Taiwan - Chinese New Year 2003

Michelle and the President

Saturday - February 8, 2003 Saturday morning started with a musical tune. The musical tune played on Chu-Wan's cell phone. Her aunt was calling to tell her that she was on the way and bringing breakfast. No amount of arguing could stop her. It was about 8:30AM and we'd only been asleep since about 1:00AM. Johnny and Tiffany showed no signs of life from upstairs, even after the aunt arrived and started shouting at them to get up and eat breakfast. My experiences in Taiwan is that people are generous to a fault, but this woman carried this to new art form. Everywhere we went she bought us food (or, in my case, tried to buy me food), she paid for our admission, she bought us gifts, she really far exceeded what I considered to be comfortable, but it was darn near impossible to refuse her. Really, the only place I could draw the line was eating. With the exception of the breakfast she sprung upon us, I managed to be "not hungry" whenever we were near food. This morning she brought me an expensive belt. Customarily, you can't look at a gift until after the person isn't around, so I couldn't see what she gave me, but I really couldn't refuse it either. Johnny and Tiffany finally roused themselves while I packed up all the luggage. Our original plan was to drive around and see things in Tainan, contact the aunt, collect our luggage, give her back the key and leave in the evening. The new "plan" which was also a surprise to all of us was that the aunt was going to lead us around Tainan again today to see the sights, then we'd return to collect the luggage and leave. I had a map of Tainan, and once you have a destination located, it's quite straightforward to navigate, but she lead us on an almost comically circuitous route to get to another section of the fort. Apparently, the other part was really mostly a lighthouse. This was the real guns and embattlements portion. Being city driving, Johnny was firmly stuck in the drivers seat. Driving behind a woman who was going slow intentionally so she wouldn't loose us, he was getting frustrated and kept pretending to fall asleep at the wheel, or he'd just start repeating the same words over and over again for no apparent reason. It was rapidly beyond my patience threshold. It wasn't just today, either, this was the third straight day of it. Then, he really did start falling asleep at red lights. I can't understand how he could be tired. He sleeps all the time. In his defense, Johnny is probably the best driver in Taiwan I've driven with. The style of driving is so different that it is difficult to make comparisons between "reckless" and "normal." In most cases, Johnny does OK, with only occasional lapses of judgement that make me want to climb out of my skin. As we got about 3km for our destination, I began to notice a lot of police officers on the street. When I mentioned it, everyone just brushed it off as being Saturday. The further we went, the more and more policemen we saw, until every intersection had one on every corner. The last street we turned down was completely lined with policemen. Clearly, someone of importance was here. As we got out of the car, I had Chu-Wan ask the nearest policemen what was going on. He wouldn't tell us, he just told us to go inside and we'd know. At the exact moment we got to the entrance gate of the fort, the announcer on the stage in the middle of the fort announced the President of the Republic of China, Chen Shui-Bien. Chu-Wan was overjoyed. She is a staunch supporter of President Chen and his party's basic Taiwan-independence platform. She was excited that she might get the chance to shake the President's hand and show him Michelle. It would be a perfect photo opportunity, the country's president and the cutest baby on the island. She listened to the speech and as it wound down (it was mercifully short) there was a presentation and then the news video shooters started to fall back to a new position. Chu-Wan knew to follow them and headed for the next place the President would be at. I noticed that one of the news teams had two shooter, one ran with the others, the second climbed the embattlements and got into position above. I followed him, deciding to favor the video camera over the still camera. Chu-Wan managed to get in the line, carrying Michelle, but she was unable to push past the other people at the front of the line. In the end, my video shows her clawing and climbing, trying to stretch her arm out to the President. She was able to shake his hand, but Michelle was out of the way and out of sight. The President really missed a perfect opportunity for some good publicity for him. After the furor died down, we looked around the 17th century, Dutch fort and then continued on to the Confucian temple, which we'd missed the other day. The temple is the oldest in Taiwan, again dating to the 17th century and quite well preserved. Parking in the area is quite constrained and we managed to get one spot, while the aunt continued to drive around in circles while we visited the temple. We didn't realize this and took our time and spent about half an hour there. (If you note the picture of Chu-Wan in front of the entrance, there is a red car driving behind her - that's the aunt, still circling. I didn't notice it was her till we got back to Taipei and loaded the pictures onto the computer. It's a complete coincidence, I almost deleted the picture because there was a car in the background.) We hadn't been receiving phone calls from here because Chu-Wan's phone was nearly exhausted and we didn't mention mine. Johnny and Tiffany's phone were (as previously mentioned) worthless outside of Taipei, so she only called in emergencies. While she was still circling, Johnny and Tiffany ran off to buy some food, while Chu-Wan and I just looked around the area and wondered where the aunt had gone. Eventually, we all met up again and headed to the next destination, the Chikan Tower - yet another Dutch construct taken over and remodelled in a Chinese style centuries ago. The drive over was interesting, this time Johnny didn't pretend to be asleep, he was too busy driving the crowded streets and eating dumplings with chopsticks. By now I had just shut down to all external influences as my only way not to hurt someone, but even this cut through my defenses and I was worried. The aunt didn't want to visit the tower with us and instead went to get food. Again, she tried and tried and tried to convince them to let her buy us (and in particular me) food, but I just kept saying I wasn't hungry. This was a lie. In the morning, when she brought breakfast, Chu-Wan had been put on the spot (while asleep) on the phone and said I ate Cong You Bing for breakfast most mornings. So, that's what she brought for me. Unfortunately, there is another kind of Cong You Bing which has an egg fried on it. Given the distance she had to drive from the point of purchase, the egg, which I don't really care for anyway, was forming frost on its surface. I managed to disguise the fact that I only ate three bites before I found a way of disposing of the evidence. It was now after 2:00 in the afternoon and I had still eaten nothing. I was starving, and stubborn. The fort has lots of stairs and the baby was in the stroller. Chu-Wan eventually sat down and told me to go look around, which I did. When I returned to the spot where I'd left her, she wasn't there, but Tiffany's garbage from lunch was sitting there instead. Perhaps as a beacon, perhaps as a careless, thoughtless, inconsiderate act. I ended up picking it up and throwing it away. (And people wonder why they get on my nerves.) The day was wearing on and we still had to get to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi again. When I bought Knocky Cat, my intention had been to place it in my office at work. When we had gotten to the guest house that night, I had told Chu-Wan my intention and she was upset, wanting Knocky Cat for the house. We compromised and agreed to buy another one. There had been two types, Yellow (for money) and Pink (for love). Knocky Cat is yellow, but we still needed to get back to the Tainan Shin Kong Mitsukoshi to buy a pink one. The aunt didn't want to go to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, so she returned to the guest house to wait for us. We sent Johnny and Tiffany on their own shopping spree and we first went to buy Knocky Cat II and then downstairs to the food court where I ordered a "spicy salami" pizza at the Italian restaurant there. The picture of the pizza was quite clear, it was pepperoni (the spicy salami) and black olives. There was a hint it might have onions. While I would (under normal circumstances) waste good money adding excess stuff to a pizza (beyond pepperoni and/or sausage) I can eat some other toppings, but they detract from the experience. Right then, I didn't care. Chu-Wan went to get herself something else, but I was waiting for pizza! (And only my second pizza in Taiwan this trip.) It arrived with even more things. The pepperoni (or something nearly like it), onions, black olives and whole tomato slices and Cheetos-yellow cheese. Again, not ideal, but edible... until I took the first bite. It had huge slices of mushrooms, the ultimate slimy pizza-killer, and they were buried deep under the cheese. I spent a long time digging that stuff out, but I would not be put off. In the end, I managed to salvage 75% of the pizza, which was a good start. Upstairs, I found a place selling Foster Farm corn dogs, so I rounded off my dinner with one of those. While Chu-Wan was using the restroom, a crowd of people formed around Michelle. One older woman wanted to know if she was a boy or a girl, but she didn't speak any English. I knew what she wanted to know, not because she tried to ask me in Chinese (she didn't) but because she kept asking her daughter to ask me. She kept saying (in Chinese) "You studied English. Ask him if it's a boy or a girl." The daughter just refused, she was too embarrassed. Finally the older woman tried her English: "Is girl?" I answered in Chinese (I had time to practice in my head), "Yes, she's my daughter." They understood, they told me how cute she was and then with embarrassed smiles quickly dispersed. I wonder if I should have answered in English? While we were inside, the day turned from clear and dry to a torrential downpour. I will say, to his credit, Johnny's driving became more cautious in the rain. I was worried because one the things he does excessively is speed up rapidly in an attempt to cut into another lane in front of someone else. A dumb move at any time, but even worse with a quarter inch of water on the road. Johnny seemed to know this and refrained from it on the way back. Traffic was very slow in places and he began to fall asleep again at the red lights. When we returned to the guest house, the aunt had purchased us about 5 grocery bags full of fruits, foods and more presents. The car had been full when we arrived and we weren't able to put it in the car, leaving 3 bags behind, much to the dismay of the aunt, who was still trying to fit more in the car even as we drove off. Nice lady. Talk about going that mile and a half extra. The rain continued and since Johnny had been driving in town all day, I took over for the trip back. Of course, I had ulterior motives... I couldn't stand the idea of him driving at 130kph in rain. We were going to split the driving, but I set my sites on the first rest re outside Taipei as the hand over point, leaving Johnny to take it the last 75km into Taipei and home. The GPS told me that the rest area was 218km as the crow flies from the guest house. The freeway takes a more indirect route, paralleling the coast. Most of the trip was a driving rain, but the freeway moved pretty well. It took a lot of work, but I was able to maintain a 95kph average and keep a fairly safe distance between myself and the car ahead. That's no easy trick, since the city mentality prevails on the freeway too and every driver who sees the slightest gap larger than a car's length gets filled. I can't explain how nerve-wrecking it is when its pitch black, pouring rain with fog and you're in three solid lanes of traffic, all moving at absolutely the speed limit (100kph) with only 4-5 feet between the car in front and in back. One slip-up and it would all be over, and all the while the cars are trying to jockey for a better position. How do you change an entire driving "culture"? There were a few places where the freeway slowed down to a crawl for no apparent reason. One of these was just outside Taichung, a little more than half of the way of my planned leg of the trip. We moved stop and go for about an hour and at last came to the second to last rest stop. We took a break there in the restaurant and watched TV. (Taiwanese rest areas have restaurants, gas stations and even hotels. All good ideas if you ask me.) The news was showing a report of the upcoming Lantern Festival in Taiwan. They reiterated what I'd already been told, that Taichung was to have the big lantern this year. They also said that the lantern was completed and that, tonight only at 11:00PM, it was going to be lit up. It wouldn't be lit again until Feb 15th. It was 9:30 and we were only 20km from Taichung. But it was that last 20km that had taken us an hour, we still had a long way back to Taipei and we had no idea where it was in Taichung. We were so close, but it just wasn't a viable alternative. We pressed on into Taipei without further incident, but I was very pleased when the rain finally stopped completely about 2km before I handed the keys over to Johnny. It was dry all the rest of the way home.

We really came to see the fort, not the President