Long time, no post! I’m going to jump into a recap of Week 4, since I didn’t take record any notes from Week 3 (oops). However, I will share some pictures from the one interesting thing I remember from Week 3: my cohort’s visit to the Taiwan Center for Disaster Prevention. In addition to learning how to stay safe during an earthquake and snaking through a smoky hallway to mimic the conditions of a house fire, I also got to don rain clothes and stand inside a typhoon simulator. Totally unforgettable experience! I can see why all of Taipei shuts down when a typhoon hits. I also visited a night market with my roommates, ate potato chips on a stick, and rode a Ferris wheel high above the city.
Sunday
I started my week off on a high note with a visit to a miniature art museum with my language partner, Gina. The exhibit was centered around the works of Tatsuya Tanaka, a Japanese artist who creates tiny scenes inspired by everyday objects and shapes. It took us four hours to get through the museum because there were so many visitors and art installations!
After a long afternoon out, Gina and I ate dinner at a soup dumpling shop (incredibly yummy) and then grabbed red bean buns for dessert. We called it a night after walking around downtown Taipei for a little while, and I came back to finish a paper.
Monday
Class on Monday started with half of the class giving presentations about a recent piece of news they found interesting. I didn’t have to present this week, so I got to just listen to some of the subjects my classmates are interested in. Multiple people presented on the intersection of work culture and sleep (apparently, some companies in foreign countries encourage napping at work?), and one person presented on the saga of Rodrigo Duterte. Quite the range of topics.
We also finished up a discussion of UNESCO World Heritage Sites that we began last Friday by going through the different UNESCO sites in each of our home countries. I can’t remember if I mentioned this in my last post, but my classmates are from all over the world: Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Sweden, and Austria. Our UNESCO exploration session just made me want to visit all of these places!
After taking the bus back to our apartment and working on some homework, my roommates and I decided to go out shopping. Taiwan has been much colder than I expected, so I desperately needed to buy a sweatshirt. I ended up finding one at Uniqlo that was a collaboration between Keith Haring and Coca Cola – definitely the best option, since most of the others were SpongeBob themed, weirdly.
Tuesday
Tuesday was pretty similar to Monday, honestly. I started the day with a study session in a nearby coffee shop, then made my way to campus for class. We talked about collaboration between countries on preservation of cultural artifacts (such as China’s contribution to rebuilding Notre Dame in exchange for France’s help restoring the Terracotta Warriors), in addition to various international holidays that recognize cultural heritage. Did you know that there has been an annual European World Heritage Festival every September since the 1980s, where museums and private buildings are open and free to the public? I certainly didn’t.
After class, my roommate Marlea and I were feeling super hungry, so we headed to a char siu noodle shop. We ended up having a conversation about our goals and struggles so far this semester, and I found myself feeling extremely grateful of the lack of language pledge. I feel so much more rooted in Taiwan than I did at this point in Beijing since I am building friendships with people who actually know me in a real way. Thank goodness for shared language!
Extremely important note: On the way back from lunch, Marlea and I found a coin machine that dispensed Peanuts characters, and we decided to take the gamble. It absolutely paid off – look at my Snoopy keychain! He’s wearing a shirt that says “Joe Cool”!!!!
My homework on Tuesday included a news program that I rewatched probably four times because the broadcasters were speaking so quickly. In the end, I had to coerce my local roommate into helping me decode one section that I found utterly unintelligible. To my credit, she had to listen to it three times, as well! After finishing the news program and associated worksheet, I rewarded myself with some free reading. (I finished Crazy Rich Asians, and I would recommend it only to someone with a high tolerance for shenanigans and drama.)
Wednesday
On Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling a bit stir-crazy, so I headed straight to the park. I walked around for a couple of hours without my phone and felt totally restored! Our indoor world, the shackles of technology, et cetera, et cetera.
After running back to my apartment for my belongings and hopping on the bus, I found myself maskless on public transportation, which is borderline taboo here. For some reason, I couldn’t find my mask, and it could have been all in my head, but I swear everyone was staring and silently judging me for willfully violating the social norm. Now I keep two masks in my backpack, just in case.
In class on Wednesday, we talked about the importance of tourism for our home countries’ economies. The most interesting part of this discussion was actually just one Mandarin word, 盛典 (pronounced “sh-ung dee-ehn”), for which we do not have an English equivalent. This word refers to big, somber ceremonies that attract national or international attention and usually a lot of tourists. It’s highly specific; for example, the U.S. presidential inauguration could be described with this word, but the NYE ball drop could not.
During one of our breaks in class, I talked to my classmate Becky who is an American that will be joining the Peace Corps after this semester. For anyone who doesn’t know, I applied to the Peace Corps and was assigned a position in Uganda for 2024-2026, before that offer was rescinded when they found out I had a childhood history of asthma. I was devastated, and I’d still like to serve in the Peace Corps later on if possible. I’m not sure that anyone who reads my blog is young enough to understand this reference, but this meme captures how I felt hearing Becky talk about her plans, haha:
I got over my jealousy with a delicious Hainanese chicken lunch. I swear, I could have eaten ten bowls of the yellow rice they were serving. Alas, I did not, and I instead headed to a coffee shop with Marlea to review the history of the relationship between China, Taiwan, and the U.S. since 1950, as preparation for our class on Thursday. The session was super productive, and I’m loving having a built-in study buddy.
Thursday
Thursday was another day of blissful weather. I spent the morning outside trying to book tickets for a concert this summer (successfully, but only after two hours of angrily closing and restarting Ticket Master), which honestly defeated the point of being outside at all, since I was hunched over my phone the whole time. I was still in high spirits because of the weather, though, and I called my mom on the way to class. Hi, Mom! 😊
We started covering a new text in class this day, this time about common superstitions in Taiwan and the importance Taiwanese people place on fortune-telling. As part of this lesson, my teacher helped us find and read our horoscopes published in the daily newspaper, which was such a fun activity. (My overall luck and especially financial luck were the worst in the class. Bummer.) We also played a few digital fortune-telling games. I don’t think we have a similar fortune-telling culture in the U.S., so this was pretty interesting to learn about.
My favorite game was one where you make a wish and throw two wooden half-moon blocks called jiaobei into the air. If they both land flat on the ground, it means your wish will not be granted. If they land with one facing up and the other lying flat, it means your wish will be granted. If they both land facing upwards, it either means that whether your wish will be granted is undecided or means that you shouldn’t have asked for that wish in the first place.
In my second class of the day, we talked about the period of Taiwanese history after 1947 called the White Terror, during which time there was a severe crackdown on freedoms and civil liberties. For over 40 years, Taiwanese people were not allowed to speak of the 228 Uprising in 1947 and subsequent invocation of martial law, which left lasting social and political impacts. One of the many effects of martial law was freezing all political elections and therefore enshrining the political power of KMT leaders that held office at the time martial law was instituted. These leaders acted as the legitimate and unchallenged representatives of Taiwan for all 40 years of martial law, which only changed due to protests from students and young people around Taiwan calling for the removal of mentally deteriorating and physically incapacitated legislators. All this indicates that Taiwan’s history of democracy is relatively new and faces historical obstacles.
I ate a quick dinner after class, worked on homework for about 30 minutes, and then headed over to a birthday party for my friend Ida who was turning 21. I was initially stressed about not having enough time to study, but the party ended up being a much-needed break. I don’t spend a lot of time casually hanging out with friends who aren’t my roommates, so this was a great excuse to do that. I left around midnight and ended up helping a drunk friend make it back to their apartment (which was a lucky encounter, since they had already gotten on the wrong subway twice and had no idea where they were going).
Friday
If Thursday night was a fun break, Friday morning was a mad dash. I spent 3 hours doing homework I blew off the night before, then another hour packing for a weekend trip out of Taipei while on the phone with my friend Jad from back home. I had no idea what to expect for the trip since it was fully coordinated by my study abroad program, so I was really just throwing random items in my bag and hoping for the best. After that, I rushed to class (looking very silly with both my backpack and my overnight bag) to continue our discussion about Taiwanese superstitions and fortune-telling.
One of the best fun facts from this session was that there is a pet bird in the Raohe Night Market (the one I visited with my roommates last week) that will draw tarot cards for the price of $10 USD. I find this hysterical – it might sound like a tourist trap, but apparently it’s more popular with Taiwanese folks than visitors.
As soon as class finished, I ran to the bus station with my roommates, where we waited to be picked up for our trip to Yilan. More on that to come. 😊
Week Four Recap:
Highlight: My “Joe Cool” Snoopy keychain. I’m so serious.
Lowlight: Being reminded of my failed Peace Corps dreams. Haha.
That’s all for now! See you next week. 🙂
很想你们，
婉婷
