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Wednesday, Taipei (4/19/2000)
Chu-Wan spent the day mostly with her mother; in the
meantime, I headed out to start collecting video footage from around Taipei. I
walked the backstreets, shopped the shopping places, went to temples and
memorials and just generally hunted for places to videotape.
I arrived at the Sun Yat-Sen memorial just on-time. The hall
was empty, and it was time for the changing of the guards. The Republic of
China takes this ceremony very seriously, with lots of slow, precision
marching, saluting, gun moves and others steps all choreographed and executed
with precision. Once done, the guards maintain a motionless position for 2 hour
shifts.
After the guards had changed, and the honor guard withdrew,
a plain-clothes man came out and straightened the uniforms on the motionless
guards. He lined up their pleats, adjusted their shoulders and just generally
made them presentable. This guy's job might be worse than those two guys
painting the highway lines, but at least he's indoors.
My next stop was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial, I didn't see
the changing of the guards there, but I did see that they also had a "minder"
person who slipped out and straightened the honor guards' uniforms. Their
pleats on their pant legs were flapping ever so gently under the breeze of the
air conditioning units, so he was fighting a battle to make them motionless and
reposition the air conditioners to prevent the problem happening again.
That night we dined on the 45th floor of the Shin
Kong Mitsukoshi building (The tallest building in Taipei) with several of
Chu-Wan's friends.
The menu was a pseudo-western style buffet, and I admit to
having a chuckle at the expense of several of the patrons. The salad bar had 6
(count'em!) SIX different types of salad dressing. The standard salad bar in
Taiwan comes with ONLY Thousand Island, and really fancy places have a second
type of dressing (ranch, or perhaps oil and vinegar). With six, I was able to
watch the patrons stare in consternation, unable to comprehend the dizzying
number of choices. Several would ask the staff what they were, but clearly the
staff was unable to convey the ingredients in Chinese, because I would hear
them slip into English names for the contents and could see the confusion
compound on the patrons' faces.
Only the container with Thousand Island in it was less than
full.
I say the buffet was pseudo-western style, this is because
many of the entrées seemed somewhat unusual, such as "Braised Pork
Tongue in a Scallion Sauce" or "Sautéed Pigknuckles in a White Wine
Sauce." I managed to avoid the more exotic delicacies and stick with "Lamb Loaf
seasoned with Vegetables" and the cryptically named "Prime Rib".
There was an Australian couple eating in the restaurant with
Chinese hosts. At one point, I heard the woman say, "The first time we came
here, we didn't expect it to be cold, so we didn't bring any warm clothes.
Well, you can imagine how hard it was for…" (as she gestured towards
herself and her husband) "…people like us to find clothes that fit
here!"
Yeah, I can imagine. I'm fully 6 inches taller than either
of them. Finding clothes would have been EASY for them in comparison.
Thursday, Taipei
(4/20/2000)
Time was no longer on my side, as we were now faced with the
reality that we'd be leaving in 2 days. It was both a very long and a very
short month, and while I had postponed several tasks till our last week, I
began to realize that everything would now conspire against me, preventing me
from having these last few days to do what I wanted.
I didn't record this trip in nauseating detail in video,
instead focusing mostly on our round-the-island trip. My goal this day was to
get as far north as possible on the island to complete my South to North
trek.
My first obstacle: we had to have lunch with my Johnny and
Tifanny. This effectively cut the day in two and so we could only go as far
north as Tanshui. We went to the old 16th century Dutch fort that
resides there, but had to return before I could satisfactorily complete my
videotaping.
Nonetheless, we were late returning and lunch became a
ramshackle affair as we wandered from restaurant to restaurant trying to find
an open place to eat. (Many restaurants in Taiwan are only open during lunch
and dinner, closing after the noon rush for a few hours.)
Finally we ate at Tony Roma's (a Place for Ribs). I was
surprised at how good it was. I decided I'd have to try them when I got back to
the States.
By the time we got back from lunch, it was time to go to
dinner, this time at the Westin hotel, for another western-style buffet. It had
been chosen to accommodate my finicky eating habits.
Once again, I was stranded for a 3 hour dinner where the
conversation was in Chinese. I amused myself by timing the waiting staff.
 Whenever anyone would get up from the table, the waiter or waitress
would swoop on their chair and refold their napkin. Maximum time for napkin
folding was 55 seconds, which I suppose is quite efficient, although I have no
other empirical data to compare it to.
To try to confuse them, I taught myself how to fold the
napkins the same way they did, and then would fold own napkin when I got up. I
would stand just beyond the watermelon platters and watch them swoop on my
napkin, only to discover it neatly folded. The first time, they refolded it, so
subsequently, I was extra careful to make sure it was perfectly neat.
There's just wasn't a whole lot for me to do at these family
dinners.
Nearly one full month after arriving in Taiwan, today
Chu-Wan revealed that our room had an air conditioner, and she'd decided to
turn it on. It's not surprising it isn't used much, it was so far up the wall
that I had to stretch to reach it.
At last, a cool breeze to sleep by. |
