Taiwan recap

I had a pretty crummy time in Taiwan. First I got arrested:


Then I had an encounter with death:

Fortunately, like the proverbial Ghosts of Christmas Past/Present/Future, Death was only bringing me a warning - not to drink and drive or something like that. Kinda spooky that it was addressed directly to me in a subway station.


Overall, my first visit back to the land of my fathers (and mothers) was a lot of fun, somewhat profound in some ways, and definitely quite fattening. I'm not sure whether my Chinese got much better though. Some highlights:

Meeting family
We (Shally and I) spent some time with her mom's side of the family in Taizhong as well as my mom's and dad's sides of the family in Taipei.

I have a huge extended family. My mom has 11 siblings (one younger brother passed away in recent years) and my dad has six, so I have aunts/uncles/cousins that I literally have never met, and the ones that I have, I may have not seen in the 20 years since my last visit to Taiwan. I think that the magnitude of the size of my family has made me almost reluctant to develop good friendships with even the cousins near my own age, especially considering the wide social network I've developed through collegiate and church experiences. I felt that there were too many people to try and get to know.

In Taiwan, it was surreal and kind of disappointing to me that I hadn't even made a cursory effort to know my own flesh and blood. My mom's side threw a family reunion-type dinner party at a swank Western-style steakhouse, and afterward the cousins around my own age took Shal, myself, and my other cousin from the US (and his gf) up to the top of Yangmingshan to check out the view and chat about life over drinks. I got to get a glimpse of the lives of my relatives - hearing about some of the triumphs, the close ties my cousins had hanging out with each other, relationships, the life disappointments, the bad habits, little idiosyncrasies, and somewhere in the midst of observing everything, I realized I had missed out.

Honestly, I'm not yet sure what to do with this realization.

The day after, I got to see where my dad grew up. My dad happened to be in Taiwan the same week we were, and had a free morning where he was able to show us around the neighborhood he grew up. I got to hear stories about how, as a junior higher, he helped lay the foundation for the house his family would grow up in - 2.5 floors of cement, plaster, constantly being remodeled for the needs of 7 children and eventually some grandchildren, as well as my aging grandparents. I vaguely remembered the living room where I first got to play Contra on the old red-and-white 8-bit Nintendo system, and learned the Code of 30 Lives and Awesomeness. I saw the room where my dad grew up as a kid (it's now part of the kitchen as part of the constant remodeling referred to earlier). I saw the furniture set my parents used when they got married. I saw the graduation pics of my parents and aunts and uncles and marveled at how young they looked. I got to see my great aunt/great uncle on both my grandpa's and grandma's side. I tried to picture living my dad's life in a cramped Taiwanese neighborhood, living in a house I helped build, enduring the legendary cram schools and military service and then finally immigrating to America.

I think family showed me that life is a much more complex thing than I can possibly imagine. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. Don't know if I ever will.

Meeting a random American traveler
Being an inexperienced traveler, I've heard stories of friends who met fascinating people while on vacation from all manner of nationality and walks of life. While visiting the gondola ride in the mountains of Maokong, Shal and I got the chance to meet and hang out with Cynthia, a woman in town for a semiconductor conference who was heading back to DC the day after. After sharing a cab in the pouring rain and finding out we were using the same Lonely Planet guide to find the same teahouse, we got to chat about our respective backgrounds, the history of Taiwan/China tensions, and the traveling habits of Europeans. We then went for a short hike in the freshly-rained jungle on the mountain and promptly got lost. It seriously did feel like an episode of "Lost," as we slid down muddy semi-paths clinging to trees and tried to decipher hastily scrawled danger signs written by former (less-fortunate?) hikers on scraps of cloth, all the while mildly panicking that the sun was going down and no one knew we were there. We then got to ride the gondola down, relax, and enjoy the view. Altogether an unforgettable experience.

Food
Much food was consumed on this trip, in keeping with the legendary reputation the country has for tasty and cheap comestibles from street vendors to homey mom-and-pop shops. You can see photos of most of what we ate on my Facebook album (if you're a Friend of mine on FB), but here are a few notables...

Foods I had never eaten before this trip (as far as I can remember):
1. durrian - not as bad as I thought it would be based on smell, but no more
2. black sesame dumplings - think shao long bao (soup dumplings) but stuffed with a sweet black sesame paste for dessert. This was absolutely delicious and doesn't appear to be available in the US. I think this was Shally's favorite dish the entire trip.
3. ba wan - glutinous stuff with meat and preserved veggies from a night market. Not bad.
4. lien wu - a fruit that reminded me of a cross between an apple's coloring and a pear's shape, with a crisp texture... apparently you can only get this in Taiwan
5. oyster egg pancake (ou-ah jen) - we had fresh oysters at a different restaurant that tasted better than oysters in the states (I don't typically like them), but the ones in our oyster pancake were mediocre.

Top 5 Favorite Taiwanese foods in no particular order:

1. Fan Tuan - this is a nice breakfast



2. Shally's grandma's lion's head meatballs - apparently this was the first time she had made them in like 8 years, and no one has yet been able to replicate them



3. black sesame steamed dumpling dessert



4. Ice monster shaved ice - I have something of a sweet tooth, so the enhanced sweetness of Taiwan mangos (compared to American ones) was right up my alley



5. Very big fried chicken - they took a thigh, pounded it out flat, and seasoned it, breaded it, and gave it a light frying. The line for this at the Shilin night market went out to the street, clearly the most popular food item in the entire market.



Miscellaneous other significant experiences/observations

Coming from a Taiwanese home and a predominantly Taiwanese church, I've been around quite a few Taiwanese people. This probably explains why everywhere I looked, I saw someone that looked like someone else - I was constantly nudging Shal and saying "That woman looks like so-and-so's mom!" and "That guy reminds me of somebody!" I guess God just used 4-5 face templates when making Taiwanese people and just did little tweaks.

I like the fact that most of the eateries in Taiwan are mom-and-pop joints rather than chain restaurants. It gives the country so much more character. However, as delicious as the street food may be, both Shally and I experienced some gastronomic issues the first few days back (although this may have been due to plane food).

Seeing the display in the National Palace Museum describing the millenia-long history of the religions of Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, and Confucianism, and their impact on Asian philosophy and sociology, helped drive home for me that the world is much bigger and older than my American mind learned about in school (the world began around 200 years ago when we decided to leave the British, right?).

Bullet train from Taizhong to Taipei. So that's what going 186 mph at ground level feels like.

Shally's six-month-old niece's delight at getting a whole hotel bed to play on. That might be the definition of pure, unadulterated joy.

Dinner with Shally's missionary friends and JT/Ring - an entire mealtime conversation about relationships. Finally heard about how JT and Ring got together.

Karaok'ing with JT and Ring at a Cashbox. Man, they're nicer than in the States... too bad the selection of English songs is pretty limited. Since it was a smaller group than the typical 10-15 that go out here, I felt a bit emboldened to try going solo on "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday" by Boyz II Men and "Change the World" by Eric Clapton.

Conversation with my cousin Mario, who grew up in LA and the Bay Area and is now teaching English in Taipei. He said that basketball players there tend to call a lot of ticky tack fouls and seem to think an unimpeded dribbling path is a right. I would probably get pretty frustrated playing there.

Visiting Taipei 101.

Reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis and getting about 1/3 of the way through Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. The latter has been a really good read about Christianity and reflects a lot of things that I had been planning to write about at some point.

On the plane, watched "I Am Legend" with Will Smith (not bad) and "Jumper" with Anakin and Mace Windu from Episodes 1-3 (skip the movie)

And that's all I've got to say about that.

...

One last thing... 'twas Shally and my first trip overseas together, and that was a lot of fun.