Category Archives: Taiwan

Cats + cafés = happy Connie.

Taiwan, ,

A few weeks ago, I became much more excited about going to Taipei for two weeks during my internship and being separated from Steve during that whole time, mostly thanks to the fact that I had read a Lonely Planet article about all the cat cafés in Taipei. It’s actually pretty awesome how many cat cafés I’ve been to in Asia now: the first two we visited were in Tokyo and Bangkok, respectively, both during our original circumnavacation. I’ve now added three more to the list, all in Taipei, and a more detailed report is due! Friends and family will know that I adore dogs, and our corgi-mix Stella is pretty much the thing I love most in the world. But I was first and foremost a cat person, pretty much from the cradle. My family had cats when we were in China, and had more after we came to the States. It’s thus fitting to get crazy about cats again when I come back to Asia!

Cat cafés are a relatively recent phenomenon. The very first cat café, called Cat Garden, opened in Taipei in 1998 and has since been renamed Cats and Café 1998. Thus, cat cafés are actually a Taiwanese invention! However, they’re most popular today in Japan, which people theorize is because there’s very limited space and it’s hard to have pets. Oh, and also that the Japanese are crazy about cats. Hello? Other than having cats, these venues also differ from regular cafés in that they often have an entry requirement or a minimum spending requirement. In Japan, the cat cafés we visited stipulated that you had to spend a certain amount of money (like 500 yen) for a cover charge to stay for a certain amount of time, but it did usually come with a beverage. In Taiwan and the cat café we visited in Bangkok, there is usually a minimum spending requirement, ranging from 120 to 200 NT. That’s usually the price of a drink, which is astronomical compared to what they can usually cost – 20-30 NT! It’s to deter people from coming in just to gawk and take pictures of cats, without spending a penny. I used the Lonely Planet article and another article from City543 to plan for a list of cat cafés…

Continue reading Cats + cafés = happy Connie. →

The true treasures of China.

Taiwan, , , ,

When we came up to Taipei, I asked my dad for a little bit of advice on what he thought was worth seeing. After all, my parents did visit Taiwan this March after the Lunar New Year, in part to see what in the world I had been raving about! When asked for the one touristy spot we should see if we had time, he confirmed that we should visit the National Palace Museum. To explain what the National Palace Museum is necessitates a detour into Chinese and Taiwanese history…

Us in front of the National Palace Museum.
Us in front of the National Palace Museum.

Behind Tiananmen Gate in Beijing is the entrance to the Forbidden City, where the Palace Museum of China is to be found. Housed in the old palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Palace Museum holds all sorts of precious artifacts, textiles, porcelains, and works of art and history from China’s thousands of years of history. Except that is, some of the best examples. In 1948, when the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek were about to lose to the Communists and Mao Zedong, they retreated to Taiwan and took the best selection of artifacts from the Palace Museum with them. Most of those artifacts remain in Taiwan today, housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Some say this was a good thing, because during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), many of China’s artifacts were destroyed by Chinese people themselves. The Palace Museum in Beijing barely escaped the same sort of destruction, thanks to guards specifically deployed to protect it.

Continue reading The true treasures of China. →

The 9-to-5 in Taiwan.

Taichung, Taiwan, , , , , ,

Written on the 506 train
Taichung-Taipei
Saturday, June 6, 10:03 am

For the next two and a half hours, Steve and I are going on a scenic, slow tour of the landscape between Taichung and Taipei, thanks to Taiwan Rail (台鐵). We are taking a not-so-express train that goes through many smaller towns, though still not the local train, which doesn’t even have seat reservations. So far, we have seen some lovely fields, rivers that are running fuller than they used to be because of the recent rains (but still not at full capacity), and some mountains and hills in the distance. It is not the kind of scenery we would expect to see in the US, because these aren’t a part of long-running ranges like the Rockies and the Appalachians. The mountains here are steeper, younger, and you come up on them very suddenly.

For the rest of the train ride, I think I will take the time to record my impressions and thoughts about my internship so far. There are two sorts of different experiences I’m going through simultaneously, which I will write about separately. The first is the fact that working (and living) overseas in Asia is a very different experience from the US, and I’m growing to understand more about the non-profit sector here. The second is that I am putting into practice what I’ve learned in my first year of public policy grad school about policy analysis, program evaluation, and statistics in order to run this program evaluation of their youth capacity building program.

The few days before I started at my internship, Steve and I were running around Taichung trying to set up our household. Even though we were crazy tired and busy, I still found time to worry about starting this internship. Plunging into full-time work, even just for ten weeks, is a considerable mental strain. What if my boss was hard to deal with? What if I couldn’t actually understand what they were telling me, since I knew nearly no professional Chinese? Even though I had talked on Skype to my prospective supervisor and found her very kind and the project for the summer quite promising, I was still on the verge of telling Steve that we had made a bad mistake, and couldn’t we just chill in Taiwan for ten weeks instead? Continue reading The 9-to-5 in Taiwan. →

Tweeting about Taiwan.

Taichung, Taiwan, , , ,

This is the laziest post I will be writing in this blog. Rather than actually sit down to recount what we’ve been up to, I’m just going to repost some tweets I’ve been making on Twitter about Taichung, and add a little bit more detail. It’s kind of like a social media sausage! Enjoy.

This was set up next to the park near our house recently. I don’t really understand why they have people playing the trombones, and it looks more like a Christmas exhibit, but it’s pretty cool anyway. After I took this picture, I saw a 50-something year-old man kneeling to take a picture of this sign from a lower angle. People love their photo ops here, which is why they put this here, I guess!   Continue reading Tweeting about Taiwan. →

Rainy day adventures in Tainan.

Taiwan, , , ,

What do you call a rainy day in Taiwan? The answer is: a normal day. At least during the early summer, that is, because it’s the East Asian monsoon season. I did the research (i.e. Googling) that you’re probably not curious enough to do. For people who think that monsoons belong to India and the subcontinent, there is in fact an East Asian monsoon season, which runs from May to July, and encompasses much of southeast Asia, the Philippines, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Koreas, and Japan.

Rain in Tainan. People wear serious gear to ride scooters and their bikes.

Having lived most of my life where there was no rainy or dry season, it’s pretty strange to experience this kind of downpour. For the last five days, it has rained pretty consistently every day. There is little thunder and few tumultuous winds, but just gloomy skies and a skin-drenching amount of rain. Occasionally, it will lift to a light drizzle, or even pause enough for the streets to dry a bit, but it’s never safe to venture outside without an umbrella. That’s a lesson that we did not have to learn a second time. The rain alleviates the crushing heat and has made late May quite a bit cooler, and we’re enjoying temperatures in the high 70s most of the time, but what it hasn’t changed is the blanket of humidity. We essentially sweat everywhere we go, and I’ve learned to build in a lot of time for walking to work and other places, because hurrying is just not worth it.

Drizzle and a grey sky, seen from the train, en route to Tainan.

Continue reading Rainy day adventures in Tainan. →

The first two weeks.

Taichung, Taiwan, , ,

Rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated… yes, we’ve been here for two weeks, and we’ve been fairly quiet, but that’s because we’ve been fairly busy! Today is the last day of my ten-day work week. Yes, I wrote that correctly. Last week, I started my internship on Tuesday, worked an event over the weekend, and am ending this week early to enjoy a well-deserved long weekend.

Where do I even start? Well, there’s much more time to talk about my internship ahead, so I will probably save that for another time. Let me tell you instead about the lovely city of Taichung. Taichung is on the western coast of the island, three hours south of Taipei. We’re in a valley basin here, and on the twelfth floor of the building where I work, I can look out the windows to the north and west and see the mountains in the distance that surround us. Early summer is the rainy season for East Asia. Yesterday, it rained from the time that I got to work until the evening, barely letting up to a drizzle. Today, it is grey and overcast, but I don’t mind since that means it’s not so hot! Taichung is in the high eighties most days with extreme humidity, and it’s only May…  Continue reading The first two weeks. →

The first forty-eight hours.

Hong Kong, Taichung, Taiwan, , , , ,

We’ve spent two crazy whirlwind days in transit, even though the calendar says it’s three, but we are finally here in Taichung, Taiwan. It’s been a true journey of planes, trains, and automobiles (and even buses!).

We woke up on Thursday morning around 4 am in Greenville, and Steve’s parents drove us to the airport, and we hugged them goodbye and gave kisses to Stella, who let out one farewell bark when she saw us disappear into the airport. We will miss that dog like crazy! I already do. We had one short but uncomfortable flight to Dallas/Fort Worth, and then a four-hour layover where we walked around the airport. We happened upon the inaugural direct flight for American Airlines  from Dallas/Fort Worth to Beijing, which featured a bunch of Chinese dancers (probably from the local Chinese school), several TV crews which were going around and asking passengers about why they were traveling to Beijing, and a buffet table of Chinese delicacies. I overheard a photographer grilling the man behind the table on exactly what soymilk tasted like, which made me smile.  Continue reading The first forty-eight hours. →

Journey to the east!!

Hong Kong, Taiwan, USA, , , ,

In just about another week, our travels are about to start up again! On May 4, we leave Durham, North Carolina, where we’ve lived for the past eight months, and on May 7, we board a flight for Taiwan once more. To our immense delight, I found a very promising summer internship in Taichung, Taiwan, for a national social service organization. That means Steve and I are gearing up for another few whirlwind months of travel in Asia!!

This summer is going to be quite a different animal from our World Tour, which occupied us for eleven months and almost as many countries. I have a ten-week internship which will keep me largely occupied in Taichung. On the other hand, as a part of my internship, I will be visiting local branches and sites across the island for a few weeks. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to check out different cities and towns in this way, maybe some places we’ve been, but maybe some new and different places too! In late July, we’ll have a few weeks to spend in our favorite places (probably Kaohsiung and Taipei) before flying to Hong Kong for nearly a week in early August, and then it’s back to the States.

I hope to spend some time blogging about the new challenges of traveling and living in Taichung. It seems again a different city from Taipei, which is large and metropolitan, Tainan, which is picturesque and historical, and Kaohsiung, which was industrial but has now reinvented itself as a very livable place and the center of southern Taiwan. From what we’ve gleaned, Taichung is more industrial and gritty, and we look forward to trying it out. Working for an organization is going to be much different than just traveling around Taiwan as well. I’m looking forward to working with the youth capacity-building program at this organization, which should really be pretty interesting. I anticipate the language and cultural barriers to be the most imposing part. While I have pretty much full conversational fluency in Mandarin, I do fall apart and splutter when faced with the challenges of technical and professional language. How do I even talk about policy analysis in Chinese? What are the vocabulary words? I barely remember the words for microeconomics and statistics! It’s going to be a challenge, to say the least.

Meanwhile, Steve and I are preparing the apartment for our subletter, starting to pack away the things we need, and oh, yes, I am also finishing my finals for spring semester. It’s going to be a busy few weeks and a very busy summer! Stay tuned for more details.

Connie

An excerpt from the Book of Circumnavacation.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Thailand, , , , , , ,
The Book of Circumnavacation
Chapter 25
 Miscellaneous Travel Tips for the Circumnavacator to Make Your Life More Comfortable and to Reduce the Number of Times You Yell at Your Travel Partner

Tip #247: When circumnavacating, it is a good idea to eat out cheaply, until it’s not. Fast local food, like fried rice or a bowl of noodles containing whatever-you-want-to-guess for less than 1 USD, is only novel and tolerable for a few days when you first arrive in the country. In order to ensure good nutrition, pony up for at least one tasty, fresh, possibly Western-style, and usually more expensive meal a day, and you can eat street food for the other one (or two, if you get up that early). Give your body some of what it’s used to eating; otherwise, you may end up with iron deficiency or other bodily complaints.

Cold noodles (凉面) from Tainan.

Continue reading An excerpt from the Book of Circumnavacation. →

Night and Day: a two-part travel post.

Taiwan, Thailand, , , , , , , , ,

Night is the Twilight Zone

When you are on a plane, in transit between cities or between countries, a funny thing happens. You also find your mind between places. It is not exactly occupied with the regular things you think about while heading to work, nor busy in contemplation of where you are going and the days or weeks to come. For me, the strangest thoughts drift through my mind – conversations from years ago, childhood memories almost forgotten… just as I am in-between places, so are my thoughts.

Flights, especially ones during the middle of the night, lend themselves to different experiences. You have never truly appreciated solitude until a stewardess has hawked luxury perfume to you at 2 am when all you want to do is close your eyes to oblivion, but sleep will not come. The alertness reminds you of other late nights, where there is no noble objective to be achieved, like a paper to be finished or someone to be taken care of, but simply to plod on and on until daylight. To simply endure.

Flights are boring. You are strapped to a snug seat, and asked to revert to your best behavior as a ten year-old (smile, follow directions, and do not ask questions). We are cattle, we are burden simply to be transported. The babies and small children have not yet learned that it does no good to cry about it, and if it did offer some small comfort from the cold and the boredom of this horrible stupor, we adults, too, would be howling.

Continue reading Night and Day: a two-part travel post. →