The Space-Time Continuum

I got back to Taipei last Thursday. Andreas, Fong, and their whole family have been extremely welcoming and hospitable, way beyond anything I could have asked for.

It's interesting to come back here. Last year I was a little overwhelmed by the noise, the size and unfamiliarity of the place, the fact that I could barely communicate with almost anyone. Now, after living for seven months in a place where a lot of people only speak a dialect I can hardly understand even with a semester at Sichuan University, it's a relief to be back where most people speak "standard" Chinese!

After a few days in Foshan－－where the food is so terrific it's ridiculous, and I won't write about it now because it deserves its own post－－Z and I took a boat to Hong Kong. We stayed there for six days, taking lots of ferries and eating a lot of fresh seafood. We went to several Hong Kong-style diners, which look a lot like my mental image of an American diner from the 50s or 60s: futuristic, chrome, pastel turquoise walls and orange tables, waiters with uniforms and round hats. Except of course they serve Chinese food. But even the Chinese food is pretty close to what I consider Americanized Chinese food. They also have a version of "Sinosized" Western food, like French toast (practically deep-fried in butter, with peanut butter in the middle) and club sandwiches. And, of course, the notorious Hong Kong milk tea, which is black tea steeped to the strength of espresso, and then mixed with milk. But the tea is actually so strong that the milk hardly decreases the bitterness at all.

Then I flew to Taipei. Andreas taught me how to play Chinese chess. We went to a hot spring. I am eating large quantities of soymilk and youtiao (油条). No place on earth has better soymilk and youtiao than Taiwan; I don't need to travel anywhere else to know this fact. On Saturday night I am flying to Seattle! I am taking a time-traveling jet which will arrive four hours before it leaves. If this causes a disturbance in the space-time continuum and tears the world apart, I am sorry.