MTV Taiwan, A Waterfall, A Train Ride, and a Shrimp Restaurant.

MTV Taiwan, A Waterfall, A Train Ride, and a Shrimp Restaurant.

It’s been a while since I did my last blog entry, so I fig’d I’d do another. Here is a brief glance at the highlights and not-so-high-lights of my past couple weeks.

First the highlights. I went to a waterfall in Eastern Taiwan, but I can’t remember the name of it, because I was guided there by my Taiwanese friend Adam from Taipei city who took me on a countless assortment of trains and transfers, the sheer number of which made me feel like I might accidentally end up in Mongolia (and considering Taiwan’s an island, that’s saying a lot). I’ve never really ridden the train before, in uber individualist Canada we don’t do trains—not for passengers anyway. We each take our individual cars, or at the very least scrounge for an individual Greyhound Bus which we complain about the whole time.

That said, in Taiwan, the train is the standard intercity method of transportation, and many of the stations have that old, romantically decrepit feel to them. They even have the same guy – I swear it’s the same guy at every station, they just cloned him specifically for this job – making sure everyone gets on the right train, and only the crazy Canadian ends up in Mongolia. Usually the trains aren’t too packed, but for one leg of the journey we found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder in an aisle for an hour. When we finally got to the town, the railroad was literally the center of the town, even more so than in prairie towns back home with their provincial highways. Literally, the town was only like 100 metres wide, and wedged between two mountains with the railroad, and trains that don’t exactly slow down, acting as the main road. You literally have to walk down the track to get to the waterfall, dodging trains like you dodge scooters in the city, only this time you’re diving into the jungle and just hoping you don’t land on something venomous.

The waterfall itself was like a smaller dirtier version of Niagara Falls, but the town was quite interesting. It had a bunch of cultural boutiques, including a shop that made those memorial balloons they release at Chinese New Year’s, a Chinese Raffle (though not the Western “Chinese raffle”), and a kid who kept chasing me down the street yelling “Meiguo Ren, Meiguo Ren!! [American! American!]” I tried to explain to him the intricacies of the 49th parallel and the War of 1812, but the point was rather lost on him. He just got more of his friends and pretended to be cowboys, and soon they were all firing toy guns and calling me an American (they apparently don’t get many foreigners in this town, probably due to the practically unnavigable nature of the train system to non-Chinese readers). Little kids always act the strangest towards me here, at one chicken shack in Danshui, there’s this little kid who always pokes out and looks at me quickly before sneaking back behind the door only to sneak a peak at me later. It’s like they think I’m some form of alien life form, though I guess I do have an Alien Resident Certificate.

Another day, my friend Chanel took me to a shrimp restaurant (which my Dad would love), but I still haven’t had the heart to tell her I don’t like seafood. Everytime we go out, she wants to go for seafood so I told her I’m allergic to it hoping it won’t make her feel bad (I really don’t like it, I’m sorry, but I’m just not a seafood fan… and yes what did I expect to find on an island, I know). Anyway, so at this restaurant they serve only shrimp (no drinks, just shrimp), and you have to catch them yourself from a big pool everyone sits around like a communal ice shack. You fish for shrimp just like you would fish for a fish, with a rod and bait, and when you catch the shrimp you apply a fast-jerking motion which launches the suddenly quite irritated shrimp with snapping pincers (yes they have pincers) inevitably in my direction (even if you’re the one catching them they inevitably come in my direction). Then you… well, if you’re me, you let Chanel go to work. On the street, Chanel is a sophisticated business woman who doesn’t like the outdoors much but in an “Angle Shrimp Restaurant” she is a hard core shrimp-catching and wrangling machine. Once that shrimp is on dry land, she’s onto it like a typhoon, ripping off pincers and skewering the bugger for later consumption. She even (and I shit you not) reached into the water and caught one with her bare hand. When she’s not holding the rod, she perches on the shoreline like a feline predator ready to pounce at any opportunity. I swear, mommy shrimp probably tell their children nightmares about this girl to keep them away from the surface.

Now, as to wraps things up, you’re probably wondering when I’m going to talk about MTV Taiwan. Well the answer is now. As it turns out, Taiwan has its own version of MTV (Yay Taiwan!), which has its own perspective on popular music. The Taiwanese generally have this notion that anything Western is inherently cool (The cools used to think I was awesome when I first arrived until they got to know me, and my true un-coolness shone wondrously through!). Foreign music dominates the airwaves, while the Taiwanese try their own spinoffs which only the locals have the capacity to take seriously. One such example is MTV Taiwan’s Chit Chat! A program designed to teach English by explaining the lyrics of popular songs. Why study English in New Zealand when you can pass your TOEFL just by listening to J. Lo? Two Taiwanese hosts, a girl and a guy wearing all the latest western fashions from 1992, go into detailed re-enactments of hip hop phrases that will probably be out of vogue by next summer(whatever did they do for “foh shizzle mah nizzle”). For instance, for the epic phrase “I got yo back” well just read the script

Dawei[David]: Okay cool kids, just watch this example. Zhenni [Jenny], can you fall back for me?

Zhenni[falling back exaggeratedly like Buster Keaton): Whoa!!!!

Dawei [rushing behind her to catch her]: See, I’ve stopped her fall by putting my hands on her back. “I have yo[ur] back” means “I support you!”

Zhenni: Ah, thanks Dawei. You’re such a cool friend. Okay, time for POP QUIZ!
Does “I got yo[ur] back” mean:

A) I will get back to you
B) I support you [I think it might be this one]
C) I have legally purchased and now own the rights to the latter half of your body.

So there you have it. The Taiwanese thought the toy Thanksgiving turkey my parents sent me was strange! I suppose it does have those nice buggy eyes that are great for scaring unsuspecting Japanese girls (hehe).

That said, I’ll leave off today with a list of a 3 things I’ve learned in Taiwan
1) English and Chinese are not the same language.
2) English and Chinese are not even close to the same language.
3) Even a Buddhist Monk will budge in front you in line in a crowded subway.