Corporate Poetry

It seems like whatever joy or enrichment that can be felt viewing most advertisements is not worth their mind numbing inanity. Something about consuming content that treats the world like an impulsive baby leaves me feeling a little... dumber. Such as are my beliefs, on the off chance I come across a commercial that makes me laugh or think, it's a pleasant surprise.

The commercial I present to you here is for Taiwan's most popular liquor (Gao Liang). It (the ad) speaks for itself, so I'll spare you any more introduction:

(forgive my novice translation)

When you want to pick up a beautiful woman

it's like you're drinking Gao Liang.

Your first thought is

don't be silly, you won't succeed.

Don't be silly, you'll be drunk.

Don't be silly, you'll be turned down.

Don't be silly, you have work tomorrow.

But if

your whole life you only go for the sure things,

how can you know

what you're capable of?

Just Missing the Dance

Yes, that is me. And no, it is not every day you see people grilling out and singing karaoke in front of their temple. This was a celebration for a local god that Jared and I stumbled upon when I was giving him a tour of the city. Thefood was really great, but we had to sing for our supper!

Nonhuman Rights

In case you can't see it clearly from my lowly cellphone shot: this is indeed a picture of a lady driving a scooter full of chickens. What kind of world do we live in where black chickens aren't free to sit on the front of the scooter with their white brothers and sisters? Just look at how they hang their heads in despair and humiliation as their priveleged counterparts gleefully strike bold, cocky poses. I don't mind saying that this scene not only sickened me, but gave me newfound sympathy for outlaw radicals like the Animal Liberation Front. But in these trying times we don't need masked crusaders, we need a leader! And that is why I will be working overtime to endorse this guy in his next bid for president:
I've already prepared a speech for the campaign, it's called "I Hatch a Dream"

Chirp Chirp

Here is a photo that has been sitting around for a long time waiting patiently for a good blogging. What you're looking at is two intricately crafted grasshoppers, a little smaller than hand-size each. I am told that making these out of long, broad leaves is an old tradition on Taiwanese farms. The man who made these was selling them to kids in front of the biggest temple here in Tainan. The kids were either really patient or really transfixed, because each grasshopper took more than five minutes to make. I'm leaning toward the latter, because the quick swipes of the artist's box cutter interspersed with the deliberate lashing and wrapping motions were more than enough to draw my slackened stare. My thoughts alternated between awe at the precision of the guy's work and disbelief that it was taking so long to finish. To watch someone work so fast for so long with just a leaf puts the thought "OK, that looks like a grasshopper, surely this is the last step" on repeat in your mind for a long time.
I've seen one of these in the office at my college and I must say it still looks good after its metamorphosis into its dried, brown form. Not bad for a leaf and a razor blade! This tradition further heightens my love for the Taiwanese countryside.

Linguo Head Trauma

I have a friend who is about to move from the States to China to teach, so I thought it would be appropriate to write him a Chinese message on his facebook "wall". I wanted to send a thoughtful message, one that would both make him excited about the strange journey ahead as well as impart a bit of sage wisdom that would ease any foreigner's transition to Chinese life. This proved difficult as I am mostly a wellspring of, well, that which cannot rightly be called wisdom, but I remembered some advice that was kindly bestowed upon me in my early days of Taiwanese life. The piece of advice was this:

"一晚睡覺多少" 不是 "一婉水餃多少"。 你不要被打！

This advice is a quite humourous illustration of the perils of using the wrong "tones" when pronouncing your Chinese words. The quoted parts are pronounced thusly:
(1) yī wăn shuì jiào duō shăo
(2) yī wăn shuĭ jiăo duō shăo

Notice that the only difference is your vocal inflection when pronouncing shui jiao. However, the meanings are
(1) "How much (money) to sleep (with you) one night?"
(2) "How much (money) for a plate of dumplings?"

And the end of my "wall post" simply says "Don't get smacked!" I believe this to meet the above advice qualitifications nicely. The recipient can garner many snippets of wisdom such as how to solicit prostitution, that there is some kind of dumpling that is presumably a popular food in China, and that not unlike American restraunteurs, the Chinese counterparts are likely to smack you for soliciting prostitution. On top of all this is a stark example of the hardships of speaking a tonal language. The recipient may begin to foresee the frustration that he inevitably faces when using all the right "words," but still not being understood for want of correct "tones". Perhaps this will initiate some last-minute Chinese language cramming to attempt to stave off avoidable communication disasters. Whatever the usefullness of my advice (or lack thereof), I believe the funniest part of all of this is the Google translation said friend is likely to be staring at soon, as I don't think he can read Chinese yet. Here it is:

"How much sleep a night," instead of "how much of a dumpling-wan." You will not be beat!

Ahh computer translator, there is truly no end to the LOLs you provide. I can only hope that in China, it will be how much he sleeps and not how many dumplings he eats that renders my friend unbeatable!

The Game

I finally learned how to play mahjong on Sunday. My Taiwanese friend came over to teach my roommates, girlfriend and I. It was really easy to pick up and seems fun. I can see why its so popular over here. If you've ever played Gin Rummy, the gameplay is eerily similar. That is great for me because Gin is one of the few card games I know how to play.

Fortunately, she lent us her mahjong set since she only needs it when she goes to visit her grandmother. So, if you stop hearing from me in a few weeks its probably because I'm in the depths of a seedy pan-Asian mahjong binge, gambling with a motley crew that looks like something in between grandmothers and pirates. But hell, if that happens at least I won't be able to buy this:

A Week of Camping

I've posted about 40 not-too-shabby pictures from my island-wide trip this past week (we had a break for Chinese New Year). You can read the details from some of the pictures in this Picasa web album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lonhig/ChineseNewYear09

This follows my 環島 "loop island" journey camping across Taiwan. Some nights we trespassed on farms, one night we camped at an elementary school, we backpacked a tiny slice of Taroko and stayed in a very old spa in Yilan. As you can see, my preoccupations were a little mountain-centric. Besides mountains, it was amazing seeing the Pacific from the cliffs along the East coast, lots of fireworks everywhere every night, Taroko gorge, eating lots of fresh veggies from mountain farms (so much better than lowland veggies!), drinking lots of tea fresh from the mountain-top using mountain stream water, seeing cherry blossoms, visiting a very old Japanese-built hot springs, and meeting really happy people everywhere. Everywhere we went (Mountains and East area) was predominantly aboriginal villages.

Here is a preview:

The Luckiest Day Ever

I had quite a surprise yesterday while studying at a coffee shop. I was on the University campus, in a coffee shop attached to the University book store, when the barista started asking me about my Chinese studies. Yesterday was the University's anniversary/ birthday so there were celebrations going on and no class. The barista told me that upstairs, in the very building in which I was drinking coffee, were a group of famous Chinese calligraphy masters who came on this one day only to do free calligraphy for anyone who requested it! I went upstairs and lo, there were about 6 old men all with big calligraphgy brushes and bowls of black or orange ink. They were writing the requested messages, of varying length, on various sizes of rice paper. I gravitated toward the man writing on the biggest pieces of paper, writing with the biggest brush, and asked him to write "peace" for me, which looks like 和平. Now look at the result!


(Click for big)

In olden times, characters were read from right to left, so on the left you can clearly see the stylized "平", but what about the 和 you ask? Well it turns out that the old, old version of 和 is much more complex and half of it was replaced with the 口. My scroll has the old version :)

I've learned a very valuable lesson from this experience. I'm NEVER going ANYWHERE without my camera AGAIN! Mark my words! Wait, have I said that before...?