January 20, 2009: Taipei

I feel like I’ve had one long day since I left my house punctuated with bouts of sleeping that don’t last long enough. I guess I am just as susceptible to jetlag as anyone else (even though I’ve at least mentally convinced myself that I will not succumb. I call it will power. Others call it denial.).

We had breakfast at a bakery before we went back to the school for more presentations on music. Eating breakfast is almost more of an adventure than dinner. At least at dinner I can understand what meat is in a dish and the basic method of preparation. Breakfast is just shooting blinding in the dark and hoping I like whatever pastry/gruel I’m eating. Alas, today was a least than fortunate morning in that regard.

Today’s music history and demonstrations started with video clips of traditional Taiwanese nose flutes. Yes, nose flutes. Vertical nose flutes are completely unique to the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan, though horizontal flutes can be found other places at well. I’m not entirely sure I’d ever want to try someone else’s nose flute…

A graduate student came in and played the Pipa for us. It’s a stringed instrument very similar to the Sitar (Middle East) or the Lute (Europe). I think it might be my favorite Asian instrument (I still like the Southern style of music better). Strings are better than wind or brass, not that I’ve really seen a brass Asian instrument yet.

The other instrument we saw was the Zen, another with strings. It’s more a flat board on legs with many strings that you pluck/strum/vibrate. If you’ve seen Hero with Jet Li there’s an old man playing a Zen in one of the fight scenes (in a courtyard while it’s raining). We got to try it ourselves. I was first since everyone always looks like a deer in the headlights the moment you ask someone to put themselves on the spot.

For lunch, we met some graduate students from the University who were going to be our language partners. We found this idea to be rather stupid, even though we really liked the people. We’re only going to be here another day after all and not see them again after this afternoon. But whatever.

We went to a restaurant called Ding Tai Feng (they have a couple of branches in America) that apparently is famous for its dumplings. It was quite crowded and we had to wait a bit before we could get a table. The food was worth it though. There is a type of dumplings that are very good and if you get a chance should try them. They’ve got “soup” in them. A normal rounded dumpling with some sort of filling but also flavored broth. It’s amazingly good.

I got to practice some of my Chinese with the grad student sitting next to me and the professor at our table. I wish more people would just talk Chinese continuously to us like that. It really helps it come back. My Chinese is a little worse than it was this summer, tone and pronunciation wise, but I think that’ll be helped soon enough. I know more words so the range of discussion I can hold is greater, even if I sound like an American. Meh, that’s probably not so bad considering I am.

After lunch we went to an Art/Calligraphy lecture. All the lectures have been very interesting so far and this was no different, even though I’m not much of an art connoisseur.
Chinese writing is probably older than 3,000 years (the earliest dated piece of writing is already pretty well thought out) and has gone through some evolution through the years. Characters are based on pictures and there is/were five major scripts (only one of which I have any capability reading): seal, clerical, standard, running, and cursive. Only standard and running are commonly used for writing.

What I got most from that lecture was what makes a good calligrapher. I know it’s hard-I had a class in it over the summer, but it still didn’t explain why some people were so impressed with some calligraphers that they were nearly considered gods. She never said it explicitly but I gathered that the impressiveness is in how well an artist can get the nuisances right. The skill it takes to make the very small adjustments in a perfect stroke is rare to find. Also, because characters have a definitive pattern in the way which they must be written you can follow the artist stroke by stroke and compare different strokes of the same kind to each other. This allows you to judge whether the artist was in a hurry, calm, etc. Basically you can get to know the artist.

Professor Bien arranged for us to hang out with some of our language partners from lunch in the evening for karaoke. We had free time in which we all clung to our beds and then met them to go to wherever we went.

The Chinese take karaoke very seriously. We went to a spot that could’ve been a hotel with the multiple floors, chandeliers, glass doors etc. It might have been a hotel that was converted later on. You also get a party room for your own and can order drinks and snacks. The book that displayed the songs you could choose was enormous but the section for English songs was itty bitty. Most of them were rather old (Bob Dylan, Scorpions, and things I remember from the 90’s) but there was also an obscene amount of Britney Spears. Some of the songs were pirated and we always knew which songs was legit vs. not by the music video that would play the words of the song. If it was pirated it always ended up being some vaguely creepy Australian white women in a shirt that was too short looking off into the distance or swiveling around. Sometimes there’d be a guy around too.

I think most of us sang at least part of one song and after we made it back to rooms we pretty much went straight to bed. I think it’s going to be a trend.