January 19, 2009: Taipei

This day was possibly the longest I’ve had ever, even longer than the 3 in 1 day I had yesterday. Our director, Gloria Bien, is attempting to keep us from having a chance to sleep and give in to jet lag. She was wildly successful today.

But before I get into the long and short (though there’s nothing brief in it) about what we did today, allow me to explain what this trip is in more detail as well as who’s with me.
Including our director, there’s a total of 13 (Go Colgate!) of us on this study group. There’s me, Tram (my roommate), Clarissa, Georgia, Becky, Tina, Ellie, Lauren, Ned, Eric, Geoff, and Gary. Thirteen people may not sound like a lot, but when you move in a pack, it’s cumbersome and terribly awkward being a giant group of foreigners. I like them all thus far, though I’m sure everyone will get on everyone’s nerves at some point during the semester. It’s only inevitable with the nature of this trip (small, rather exclusive). Tram’s pretty cool to room with. We verbally abuse each other on an hourly basis but it’s fun- like a game of one man up. It keeps you on your feet having to think up a contextually appropriate insulting response.

Way to go Colgate for diversity. Of all of us, we have four people with some kind of Asian descent, the brown West Indian (me), and an African American. Sadly none of us are blond. A real shame in my opinion. We’ve already run into the phenomena of Chinese people assuming that Geoff, Gary, Tram, Ellie, and Georgia understand/are Chinese. They can’t decide if they like it or not. I don’t think I’ll run into this probably. Go European heritage!

Chinese New Year’s is on the 26th or 27th so all the students are currently on vacation. We can’t start our classes in Beijing until a little while after New Year’s so our study abroad will begin with a two week vacation trip in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I don’t really know yet what our schedule is while we’re here. After Hong Kong we’ll head to Beijing for most of the rest of the semester, though we have a trip planned to Shanghai and Hangzhou as well as a week off for Spring Break.

Last night we didn’t crash into bed as soon as we walked in, but it was pretty close. We unpacked just the tiniest bit and checked our emails. We had to be up in time to eat and move out to our lecture on Taiwanese and Chinese tradition musical instruments. You’d think that 3 hours would be a long time to listen to presentations, but it was all very interesting. The mini demonstrational concerts we received was definitely a help in keeping the interest there.
The first instrument that we saw was a giant stick-looking Pestel used to grind millet by the Thae. Apparently the aboriginals used it functionally for a while before realizing that the thumping could be turned into functional harvesting AND music. We got to handle several and try our hand at thumping in the front courtyard. Bluntly, cumulatively we have absolutely no musical talent.

Next was the Huqin, or erhu as I better know it. It’s a two stringed instrument that creates that is often played in a pentatonic scale (five notes) that most people associate with Chinese music. It’s got a round shaped sound box made of wood with one side cover with [snake] skin. The neck is typically made of cow bone. Wood in China means bamboo 99.99% of the time. Just so you know.

The two strings are played with a bow of horse hair. First crafted in the Tang Dynasty, this instrument has gone through some changes, but it mostly the same as it was in the beginning. The graduate student performing it for us explained that it can do nearly everything any other stringed instrument of comparable size can do, ex: violin. She then proceeded to play a concerto which sounded remarkably like a violin. It’s also amazing at imitating animal sounds. She had it twitter like song birds, bark like a sick dog, and whiney like a horse.

The Erhu is a great example that simplicity sometimes is best. With only two strings it manages to do everything you could really ever need an instrument to do-sound good, sound bad, and sound like an animal.

Another student demonstrated the Dizi (笛子), the Chinese traditional flute, in its different sizes. It started out as a bone flute not too long ago… only about 9,000 years ago. Unlike our flutes, one flute plays one key so players end up carrying a lot of different sized flutes, which they may switch mid-song if need be. The two main categories the flutes fall under are the Bandi and Qudi, northern and southern styles respectively. I like the Qudi much better. Northern style music is all this high, bright, fast, and borderline hysterical nonsense. Probably because life was/is rather difficult compared to the south. Southern style is slower, more methodical where you can actually hear notes that aren’t trying to make your ear drums bleed.

The whole thing was just awesome and now I’m inspired. Not inspired enough to go and learn one, but enough that I’ll buy a pirated CD of good classical music when I reach Beijing. Along with several dozen pirated movies. I’ll probably have a few of the new ones before you get to watch them in theaters.

We had lunch at some Vegetarian place. It was cool, but nothing terribly special remains in my mind other than what really ought to have been meat wasn’t. Or maybe it was. You never can believe what people tell you…

Following lunch we went back to the University where we were giving a briefing and tour of the Mandarin Training Center (MTC), one of the best learn-Chinese programs in Taiwan. Several high profile people are alumni including the current Australian Prime Minister. I would have been more impressed with someone like Will Smith. Who cares for foreign politics? Just kidding.

They explained their program and were super nice to us. To fully display how they help their students learn Chinese language and culture they included us in a make-certain-New Year’s-type-of-food workshop. Fangao and Anguiguo to be exact. Those names as much to me as they do to you I’m sure. Like every other candy, dessert, and food in general, Fangao and Anguguo are made of rice at the most basic level. Fangao is a thing you pour into a pink or red cup as full as possible. The top will “explode” when you bake it and the more it explodes, the better your future fortune and luck will be. Anguguo is a red sticky rice paste rolled around red bean paste and put into a flat mold shaped like a turtle. The turtle is supposed to symbolize longevity and fortune.

In addition to having no musical talent, none of us will be master chefs. All of our turtles ended up looking like it swallowed a fish that was too big for its stomach. We can’t even blame confusion since everything was first spoken in Chinese and then English. What I can blame mine on is exhaustion. Halfway through the wave of tired bowled me over like a dead fish (lovely metaphor right?) and all I could think about was sleep. But alas, we must continue to drag ourselves through this endless day.

Continuing on, we now leave to meet Dr. Steven Bradbury, an American who’s been teaching here in a Taiwanese university for the past 11 years. He specializes in poetry, but doesn’t teach it here since there’s no infrastructure to teach that sort of thing. Ironic considering the great poets of Ancient Asia. We went to Mei’s Tea bar and hung out there for several hours while he talked to us about various things about Taiwan and poetry.

After we finished at the tea bar, Professor Bradbury took us to the night market near the school. My experience there consisted of walking down the main street for about one minute, ducking into a diner (I refuse to use the word restaurant to describe most of the places I eat at. It doesn’t convey the right message) that had noodles for dinner with Bien and eventually the rest of the study group (who stumbled in later because we gravitate towards even when we actively try to avoid it) and heading back to the dorms. I plan to look at it again later when I’m not stumbling like a drunkard.

Soon I’ll put down some of my initial impressions of Taiwan, but since I’m (still) tired and this is already pretty long, I’m gonna call it a night.