Eastern Dragon Super-Update Jutsu!
I finally have time to write something. There is a very good reason for this, and this reason is called Supertyphoon Haitang. Not quite the weekend I was aiming for, but it will do.
Taiwan is too much for a cutesie “Taiwan is like...” sentence. It is definitely unique among Asian cultures, a polygot mixture of the best and worst of all of them. A brief historical rundown follows.
First it was settled by Polynesians, now known to be the ancestors of the Hawaiians and other south pacific friendly giants whose polygamous, pineapple-munching existence is the envy of my eternal life. There aren’t many of these ‘aboriganees’ left, and they mostly do silly made-up dances for tourist blingola, aboriganeeness having become rather chic among the wealthy locals.
In the 16th century, the Dutch settled the island in the best colonial tradition, setting up shop in modern-day Tainan. A bit after this came the Chinese, who invaded as the escaping remnants of a faction that had lost a power struggle on the mainland (if this sounds familiar, it should). This lasted until 1895, when Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a spoil of the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese brought harsh law and order style governance, but modernized the country, and the era of Japanese occupation (which ended in 1945) is regarded fondly by the old-timers who predate the KMT takeover.
After WWII, the Chinese civil war started up again in earnest, and soon the KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party, was losing badly. The KMT were the political party of the Republic of China, which had been founded in 1911 by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Driven from the mainland, the Republican troops fought a few defensive battles on Taiwan against the Commies, and a long cold war status quo was established.
So, what does that make this place? It has a long capitalist history, and there are night markets nearly everywhere, filled with cheap clothes and trinkets and do-dads, which are completely amazing and a necessary part of any person’s life. And god, the food: amazing Chinese food for practically nothing, cheap delicacies served up from grotty carts, tiny side-stall vendors, and set-aside corners of stores selling appliances, telephones, whatever on the side. There is Hello Kitty everywhere, dispensed from the ubiquitous corner store (most of which are, I swear to God, 7-11s) as prizes for buying stuff, on bags, clothes, purses, everything. There are internet cafes everywhere, filled with people playing Warcraft III, local MMO games, and bizzare shit I could not possibly describe if I wanted to. The people out in the countryside speak Taiwanese, a language brought over from the mainland by immigrants during the period of Chinese rule after the Dutch were expelled, and the city-slickers in Taipei speak Mandarin Chinese, which even the Taiwanese speakers can understand, and is the language I’ve been learning to order beef noodle soop (anglisized: nyou roe mien) in.
As for me, I work at an American style, english-language summer camp on the border of Yangmingshan National Park, an hour drive out of Taipei. The camp is a little drive from the sleepy hamlet of Daping, which is where the office (and home of our bosses, Tom and Nara) is. Once a week, we come up for internet access and to plan our weekend trip into Taipei or elsewhere.
The Daping locals are all hilarious. The neighbors, the Goa family, are three houses worth of Chinese land-owning goofball antics. Mr. Goa, the family patriarch, has super powers, which include predicting Typhoons (his prediction: there would be none this year, the only time the man has been wrong, though it’s a pretty spectacular fuckup given I just saw a tree blowing down the street past me) and pulling leeches out of our bosses’ dog’s nose. I tried to get one of the leeches myself, and can duly attest to the difficulty of the task; the man is amazing. All he does all day is roam around in his BMW, making business deals and ordering his family around. He is my hero.
The camp itself is cult out of a stretch of World War 2-Jap-killing-movie-starring-John-Wayne jungle, filled with gargantuan, Jurassic Park-ass insects and no discernable mammals. We live in Safari-style tents, which are homey and comfortable, while also being disassemblable for, oh, say, typhoons, or whatever might hypothetically blow off the Pacific ocean and soak all my clothes. We do archery, hikes, kayaking, hikes, hikes, wide games, and the occasional vigorous stroll uphill through the woods. There haven’t been any kids for a few weeks (time spent switching from school groups to individual sign-ups, and for the marketing campaign to start), so I mostly get paid to get really ripped in a jungle hell-hole and practice my archery and fire-starting skills.
Call this Part 1; more shall be written as the Typhoon progresses.
Taiwan is too much for a cutesie “Taiwan is like...” sentence. It is definitely unique among Asian cultures, a polygot mixture of the best and worst of all of them. A brief historical rundown follows.
First it was settled by Polynesians, now known to be the ancestors of the Hawaiians and other south pacific friendly giants whose polygamous, pineapple-munching existence is the envy of my eternal life. There aren’t many of these ‘aboriganees’ left, and they mostly do silly made-up dances for tourist blingola, aboriganeeness having become rather chic among the wealthy locals.
In the 16th century, the Dutch settled the island in the best colonial tradition, setting up shop in modern-day Tainan. A bit after this came the Chinese, who invaded as the escaping remnants of a faction that had lost a power struggle on the mainland (if this sounds familiar, it should). This lasted until 1895, when Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a spoil of the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese brought harsh law and order style governance, but modernized the country, and the era of Japanese occupation (which ended in 1945) is regarded fondly by the old-timers who predate the KMT takeover.
After WWII, the Chinese civil war started up again in earnest, and soon the KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party, was losing badly. The KMT were the political party of the Republic of China, which had been founded in 1911 by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Driven from the mainland, the Republican troops fought a few defensive battles on Taiwan against the Commies, and a long cold war status quo was established.
So, what does that make this place? It has a long capitalist history, and there are night markets nearly everywhere, filled with cheap clothes and trinkets and do-dads, which are completely amazing and a necessary part of any person’s life. And god, the food: amazing Chinese food for practically nothing, cheap delicacies served up from grotty carts, tiny side-stall vendors, and set-aside corners of stores selling appliances, telephones, whatever on the side. There is Hello Kitty everywhere, dispensed from the ubiquitous corner store (most of which are, I swear to God, 7-11s) as prizes for buying stuff, on bags, clothes, purses, everything. There are internet cafes everywhere, filled with people playing Warcraft III, local MMO games, and bizzare shit I could not possibly describe if I wanted to. The people out in the countryside speak Taiwanese, a language brought over from the mainland by immigrants during the period of Chinese rule after the Dutch were expelled, and the city-slickers in Taipei speak Mandarin Chinese, which even the Taiwanese speakers can understand, and is the language I’ve been learning to order beef noodle soop (anglisized: nyou roe mien) in.
As for me, I work at an American style, english-language summer camp on the border of Yangmingshan National Park, an hour drive out of Taipei. The camp is a little drive from the sleepy hamlet of Daping, which is where the office (and home of our bosses, Tom and Nara) is. Once a week, we come up for internet access and to plan our weekend trip into Taipei or elsewhere.
The Daping locals are all hilarious. The neighbors, the Goa family, are three houses worth of Chinese land-owning goofball antics. Mr. Goa, the family patriarch, has super powers, which include predicting Typhoons (his prediction: there would be none this year, the only time the man has been wrong, though it’s a pretty spectacular fuckup given I just saw a tree blowing down the street past me) and pulling leeches out of our bosses’ dog’s nose. I tried to get one of the leeches myself, and can duly attest to the difficulty of the task; the man is amazing. All he does all day is roam around in his BMW, making business deals and ordering his family around. He is my hero.
The camp itself is cult out of a stretch of World War 2-Jap-killing-movie-starring-John-Wayne jungle, filled with gargantuan, Jurassic Park-ass insects and no discernable mammals. We live in Safari-style tents, which are homey and comfortable, while also being disassemblable for, oh, say, typhoons, or whatever might hypothetically blow off the Pacific ocean and soak all my clothes. We do archery, hikes, kayaking, hikes, hikes, wide games, and the occasional vigorous stroll uphill through the woods. There haven’t been any kids for a few weeks (time spent switching from school groups to individual sign-ups, and for the marketing campaign to start), so I mostly get paid to get really ripped in a jungle hell-hole and practice my archery and fire-starting skills.
Call this Part 1; more shall be written as the Typhoon progresses.