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.

Photos from Cappadocia

I don't have time to write any captions, because we're about to catch a bus, but enjoy this photo post from Cappadocia, Turkey!

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?

Photoblog: Turkey

We left Taipei on Sunday morning, flew to Istanbul in one long day and night with transits in Manila and Abu Dhabi, stored our luggage, spent a day in Istanbul and then took an overnight bus to Goreme in Cappadocia. This was grueling, and I smelled so preposterously fetid that if I’d raised my arms, from Turkey, in the general direction of Tokyo, Godzilla would have scampered away like a spooked gecko.

The best way to recover from this is to drink a very large quantity of cay, or Turkish tea.

The Hagia Sophia is gorgeous on the inside – which we will find out when we return in September. It is closed on Mondays and Monday was our day in Istanbul.

The Blue Mosque is gorgeous on the outside (inside too, don’t get me wrong) and the hundreds of tiny glass lamps on the inside give it character. It’s too bad so many tourists don’t realize that when they are asked to wear a headscarf and cover their legs, that they actually should do so.

I’m a big fan of the blue and turquoise tile and ceramic patterns of 17^th century Ottoman Turkey.

There’s a reason why Myspace Angle photos are so popular – they can be really flattering. But blue eyes don’t handle harsh sun very well.

Ornery Old Ladies are the same around the world. They’re like that in the USA, in Taiwan, in China, in Japan, in Indonesia, in India and in Turkey as well. I bet that even though all those nationalities of Ornery Old Lady don’t share a common language, that they’d get along just fine if you put them all in the same place. Within a week they might take over the world. Then, hyperspace.

You think it looks like a bunch of big penises. Yes, you do. Don’t pretend you don’t. They call one valley filled with such natural stone monoliths “Love Valley”, proving that the Cappadocians have a sense of humor.

Sunsets and mosques go well together.

There’s a reason why Goreme is a touristy place.

Pottery is big here. Real big.

You’ll always look stunning against any backdrop in Turkey if you wear blue.

You think you’re an intrepid traveler, but you’re not. You go to a gorgeous town full of unworldly rock formations, 400-year old buildings and cobbled streets. As the sun hangs low, you hear lovely traditional music wafting in the lanes. You think “ah, some locals playing mandolins, drinking cay and dancing” so you take a look. It’s the Cappadocia Gift Shop playing traditional music on CD to entice customers.

Valleys of Cappadocia. Love.

Even in the most touristy towns there are local people going about their daily lives.

Turks like domes. They really, really like domes.

Don’t pretend – you’ve been these people too. If you say you haven’t, you either haven’t done anything exciting or you’re lying.

Did you know that in the early Christian era that sometimes, Satan was depicted as a weird cockroach thing surrounded by two crosses to show that he couldn’t hurt people anymore? I didn’t know that. Now I do.

Cognitive Dissonance

More photos from Istanbul tomorrow. This was taken in The Blue Mosque

We've been in Turkey for two days now, and what I have to say is this:

- Great food
- Breathtaking sights and scenery
- Extremely friendly people, talkative and helpful almost on the level of the Taiwanese

That last one is a bit of a sticker for me.

(By the way, I do link this a bit to Taiwan further down, if you feel like reading that far).

As you know if you read this blog with any regularity, I'm Armenian on my mother's side. Specifically, Armenian from Musa Dagh, Turkey: it's half the reason why we're in Turkey now at all - I'm interested ins seeing the one of the lands I come from. And as you know if you've studied history under anything other than a regime hell-bent on brainwashing young citizens through education, the Turks committed a massive genocide against Armenians in the early 20th century. I exist at all - and am American - because my family (or at least many of them) escaped that genocide. My great grandparents fled to Greece, but as WWII approached they had to leave Athens, as well - my great grandfather had been a freedom fighter for the Armenians, was well-known to the Turks and also to the Nazis. They would not have lived long in Greece had they stayed through the Nazi invasion.

My grandfather was born in Greece between those two flights for life, and as you can imagine, he hates Turks with a passion. Nobody else in the family is too fond of them, either. This might be left to history if the Turks would admit that what they did was commit genocide, and apologize for it. This hatchet might be buried if they'd admit that Ataturk was not only the father of their nation but also someone capable of committing great evil (hell, most Taiwanese, even those who vote KMT, pull no punches when saying the same about Chiang Kai-shek, although nobody sees him as the father of Taiwan and "father of the Republic of China" is a honor given to Sun Yat-sen).

And yet they won't admit this, and they educate the young to believe their side of the story - not that I believe there are sides - there is the side that knows what happened and the side that denies it, and that's all - and so young Turks today still believe that "it was a difficult and chaotic time and many people died but we did not commit a genocide". They will defend this quite vehemently and in Turkey, the law against speaking ill of Ataturk or calling the Armenian genocide a "genocide" is on their side.

This is why I have not told anyone I've met in Turkey of my ancestry. Yet. It's not a fight I can win. It's a fight that can get me in legal trouble.

So in my postcards home I've been writing things about how friendly the people are, and sounding fairly lighthearted about it. Honestly, though, I'm not. I am not remotely lighthearted about it. If anything it's had me a bit on edge since we arrived.

These women were quite friendly to me, and took lots of photos with me because they liked my blue eyes. No joke!

Instead, I'm torn. That friendly fellow in the tea garden who chatted with us, and the nice young boy who served us tea, and the helpful people who gave us directions or gently guided us, or who smiled but did not mock the mistakes we made in Istanbul (like trying to put a token on a card reader in the Metro), the man in the electronics shop who asked if we liked Cappadocia and the women in the Blue Mosque who took pictures with me just for fun, or those who were just plain friendly and welcoming - they didn't murder my people. I can't blame them for something that happened almost a century ago.

And yet they also deny that it happened.

And yet they were educated to believe it didn't happen.

And yet despite that education, they should know better.

And yet, they are some of the friendliest people I've had the pleasure of traveling among.

There's no denying it - so far the Turks have been nothing if not truly hospitable. That's hard for me. Their ancestors killed my people and the descendants deny it happened, and yet I cannot find fault with their kindness. How do I even begin to reconcile that?

Because really, underneath my feeling of warmth for the warmth the Turks have shown us is a bit of a raw scar - a thin line of anger, knowing that that kindness would probably be withdrawn the moment they learned I was Armenian. That kindness is wholly dependent on a pretense - on allowing them their cognitive dissonance. On not upending their belief system. This means that I also feel cognitive dissonance - these people who are so friendly, whom deep down I know would deny a massacre I know to have happened - how does one go about stitching those two things together? Is it really friendliness if it's contingent upon my not revealing a deep kernel of myself? Would it even be appropriate to do so? Is it fair to my ancestors who gave their lives or risked their lives to save others to not do so and to accept this hospitality at face value?

What happens is that I talk with these lovely people, and it's fine, except I feel, off to my side maybe, waves of heat from a red-hot poker, just inches from my skin, threatening to brand me an Unwelcome Other if I discuss my heritage or speak the truth, and threatening on the other hand to brand me a Traitor if I let things be.

It's a hard line to walk and I can't help but feel a little emotional over it. It's not so bad in Cappadocia, but when we hit Musa Dagh I will have to work very hard to keep my feelings in check.

I can see how the same issue dogs many Taiwanese. There are those who came or whose parents came over with the KMT, those who served or whose parents served under Chiang Kai-shek, and those who were killed by the KMT in the wake of 228 and the White Terror. There are many for whom being welcomed by neighbors, coworkers, classmates and even family is contingent upon not upsetting the worldview of others that their political beliefs are correct (and that goes for both sides). It is not so serious as a genocide when someone who is deep green can't reveal to his coworkers who are mostly blue, but there is still a raw feeling underneath the pretense of cameraderie. There is an unspoken understanding that "we all need to get along", so talking about things like, well, the White Terror around people whose parents may have ignored it or even supported it is not condoned. I can very much imagine how those Taiwanese feel, unable to upset the fragile truce of "your parents' party killed my loved ones, and that party won't apologize for it, your parents won't acknowledge the atrocity, and that kills me inside so I won't talk about it. I have to deal with you and I want things to run smoothly so I can't bring it up. I have to pretend it doesn't exist."

I can imagine it because I'm living it right now.

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.