History, Hiking, and Gods

I'm back in class and am starting on the second book, yay! It's green! I have a new teacher too, who's 3 months pregnant and said in class once that all her body's resources have left her brain for the baby, and I can see where sometimes that might be true... I also got two new classmates - a girl from Vietnam and a guy from Spain! The Spanish guy, Roget is fun to hang out with, and we get to mix in Spanish words with our Mandarin if we come across a topic beyond our limited vocabulary. :) I also got to keep my two half-Japanese classmates, Satoshi and Abe, who seem to have taken up the habit of late-night gaming... sounds like fun, but not so good for the homework.

I've also gotten a new "job"! There's a company called LiveABC that publishes and distributes English learning materials to somewhere (I think several countries, but I don't really know), like magazines, books, and CD-ROM's... and I get to be in the video part of the CD-ROM's, yay! So far I've gotten to make a mess in someone else's kitchen, watch a Taiwanese baker make a cake (totally, start to finish, very cool!), and cry at my computer screen because I have to write a report but my hand is in a cast. Tomorrow I get to be a Chilean business assistant with the hots for an American business assistant. And my ever-generous wardrobe assistant, Vicky, continues to garner the privilege of having her clothes displayed all over the place. For tomorrow's filming, I've borrowed a suit... her little black shorts were featured in my swing performance, and her extra shiny shirt was seen at a tango milonga. Yay Vicky!

Back in dance land, some of the foreign dancers and I went to a photo shoot to take some promotional pictures. Brook, and Magda and Olga - both Polish-Canadian, were all there, all of whom I have a great deal of respect for. We got to wear our coolest dancey costumes and pose while the camera-man told us we all looked great... and then we went outside to the green area in the middle of the road to take more pictures, where it seemed evident that the people in the cars thought we looked great too... mmm... more clothes for the outside pictures next time, I'd say.

There's hiking in Taipei! Taipei has fuzzy green mountains all around it that have tempted me since I got here, and this last Saturday I finally go to explore! Fish and I wandered up a trail in NeiHu, a district of Taipei that I read has the best hiking in Taipei, and we did indeed discover the tops of (short) fuzzy mountains, as well as lots of people fishing next to the "do not fish" signs, and a little old monk in front of a temple. It also seems that Taiwanese people like stairs almost as much as Chinese people do... Fish is learning Spanish, so he got to practice counting, and after a few hundred stairs, I think he's starting to get the hang of it. Next time I also think I should take a bag with me and pick up some of the trash... Fish picked up an extra tea bottle at the top, and we felt pretty cool, until we saw all the other bottles floating in the river on the way down.

I saw on the MRT map that there's hiking trails near where Fu lives, and I'm excited to try those out... but first I may have to convince Fu to go with me... I haven't met many Taiwanese girls yet who think the idea of physical exercise sounds like fun. I have discovered though, that hiking clothes here are ridiculously expensive here. I have my favorite black REI bought shirt that I wear a lot, so I thought I'd go looking for another one (maybe red)... and even the stuff made in Taiwan is evidently subject to an import tax because of it's American branding, making it more expensive here than at home in the States... interesting. Guess I'll have to buy real Taiwanese clothes instead.

Last weekend was lantern festival! Fish tells me when he was little his family would make paper lanterns and stick candles inside, and that was great fun, but now most people buy their kids electric lanterns... safer, but without the same excitement. I missed the big send-lanterns-into-the-sky-en-mass party because I was performing dance somewhere, but at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall there were lantern sculptures... no, maybe not sculptures... I don't know. People from different companies or schools each made a scene with metal framing and paper over it, and of course, light inside. There were lots of pigs to celebrate the pig year, as well as random cartoon characters and toys and famous buildings and such. Reminded me a lot of ice carving in Anchorage... except, not as cold. Ah, and I've been registered! Because this is the year of the pig, and I was born in the year of the pig, I'm suppose to register myself at a temple so that I can be... protected... or something. Keep the bad spirits away. What that required though, was to go to the temple, give them 500NT (what do they do with it??), tell them my name, address, and phone number, and then they registered me and gave me noodles. I haven't eaten the noodles yet, but I imagine they're not worth 500NT. I also asked some of my friends what they think of when they pray at the temple, and evidently you always have to tell whichever god you're praying to your name and address... interesting. Maybe Taiwanese gods are not as good at voice recognition as a Christian god..

I also saw a cool play last weekend, a historical fiction following a woman born just after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, through when Chiang Kai-Shek and his crowd came from mainland China, to sometime around the present with the influence of American culture. A lot of the play was in Taiwanese, meaning it's catered for an audience of the came-to-Taiwan-from-China-around-500-years-ago crowd, rather than the came-to-Taiwan-from-China-with-Chiang Kai-Shek crowd. I got some Taiwanese-to-Mandarin translation whispered to me during the show, so I understood the general idea (but not what people were laughing about usually). I think I understand a little better now why some people still feel so bitter about mainland China and Chiang Kai-Shek... at least, the story is much more visual now, with fake dead bodies (from Chiang Kai-Shek) and arranged marriages (from the Japanese era) and mixed-culture kids (Taiwanese-American). Now I just need to see the made-for-Chiang-Kai-Shek's-followers play.

Brook and Katie Valentine's Day Performance

Videos!

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Chicago Hat and Cane, Soft-Shoe, Charleston




Lindy Hop

The Northern Half

Spring is Coming

Let the traveling begin:

On the second day of the New Year, everyone is supposed to go home to visit their Mother's family. I went with Fu to her mother's mother's house in YiLan where all the relatives were gathered, with munchkins riding little plastic tricycles underfoot. Gambling during family gatherings seems to be pretty popular here, and the kids and me and Fu played a completely random chance dice game for peanuts. I lost all my peanuts several times over, but luckily Fu was nice enough to lend me some of hers. We got back to Taipei and Fu's house late, where Fu's Mom was more than gracious, and is trying to get me fat on tasty Taiwanese snacks.

Over-looking the Graveyard

The third day of the New Year, Fish came to pick me up and we started our week-long drive around the north of Taiwan. We drove down the west coast, stopping first at the university he graduated from. Wandering along the hills of the perimeter, I looked down into a valley and discovered a graveyard... then that the graveyard extended up to where we were standing... whereupon Fish told me that his college was built on an old prisoner extermination ground, and some of the college buildings were now unstable because their foundations are laid on unmarked graves. Whoa. I guess during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, a lot of prisoners were killed.. Fu also told me later that a lot of universities in Taiwan are built on such sites - because a school needs a lot of space, and the areas around these old "prisons" were left clear of houses because of ghost stories. Goodness. Makes me curious if it was something that only happened during the Japanese occupation, or if these grounds continued to be used under the rule of Chiang Kai-Shek (I hear he killed lots of Taiwanese intellectuals opposed to his party, and shipped some of them off to Greenland...) and if so, when the "prisons" got converted to schools. I guess it gives a student reason to believe that he really is in jail...

The West Coast - Towards Wind-Mills

Hello Bird!

After a visit to the muddy coast, full of people wading ankle deep in the mud (Fish says they were looking for things to sell...), we went to a night market to eat our fill. In Taiwan, there are tons of night markets - I live right next to one of them, which is great when I get hungry late.... mostly it just means that it's a collection of shops and food vendors that sell things cheaply in a centralized location. I like them! Unfortunately, it seems that most of the vendors/restaurants here are very specialized, so it's often difficult to find vegetarian food on the street. I'm used to being able to go into any restaurant and assume that there will be at least one vegetarian option - but here, I often wander into three or four stores, asking if they have anything vegetarian and getting a firm "no." Still not used to it... but I'm continuing to find places and things that are interesting and meat-less, yay!

Sun Moon Lake

Amazing Sun Moon Lake Rock-Climbing Frog

From TaiZhong (台中), starting up into the mountains, we stopped by Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), the wondrous famous lake... which was indeed very pretty. Lots of mountains surrounding a really big lake. Supposedly from above it looks like the sun and the moon together... but on the aerial view map, it still didn't really look like a sun and a moon... ah well, perhaps the ancient namers were of a more romantic sort than I. We paddled around on a boat and wandered around the perimeter, and I didn't even fall in, yay!

Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village - the Tlingit and Haida Aborigines?

Close to Sun Moon Lake lies the Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village - where there are roller-coasters (wheee!), reconstructed houses of the major Taiwanese aboriginal groups (sparse, but cool), and aboriginal music, dance, and other performances (ooh, pretty!). An interesting combination of commercialism and cultural preservation, but I'm glad I went, just to know that such a place exists..

Towards the Green Green (Yellow?) Grasslands

On to the upper mountain reaches and the Green Green Grasslands, where crowds of Taiwanese people gather to take pictures of sheep. baaaaa! The sheep get to live in the beautiful mountains, which made me temporarily envious of the woolly ones, until I realized that to earn their place in the cool fresh lands, they have to endure the handling and photographing of a gazillion Taiwanese tourists... There were signs warning not to chase or ride the sheep, but I'm not sure how strictly they were enforced. I think I'll try not to be born a sheep in the Green Green Grasslands next life... even if sheep milk popsicles are rather tasty.

Mountains!

Through the mountains in the center of Taiwan! Taiwan is a big oblong shape - with it being long N-S, and skinny E-W. But all through the center (running N-S), there are mountains! And they're massive and covered in green, inter-mingled with white mists swirling to cover and reveal the sun shining down in dappled rays... We drove up, up, and up and wandered around the cold summit, following close behind the ant-like tourists on pilgrimage past the "do not enter" signs to find the perfect picture location.

Taroko Gorge

Then down and down, through tunnel after tunnel, to the bottom of the mountains and a deep gorge with steep rock walls, clumps of green still clinging to the vertical gray. Ahhhh...

ShihTiPing's Volcanic Rock Coast

Passing through nature's mountains, we arrived in Hualien where my friends Fu and Jia Yi met us. We spent a late night at the night market losing money on fair games, eating tasty food, and talking, until I finally crashed and left the others to their conversation. The next day we drove south down the dramatic east coast to see a bat cave (whoa, bats!), and take silly pictures of Fu with the brilliant blue ocean and rocky shore in the background at ShihTiPing (石梯坪).

Fu!

I've learned that events here can be much more about the taking of pictures than about the event itself... Brook theorizes that it's a way to show off to people where you've been, while reminding yourself that you went somewhere beautiful... I'm not sure yet, but my wandering self likes looking at the pictures in retrospect much more than stopping to compose a shot. I'm grateful there are so many people around me with amazing digital cameras to help relieve me of the picture-taking responsibilities!

Alaska's That Way...

Then up the east coast in the middle of the mountain-side, with a drop to the sea on the right... amazing. And I got back to Taipei just in time to go to rehearsal... I performed a 4 person Irish tap last Wednesday with Brook, another foreign salsa teacher Maggie, and Taiwan's master of tap Yu Qing (who's about my age and amazing, amazing, amazing). I've been rehearsing at least once a day since then, as I perform again on Sunday night, and we're putting together an hour and a half show for next Thursday in TaiZhong(台中)... it looks like I'll be dancing Disco, Irish tap, Chicago Hat and Cane, Charleston, Lindy Hop, Salsa, and doing a short comedy piece. Awesome. I'm learning a whole lot with all this dancing, and meeting some really excellent people in the process.