Traditional Chinese Society ended yesterday, with my first final during finals week(s) and my fourth final overall. Being my first one during finals it was officiated in an authoritarian manner that I’m only used to for standardized tests. The professor had the exams on our desks when we came in then read verbatim off of an instruction sheet provided to him by the university. I know that it was provided to him because he laughed when he read aloud that you are allowed to have calculators out (since the only number we dealt with was the number of souls that a person has).
Out our class of twelve, I was given seat number twelve. For the large classroom, we were all squished onto the left side rather than spread out over the room, as would have been sensible from an administrator’s standpoint.
After we were read out loud the directions, the professor, who already had us down by name, seeing that he taught all the tutorials and the class was really small, had to verify all of our identities by means of our student identification cards.
I didn’t think the final examination was too hard. To study, I did all the readings again and went over our class discussions of the topics—both those online and those in the classroom. He specifically said not to stress specific details—so I didn’t.
We were given seven questions based on various topics that we covered in class and we had two hours to answer two of those questions in an extended in-class essay format. And I feel I answered those two questions well and completely, despite the fact that I was the first to finish. (I usually finish somewhere in the middle, though the fact that I finished first may be because I was the only native English speaker in the class.) We’ll see how I did.
Other assessments for this class included the weekly journal, online discussions, and project.
The weekly journal entries only had to be two hundred words long each, and I usually went past that. Many of my classmates, realizing that you can’t really say much in two hundred words went well over four times that. This blog has already added up to over one hundred thousand words, so I’ll attest to the fact that you can’t say much in two hundred words. We were to write on the topic of traditional Chinese society that we were covering that week. Whereas other classmates treated the entries as anthropological research assignments, I did less of that and instead had personal reflections on the topics. Often, I would through in the line or two about how I feel we’re exoticizing the subject too much, but I’ve talked about that a lot already.
The online discussions I contributed to more often than not. Some people had contributions several times a week. It was also apparent that some people had not contributed once to the discussions. I always tried to interact with other students on these online discussions rather than only summarizing articles as was prevalent at the beginning of the semester.
I can’t remember if I talked about the term project, but it consisted of a two thousand-word (field) research paper accompanied by a presentation to be made during tutorial. On the syllabus, it said that it was due week seven. To that effect, I got it done before the week seven tutorial, ready to present. I was the only one in the tutorial that had anything to show, not that the professor was expecting it. That week he decided to schedule in everybody’s presentations, and when it came to me, I asked if I could do it that day, since it was already done. He (reluctantly) said yes and I got it over with—meaning that I unintentionally lectured for forty minutes.
My topic was on the (Christian) religious beliefs of HKU students. My sample size was small, as he only required about ten interviews. Overall, my results fell in line with Hong Kong SAR statistics. I noted that I didn’t encounter as many self-described Christians as I imagined. My professor made the note (that I didn’t see) that the number of self-described Buddhists was higher at HKU than in Hong Kong SAR statistics. I felt that my report was well-researched and well-written.
On a different note about the same class, I’m planning on petitioning to have this course qualify for my minor in the Study of Religion for my degree back at UCSD. The undergraduate advisor told me I couldn’t because nothing in the syllabus mentioned directly “religion,” so I had to rebut by saying that religion in the modern, scholarly sense ultimately refers to one’s overall view on the world and what things are significant and how those things are significant. In addition, there is a class called “Chinese Society” at UCSD that has the same course description as the course I was about to take, and it happens to fulfill the requirement without petition. She then forwarded my request for preapproval to the director or the program, who decided that I did have a case and that I did receive preapproval. So hopefully everything falls in line.
Showing posts with label Traditional Chinese Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Traditional Chinese Society. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Pride and Prejudice
Do you ever wish life were easier? When I was little, I definitely did. Why did it need to be so complicated? It all seemed like farce to me. I thought as I advanced in life, maybe complexities would either become simpler or maybe I would be able to deal with them better.
I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”
In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.
Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.
But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.
In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.
The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.
The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.
He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.
People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.
I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.
I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:
“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”
And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.
My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.
We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).
This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.
Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.
However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.
It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.
It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from. He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?
What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.
After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.
When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.
And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.
Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.
He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.
Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.
And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.
People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.
The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.
The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.
Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”
In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.
Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.
But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.
In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.
The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.
The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.
He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.
People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.
I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.
I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:
“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”
And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.
My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.
We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).
This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.
Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.
However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.
It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.
It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from. He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?
What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.
After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.
When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.
And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.
Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.
He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.
Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.
And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.
People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.
The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.
The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.
Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Taipei: Communists and Nationalists
We started our first full day in Taipei at 8:30, leaving at 10:00 after eating hotel breakfast. First on the list was the National Palace Museum. The hotel that we were staying at was about a ten-minute walk from the closest metro station, and that little walk there forms the basis for much of my perception of Taipei away from touristy areas. First off, the streets were almost as wide as they were in Beijing. The way the upper stories of buildings hung over the street was like Macau. And on a side note, the electricity plugs are American in shape.
Taipei seemed a peaceful town. While relatively crowded, the drivers were tamer than those in Hong Kong and honked a whole lot less than in Beijing. People were friendly and the whole area seemed safe. Restaurants of all types dominated the selection of storefronts. It was apparent that Taipei was a lot more westernized; at the superficial level, a lot more people had their hair dyed to brown or purple and presented themselves in what they likely thought was high fashion.
The subway system, deemed Taipei Metro or the MRT (as opposed to the MTR in Hong Kong), was relatively clean and very efficient. It was more apparent that it is common courtesy to stand on the right of escalators and walk up the left. Out of the station in Shilin, more food stands dominated the scene, charging very reasonable prices for good food.
The bus from the metro station to the National Palace took just around ten or fifteen minutes and was surprising in its setup. Whereas in Hong Kong, you pay when you get on, the rate being charged based on where you get on the bus, in Shenzhen the bus fare was calculated on where you were to get off, as you’d tell the ticket seller on the bus where you planned to alight and get charged the appropriate fare. In Taipei, the fare was based on destination as well, though this was done by people entering the bus through the door towards the back and exiting out of the front, where payment is made right before leaving.
As we approached the National Palace Museum, the frequency of ROC flags increased along the median of the road. On arrival at the National Palace Museum, the motivators of its creators were highly apparent. Whereas the building used Chinese motifs to evoke a national and cultural past, it was clear that it was more modern in some of the stone used, because after all the building was completed in the 1960s. In particular, the building evoked the Forbidden City in Beijing, from where many of the artifacts were taken by Chiang Kai-shek were removed.
Entering the museum, the joint ticket with the National Aboriginal Museum caught my eye. It was just a couple hundred meters from museum gate to museum gate, so I figured why not. Going though the place, it was apparent how much was removed and how much stuff there was in the Forbidden City. Many of the buildings in the complexes stand just that now—buildings devoid of treasures. To this effect, the exhibition rooms in the National Palace Museum often have a map of the Forbidden City with a note on where the objects in that particular area were removed from.
The content was amazing. Some parts of the museum didn’t have cream of the crop works, but overall, it was good to see a museum so full of authentic Chinese artifacts collected over the dynasties.
From there we wandered on over to the National Aboriginal Museum, which completely lacked people (if that says anything at all about how people feel about the Taiwan aborigines). We got through the four floors of the complex in a relatively short time, but the disinterest exhibited by my friends prevented my stay from being longer.
From there, we decided to walk back to Shilin metro station, stopping along Chiang Kai-shek Residence along the way. It took longer than expected to reach that first stop. We passed by the national university en route, which was accompanied by a green river. Oh, I forgot to mention that it was raining that entire day and most of the next.
Arriving at CKS Park (as I remember it being abbreviated in English) was worth a gander, though only worth it because it was free. There were a couple gardens in park that stood out. One contained a face carved out of a relatively large shrubbery surrounded by a colorful assortment of flowers. The other was indoors and obviously aimed at kids with its large anthropomorphic insects and fauna. Neither was entirely impressive. Also there was Chiang Kai-shek’s Taipei residence, which was under renovation (and likely remains so as I write this) but still good to see from the outside.
By this time it was only 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, and we were planning on going to the Shilin Night Market, so we did a bit more sightseeing before then, which was said on Wikitravel to begin around 4:00 or 5:00.
To this effect, we headed down to the neighboring Confucius Temple and Bao’an Temple. Confucius Temple was more of a park whereas Bao’an Temple was a functioning place of worship. Both were notable in their relative newness. Roof bricks glazed blue and green remained blue and green whereas in places with more history such as the Forbidden City, the darkish yellow roof bricks were fading and in some places weeds were glowing out of the tops.
We then took a taxi to the Grand Hotel, whose history I haven’t fully explored. It’s basically an interesting building because its twenty or so floors have traditional-looking façades, though no authentic building of such a style had been that tall. It was interesting as such, though its overall appearance looked more busy and overly done than authentic. Like I said, I have no idea what the people involved had in mind during its overall planning and construction.
From there we took a leisurely walk to Martyrs’ Shrine, which is, in essence, a memorial to all those fighting in the name of the Republic of China. Along the walk, the ROC flags increased as we became closer. Like gravitating towards groups of tour buses, it became clear that in Taiwan, many of the sites to see were accompanied by copious quantities of national flags along the street median.
Martyrs’ Shrine was indeed impressive, largely because of its sheer size. It took a very notable period of time to walk from the front gate and entrance to the actual content of the memorial (a complex of a handful of buildings) on the other side. There was the first time we witnessed the military decorum of ROC officers. First off, when doing honor guard stuffs, they dress as such, looking stern and straightforward, never blinking, never moving. On more than one occasion, other employees came around to adjust their clothes and spiff up their uniforms.
At one point, the soldiers in the memorial came ceremoniously marching down the center of the plaza to the entrance gate. We watched as they marched down in step, the guards at the gate spinning their rifles and exiting with them. Check the pictures out. It was impressive (and scary at the same time.)
Last for that day was the Shilin Night Market. Taking a taxi there, the driver was adamant about the market. Granted, we were going to the one that was likely the most touristy; however, the driver kept going on about it stretching on for four city blocks (though it seemed bigger than that) and how you can buy anything there.
Actually there, there were mostly souvenir-selling places and street food vendors. Taiwan is supposedly famous for its snacks, and one of the best things that I had in Taipei was actually this breaded, deep-fried octopus cut into pieces and accompanied with something of a topping (seaweed in my case). After our first full day, satisfying as it were, in Taipei, we went back to the hotel to prepare for an equally productive day the next day.
In my case, preparation was working on a research paper of 2,000 words and accompanying presentation that I’ll talk more about later.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Taipei seemed a peaceful town. While relatively crowded, the drivers were tamer than those in Hong Kong and honked a whole lot less than in Beijing. People were friendly and the whole area seemed safe. Restaurants of all types dominated the selection of storefronts. It was apparent that Taipei was a lot more westernized; at the superficial level, a lot more people had their hair dyed to brown or purple and presented themselves in what they likely thought was high fashion.
The subway system, deemed Taipei Metro or the MRT (as opposed to the MTR in Hong Kong), was relatively clean and very efficient. It was more apparent that it is common courtesy to stand on the right of escalators and walk up the left. Out of the station in Shilin, more food stands dominated the scene, charging very reasonable prices for good food.
The bus from the metro station to the National Palace took just around ten or fifteen minutes and was surprising in its setup. Whereas in Hong Kong, you pay when you get on, the rate being charged based on where you get on the bus, in Shenzhen the bus fare was calculated on where you were to get off, as you’d tell the ticket seller on the bus where you planned to alight and get charged the appropriate fare. In Taipei, the fare was based on destination as well, though this was done by people entering the bus through the door towards the back and exiting out of the front, where payment is made right before leaving.
As we approached the National Palace Museum, the frequency of ROC flags increased along the median of the road. On arrival at the National Palace Museum, the motivators of its creators were highly apparent. Whereas the building used Chinese motifs to evoke a national and cultural past, it was clear that it was more modern in some of the stone used, because after all the building was completed in the 1960s. In particular, the building evoked the Forbidden City in Beijing, from where many of the artifacts were taken by Chiang Kai-shek were removed.
Entering the museum, the joint ticket with the National Aboriginal Museum caught my eye. It was just a couple hundred meters from museum gate to museum gate, so I figured why not. Going though the place, it was apparent how much was removed and how much stuff there was in the Forbidden City. Many of the buildings in the complexes stand just that now—buildings devoid of treasures. To this effect, the exhibition rooms in the National Palace Museum often have a map of the Forbidden City with a note on where the objects in that particular area were removed from.
The content was amazing. Some parts of the museum didn’t have cream of the crop works, but overall, it was good to see a museum so full of authentic Chinese artifacts collected over the dynasties.
From there we wandered on over to the National Aboriginal Museum, which completely lacked people (if that says anything at all about how people feel about the Taiwan aborigines). We got through the four floors of the complex in a relatively short time, but the disinterest exhibited by my friends prevented my stay from being longer.
From there, we decided to walk back to Shilin metro station, stopping along Chiang Kai-shek Residence along the way. It took longer than expected to reach that first stop. We passed by the national university en route, which was accompanied by a green river. Oh, I forgot to mention that it was raining that entire day and most of the next.
Arriving at CKS Park (as I remember it being abbreviated in English) was worth a gander, though only worth it because it was free. There were a couple gardens in park that stood out. One contained a face carved out of a relatively large shrubbery surrounded by a colorful assortment of flowers. The other was indoors and obviously aimed at kids with its large anthropomorphic insects and fauna. Neither was entirely impressive. Also there was Chiang Kai-shek’s Taipei residence, which was under renovation (and likely remains so as I write this) but still good to see from the outside.
By this time it was only 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, and we were planning on going to the Shilin Night Market, so we did a bit more sightseeing before then, which was said on Wikitravel to begin around 4:00 or 5:00.
To this effect, we headed down to the neighboring Confucius Temple and Bao’an Temple. Confucius Temple was more of a park whereas Bao’an Temple was a functioning place of worship. Both were notable in their relative newness. Roof bricks glazed blue and green remained blue and green whereas in places with more history such as the Forbidden City, the darkish yellow roof bricks were fading and in some places weeds were glowing out of the tops.
We then took a taxi to the Grand Hotel, whose history I haven’t fully explored. It’s basically an interesting building because its twenty or so floors have traditional-looking façades, though no authentic building of such a style had been that tall. It was interesting as such, though its overall appearance looked more busy and overly done than authentic. Like I said, I have no idea what the people involved had in mind during its overall planning and construction.
From there we took a leisurely walk to Martyrs’ Shrine, which is, in essence, a memorial to all those fighting in the name of the Republic of China. Along the walk, the ROC flags increased as we became closer. Like gravitating towards groups of tour buses, it became clear that in Taiwan, many of the sites to see were accompanied by copious quantities of national flags along the street median.
Martyrs’ Shrine was indeed impressive, largely because of its sheer size. It took a very notable period of time to walk from the front gate and entrance to the actual content of the memorial (a complex of a handful of buildings) on the other side. There was the first time we witnessed the military decorum of ROC officers. First off, when doing honor guard stuffs, they dress as such, looking stern and straightforward, never blinking, never moving. On more than one occasion, other employees came around to adjust their clothes and spiff up their uniforms.
At one point, the soldiers in the memorial came ceremoniously marching down the center of the plaza to the entrance gate. We watched as they marched down in step, the guards at the gate spinning their rifles and exiting with them. Check the pictures out. It was impressive (and scary at the same time.)
Last for that day was the Shilin Night Market. Taking a taxi there, the driver was adamant about the market. Granted, we were going to the one that was likely the most touristy; however, the driver kept going on about it stretching on for four city blocks (though it seemed bigger than that) and how you can buy anything there.
Actually there, there were mostly souvenir-selling places and street food vendors. Taiwan is supposedly famous for its snacks, and one of the best things that I had in Taipei was actually this breaded, deep-fried octopus cut into pieces and accompanied with something of a topping (seaweed in my case). After our first full day, satisfying as it were, in Taipei, we went back to the hotel to prepare for an equally productive day the next day.
In my case, preparation was working on a research paper of 2,000 words and accompanying presentation that I’ll talk more about later.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
