the Japanese tourists who shop and sightsee, the backpacker on some sort of 'see the world, change myself' journey, the Asian-American family that seemed to be on a 'show the kids their roots' trip, the old folks), but I felt that those journeys could have happened anywhere in Asia. The tea fields, the lake with the lantern-bedecked pier, the bus going down the country road. All 'stereotypical Asia', not Taiwan.


I'm not saying they should have just shown touristy places, although they should have added a few (just 101, Taroko Gorge and maybe Chihkan Towers or another historic building would have sufficed), but they should have shown scenes that felt more like...Taiwan. I felt the more arty, cloudy, overcast feeling of the film lacked spirit, verve and love for the country. I felt it sacrificed spirit in the name of, I dunno, art?

I feel that...well, first of all, what's up with the first five minutes of the film being nothing but Taoyuan Airport, a bus station, the HSR, a hotel, an escalator? Other than possibly the HSR (which would have been better depicted as it was actually racing across the countryside with the happy pensioners riding inside), none of that is even remotely interesting. Five minutes of Taoyuan Airport and Ubus is four and a half minutes too many. A good filmmaker could have gotten some dialogue in there while showing more scenes of actual, you know, Taiwan.

The music when they're getting their passports stamped was also a poor choice - it was horror movie "something terrible will happen to them in Taiwan" music, not music that makes you want to actually go to Taiwan. The scene where the Japanese girls go shopping - really, why close up only on their faces and one pair of ugly shoes? Why not show the Xinyi district at night, all lit up, a more sweeping view of where they were, and then close up? Or move out? Why not show Taipei 101 (a cheesy addition for this too-arty film, but I think an important one for tourism)? Why not show them out at a club or bar after shopping, seeing as they spent another valuable chunk of film time putting on makeup, which we really didn't need to see? When they were at the night market, why not show more than very close-up shots of the one food stall? Night markets are so full of visual stimulation and are so very Taiwanese in feel that I can't fathom why they didn't show more of it.

The tea fields were visually engrossing, but the dialogue was so stilted. Seriously, "your hand in mine, as we were in our younger days?" Excuse me, but what the hell is that? What hack wrote that? Couldn't they get someone to write some actual, realistic dialogue?

For the backpacker, I thought the idea was cool, but one could have shown him venturing into more interesting places (the part in the mountains at the end was cool, and the aboriginal-music party was cool too, I'll say that). Why not have him be totally blown away by a colorful temple fair, as I was the first time I saw one pass by, all banging and crackling? That was a formative Taiwan experience for me - cultural things like that really deserve more screen time. They got none.

Instead of showing the older folks drinking tea in a restaurant, why not have them on Maokong, learning how to brew 老人 茶, or invited into a local's home for tea in the traditional style?

Anyway.

I can nitpick all night (and would love to - I'm in a truly foul mood these days for completely unrelated reasons that I won't divulge here) but really, at the end, it's this.

The movie had no soul. No heart, no verve, no spirit. It was like a European art film on sleeping pills. It was like Terrence Malick doing a parody of a Terrence Malick film (if you couldn't tell, I didn't care for The Tree of Life one bit, and my husband assures me that The Thin Red Line is as bad or worse in that style). Nothing - not one thing - about it screams yes! This is the Taiwan we know and love! YES! This is the Taiwan I want my family and friends to see!

It screams generic arty film about Asia that lacks a pulse.

And for that, despite all its visual beauty, I give it a FAIL.

Some suggestions, in bullet form:

- pick up the pace
- intersperse the tight camerawork with some more sweeping views
- lose the depressing, at times horror-movie like music, or use it more sparingly
- show more of Taiwan - not necessarily focusing on typical tourist stuff but interview some tourists and expats and ask them to visualize a scene that for them would be "Taiwan". For me it would be either driving the Central Cross Island Highway (seriously, Hehuan Mountain has to have some of the most gorgeous views in the country and nobody uses it in films or commercials? WHY?) or a temple fair, or brewing old man's tea on a mountain or in a picturesque teahouse, or hanging out in a lane in an urban area with old ladies fanning themselves and gossiping. Other people would have different ideas. Incorporate these visions, because that's where you'll find the things about Taiwan that really grab travelers and give them a unique experience.
- rewrite the awkward dialogue. None of this "I think it was fate that brought me here" business. Gag.
- show more interaction with locals - other than that A-do character and a night market vendor the travelers seemed to be off in their own worlds
- infuse the whole thing with more, I dunno, vibrancy. Pick a director with boundless love for Taiwan who can really show that through his or her work.

Also, it would have been better if they'd called it "My Beautiful Country" (I realize Ilha Formosa means "beautiful island" and that there are political issues involved), but of course that would have never happened. That would be too good to be true. Goodness forbid that foreigners actually realize that Taiwan is a country.

Ugh.

So, my hard drive died on the weekend and we had to get it fixed, and I tried to find the White Roses protest mentioned in the Taipei Times but it didn't seem to happen (seriously there was nothing there and I spent awhile in the area walking around and looking), and I wasn't feeling well for most of the weekend and we have a lot to do before we leave for Turkey, so despite all of my grand blogging plans it hasn't happened.

Hopefully before we leave for Turkey I'd like to post on a few topics - celebrating some of my favorite Taipei architecture, another look at views on weight loss in Taiwan, some observations on mothers-in-law and having sons from a student, a post on "fish cookies" (named for their herringbone pattern) that I'll make for our party on 8/13, and a few complaints I have about the new Taiwan tourism mini-film (seriously, did they hire Terrence Malick to direct it or something?) and more.

Not sure when I'll have the time to do this, though. We'll see.