A-Cai's Restaurant (阿才的店）: 黨外國人！

This past weekend I put together a group outing to A-Cai's, a historic restaurant that is scheduled to be shuttered (and possibly, but not assuredly, relocated) when the building it's located in is torn down as a part of Taipei's ongoing, and controversial, urban renewal projects.

Mao Po Tofu - spicy, too!

Fish Scented Eggplant (Yuxiang Qiezi) 

 You can read about the history of the place above, and a review here - the place is hardly off the beaten track, as much as it looks like it.

I put this dinner together now because A-Cai's the window of opportunity to go is potentially so short: I asked upon leaving if the tear-down was still in the works and was told that yes, it would happen, but "not that soon". I hope they're fighting it, I really do, but the Taipei City Government is run by such buffoons that I don't hold out much hope.

All I can do is throw in my word as another recommendation for this place. Dirty walls, old Taiwanese knickknacks and memorabilia, old-skool wait staff and good food with strong flavors that practically begs you to drink large quantities of Taiwan Beer - what could be better?

Plus, despite not being a Sichuanese restaurant, the Sichuan-style dishes we ordered were genuinely spicy. Not as fierce as Tianfu, but they put on a pretty good show of chili.

I also loved the service. None of this cutesy Japanese-style welcoming or overly-attentive waiters. We came in and they knew who we were ('cause I sound like a foreigner on the phone, natch), said "over there". We sat, got a menu, and a few minutes later - "你要什麼?" No extra pleasantries or "我可以介紹一下喔", just, "Whaddya want?" I let them know that despite a reservation for 9, that actually 11 would be coming (two friends wanted to bring guests) - no muss, no fuss, just "好" and a few more sets of chopsticks dumped on the table. LOVE IT.

                           

So...go. Lend your support. Give 'em business. Throw a 加油 in at the end. Fight the power! Write about it. Enjoy good food. Drink beer. Beg them to re-open in a new location. Don't let this piece of Taiwanese history disappear.

                           

Oh Jesus

I don't even think I need to expand on this. WTF

"The New Good Woman", according to the government of the ROC

Reason #26 to Love Taiwan

I think I'm at 26, anyway.

Getting clothes made or copied.

In college, I walked into a Goodwill once (as one does when one is in college and something of a nascent hipster, although I never quite made it to actual hipsterdom...I think) and saw this used faux leather jacket for sale for $6:

(This picture is at least 5 years old).

I wore it through the rest of college, to China, for a few years after I got back from China, and brought it to Taiwan where I wore it until the faux leather had deteriorated to the point where I could not possibly wear it any longer. As in, big tears under the armpits and patches where the netted lining, but not the "leather", was still there. I'd worn that already used jacket for at least 8 years since I bought it. For years it languished in a bag in my closet until I finally got my act together and took it to a tailor on Dihua Street. She made the copy and then sent it off to a specialist for the dragon embroidery. They couldn't do it by machine so she did it by hand. It cost me a pretty penny (far more than $6!) but what I got back was amazing:

踹共！

Yes, it's a 5-clawed golden dragon, which a.) is a male symbol and b.) was once reserved for the emperor, but whatevs. I wanted a dragon, not a phoenix and Chinese symbolism can stuff it. I've always been more interested in male symbols (tigers, dragons, yang rather than yin) than female ones (plum blossoms, yin, phoenixes) anyway.

I couldn't have had this done - I couldn't have afforded the hand-embroidery, certainly (which came to NT$2700 alone, which I obviously can afford) - in the USA.

I still wonder, other than for family reasons, what the point of going "home" would ever be.

Watching Zhubei

Sheraton Zhubei

In this somewhat meaningless post, I shall admit something:

I am weirdly fascinated with Zhubei (竹北), the small but increasingly shiny city in Xinzhu (新竹) county.

I'm not sure if it's because I know so many people who live there - a lot of my students, that is - or because it's just interesting to see a city go through a noticeable physical transformation over the course of just a few years, or because I have to drive through it so often, or what. I don't know, it's just a place that has caught my attention.

You might know it as the city where the Xinzhu (or Hsinchu, but I like Pinyin) HSR station is located. I know it as the city I have to pass through at least once a week, often more, on my way to the Hsinchu Science Park or, more rarely, Hukou Industrial Park. Occasionally, I teach seminars in Zhubei itself and at one point was hanging out there, at loose ends, for the better part of a day because I had a morning seminar in a building near the Sheraton, a set of late afternoon classes at the Science Park and nothing to do in between.

In the years I've done this job and commuted fairly regularly to Hsinchu, Taiwan's tech industry powerhouse, I've seen Zhubei go from being a dull, slightly weedy, city-in-between that boasted the HSR station, a few office buildings, a cluster of old traditional farmhouses and the Sheraton, and that's about it, to being a city that one might actually want to live in (as opposed to "choose to live in", which is what a lot of people in the science park do - it's not so much that they want to live there as they choose to live there, because it's convenient enough and got enough transportation links, and raising a family there wouldn't be quite as boring as being single there).

Every few months I'll cruise through in yet another taxi - some of the drivers actually know me at this point, which is impressive considering how many taxis line up regularly at the HSR station - and see another weedy lot gone, another building going up, another at completion that had been a weedy lot just a few years back.

Zhubei used to have a few of those weird-looking apartment building showcase buildings: I couldn't find a photo of one online, but anyone who lives in urban or semi-urban Taiwan knows what I'm talking about: weird one-story buildings with asymmetrical construction, funky roofs, odd lighting elements, ultramodern finishes and lines, occasionally weird globular or angular elements, that you look at and wonder "what's that for?" - too small to be a place to live, too small to be a wedding venue, too big for most stores (and too fancy to be one of the larger stores). Before I figured out what they were I thought Zhubei just had an overabundance of semi-talented, half-baked architects who kept designing weird buildings. Turns out they're places you can go to look at showcase apartments you can buy in the building that will eventually go up on that site. Or so I'm told.

Right now Zhubei seems to have more of them than they have cockroaches. This fascinates me - Taipei is built up enough that we don't get many of them, and when I ride through Zhubei I can't help but compare them.

I can't write this post without mentioning Titty Tea - when I first started working in the science park I'd pass this place in a taxi and for the longest time I thought it was run by locals who had no idea what the name meant. Once I rented a car with friends, and we were headed through on the way to the Pasta'ai festival, and I got my friend to stop so I could take a photo. Only later, when I had some free time in Zhubei and I actually went there, did I realize it was either foreigner-run or foreigner-staffed, and the name was chosen entirely on purpose. Also, wifi, good brownies, decent food and Belgian beer. You should check it out. If I lived in Zhubei I'd probably hang out here a lot...partly because they've got some good stuff, and partly because there doesn't seem to be anything else to do in Zhubei except possibly get a drink at the Sheraton bar (I assume there's a bar, since the hotel clearly exists for science and technology business types in town to visit TSMC or something, rather like the Holiday Inn Shenkeng exists for Chinese tourists whose tour packages have them staying out of town) or check out those old houses.

I'm also interested to see Zhubei continue to grow from weedy lots and a few weird buildings to a place crawling with science park types, and the associated high-end living spaces that go along with having a relatively well-paid professional population. What I haven't seen yet, and am waiting for, are obvious the next wave for Zhubei: restaurants, cafes, a few restaurant-bars, shops. There are a few, but certainly not enough to make it a terribly interesting place to live. Most people I know who live there - and working in the science park as much as I do, I know quite a few people who do live there - spend their weekends driving somewhere else: Hsinchu city (apparently there's this re-opened huge department store called Big City down there), Taipei, some rural area conducive to day trips or wherever their parents live.

As of now, the Zhubei living experience can be summed up by one of my students:

Him: "Last weekend we decided to find a good place to eat in Zhubei. We didn't want to go all the way to Hsinchu or Taipei."

Other student: "Did you find one?"

Him: "No."


Me: "So what did you do?"

Him: "Well, on Saturday night we decided that Wang Steak was too crowded, so we went to a Japanese seafood restaurant. It was terrible. We wanted to try again on Sunday so we found another place, but it was also not very good."


Other student: "Is Wang Steak the only good place to eat in Zhubei?"

Him: "I think so, yes."

He might not be completely correct, but he's got a point: there are a lot of people with a fair amount of money kicking around Zhubei, and more than a few are either single and well-paid, DINKS, or dual-income families with kids that they can afford to spoil a little bit, and not a lot of them to do in the city where they live. More has got to be coming to cater to these people, because that's how economics works.

And I'll be excited to see it happen. I don't think I'll ever live in Zhubei - most of my work is still in Taipei, I get paid well to go down there so there's no need to relocate, and I still enjoy all that Taipei has to offer. I wouldn't want to live without lots of cool coffeehouses to choose from, the hidden old buildings and streets in the western part of the city, public transportation, various amenities that I don't always take advantage of but enjoy having around (like City Super's cheese selection), museums (which I do visit regularly enough to make this an important thing) and accessibility of hikes and the coast by bus.

Hanging on to Confucius

The other week I blogged about being quoted in the Liberty Times and United Daily, more out of the pride of being able to deliver a decent quote in Chinese and have it printed accurately (meaning that people can actually understand me! Wow!).

What I didn't write about until later was that when I went to buy a copy of the Liberty Times containing my quote, that I had a little run in with a dying breed, a species I hope is slowly going extinct, an ancient throwback. I live in the heart of Da'an (be jealous, mofos), an area that is super-duper deep blue. Most of my neighbors are veterans. Some even fought Communists. As I'm buying my paper at 7-11, which I don't normally do as I read Taipei Times online and practice Chinese with free papers I pick up, some old dude says to me in English, "don't buy that paper. It's lies!" and "We are Chinese! We have 5,000 years of history. You foreigners can't understand."

Edited for clarification: the veterans aren't the "ancient throwbacks" I hope will go extinct. I mean the rude guy and his ilk. Most of my neighbors are very nice people with whom I happen to disagree politically, which is not a big deal - I'd rather have good relationships with them and not talk politics. Few if any of them would say the sorts of things this guy did.

This recent memory was yet again thrust to the forefront of my poor embattled cerebral cortex when someone else I know said that it wasn't that she didn't want Taiwanese independence - she did, someday, not now ("it's not safe now", which I'd agree with even if it makes me angry, because it's the work of Chinese bully politicians), but that she didn't want Taiwan to be called "Taiwan" beyond it being the name of the island. She wasn't interested in a Republic of Taiwan - she wanted independence as The Republic of China.

I should note that this person, while she did vote for Ma Ying-jiu, is not particularly blue and has voted green in the past. She'd said that she actually prefers Tsai to Ma, but that she doesn't like the people Tsai has surrounded herself with. While I'd say that the greater good comes from kicking the KMT out of power and elevating the basic ideals of the modern DPP, I can still see and understand her views. She also feels more disappointed in the DPP - saying they help themselves at the Buffet o' Corruption shamelessly, when they were supposed to have done better (which is true, but sadly not surprising), whereas the KMT has always been known to be corrupt so it's to be expected, even though in the end they've stolen way more over time from Taiwan.

I get that, too, but then I feel that if faced with two corrupt parties, you've just got to go with the one whose policies you agree with.

Why, then, does this name matter so much to her and to many others, in much the same way that "Taiwan" matters so deeply to the other side (the side I'm unabashedly on, if that wasn't clear)?

Her rationale is a common one - despite not wanting to be a part of the PRC, she still felt a cultural connection to China. "I love Confucius and Lao Tzu" - it's part of her heritage, she said, and she didn't want to give that up. She saw no reason why the name "China" should belong to the PRC when it's her heritage, too. She doesn't want to give up the Analects and the Tao Te Ching, the art and the music.

OK, I see that.

I also feel, though, that we "foreigners who can't understand China's 5,000 years of history" (BLLEECCCHHHH) do have something worth contributing to that conversation. Most of us come from immigrant stock. I will only speak for Americans here, but I do think it is more universally valid, to say that this isn't just true for minorities: some or all of us "in the majority" white people are also immigrants from hundreds of years back ("all" if you're talking American, "some" if you're talking British, it gets complicated). In the case of America, it's been a comparable amount of time between when some of our families first settled here - and totally screwed over the Native Americans, something that history loves to repeat on every continent - and when the Hoklo were settling Taiwan from Fujian.

I'm American. I am not British, Armenian, Polish or Swiss by citizenship. My passport says "United States of America" on it. Does that mean I can't still feel a connection to the cultural heritage of the places my ancestors came from? Do I have to be "British" to appreciate Britain's cultural contributions, and recognize that part of my family is from there? Do I have to be "Armenian" to appreciate the strong culinary traditions that still run in my family from that side? Can I not appreciate those things and still be "American"?

I'm not going to say that these things aren't important - they are. Knowing and appreciating where you came from, even if that place is not the country you live in now and doesn't bear the same name, is vital to most of us. I'm not going to say "eh, who cares, let 'em have Confucius", although I have heard people say similar things. Armenians are pretty intense about their heritage, and yet I don't feel shut out just because I don't look Armenian, have an Armenian name or citizenship in a country with the word "Armenia" in its official title.

But then, she was pretty clear that part of her attachment was to the name "China" alone (why let them have it? being part of her reaction), and my resolution to culture vs. citizenship wouldn't satisfy her. Edit: as J said so wisely in the comments, identity is a feeling, and you can't argue that away.

That's why I fall on the side of "this is Taiwan", not "this is the Republic of China". It's true that I have no specific attachment to Chinese culture beyond my expat experience, but it's not impossible to understand that attachment. And yet, as an American, I'm able to get past my own tangled ancestry and appreciate what it's given me without insisting that I need, absolutely need, to hold on to those names. Heck, I feel just as strong an attachment to my Armenian side as my Polish one, and yet I grew up with a Polish surname, not an Armenian one. It is clearly not impossible.


Or maybe I'm just a blundering big nose who "can't understand" "5,000 years" of Chinese history and culture. Who knows.

Some More Thoughts on Being an Unfeminine Female in Taiwan

I wrote a longish post on this awhile back, but thought the matter deserved a bit more.

A friend recently put up a post for her own circle about identity issues - dressing in a more feminine way and then being angry at the idea that if she did so, people would notice and comment, and how it forced her to think about her own reactions to women who dress in a feminine way. That's her post and not public so I won't go into it more.

But it got me thinking.

I only rarely wear makeup and the most feminine I get is the occasional long skirt (long so I won't have to wear tights or hose). You will NEVER see me in heels. One time when I did wear makeup for a work function, one of the women from the office (Taiwanese) said it looked good and implied heavily that I should wear it more often. I smiled, thanked her, but said quite firmly that I would not be wearing it more often - I didn't find it necessary and in Taipei's humid weather, it was really quite uncomfortable (and I use a light hand and wear expensive mineral makeup). I just don't like how makeup feels and won't subject myself to it unless I want to, at my discretion. I certainly won't wear it because other people think I should.

The thing is, my coworker's comment really bothered me. I had tried to reply nicely but firmly, and I wondered a bit at why, after she said it, it chafed at me so much. Why did it matter to me that this woman, whom I don't even like, mind you, thought I should wear makeup more often? I'd already decided not to, so who cares?

After my friend's post, I realized why it mattered: because we live in a world where women are expected to go to such lengths, to look certain ways, to do certain things. Her comment was an endorsement of these expectations. It was a signal that she bought into this set of ideals and that, by saying it to me, that I should, too. Which implies that these expectations, to her, are right - when I happen to think they are wrong. It signals that, whether or not she realized it, she had felt something was lacking with the old me, enough so that she felt it was OK to imply as much. That I was not quite "right" for refusing to follow the rules. That I should conform more. That I wasn't fine before.

We are judged on our appearance, more so than men. Nobody will say anything, usually, if a woman doesn't wear skirts, heels or makeup. I don't blow-dry my hair - really, I air-dry it! Even in Taipei! - and nobody says anything.  A woman who does do those things (especially the shiny hair, heels and makeup) will get advantages that I won't. She just will.

Society expects these things of women and there is a downside to not following those rules. I've felt it myself. I do feel I have more to prove than a "pretty" teacher - I have to be good because my looks won't save me (not that a pretty teacher is necessarily a bad one). Of two women of average or roughly equal attractiveness, the one wearing makeup with her hair looking nice and in feminine clothing is going to get more attention - more so in Taiwan, I think, than back home where there is a subset of guys who prefer ungirly women. The woman in a pretty skirt suit is more likely to be taken to a sales meeting than the one in comfortable "office pants" and a regular top, possibly even if the latter woman is more capable. The neighborhood obasans will pay compliments to the polished girl and cluck their tongues at the one who flouts the rules, regardless of how accomplished the latter is - again, more so in Taiwan I think.

This seems especially true in Taiwan. Interestingly, I've noticed a greater polarization here - women who wear no makeup and dress plainly, if not outright unflatteringly, vs. women who are down to there and up to here in bling 'n fake lashes and heels with fringe (which to me is just asking for a broken ankle, but hey). Back home I see more of a continuum.

As much as I love Taiwan, I can't lie: despite all the makeup-less women in flats and weirdly constructed shirts I see on the MRT, there are greater expectations of women's grooming and beauty. There are stronger social cues as to how women should present themselves. There is a social reward for looking more "feminine"...and yet even stronger drawbacks. As with the USA, I feel that in Taiwan there's a societal expectation of feminine grooming and beauty, and you get a cookie, a "sit! sit!" Good girl!" treat -for adhering to it, while at the same time, people don't take things that are feminine, or women who act very feminine, seriously. All the high-level women I know - the directors, the CFOs, the general managers, the BU heads - are remarkably not feminine save for one notable example. All the office girls - the xiaojies who get male attention - are. Nobody takes the office girls that seriously, and yet, if they all stopped wearing makeup and put on pants and flats, they'd be castigated socially for it.

It's like a big ol' trap: you have to look feminine, if you don't we won't pay attention to you socially. But if you do, we won't take you seriously. So have fun looking pretty and not being taken seriously, ladies!

What bothered me about this coworker's comment, then, is the implication that she's OK with this total fucked-upedness. And, by extension, that there are women who are still OK with it, who support it and will defend it.

Which is their right, but it bothers me.

Plum Rain and Communication Breakdown

I don't know what I like about you, but I like it a lot.

Anyway, it's rare that I feel anything greater than a low-level, temporary frustration in Taiwan. When I do, it's rarely ever greater than the frustration I sometimes feel back home, where nothing is convenient, everything's too quiet and boxed off, doing even one simple thing is expensive and you have to drive everywhere (plus having to share the country with people who make me feel ashamed of America - though I don't have to deal with them much, seeng as I'm an east coast liberal progressive feminist socialist elitist snob - although not, to reference Woody Allen, a pornographer, Communist, homosexual or Jew).

The past two days, however, have imparted onto me a low hum of frustration that has not receded. It seems to be mostly stemming from one source: communicating really, really badly. Everything I've said to somebody who is not a native English speaker (that is, to a Taiwanese person) seems to just not be understood in the way I intended it, or more likely, I screwed up in what I was trying to say in the first place, and the language and culture barrier just invited my poorly articulated words to be misinterpreted.

It got to the point where someone thought I wanted them to have the front seat of his car removed to check for a piece of jewelry of mine that fell somewhere in the car (admittedly it was of great sentimental importance and not insignificant cost). Obviously, that's not what I wanted at all - who would ask for such a thing? I was trying to say that since the only way to find it after having the dealership search thoroughly with flashlights and coming up empty-handed was to remove the seat, but as that was ridiculous, to forget about it and just accept that these things happen.

That's just one example of the mayhem I feel my mouth has unleashed these past few days.

So, clearly, an orangutan signing in Swahili is apparently a better communicator than I am.

I think part of it is cultural: the slightest whiff of mentioning you want something or you are considering something is misinterpreted as a request for that other person to do it for you. I mentioned the car seat, and it was heard as a request to remove it. Or you mention wanting to go somewhere and the person who hears it thinks you want them to be your guide. Or you mention replacing an item lost in their house or car  (because you are intending to replace it yourself) and the person thinks you are hinting that they should replace it. Where we hear idle talking, or thinking out loud, a lot of people here seem to hear subtly-worded requests.

I know these things can happen even years into an expat life in some other country - you think you've basically got it figured out, the bumps are minimal, life is going smoothly (or as smoothly as possible with a family illness to deal with) and fulfillingly, and then BAM! You find your muscles knotting up, you can't seem to say anything clearly, everyone misinterprets you, or they say things you just don't want to or care to hear. To wit, the old guy at 7-11 who, when he saw me buy a Liberty Times, said "That paper is LIES! We are all Chinese and we have 5,000 years of history. You foreigners can't understand. Don't buy that paper of lies!" He said this in English, no less. And me with no good response to such nonsense beyond "大家有他們自己的想法, 大部分的台灣人不同意你的意見" and, after he wouldn't let up "你好傲慢喔" before walking away.

And now, the plum rains are turning Taipei gray. Rain is supposed to wash things away, turn things green, refresh everyone. Instead, it feels like a downpour of more of the same and matches my mood eerily well.

Oh well. Communication breakdown, it's always the same. Communication breakdown, a-drive me insane.