I've been lucky so far. After the first week's twin earthquakes, last week I got to experience a typhoon, which some people in other parts of the world refer to as a hurricane. I came back early from Yilan this past Monday morning because the afternoon buses and trains were canceled in anticipation of the storm. The Yilan bus terminal was jammed with other tourists, and extra emergency buses were leaving for Taipei every five minutes.

This was my move-in day for my new apartment. Mr. Song, the landlord, had come down from Taoyuan early to meet me when I told him I was getting back in the afternoon. By the time I got there, it was dumping rain and the wind was making umbrellas more of a liability than a help. I ran under the eaves to ring the buzzer, and a few minutes later Mr. Song came down and let me in. I followed him up four flights of narrow, slippery stairs to an apartment flat that had been separated into three or four studios.

My room was still littered with empty beer cans, yogurt cups, and newspaper. Mr. Song had been expecting to have enough time to clean up that afternoon before I arrived, he said. He refused my help, so I sat for a few minutes watching him gather the litter into plastic bags while he talked. He spoke too quickly for me to readily follow, and after a while he switched to English, possibly tired of repeating himself.

Outside the wind was getting more aggressive. It would mellow down for a bit, and then suddenly attack with a loud whoop, shaking the building and rattling the windows. A sound like a metal door slamming irregularly boomed from somewhere downstairs.

Mr. Song said this was the worst typhoon he'd seen in years, and it would get even worse around nightfall. It was only about 4pm, but the sky was already getting dark. Outside the window, trees were bent over sideways and large objects were flying through the air.

That was about when I realized I didn't have any food with me. I told this to Mr. Song. Don't go outside, he said. If something falls on you, you will die.

I went out and stood under the eaves, watching the wind make long blurry shapes with the rain. When it died down, I ran to the sidewalk and turned right toward a row of shops, stepping over large pieces of roofing material and tree branches. Everything was closed, corrugated garage doors pulled shut. I kept walking down the street, ducking under cover whenever the wind picked up strength.

Eventually I came to a restaurant that was still open. There were no customers inside, just two employees sitting behind the counter, probably stranded. I got two boxes of sesame noodles and some sour plum juice and turned back.

To be continued...

Police responding to a broken roof, while the storm picks up strength 

Mr. Song riding past stranded fish on the road the next morning by the river

By the river after the storm 

Things knocked over by the storm 

A local independent beer

Spirit animals 

Buns cat 

Grandma Millie's handmade cookies

Cherry Grandfather

I never thought I would appreciate Starbucks. It's expensive: a cup of black coffee there is $75 TWD, equivalent to about $2.25 USD, while all the numerous dedicated espresso shops that roast their own beans in town or even right on the premises charge about half that. The coffee is still just as disappointing as it's always been: strong, hot, sometimes freshly brewed, but roasted to a crisp, tasting like charcoal and missed opportunity. And of course it contributes to rising prices and homogenization of the neighborhoods it occupies. 

But if you spend any amount of time walking around in the heavy heat and humidity and traffic of Taipei, and then retreat into the dim, smooth-jazz, air-conditioned Starbucks, it's hard to continue hating it with every single fiber of your being. Especially once you realize you can just stand there by the door for as long as you want, and the staff will never ask you to buy something or get out. And that the bathroom is unlocked, and clean. And that you can find a cozy seat by the window on the third floor (there are always three floors) and use the free wifi for an hour or two, undisturbed except for the occasional obnoxious saxophone solo. Yes, a few of those fibers are no longer dedicated to hate. 

Wait, I lied, they still are -- it's just a hate tempered by a dash of humble gratitude.

Five Years After

I watched a small posse of golden cockroaches crawl out of the sewer and clamber across the ground in front of me. One of them took wing and flew past my leg. My first thought was "This is it. This is the big earthquake. The roaches know about it before the rest of us." 

There were earthquakes my first two days here. One happened in the middle of the first night, when I was trying to sleep on the couch in the living room of the hostel, because some kind of device, which I later found out was a water pump to push water to the second floor, kept making noises like a printer near my head. The second earthquake happened while I was eating sushi with Ivy next to a big picture window in the SOGO shopping center area. Outside, people just kept walking while the ground moved under them. 

I asked the elder man waiting at the crosswalk next to me if he knew why so many cockroaches would crawl out of the sewer at the same time. He looked at the little dudes crawling around his feet and chuckled. 

They're probably putting poison in the sewers, he said. They crawl out when they're about to die. 

Just like a plague! I thought, feeling reassured.

Taipei's airport shuttle 

When I arrived in Taipei a week ago yesterday it was only 7am, so I had some time before the landlord would wake up and let me in. I had an egg pancake -- the first of many -- at a place on the corner across from the hostel. The store specialized in two things: eggs and keys. It seems like a strange choice of things to put together, but it makes sense if you think about it. Why not give their customers something to do while their keys are copying?

Eggs n' keys

American food: Eggs and spaghetti in the belly of a cow 

I sat down in this place one morning without reading the name on the sign, which said 美式牛排 (American Steak). They said the tomato sauce was vegetarian, little bits of beef in it notwithstanding. That makes it OK, right? 

 

One more reason Taiwan is the greatest place on earth. 

I went to a couple climbing gyms this week. Here's one, on the outskirts of eastern Taipei. I went with Sean, the landlord from the hostel, and Kit Man, another guest who had just arrived that morning from Singapore. There weren't many other climbers besides us, but there was a large group of serious-looking men in military fatigues and hard hats practicing rappelling in the main room.

This is a corner near the hostel. There's a 7-11 on one side, and on the other is a store (the one on the right) that resells things from Costco. One night there was some kind of community event, which looked like this.

Egg pancake with corn, a standard variation 

Mango, watermelon, red dragon fruit, and panna cotta with condensed milk over ice. You don't really need another reason to visit.

The front of the mango ice shop where the above delicacy is served. 波動拳！

Event calendar at a McDonald's. The crazy-looking one reads "uncle show". Woohoo, uncle show!

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.

Goodbye, Chengdu

I packed up what I most wanted to keep, and gave away most of the rest. A few bottles of soy sauce, vinegar, and ketchup were left behind, plus maybe some bits of cardboard and a few leftovers in the fridge that I never got around to. Packing took longer than I expected and ended up becoming an all-night ceremony, almost. Then in the morning I flew to Guangzhou, and took the bus to Foshan.

The last two weeks have been a chaotic mess of trying to accomplish too much with too little time, trying to say goodbye to everybody, and all the while having an ongoing case of what I think is/was a stomach virus or infection. I think I got out of Sichuan just in time; the food there is not good for people who are trying to recover their digestion. Cantonese food, apart from being better on the stomach, is phenomenal. For dinner tonight we had stir-fried soybean noodles with zucchini, greens, and dried shrimp, steamed fish with ginger soy sauce, fish-stuffed green chilies, fish-stuffed eggplant, and boiled greens (there was only one non-fish meat dish). After dinner, we passed a "cold tea" herbal medicine place (the first of many), and I sampled a cup of dark brown, syrupy tea. "It might taste a little bitter, but it's good for your stomach," said the lady. If you condensed the essence of the word "bitter" into a cup, this is what it would taste like. I had the plum juice. Now I am looking forward to sleep.

I wrote this other post a while back, but because of all the happenings mentioned above, I never got around to posting it.

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The apartment where I live is inside one of several small communities of apartment buildings, which together are designated the Zongbei community. Each community or complex has about ten buildings, and each building has about ten staircases, and each staircase has seven floors, and each floor has two doors. So I guess each complex must have about 1,400 apartments.

Across the street from and standing far above the Zongbei communities, there is a big tower of condominiums called the Zongbei International. A lot of foreigners live there; it's close to the University, the U.S. consulate, and the majority of Western restaurants in Chengdu (or at least the plurality), and it's nicer and more expensive than the Zongbei community. One day my friend Anna and I tried to get onto the roof of the Zongbei International, thinking it might be a good place to study. Taking the elevator to the top floor, we found that the hallway ended in an open ledge that you could lean out over, from which you could see the complex where I live (you can actually see the back window of my apartment on the far right side of the picture). It was also a perfect place for throwing paper airplanes.



From that hallway, we went up an unlit staircase, which after a couple of switchbacks and a ladder came to a room full of big pipes. There was a metal gate through which we could get to an outdoor walkway. The walkway ran between the outer wall of the building and an overgrown patio. Unfortunately, the walkway was a dead end. After spending a while admiring the strangeness of the little patio trapped in a cage on the top of a skyscraper, we went back down and ended up studying in the park (where by studying I mean making collages).

---



A few weeks ago, there was word around the school that a TV company was looking for some foreigners to be on TV for an evening. In return, participants would receive free dinner and 100 kuai. Interested people should show up in front of the school building at 5:30. I got there right at 5:30, and there were already six or seven other people waiting. A few were friends, and we talked about what we thought we were going to have to do. There was a rumor that they were taking us to the Panda Base to look at pandas, but someone brought up the fact that the Panda Base closes in the evening. Anyway, what was interesting about watching foreigners look at pandas?

Around 6, a van crawled up to the school. The driver opened the side door of the van, and then nodded at us while vaguely staring at some point in the distance. I was a little bit wary of climbing into a van before even making eye contact with the driver, but I did it. The rest of the students came in after me--now there were about eight of us. Without a word, the driver and another Chinese guy got back into the car and we drove off.

As we pulled away from the school, we started hypothesizing about a Chinese gang bribing school officials to abduct foreign students. Then the van stopped in front of a bar. We were in a neighborhood called Jiuyanqiao ("nine eyes bridge"), which is a bar and club area next to the river. On our right was a narrow park and then the river. On the left was a row of bars, most of them with bright flags and banners, neon lights, and outdoor tables.



They led us into the nearest bar, which actually comprised several small, one-room buildings scattered around an otherwise table-filled garden. In a wooden room with broad, low tables and benches with colorful pillows, we sat down. Then they explained to us (through one of the best Chinese speakers in our group) that we were going to wait here while they put makeup on us, and then we could eat.

The makeup, food, and everything else were supposed to take about four hours (i.e., five or six hours), and some of us were starting to talk about forgetting the whole thing. We were still within walking distance of the school. We told the young man who had explained things to us--I had mentally started to call him our handler--that we weren't too impressed with his plan. We suggested a pay raise. He quickly said he couldn't make that decision, and would have to talk to his boss. We assumed the issue had been dropped and kept trying to build up the nerve to walk out, but a little while later the handler came back and said he could pay us each 200. Only one person left after that.

After an hour of putting makeup on some of us (I declined the offer, unlike at Chengdoo Magazine's '80s-themed anniversary party), they told us we could eat. We crossed the street again, and in the little park on the river there was a table stacked with plastic takeout boxes. To tell the truth, when I'd heard about a free dinner I had been expecting the kind of big, round table, 30-dish feast that usually happens here when somebody is somebody else's guest. So I admit I was a little disappointed with our insipid-looking rations partially falling out of their flimsy white containers. Also, predictably, all or almost all of the dishes had meat in them.

After some prodding, the handler agreed to give me some money to buy my own dinner. "Just come back," he said. A few blocks away I found a restaurant and ordered eggplant and potatoes to go, and then bought some lychee at a fruit stand. When I got back, the rest of the foreign students had finished eating and were sitting at a table in the garden of the bar, drinking beer and watching Portugal vs. North Korea on a big projector screen. The beer was from the convenience store down the street and not from the bar where we were all sitting, and waiters kept coming to our table to ask if we planned to order anything. There was one Japanese guy in our group, A____, and as the only one who looked like he was from East Asia, he was the one the waiters always approached. To their dismay, however, A____ pretended not to speak any Chinese at all, and this probably gained us an extra thirty minutes at the table while the staff searched for someone who spoke English. Eventually they did find someone, and then A____ started to explain to them about the TV show, telling them they should talk to the TV crew. Just then, the handler appeared of his own accord and told us we were going to start filming.

They ushered us into a small, fenced-off area with a stage. There were already about 30 other people inside the area, although they mostly clung to the edges in small groups. We found out we were shooting a commercial for the city of Chengdu, advertising it as a city of vibrant culture. To demonstrate this vibrancy, the local pop-rock band Mosaic would play a song, and we would be the enthusiastic (international) audience.



Everywhere there were lights--pointing at us, at the stage, and even at the bridge over the river nearby--and the brightness during dusk gave everything an unreal color. The members of Mosaic were sitting around too, and we talked to them for a little while. The singer's permed hair reached down to his shoulders. After learning the Chinese names for all the instruments and stretching our own Chinese vocabulary to the limit, we turned to the big screen across the street, where Portugal was now beating North Korea 4-0 (they would score three more goals that night, to the extreme dismay of the North Korean team, who had lost to Portugal the only other time they made it into the World Cup).

We stood there a long time before the music finally started. Only a few more people had arrived after us, and the crew pressed us into a tight square in front of the stage to make it look more crowded. Excited to have something to do, we danced with verve as Mosaic lip-synced through their song (the lyrics of the chorus went like "M-O-S-A-I-C"). Then it was over and the long quiet resumed. Portugal scored its last goals. Someone handed out some battery-powered wand things, which we were supposed to wave in the air. We started mock-fighting with them, and by the time the music started again, half of them were broken.

Someone noticed a small boat coming down the river with a panda on it. A couple of men paddled the boat up to the shore, helped the panda out, and led it inside the enclosure with us. They started the song again, with the panda tottering slowly in the middle of the square of people. When the song ended, three people rushed in to remove the panda's head. Inside was a little boy of maybe ten, face and hair saturated with sweat. They wiped his face with a cloth and gave him some water through a straw. Then the head went back on. I hope they were paying him more than they were paying us, but somehow I doubt it.

We did the same song about eight times. The last several times, they used a big camera on a long-necked crane, which a few crewmen pushed through the crowd. While we danced we had to keep one eye on the camera, because whenever it passed we had to jump over the cables and dodge out of the way. And we had to do this without ever looking directly at the camera.

Around 11:30, as we were getting ready for yet another round of the song, the producers suddenly announced that the filming was over and everyone quickly left. The handler and another crew member walked us across the bridge to a van on the other side and drove us all home.

KTV Blackout

It's been two months since I've made a post!? I blame work and finals. Now that both are finished, I finally have two weeks to do whatever (else) I want! Actually, I meant to post this yesterday, but the internet crapped out.

To celebrate the end of finals, Z and I went to sing KTV this afternoon. One of the most famous KTV chains, ATT, has a newly remodeled branch not far from my apartment. ATT is also known for having the best selection of foreign songs (including one song from Radiohead, who are banned in China). At the entrance, a tall young man in a white dress shirt bows as you go in. Then you ascend one of two curved staircases into what looks like a low-ceilinged hotel lobby, everything in off-white marble. The all-young staff in black waistcoats help you figure out which room to order, or you can sit in the chilly waiting room and watch news on a little TV desk.

Like some less reputable hotels, KTVs rent out rooms by the hour. There are usually half a dozen different room sizes for different prices. The price also varies depending on the time, with evenings and weekends being more expensive. Since there were only two of us, the right size would have been a "mini" room, but they only had small rooms, which fit up to five people. The hourly price for the room on a weekday afternoon would have been 36 kuai (about $5), but there was also a special: we could pay 36 kuai per person and get a room for four hours, and they would bring us dinner, a fruit plate, and popcorn.

KTV rooms are small and windowless. The essential features are a leather couch that circles around three sides of the room, a big-screen TV, and a big coffee table with a giant ashtray. And of course the touch-screen computer for choosing songs. When you sing for four hours, you have to pace yourself. Early on I made the mistake of trying to sing two Nirvana songs and half my vocal range went mute. Bohemian Rhapsody would have to wait.

Exactly two hours in, when we were almost finished with The Sound of Silence, everything suddenly went black. It was also completely quiet, and for a few seconds I was disoriented. Then I could hear people walking in the hallway outside, and a vested employee came in with two bento boxes, two bowls of soup, and chopsticks. In the dark, he set them down on the table, and asked if we wanted a candle. I asked him what time he thought the power would come back and he said he didn't know.

For a while we sat in the dark room, eating by cell phone light. The food wasn't bad for something from a karaoke house. The employee eventually came back with a candle. When we were finished eating, there was still no sign of returning electricity, so we went outside. No sooner had the room door closed than four employees intercepted us to apologize about the sudden darkness. Z asked them if we could have a refund, and they agreed to give us half our money back--36 kuai. Z pretended to be mildly satisfied, but really we were both glad, having half-expected them to refuse any kind of refund ("it wasn't out fault"; "you already ate the food"; or simply "we don't do refunds").

At the end of the hallway, a group of middle-aged women were arguing with another employee. We left, and this time the doorman had four companions, and they all bowed and thanked us for coming. Next door at the Trust-Mart supermarket, a crowd was standing around the entrance, looking vaguely in the direction of the darkened bag check room. Apparently the whole block had lost power, which meant that the customers at Trust-Mart wouldn't be able to retrieve their bags from the newly installed electronic cubbies. I wondered how many people would have to cancel whatever plans they had because they were stuck at Trust-Mart, waiting for their stuff. And then about the mad rush that would ensue when the power finally went back on.

some potatoes and greens on the coffee table in my apartment

I'm starting to make plans for my trip back. For whatever reason, the semester ends in mid-July. I'll go to a few of the places in Sichuan that I've wanted to see--maybe I'll try to find one of the old towns that's still actually old, and hasn't been rebuilt as a tourist trap--and then go east, stopping in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Taipei before flying home sometime in mid-late August.

In about a week I'll have been in Chengdu for six months. I find that hard to believe. When I think about such a length of time in the abstract--such as before it happens--it's made up of habits, patterns, and repetitions. I see myself going to class every morning, studying every afternoon, working every weekend, etc. But when it happens, of course, it isn't really like that. Every class or lunch or studying session or neglect of one of these is unique, and the real events don't blend together, they elude categorization. And because every "event" is so different from every other, it's impossible to comprehend them all at once. So naturally my mind summarizes the period, alighting only on the most interesting or somehow otherwise memorable parts, and the time necessarily feels shorter.

A month or so ago all of the street vendors were selling pineapple. For the equivalent of 20 cents you could select a stick of pineapple from a jar of water on their cart, or else you could buy a whole pineapple (peeling optional) for a dollar a kilogram. A few weeks later the strawberries appeared. They were big, bright, firm, and delicious, and probably laced with pesticides. At first you had to pay a little over two dollars a kilogram; toward the end of the run they went down to a dollar fifty a kilo. Now they're harder to find. The woman who used to stand every day outside the gate of the apartment complex I don't see so often anymore.

One day, after I paid for a stick of pineapple and was inspecting the glass jar, trying to find the best stick, the fruit woman suddenly became agitated and started telling me to hurry up. Usually her patience is inexhaustible, so I was surprised--I looked around and saw a police car driving up. The police got out of his car and shouted angrily, and I took a few steps back, away from the fruit cart. The woman immediately grabbed the handles of the cart and dragged it inside the gate. The officer went as far as the gate, speaking in a rough tone of voice, but he stopped just outside of it. The woman, inside the gate, smiled at him indulgently. The police barked a few more times, but by then it was clear that he was only half serious. Then he left. I went inside the gate and grabbed a stick of pineapple.





A few weeks ago I went to a place called Luodai, which has a lot in common with Jiezi, the old town I visited last month, including the narrow, car-less stone streets, the multitude of small shops selling all kinds of sweet snacks, and the new-ancient architecture mixed almost seamlessly with the real-ancient buildings--which are only distinguishable by the "naturalness" of their decrepitude. What makes Luodai different is its fame as a Hakka town. The Hakka are a minority with their own language and culture, although supposedly they are ethnically indistinguishable from Han Chinese. For a long time they have primarily occupied the eastern provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Fujian. However, around the turn of the 18th century, the Qing emperor Kangxi encouraged a lot of them to relocate to Sichuan, which for evil reasons was lacking in population. A lot of the Hakka moved to Luodai.

One quintessential Luodai food is "heartbreak noodles" (伤心面), which supposedly serve to remind Hakka people of their far-off homeland. But in case the memory of Eastern China isn't enough to make you cry, the spiciness can help. These noodles were so spicy they gave me a headache.





May Day weekend is a national holiday in China, and this year it was also the second annual Zebra Music Festival. The three-day festival comprised three stages and multitudes of bands and DJs from all over China and the rest of the world. The international acts included Does it Offend You, Yeah? (UK); Exile Parade (UK); and Reptile and Retard (NL). The festival was held in a big park near the Panda Base (which I also visited while I was there--pictures later). Z and I went on the second day and stayed overnight in a borrowed tent, which we set up on a hill right in front of the main stage. Aside from the music, one big attraction was the Jägermeister tent, where if you played a game of foosball you could win a shot of that awful stuff.





The festival was a lot of fun. A few of my friends went on the second day (pictured below), the crowds were exuberant, and at night it rained like hell. Finally, here are a couple movie posters for films coming out this year that I'm excited about.