After eight days of fantasy vacation-land, I’m back to reality, which is sad.
It was especially nice that we were travelling on a school program and had prepared by talking to group partners (locals) over Whatsapp/LINE/Instagram, because I couldn’t imagine seeing what Taipei has to offer without that kind of help, nevermind the things that we were able to do with 政大’s means and planning crew.
It was also especially helpful for myself to have studied up so much before I went, although I think it was more the other way down the cause-and-effect chain: I started seeing neat content about Taiwan online and found an opportunity to go there in this class.
I had ended up finding some podcasts and books that prepared me pretty well for understanding the history, what to see, and what to know.
I listened to:
- Laszlo Montgomery’s China History Podcast, History of Taiwan series
- Every episode of Formosa Files
- Every episode of Formosa Files 中文版
- Every episode of Taiwanology (from 天下雜誌)
and I read
- A Pail of Oysters by Vern Sneider
- Formosa Betrayed by George Kerr
- A Taste of Freedom by Peng Ming-min
- Fireproof Moth by Milo Thornberry
and I started reading Two Countries: My Taiwanese-American Immigrant Story by Wu Li-pei.
Two blogs I found I liked were also “Pinyin News” (the author seems to be an interesting political figure?) and “Language Log” (not much to do with Taiwan, but there’s someone who writes on there sometimes about 台語 and that person seems cool).
I also found a decent current-events news source in 天下雜誌 Commonwealth Magazine, which has both English and Mandarin editions (although the content is different between the two). The English articles will usually have one turn into a Taiwanology podcast episode per month.
These are all really helpful resources for understanding what to expect before you make it to the 美麗島. But, it took me about a year to make it through all of that. I guess I came prepared. I’ll admit, though, I’m a slow reader.
Even with all that out of the way, I’m still absolutely in the honeymooning-love phase with my affection for this place. I don’t think I come from a reasonable state of mind.
Everything is beautiful, adorable, convenient, cool, and interesting. The mountains are everywhere and always covered in fog, there are delightfully stupid cartoon ads everywhere, there are at least two FamilyMarts per block in Taipei, prices are reasonable, and the food is all fantastic. Especially soymilk and scallion pancakes in the morning — right near our hotel was 天津蔥抓餅 Tianjin Onion Pancake on 永康街 Yongkang St. You can’t get soymilk there, but you can get it for $35 NT a bottle at any of the nearby Seven-Elevens.
And if you want a decent entire breakfast for super cheap, you can go to 永和豆漿 Yonghe Soy Milk near 善導寺 Shandao Temple, right near 阜杭豆漿 Fuhang Soy Milk (the trendy touristy one that’s admittedly really fantastic but always busy). 永和 Yonghe is right next door and pretty good, too. Not a tourist attraction, but better value than you’d ever get in the United States.
This was from 永和豆漿. I had never heard of “peanut rice milk”, but I love that this and the soymilk can come out hot if you order it that way. I think it tastes better than cold soymilk, but I just tend to not like cold things anyway.
The peanut rice milk in the photo was pretty great, but I think I still prefer soymilk.
On the other end of the day, there was a place (also on 永康街 Yongkang St, like the 天津蔥抓餅 Tianjin Onion Pancake booth), called 芋頭大王 Taro King, and the mango shaved ice goes pretty hard (as shown below).
So, overall, Taipei is a great place for food.
Other than the capital, I couldn’t resist getting on the HSR, even though I didn’t have a particularly good reason — I convinced a few friends to go with me to 嘉義 Chiayi City, and there, we got some good 嘉義火雞肉飯 Chiayi turkey rice (which they’re apparently very serious about).
I swear this restaurant was excellent, and if I remembered the name I’d recommend it. It has fourteen reviews (all five stars) on Google Maps at time of writing, and it’s right nearby Hinoki Village (someone there pointed us to it).
An hour-and-a-half HSR ride to Chiayi, of course, for that turkey rice was well worth it. And we saw Hinoki Village and the Chiayi Art Museum, but those were less important. I thought Chiayi was the greatest place I’d ever been when we stepped out the front door of the train station onto the bus terminal and some dude starts running at us and yelling in Mandarin asking us where we’re trying to go — no conversational strong-arming to try to evacuate the English as would usually be necessary in the 北市.
Food really aside, there were also beautiful landscapes about everywhere. These are mostly the north, but number two is 嘉義 Chiayi. I have other really good photos, but they have people in them (complete strangers who happened to be in line-of-sight of the camera), so maybe not on the Internet. But trust me, Chiayi can be a pretty photogenic city in the right parts.
Some of the activities that we got into while we were there included touring 政大’s campus, going to 新竹 Hsinchu City’s God Temple Market and going to 大山北月 Big Hill North Moon in the mountains of Hsinchu County, which was pretty beautiful. On the way back, we popped out the KTVs and the microphones and started blasting it down the Zhongshan Expressway, an experience that everyone deserves at least once in their lives.
We also saw some of the obligatory landmarks, like the 國立故宮博物院 National Palace Museum, 中正紀念堂 (say it like the MRT announcer) Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and I took a morning to ride out to 228 Peace Memorial Park, something I was surprised we didn’t do as a group.
I think having an environment where I could use Mandarin anywhere, instead of just during group meetings and classes, was also extremely helpful. I think I improved by about five miles over the course of the week, and that, in combination with all the KTVing (on the bus, at a KTV bar, at the lunch table, pretty much anywhere) removed about just as much of the insecurity wall around my mind. It was definitely necessary for my learning, I think.
And from a learner’s perspective, it was fun seeing Taiwan’s famous inconsistencies and anachronisms out in the wild. I kept maintaining a photo collection of every instance of 注音符號 Zhuyin Fuhao that I spotted out in the wild. Here are some highlights:
These aren’t so much anachronisms, but I did also see some of that world-famous 阿扁拼音, with the obligatory amount of postal and Wade-Giles-inspired sequences of letters for names of larger cities that already have their names established (Tamsui? Keelung? Kaohsiung? … I mean, most people know how to pronounce them anyway, and if they don’t, the train announcer will correct them).
And, of course, there’s the bopomofo handbag that I bought at 平溪 Pingxi. At least one graphic designer has their priorities straight.
So, 終於要說：if you have a nice working knowledge of Mandarin, Taiwan is awesome. If you don’t, you have to stay in the touristy parts, and those people who speak English can be kind of stuck-up sometimes. Especially at 大稻埕 Dadaocheng. The temple is nice, but go elsewhere if you want food (the scenery is neat, though).
Also, be prepared for squatty-potties.
If you want a city that’s cool, go to Tokyo. If you want a city that’s different, go to Singapore. If you want to step foot into an adorable island society with fun people, excellent food, history, politics, sometimes-questionable traffic safety but an unquestionably beautiful landscape, go to Taiwan.
I know I plan to go back!
Until then, I have to do working things and live my life here in English-land where my Zhonghua bucks don’t buy even a third of a latte at the local Starbucks (or anything, for that matter).
886!