Outing with Sophie

One of the things I do in addition to teaching at school is tutoring. By contract, we are allowed to work 4 additional hours tutoring outside of class. My first tutoring student was Sophie, and while I have since accumulated others, Sophie remains my favorite. Sophie lives in my same apartment building just across the courtyard, so every Thursday evening, I trot over to speak English with her for an hour.

Sophie is delightful. She is one of the sweetest people I know - always thoughtful, always adorable, always going out of her way to help others. She brings fruit or home-cooked meals to our apartment at least twice a week; invites me out to dinner with her family; always prepares a drink and fresh fruit for me during our lessons; and usually sends me home on Thursdays with multiple bags of everything from breads, to cakes, to books, to DVDs to English New York Times issues (how she procures these is beyond me). My roommates and I have decided that she has adopted me. Her husband commutes every day to his job in Kending (which is a two-hour drive one way), and she only has one son, who is currently in high school (which means he is constantly busy studying). We think that she must have always secretly wanted a daughter, and here I am, the perfect age. :) Not that I am complaining - I adore Sophie.

Three times a semester, junior high schools here have major exams. The exams last for 2-3 days, and since I do not need to administer the exams, this means that I get 2-3 days off school. for our most recent exam testing period, Sophie invited me out with her on a day-trip to Tainan. Tainan, half-an-hour north of Kaohsiung, is the fourth largest city in Taiwan, one of the oldest cities on the island and also the old capital before Taipei. It is also known for having the most number of temples anywhere in Taiwan, not hard to fathom after walking around the city and literally seeing one on every street corner.


While I had been to Tainan various times with my host family and friends, this time, Sophie wanted to take me to a famous restaurant there. It was started by a woman as a way to show off her artwork - displayed both in the architecture and in the sculptures. Sophie had been very moved by the woman's story when she first heard it years ago, and she still finds her life very inspiring. This woman grew up in the country with almost nothing, never finished school, was forced into marrying someone by her brother and did not manage to find herself until she reached middle-age. After she escaped her unhappy marriage, she began her artwork, creating statues solely using natural, recyclable materials. She built her first restaurant entirely by herself, with ocean driftwood and other damaged materials she found after a typhoon. She now has over half a dozen restaurants scattered around Taiwan, each unique with its own theme and specially designed environments and artwork. For example, the restaurant in Tainan, as you can tell by the pictures, has a forest feel to it, with trees growing up from amongst the tables
to the skylights in the ceiling. Her artwork focuses on women's empowerment and has a strangely Picasso feeling to it... The food was also superb, though as I understand, not inspired by the same artist, but by a chef who has paired up with her.












After the restaurant, we did a bit of sight-seeing, visiting the Eternal Golden Castle and the Chikkhan Towers. It was interesting seeing how much the land has changed over the last few hundred years, as both forts were originally built right on the water and are now several miles inland. The Eternal Golden Castle was built in 1874, by a Qing Dynasty official to help defend against the Japanese. Sadly, it proved mildly ineffective, as the Japanese would invade two decades later. The Chihkan Towers were constructed in 1653, during the Dutch colonization. However, they were later rebuilt, which is why the buildings today look Chinese, although their foundation is the original Dutch brickwork.











Above: at the Eternal Golden Castle
Below: (left) Chihkan Towers; (right) statue of Dutch surrendering to the Chinese










Below: (left) god of literature - the figure is holding a writing brush in one hand and an inkwell in the other, one foot on the head of a tortoise and the other kicking the stars, the symbolism of which means high academic success, so students often come here to pray before taking exams










Above: (right) classic Chinglish


On a sillier note, Sophie also insisted that I let someone at each site take my photograph. I could not figure out what was happening at first, but it turned out that she was signing me up for insurance cards. The city of Tainan has a free insurance program for tourists, covering all of its historic sites. Basically, if you give them your name and other identifiable information and let them take your picture, they print you a nifty little card and guarantee you free insurance for the duration of your stay in Tainan. Plus you end up with a cute little souvenir - a card with your picture in front of the historic site. Sophie got so excited by it, that she even ended up getting a card herself at the second site.