Directly Translated 2

Here's something interesting that my recent Chinese studies have led me to. Presented below is a list of 3 Chinese characters and their English meanings.

Watch carefully...

Directly Translated

I am a teacher of the English language. My job description is pretty clear: teach English. The way this differs from a translation website or a dictionary is that, although some things CAN be directly translated, it doesn't always sound right.

So my job is not only to teach English, but to make sure it's being used properly. Here's how things can get interesting:

Celebs?

For the most part, I've gotten really used to daily life in Taiwan. The scooters, the sugary bread, the questionable street-side cuisine, the signs I can't read, the lot of it. For the past 14 or so months, I've come to terms with it and I'm hardly phased.

Some of the Taiwanese, however, can't meet me half way on that front.

Trips to the supermarket, certain restaurants, and just about everywhere in Taipei are hardly ever uneventful. I still get that paranoid feeling that everybody is staring at me because I'm a foreigner. By definition, though, it's not paranoia. I don't have a baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others. They are actually staring at me.

Eyes of children are locked on target with mouths stuck open as I walk down the aisle at the store. They creep to safety behind a parent's leg without ever disengaging their curious stare.

On the subway, children peer through limbs down the car at the strange looking man with no hair and whose skin has a pinkish hue. I've seen a child whisper something to her mother while pointing at me, and her mother gently slapped her hand. I can't even imagine what she was saying.

Another encounter with children involves them being forced by their parents to come and say "hello" to the foreigner to practice their English. Then it's time to throw on a quick smile that I thought I had abandoned at 3:30 on Friday afternoon.

I get it. Kids worldwide are ignorantly shameless when it comes to pointing and staring. In all fairness, compared to a place like the U.S., it doesn't seem like Taiwanese kids get exposure to as diverse a population at such an early age. It's just that I kind of wish they would grow out of the fascination...

"Ah-scuse me. May I take picture wiss you?"

I'm walking through the subway station with Mike. Two high school aged looking Taiwanese girls come up to us with that question. We look at each other with identical puzzled expressions. We say "sure." The girls giggle, turn around and about eight other girls appear from the crowd and surround us. Once the camera appears, pinkies, ring fingers, and thumbs instinctively fold down due to years of conditioning. The giggling continues as they walk away, passing the camera around and inspecting the pictures, which I'm sure contain a Canadian and an American with "What the (expletive) is happening right now?" looks across their faces.

Without exaggerating, I'd estimate this happens on a monthly basis (twice in 10 minutes at a museum one time). It's always the same routine: send the cutest, most confident one of the group, and after compliance, swarm the foreigners with "peace sign" two fingers already glued to their faces in "cute" pose.

One of my favorite things to do is imagine if something like this happened back home. A group high schoolers (girls and boys alike) see an Asian person at the train station and run up to them to take their picture. Will somebody please try that and let me know how it goes?

(the lack of "peace signs" in this picture is almost creepy...)

A Heart and Two Leaves: Part 1

Living in/around a city like Taipei, it's nice to get out every now and then. Although Taipei is a very large, busy, and densely populated city, the fact that it is surrounded by mountains on almost all sides makes it pretty easy to find a peaceful getaway. After all, nothing soothes the weekday blues like a cup of fresh tea on a quiet mountainside.

Assuming the role of tourists in the country where we are Alien Residents, I headed to Muzha with Mike, along with his visiting aunt and uncle, Terri and Brian. After taking the MRT to its limits at the Taipei Zoo station, we made our way to a line of cabs. Sure enough, one cab driver correctly recognized that we speak English, and won our affection and patronage by speaking a little English and knowing exactly where we wanted to go.

The cab itself had lost the "new car smell" many, many years ago. The tachometer needle, jerking uncontrollably, made itself at home in the red zone, even when idling. Nevertheless, it dragged it's four passengers, with an average height of about 6'2", up the mountain. The driver entertained us with questions about our origins, and stories about his dreams of marrying a woman from the Philippines.

"I don't think it will ever come true," the smiling old man sadly stated. Sympathetically smiling back, I asked him why he thinks it won't happen. He gently patted his pocket and said, "No money, no honey." Indeed.

During the climb, we all peeked out from between our knees at the beautiful scenery. Going up the switchbacks, we looked over the steep cliffs and saw Taipei 101 piercing the sky from behind the tall peaks. Finally, the struggling cab rolled to a stop in front of Taipei Tea Promotion Center.

Inside the building, we were given somewhat of a private tour. Due to the temporary suspension of the Maokong Gondola, the Promotion Center is also not running on all cylinders and is more or less closed. However, our tour guide insisted that since we are from very far away, we should be able to see how the tea is harvested and made, so we entered a live episode of "How It's Made: Tea."

With that, we learned how the tea trees are grown, how the leaves are harvested, and also about the 3-day heating/drying/fermenting process between the time it is harvested and the time it's ready for consumption.

1. plucking TGY tea leaves
2. sun-dried withering
3. cooling
4. tossing
5. air-conditional withering
6. stop oxidation
7. curling
8. drying
   

We even learned all the benefits tea has over coffee (fascinating, but I was not converted). Now that we were tea-harvesting experts, it was time to get out and try some of the finished product.

A stroke of curiousity

When I come home, would it be at all rude or presumptuous for me to try to speak Chinese to any Asian-looking people I see on the street?

[That is rhetorical, depending on whether anyone answers it.]

What's in a name?

"Names are a great mystery. I've never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this -- whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong."

~John Steinbeck

Here is a list of great names I heard on Saturday:

Destroy and Icey: 2 dudes that work at the movie theater where I saw the new Terminator movie.
Liz: the guy that sold Mike a new pair of flip-flops. His name is very fitting.
Cola: an attractive girl that works at a jewelry counter in Ximending. C-O-L-A, Cola.
Skeet: a random guy we met at a grocery store that speaks great English. Wondering if he's aware of his name's implications.
Not Band: a rock and roll cover band consisting of a bunch of 17-year-olds that we met on the train.

Here we are rocking out with Not Band on the train:


Speaking of names, how about these names for students: Legal, Genius, Zero, Lion, Eagle, Apple, Christ... (it's a goal of mine to be asked to help assign English names to our new classes).

Finally, taking the award for awkward naming, here is a picture of me and Mike shopping for new hoods:

I <3 Taiwan

After a lovely afternoon of hot springs in Xinbeitou and a delicious "Garlic Fry Pork" dinner in Taipei, I boarded the train home to Shijr. We were packed like sardines into the train car, and the young Taiwanese gentleman in front of me happened to be wearing the classic "I ♥ NY" T-shirt.

Mike and I decided that I should tell him I am from New York. The conversation went something like this:

[Train moves abruptly and the boy falls into me. I catch him.]

J(ohnny): It's a good thing you love New York or I wouldn't have caught you!
B(oy): [smiles]
J: [pointing to the boy's shirt] I like your shirt. I'm from New York. [pulls out driver's license and points to "New York."]
B: [smiles] New York is very good. [thumbs up]
J: Taiwan is very good too [thumbs up]. I wish I had an "I love Taiwan" shirt.
B:[smiles]

[I happened to not only be wearing a plain white tee, but I also had a neat little pen with, not one, but four colors! Mike created a masterpiece on my chest...]



In order to show my respect and appreciation, I diplomatically returned the cross-ocean compliment. Together, as ambassadors for our respective countries, we shook hands, posed for pictures, chatted for a little while, and pretty much exhausted his English vocabulary. He likes baseball, particularly the New York Yankees, but even more particularly Chen Ming Wan. He also liked my chest muscles (which I was thrusting forward for the picture).

.

I only wear Korean shoes

After deciding to get a breath of fresh air and maybe some tea with boba in it (which is really good by the way. Its got jelly balls and I like to chew it), Mike and I stepped out of the school to walk around the block. Immediately after exiting, we saw a Taiwanese man standing on the corner with a handful of pamphlets. In any city in the States, this activates a reflex to pretend like you are reading a sign on the opposite side of the street in order to avoid being guilted into taking an advertisement. In Taiwan however, while these birdcage-lining distributors are not hard to find, I don't have pretend these people don't exist. They see my skin and avoid me like the plague, not having the patience to try to explain to a foreigner about the incredible sale they are having at their store around the corner. Normally I walk by unscathed.

But not this guy. He saw me and Mike and smiled as he trotted up to us with two pamphlets in his outstretched arm.

"Do yoo wan Korean shoes?" He was obviously very excited to speak English to us, so I took the piece of paper hanging inches from my face and looked at it. For what? I don't know. I saw some numbers. "We Korean shoes," he insisted.

"Are they better than other kinds of shoes?" Mike asked. It was about that time that I noticed a number on the paper: 150 NTD, roughly $5 US.

"That's pretty cheap for shoes." I looked down at the man's shoes. "Are those Korean shoes?"

"No, no-"

"How can you try to sell us Korean shoes if you don't even wear them? That's not a good marketing strategy."

"Korean shoes!" He started moving his hand back and forth quickly in a scrubbing motion. Of course, only then did it all make sense.

"You want to clean our shoes?"

"Yes, yes! We korean shoes. Very cheap!" He even offered to korean my shoelaces and said he could lace them up exactly the way they are now. I tried to get a job weaving shoelaces, but no dice. We eventually told the man, "no thanks," we can korean our own shoes and walked away.

Moral of the story? Talk to strangers.

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Almost Famous

...or "The Time I Almost Lost a Kidney"

Last weekend I went into Taipei City for the night. I started off at a New Zealand burger joint and ended up at a South African bar/meat pie store. Meeting up with Mike, my Canadian roommate, and B, my South African roommate, and Fred, my Taiwanese friend, we were a melting pot with no assimilation required. After a few TBs (Taiwan Beer) and a couple brandy and cokes, the four of us, plus a peculiar collection of South Africans, were talking like old friends about everything: the joys of teaching, how great Taiwan is, the dangers of smoking, and Chinese birth chart compatibility. However, it soon became time to go to Shilin night market.

It's really hard to do justice to the Shilin night market through description; it's more of an atmosphere you have to breathe and take in. In between two MRT stops, there are hundreds of food stalls, clothing shops on wheels, knick knackerys, carnival games, and so on, all crammed together. They've got belts, and sneakers, and trucker hats galore. Fried chicken, rice noodles, chicken feet and more! It is a culture explosion, contained in a relatively small portion of the city, with a nightly attendance of thousands. As the night progresses, it gets harder and harder to walk through the densely packed alleys. Even if only for a late night snack, the buzz at Shilin night market is worth the trip.

So here we are, Mike, B, a guy Shaun, and I, weaving our way through the crowd. All of a sudden a young man stopped us. "Hey have you guys ever done any commercial acting before?" With a party of four, we defeated the odds- none of us had. "Well I'm actually a casting agent and I'm looking for a white male, kind of sporty with blue eyes to do a bubble gum commercial." I looked around. I had the only blue eyes for miles.
"I'm white!" I exclaimed. "I like sports, too! And I have blue eyes!"
"Yeah, thats great. They are casting tomorrow near SYS Memorial MRT station between 2-5. Take my card, call my phone when you want to go so I can make sure I'm there."

One taxi ride, a few hours of sleep, a headache, and a shower later... Should I call this guy? Eh, why not? Inspired by Josambro, Dave and I have sort of a competition to see who can get famous in Taiwan first. To my understanding, this commercial was for television, so I would be everywhere. So I called. "They're going to do a quick photo shoot, and maybe have you say a few lines while pretending to ride a bike or surf or something."

I got off the MRT and was picked up by a scooter. Being the passenger on a scooter is a very intimate experience. We zipped around town, and when we pulled down a not-so-public street, I started to get worried. I value my kidneys. I entered a small office and was directed to a room with two giant lights pointed at a blank wall. I stood in the spotlights and posed, turned around slowly, and gave a brief introduction. The camera's shutter snapped furiously. I started observing weird things, like how many exits there were and what could potentially be used as a weapon. I couldn't remember if they offered me anything to drink...

The whole operation only lasted about 5 minutes and I was awake for the whole thing (the photo shoot). I was scootered back to the MRT and told that they'd get back to me by Wednesday. Turns out I didn't get the part, "the director changed the requirements for the character." I'd sure like to meet this whiter, sportier, more blue-eyed chump who happens to be in Taiwan.