As you may know from other parts of this site, I do market research for a living. It turns out that I spent much of my free time this trip investigating the numerous street markets of Hong Kong and Taiwan, so in some sense, this was "market research" also! (Maybe I should have tried to expense my personal purchases, eh?)
The mother of all flights. Let me just say that 15 hours is way too much time to spend on a plane. It seemed interminable. They showed 4 full-length movies plus a bunch of short videos, and served 3 meals. I sat next to a man born in China who was now an American citizen, but he slept the whole time (a bad idea since you arrive in the early evening). But I did meet a few interesting people, like a woman who was a professional soccer referee, on her way to Canton to officiate a tournament.
Upon arrival, I zipped through the airport. Strangely, there was no customs check-- they were just waving people through the gates. I took a limo bus to the Great Eagle Hotel in Kowloon, getting my first glimpse of Hong Kong by night. (The guy at the ticket counter looked me right in the eye and wrote "Mr. Kimberly Allen" on my receipt-- more on this below). The airport is on Hong Kong Island, while Kowloon is on the mainland, so we got to cross the world's longest suspension bridge. The city itself is magnificent, packed full of skyscrapers with so many lights. It's hard to describe, but somehow the "look" of Hong Kong is, not surprisingly, more European (or generally Western) than that of Seoul or Tokyo. Just the structure of the city seems to resemble Chicago, London, or Frankfurt more than an Asian city. Of course, much of it was built during British rule.
However, Hong Kong is undoubtedly international. The signs are mainly in both English and Chinese, and once you get to the little streets off the main thoroughfares, there is no doubt that you've entered an Asian city. Street vendors hawk their wares, tiny shops crowd together, and the alleys are lined with Chinese lanterns.
By the way, the local language here is Cantonese, which differs from Mandarin, the "official" language of China. I certainly can't hear the difference between them. I can't understand a word anyone says! Japanese doesn't help you much in these parts. In fact, knowing Cantonese doesn't even help you much with Mandarin and vice versa; the dialects of Chinese are incredibly different. One thing that Mao did was to standardize the written language so that all dialects use the same characters. They are just pronounced differently. This way, if you can't talk to someone, you can always write down what you're saying, and they'll understand. Interesting!
Driving myths shattered. I admit that I had a silly notion about which side of the road people drive on in various countries. My theory was that island countries are the only ones that drive on the left because the rest of the world has standardized to the right. That explains the left-ness of Britain and Japan, and the right-ness of the US, China, the rest of Europe, and as much of the rest of the world as I was aware of. But no! Hong Kong, as a former British colony, drives on the left! I've heard there are big problems at the border with the rest of China now. And I've also learned that India drives on the left (another former British colony, but then how do we explain Canada and Australia? I digress.) And furthermore, Taiwan-- an island country-- drives on the right. So much for my half-baked theory! It was good while it lasted.
Gender confusion. At the Great Eagle, I again got a receipt saying "Mr. Allen." Not that I'm objecting that much, but what is with these people? Sure, I have short hair, but really, I don't look all that male. My theory is that maybe they're not quite aware that "Ms" is an option that doesn't mean "wife." Perhaps they are thinking that "Mrs" really just applies to a wife, and so they should use "Mr" for the general business title. Odd.
Business in Hong Kong. I spent the next day in meetings. The guy who delivered my breakfast warned me that it was "very, very cold" that day, so I brought my jacket. Actually, it was about 55 degrees F, and that was just the morning chill. And people say Californians are wimps!
I was accompanied by a local guy who works for our parent company, so at least I had a Chinese-speaking guide. We took cabs around because no one in Hong Kong owns a car (you can't park it for less than your rent), even though some of our appointments were in the "new territory" outside the main city. I found out that Hong Kong has about 6 million people-- no wonder it looks something like New York. Our first cab driver had on a jacket with an American flag and some writing on the back. Intrigued, I tried to read it and discovered that it was typical fake Asian English. It said something like, "We combine the best gimmicks with challenging details." Um, yeah!
For lunch, we did dim sum, sampling such local delicacies as fried duck (too oily for me), rice dough with shrimp, and some kind of fried rice that was formed into a cube and had bits of seasoned mushroom and fish embedded in it. And don't forget your pocket tissues (which should be standard fare in Asia)! No napkins in sight.
Pleasure after business. The meetings were done in the late afternoon, and we walked around to some street markets. (I was still having pretty significant knee problems, so we went slowly and rested a lot). It seems that Hong Kong's main shopping areas are divided into several-block segments that tend to have "themes." We visited a flower section, a fish section, and an electronics section, for instance. In the flower section, we saw these weird tuberous fruits that look like inflated gloves. The central part is supposed to represent the parents, and the fingers are children, so they are bought for "happy family" vibes.
The fish were really interesting. Hundreds of them tied up in little baggies so you could take them home immediately. There were also newts, snakes, frogs, and turtles. We also saw a pet store with lots of chinchillas (including a hand-drawn sign with a picture of a chinchilla and the label, "Love me! Buy me!").
Then we went to the Hong Kong bird market, a famous permanent market for selling birds, fancy carved cages, and high-quality crickets (yum). They had both decorative birds and songbirds (you don't tend to get both qualities at once, I've heard).
Finally, we went to "women's street." This was apparently named in contrast to "men's street," which sells just what you think it would sell. But instead of selling the women's equivalent on women's street, they just sell lots of cheap merchandise, like what you would have expected from a "made in Hong Kong" label about 15 years ago. Prices are listed (and are the same up and down the street), but actual prices are negotiated. Not to miss the true Hong Kong experience, I bought a fake watch! The list price was just $35 (US dollars) for a name-brand label, and being with my Hong Kong guide meant we got a decent discount, down to $25. Woo hoo! You could make some money on eBay after shopping on women's street, if no one noticed the counterfeit.
Sumptuous seafood. Then it was dinnertime, so we took a cab to a restaurant that has "the best taste," according to my colleague. Hong Kong is known for its fresh and wonderful seafood. This place had the usual array of live seafood tanks in the back, and we went and actually picked out the fish we wanted to eat. One lobster, a handful of small abalone (not like the big American ones), and some kind of regular fish. The most expensive was the fish-- it turns out lobster is very common and pretty cheap in Hong Kong. Most of the fresh seafood comes from Australia, the Philippines, or the waters around China. And it was awesome. It doesn't get fresher than that, except maybe when you have sushi. By the way, none of this came with rice-- apparently having rice with Chinese food what they do at fast-food restaurants. "Real" restaurants just serve the food. Another interesting restaurant thing is that they give you a bowl of tea with a lemon floating in it to dip your greasy fingers in after you've munched on lobster and abalone.
Then my colleague said with a grin, "Do you want to eat snake?" Well, who could pass up an offer like that? We had snake soup, flavored with some lemon and ginger. How is snake? Don't kill me for saying this, but it tastes like chicken. I don't know what kind of snake it was.
At the end of the evening, I went home by taxi, and was amazed at the low price (I had vaguely noticed it earlier on our business voyages too). The 12-minute cab ride to my hotel cost $HK 31, or about $US 4.50. When we went to a company that was 35 minutes away, the cab fare was only $HK 100, or about $US 14.30. Try that in New York!
Yau Ma Tei -- Yow!. The next day, all I had to do was catch an afternoon flight to Taipei, so I went sightseeing in the morning. I decided to check out an area of town called Yau Ma Tei, famous for its street markets (although goodness knows why this is different from the Mong Kok area where we saw all the markets yesterday).
Anyway, I took the "MTR" there, which is the local train/subway-- maybe that stands for something like Mass Transit Rail, I don't know. One thing I discovered to my chagrin is that signs that say "Subway" do not lead to the MTR. They indicate underground passages that allow you to cross 8-lane roads without waiting for the traffic signal. But I did eventually find the MTR stop near the Great Eagle Hotel.
I started walking (i.e., limping) around Yau Ma Tei, looking at a zillion little shops with everything from housewares to jewelry to fresh fish. I had a little guide map that I had borrowed from my aunt and uncle (who went to Hong Kong in the early 90's), and was pleased to discover that many things on the map were still there. Here is a sampling of what I saw in a few hours' time:
The Jade Market. This is a famous Hong Kong sight. More than 450 jade merchants have registered stalls in a special area, plus there are a couple of city blocks with actual jade jewelry stores. The stores are expensive, of course. The jade at this market comes from all over China and Southeast Asia, and is interesting because even though it has no intrinsic value like gold or gems, a huge market has built around it, and various standards of quality have been agreed upon by the buyers and sellers as a whole. The best jade is of uniform color and may even be slightly translucent. Needless to say, much of the jade being hawked was streaky and opaque, but who cares? If it has no intrinsic value, I figured I could assign my own value as well as anyone.
As I cruised the stalls, the merchants tried to grab my attention. I was an obvious foreigner, which meant I would probably buy. (By the way, I was keeping close watch on my pockets and bag-- the jade market is also known for its pickpockets! Luckily, I was not targeted). One merchant said, "For you, special American price!" Bargaining is of course the order of the day. There were many Chinese New Year charms since the holidays start in a couple of weeks, as well as an array of finished jewelry, carved pieces, and loose stones.
I ended up with a couple of pieces that could be suitable for necklaces. I found that I just wasn't that wild about the bracelets or earrings they were offering at the affordable prices, and I wasn't prepared to spend $US 50-100 on something more valuable. It was a fascinating place to walk around, though.
Food market. After a rest, I strolled through an enormous food market. It looked just like the pictures you've seen in National Geographic, only I got the smell too. (Not always pleasant, but certainly interesting :-) ). There were intriguing fruits (like a grapefruit thing about the size of a bowling ball), lots of dried fish, many unidentifiable herbs, and meat that was much more realistic-looking that you would ever see in the US. Huge carcasses were being chopped up in plain sight, and the parts were hung on big hooks with prices on them. Buyers studied beef rib racks and whole geese, and when they placed an order, the merchant would tie it up in a bag with a couple of scoops of gizzards as a bonus.
Amazingly, I was getting hungry. I found a section with little noodle houses and other restaurants, and decided to get something Chinese. I opted for a bakery that sells various kinds of steamed buns. Most labels were in both English and Chinese, so I picked out one with red bean filling. (I have to admit that I skipped right over the one labeled "roasted sausage with salad dressing"). There was another one that didn't have a description so I tried to ask the lady there what it had inside, but alas, she didn't speak English.
Herbal tea to cure what ails you. I wandered past a tea merchant who had steaming cups of various kinds of tea set out on a table at the front of his shop. Passersby would stop, chug a cup, and drop some coins in a basket. Intrigued, I lingered by the counter to watch. The merchant could just barely speak some English, and encouraged me to try the one on the end, "made from flower petals with sugar." I tried it, and found it sweet but not too cloying. I asked what it was good for, and he said, "In winter, some people get too cold." It was his own blend, he said, not for sale. You can only get it by drinking his steaming cups on the street. Meanwhile, several more people had stopped, chugged a cup, and paid their $HK 6. I complimented the man on his English, and he shyly admitted that he had recently visited London and Paris for vacation, but denied that he could speak well. Hey, it was better than my Chinese!
Snake shop. Next door, I saw a fast-food restaurant with the usual meat items hanging in the window (they've all got these goose-roasting racks with whole geese skewered on them), except the meat looked funny. It was long and cylindrical, not like a goose. Oh, it's snake! Sure enough, the guy in the back was flaying them before hanging them up. At the short-order window, you could get what looked like Snake McNuggets. Urk.
Fun and games. Reading further in my aunt and uncle's Yau Ma Tei guide, I learned that there was a Mah Jongg gambling den in the neighborhood. Intrigued, I walked by, but you couldn't see much. It was a white plaster building with fancy gold trim and carved wooden doors. A sign said that only persons older than 18 would be admitted, and it seemed to be closed at midday.
Farther up the street, I happened on another betting game, however. A group of four men sat at a card table playing a fast game that I couldn't make heads or tails of. The playing pieces were marble not-quite-cubes (they were about the size and shape of nigiri sushi pieces) that were plain green on one side and had some pictures on the opposing white face. They seemed to have various numbers of various items, like the suits and numbers of a Western card deck. The blocks were arrayed in four lines like a windmill at the beginning of the game, and then each man got some for his hand, plus some were left on the table. Play consisted of drawing new blocks, tossing blocks into the center, banging them on the table, and eventually shouting in triumph and flipping all the blocks in your hand face-up to declare victory. Then money changed hands-- about $HK 300 ($US 43) on average. Like me, some people stopped to watch the game for a while. But I never did figure out the goal or the rules. (Ironically, I found out later that this game is Mah Jongg!!)
Traffic rules. By the way, I learned some street rules walking around for a few hours. First, the traffic lights on major roads have an interesting feature: they tick to indicate what state they are in (probably for blind pedestrians). A slow tick...tick...tick means Don't Walk, while a rapid tickticktick means Walk. A medium tick-tick-tick indicates that it is transitioning from Walk to Don't Walk. However, Hong Kong people love the excitement of crossing on red. The pedestrians do not have the right of way, and they know it-- they will skitter out of the way of speeding taxis like their life depends on it (and it does), but that doesn't stop them from chancing the red light every time they can.
Also, since Hong Kong is a crowded city, you have to compete for sidewalk space. Asian politeness fades the farther south you go, and the Hong Kong Chinese are quite aggressive about getting where they need to be. You don't have to bang into people, but you can nudge your way along quite insistently and no one bats an eye.
Across the straight. Alas, I had to get back to the airport to head off to Taiwan. I took a limo ride from the Great Eagle where I had to endure 40 minutes of Lawrence Welk mixed with cheesy 70's folk songs-- apparently the favorite music of the driver. At the airport, I wanted to get something to eat, so I found a restaurant called the "Banana Leaf Asian Square." They had an amazing variety of Asian food, including Japanese soba, Chinese grilled meat, Thai fish ball soup, and Indian curry. There were coconut-milk drinks, mango lassis, and Tsingtao beer. They also had ham and cheese sandwiches, but I went for a salad and a small portion of curry, which was actually hot, unlike fast-food curry in the US. Then I stopped for frozen yogurt at a TCBY booth and found that it has some local variation. In the US, they tend to just offer soft serve, but this one had some hard frozen yogurt too, in unusual flavors. I got a taste of the sesame frozen yogurt, but didn't like it well enough to eat a whole portion. It was a little odd.
I flew China Airlines (CAL), a slightly scary experience in ways that are hard to articulate. I realized that I had never flown a non-US airline (except perhaps a couple decades ago, when I think I flew KLA once). Welcome to the world of the intra-Asia airlines! There's Cathay Pacific, Royal Nepal Airlines, and a zillion other little ones that do the hops around Hong Kong, Taipei, Manila, Shanghai, Brunei, Kathmandu, etc. The reason it was a little scary is that for the most part, these airlines have adopted an American-style procedure for checking passengers in and offering the in-flight service, but you can tell it's a little bit of an unnatural act for them.
For instance, the procedure for getting on the plane involved getting your boarding pass stamped by a CAL official. This was not accomplished by making people come to the desk. Instead, the CAL employees wandered around the waiting area asking people if they needed to have their boarding pass stamped. When new people arrived, the CAL people found them and got them properly stamped and ready to go. That would never fly in the US, but it did seem to work.
I sat next to a Taiwanese woman in the waiting area. I think she was fascinated by me because she kept glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. I was wearing a large leather jacket, jeans, sneakers, carrying a backpack and laptop computer. I suppose I looked rather American. She tried to talk to me in Mandarin, but alas, I could say nothing. And she didn't speak English or Japanese (I guess the latter was a long shot, but I had to try). The only Mandarin word I've learned so far is xie xie, which means "thank you" (and you have to say it with the right inflection).
[Aside: Taiwan passports don't say "Taiwan" anywhere on them. They say "Republic of China," of course. I wonder how many dumb US customs officials have thought that a Taiwanese person is from mainland China.]
When it came time to board, the CAL people walked around and told the people with children that they should go to the gate. Once these people started moving, everyone else realized that it was time to go, and flooded into line. (More competition and jostling to get in position, a process that I am not very adept at!) There was definitely no concept of announcing rows or loading the back of the plane first.
In a 75-minute flight, they served a full meal and drinks, as well as offered duty-free shopping on cart they wheeled through. The stewardesses were running full speed the whole time. I hate to admit it, but safety seemed a little lax. They didn't check seatbelts or tray tables, and a few people did not have them in the "full upright and locked position" during take-off and landing.
I sat next to a Taiwanese guy who is now an American citizen and lives in Cupertino. I go all the way to Hong Kong to meet a neighbor. He was going to Taipei from an earlier visit to Shenzen in mainland China. He told me that probably most of the plane was not from Hong Kong. I hadn't fully realized that there are no flights between Taipei and the main part of China. All such flights must route through Hong Kong. If relations are ever normalized, and planes go straight from China to Taiwan, the Hong Kong economy will take a big hit (and in particular, Cathay Pacific Airlines will be in trouble). Currently, more than 1.5 million passengers come through Hong Kong airport on the way from mainland China to Taiwan.
He also told me a little about local politics. You may recall from the election a few years ago that the new Taiwan government is from the local Taiwanese party. There are two major factions in Taiwanese politics-- those who were there already, and those who came with Chiang Kai-Shek in the 50's. There is much tension there, both between them and between Taiwan in general and mainland China. With the new government, there is a strong move to emphasize local culture, not Chinese. When I mentioned that I wanted to go to the National Palace Museum to see some of the Chinese treasures, he said this might be a good time to go because the exhibition was being changed slowly to de-emphasize all of that stuff. Better see it now.
Then we arrived at Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport. I had instructions from the company rep I'm meeting here not to accept a private limo, but to take a regular taxi to my hotel. I was accosted three times by limo drivers who insisted that their set price of NT$ 1,300 was far cheaper than a taxi, and that I would make a huge mistake if I didn't take one of their "hotel cars." They were specifically targeting foreigners, of course, and it hardly seemed fair since taxi drivers can't leave their cabs to grab you in the terminal. I resisted, and went for the regular cab. The final charge was $NT 1,230.
In my room, I was amused to discover that despite my careful effort to buy a converter plug that would work in Taiwan, the wall outlets fit my American plug just fine.
Business in Taiwan. The next few days were to be devoted to client visits, which were mostly in Hsinchu, an hour's drive from Taipei (or two during rush hour). As we cruised back and forth every day, I learned some things about Taiwan from my company's rep who was taking me around.
First, I learned some rules of the road. Taiwan is full of scooters, which are used to beat the constant traffic jams. Scooters regularly drive everywhere like ants at a picnic, weaving in and out of the cars, turning in a seemingly random fashion. Amazingly, they apparently don't get killed too often. One interesting thing is that many intersections have a "scooter zone" at the front, so that when the light is red, all the scooters can come up to the zone and get first crack at going forward. They look like marathon racers piled up at the start line when 30-40 of them cram into the zone.
Also, Taiwan actually has a law that you can't use a cell phone handset while driving (headsets are OK). You have to stop to use it. However, what this really means is that people feel free to stop wherever they are when they get a call. Cars veer over to the curb, or sometimes just take up part of the right lane. Watch out!
One more rule of the road: don't speed. Cameras mounted along the highway will take your picture (your license plate, of course), and you'll get a ticket in the mail. They've got cameras all over Britain, too. We are just starting to implement something like this in the US at certain intersections, to catch red-light-runners. But these services are mostly run by private companies, and the business model isn't working so well (I've heard). Plus Americans are less than excited about letting the government install cameras everywhere. That sort of thing really makes me (and lots of people) nervous, but my guide said such privacy concerns really don't exist in Taiwan.
We saw some interesting things too. I gawked at a hillside totally covered with little shrines, almost like mansion facades, but miniature. Turns out they really are shrines-- they are tombs and graves. I thought they were sort of picturesque, but apparently there is a movement to have more efficient burial so that hillsides don't get totally covered like that.
We also talked about Taiwan. It's hard to describe, but of all the Asian countries I've visited, Taiwan is the most like America. (It is not terribly American on an absolute scale, but it's way above, say, Japan on a relative scale). It must be the capitalist/entrepreneurial spirit, or the openness to foreigners (in many ways, Taiwan is also an immigrant culture), or something, but Taiwan is generally quite American-friendly. For instance, it is the only Asian country that has any kind of regulation of smoking in public places. And many signs are in English despite having no English-speaking heritage like Hong Kong. (Although granted, the cab drivers and most service people you interact with don't speak English). Also, almost everyone goes by a western name (like Peter, John, or Susan) when dealing with Americans, which rarely happens in Japan (although, granted, Japanese names are easier for Westerners to pronounce than Chinese ones). It's not that I want that sort of accommodation, but it's nice not to get the feeling that I am invading their country simply by being there.
Taiwan's industry and economy are fascinating, although I can't say I'm any kind of expert. It's hard to fathom the manufacturing strength here-- for instance, 20% of the world's printed circuit board (PCB) output comes from a stretch of factories just a few miles long. Hsinchu, the technical area southeast of Taipei, is a seemingly endless array of buildings with names of companies you recognize from the semiconductor, optics, computer, and biotech industries. Everything you want is right here, concentrated in a tiny area. Companies just go up the street to get something made, or to collaborate on a new product. And these factories work, day and night, churning out high-tech devices and components at low prices.
But wait. Things are changing. Slowly but surely, the manufacturing base is shifting to mainland China, which offers even cheaper labor and increasingly sophisticated technical know-how. Most Taiwanese companies are in the process of moving some operations to Shanghai, Dongguan, and other technical zones in China. This is good for prices, complicated for cross-straight relations, and certainly dangerous for Taiwan's economic base. Taiwan is in the throes of shifting away from a manufacturing economy, as America did during the past century (no one builds factories in the US anymore; labor is far too expensive).
We (and to some degree, Europe as well) have called our shift the growth of the "service economy," and I would hardly say we have completed the process. Japan is digging in its heels, unsure that it wants to make such a transition, even though it is inevitable and already occurring. Taiwan is just starting, and needs a different model than has been applied elsewhere in the world. What can Taiwan do besides make things? My company's rep suggested research, which I thought was an interesting idea. But the next sentence out of his mouth was that Taiwan is ill prepared to produce true innovation, having made its fortune on "me-too" manufacturing, done cheaply. So what's next for Taiwan? Stay tuned.
Snake Alley. I managed to look around Taipei a bit at night. I was staying in the business center, which is really westernized. It's a lot like New York or Chicago with shopping and restaurants and too many cars. But one feature worth checking out are the night markets. These are sort of like the places I went in Hong Kong, just like you'd imagine with lots of vendors hawking cheap goods and tons of local food, much of which is hard to identify and sort of scary-looking. Snake alley is a section of town near Lung Shan Temple. It's called that because they have butchers there flaying snakes and serving them up, and some of the vendors sell snake products based on snake oil or venom. (This gives literal meaning to the term "snake oil salesman," I guess). A very odd place that you would never see in America.
Food in Formosa. Since I spent several days in Taiwan, I had a few interesting meals. The food is definitely more international than, say, in Japan. You can find many varieties of Chinese food (my hotel alone offered Shanghainese, Pekinese, and Cantonese, as well as native Taiwanese), plus all sorts of Southeast Asian and even Western food. Here are some samples:
Farmhouse fare. One day we went to a curious little joint for lunch that served native cuisine. It was in a traditional Taiwanese farmhouse, which has three wings surrounding a central, walled courtyard. The tables were bare wood with stools around them, and native artwork hung on the walls. We had pork cooked with bamboo shoots, spicy chicken (actually Szechuan, not native Taiwanese), some sort of squash cooked with beans, an egg dish with a native bulb that tastes like both onion and pepper, and crispy little river fish cooked and eaten whole (almost like crunchy snacks). Really interesting stuff. I learned that native Taiwanese cooking tends to be simple, farm fare, and over the years it has come to combine elements from many styles in China (as workers came over).
Sushi? Yes, I did I did go to a sushi bar in Taiwan. I was amused to hear the sushi chefs speaking Chinese among themselves. They knew enough Japanese to communicate (quite well) with the Japanese-speaking patrons who were getting a taste of home. I think I was a real puzzle to them as a single Caucasian woman who ordered beer and sashimi in Japanese. I got a curious free appetizer I hadn't seen before that seemed to consist of tentacles in a thousand-island-like sauce. The sauce certainly wasn't very Japanese, so I suspect this was one of those Chinese modifications of the cuisine, just like American "Chinese" restaurants have many American modifications to the original. But overall, it was good quality fish.
Shanghainese. One night, we went out to a well-known gourmet restaurant in Taipei (in fact, it was called "Gourmet" in English, but the characters for the Chinese name are the same as the chef's name). The food was high-class Shanghainese, which tends to have a lighter taste than other kinds of native Chinese. It was great. We had vegetables and fried chicken in a soy-like sauce as an appetizer, followed by steamed whole fish with ginger, the fish head and tail in a lemon soup, beef ribs with green onions, and seared tofu with bamboo shoots and garlic. All of it came with special Shanghainese rice, which has a chicken-broth flavor and some vegetables in it. Fabulous.
Afterwards, we walked on the street looking for dessert. We ended up at a stand selling a new "hit" dessert that was advertised as, "Ice ice! Healthy drink!" It sounds really weird, but I swear it was good. It was a scoop of sweet beans, doused in a sweet broth containing cubes of gelatin, topped with a spoonful of a Chinese herb that actually resembled rice. The herb had little flavor, and apparently some people (aiming to be healthy) eat it in place of rice with their meals. The drink is supposed to be beneficial for your heart and blood pressure. Really, it tasted good! And I never would have discovered it on my own, so I was glad to be introduced to it by our company rep.
The National Palace Museum. On my free day in Taiwan, it was raining. But no matter-- I wanted to see the National Museum. This has a huge collection of Chinese treasures. They only display 5% of the collection at once, so I only saw a little piece. The museum is set into the side of a mountain, and I found out later that the whole collection is kept in vaults inside the mountain!
If what I saw was 5%, I am stunned at how much Chiang Kai-Shek brought over with him. The museum has 3 huge floors, filled with thousands and thousands of pieces, some of them just jaw-dropping. There was carved jade, ivory, bronze pots, silk tapestries, paintings, scrolls, ceramics, wooden curio boxes, and tons of other things. One of my favorite pieces was a peach pit that had been carved into an intricate riverboat scene, so finely detailed that the museum had installed a magnifying glass for viewers. There was also a huge memorial to Sun Yat-Sen right in the middle of the museum. The best part was, they permitted non-flash photography in some parts! It was a little dark, but I'm hoping the pictures of well-lit pieces will come out.
Another interesting thing was the room called "Relation of Chinese and World Cultures." This was a timeline starting in about 6000 BC and running through the present. The wall had a long horizontal stripe across it, and Chinese innovations and art were shown above the line, while contemporary non-Chinese examples were shown below the line. The exhibit was maybe 100 yards long. I had never seen a whole overview of world history like that, and certainly not from the Chinese perspective. The first named dynasty started in something like 4000 BC. The non-Chinese examples didn't really compare in sophistication until the Greek civilization of about 500 BC. It was interesting to watch the rise of Christianity in Europe in the first millennium, paralleled by the rise of Buddhism in China (although of course, the details were vastly different!) The non-Chinese examples also included things from the cultures of Central and South America, the Middle East, India, and Africa, which I had never seen compared directly with those of China. The message was clear-- let's celebrate the greatness of Chinese culture-- and I would have to agree. I thought it was curious, BTW, that the timeline used the western calendar, but at least that made it more comprehensible for me.
I had taken a taxi to get there, and when I wanted to go back (ow! sore knee!), I asked the information desk to call one for me. You would think at a big tourist spot like that, they would speak English, but I could barely communicate with the women at the desk. I tried to tell them my hotel name, but they didn't really get it. Luckily, I had a map with Chinese names on some of the landmarks (this is totally essential in Taipei, by the way! So that you can point to places you want to go for the non-English-speaking cab drivers). I pointed to my hotel, and she wrote something on a slip of paper, then directed me to wait outside for the cab. I thought it was all going well, but then the cab delivered me to a different hotel! I said, "No, no, not this one," and pointed to the map again. The guy didn't know how to get there, and had to call someone on his cell phone. Eventually, we made it. Sort of a mini-adventure.
"Stopping over" in Japan. Oh yeah, I had to "stop over" in Tokyo on the way back from Taiwan for one more meeting. Although I originally thought this was out of the way (not really "stopping over"), in fact the first flight I took from SF to Hong Kong flew right over Japan, and then Taiwan! So I guess Tokyo is on the way back from Taipei to SF.
Usually you fly into Narita (Tokyo) or Kansai (Osaka) airport when you go to Japan, but this time I took China Airlines to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. This is a little airport, right in the middle of town (way more convenient than Narita, which is 90 minutes outside of town), and it has some history. Several decades ago, when Japan recognized mainland China as the "real" China, mainland China objected to letting Taiwanese airplanes land at the fancy big Narita airport. So Japan made arrangements with Taiwan-based China Airlines to let them (and only them) land at Haneda. I think there are now a couple other little airlines that land there too, but it's mostly China Airlines' gig. That means big profits for CAL because lots of intra-Asia travelers want to land right in Tokyo, not take the train for 90 minutes. Ah, the accidents of history.
This CAL flight was handled in a more familiar way than the earlier one I took. They didn't walk around stamping boarding passes, and we actually boarded by rows. As usual, there were only a few westerners, and I was the only non-Asian woman.
I made one mistake. I had a chance to change currency at the Taipei airport before entering the security area, but I didn't do it, thinking I might need to pay the usual departure fee, which they only take in local currency. But there was no explicit fee, and no place to change money inside the security zone. Oh well, I thought, I'll get yen in Tokyo.
Not so fast, sister. I didn't realize just how unacceptable NT dollars are outside of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Thank goodness I was carrying a small amount of American dollars with me, or I wouldn't have had access to money at Haneda Airport (although they may have had international ATMs, I'm not sure). They will not change Taiwan dollars there! I later commented on this to a Japanese colleague, and he sucked in his breath and said disapprovingly, "Well, NT dollars… that is not a reliable currency." Excuse me? Japan is busy exporting half its manufacturing strength to Taiwan, and they won't even change that currency because it's "unreliable"?
Anyway, I took a cab to my hotel, and watched the meter closely, praying that we wouldn't overrun my precious stock of yen. Luckily, I was able to pay the cab fee, plus have enough just enough left over for the next day's train tip to Narita Airport. My hotel refused to change the Taiwan currency also. Ironically, I had to wait to get back to San Francisco to get rid of my NT dollars. (Lesson learned: always carry an emergency stock of American dollars. They are good anywhere).
I was unprepared for the culture shock of going straight from Taiwan to Japan. Suddenly I was in the world of bowing, genuflecting, and apologizing. I had dinner at the hotel's Japanese restaurant (ah, sushi!), and the whole atmosphere was like moving from the boisterous ocean to a calm, steaming spa. Japan is as quiet and spare as Taiwan is exuberant. As something of an introvert, I often feel more comfortable in Japan, but I am also aware of the restriction associated with having to do things "just so." One wonders about the future of Japan.
By the way, I had one nice experience at the restaurant. I spoke Japanese when I arrived. After I had studied the menu, which had both English and Japanese on it, for a few minutes, the waiter came by and offered me a larger menu, asking if I wanted "the Japanese menu." I guess you get more options when you're a local. I couldn't read much of it actually, but I thought it was a really nice token to give it to me. I don't think many gaijin get the Japanese menu.
Anyway, it was a quick stay in Japan. Just a little bit of time to enjoy the heated toilet seats, automatic pop-open cab doors, and (I could hardly believe it) the free T1 connection in my hotel room. After a meeting in the morning, I took the evening flight back to SF. It was the usual I-can't-believe-we're-landing-already 8 hours.
Overall, a fabulous trip.
Miscellaneous Asian English. It's really not fair to laugh at Asian English because they do so much better at our language than we do at any of theirs. But still, I am endlessly amused by the things I hear and read in Asia, when the translation has obviously not been checked by a native English speaker. Here are a few examples:
In a brochure about Taipei:
"The smog laden atmosphere produces sunsets of sublime color and depth." (Now that's a good way to spin the negative into the positive!)
"The Antique Market is a dingy weekend bazaar full of interesting trinkets -- but you've got to navigate the back room wall holes and creaky staircases to see it all." (Perhaps they mean holes-in-the-wall).
On the plane from Taipei to Tokyo:
"Due to foot-and-mouth disease in Taiwan, it is strictly prohibited to carry animals or animal products into Japan from Taiwan. Please do not bring the previously mentioned items into Japan to avoid inconvenience." (Not incorrect English, but you have to love the Japanese indirectness here-- saying that you should "avoid inconvenience.")
"The carriage of restricted substances is prohibited." (I guess technically "carriage" is the noun form of "to carry," but we probably wouldn't say it this way).
And my personal favorites from the hotel information book in Tokyo:
"For a drink, come to the specious hotel lounge to get an enjoyable atmosphere." (Specious? Trust me, it's not quite a typo; this sort of thing is incredibly common (and hilarious). Someone really thought this was the right word at some point.)
"It is done that (cutting by a view of the garden and graceful relaxation are had enough) settles down at a restaurant. I will prepare three private rooms." (I can't make heads of tails of it either. It's supposed to be a restaurant description).
Copyright © Kim Allen 2002
