Taiwan facts and observations, part III.

Winter has arrived in Taiwan last week. Temperatures dropped to 15 degrees Celsius and the winter coats, hats, scarves and gloves came out, and foreigners wearing only t-shirts got to stand out even more. Today, we are back to 27 degrees and winter is apparently over.

Over the last seven days, I bought flight tickets to Hong Kong; went to Wufenpu ie. a crazy night market selling nothing but clothes (and stinky tofu occasionally); went ice-skating again, this time successfully; went to a Czech yogurt party; spent a lot of time in the radio lab working on a project for my Cross-Culture Communication class. I also took a Chinese TOP test, just for fun and to see where I stand with my Chinese skills. The Chinese teacher felt that I could be able to handle the intermediate level test (level 3, out of 4, with 4 being the best), so I tried. Wrong. I didn't understand anything.

Also, I had a final exam in my Chinese class, and the classes are now finished. I really learned a lot there, but will be mostly on my own from now on, except for the language exchange and the tutoring. After the exam, our class had a dinner together, and our teacher (whom I originally assessed as 18 years old :) revealed a number of shocking surprises.

Here's a picture: From left to right: The teacher; Luisa from Italy; Ivy from Canada; Myself; My Linh from Denmark.



I will post a better picture later, if I get my hands on one.

Now, for my Taiwan facts and observations part III.

• the Taiwanese night club fashion is: For girls: Super short skirts or dresses, as revealing as possible, seeing a bikini as a top is not uncommon. (but the girls still behave like teenagers, more often than not).
  
• Guys in clubs mostly wear the badass hiphop wide baseball caps.
• Girls also often use fake eye-lashes.
• Every once in a while, I see a girl / woman with extremely long nails on her pinkies, while all the other nails are normal. This was explained to me as "well, we really like long nails, but they are mostly really impractical. However, not a problem on the pinky." Also, one friend told me that the nails bring her good luck.
• Many Taiwanese men go find their brides to countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, then bring them back to Taiwan and marry them. I don't know the exact reason for this - whether it's a lack of females in the Taiwanese population, or if the Taiwanese women do not want to marry the Taiwanese guys. However, people from the South-East Asian countries are somewhat looked down upon here.
• When people here get a cold, or a flu, they wear facial masks (on the street, in class), in order not to spread the disease. This seems quite practical. I guess this is at least partially caused by the serious SARS epidemic several years ago.
  
• Every evening, the garbage cars go around the city, playing Beethoven's Fur Elise. This is a signal for people to come out with their garbage and pass it on to the garbage men. I bet Beethoven never imagined his piece would become the garbage anthem in Taiwan.
• Every Hello! or Goodbye! here is accompanied by ferocious hands-waving.
• All the pastries in Taiwan are sweet and oily. Once, at the early stage of my stay, I was overjoyed to find something remotely similar in appearance to our bread. So I bought it, only to find out that there are raisins inside!! They also have a version with sweet red beans. Yuck.
• I have yet to see this with my own eyes, but apparently, it is quite common here to hire strippers to perform at funerals! I believe the idea is this: The more people attend a funeral, the better off the soul of the deceased will be. What's the most sure way of getting people to attend a funeral? Promise them a strip show. Twisted, but effective.
  

What's been up & IMICS intro

Friday has unofficially become my blog day, so to adhere to the tradition, here is another review of the events of the past week.

Last Saturday, we had an event called NCCU Olympics. It was basically a tournament in football, baseball and dodgeball. Unfortunately, there has been a strange pattern - almost every Saturday when I wake up in the morning, it is raining. It wasn't any different last week. So we only managed to play 1 1/2 football games. At that point, football was canceled to protect the football pitch and the participants were all so wet that nobody turned up for the other sports. NCCU Olympics was over, but the rain unfortunately wasn't. In fact, the weather has been really bad every day of this week. The temperature dropped to about 18 degrees, which in Taiwan means one thing.. "So cold!!!". So mid-November is the first time I wore a sweatshirt here. It's also been wet and rainy, and generally not too pleasant.

All my evening activities (judo and guitar) have been canceled this week. Judo because of some important judo exams, guitar because of mid-terms at the university. At least we went to have a dinner together with the judo people. In a Italian restaurant, no less. So I also took more than 2 months to go out for western food here (not counting ice cream in Mc Donalds). On Monday, our IMICS program decided to go ice-skating. Unfortunately, as we arrived at the ice arena, we learned that it was closed to public because of some speed skating event taking place there. So we ended up going bowling instead, which was also great fun.

Other than a few more meetings and dinners and a "4 beers for free Czechoslovakian night", the week has been fairly uneventful until today: I was walking to our project meeting, and a Taiwanese girl was walking in the other direction (I've never seen her before). Just as we passed each other, out of nowhere she said: "Mám ráda nakupování!" and kept walking. This is Czech for "I like shopping". I was too shocked to say anything and ask her, where did that come from? Was she talking to me? Did she even know that I was Czech? Or was she just practicing for a Czech class? Either way, I've encountered way more Czech language in Taiwan than I would ever have expected.

The Taiwanese people were fairly excited about the biggest event of the week - the detention of former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian - I believe he is currently in prison, being prosecuted for corruption and money-laundering, and recently went on a hunger strike.

I finally gathered enough pictures to be able to introduce my classmates (with one exception), ie. IMICS first-year students.

From left to right is:

Lenka - from Slovakia. The first person I met in Taiwan. My guardian angel for the first few weeks and a mischievous older sister ever since. We annoy others by chatting in Czech and Slovak during class breaks. Sometimes, she speaks Spanish to me and is surprised that I don't follow.

Maria Jose - a representative of the Taiwanese Chile community. Does not approve of scheduling project discussions on a Saturday evening (I got used to it pretty quickly)



Ryan - from Canada. The miraculous Matrix-like speed of his hand, the reflex to jump in the picture so quickly and the facial expression all come from his years of working as a professional juggler, circus performer and actor.

Lilian - from Taiwan, is undoubtedly the nicest and sweetest person from our group. Week in and week out, she has to explain that "the light bulb has not arrived yet", therefore we see all the presentations in purple color only.

Eddie - from Taiwan, a bowling champion, we are always classmates and almost always teammates, also an excellent companion to go drink beer with.



Not present at the bowling event were, from left to right:

Micky - from Taiwan. The first time we met, she introduced herself as "one of the Walt Disney characters". I guessed Cinderella. Just yesterday she promised to join me in the guitar class. Who knows, maybe we will start a band together one day!

Lucy - from Taiwan. Helps me survive boring classes with her incredible pencil-twirling skills - I could watch that for hours. Loves to draw pictures on the board during presentations.




now for our incredible "Night Market team"

Lily - from Mexico - the adoptive mom for Len and I, the happiest person I know, who speaks a charming mix of English, Spanish and Chinese. She wants to become Taiwanese, even though she hates Hello Kitty, pink color and tiny cutie-cutie dogs. Other options are Thailand and Praha.

Len - from Taiwan, inseparable from Lily. Always glamorous, works as an English teacher, is learning Spanish and German and when it comes to Chinese, he teaches me excellent phrases like 吃豆腐, 炒魷魚, 炒飯, 數饅頭.



Cecilia (or Lenka) - not our classmate, but a Taiwanese student from the Russian department, who is diligently studying Czech and plans on studying there in a few years. Also my language exchange partner (a real one, not what the Nov 9 post might suggest).



Kai - from Canada, hasn't joined any of our activities this week, so I don't have his picture. Last time I checked, he was still on a mission to move away from his girlfriend without upsetting her too much.
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A Squid - is not my classmate. I had it for dinner after the bowling, and it looked excellent and tasted even better. Highly recommended.

Language Exchanging a pohádka o Budulínkovi

There is a student group called Student Ambassadors here at the university. The Student Ambassadors offer help for incoming foreign students and organize a variety of activities to strengthen the links between the local and foreign students. The first or second week of September, they gave us an option to sign up for a language exchange - which means, two people meet on a regular basis, learning the language of the partner and teaching the partner some other language. So the idea here is, get a local student to teach us Chinese, and in exchange teach them a language we're good at.

Back then in September, I also filled out the form and applied for said language exchange. I never heard from anybody, so found my own ways to learn Chinese. Last week, the LE ads were finally published on the internet. Within a few days, I received about 30 emails from local students, asking to be my LE partner. I already have 4 sessions of Chinese a week and can't really handle any more. However, my classmate Ryan, who has a good amount of Taiwan experience, explained to me that in fact that wouldn't be necessary, as in many instances a language exchange is in fact a dating service, widely understood by all sides as an opportunity for the local girls to find foreign boyfriends, and for the foreigners to know the local girls on a personal level (it is not nearly as common to see the opposite, ie. taiwanese men and foreign girls), with the ultimate goal of "body fluid exchange", as Ryan put it. I went back to check the emails and indeed, about 28 (out of the 30) emails were from girls. Thing is, the only language i'd want to learn that way at the moment is Suomi. On the other hand, there are a lot more girls than guys in the Zhengda language departments, so they probably are only after the language after all.

Somewhat related to the topic of English and Eastern languages is the most hilarious website I've ever seen, and I'm not exaggerating. This can always make my day and my roommate doesn't understand why i can't stop laughing for an hour straight:

http://www.engrish.com/


The following part is in Czech, because it only makes sense in Czech.

Přemýšleli jste někdy o tom, odkud pochází jméno Budulínek z klasické české pohádky? Udělal jsem objev, který zamotá hlavu nejednomu historikovi a jazykovědci. Slovo Budulínek totiž pochází z čínštiny. Přišel jsem na to na hodině čínštiny, kde si povídá americký a čínský student o tom, jak to mají doma s výchovou. A dojdou k závěru, že americké děti se v poměrně raném věku osamostatní a jsou nezávislé, zatímco tady na východě to tak nefunguje a rodiče jim mluví do života ještě ve třiceti (což je rozhodně pravda, protože oni ve třiceti letech často nejenom s rodiči bydlí, ale musí si i vyslechnout kázání, když se vrátí domů po půlnoci. Teda abych nekecal, vyprávěla mi to kamarádka, které je 25, ale i to je dost). Nezávislý se čínsky řekne 獨立, tedy "du li". Závislý je ne-nezávislý, tedy 不獨立 "Bu du li". No a jak jsme na té hodině pořád dokola poslouchali a říkali to duli buduli, tak mě to trklo. 不獨立, Bu du li, Budulínek! Jak známo, Budulínek rozhodně není nezávislý, právě naopak. Babička mu nachystá hrášku, ještě mu přikáže, aby nikomu neotvíral a on to stejně nakonec pokazí a nechá se odnést liškou. Takže to jméno na něj sedí perfektně.

No řekněte, může to být náhoda? Nemůže! Teď jen zbývá přijít na to, jak se tyhle čínské vlivy dostaly do Evropy. Mongolové? Marco Polo? Kdy byl vlastně v českých zemích první číňan? Třeba to je začátek objevu, který přepíše historii. Tohle téma nabízím bezplatně pro další výzkum, pokud s tím někdo uděláte díru do světa, doufám, že mě v článku a na tiskové konferenci vzpomenete.

A Full Day of Taiwaneseness

One of my goals for my Taiwan stay was to avoid falling into to foreign and expat community, and to spend as much time with the Taiwanese as possible. While the plan hasn't always been 100% successful, I can proudly say that I managed to pull it off last Saturday.

First, I joined a hiking trip, organized by the Mountain Climbing Club here at the university. We met at 7 a.m. On the way to the meeting point, I met many exhausted or drunk foreign students, wearing silly costumes - they were just returning home from the Halloween parties. As for people joining the trip, there were about 16 of us altogether. Out of that, there were 2 students from Mainland China, Nick from America (he's lived in Taiwan over 4 years already, so can almost be considered a Taiwanese) and myself. Everyone else was Taiwanese.

The plan for the day was to hike the Sandiaoling trail on the northern tip of the island, famous especially for its waterfalls. We took a train from the Taipei Main Station, the journey took about 1.5 hours. The problem about northern Taiwan is, it rains a lot. So while the sky was clear in Taipei, the further north we got, the worse the weather. First an occasional cloud here and there, then it became overcast, then it started drizzling and when we got of the train at Sandiaoling station, it was raining quite heavily. The mountain climbers are a tough sort though, so it didn't stop us from setting off for the trip.



After a short walk through the village, we made a turn into the jungle. While the trail is maintained well, everywhere around is a thick, lush, green vegetation, which fits my mental image of jungle very well. Add the fact that it was misty and rained non-stop, and we have the perfect tropical rain forest. While the clouds didn't allow us to enjoy the scenery, the waterfalls were indeed wonderful. We passed about 3 or 4 of them, all spectacular.





The trail was good, but not without obstacles. First of all the streams, later on there was also quite a lot of rock climbing (with the help of ladders, ropes and chains). This part was particularly exciting for those, who were still trying to use umbrellas for protection from rain while climbing.



When we came out of the jungle, covered in mud, we cooked some noodles...



... and then proceeded back to the train station ...



... buying snacks while waiting for the train ...



... and watching this old man work.



Throughout the entire trip, Chinese was the only language used. While I handle the one-on-one conversations fairly well, I don't catch on when the Taiwanese speak with each other, outside of perhaps the general topic of the conversation.

That evening, I had an opportunity to further explore the Taiwanese culture and finally see how it's really done. I went to my friend's birthday party, which took place at a KTV. KTV is what karaoke places are called here. I believe that next to going to night markets, ktv is the other extremely popular form of entertainment. Whereas when Czech people get together, they like to go to a pub to drink beer, people in the Far East in general like to go to sing. So, what does a place like that look like? In this particular case, it was a huge building, which, to me, looks exactly like a hotel. The lobby is like a hotel. The receptionist told us that our room number is 812. So we took a lift and looked for our room.. Even that looks almost like a hotel room, except instead of the usual furnishing, it has a long sofa, couple of tables, a computer and a big TV screen. While people here really like to sing, they do it only among their friends, with no outsiders being able to observe. (Somebody told me that the Japanese, on the contrary, prefer to sing in front of a large audience).

There was about 15 of us, everyone Taiwanese, with the exception of me. As soon as we got there, everyone started rummaging through the extensive list of songs available, loading them into the computer. Then, the bottles came out of the bags (it is perfectly ok in a place like this to bring your own food, drinks, alcohol) and we spent the next 5 hours eating, drinking and most of all singing.. alone, in duets, the whole party together, whatever. Everyone was really into it and I didn't observe any shyness about "not being a good singer". 98 % of the songs were Chinese, so I had to wait a bit for the English ones to come up - and they only put them in because of me, this particular group wasn't the least bit interested in singing English songs. When we ran out of the drinks, we simply called the service (on the phone), ordered some more and they were promptly delivered. Very convenient.



Later on in the evening, the party decided to show me the the concept of Gan Bei, ie. drinking "bottoms up." They also wanted to figure out how much booze the foreigner can take and started refilling my cup at an extremely fast pace. My only fortune was that at that point, it was almost closing time, because otherwise they would get me drunk very very quickly.

Overall, this was an excellent, authentic experience.

University ranking

Big news in Wenshan! At last, the National Chengchi University received tangible international recognition. The NCCU Masters in Management program was ranked as world's 47th best in the UK Financial Times 2008 poll. Hooray, this is a good university after all. My program didn't receive any laurels that I know of, but we can at least hope to be somehow influenced by the presence of excellent future managers on campus.

Incidentally, the EMBA program at the Hong Kong University of Science Technology, where I spent one semester as an exchange student, was ranked as number 2 in the world. Average annual salary of the alumni 3 years after graduation is close to 350,000 USD. Too bad I was an undergraduate student, and spent about half the semester traveling around Asia, rather than peeking into the classrooms and making friends with the future steersmen of the world business.

This tells me I have a talent for sniffing out the cream-of-the-crop universities in Asia. Just need to work on getting my application to the right department.

Anyways, here's a link to the poll: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/masters-in-management