I’m writing from the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (again.) One year ago (almost to this day) I was standing at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam at the boarding gate. My first signs of dread only appeared when I saw my fellow passengers toting Aritzia carry-on bags and heard the sounds of native English swirling around me. I remember texting my friends with the remaining money on my SIM card, telling them that I was staring at the vessel that would transport me back to my impending fate. After five months on exchange in the Netherlands and two months backpacking Europe, I was ready to go home and face my final year of university. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it but I wasn’t dreading it, it was just what was going to happen.

I’m leaving Taiwan in two hours and I don’t feel the same way at all. When I left Utrecht at the end of June to go backpacking all the other exchange students were just starting to leave. In August when I went back at the end of the summer to pick up my luggage, it felt like a completely different city. I didn’t mind going back to Canada because Utrecht as I knew it had disappeared.

For the first time I have a few good local friends (natives and permanent expats.) After today, life will go on without me in Taipei. This Tuesday will be the first in about two months where I will not go to Underworld, the bar across the street from my apartment, after the 10:30 p.m. garbage pick-up. On Monday, there will be no class to attend and my classmates won’t sidetrack our teacher from the lesson plan with our bad Mandarin. And once again, I’m finished school.

My final day in Taiwan consisted of packing and a series of three goodbye meals. Seeing my apartment bare made me sad and petrified to leave a place for the first time. It’s strange to think that tomorrow I won’t be woken up by the creeping morning heat or the sound of man driving a cart calling for recycling. When I open the door to leave the house next time, I won’t step in the fray of the Shida night market.

When I think back on my time in the Netherlands, I think of it as a really beautiful time in my life. I miss my friends, the lifestyle and the situation we were in together but it’s not something I could go back to. Going back to Canada feels like I’m headed somewhere cold–literally and figuratively. The random conversations and acts of kindness will be no more and we will all continue to mind our own business and pretend not to notice each other. I never expected that I would have a life in Taipei, much less have one to leave behind, but there it is.

posted by vicky at 3:48 pm under Asia, Taiwan
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I’m standing in a retirement home somewhere in northern, rural Taiwan next to a Taiwanese grandma. I met her while hitchhiking at a cemetery and now she’s showing me her family members, clad in full-dynasty wear, in a 150-year-old photograph. A lot of the time here in Taiwan, I wonder if my day can get any stranger or more random. And the answer is always: yes it can. There is actually a very logical explanation for all of this.

It all started two months ago during my trip to Green Island. While my friends and I were at the hot spring, a group of old women were singing a song in Mandarin. I instantly recognized it but knew neither the song or artist. Too shy and my Mandarin too shameful at the time to ask them what they were singing, I wrote it off as a pleasant memory and mystery. Fast-forward to last month when I went to karaoke (or KTV as it’s called here) with my friend Channing, her classmates and a few locals. After a few “gang bei”s, a request/challenge/demand to finish the contents of your cup frequently issued by the Taiwanese, I finally mustered enough courage to hum the tune to a local to find out the name of the song and add it to the playlist.

The song was “The Moon represents my heart” (月亮代表我的心) by Teresa Teng (鄧麗君.) Teng is a legendary Taiwanese pop star and who was popular even in non-Chinese speaking Asia. When she died at 42 from an asthma attack that shocked not only Taiwan but the continent. This song is the kind of song I felt like I have always known and could sing along to despite the fact I couldn’t speak Mandarin until recently. Once I could put a name to the music, the Wikipedia search that followed revealed that her grave was in Chi Pao San, a mountain cemetery, in Jin Shan, a town in Taipei county.  The article said her grave had a large in-ground keyboard that fans could play by stepping on the keys and I decided I had to go.

So Channing and I set out one hot Taiwanese Saturday afternoon to find Teng’s grave. We took the MRT to Danshui, the final stop on the subway’s red line and boarded a bus for Jin Shan. It took us two-and-a-half hours in total to get to Jin Shan, about an hour longer than I was expecting. When we started asking around for directions to Chi Pao San, we were met with of shock and horror. “It’s too far away to walk,” said the woman whose restaurant we ate at. “No buses go up there. You should take a taxi.” Still she pointed us in the direction. We felt anxious and took a stroll through Jin Shan’s night market before deciding what to do. For no good reason I was compelled to buy a bag of lobster chips.

After walking to the edge of the town, we checked with a security guard who reacted the same way and told us it would take another 40 minutes. Despite the discouragement, we pressed onward through the Taiwanese countryside with the sun blaring down at us. The next woman we met told us it would take an hour and a half. The convenience store owner, who sold us a bottle of water further down the road, told us if we would get heat stroke from going. After starting up the mountain we met a man who told us we were on the right track, but it was going to be another hour and a half.

Two hours after leaving the restaurant, we made it to Chi Pao San. Teng’s grave is at the front of the massive mountainside cemetery. As we approached her grave we could hear her music playing. Appropriately enough, the first song we heard was her rendition of “I’m gonna live forever” from Fame.  We were steps away from Teng’s grave a security guard rode up on a scooter and asked if we had walked all the way up. When we confirmed we had walked from Jin Shan, he responded with “pei fu, pei fu” (佩服)–an expression of respect and admiration. We asked if he had any good suggestions on how to get down the mountain that didn’t involve walking. He told us there was an hourly shuttle bus but only for locals. But, he said, if you ask them maybe they’ll let you on.

And so there it was. The in-floor keyboard, a golden statue of Teng, her grave and a small collection of flowers. We had hiked two hours and had reached the promised land. While my mother’s attempt to instill Chinese attitudes and traditions on me has been less than successful, here is the proof it wasn’t completely wasted. You can’t show up to someone’s grave empty handed. You have to bring an offering, usually food. So it only felt right to leave her my lobster chips.

Channing and I were tired from the hike and sat down to wait for the 5 p.m. shuttle down to Jin Shan. Half an hour passed by and there was no sign of it. Darkness was approaching and Jin Shan was still two-and-a-half hours away from Taipei. We made the collective decision to solicit fellow visitors for rides down the mountain. Our first attempt was shot down. We tried to explain our situation to a man who was cleaning off his car while his wife sat inside. He said something in Japanese, which I think amounted to “I don’t speak Mandarin.” On our second try we hit gold. We met Lois, a 30-year-old piano and violin teacher, and her grandma, who only spoke Taiwanese. Lois offered to take us down the hill to Jin Shan but, if we wanted, she was going to go to Taipei after dinner and we were free to join her for the meal and the ride back home. We looked at each other, shrugged and were only too happy to accept.

The ride down the mountain took only about 10 minutes and in another 20 we arrived at Bai Sha Wan, a popular beach nearby. We all sat down for dinner at a restaurant that directly overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Grandma was pretty agitated during the meal because, she said, it was getting dark and she was worried about Lois driving back to Taipei. Channing and I tried to pay for dinner knowing the usual Asian money-shoving match would ensue. We lost and ended up going Dutch. After dinner we drove Grandma back to her retirement home that is run by a convent. Six years ago she decided to move because she was tired of cooking and cleaning and here she could go to church every day. She showed us her five copies of the Bible, each in different languages, that she was learning to read. Grandma hated being in pictures and protested each time Lois suggested it. Still, she always obliged and sometimes even pulled out the peace sign. Lois drove us all the way back to the Shida neighbourhood despite that she lives in Xiandian, on the outskirts of Taipei city.

It’s a little sad when the kindness of strangers is so foreign that it’s actually funny. These encounters always become epic-traveling stories that bring out disbelief in other people. In a way I’ve come to expect this kind of random generosity in Taiwan but I always still feel grateful. Maybe this is just how things work in the friendliest country I have ever been to and this is just another day in the life of a Taiwanese. Or maybe Channing and I are a hilarious story for Grandma to tell to her friends at the home. (It was ridiculous watching Lois introduce us to her friend and at the home. while we stood there like the vagabonds we were.) One thing is for sure, I should just ask more often.

posted by vicky at 6:12 pm under Asia, Music, Taiwan
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It’s been a while, I know. I come bearing no quirky cultural encounters but with a life update, so please indulge me.

It’s been hard to update because sometime within the past month and a half, I’ve carved out a little life here in Taipei. It’s not quite exchange but maybe only because Utrecht and Taipei are so different. The main difference is I feel like I will be leaving a life behind when I leave here next month. While most of my friends are still foreigners (some who will stay, some will go and some already gone), unlike in Utrecht, I have local ones. Life in Taipei will continue here without me but in Utrecht, within a week of leaving for backpacking, the city as I knew it was gone.

Taipei has turned me into a creature of habit. Tuesdays you will find me at Underworld, a dive bar that is a one minute walk from my house. The DJ plays Morrissey while I order two-for-one beer from either Susan or Xiao Bo. Somehow I’m a little surprised if I don’t know at least half the people in this tiny bar. I’ve never been a regular anywhere–not Markham, Toronto or Utrecht. It’s not quite Cheers but it might be the closest I’ll ever get.

Being in this position makes leaving all the more difficult. I haven’t mentioned it on here yet but I have accepted a job offer to go be an English language assistant in France this fall. In April the French Ministry of Education that runs a program that hires native English speakers told me I was accepted and I would be teaching in high school in the Alsace region. A few days ago a letter arrived at my parents’ house telling me I would teaching at Lycée Koeberlé in a town called Sélestat. Wikipedia places the town’s population at 20,000 and 50 km away from Strasbourg.

I have always been jointly intrigued and terrified by small-town life–both because I’ve never experienced it before. The closest I have come is probably here in the Shida neighbourhood of Taipei. Sometimes in Toronto I feel like I need to ignore a lot in order to get by in the city, especially when I’m commuting. I don’t really make an effort to talk to people or get to know them. When I’m somewhere like London, I feel like I’d have to get used to ignoring even more things and people if I wanted to live there. I know it’s both inevitable and a method of protection to be exercise less trust in the urban environment. Been to the sociology of the city course, gotten the credit on my transcript. But I guess I still can’t speak from first hand experience about the other side.

Today an old lady was talking to my friend while we took the train to Fulong beach. She told her the reason she had been staring at me the entire trip was because I look like her granddaughter who is presently backpacking across America. I barely said two sentences to her but she bought lunch for myself and my two friends. She had been telling us about this really famous pork rice takeout box exclusive to Fulong and when she saw a vendor on the train platform, she insisted. It’s things like these that remind me about how nice people ca be and make me wish I was a better person. I don’t know whether to chalk this moment up to Taiwanese people, Taipei the super-friendly big city (exception?), Fulong the small town, old people or just one really nice woman.

I could easily commute from Strasbourg to Sélestat or live in the town itself. I have my reservations about both. At this point in my travels, I have realized that, in the end, big cities all over the world are the same. Small town life is probably the most exotic experience I could have. Just by working there I know it will become part of my life but I’m wondering if I should take the plunge. As crazy as it sounds, I’m staring one of my biggest fears in the face and I don’t know if I have it in me to make it my life for seven months.

Finally, I’d like you to know that I have a new camera. I’m excited to learn how to take photos on it (Yes, there’s a learning curve to it!) and to document whatever new places I end up. Also if I’ve been remiss about updating this blog, it’s because I just started up blogging at Macleans OnCampus about my travels and neither-here-nor-there life. As for what goes here and what goes there in terms of the blog, I don’t have it exactly figured yet. But when do I ever?

posted by vicky at 5:40 pm under Asia, France, Sélestat, Taiwan
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Last night I witnessed a comedy, like in three-acts Shakespearean sense. Since I got here there have been posters and pamphlets all over Taipei promoting Canada D’eh. The literature explained it as a celebration of Canadian confederation held on a beach in Danshui on June 27 featuring a performance by Grammy-nominated artist Colby O’Donis. There are so many questionable things in that last sentence alone I don’t know where to begin.

The fact that the party was on June 27 and not July 1 was understandable. While Canada Day falls on a Wednesday, a big party night in Taipei, you need a weekend to get people out to a beach party. So my mostly Canadian friends and I piled onto the MRT and took the 40-minute ride to Danshui, the final stop on the red line. From the subway station there were free shuttle buses transporting party-goers to beach. As we walked in, the scene and the extent of ridiculousness began to dawn on me. There was a canopy containing the bar, food vendors, a booth featuring live instruction on how perform CPR and a display of prize-winning agriculture including a very large, very malformed pumpkin. On the beach organizers erected a stage with lit-up maple leaf, around which a procession of fake mounties on real horses trotted around.

Stranger still, most people were walking around in Canadiana wear. Taiwanese, Americans, other random westerners were only too eager to slap maple leaf stickers onto one cheek and wear a McCain temporary tattoo on the other. (Yes the Canadian-processed-food brand McCain, which brought us such delights as Deep’n Delicious cake and Smiles, was a sponsor.)

We arrived around 7 p.m., about mid-way through the 12-hour-long beach party. By that time the tide had gone out and it was too dark to go swimming.  According to signs on the beach, swimming in the dark is a prohibited activity. Still the emcees were made to humourously threaten and plea for anyone in the water to get out. Making sure to repeat this between each performance, the final broadcast informed us that Taipei police would find us and fine us. They weren’t kidding. Authorities had range rovers set up at the edge of the water and were blasting spot lights into the Pacific Ocean.

The performers were a mixed and strange bag. Skareoke delivered what their name promised: wordless ska. Their take on the genre is the elevator muzak of ska with the occasional Kenny G flourish. The second headliner was an excellent local band called Won-Fu (旺福). Xiao Min, male vocalist and lead guitarist, kept saying the most adorable things like “I wrote this song about the famous, my favourite…Jimi Hendrix! This song is called ‘My Name is Jimi Hendrix.’” Their messy/rocky/go-go-60s-girl pop had the entire crowd waving their arms and clapping along with the earnest, unabashed excitement usually reserved for teenage girls and the local Taiwanese.

And then there was Colby O’Donis. My friends and I had no idea so we did some pre-concert research. We were able to piece together that he was the formerly anonymous male who sang the brief solo in Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and also, apparently, has a solo career. He reminded the audience of this claim to fame by singing tiny bits of the song and then abruptly stopping then bait-and-switching into his own material. After the Gaga reference, the song that got the biggest response was the dance routine he and his overdressed back-up dancers did to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow.” It’s a wonder no one passed out from dancing in their velour sweatsuits in the Taipei heat. After Colby’s departure, a DJ set up and fueled short-lived, albeit, decent beach dance party.

Canada D’eh’s WTF-factor was through the roof. Maybe it’s my Torontonian arrogance but probably the least Canadian thing you can do is celebrate Canada Day. At most you have an impromptu night of drinking with friends because it’s a statutory holiday or go to a free concert if the band is worth seeing. Seeing real Canadians declare their pride was equally funny and weird. But then to see other people pretend to be Canadian even more so. (Since when was Canada cool?) I enjoy and expect these kind of flagrant and gaudy displays of nationalism from other countries but to be the one being celebrated was more confusing than flattering. Three years ago I spent Canada Day in Ottawa, an actual all-out raucous party. People were drinking on public transit (very wild behaviour by Canadian standards), jumping into fountains and puking everywhere. I never thought I’d find a wilder Canada party but here it was, washed up on the beaches of Taiwan.

posted by vicky at 6:45 pm under Asia, Music, Taiwan
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Every day a barrage of unfamiliar sounds parades through Taipei’s streets. There are the scooters that putter through the streets and into the city’s many lanes and alleys. There is the old man who mumbles sweet-monotone nothings into a bullhorn while driving a loud vehicle, every morning around 9 a.m. And then there is the MIDI version of Für Elise (circa mid-90s Angelfire websites) that is blasted at 10:30 p.m. every night in my neighbourhood except Wednesday and Sunday. When I start to hear the sounds of Beethoven bleat, I know it is time to take out the garbage.

Taking out the garbage has never been such a confusing and communal experience. In the Netherlands, the process was was almost exactly like it is in Canada. Waste is separated from the recyclables, garbage is collected in a bag and placed in a bin, recyclables into a separate bin and both bins are placed on the street on a designated day to be picked up. The only twists were that organic waste has its own container in Canada and in the Netherlands glass bottles were brought to giant neighbour containers and separated by colour. It never occurred to me that there was any other way to dispose of waste even existed until I got here.

A few days after I moved into my apartment I asked my landlord, who only speaks Mandarin, where to put my garbage. After performing an abridged version of Für Elise, she mimed 10:30 p.m. and Shida park for me. Finally, I had a starting point for what would become a two-week journey. After consulting a few English speakers, I found out that special garbage bags needed to be purchased and any other plastic bag would be denied. So off I went to Wellcome, the local supermarket to buy some. The bags are blue and each comes with a sticker, printed with a currency-like texture, declaring each bag’s unique serial number. I purchased one pack of 20 bags cost $45 NTD and happily began to collect trash.

My next obstacles came in a set of two. After further investigation I found out that organic waste could not be placed in these blue bags and had to be packaged separately. Used toilet paper, for the record, is not organic nor usually flushed down the toilet. There is still a furious debate about whether Taipei’s sewage system can handle having toilet paper flushed into its old pipes and soiled paper is collected garbage bags. (More on this in a future post I’m sure.)

This rule about organic waste did not bode well with the pile of fruit peel that was collecting in my room and the consequent fruit flies. But being home at 10:30 p.m. proved to be a more difficult task than I thought. I found myself packaging illegal garbage full of organic waste and secretly dumping them at the public garbage bins at Shida Park, the park in front of my apartment. However, my method is not as a bad as some people I know who keep bags of organic waste in the freezer to stave away the rotting until they find the right moment to toss it.

This cycle continued for a few weeks until I could stand the mystery and my failure no more. Finally, one night, I schlepped out of the house, towing my blue bag as well as my cardboards and plastic bottles. I made it no further than about halfway down my street before an old woman stopped me and took my recyclables. Confused, I let her have them figuring it would probably take more effort to figure out why she wanted them. At 10:30 a series of trucks pulled up in front of the park and the neighbourhood got to work. The garbage men pulled giant blue bins off the truck for everyone to dump their organic waste into. (The dirty bags that contained them were thrown in the back of the regular garbage truck.) Had I not parted so soon with my recyclables I could have throw them onto the separate recyclable trucks. I consulted some fellow foreigners and apparently people show up early to take others recyclables in order to sell for money. Their haul takes away from the money the government would be making but who really wants to argue over, literal, scraps?

It’s been about two weeks since I first completed this ritual and it’s about time for me to do it again. My immersion into Taiwanese life is slow but moving along. Now I just have to figure out what that old man is yelling in the morning.

posted by vicky at 9:46 am under Asia, Taiwan
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Dear Schwarma/Doner Kebab,

It’s been a while since we’ve been together. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Every time I walk by a giant metal skewer, strung with meat, you still make my head still turn. Last time I saw you I was in Ximending, Taipei’s trendy teen shopping area. I wanted you but I had eaten already. Sometimes I think about making the trip there especially for you.

Long distance relationships are never easy. I don’t think of myself as unfaithful but here in Taipei I just can’t help myself from looking around. It’s happened a few times when I was drunk but I’m finally ready to admit it to you and myself.

There’s this stall at the entry to the Shida night market, our neighbourhood’s communal kitchen and pantry. You grab a plastic basket, pair of tongs and start grabbing. There are similar stands further inside the market but lack the selection that this one has. I can choose from shiitake mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms, entire green peppers, sweet potato wedges, sausages, octopus tentacles, fish balls, tofu, tiny fish filled with eggs, cauliflower, chicken cutlet, onion rings, fries, hash browns, green beans and rice wrapped in seaweed. I select my favourites and hand them over to the lady who chops up the larger pieces, separates them according to cooking time and accesses their worth. She assigns my basket a number, tosses in a few strands of leafy greens for flavour and sends it off to meet its deep-fried fate. (And here I thought the Dutch loved deep-frying.)

After the frying process, the basket’s contents is emptied into a bowl where I have white pepper, chili powder and minced garlic added. It’s then flipped around in the bowl skillfully to ensure even distribution. From there my snacks are packaged into a tiny paper bag via a large metal funnel. A few skewers are shoved in and the paper is thoughtfully placed into a custom-sized plastic bag to keep it from burning my hands. I’m not trying to make you jealous but it’s really, really hot.

It’s not that I’ve found a replacement for my new favourite drunken food. To be honest, with you, I always feel better the morning after. Waking up after my rendez-vous with this stall, I always feel slightly guilty (and garlicky.) Still I think we’re going to have to take a break this summer. I’m young and I need to experiment you know? But you have, and will always have, a special place in my heart.

Love,
Vicky

posted by vicky at 4:17 pm under Asia, Food, Taiwan
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Life in Taipei doesn’t seem much like island life, or at least the kind of island life seen on television. When the urban Taiwanese need to get away from the big city their solution is to hole themselves up on another, smaller, island. So before class started, my friends and I took a very brief vacation the hustle and bustle of Taipei and headed to Green Island, a tiny island off the eastern coast of Taiwan.

 Getting there required a six-hour-train ride to Taitung and then an hour-long ferry ride. Lonely Planet had advised us that the ferry was a vomit-inducing machine, so we piously took motion sickness pills. I actually would describe the ferry ride as easy and pleasant, if not for the frigid air conditioning. When we arrived I found the small-town life I’ve always wondered about (and also only seen on television) set against lush, mountainous terrain. There wasn’t much to do but fly through the scenery on our scooters on the 20 km of road encircling the island. Its claim to fame is the hot spring, one of the three natural saltwater ones in the world.

I’ve never taken an “adventure” vacation before and still can’t say that I have after this one. If adventure means snorkeling in a group of 20 while keeping one hand on the string of buoys being pulled around by a guide, then yes I have gone adventuring. Contrary to what the brochure promised, there is no off the beaten path on Green Island. There is no searching required to see see how the locals live. The deer tied up in front of people’s houses aren’t pets so much as dinner for themselves or to be served in one of the few restaurants.I can’t imagine what other industry it has other than tourism and maybe fishing.  The main drag that tourists frequent for food and accommodations is only fancy enough to feature a 7-11 and dessert parlour dressed up like a seafood restaurant.

Green Island is the opposite of where I grew up. It’s the small town, picturesque paradise versus the sprawling post-war suburb that you urge others not to visit. Somehow I can’t imagine sharing my home with tourists. I felt it in Amsterdam last year too. Living there means having to alter your bike route to avoid the hoardes (not whores) in the red light district and having the drunk and stoned as permanent fixtures on your landscape. If the city folk commute to nature to find peace of mind, do those that live among the trees and the sunbathers still find it the same place?

posted by vicky at 5:44 pm under Asia, Taiwan
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Mid-way through the four-hour train ride from Tainan to Taipei, I looked up from my book. Shortly before I left Canada, I started Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Right now I’m at the part where Toru starts to discover the underlying connection between the mysterious turn his life has taken with the war in Manchuria between the Japanese and Chinese.

For the final detour before I settle down in Taipei, my parents and I headed to Tainan yesterday, in the southern part of the island. “Nan” means south in Mandarin and “pei” means north. The past month has been a checklist of visiting relatives. Some are ones I haven’t seen in over a decade and the rest are ones I’ve never met (and, consequently, ones my parents haven’t seen in decades.) We started in Hong Kong, headed to Guangzhou and now we had reached Tainan, our last stop. With each city, the longer the period since my parents had seen whomever we had come to visit. It was about 1973 when my Dad last saw his 85-year-old uncle.

We went to his residence and he took us out for a late lunch. He lives in a building that has a dusty lot outside where his neighbours play mahjong under a canopy and even the dog tries to sleep off the uncomfortable and debilitating heat. The building is one set aside by the Taiwanese government for war veterans to live in for free. We ate a late lunch at a restaurant that specialized in beef dishes. He didn’t eat since he had eaten earlier but paid for our meal with one of the consumer coupons the Taiwanese government handed out to combat the bad economy. Everyone received $3,500 in $500 denominations but since stores didn’t give change if you spent less–so he hadn’t been able to find much use for them. After an afternoon of walking around the city, we went for dinner at a run-down Chinese restaurant with an all-you-can-eat ice cream bar. Everyone in the restaurant, children and adults alike, seemed to be more interested in the ice cream than their food. My uncle made three trips to the bar after putting away a full-meal.

Before I met him my parents assured me I could speak English to him if I needed to. As a pilot for the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, he had to learn English to communicate with control towers and operate the airplane’s controls. By the time he finished his training the Japanese had surrendered and he joined the fight against the Communist Party. When I asked him what he could say in English, the only things he could remember were: “What’s it all about?,” “I don’t know,”and, my favourite, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you.” He laughed that even at the time when he tried them on the Americans, they told him he wasn’t pronouncing the phrases properly.

In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Toru is puzzled by what a war that happened long before he was born could possibly have to do with him. I’ve never really made any connection between any of my relatives and history. Any stories I’ve heard from my parents and relatives in Canada, I’ve been able to write off as the hardships typical of that era, the push factors that end in immigration and possibly exaggerated complaining meant to guilt the young. When the Kuomintang lost to the Communists, they retreated to Taiwan, creating a new and permanent population on the island and my great-uncle is one of them. Here on this island I have found my own living and breathing witness to what already seems like ancient history.

posted by vicky at 4:00 pm under Asia, Taiwan
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I had one of the hardest, most-crippling laughs I have had in a long time tonight. The situation and characters are so ridiculous, it borders on surreal. In a way, I owe it all the to the bus tour for bringing us all together.

First an introduction to some of my tourmates. There’s the Taiwanese woman in her 60s, who has spent the last 30 living in Germany. She is on this tour with her son and his girlfriend. They all talk to each other in German. I can talk to the lady and her son in Cantonese, to her son and his girlfriend in English, but there is no language I can talk to all of them in at once. She says things like “Those noodles were so delicious, I ate two bowls,” and then punctuates them with a hearty trail of laughs. Every time we get to a new site, she looks for a place to sit down and wait while the guide lectures the group. Whenever we go to the bathroom she will complain about the toilets without fail.

Then there’s Daniel. He’s a Mexican-American from Los Angeles, who came to Hong Kong to play golf. He says he’s one year away from turning pro but in the meantime he’s tiling floors and renovating bathrooms. In Asia he’s a giant standing at about 6′5, in his white t-shirt and florescent shorts. When he’s not talking about his girlfriend, ex-wife, ex-girlfriend or daughters back home, he’s constantly bargaining with street vendors for counterfeit purses. He says things like “When I get home to America, I’m going to sell these for $400. They look so real,” in a slow and deceivingly slow-witted way. Really, he knows how to play up oafish, foreign and dumb for laughs (and deals) among our tour group and the locals. He’s the kind of Dad you’re mortified at but everyone else thinks is hilarious.

So Daniel, the Taiwanese lady, my parents and I are in Hangzhou waiting for the rest of our group in front of a McDonald’s to take the bus back to our hotel. Daniel has been teasing the counterfeit purse vendors earlier and promised to come back. He starts to bargain with one with my Dad translating for him into Mandarin. The vendor, like most other ones, are loaded up with merchandise over their bodies with a bike with additional merchandise in tow. Daniel says that he wants the bigger size Louis Vuitton purses. The vendor says he doesn’t have them on him but he can get them. It’s a problem since we’re leaving for our hotel, which is a half-hour drive from the city centre, in 20 minutes.

The discussion goes on and we start to attract a crowd. More vendors flock towards us, pushing their wares at us. It’s a flurry of Mandarin and fake Coach purses surrounding us. As a joke, I get Daniel to take a picture of me with the street vendor’s bike and his purses amidst the clamor. Completely ignoring the ruckus, he steps back and takes a few pictures and laughing hysterically, completely oblivious that he is blocking the door for several people trying to enter the McDonald’s. The Taiwanese woman also finds the idea of riding the bicycle hilarious and decides to try herself.

It’s at this moment I realize how ridiculous this situation really is. I’m standing on a street in mainland China with a old Taiwanese lady who is sitting on a bootlegger’s bicycle and yelling “My le! My le! My le!,” Cantonese for “Buy it!”; a Mexican-American, who is telling a street vendor he’ll send all his foreign friends to buy from him, all the while a cigarette dangles out of his mouth; my Dad,who is translating every word of Daniel’s ridiculousness; my Mom, who is joining in the madness by trying on counterfeit designer belts and later screams “Oh my god, our passports are gone” only to find her money belt, wedged lower than usual in her pants; and the street vendor, who tells the Taiwanese lady to stop drawing attention before police arrest him and then poses for pictures with Daniel. Meanwhile, I am doubling over with laughter with the street cleaner next to me.

Our bus arrives and by the time we board, Daniel has one LV purse, about three belts and four wallets. As we sit inside the bus, things do not calm down outside. The vendors have now rushed the side of the bus and holding their wares up outside the window for Daniel’s consideration. Locals stand around gawking and laughing at the spectacle. Sitting inside in this bus and looking out at this circus feels like being a pop group on tour. Daniel eggs them on by sliding open the window to take new and reduced offers for more stuff. He opens it to deny offers and say goodbye, only to close a deal for half-price a few slides later. In the end he walked away with two purses full of accessories for 360 yuan, a deal the rest of our tour group admire and congratulate him for.

Daniel and I took away very valuable things from Hangzhou. He earned some street cred and scored some gifts for the many women in his life. I got a story and a valuable reminder (cheesy but necessary) that, wherever you are in the world, having a good time depends solely on human interaction. If I ever forget, I need look no further than tonight to remember. Even in the most difficult circumstances designed to prevent any fun from happening (read: Asian bus tours), in the most unlikely mix of people, it’s possible.

posted by vicky at 4:26 pm under Asia, China
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Whether its to the local casino, American border outlet mall or multi-country journey, the bus tour is the only way some Chinese people will travel outside of their own land. For some Chinese people, they use the bus tour as a medium to travel within their own land. My parents, wary of the big six, booked us on an eight-day bus tour of Beijing, Hangzhou, Souzhou and Shanghai and some other cities in between. Plane tickets, hotel reservations, site admission, three meals daily and, of course, transportation via an air-conditioned spaceship are covered by one neat price. Always afraid of missing out on a deal, lustful for safety and efficiency and, dare I say it, not enthusiastic about mingling with any actual locals–bus tours are the way to go for middle aged Chinese parents and their children.

It’s hard to form an accurate opinion of a place and its people as a tourist and even harder when you’re part of a tour group. The last time I went on one I was about 12, traveling through the eastern U.S. with my parents. It was my first and only trip to New York City and it left me with no desire to go back. In hindsight, I realized it is bus tours I despise, not the Big Apple. I loathe getting pushed around like cattle, stuck grazing the fields with people I’m not interested in talking to or can’t bridge the language gap with. The situation seems to have gotten worse since my last foray into this beloved Chinese tradition.

Today, on our second day in Beijing, we saw the 13 tombs, the king’s summer palace and the Great Wall of China. In between we were pushed into a jade showroom, walked through a pottery factory on our way to our meal and an herbal medicine retailer. All three of these mammoth buildings were in the middle of nowhere. The parking lots were painted with huge rectangular spaces fit only for tour buses. No locals in their right minds would come here to shop or even stumble upon these places by accident. No, these places are tour bus conspiracy, where comparatively rich tourists are brought for slaughter. They’re rounded up, made to look at cheap wares that when sold, a cut is passed on to the tour company.

Mid-way through the herbal medicine demonstration I got annoyed. Intially I found it funny how ridiculous the salesgirl’s spiel was. She asked the crowd if anyone had aches and oiled, massaged and stuck arthritis herbal bandages on a volunteer. She made sure to point out pressure points and showed the crowd where to properly place the five bandages required for proper usage. Her presentation lasted close to an hour after she whipped through most of the catalogue. Those that didn’t want to listen to the sales pitch hung outside in the lobby and ended up buying some ice cream or souvenirs anyways.

It occurred to me that China is a place where locals just invent anything, or just slap the right marketing on something that already exists, to get out of poverty or make a fortune. Regardless of whether it helps improve anyone’s life or involved any genuine innovation is besides the point. It’s North American shameless capitalist spirit except with ancient Chinese secret stamped all over it. I got annoyed because my parents spent a lot of money and not so we voyage through a walking infomercial.

Then I remembered that it was the Hong Kong travel agency that pimped us out in the first place and this happens to me in Canada and Europe all the time. The Chinese just haven’t learned how to shill subtley yet. As for the search for authenticity, in travel and in general, it’s a questionable one. But if you can find it anywhere, it may as well be here. They make everything else here, don’t they?

posted by vicky at 3:53 pm under Asia, China, Stuff Chinese people like
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