Saturday, December 12, 2009

Hualien and Taroko Gorge


This past weekend, Bekah, Kristin, Kaitlyn and I went to visit Taroko Gorge for a few days. Since we had no English Village (every couple of months, we get two weeks off from EV), Bekah and I had an extra long weekend. On Fridays, we usually do EV together in the morning at Sanmin or Lingzhou and then have the afternoon off (Fulbright asks all of our schools to give us Friday afternoons off, I suppose for the purpose of better engaging in cultural activities or exploring Taiwan? This is not to say that I have not spent the occasional Friday afternoon in the office at school doing work - the delights of newspaper editing). Therefore, we were both able to leave right after our classes Thursday afternoon. Kristin and Kaitlyn, who both have EV Tuesday/Thursday and therefore class on Friday, were to join us Friday afternoon/evening. I was very excited to go, as Taroko Gorge is reputed to be one of the most beautiful spots in Taiwan with gorgeous mountains and scenery.

The plan was to take the HSR (high-speed rail) up to Taipei, and then switch trains to go down to Hualien. Sophie (an older lady whom I tutor in English who also lives in our apartment building - she is an angel and deserves her own blog posting at some point...) drove Bekah and I to the HSR station. The HSR is amazing. It takes one between Kaohsiung and Taipei in under an hour and a half, a trip which takes about seven hours by normal rail. We arrived in Hualien, the nearest large city to the gorge, fairly late and opted to go straight to bed once we reached our hostel.



The next morning, we woke up early so that we could maximize our gorge visiting time. Bekah and I both love to hike, so we were pretty excited to get started. :) Since Taroko is about an hour's drive inland from Hualien and since we had been told that public transportation within the gorge was fairly nonexistent, we had planned to rent scooters for the weekend. Because Bekah and I both have our Taiwanese drivers licenses, we were able to rent for super cheap - 250 NTD a day! This is about 8 USD, which is an awesome deal. It turned out that renting scooters was the way to go, for besides the convenience, we had beautiful views riding along in the open air.



The biggest problem with the scooters was that the weather was freezing cold! When I say "freezing," we are probably talking about mid- to high-50s. There are two reasons to account for my sounding like a wimp here. For one, we are all clearly spoiled living in Kaohsiung, where I still traipse around in sundresses and shorts (not literally, I did graduate to pants a few months ago, but still...). Secondly, driving on a scooter with the wind rushing past you drops the air temperature significantly. I ended up wearing almost the same thing every day up there, which involved all of the "winter weather" clothing which I possess here in Taiwan: short-sleeve shirt, long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket and scarf. My hands wanted gloves, for the first time since the end of last winter in NC! Anyways, once Kristin and Kaitlyn arrived, we could snuggle with them on the backs of our scooters - the body heat definitely helped. :)

The travel books do not exaggerate. Taroko Gorge is beautiful. The only road in runs right along the main gorge, so you are driving along with mountain cliffs shooting up above you and the river slicing through the marble rock below you. Chemicals from the marble have turned the water an exquisite turquoise blue color. Everything looked so pristine and natural, a big change from the relatively polluted city of Kaohsiung. All weekend, Bekah kept taking deep breaths of air and making exclamations over the air quality.




















The four of us spent Friday and Saturday nights at an aboriginal village up inside the gorge. That is, the hotel is on the site of an old village and is today run by aboriginals. We stayed in little cabins which are nestled inside a valley about 5-10 minutes up from the main gorge. It was so beautiful and relaxing. We loved every minute of it, aside from the coldness factor... Apparently, they do not heat buildings in Taiwan... At least the beds had electric blankets, so we survived. :) I have to say, though, it felt so good to finally feel "cold." We had breakfast included with our stay, as well as free evening entertainment. Every evening, they put on a show for their guests, singing and dancing and playing musical instruments. One of the guys, in particular, had a beautiful voice, and we all fell in love with his singing. On the first night, they even gave us nature trail around the site in the dark. We were looking for owls, but I do not believe we ever found any. Tragic.


Favorite moments: splashing my feet in the chilly water, eating toast stolen from breakfast for lunch next to a pond three hours up a mountain, posing on suspension bridges which could have been taken out of a kung fu movie and doing my taijichuan on top of a cliff overlooking the gorge.







Another amusing side story is about the shopping. Kaohsiung has zero cultural/touristy shopping, so we were all fairly excited to find a place with lovely indigenous Taiwanese handcrafts. The most funny item which we all ended up purchasing, though, was the wine. On the first evening, we were served their local wine - made and bottled by the aboriginals - in these tiny little pig cups. When I say "pig cups," I do not mean that they had pigs painted on them. No, they were in the shape of a pig, and you had to drink out of the snout. The wine was quite sweet and had an unusual tangyness to it which we all liked. For some reason, each of us decided that it was the perfect "gift" idea. By the end of the weekend, the four of us had accumulated ten bottles of the wine along with about that many of tiny wine bottles and two bottles of it in liquor form. Haha I swear none of us are alcoholics! It was just so unusual and packaged so lovely. :)


While we were up in the mountains hiking, we passed a college professor with his students who were out catching and documenting birds for a class. They let Bekah hold one of the birds before releasing it.

Shopping

It is necessary to offer up a quick blurb update. Yesterday, I was out Christmas shopping, entered a Nike store and low and behold, saw not one – but FOUR UNC Tarheels t-shirts. You can imagine my consternation and rage. Why are the Tarheels being represented in Kaohsiung, and not Wake Forest?! I thought about giving the store manager a piece of my mind, but fortunately rethought that idea in time. No sense in confusing the poor Taiwanese with American college rivalries. :) Still, the impudence. One of the shirts had “Go Tarheels, Go!” scribbled all over it. Such gall.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Thanksgiving in Taiwan

American holidays celebrated in foreign countries are always amusing. They are never quite what they ought to be, even though they seem to make a solid attempt at getting there. Here in Taiwan, I got to celebrate Thanksgiving multiple times: at school with my children, the day before with AIT and the day of with my roommates. We'll see if you can figure out which one was the most authentic. :)

Here in Taiwan, the average Taiwanese concept of Thanksgiving is some vague notion involving turkeys. At school, I wanted to devote part of my lesson to teaching about Thanksgiving - the history of the holiday and what it means to "be thankful." Since my book lesson for the two weeks was on "Restaurants," I figured that they sort of fit together (food? ok, so not really...). Now there are 750 Kaohsiung middle schoolers who ought to know the three minute basics of Thanksgiving.

Pilgrims came from England to America. They were cold, hungry and sick. Many of them died during the winter. The next year, they made new friends with the Indians who taught them how to grow food. That year, they had lots of food, and were all healthy and happy. Therefore, they had a big meal to celebrate and they thanked God for all of their blessings.

I have become an expert at simplified English!

Then we did an activity where all of the kids had to write down what they were thankful for. They could draw pictures (I showed them how to make hand turkeys - quite exciting), and then had to present before the rest of the class. Popular responses for: "I am thankful for_____" were "family," "friends," "Grace" (yes, I made the charts - the little brown nosers...), and "myself" (these were the children who did not understand the concept of "being thankful" - ah middle schoolers... one of them told me this was because his whole class was made up of megalomaniacs - yes, he did say that).

My favorite Thanksgiving moment at school, though, came from one of my English club students. He was supposed to write an article for newspaper about the First Thanksgiving. I would like to include here a few of the drafts I received from him. Hopefully, the "history" lessons here will give you a good laugh. Apparently, if you google "First Thanksgiving," all sorts of strange things will come up.

Thanksgiving, starring the most cooperative turkeys! The “First Thanksgiving” was on September 8th 1565, and coming from the obvious hint in the name it was the first thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was a time for people to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude to your close ones but over the years tradition changed to what is it now, and that’s having a nice time with your friends over lunch or dinner. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of every November. This year it will be on the 26th, so get ready for a big feast, if you ARE going to celebrate it that is.
Of course the one thing you cannot miss is the turkey (火機). Just watching the enormous turkey being brought out of the kitchen with the steamy air rising above it can make your mouth water. Though the turkey is one of the most important dishes, the mashed potato and corn bread also serves a great deal during the meal! The mashed potato (馬鈴薯) is a great dish to go with the warm and lip smacking gravy (肉汁) that is just something you cannot not have! The cornbread (玉米麵包) is also a scrumptious dish that has a sweet taste of corn mixed together with the flavor smell of the bread.
Almost everyone in America celebrates thanksgiving, but not a lot of Asians do. Maybe on the 26th you could try it out and see whether you like it or not, anyways, you’ll still have a great time! Happy thanksgiving!

After I corrected him that the First Thanksgiving was NOT with the Spaniards in Florida during the 1500s, this is the next draft I received.

Thanksgiving became a tradition in the United States since 1863, but it didn’t become a federal holiday until 1941. Thanksgiving was a religious observation to give thanks to God. Many people still celebrate thanksgiving as a time to give thanks to God, but some people celebroate it as a secular holiday too. On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers came to Berkeley Hundred in an area known as Charles Cittie. The group’s charter wanted the day that they arrived to be known yearly as “day of thanksgiving” to God. During the first day, Capt. John Woodleaf held the service of Thanksgiving. Quoted from the section of the Charter of Berkeley Hundred describing the thanksgiving service: "We ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."

I had never heard of Berkeley Hundred or Charles Cittie before. However, I am now an expert, as I had to go and do background research to try to figure out where in the world he was coming from. Never have I so doubted my Pilgrim origins! Never fear, though. I straightened him out, and in the end, his article was quite presentable.


So the day before Thanksgiving, AIT invited us all over to Chris Castro's (AIT/Kaohsiung director) house. Originally, we were led to

AIT, Education Bureau and Fulbright Taiwan people (left); Fulbright Taiwan director (Dr. Chen), AIT Kaohsiung director (Chris Castro) and another AIT/K guy (Mason)

believe this would be a small intimate affair. The invitations also specifically said dress "casual." However, when we found out that all of our co-teachers and principals had also been invited, we started to get a little suspicious. Since we went straight over to his house after school, most of us were in business casual from teaching, but a few had indeed taken the invitation seriously, appearing in shorts and t-shirts. Our suspicions were well-founded, for this was definitely an affair of state. All of AIT/Kaohsiung was there, along with all sorts of the other important people from the city - Education Bureau, bank managers, random American expats who head important industries etc. Chris's house (which was huge, beautiful and full of exquisite artwork; clearly designed to host State Department events) was packed with easily over 100 people. All of whom were in suits. We asked Chris to not write "casual" on the invitations next time when he meant "formal," and he told us that for the State Department, "casual" means suits and "formal" means tuxedos. Well, I suppose there is a reason we are all recent college graduates. :) It was certainly the most formal Thanksgiving dinner I have ever been to or wish to go to in the future. Thanksgiving is supposed to be super laid-back and casual -- jeans, t-shirts and sweatshirts; hanging out with your family; watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in your pajamas, stuffing yourself with incredible food; playing boardgames and watching football. Instead, we had "mingle" with a bunch of suits and eat food catered by the local culinary school. While their food was delicious, it was not appropriate Thanksgiving food. My favorites were their cranberry sauce, eggplant and cauliflower dishes. The turkey was cooked Asian-style (if you have ever had Asian meat, you know what I am talking about) and the pumpkin pie was rather rubbery and minus the whipped cream... Not sure how you mess up pumpkin pie... But overall, it was a lot of fun with good food, just not Thanksgiving feeling at all.













Our apartment decided to cook our own Thanksgiving meal the next day. When I got home from school mid-afternoon, I was fairly bent out of shape and planning to just go to bed. However, Kristin walked in the door soon afterwords, laden with Christmas decorations and singing Christmas songs. She dragged me off the couch and to Carrefour where we engaged in last-minute Thanksgiving meal shopping. When Kaitlyn got home, we started all of the cooking and ended up with quite a cozy little meal: chicken (no turkey, but after the turkey the night before, I can't say I missed it), mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, salad, green bean casserole, stuffing and both pumpkin pie and a pumpkin cream cheese loaf for dessert. Then we put on "Miracle on 34th Street" and decorated our apartment for Christmas - putting up the tree, hanging lights and garland etc. I truly do love my roommates - they are all so great. :)













To round out our Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to have our very own ultimate frisbee turkey bowl on Saturday. We went out to a park down by the harbor and engaged in some exciting frisbee competition. Pilgrims versus the Indians. I was a Pilgrim, obviously. William Bradford and William Brewster are practically my next of kin. You see, their descendants married each other, then married a Squirrel who married a Johnson who had me. It's a bit more convoluted than that, but it works out somehow. When I was little, I always thought it would be cool to be a Squirrel... At any rate, we Pilgrims crushed the Indians. As I said before the game started, history always repeats itself. We sang a lot of "Pocahontas," even though we are all well aware that Jamestown and Plymouth were entirely separate colonies... Favorite song to sing while rushing the Indians: "Savages, savages, dirty little heathen." Haha I hope no one thinks less of me now. I must say, being in Asia is quite liberating. There is not such a push for political correctness over here. Asians have every single ethnicity, race, people group and country stereotyped, and not usually with the most pleasant of connotations. The joys of being a homogeneous nation-state and not having to worry about diversity (though this is not as true as they would lead you to believe, for Taiwan has a fairly significant aboriginal population, where each group has its own language and culture; still they are all Asian - nothing like the "melting pot" or "salad bowl" of America).