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?
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.
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.
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?
I have been brought up to have a fear of Chinese people. My parents have always voiced an annoyance and fear about mainlanders and mainland China, otherwise known as everywhere outside Hong Kong. Our time in Hong Kong confirmed this feeling as general sentiment held by other Hong Kongers. Carry your purse in front of you, they said. If you’re paying for something, the shopkeeper takes your bill, tells you they don’t have enough change and hands it back, check that they they haven’t switched your bill for a counterfeit. Be wary of raising a family there, they said, because children are kidnapped, maimed and made to beg on the streets for money. While I’m sure these things have and do happen, Hong Kong, and its residents, undoubtedly have a superiority complex despite the fact they all came from the mainland at some point too.
Case in point: my Dad. He was born in Guangzhou in mainland China, or “the big six” as I like to call it–a literal and non-sensical translation of the Cantonese sounds. It’s only a two-hour train ride from Hong Kong but my Dad hadn’t been in about 25 years. My mom was unhappy about making the trip at all. Why would you expose yourself to all the inconveniences and dangers of mainland China when everything you could possibly want is in Hong Kong? (It’s pretty similar to the complex Torontonians suffer from.) But, my parents agreed, at least it’s not as bad as going to Shenzen.
We have been in Guangzhou three days, the same amount of time we spent in Hong Kong, and I have no unsavoury feelings, except about people smoking indoors. They possess some of the Asian cultural characteristics that make Westerners uneasy (penchant for hawking spit in the streets, squat toilets and talking in a way that sounds loud and angry) but Guangzhou has an ease that Hong Kong doesn’t. There are nary any mask-wearers to be seen. In Hong Kong, wearing a mask is practically a fashion accessory and obsessing over the flu is a favourite past time. The streets are much less crowded and not in mad rush mode all the time.
Guangzhou feels like a working-class city you would do well to grow old in. There are beautiful temples to spend a morning praying and follow with a vegetarian lunch. Parks are filled with the old people playing a hackey-sack game with a badminton birdie, Chinese chess, performing live opera music and learning ballroom dance. There are entire markets to dedicated to pet fish, kittens and puppies if you’re lacking company. It might be related to a Confucius respect your elders thing, but China, in general, seems to be a great place to be old.
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A little about me A Canadian flies into a country called the Netherlands to study journalism.
There she develops a taste for a drink called "living abroad."
A bartender asks if she wants a shot of Taiwan and France.
"Sure," she says, reaching for the glass. "Just two things. How do you say 'Cheers' in Mandarin and French?"
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