All Taiwan Is You

I’ve waited this long since the first post in the hopes that I could acquire the appropriate cable necessary to download my camera’s photos. Unfortunately, I left that cable back in the States but I did bring my Minnesota modesty which aids me little in my attempts to find a particular wire in the bright and bustling electronics district of Taipei. So, until I purchase said cable, I’ll be posting pictures plagiarized from plentiful personal websites of plucky photographers.

I’ve now been in Taiwan, population 23 million (same as Australia but 213 times smaller), the Asian Mecca of computer technologies and “true” Chinese cuisine, for just over a month now. What do I have to show for it? Not a whole lot actually.

Not a whole lot technically but an abundant cache of life experience packed into a one month. At this point, I’ve basically spent a month on vacation. It makes me nervous to think of what it costs me to spend an entire month without work with the pressing concerns of food, rent, and most frightening, student loans. Barring great disaster, though, I have nothing to fear for the next two months as I saved up a great deal before departing. I feel it a bit reprehensible of our United States culture that I’m haunted by such dread for this absence from the work force. Living in Taiwan has taught me what I love and what I hate about the United States.

I love the invention and maintenance of the idea of sidewalks in my homeland. On any given day, on any given street, you and your two friends can walk comfortably abreast down the sidewalk. Occasionally, you need give way for foot traffic from the opposite direction but it’s as easy as stepping onto the grassy boulevard. Especially in the major cities, bike traffic is disallowed leaving the sidewalk the sole realm of the pedestrian.

In Taiwan, they don’t have sidewalks. They have attic crawlspaces, stuffed with forgotten relics, in a contested no man’s land somewhere between shop and street.

I don’t know if it’s properly illustrated in this picture but I spend much of the time making way for others by stepping into the scooter-parking/pallet-storage zones of the sidewalk. Many times, I must move so far aside that I’m walking in the street, like many other pedestrians, never quite comfortable with how much wind I feel from the passing cars.

Last night, I found an average Western-sized sidewalk and delighted in my freedom of movement only to find myself making way for a car. I double-checked to make sure I was not the only person walking on this “sidewalk”. I noticed the curb was several inches above the street, no gentle slope to aid the car’s ascent. All the same, the car waited impatiently for myself and the other pedestrians to scurry away before parking like FBI agent coming to the scene of a bank robbery. It has been a month and I feel less and less comfortable about my definition of “sidewalk”.

One of the many things I do love about Taiwan is the incomparable convenience store life. The list of products and services you can find at any 7-11 is astounding and makes American convenience stores look like a trip to the DMV. This list does a good job painting the picture but let me summarize a few points. You can walk into every 7-11 and:

•  Pay your utility bills and traffic tickets
• Do your dry-cleaning
• Have an employee call a cab on your behalf
• Send packages from 7-11 to 7-11 worldwide
• Buy concert and sports tickets
• Buy microwaveable meals which the employees will prepare for you for next extra charge and with a smile

I believe I fell in love with Taiwan the first time I bought the meal which was the prepared by a smiling employee. And with over five thousand locations in a country the size of North Carolina, you will never need to use a store locator when looking for a 7-11. That’s not even considering the number of the competitor convenience stores of Family Mart, OK Mart, and Hi-Life which fill the rare corner not already claimed by 7-11.

Hopefully, this brief post will whet your appetite for future installments in “Yet Another White Guy Who Doesn’t Speak Chinese Moves to Taiwan in Search of Work”. If you have such free time, I would love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email at [sandraker@gmail.com].

“My good friends, imagine if you were to live at the bottom of a deep, dark well. What kind of world would you see?”

There is a Taiwanese fable about a little frog who lived at the bottom of a well. Many flies and bugs crawled down his way, so he never went hungry. He had all the water he’d ever need so he could always swim and never go thirsty. Then, one day, he got a visit from a bird, perched on the edge of the well.

“Hello!” cried the little frog. “Why don’t you come down here and play with me. It’s so pleasant down here. Look, I have cool water to drink and countless insects to eat. Come down! At night I can watch the twinkling stars, and sometimes I can see the beautiful moon, too.”

“Hi, Little Frog!” said the bird. “You see, the outside world is much bigger and nicer. It’s many times more beautiful than your little well at the bottom. ”

The little frog stubbornly denied such obvious lies and after several visits, the bird finally grew frustrated and swooped down to pick up the little frog. He carried the frog out, kicking and screaming, and showed him the world he so protested. The bird showed him mountains and valleys, rivers and seas before setting him down next to a quiet pond.

The bird asked, “Little Frog! How’s this outside world? Big? Beautiful?”

“Thank you very much. If you had not brought me out to see this world, I would never had known that there are such beautiful things that exist outside my well .” The little frog never tried to go back to his old well again.