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.