Finland

I'm spending much of the summer in Finland. Been here for several days now. Sure, the blog is called Taiwan adventures, but this can count as a European holiday in between my regular Taiwanese life. Therefore, while I don't expect to be very prolific in writing the blog during the summer, I might still put up some horrible stereotypes of this country every once in a while.

So far, I've been here in the North for 4 days. Of that, one day was spent in Stockholm (took an overnight ferry there from Turku). I can say that Finnish/Swedish summer (warm, sunny, pleasant) > Czech summer (cold, rainy) > Taiwanese summer (Scorching hot, humid & stormy).

Now for some stereotypes. Finnish and Swedish people are.. very blond. Who would have thought that? But less expected fact, an incredible amount of people has tattoos. Seriously, it's like there are visible tattoos on 50% of the population here. And not just some tiny ones, I'm talking about whole arms (and who knows what else) covered with tattoos. I guess they aren't aware of the fact that they will never be able to appear on Korean TV (apparently, people with tattoos are not allowed to appear on TV in Korea.)

Other than that, goatees are big among the Finnish men, as are goatee-braids. And of course, the metal looks. Swedish men, on the other hand, are best identified by long, slick hair. And the Swedish royal guards, guarding the royal palace in Stockholm, are total wussies.

Going back - Reverse culture shock

This is my first post from outside Taiwan. After three days back in the Czech Republic, I've obviously had time to drink a beer or two, but don't feel like doing that Taiwan reflection quite yet. Instead, I'll focus on my trip back and what the first days brought.

Probably the worst part of the trip from Taipei to Prague was trying to get to the Taipei airport. Even walking from home to the bus stop, and then from public bus stop to the airport bus, in the scorching Taiwanese heat, was rather demanding. Still, I guess I was lucky, as there was no thunderstorm and no crazy Taiwanese rain on that day, unlike all the other days last week.

I was a little scared of the flight itself, because KLM uses an old Boeing 747 on that route, which doesn't have the personal screen with audio/video on demand at each seat. What an outrage! I may have become a bit spoiled, but all the other intercontinental flights I've been on had that, even in economy class. What's more, I couldn't see properly even the 'communal' TV screen from my seat. That didn't matter, because the movies they showed were stupid anyways. But at the end, I didn't mind this lack of entertainment one bit. There were many eating and drinking opportunities during the flight, which took up a lot of time (I learned this trick during endless rides in trains in China. When done properly, eating can take up a lot of time, which passes rather quickly. Similarly, time passes faster with a bottle of wine or beer). I spent the rest of time asleep, half asleep or in a state of stupor.

The first thing I did at the Prague airport was try to address a lady at the information counter with 不好意思.. The I got out of the airport and attempted to flag down an approaching bus. I spent the trip to my Prague home observing the Czech people. I felt that I fit in rather well with the Czech men. I was wearing unmatching sports shoes together with a loose and not very pretty t-shirt (comfort during the flight was of utmost importance for me), I also didn't smell that well after 24 hours of traveling, and had not shaven for a few days. Fortunately, at least I wasn't sporting a large beer gut or a fanny pack (ledvinka), which appears to be the one accessory no Czech man leaves the home without. I may have just been lucky to only meet IT men though. Anyways, at least the girls in Prague looked very pretty, even without the mini skirts and very short shorts that I've become used to.

Also, people in general seemed very tall and it was a shock at first when the grandmas making small talk on the bus spoke Czech. I didn't need any Easycard to get on/off the bus, and the bus came exactly at the time that the schedule said. Weird.

Later that afternoon, I went to the center of the city, which was completely taken over by foreigners. The people in the cafes spoke Russian, the exchange offices were either Russian, Turkish or Arab and everyone else was a tourist. Then I accidentally ran into a friend at Václavské náměstí - a Turkish guy. It seemed that tattoos made up of Chinese characters are particularly popular this year. The characters usually seemed somehow weird or didn't make much sense. I even saw someone with a mirror-imaged Chinese character! I chuckled, but decided not to break the bad news for them.

However, arriving into my hometown of Jablonec nad Nisou later that afternoon, everything looked exactly the same as it was last year. As if I never went away. Except for the fact that a new Lidl supermarket is now around the corner from our house.

On to an unrelated topic. I wrote another short report for Zápisník zahraničních zpravodajů, this time on the topic of North Korea. You can find it here. It seems that I'm doing quite well with the voting for the competition so far, but please support me and send me a vote :) Maybe I can win a cup or something wonderful like that. It's in Czech only, but if any foreign readers want to give me a vote, then 1 means good, while 5 means bad. Therefore, I'd prefer the 1's. Thanks.

Speaking of North Korea, during the tour to the border, people were joking around and asking what would happen if they tried to cross the border and enter the land blessed with the genius of Our Dear Leader Kim Chong-Il. The story of the two American journalists sentenced to 12 years in labor camps for allegedly crossing the border from China gives a pretty good answer. At the time I went there in early May, North Korea seemed like a laughable country that doesn't need to be taken seriously. Just one week after my trip, they started playing around with the missiles and nuclear tests.. I guess they do want to repair their international reputation and be taken seriously after all.

Packing

The last few weeks have flown by and all of a sudden, I'm packing my bags, and tomorrow I'm flying Taipei - Bangkok - Amsterdam - Prague for the summer in Europe. I haven't even had a chance to think about that much, since all of June was dedicated pretty much only to writing papers and giving presentations. Last presentation is tomorrow morning, and in the afternoon i will already be on the way to the airport. It must seem that I'm dying to get out of Taiwan as soon as possible.. That's only partially true, the main reason was that at the time when I was buying my ticket, it was much cheaper when departing on June 17th at the latest.

At the same time, I have to admit that it just isn't very pleasant to be here at the moment, mainly due to the weather. It's been scorching hot & humid pretty much every day now, with huge thunderstorms and pouring rain coming out of nowhere in the afternoons. Just today, I had a nice sprint up the hill to where i live, because I already knew the "pouring buckets of water" type of rain was coming.

Speaking of weather, did you know that typhoons in Taiwan prevent large and destructive earthquakes from happening? Apparently that's what some scientists discovered. Here's an article about it (in Czech). 

Expect some summary of my year 1 in Taiwan, after I've had a bit of time to reflect on them (over Czech beer, of course :)

Discrepancies

I still remember one sentence in my bachelor's thesis, the topic of which was Taiwan. "The price level in Taiwan is higher than that of the Czech Republic." I never did any serious research about it, it usually seems pretty similar, although food and services tend to be generally cheaper in Taiwan.

Today, I went to buy contact lenses. I bought exactly the same brand, type and amount in the Czech Republic for 770 CZK (about 1300 NTD or 29 Euros). In Taiwan, it cost 380 NTD (about 220 CZK, or 8 Euros). And that was in a normal shop, while the Czech price is over the internet, i.e. that should be the cheaper option. How weird is that!?

Sweet Home Asia?

I've just realized that between the time I spent in Hong Kong, Taiwan and several other countries around here, I've been in Asia for over a year altogether, overtaking North America for second place in continents where I spent the longest (now that is a silly ranking..), even if in terms of countries, United States are still in second place (Taiwan will take over soon enough though).

One year sounds like a pretty long time already, and I'm not even sure where it came from. I don't consider myself a big Asia-phile. Don't have a particular interest for the Far Eastern cultures. Don't care about Buddhism, Confucianism and don't plan on spending several years searching for my soul in a monastery. While I've tried several types of martial arts before, i've not developed any particular passion for them, which would make me want to seek wisdom from the real masters (everyone knows that only an Asian guy can be a real kung-fu or karate master!). While I can appreciate the beauty of Taiwanese women, there is significant evidence that I didn't come here for the girls.

So really, I just kind of lucked into this. When deciding about the place of my semester abroad exchange 3 years ago, I thought that Europe is too close and safe, America sounded boring and Hong Kong was the only other option. I did kind of develop a passion for the Chinese language, although that has in recent months been shaken by a little frustration about the language. Strangely, in the first weeks and months of my studies, I thought it was really fun and easy to learn and speak. Now it seems that the more I learn, the more there is still to learn.

With all that said.. While I'm looking forward to my summer in Europe, I'm pretty sure that after 2 months there, I will be excited and ready for another year in this crazy island.

Dragon Boat Day

I always used to think the Czech holidays were pretty boring. Christian festivals, Saints' days, independence day, the guys who brought Christianity and Cyrillic alphabet into our pagan lands (though nowadays we don't use Cyrillic and most people are not Christian). Life abroad and having to explain some of my country's traditions made me revisit this a bit. One holiday is for Jan Hus, a guy who got tricked to travel to Germany 'for a little chat' and once there, got arrested and burnt. Mikuláš sounds extremely obscure from the Far East, with loads of angels, devils and old bearded men swarming the streets. I tend to avoid explaining our Easter traditions nowadays, because that inevitably freaks people out. Still, most of these days are welcome mostly because that means not having to go to school or work.

The Chinese, on the other hand, have cool sounding holidays. Lantern festival, Moon festival, Buddha's birthday, Dragon Boat Holiday, they all sound incredibly exotic, oriental and mystical. I wouldn't be surprised if they also meant not much more than a day off for the locals, but the foreigners love these festivals, thinking that they are really getting in touch with the local culture.



We just had the Dragon Boat holiday here last week. A background legend first:

Many centuries ago, a man named Qu Yuan lived in the Zhou dynasty. He worked as a minister. He was honest, just and smart, and the common people loved him. However, the other officials in the kingdom were jealous of this man, and somehow they managed to persuade the emperor to remove him from office and kick him out of the country. Qu Yuan went into exile and lived there for several years. Later, another empire invaded the Zhou dynasty and conquered it. Qu Yuan still loved his country and couldn't bear to watch it. So he jumped into a river and drowned himself. The people, who still remembered what a great man he was, jumped on boats and went on the river, where he drowned. They beat drums to scare the fish away, so that they wouldn't eat his body. They also threw rice cakes into the water, so that the fish would eat them, rather than the corpse.



During the Dragon Boat festival as it is today, hundreds of boat races are held throughout the Chinese world. All it really is is crews on long, narrow boats decorated with dragon motives racing against others over a distance to grab a flag at the end of the course. Each boat has a drum and a drummer, who is trying to make sure the paddling is synchronized. Pretty straightforward. Some crews were trying hard, some took it easy, some quit right after the start. There were really good ones, as well as really sloppy ones, who ignored their drummer and kept hitting others' paddles.



I went to see the races in Dajia park, close to Taipei's Grand Hotel (above). It was indeed an interesting cultural experience although one only has to see a handful of races to see it all. That comes from the position of a spectator, I'm sure it's much more thrilling to actually be on the boat. One thing that struck me was the huge amount of foreigners taking part in the races and in the audience. That proves my theory that the locals mostly don't care and are happy to have a day off, whereas the foreigners see this as an opportunity to really immerse in the local culture. Everyone I spoke to thought it was really worth the blood, sweat and tears of the hard, long practices. All I can say is my usual mantra: Maybe next year, I could do this too.