International Food Festival

Last weekend NCKU organized an international food festival. I was thinking about making and selling something, but what does America have? Hamburgers and hotdogs come from Germany. Pizza and pasta come from Italy. What's left? In the end, I decided not to cook - but I felt bad for not being involved so I said I could spin fire in the talent show portion.

In retrospect, my act was a little bizarre. There were all these cute cultural dances, with groups of friends from some country in their traditional outfits, and then me: I chose a hard-rock punk criticism of American politics song (Greenday, American Idiot), and spun around on stage in jeans, twirling a flaming stick. Although the show went off ok, and thank God I didn't drop the thing and light anyone on fire, I still felt a little out of place. Later on, they held a fashion show and everybody who performed came out for 2nd and 3rd rounds of bowing - all of which I skipped, feeling conspicuously ordinary in appearance.

The food, however, was great. Hands down the best was an Indian curry with rice, chicken and garbanzo beans. There was also an amazing carne asado (good cooked meat) from Colombia, and they even had Yerba Mate - although they drink it cold there instead of hot, sweet, with milk.

Almost everything was fried, but pretty good stuff. Hmm... its making me hungry again. I also found out something interesting: people all over the world consider potato salad their own cultural heritage. Not just something they like to eat, but a sample of their own ethnic ingenuity. We had potato salad from Equador and potato salad from Mongolia. When I was cooking in Boston I worked with a girl from Romania - I asked her to make a special Romanian dish and she made potato salad - and she spent all day on it too, chopping up all the potatoes and vegetables until the looked just like the little squares that come in the frozen veggie mixes.

I know a lot of Americans who would consider potato salad the epitome of Yankee; like fried chicken and apple pie. Can you imagine going to Mongolia or Romania or Equador, somewhere that seems completely foreign, and getting a plate of chopped potatoes and mayonnaise?

Road Trip

I'm going crazy on a Thursday night... class was canceled today so I've been sitting at home building my websites. Getting a lot of work done but going stir crazy. I did acupuncture yesterday, got another tooth drilled this evening (I have about 6 teeth left that aren't all metal posts and porcelain) and am kind of killing time with nothing to do.

Next week is Spring Break however, and I'm taking a road trip down to Kenting. I've never driven so far on my scooter, but desperately need an adventure - besides, next week is Spring Scream, Taiwan's largest outdoor music festival. Every college student on the island will cram into the tiny beach town for 3 days; there are 3 stages which will play 24 hour music, and its a constant party. (http://www.springscream.com/)I decided to camp, so I bought a tent. I'm also packing my fire staff and my metal detector.

My bike is old and falling apart. I had the foresight to take it in for an oil change (about a month late) but while I was there the mechanic recommended I change my tires and fix some broken bits. The entire front was all bashed up and falling off also, so I bought a new one. All the work set my back about 60USD, and while it was in the shop, the mechanic let me borrow his scooter to get to work. (It always astounds me when they just let me drive off with their scooter, with no ID or paperwork or anything, even though its pretty common.)

I need a fun, distracting project - so I'm going to buy some acrylic paints and paint my scooter crazy style for the trip. Make it super cool, arsty, and attention grabbing. Check back soon for picture.

Funky English

In my minority literature class, recently we've been reading books by Chinese immigrants like Kingston's "China Men" or Amy Tan's "Joy Luck Club." What's fun about these books is the way the authors make word puns or play with the multiple meanings that arise going back and forth between English and Chinese. Unlike English, Chinese is a tonal language in which one sound can have many different meanings, depending on the tone. So the author will point out, that "Ro - Lo- Bo" to use a fictitious example, can mean second uncle or frog prince or tea ceremony.

However, the truth is that these second meanings aren't even noticed by Chinese speakers. Tones are tones, after all. A word with a different tone is a completely different word, with no relationship to the first. I know this because, when trying to learn Chinese, I often have trouble with words that sound alike.

In Chinese, there are words that sound exactly the same, but have different characters, and there are words that have the same characters, but sound different. Then there are the words we foreigners get mixed up, that have different tones, or sound the same to us, but which are never confused by native speakers. If you drop off the tone and write the word in blank pinyin, or an English approximation, a learner of Chinese, or someone who's not been brought up with Chinese as a first language, can readily see the substitutions and word games. For example, "Yao" can mean "I want", "to bite", and "medicine". So, "Wo yao yao yao," means I want to eat medicine. This is hilarious to foreigners or learners of the language. Chinese people, however, don't get the humor.

Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston can only use these word puns because they were brought up in America but in a Chinese family - and the only people who can fully appreciate their little jokes, or have the same kind of fun with the language, are other people who can look at Chinese with an English mind-set.

I often find the very opposite of this phenomenon with my Taiwanese girlfriend, who hears connections between English words that I've never considered before. For example, when I'm cold, I say "Brrrr...." which to her sounds like "Bird." She never knows why I say "bird" when I'm cold. Even though I've explained it to her, she always thinks its funny to translate back into Chinese, "Xiao Niao" - Little Bird. When I was growing out my facial hair, she asked how to call it. I said, "Beard." She translated into Chinese, "PiJiu", or "Beer", which is what she heard.

One day after staying in watching movies, my girlfriend said "We are tomatoes on a couch!"
It took me awhile to figure out that this was what her memory and translation had retained from a phrase she learned in class, "Couch Potato."

Center of Attention

I have a nervous, introverted disposition that generally prefers to hide in the corners observing the action rather than gathering attention to myself. In certain circumstances, of course, if I'm on stage or giving a speech, if I've assumed the role of exhibitionist, I can handle being the center of attention. In Taiwan, I'm rarely given the choice.

While most immigrants to America are marginalized and ignored, as a foreigner in Taiwan I'm very, very interesting. Today my professor got distracted from the lesson plan and began to ask me, in front of my classmates, personal questions about my background. Like most people, she thinks its surprising that I came all the way to Taiwan to study English literature and wanted to know the process behind that decision. I usually try to keep out of the limelight because I don't think its fair to Taiwanese students to be compared to a native speaker, and I don't want them feeling insecure in their abilities. And also, some days, like today, I'd just like to keep my mouth shut and count the seconds until class is over and I can go home - just like any other student. But being the foreigner, I usually feel a little responsible for helping the teacher out. Taiwanese students aren't really used to speaking out in class, and given that these classes are in their second language, its even harder for them to speak their minds. Often, if the teacher has asked a question, and nobody else seems to want to answer, I'll raise my hand and respond just so the class can progress.

Today I was thinking about skipping my afternoon German class. It's a beginner course and because I've studied some German before, its pretty easy for me. Besides, I have to take the class for credit on a pass/fail basis, so the grade doesn't even matter. However, one of my classmates told me that my German teacher, after I had a short conversation with her about her time spent in Spain (we could speak more fluently in Spanish than we could in English or German), was talking about me with her students during her Wednesday class. Why? No reason. I'm just interesting. I stand out. An American studying German in Taiwan who learned Spanish in Argentina. Of course, it means that I can't just skip German class when I want to. My absence will be just as conspicuous as my presence, if not more so.

Acupuncture, Part II

Yesterday, after my first round at Taiwanese acupuncture, I had a headache and nausea. Not a migraine, this kind of headache was more like a hangover headache - I've felt it before whenever I do a detox program. A lot of people claim it's from the toxins that are stored in your cells releasing back into your bloodstream before being cleared out of your system. And, since acupuncture is supposed to help remove toxins, I took it as a good sign.

When I went back this time, I wasn't sure what to expect. Sure enough, after a brief evaluation, I went into the back to get more needles stuck in me.

She gave me me a few extra ones in my stomach and feet this time. Like before, it was very painful. When she put one in my arm, I could feel the pain shoot down my wrist to my ring finger. I was even worried about irreparable nerve damage. After the needles were in, I felt like a paper doll pinned down with thumbtacks. I couldn't move anything. I couldn't even scratch my nose.

The office was busy this time. The man to my right was doing a different kind of traditional health technique, known a "fire cupping". It's like a reverse massage that draws the skin up and outwards, using heat and plastic suction cups. I was a little jealous, it looked pretty comfortable compared to what I was going through, and he was in and out in less than 30 minutes.

To my right was another guy, with his girlfriend. I couldn't see exactly but I think he'd hurt his ankle, and he got about 30 needles in a 4 inch area down there. There were also several people in the back room, an old women with a loud, Taiwanese voice, and another woman, yelling in pain from what I guess what also acupuncture but I can't be sure. It's hard to know for certain if I feel any better - but I'm pretty sure it was good for me and I'll try to go back at least every month.

Sex and Violence

Last week I read Al-Tayyib Salih's post-colonial novel, "Season of Migration to the North." It was fantastic. Like always, I found myself in class defending and exonerating the character that most readers, including my professor, associate with 'the bad guy'. "Cruel, heartless, inhuman..." are some of the words my teacher used to describe him. And true, he did murder his wife and cause several women to commit suicide - but I feel that the novel accurately portrays him as a victim who was only acting out the violent role that the British had already written for him, as an immigrant black Sudanese. As with several other novels I've read recently, the narrator is a guy who never does anything. All of the plot events are caused by the very interesting Said, who is mysterious, charismatic and seductive. True, bad things happen around him - but without him, there is no story. And in the end, it is the narrator's lack of action that allows the women he loves to be forced into an arranged marriage, as well as her subsequent suicide.

Today, I just started reading V.S. Naipaul's "The Mimic Men" and I'm already fascinated by it, although very little has happened. Perhaps I identify with the main character. He's attracted to foreign women, has an anxiety problem, and lives abroad. He keeps hinting at a terrible tragedy.

I've realized that the literary images which draw me in and haunt me even after I've finished a book, are generally concerned with sex and violence. Sure, great description helps, mood and setting, but its the event, the blood or sweat, that really binds my attention. Traditionalists sometimes blame the media, the News Channels or Movies, for introducing gratuitous visions of sex and violence into our lives - but without TV, wouldn't we resort back to thrillers and romance novels? Are the great classics of literature (Romeo and Juliet?) so powerful precisely because of the sex and violence they display?

Acupuncture

Today was an epic day. My Husserl presentation went off pretty well - but there were a lot of blank faces as the professor and I tried in tandem to explain the difference between Noematics and Noetics and their relationship to the Perceptive Noema. I've felt 'off' for several days, and I crashed early this afternoon for a 3 hour nap. I finally forced myself to get up around 5pm, feeling restless because of the hot, muggy weather and my dirty apartment.

I drove over to a Chinese medicine center that I'd scoped out yesterday, bravely went inside, and asked to see the doctor. She was charming and vivacious, and, as is customary, checked my pulse at both wrists before asking me any questions. I felt a little stupid describing my symptoms - migraines and vomiting, triggered mostly by food allergies. (The obvious solution is to avoid the food I'm allergic too, but I keep hoping some alternative method will completely reform my body.) I was worried about my digestive system and liver. Had I done any tests? Um...no. She was about to prescribe some Chinese herbs and send me on my way, but I asked specifically for acupuncture and that seemed to put her at ease. I'll bet a lot of foreigners came in asking to 'try it out', and so she could treat me more as a tourist than a patient. She yelled out to one of her assistants to set me up in back. "Where?" "All over!"

I was waiting in the back room for some time. The nurse was a cute young woman, she seemed to be stalling. I wondered if I was supposed to get undressed, and she didn't know how to ask me. However, the Doctor herself finally came in to treat me herself. I remember doing acupuncture at least once before, perhaps in Malta. I remember the needles being very small and flimsy, and were stuck just a little under the skin. This time was different. The Doctor placed each needle carefully in place and then tapped it deeper with her finger. It was very painful. "You mean, a warm, electric feeling, right? Or a dull throbbing?" She asked me. No, just pain. Sharp, intense, penetrating. I got two needles in each hand, four in my stomach, 1 in each knee and 2 in each foot. Then the assistant heated the needles by waving burning embers over them.

After about two minutes, I felt pretty comfortable. I was a little dizzy, but it could have been the harsh fluorescent light above me or that the room was filled with smoke from the incense. At one point the Doctor came back in. She grabbed each of the needles - I thought she was taking them out - and said 10 more minutes. As she did this, the intense pain came back; pain that spread up my arms and legs from the site of the needle. A few moments later, I was trying to relax by breathing deeply when I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. I looked down and was surprised to find the needles were still there. After a long while, the Doctor came in and took out all the needles. The whole process took about an hour, and I paid only $3.00, courtesy of my National Health Insurance. I would have been happy to come back in about a month, but she wants to see me again on Saturday.

It had been a hard week, so I drove straight to Tainan's cheapest movie theater where they show films that have already been out for several months. The building used to be a real theater and was converted. It's old and dodgy, a little sleazy, but only $2.00 and I had the whole theater to myself. I watched Denzel Washington's "Deju Vu". Afterwards, I thought about cruising over to the Confucius Temple to do some metal-detecting; but my left hand is still so sore from the acupuncture I can hardly make a fist.

Aren't I a handsome devil?

In Middle School I had acne. I took an "high-risk" drug called Acutane for about 6 months, which completely and permanently cleared up my skin. It's considered high risk because, although it worked out fine in my case, "patients taking Accutane may develop potentially serious problems affecting a number of organs, including the liver, intestines, eyes, ears, and skeletal system. Some patients taking Accutane have developed serious psychiatric problems, including depression."

The reason I bring this up is to illuminate the very conflicted self-image I've developed - I've always had pretty high self-esteem, but that confidence has developed more out of ability than good looks. And in the West, besides your mother, there are few people who reaffirm your aesthetic quality.

Maybe I've been lucky to have spent many years outside of the USA - when you leave your homeland behind, you also lose much of the systematic criteria people use to judge you with. Good lucks become more or less a feature of your personality, rather than a comparative rating system. (Although, www.hotornot.com consistently rates me at above 80%. Except, surprisingly, for the above picture, which I really like.) However, when surrounded by the flawless olive skin, the large almond shaped eyes, abundant personality and maddening 'coolness' of Italians or Argentines, its possible to feel a little insecure.

In Taiwan, I am Brad Pitt. When I walk down the street, boys and girls alike will turn, stare, then elbow their friends in the ribs and point me out. Kids will grab their parents and shout, "WaiGuoRen!!" (Outside-country-person), and parents will, with only slightly more subtlety, likewise point me out to their children. There are at least 500 foreigners in this town, and they've been here for years, but for some reason its always a surprise to find one. Maybe its lucky, like picking out a four-leaf clover. There's no doubt, we stand out. A white face is probably something like 1 in 5,000 here. And since "handsome" is almost synonymous with "white" - especially when it comes in the blue eyed variety, I'm treated like a movie star. If I go somewhere I haven't been before, even a tea-stall, the employees act really nervous and yell in the back for someone who can speak English. If they find out I can speak Chinese, then they ask me lots of questions. Before I leave, they'll make sure to tell me, whether they're a boy or a girl, that I'm "Hen Shuai" (Very Handsome)

Anywhere I go consistently, I'm remembered. They make less of a fuss about me being there, but they also remember exactly what I like to drink based on previous orders. If I'm at the nightmarket alone, somebody will try and sneak a picture of me with their cellphone. If I'm walking past someone who knows English, they will pause their conversation and switch into whichever random English phrase comes into their head. (Once the most adorable four year old girl called me "LoaShi" (teacher), and yelled "Tomato, Papaya, Dog, Puppy!" Equating those words with the proper sort of communication for a white guy like me.

It's true that while it may be cool to know (or even date) a foreigner, most girls aren't confident enough in their English or good looks to approach one. Besides, romance in Asia is much more focused on that dreamy life of comfort between soul-mates, which includes reading together in a bookstores or laughing together in the rain. Generally girls want someone they feel can understand them. Those girls who do date foreigners, are often attracted to their "foreign-ness" quality more than anything else, and end up dating several foreigners. ("Landing" a foreigner is much more difficult than marrying a Taiwanese. Local men are brought up to be good, stable providers, who then look for wives. Foreign men are looking for a no-strings, part-time girlfriend to have fun with until they go home.)

I wonder if foreigner's reputation for licentiousness is tied to how they are perceived and treated. Someone who's never had any luck with women at home comes here and gets flirted with, by beautiful women, almost constantly. It's enough to drive a man crazy.

Husserl's Phenomenology

I love studying at NCKU. The Master's program of Foreign Language and Literature has excellent courses about fascinating subjects. All the courses and reading material is in English (thank goodness), but this doesn't make it less challenging. Reading Moby Dick doesn't get smoother just because it's in my native tongue, however, compared to my Taiwanese classmates who are studying the same subjects in English, their 2nd language, I'll admit that it's easier for me than them.

A long with classes in Post-Colonial, Minority, British or American literature, which center on great novels, we also have some classes on Literary Criticism - or the philosophy of interpreting written texts. Right now I have a class on Levinas, examining how his theories of "The Other" have influenced modern novels. And as a pre-cursor to Levinas, we have to study Heidegger, and before we get to Heidegger, we need to be introduced to Husserl.

I'm a philosophy major and so my partner and I were given the first essay to read and report on. (Today is Monday, we have to give the presentation on Thursday.) And I'm not complaining, philosophy is kind of fun - its a lot of old guys who get a high off of sounding more intellectual than anyone else. Every philosopher has had to create a whole new language for himself, giving catchy titles to all of his chief theories, in order to prove that his ideology is really fresh and exciting. And then they write books about things that don't exist and can't be measured. (Levinas writes about "The Other", but also says that "The Other" can never be comprehended. If we understood "The Other", then it would not be "The Other".)

I like to think I'm pretty sharp, but it takes me two or three readings to understand what anybody is talking about. And it's kind of like doing a cross-word puzzle, you have to look for clues in the usage to figure out what the concepts mean, and then apply the meanings into the texts for comprehension. It feels like running in a thick fog, going around in circles, running into trees and rocks. Here's a sample from the assigned reading:

"By making the most arbitrary changes that wholly disregard reality as it is and therefore are best made in our phantasy, the immutable and necessary complex of characteristics without which the thing cannot be conceived is made manifest. All variations have concrete similarities with the same prototype, and the manifold of new instances produced in phantasy is permeated by an invariant and identical content. In terms of this content, all of the arbitrarily performed variations come to congruence, whereas their individual differences remain irrelevant."

Imagine reading 20 pages of that, and then imagine trying to read it in Chinese. That's how hard it must be for my classmates. The professor warned as that it was a challenging course, but its mind boggling to me how any semblance of intelligible meaning can be pulled from a philosophical text, originally written in German, translated into English, and then taught to Taiwanese students who have to convert it into some kind of Chinese equivalent. Incredible.

Currency Crisis

I came back to Taiwan with a shiny new $100 bill from my grandpa. I forgot to change it at the airport, where they only opened three booths for several hundred people and we all had to wait an hour to clear customs, and have been holding onto it until today.


Of course, I waited until I was flat broke and needed to buy books and meet my classmate to discuss a presentation before I headed to the bank. I assumed, since they had the big electronic board with the conversion rates on it, that my request would be relatively smooth. This is how it went: The young man working there kept scratching his head and giggling feebly. A girl came over to be involved and peered over his shoulder, talking with him. Another woman came over too, and hovered nearby shouting advice - she seemed to know what she was doing. But then several times I heard her say in Chinese, "I haven't done this for a long time."


After finding several forms on the computer, filling in my personal details, getting my passport number and phone number, making several phone calls to various superiors, they finally printed out an enormous receipt (about one square foot) on an ancient printer - the kind that makes the loud screeching noise. Then they gave me my hundred dollars back. Armed with the receipt, I now had to go downstairs to another teller, who had to make several phone calls to her superiors before trading my 100 dollars for about 3,000 New Taiwan Dollars.

Now it's true, they probably don't face that specific issue on a regular basis and weren't use to dealing with it. Maybe they'd never seen a real one-hundred dollar bill before. If someone came into a bank in America with a thousand dollar Taiwanese bill, it would probably take some time to get it verified. Or would it?

Later that afternoon, I was talking with several foreigners. They were complaining about the organization (or lack thereof) of the University - and not just ours, it seems even the very best universities in Taiwan are prone to chaos. There are many different offices in many different departments, and no one seems to know what's going on. We pinned it down to lack of accountability. There is no one who can make a decision, all by themselves, when faced with a dilemma. Every decision needs consultation, outside input, group effort. One of my friends said, "Asia may be developing quickly, but I don't think they'll ever be a real threat to Americans, because we are more organized. You can ask a guy something and he'll make a decision, then and there, all by himself, and you move on. Things get developed quickly. Good ideas are implemented."

I'm not sure if this is true - however, I think American businesses as a rule have stronger processes. They've already thought of nearly everything that an employee might need to do, and there is a process for them to follow, which is probably explained in the training period. But its not just that. Often I've noticed that Taiwanese people just don't hurry - when there is a huge line and only one teller, she seems to be in no rush to speed things up. The bank doesn't open another line or help her out, perhaps because they don't have any contingency plans for extra traffic.

The Best Restaurant in Tainan

It's Saturday and I made it over to the beach. Now, Tainan's beaches aren't great - the place we went to had its heyday about 20 years ago and by now had fallen into obscurity. It's just near "Golden Beach". There were still plenty of people out flying kites and remote control helicopters. No swimming (most Taiwanese can't anyway) but lots of young couples and teenagers having a good time.

The city of Tainan is completely re-doing An-Ping harbor, and in a year or two we'll have an amazing waterfront area closer to the city, with boardwalks, restaurants, and modern facilities (all right next to the old temples and forts that make An-Ping famous. At any rate, I tried a dowsing method on Google Earth, using the mouse and monitor like an Ouija board, and was drawn to a spot on the map. However...didn't find anything today. Almost nothing metal on the whole beach, which seemed strange, so I wondered if I came when the tide was too high. There must be a place where the heavier stuff gets deposited, right?

But the day wasn't a total loss, we went to my favorite restaurant in Tainan. Taiwanese food is excellent, however, nearly everything has MSG in it and I'm allergic. That means there are few things I can eat without getting really sick. I'm usually OK with Western places and I eat a lot of pasta, but who wants to live in Asia and eat Italian everyday? This restaurant is one of the few places that serves good fresh food with no MSG - plus its super cool inside.

Starting Out

The ground was very hard under the ancient Bunyan tree. The gnarled roots had cemented the soil down to a dry, chalk like layer that ended abruptly only 10 feet away with the well-watered lawn of the university campus. But this is where my metal detector beeped, so we dug.

I bought the metal detector a year ago, before spending the summer working at a camp in Northern Taiwan's Yanmingshan National Park - there are some old gold mining towns up there, although I never got around to going. For some reason the mood struck last weekend and I dragged my girlfriend out on an adventure, first to the remains of a Dutch wall on Nanmen Road, then to the beach. I hadn't found much, but the thrill, the power, of being able to find things that have been hidden under ground for decades, is intoxicating. I was so excited to dig up something valuable that I couldn't relax, and convinced her to go out again in the evening.

I chose NCKU (National Cheng Kung University) because its near my home, and has lots of fields. The trees there must be at least a couple centuries old, and the campus is also just just within the old city walls, which were first constructed in 1735. Ill-equipped as we were, stabbing at the ground with tiny shovels, crouching in the dirt trying to see by the light of the one flashlight I'd purchased (the kind that you wear on your forehead), its amazing that we several coins - enough to satisfy my obsession enough for the night.

I returned a few days later on my own with a big shovel, to dig a spot that I'd dowsed at home. I'm still pretty self-conscious, being a white guy in Taiwan who already attracts a great deal of attention, but I stayed mostly in the shadows and dug 13 coins (between 20 - 60 years old), a rifle cartridge, a broken watch and an old belt buckle. I was staying with the safe, small finds that I knew I could dig quickly, but later decided to dig up one of the big ones - the ones that beep continuously for about 3 feet.

In general, I've found, the object isn't actually this big - its just that its been in the ground for a long time and has built up an electromagnetic field in the soil around it. I had to dig for a long time, and get around a lot of garbage, broken glass and old tinfoil packages, before I unearthed two old metal bowls. I imagine that this was the site of a picnic, back before disposable dishes and when burying your garbage was considered the proper way to clean up after yourself (50 years ago?)

I was a little disappointed, because what I really want is a bag of gold or silver coins. (I love the history aspect of it too, but I can see myself losing interest quickly if I only dig up non-valuables.) The university was only found in 1931 anyway, and so it makes sense that most of my finds would come in the period since. For older things I need to stay nearer the center of Tainan, like the Chikan Towers, the site of one of the original Dutch forts built in the 17th century.

However, the belt buckle I found is interesting. From the corrosion and style I'd guess it's very old. I've only covered a tiny bit of only one of the fields at the University (the coins I found were about 2 feet apart!) Luckily, I've got time to explore. Unlike relic hunters in most countries, I may possibly be the only person on this island with a metal detector!