Colors: Reason #25 to Love Taiwan

An unrelated photo, but one I like

I know I haven't blogged much recently, and that will probably continue into the near future: the family illness issue has turned out to be, while not the worst possible scenario, pretty damn bad. I'll say that words like "prognosis" are now thrown around, with their worst possible connotation. So, if I'm not much into blogging until I process this, or if I don't write much of import or substance, I'm sure you'll understand.

And now, since I don't know how much longer I'll be in Taiwan (at least another year, maybe two, after that who knows, but at some point I'll have to go home for an extended period), I thought I'd eschew substance and write this country a weird little love note. 

I have to admit I don't really know exactly why I love it here so much. I can't pinpoint it. As much as I try to look for the beautiful, and the vibrant, a lot of the architecture really is hideous, or at least completely lacking in aesthetic consideration. That's true even if you are looking past the squat cement buildings and looking for the interesting window grills, little shrines, old bricks, street-level liveliness and all the other things that, aggregated, make the place look pretty interesting if you just seek them out. I have to admit that the weather in Taipei mostly sucks - it's more or less the one big drawback to living here. While I feel the constant sandpapering of culture shock has helped me change and grow as a person, it does get on my nerves on occasion, as it would with anyone living in a foreign country. I can't point to politics and say "it's better than back home" (although in some ways, it is), I can't say that Taiwan is a better place for women to live than most Western countries (it's the best you'll do in Asia, but from a global perspective, you can do better - although I no longer believe that America fully belongs on that list), and there's something annoying I can say for every two great compliments I could give this country.

So why am I so attached to this place? What about it has made it the place where I've chosen to live - rather than New York, Washington, DC, China (shudder), even India, or any other country where I could conceivably live? What about this place makes me so optimistic about life here - what makes me stay? It's not just that the good outweighs the bad for me, because I could also say that about India (but not China). It's not that I've gotten "stuck" here - I've actively chosen this life, and the fact that I have not left it and do not, as much as I can control, intend to leave it, is also a choice. 

All I can say is that when I picture the places where I've lived, each one is tinged with a very specific color. Maybe there are tiny specks of other colors in there, but there's always one dominant one.

With India, it's muddy, sandy brown - sure, the panoply of colorful clothes, signs and even rickshaws (when they're not yellow) come to mind, but under all that is the dun-colored landscape - even down south where it's infused with green. I see dirt roads and dry heaps of rock. I see dust in the air and in a film on the buildings. An appealing, earthy color despite the fact that when you get down to it, what it says is "wow there's a lot of dirt in India". Indeed there is. But not in a bad way - at least mostly not.

With China, it's flat gray. Overcast gray. Ugly cement building gray. Highway underpass asphalt gray. Who would want to live in that? China had dirt just as India did, but something about the whole experience imprinted a more human dirt - a pollutant, a factory made toxic grime - rather than a sunny, muddy natural one.

With Washington, DC it's chalky white. Memorial on the Mall chalky white. Marble white but without the luster. When I lived in Rosslyn, a fairly boring neighborhood in Arlington, VA, I would walk up to the Carillon out past Iwo Jima and look out over the city - and the majority of what you see from there is that marbley-chalky shade of white. This is also a good metaphor for how impenetrable I found that city. Even at young ages (single and twentysomething), people would judge you based on your answer to "What do you do?", and "DC society" was something I felt I'd never really scale, nor did I want to.

And with New York, I would have to say brick red. Sure, it's hard to actually see a lot of that particular color, but something about the vintage architecture and the feeling on the street was very brick-colored to me. And, despite being both bigger and infinitely more complex, I've always felt that New York was a place I could get into, unlike DC - and brick red reflects this.

Finally, Taiwan. For all of Taipei's gray buildings and gray skies, when I think of Taiwan the color that comes to mind is green. Green like Da'an Park. Green like the trees along Dunhua and Ren'ai Roads. Green like the mountains - rising in the background of Taipei and beyond. Green like wet markets and vegetable vendors selling their harvest on the street - like stacks of green onions, fragrant melons and bags of sweet potato leaves. Even in the grayest cityscape of Taiwan you can usually find specks of green. I mean, heck, I even found some along Zhongyang Road in Tucheng Industrial Park - a place you'd expect to be ugly as sin (and it is). And yet, this, just along the side of the road, on a concrete guardrail where the road goes over a creek:

It's a comfortable green, a living green, a farmland green even where there's no farmland. It's a green I can live in, unlike the gray of China or the white of DC.

Not to get too sappy, but I've come to realize that for me, there are places that have a certain synergy - a groundswell of something, that makes a place feel like somewhere worth caring about. It attaches to you, the way a kitten or a dog imprints on a person and bonds with that person quickly and permanently. I felt the same way in India - a weird, almost patriotic bond that ensnared me very soon after getting off the plane (that weekend where I cried with culture shock and homesickness notwithstanding), where you can almost feel the same sort of pride and attachment to a place as the locals or natives of that place themselves feel. Where it hurts a little emotionally to see something bad happening there (like the urban renewal scuffles in Taipei, or the bombings in Bombay - although these events are of course of very different magnitudes) where in any other place you'd just think "eh, that's bad news". 

I really do feel that way - I come from a place of "manufactured civic pride", a hometown that has a school varsity mascot and a "Day" where it comes out to celebrate itself with a street festival downtown, but few people actually seem to feel that pride beyond a few half-hearted cheers. A few might, but most people I know from my hometown might give a few "rah rah rahs" out of obligation, without a true sense of belonging or town pride. There's no synergy - at least not for me - no groundswell, no attachment, no imprint. Highland, New York may as well not exist for all I care, even though I spent most of my childhood and teens there. Its color is a middling yellow, if you're curious.

So coming to Taiwan, where people have a real love for the place, has had an impact on me. The same for India, but I do find life in Taiwan to be easier. The whole "developed country" thing, and the relative ease with which I found good work, and the feeling that I get that learning Chinese is both an endeavor of great utility and beauty all contribute to that (learning Tamil, as little as I did in one semester, was an endeavor of beauty but hardly one of lifelong use). 

All of this has formed a sense of attachment to Taiwan that I can't really explain, but I can at least describe. It's why I look beyond the ugly and search for the lively. Why I look beyond the bad (while acknowledging it as necessary) and search also for the good. 

The R-Word

When I went to Turkey, some of my students were given substitute/replacement instructors. Some chose to wait. I knew that even when those classes ended, I would not necessarily get them back: generally the trainer who has a class when it officially ends gets first priority in the renewal. I knew and was OK with that.

Recently it got back to me that one of the students I gave up had “really liked me”, but was “happy to keep her new teacher” because “she’s Asian” (Australian of Cantonese descent) and she feels more comfortable with a teacher of Asian heritage – or, to be blunt, in the words I was actually told, “another woman who looks like her”.

Now, I realize that this was secondhand information and there’s no guarantee that my former student’s true sentiments were reflected in this game of telephone. I also realize that the person who told me might well have been trying to protect my feelings by not saying that, regardless of race, she just preferred the new trainer (which, you know, it happens. Oh well). The person who told me is pretty blunt, though, and the student in question and I had a very good, friendly, dare I say ‘close’ relationship. So…who knows.

What’s interesting is the reaction when I mentioned this on Facebook – when it happened, I felt a bit hurt. Not so much at the possibility that a student would prefer another trainer (although that sucks, I figure it’s a lot like finding a good therapist: even the best ones don’t click with every patient and it’s a patient’s right to find one they ‘click’ with. It doesn’t mean that the one they left was bad). More at the idea that, despite liking me quite a bit, learning a lot and enjoying the class, if my intuition that we’d had a good relationship had been correct, that I’d be passed over simply because I’m white, not Asian.

I realize people face this all the time in the otherdirection – schools and other employers regularly discriminate against Westerners of Asian heritage - and it’s a lot worse going that way. I’m not trying to detract from that or trying for a condescending “I know how you feel”. Just adding my experience. A lot of discussion on racism in English teaching in Taiwan is about discriminating against English teachers who don't look Western - while that's a far more serious problem, I do feel a different perspective based on different experience is valuable.

Generally speaking my Western friends didn’t comment much – but my Taiwanese friends sure did!

And here’s the thing: if you take as a given that the student did, in fact like me and there is no missing information, and it is in fact true that another instructor was chosen purely on the basis of that instructor’s race compared to mine, I personally feel that’s a form of racism, or if you want a less loaded term, “racial discrimination”. I mean it’s judging someone and making a decision based 100% on race – how is that not discrimination?

My Taiwanese friends generally felt differently, though -  few chimed in with agreement that it just sucks, and nobody should judge people based on skin tone, and it stinks that people still feel this way regarding race (which many undoubtedly do).

Most came out and said that they did not, in fact, consider that situation to be “racism”. I’m still at a slight loss as to why, because with one exception from one very eloquent friend whom I routinely mistake for being a native speaker of English (she did go to high school and college abroad, though), all of the reasons given still struck me as, well, as racism. Or “racial discrimination”. Or whatever.

Which may be a bit of culture difference I’ll never get over. I’m not even sure I want to.

The very eloquent answer: that, despite this other teacher being culturally Australian despite looking Asian, that with her family roots in Hong Kong, there would be some sort of gut-level cultural synergy between her and the student that I could not pick up on, because as someone with zero ties to “Chinese culture” besides living here for 5+ years, I wouldn’t have it. There might be cultural concordance that, while not easy to articulate, is there on some fundamental level that makes the student feel more comfortable.

OK, I can buy that. Race isn’t just about race, after all, it’s about culture – and even though I consider anyone born in whatever country, regardless of their family history, to be of that country (so a kid with Chinese parents born in Canada, to me, is Canadian), that they will have cultural ties and cultural traits passed down from their parents that I don’t. I mean, I have that, and my most recently emigrated relative is my grandfather. I have ties to Armenian, especially Armenian-diaspora-from-Turkey, culture that are on some level hard to explain to others. Hell, I even planned an entire seven-week trip around returning to Mousa Dagh to see where I come from. Looking out from that gorgeous orange-tree dotted mountain out to the Mediterranean below is and will continue to be one of the most memorable moments of my life. My grandfather practically cried when I gave him a framed picture of me in the last remaining Armenian village on the mountain.

Although, I couldn’t help but think when we discussed it, that if you’re going to learn a foreign language then you’re kinda-sorta obligated to interact with the culture that comes with that language. In my heart of hearts I do feel it’s sort of a cop-out to want to learn English but interact with other Asians, avoiding the Big White Other as much as possible. It’s really not any better than foreigners coming to Taiwan to learn Chinese and then hanging out almost exclusively with other foreigners (except for maybe a local girlfriend). I can almost-sorta understand that, though, as many people in that situation would probably like to make more local friends, but havetrouble doing so.

On the other hand, I’ve said a few times that I’m going to leave my job fairly soon (this is an open secret so I’m not worried about saying so here), and one of the reasons is that I would really either prefer to work for myself, or have a foreign boss – I just can’t take the constant sandpaper-like scratchy-scratchy culture clash of having an overseas Chinese (not Taiwanese) boss who treats foreigners like they’re Chinese employees and then gets flustered when we don’t act in accordance with that. So…OK. I kind of get it.

Otherwise, I do have to say, I got a bunch of stuff I’d still label as “racist”.

One friend said “if I were a Chinese teacher in the USA and a student wanted an American teacher and not me, I would not consider it discrimination.” Really? Because I would.

One said “Maybe she wanted the Asian teacher because her English is not good” (it is, but that’s not the point) “and she thinks she can speak Chinese with the new one.” Nice try, but I speak far better Mandarin than the new teacher, and is it not racist to assume that someone who looks Asian will necessarily speak better Chinese than someone who does not?

(To digress a bit, but in related news, I do seem to have a few Taiwanese friends who, despite knowing I speak Chinese, still have this idea that I don’t speak Chinese. Not in a malicious “we don’t want you to learn our language” way, but in a really hilarious, although also slightly annoying, “I have to prove to you more than once that I do in fact speak Chinese even if I am not perfect” way. One said “Oh yes, [Cangjie] is too hard for you.” “Come on, I’m not stupid.” “No, you’re not stupid, you’re a foreigner.” I called him out on that and we had a good laugh. Another asked me if I could read a basic Chinese menu after seeing me typing and replying in Chinese on Facebook for months. I was really heartened when yet another – finally, in a show of faith – told someone else I’d be fine at Taiwanese opera because they had Mandarin electronic subtitles and I could read those. THANK YOU SASHA).

Another said “with other Asians we feel comfortable. With foreigners, we like you and we’re friends with foreigners, but sometimes there is a ‘sense of distance’, and maybe she doesn’t feel that with the new teacher.” (translated from Chinese)

OK, but feeling a ‘sense of distance’ based solely on the fact that I’m Big Whitey – how is that not also a subtler, and also sadder, form of racism (even if it’s not the virulent ‘I hate foreign people’ kind)?

I mean, honestly, I wrote yesterday about not having a "best friend" in Taiwan - I mean a female best friend, not in the way that my husband is my best friend - and while I value my foreign and local friendships equally even if we interact in different ways, I have to say I feel far greater chemistry and intuitive understanding with my Taiwanese friends than with any other random foreigner who is not my friend. Maybe I'm weird. Maybe I just don't feel that synergy or that "cultural connection" (although I feel that on some level, I must. I'm not that special after all). I don't feel a "sense of distance" with my Taiwanese friends even if we don't always have the same sort of interactions I do with other Westerners. In Chinese there's this idea of an 'unspoken understanding' or 'chemistry' (默契) - and I do feel that many locals expect that foreigners will feel 默契 with each other. Well...no. I mean, maybe on some level, sure, but I feel more 默契 with my Taiwanese friends, especially my female friends (my male friends are great but it's a different sort of friendship), than I would with any given foreigner if I didn't know them - because it's based on friendship and knowing someone, not on race and how someone looks, or even entirely on their cultural background. 

So...I dunno. On some level I can sort of understand this but on another I just don't get it. Or I don't agree. I'm not sure which - still processing my thoughts there.

In the end, all I can say is that there really seems to be a difference in how we Westerners perceive racism vs. how it’s perceived by many Taiwanese. This is what I was trying to say in an earlier post – especially the fact that while we might see all foreigners as “foreigners”, locals often group us into “high income white people” (regardless of whether we’re high income or not – I feel we’re generally not, but then most of my students earn six figures NT per month) and “service and factory working Southeast Asians and foreign brides”. It’s fairly common for locals to say 外國人” and mean “white people” – Koreans are Koreans, Japanese are Japanese, Chinese are Chinese or “Mainlanders”, and – surprisingly – Africans and African Americans (or black people of any other country) are not 外國人 but “black people”.  Anecdotally, my friend’s girlfriend has done this, and another local friend confirmed that yes, a lot of people do think that way.

And – for whatever reason, because I still don’t get it, not really – there’s an idea that it’s OK to prefer people of your own race, regardless of their cultural upbringing, simply because they look like you, and that’s not racism. Other things we’d probably call “racist” would not be called so here. It’s not quite as bad as the infamous Lonely Planet China quote from a Chinese person: “There’s no racism in China because there are no black people in China”, but still, it’s there.

I don’t deny that there does seem, in any culture, to be a certain “understanding” between people who have similar ethnic heritage and it makes sense that people would gravitate to those who share a common cultural background, but, I don’t know, I still feel that making business decisions based on that is, on some level, racist. Even if it’s the way of this very unfair world. I am not sure I’d go so far as to say that people – regardless of any language they might be learning – are racist if they make moves towards surrounding themselves with their own race and culture, and don’t exhibit an interest in interacting with, much less befriending, anyone outside of that bubble, but I do question it. And I do wonder.

BFF

My BFFs from college - like Sex and the City except we look like normal people,
don't live in New York and don't sleep around
(this is at my wedding - they're all bridesmaids)

So, recently I've gotten some bad family-related news. I don't really want to give too many details, but it's illness-related, not so serious that I have to move home (which is not a realistic option anyway, although if necessary I would make it happen), not anything terminal, but definitely not good. We've been through it once before, but it's stressful no matter what.

If I don't update as often, it's not because I've got no free time - although often, I don't - but when dealing with stress like this, I might feel like leaving writing alone except for the occasional "cool thing I did on the weekend" or restaurant review. Which is too bad, because I'm still working on a post countering a lot of terrible things I hear said in the expat community about Taiwanese men.

So, with this illness in the family to deal with, I've realized something. I'm very happily married and have an active social life that includes both expat and local friends of both genders (not a lot of people can say that, I've found). I always have something social to do, someone I can call, people to invite places or have coffee with. On weekends when I don't do anything social other than hang with my wonderful husband, it's by choice.

And yet, there's something I don't have: a best girlfriend in Taiwan. Someone I can call up for a moment's notice to get coffee or a 3pm margarita - no joke, I've done that, Taiwan and my job in general are great that way - and complain with, cry on the shoulder of, joke with, go nuts with.

I have a lot of good female friends - I meet up and have frank discussions and fun times with other female bloggers, I go to Taiwanese opera and talk about cultural differences with Sasha, I talk frankly about personal matters and make dirty jokes with Cathy, I complain about work with Aliya, and I'm very close to my sister (who also lives in Taipei), but I don't have anyone who I *know* would call me if they needed someone to drop everything to come over in a crisis, or who would be the first person I'd think to call if a crisis were to hit me. I mean, my sister would come, but at other times she runs with her own younger buxiban teaching crowd, being in her mid-twenties and single and all.

You can accuse me of being too girly if you want, but I do think this kind of BFF friendship is an important part of being a woman, even an adult woman, even a married woman. Yes, of course, in any crisis the first person I'd call would be my husband, but there's something about having a BFF who you can also call - like your girl-husband (or, as one very close pair of friends call themselves, "Wife", as in "WIFE! Skype date!") - because sometimes you just need another woman's perspective. I have been blessed with the best husband on Earth - I really mean that, I do not believe it is possible to find a more wonderful, supportive and good-to-the-core man, and this is not hyperbole - so I'm not talking about someone I can call up to whine about Man Problems, Sex and the City style. Maybe 8 years ago, but not now. I'm talking about, well, that female perspective. The unconditional mutual love and support of someone you are not legally bound to, who enjoys things like shopping and crafts (which, awesome as he is, Brendan unsurprisingly does not really relish or, well, do at all).

Someone you can go wedding dress fabric shopping with, get your hair done with, and drink those all-important 3pm margaritas with.

There's just something about that dynamic - mostly drinking caffeine or alcohol, eating delicious, or deliciously awful food - making crude vagina jokes and BSing, but knowing they'd be there for you, no questions asked, if something really bad happened. Having someone who also possesses lady parts and lady hormones and lady hobbies to talk to, who isn't afraid to get personal.

I'm really not joking. It's Margarita O'Clock!

With my Taiwanese girlfriends, they rule, but they don't generally talk as much about very personal matters (like, oh, sex) - with the exception of one I know. They definitely don't drink as much (no margaritas! Waaaah). I have some awesome expat female friends but we're all very busy people with mismatched schedules, and beyond that, well, there just aren't a lot of expat women in Asia. Certainly not in Taipei, and those who are around are often older and married to men here on business - trailing spouses.

I'm not a trailing spouse so I don't do playdates or coffee mornings. I mean, what is this "morning" of which you speak? Is that even a time? Who does that? "Coffee morning" to me is when I roll out of bed at 9:30am and pour myself some coffee from the kitchen. If I don't have work that day I put whiskey in it, although I try to limit that because I'm not a total train wreck. I'm not gonna haul my ass to Starbucks at that godawful hour). In my younger days I might drink that coffee with whoever was crashed out on my couch from the night before, and we'd sort of mumble pleasantries at each other through bleary-eyed light hangovers. Now I'm much more domestic. I have a living room that doesn't have random people sleeping in it. I haven't had a hangover since January - and even then, it was because I was invited to an annual party and getting a bit sloshed is a requirement at those things. Ah, to hit one's thirties...

My point: we younger-but-not-too-young, say early thirties, female expats are thin on the ground. There are millions of great Taiwanese women to befriend, but there are cultural differences to account for as well.

And, as a result, I'm feeling like I could really use a BFF.

貴州人怕不辣 ("In Guizhou, people are afraid food is not spicy enough")

"Mi pi" noodles in a sour spicy sauce

Oriental Cuisine (東方饌黔天下)

Dazhi Road Lane 46 #27, Dazhi District, Taipei (MRT Dazhi - surprise!)

台北市大直區大直街46巷27號

In 2002 and 2003 I lived in Guizhou (貴州), a southwest-central province of China. Specifically, the city of Zunyi (遵義), in the north part not far from the Moutai brewery and, further up, Chongqing.

When I lived there, for most lunch meals that I didn't eat at the school, I would go out for either the town's famous lamb noodles (遵義羊肉面) or get something called "mi pi", or "rice skin" noodles. Like the wide "bantiao" noodles popular in Hakka cuisine in Taiwan (板條), they're basically soft, white, wide, thin noodles - but these are much wider than bantiao and served in a much spicier sauce with ground lamb or pork and vinegary undertones. It tends to be spicier, reminiscent of the flavors of Chongqing hot pot, in the north and more sour, reminiscent of Miao (苗族) cuisine in the south where there are more ethnic minorities - mainly Miao but also Dong and others.

Mi pi quickly became my favorite food IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, second only to dried chilis stuffed with rice gluten and baked until the chili skin crackled. I've tried every Chinese restaurant that does a good job with southwestern Chinese fare - Sichuan, Hunan, Chongqing, Yunnan - and never found my mi pi outside of Guizhou. It was so simple and yet so perfect. And I could only have it in Guizhou - it was too simple, too local, too basic, to be served elsewhere it seemed.

Until now. 

苗寨乾鍋雞

                        

The other day I read a review of "Oriental Cuisine" in the Taipei Times (linked above) and thought "I must go there immediately". It was actually my husband who found the review, but I was the one squealing giddily over it. Finally! MY FOOD! I could have MY FOOD again! I didn't like a lot about China - I got pneumonia twice in one year after all - but I loved, loved, LOVED the food, especially the amazing yet underrated cuisine of my "home state" of Guizhou. It was like Sichuanese food only better. As though Sichuanese food could get better (actually, it can).

There's even a saying: 四川人不怕辣，湖南人辣不怕，貴州人怕不辣. In Sichuan, the people are not afraid of spicy food. In Hunan, the people of spicy food they are not afraid. In Guizhou, the people are afraid food is not spicy enough!

And it is so true. The variety and depth of spice in cool, humid, mountainous and poverty-stricken Guizhou (all true: they also say that "in Guizhou you cannot walk three steps without going uphill, it cannot go three days without raining, and the people do not have three pennies to rub together") is truly a magical, life-changing thing. I tear up just thinking about it - and not from the chilis. The sweat on my brow from a fiery soup steeped in chili oil. The long-term burning of the dried chilis used in many dishes, especially when tempered with nothing but rice gluten. The use of grilling, stewing and adding sour or bitter notes, the sharpness black pepper and flower pepper (花椒, a personal favorite of mine and found in all good Sichuanese food) created a cuisine that I grew very attached to.

貴州式公保雞

Unfortunately, Guizhou cuisine, for reasons I cannot explain, has not caught fire - pun intended - abroad the way Sichuanese and Hunanese cuisines have. Why? Why?! I honestly don't know.  So, after leaving Guizhou, I'd resigned myself to never enjoying that particular beauty again, unless I were to return for a culinary visit (which I fully intend to do, even if I will never again live in China).

And then, there was magic.

A restaurant - in Taipei!!!!!!! - specializing in Guizhou food with a guy who had studied it in depth and in meticulous detail at the helm? Oh, pinch me! Bring my smelling salts! Bring my stuffed dried chilis and my mi pi sauce! BRING IT!

So, it was really not an option: we had to eat there as soon as possible. Which we did, on Sunday.  We ordered many of their most famous dishes, I got my mi pi (not seen on the menu, but he could whip it up for me easily enough) and I had a lot of great banter with the chef about the wonderfulamazingness of the food of Guizhou. Either he was humoring me or he was genuinely pleased to meet another fan of the cuisine who had been there and knew what she was talking about.

The chef explains the history of Miao dry chicken pot as my friend Cathy gazes into the wok

We also ordered a meat dish cooked with a special root which has a bitter-ish taste (one of the only bitter tastes I can handle) and a fishy smell - and not in a good way. I'd seen it many times in Guizhou, and at the time didn't like it. With five years of Chinese cuisine under my belt, I was ready for another go. This time, I can say I honestly liked it. My, how things change.

Scary root dish that is a little bitter and smells of fish

We ordered some of the cheaper Moutai - not the "ten thousand NT a bottle" stuff, but good stuff - to drink to our amazing meal. Despite not being the most expensive kind, it did make us a little lightheaded.

And the meal was amazing. This chef is the real deal - he knows what he's doing and the food delivers.

苗家酸湯魚

 We also got the Miao sour fish soup (above), which comes with a "dipping soup" for the fish slices - amazingly boneless - shown below. So good. This reminded me less of Zunyi - mi pi and lamb noodle territory - and more of Kaili, the Miao stronghold in the south of the province, not far from Guanxi.

Good decor, too.

All I can say is that if you live in Taipei like spicy food, you have to eat here. If you don't, I will punch you in the face.

And now, please enjoy some of my photos from Guizhou - this trip down memory lane brought to you by the fine folks at Oriental Cuisine. Just to give you a little cultural and landscape background to the food that you WILL eat because I will MAKE you eat it. You don't have a choice, sorry.

Kaili textile market

Downtown Guiyang - China Construction indeed

A "Chinese horoscope" game in Zunyi - you get a lollipop that looks like the animal
the spinner lands on

Somewhere in Zunyi

Minority woman (Dong, perhaps?)

Phoenix Park in Zunyi

Zunyi wet market spice shop

A very poor area in northern Guizhou

Villager in a Dong minority area

Miao woman outside Kaili, preparing to go to a wedding (which I was invited to, attended,
but could not take photos of as it was too dark - it was amazing)

Zunyi's main wet market

Miao woman outside Kaili

Miao girl and her mother dressed up in a village outside Kaili (we were going to a wedding)

View from the highway between Guiyang and Zunyi, central Guizhou

Miao mother and child Chong'an in southwest Guizhou

Southwest Guizhou

Miao textiles for sale (I own several)

Way up by the Chongqing border

Capital city of Guiyang

Near Chishui (north Guizhou)

Weird House

Welcome to the house of WEIRD FOREIGN PEOPLE

Just for fun on a sunny morning, I wanted to make the quick observation that culture differences span not only attitudes, interpretations, actions and reactions - and when at home they extend far beyond what you do at home. They also affect what you do to your home.

I'm obviously not the first person to notice this: my husband has noted that in Korea, people pump a lot of money into their cars and comparatively little into their homes. I once heard an expat in China muse that the money we'd spend on a new floor, a nice print for our wall and a paint job would be spent, in China, on a designer bag - the walls could stay dingy and the floor could stay cracked or peeling. That's not always true, of course, but there's a grain of truth to it.

What I've found interesting is that in the US, people often assume, when we talk about where we live and what our home is like, that "Asian people decorate in an Asian way, and we decorate in an American way." I don't know exactly what they picture, but I get the feeling that a lot of Americans think that everyone in Asia lives here:

from here

Or if they don't have money, here:

from this site - go visit so they get traffic and don't sue me

You know, this idea that I'll always have a couch and coffeetable and they'll have tatami mats and lanterns or something, with red walls and round doors, and a futon and those old Chinese chairs and they'll sit around playing zither and drinking tea out of impossibly tiny cups while they talk about Confucius. Or something.      

Whereas it seems the exact opposite is true. Young travelers who come to Asia to set up shop as English teachers generally don't have enough money to live anywhere much better than a horrible cement monstrosity (although some luck out) - maybe not as bad as the one pictured but pretty bad. I lived in one. Those who do have money would, very often, prefer to live here:

from this site

I know I would.

And most Taiwanese people I know would laugh at that and instead jump at the chance to live here:

from this no longer functional site

Most people don't have the money for such interiors, but if you look into what people do with their decorating budget, and what their dreams are, you will find a stark difference: and it's really not what you might have imagined.

A lot of people visit our home, now that I have one that isn't horrible, and we've gotten some rather surprised reactions to how I've chosen to decorate and even interact with my living space that goes against cultural norms in Taiwan.

I do want to keep this lighthearted - I'm not trying to make fun of anyone here, except in a friendly way, but here goes. A short list of things locals have said when visiting my apartment:

1.) "You don't have a TV? But...what do you do in the evenings?"

2.) "AAAAH! CAT! Can you make him go away?"

3.) "Your window is open? Without a screen? I never do that! If you do that it's too cold, or it's too hot." (We do have window screens, I just usually open the window fully so the cat can go out on the casement and I can get to my herbs, and I like the open air feeling. Apparently a fully open window is a weird thing).

4.) "Wow. Why did you paint so many colors on your walls?" (Instead of the usual white or cream color you see in apartments)

5.) "Even if I didn't know you I would  know that foreigners live here." "Why?" "Because IT'S TOO CHINESE!"

6.) "You sit on the floor?" (we have a tatami dining area with floor cushions). "I thought white people liked chairs."

7.) "Oh, no TV?"

Yes, we sit on the floor.

8.) (friend's wife, to my friend) "Psst, there's no TV?" "No." "Really?" "Really. She told me before." "Wow."

9.) "Why don't you have a TV?"

10.) "There are so many pictures on the walls. I have no pictures."

11.) "Why do you have this? This is Chinese."

12.) "You don't wear your shoes inside! I thought foreigners didn't take their shoes off."

13.) "You have too many spices."

14.) "So, what's your rent?"

15.) "Where's your TV?.....oh."

16.) "Why do you want curtains made of chiffon. [that was not really a question.] That's too light. You should use this heavy fabric. See the nice flowers on it? I also have it in shiny gold. Do you want tassels? No? I have lots of tassels. Oh." (from my tailor, who made our curtains)

16.) "Is your TV in another roo....oh."

17.) (looking at my cat) "You have a cat?"

18.) "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS? It is too local. We don't have this. It's too Asian." (referring to a basket we own that used to be a typical household item in Taiwan)

Not our basket, but close enough. I'm too lazy to take a photo.

19.) "I like your house but I prefer Western style in my house."

20.) "Wow. Your coffeemaker! But you can't make lattes!"

Of course, not every comment has been critical - and most of these were meant in friendly banter. Surprise, even, that we'd choose a more Asian style for a lot of our decorating flourishes, that we would eschew a TV, that we do take our shoes off, or that we'd open the window all the way to let the air in, and only close the screen if there are too many bugs. And, of course, rather than a tiny, yippy Maltese we have a cat who appears to have multiple personality disorder (although, honestly, don't all cats?). They're not surprised that we don't go down the typical route of blue or black vinyl couches, a Fat Buddha calendar, a round dining table and a glass-topped coffee table (and a side table made of yellow wood topped in thick, greenish plastic) with a huge TV on the wall, but I think what they often expect is something more Western, you know, like they'd choose and like they imagine we'd choose because we are Western.

It's always interesting to visit other peoples' homes and see what they've done with their interiors - and I look forward to being able to make observations.                                                                 

Muppet Hao!

Now that everyone seems to have forgotten about the Wang family - as I am sure those in power had hoped - this story on the famous A-Tsai (阿才) restaurant as Taipei's next urban renewal victim is worth reading.

Here's my take on Taipei city politics.

I really think this says it all. Derp derp derp.

Restaurant Review: Yin Yi (銀翼/ "Silver Wings")

Yin Yi / Silver Wings Restaurant
銀翼餐廳
(02) 2341-7799
Jinshan S. Road Sec. 2 #18 2nd floor / Jinshan Xinyi intersection
金山南路2段18號2樓 / 金山信義路口
10am-2pm, 5pm-9pm
MRT CKS Memorial Hall (you could also get there from Zhongxiao Xinsheng without much trouble. It's very close to the Xinyi end of Yongkang Street).


Notes: Reservations recommended, great for large groups, some specialty dishes need to be ordered in advance (a few hours ahead)


Four words: really tasty, great service. Here's a rundown in Chinese.


So, OMG, I managed to find a good restaurant recommended by a student that has not already been reviewed in the Taipei Times! Yin Yi is locally famous, although not really well-known among expats (obviously, the restaurants that get to be known among us foreigners tend to be the ones that end up in guidebooks, which are often good, sometimes not). Rather like Rendezvous (龍都酒樓, another gem), local reactions to my eating there run along the lines of "it's famous! How did you know about it?!" with the strong implication that all Taiwanese in Taipei have heard of these places but it's expected that foreigners have not.

清炒鱔魚 - slivered braised eel (or something like eel)

Yin Yi specializes in Yangzhou food (from the province of Jiangsu, but cuisine from here is apparently closer to Shanghainese or Zhejiang food), although locals I know have mistakenly said that it's a "Zhejiang" restaurant or even a "Shanghai" restaurant. I'll be honest - the food was amazing, but if you told me "this is Zhejiang food" and not "this is Yangzhou food", I'd be all "Oh, OK." The three cuisines are really very similar. I wouldn't really know. I know a fair amount about regional Chinese cuisine, but I'm not an expert.

鍋粑蝦仁 - shrimp and puffed rice in tomato sauce

But anyway. The food. It was excellent! We had three kinds of dumplings cooked on pine needles, which give the dumplings a subtle but unique aroma and flavor. I highly recommend any one or all of the three.

小籠菜餃 (the second photo) - all the dumplings cooked on pine needles are recommended!

We had the famous shrimp pot with tomato sauce and puffed rice, which is a good dish to order if you're entertaining visiting friends or family members (or clients) - very easy on foreign palates. We had the "shanyu", which is like eel ("manyu"), which had an interesting texture. There was a shredded tofu and dried meat dish that, by east coast Chinese standards was spicy, but to this woman who lived in Guizhou and ate Sichuan-style food for a year, was not spicy at all, but still good. It was hard to tell what was tofu and what was meat, because it was all quite tender. We also had a sour cabbage salad and the red bean paste in fried tasty thing (it has a real name, but I prefer this one) as well as their famous noodle dish （蔥開煨麵), which was fantastic, but I don't have a photo. It's thick noodles in a cloudy soup with dried meat and shrimp: delicious!

紅椒肉絲炒干絲 - dried slivered pork, I think with tofu, and some chili

Finally, we had the duck. It's served as something between Beijing duck and fatty pork gua bao (the dish for which you put slices of braised fatty pork into sesame buns): a roast duck, more dry and not as 'lacquered' as Beijing duck is torn to shreds, and the shreds dipped lightly in salt and put into soft white buns. Absolutely delicious, and a real treat. The salt really made the dish: don't skimp.

香酥全鴨 - duck with bread. You can see what we did to this poor duck, who is now just a carcass (in our fridge, because we took it home - Imma make SOUP!)

Everything was  really just...good. I'm not sure how else to describe it: think of visiting a new city and having your friends there introduce you to their favorite place that isn't in guidebooks. Or going out with a group to a new restaurant and having just a fantabulous meal together. Think of a well-made, well-served meal where you leave thinking "that was so yummy, my stomach is so full, I'm going to get cramps if I try to walk!" That's really the tone the food at Yin Yi sets. For me, that's the hallmark of a good Chinese meal.

I'd also like to note Yinyi's fantastic service. These folks could really go teach Song Chu a thing or two about cultivating service that will keep people coming back. We got a free dish because I said the boss (or a boss, it's hard to tell), who also took care of our table looked like my boss - and he did. To the point where I was startled for a second. He brought a free dish (the sour cabbage salad) and said "it looks like you don't like your boss, and I don't want you to not like me!"


                           
                                               拌白菜心 - sour cabbage salad with peanuts

When they realized it was Brendan's birthday - our reason for going out - they helped us with the cake I'd brought from My Sweetie Pie and gave us a plate of mint candies and almond roca (although we were so stuffed already that it was hard to eat it)! They didn't pressure us right away with the check, and they didn't try to overload us with food: what they said should be enough for 8 people was just about enough, but we ended up ordering more. At some less ingenuous restaurants - not sure if that's the right word but we'll go with it - they'll purposely upsell and oversell in the interest of raising the bill, not what you actually want to eat. At Yin yi, they recommended the dishes that they were truly famous for and didn't kill us with volume.

We killed ourselves with volume, ordering three extra dishes that we could barely finish!


It was never difficult to get a waiter to come over (something that is a problem at a few good restaurants in Taipei) and we never felt rushed, bothered, upsold or kicked out even though we stayed until closing time, even long after we'd finished our order and were having cake and Brendan was opening gifts.

                                            豆沙鍋餅 - red bean paste in tasty fried thing


All in all, it was a fantastic evening and I strongly recommend this restaurant to anyone and everyone. Especially for foreigners who like Chinese food but want dishes that are palatable to Western diners: this isn't American Chinese, not at all, but the flavors are the sort that Westerners can enjoy, even if they aren't used to the many variations of Chinese cuisine.


Now, as it was my dear husband's birthday, enjoy a few birthday pics!