We spent a good chunk of time with a team from Invisible Elephant who came in to give us some training on making technical presentations, and then dug into the code on Day 2. It was great to have the geniuses at Mozilla Labs like Atul and Myk show us the latest Jetpack code as well as get the latest project direction from Daniel, Aza, and Nick, from which we could see the amount of careful consideration and effort that’s gone into the Jetpack reboot.

The best part of the whole experience, though, has to be the fellowship with the other Jetpack Ambassadors. The Ambassadors came from all over the world, encompassing Europe, Asia, S. America, and of course N. America. Each are involved with some really exciting projects and have each made a name for themselves in their respective communities. I’ve put together a twitter list of all the Jetpack Ambassadors and the core team members and invite you to follow them.

We also had the greatest number of Ubiquity core developers to have ever been in the same place at the same time, which of course had to be documented.

(More photos can be seen in my gallery.)

I had a fantastic time in MV and it was a shame I could only be there for such a short time. I feel honored to be a part of this group and am looking forward to speaking on Jetpack soon at an event near you!

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1. Contribute to Ubiquity! No Coding Required!
2. Localizing Ubiquity: an open letter to linguists
3. Mozilla By The Numbers

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Being a longer time slot than I previously have used to talk about Ubiquity, I decided to dedicate a good portion of the talk to Jetpack. Being outside of Mozilla for the past few months, this gave me an opportunity to get reacquainted with the Jetpack APIs. I myself was impressed by how easy it was to develop a quick Jetpack. I ended up preparing two to live-code during the talk: one called Helvetica which, with one click, replaces all fonts on the current page with Helvetica; and You Are Here which uses an open API from IPinfoDB to display the physical location of the domain you are currently visiting in the status bar. Both are now on the Jetpack Gallery.

Unfortunately there was a bit of a snowstorm leading up to the event, but there was still a nice turnout and I got to meet some fantastic people there. Ken Shoemake of slerp and quaternion fame came up to me after my talk and said “the Ubiquity parser reminded me of the dancing bear… it’s less surprising that it works well as that it works at all.” I also enjoyed the other great presentations in the technology track, covering the virtues of REST and basic iPhone development.

Mashup the Browser with Ubiquity and Jetpack

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2. Talking Ubiquity in Japan: 拡張機能勉強会にて発表
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Last weekend my family (including my aunt Mikako and Bailey) took a short trip to Yugawara (湯河原) at the base of the Izu peninsula. Last weekend was possibly the peak of the cherry blossoms this year, making it a very picturesque trip. It’s quite rare for the four of us to all be in the same place at the same time, so these photos are definite keepers:

One of my personal highlights was going down a slide at Azumayama Park in Ninomiya right through a grove of cherry trees in full bloom—it was so beautiful that I had to go back down it again and take a video! Unfortunately the Flash video encoding (or my camera) doesn’t do it justice, but I hope you can fill in the gaps with your imagination.

Cherry blossom slide - 桜のすべりだい（二宮吾妻山公園） from mitcho on Vimeo.

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1. Weekend in Osaka
2. 北京 Part 3: The Great Wall of China! and noodles
3. 新年快樂! Chinese New Year with Andy

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My trip began with the three-hour bullet train (新幹線 shinkansen) ride out to Osaka. I hadn’t purchased a ticket in advance, so that meant standing in a non-reserved seating car for most of the way there, the sole consolation being the great view of Mt. Fuji. Lesson learned: buy reserved tickets for holiday weekends.

大阪城

Our first stop was the Osaka castle (大阪城 ōsaka jyō). Located at the center of the city, the castle is surrounded by a moat and a pretty big park. Many of the paths are lined with cherry trees, making it a popular cherry blossom viewing venue in the spring.

The castle seen today is actually not the original but the end product of the history of its complicated history. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) built the castle began its construction in 1583 but were stripped of its outer baileys at the end of the Toyotomi era in 1615. Since then many have tried to rebuild parts of it while it endured lightning strikes, Meiji restoration civil unrest, and World War II bombings.

Here Bailey reconnected with her inner Bailey:

道頓堀 and 文楽

We continued on to Dōtonbori (道頓堀), the flashy and touristy part of the town. Particularly famous is the crab restaurant with the huge mechanized crab sign. The main strip runs parallel to a boardwalk which offered a comfortable contrast to all the shops.

We also had たいやき (taiyaki), the fish-shaped cake with red bean paste inside. No fish were harmed in the making of our taiyaki.

Afterwards we met up with Bailey’s classmates and professor from her nō (能) and kyōgen (狂言) course to see a bunraku (文楽) performance. Buraku is a Japanese puppet theater tradition which originally began as street performances in Osaka and registered as a UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Bunraku today is only performed regularly in Osaka and, compared to other traditional theaters such as nō or kabuki, has an uncertain future for its continued performance and teaching.

A bunraku performance consists of key scenes from a few different famous stories (or, stories that were famous 300 years ago), like a review show. The puppeteers are accompanied by the storytellers who have a distinct style of sing-speaking, much like in opera. The language they use is an older style of Japanese (think Shakespearean English, say), so the theater has supertitles. These storytellers are in turn accompanied by a handful of musicians.

Each puppet is controlled by often four different people, with only the lead puppeteer’s (who controls the head and right hand) face visible. You can obviously see all the puppeteers, but if you ignore all the people dressed in black and just look at one of the dolls, they really do move like people and express human emotions. It’s riveting. Unfortunately we weren’t able to take any pictures.

We love Ikeda and Momofuku Ando

The next morning we went up to Ikeda, a northern suburb in Osaka prefecture, in search of Momofuku.

Earlier this year Elvis Costello released the album Momofuku with The Imposters. The album features Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis. But this is not the Momofuku we were looking for.

We went to Ikeda for the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. Andō Momofuku (安藤 百福) was of course the inventor of instant ramen and cup ramen and founder of Nissin foods.

The museum is a beautifully designed building full of cute ramen-related displays and, on that day, dozens of elementary school groups. The display first takes you through the history of instant ramen—its discovery, marketing, evolution, and ultimate world (and space) domination. Have you ever wondered why the ramen in cup ramen cups are floating towards the top? Or why he decided to seal the packages with an aluminum foil top? Well, if you went to the museum, you would know these answers.

There was also a huge “Instant Ramen Tunnel”: a genealogical timeline of all the Nissin product lines, beginning with the original 1958 package.

The museum was also filled with the adorable instant ramen chicken character. We found a huge one on the second floor.

The highlight, however, might have been Mister Ando himself. Just look at him:

Frankly, that looks way more like an album cover than the actual Elvis Costello Momofuku album art.¹

勝尾寺

We took a train and then an expensive taxi up to Katsuō-ji (勝尾寺), a beautiful temple up on a mountain. The leaves were turning so it was the perfect time of the year to go.

Walking up the mountain, we started finding a bunch of daruma dolls—little dolls based on Bodhidharma, a prince-turned-monk important in the early history of Zen Buddhism. Legend has it that Daruma went into a dark cave to mediate for nine years and his eyes fell off. Even now in Japan, you buy daruma dolls with blank eyes, filling in one eye when you make a wish and filling in the other once the wish has come true.

It turns out the daruma dolls are a kind of symbol of the temple. Most temples have omikuji (おみくじ) fortunes that you draw and if you like the fortune² you can tie it to a string or tree in the temple. This temple sells omikuji that come in little daruma dolls, so many people will take their daruma and leave it someplace in the temple grounds for good luck.

The temple also had something else bizarre. A little background: there’s a famous pilgrimage route of 88 Buddhist temples on Shikoku island in western Japan. Well, why would you bother taking time to visit all those temples when someone can bring some of the ground from each of those temples into a central location!? This is what they did at Katsuō-ji… neither Bailey nor I are Buddhism experts, but we agreed it’s bizarre, to say the least.

Overall, though, Katsuō-ji and the mountains were beautiful. We had a great weekend.

Related posts:

1. Weekend update: 師大 café, 南方澳, and 淡水
2. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
3. 北京 Part 1: Fulbright love, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and Houhai

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Best Curry Udon ever (Yilan)

I’ve been craving some good udon noodles, called 烏龍麵 (wūlóngmiàn) in Taiwan which originally confused me as those are the characters for Oolong tea.¹ I haven’t found great soup udon in Yilan but I did find some fabulous fried curry udon.

The (unfortunate) best way to describe this shop is “half-a-block from the entrance of the night market, across the street from the condom store.” For the past month or two, since I found this store, this has been my dinner every Tuesday before Chinese class. Here are some pictures from when Aaron and I went.

The curry udon is 55 dollars. The other two flavors were unfortunately not as good. I haven’t tried anything else at that store, but I really don’t know why I would. The store also has Coke, Sprite, and Apple Sidra in glass bottles which taste great.

Real Ramen (Luodong)

I asked a few locals where I could get “real ramen”: not that instant schtuff but the fresh firm yellow noodles in a variety of soups with different toppings.² The place that was recommended to me is just down the street from the Luodong night market, past the post office and toward (but before) Zhengzheng elementary school.

They had all the classic soups, like pork broth, soy, and miso, and they all came with wonderful fixin’s. Highly recommended.

The Diner (Taipei)

The Diner, Taipei

The Diner is a classic American diner in Taipei near Da-an Park.³ Other places may advertise “American breakfast” but this is the real deal. It took us a disgustingly long amount of time to find it but it was worth the wait and, with the proper directions or address, I know you, gentle reader, will find it with ease.

The Diner has a great atmosphere. While there isn’t much of a counter, there were soft bench seats and a real diner feel. It even had a print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks on the back wall. Nice touch, though it makes me miss the Institute.

Michelle and I split a mushroom and swiss and a California burger. A&W Root Beer was available, so we bit.

We also saw the most disgustingly large burger this side of the Pacific two tables down that just had to be documented. I finished the meal off with their pecan pie, served warm and soft with some vanilla ice cream. Amazing.

“Steak” and bread-covered soup (Yilan)

Aaron and I went out to get some Taiwanese 牛排 (nǐupǎi, ‘steak’) after our last Classical Chinese class. The particular place we went was inside the Yilan night market. We ordered the meal, meaning we got some soup and some salad. This soup had a thin pastry-esque top to it. In classic Taiwanese style, however, the bread was slightly sweet, making it interesting—not bad—in the savory soup.

The Taiwanese interpretation of “steak” is a bizarre concoction. It’s steak on a skillet alright, but with some extras. The steak is laid upon a bed of “spaghetti” (close, but not quite) with some mixed vegetables and a fried egg on top. You have your choice of black pepper and some other sauce although our waitress recommended the half and half.

Once you get over the fact that you don’t live in America, it’s really quite delicious.

Tavoli pizza (Yilan)

Aaron called this “the best pizza in Asia” (possibly only matched by The Tree in Beijing which I went to back in January). The owner went to Cornell and speaks English fluently. She returned to Yilan and opened this restaurant, bringing much needed amazing boutique pizza to Yilan.

I’ve had the white chicken pizza and BBQ beef pizza which were both fabulous, and nibbled at others’ Formaggio (lots of cheese) and Margherita. They also have a great caprese salad with fresh mozzarella (!). I was about to die when I tasted balsamic vinegar.

Tavoli also serves good fresh American-style lemonade, A&W Root Beer (cans), and an Italian import beer. It’s not cheap by Taiwan standards, with a meal registering 200-300 dollars (still cheap by American standards), but definitely worth every penny.

All that being said, the photos above aren’t all about the pizza, but that’s just because good company is the ultimate ingredient in a meal.⁴

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1. Lantern Festival
2. A Saturday in 台北
3. 新年快樂! Chinese New Year with Andy

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Chiayi is a medium-sized city (270k people, so still way bigger that Luodong or Yilan) on the plains of southwestern Taiwan. The good news about getting to Chiayi is that there is a high speed rail station—the bad news is that that station is actually about half an hour east of the city by car. I took a taxi into the city Thursday night, but took the free shuttle service on Sunday.² As is the case with most cities on the west coast, it personally took me more time to go from Nanao to Taipei than to then take the high speed rail down to whatever city… such is life on the east coast: sans high speed rail.

The conference itself was Friday and Saturday. This particular conference was limited to speakers who were current students or recent MA or PhD graduates, so many of the talks were exploratory and less developed. They were still a lot of fun for me to see, though, especially as many of them were on Mandarin or Taiwanese, so there was a lot of data and phenomena that I’d never even considered. It was also great to see professor Luther Liu, an eminent researcher of Chinese comparatives, whom I met in 2006 at the Chicago Workshop on Chinese Linguistics, as well as many other friendly professors. I my gave my talk on Saturday and received an award for my paper.

You can see Luther Liu and I talking in this first picture below… try to find us!³

Each talk at the conference was followed by prepared constructive criticism by a “commentator” who’s a professor with similar research interests. As a corollary, while all the speakers at the conference were younger, a good number (30+) of professors from all around the island were in attendance as well. I believe this annual conference is an excellent opportunity for ling students in Taiwan to have their work known and criticized by professors outside of their own departments, and also to get to know others in their field. It fosters a sense of community among young researchers outside of their own schools—I’d love to see more such activities back in the US.⁴

On Saturday evening after the conference I went out with some MA students from Tsinghua University (國立清華大學, or simply 清大). As one was originally from Chiayi and another went to school there, I was in good hands for finding the best local food. We first hit up a stand to get some 火雞肉飯 (turkey rice) which is a Chiayi delicacy… it’s so simple yet so delicious!

Afterwards we walked around in their night market, eating some Finally, here’s a photo we took in front of the traffic circle which is a Chiayi landmark. Thanks for the good times!

Next up is the International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL) that I’ll be attending (but not presenting at) in a couple weeks, so I look forward to seeing some of my new linguist friends there again!

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1. 新年快樂! Chinese New Year with Andy
2. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
3. Co-schooling in Dongshan

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It’s that time of the year again—Mother’s Day weekend—and that means Scav Hunt! Every year at the University of Chicago we have a huge Scavenger Hunt (a.k.a. “Scav,” or “The Hunt”). On Wednesday night at midnight, a list of roughly 300 items is released in some obfuscated fashion. The items are to be presented three days later, on Judgement Day (Sunday). While some items are simply rare and must be found, most are some sort of construction, production, or art project. There are also some other scav staples: some of the items make up the Scav Olympics, the Party on the Quads, Scav All Stars, and the Road Trip.

The Road Trips

As an undergrad I drove my trusty Toyota Camry (“Erlewine Carpool of Love”) and participated in the Scav Road Trip twice, my second year for Pierce and my fourth year for the Shoreland. Some people are in charge of research overnight and you’re woken up Thursday morning with a map in hand, some costume you’re supposed to put on, and your car decorated in some fashion. They give you a route and tell you to be back in time for judgment. My second year, fellow linguist and brother Bob Peachey, Liz, and Tiffany (with whom I oddly enough had worked together at 森林湖 a year or so before then) went up Wisconsin, across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, dipped into Canada, and drove back down to Chicago in three days. Feel free to check out the full gallery of photos.

My fourth year of college, Bailey, my life partner Evan Jenkins, our friend Jane, and I went on a long-distance adventure, across Wisconsin, southern Minnesota, South Dakota, to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, down through Nebraska and Iowa, in three days. It was a marathon Road Trip route, but we still had a great deal of fun. Again, check out the full gallery.

Also check out the Badlands video we made, which was one of our items.

Scav Hunt 2008

This year’s list was just released and it continues the Chicago tradition of wit, humor, intellect, and crazy crazy fun. While no longer in Chicago, I’m still helping the Shoreland team this year, running a bbpress bulletin board system on my server to manage the progress of all our Items. I also did some road trip research… oddly enough, this is the first time that being thirteen hours ahead has been a good thing.

My fantasy Scav items

I myself actually applied to be a judge for my fourth year… unfortunately I had a scheduling mixup and couldn’t make the interview. Here, for the first time in history, however, I will make public the items I submitted as part of my application. If any of these show up on future lists, the world will know where credit is due:

1. …GACCTGGACGCCACACACTGTACCTGTTGCGATAGTGGAGTACCGTCGCTGGAGA
   AAGGCACTGTAGTTATTACTCGCTACTCCCGCACCCTTT… [20 edible points]
2. A flight data recorder. [30 points]
3. ∃x(CAPTAIN(x) ∧ ∀y(SPEAK(x, y) → LOGLAN(y))). [⋆ points]
4. Zipper prom is the new duct tape prom. [50 points per couple]
5. A ramen vending machine. No people dressed up in boxes, thank you—we want the real deal. Must be free for judges. [50 points]
6. A letter from your congressperson, agreeing to support legislation for a Chomskian Sin Tax, if brought to the floor. [15 points]
7. “Zimmer: The Musical.” Send three team members to (place) at (time): a singer, a writer, and an instrumenter. The show goes up at (a later time) at (another place). [30 points per participating team member]
8. Show the world that our faculty be pimpin’. Install spinning rims on your favorite professor’s car. The professor themself must drive the car to Judgement Day. [40 points; 80 points for the Zimmster]
9. Feces perfume. [23 points]
10. Is the water from Botany Pond safe to drink? Check against the EPA NPDWR MCL’s. [up to 60 points]
11. Procure the following:
    • 赤巻紙青巻紙黄巻紙 [3点]
    • 生麦生米生卵 [3点]
    • 引き抜きにくい挽き肉は引き抜きにくい温い肉 [10点]
    • 骨粗鬆症訴訟勝訴 [40点;英語でもよし]
    • 東京都特許許可局 [※点]
12. Get married. Sign your papers at judgment. [50 points]
13. Ever played Lemonade Stand on the Apple //e? Yeah, so did we. Bring us a copy and a //e so we can play. [30 points, 5 points bonus if you beat us]
14. Musical Department Chairs. You bring your best Chair to (place) at (time) . [15 points for participation, 50 points if your Chair wins]
15. The Trabb Pardo-Knuth algorithm? brainfuck it! [10 points]
16. A Proof movie poster, signed by five people in the film, with vidcap proof. [50 points]
17. UChicago Answers. Refer practical questions to Google Answers. [75 points]
18. Straight A’s won’t help you now. Bring us one (1) official U of C transcript. [3 points per distinct grade code]
19. It’s Stroganoff Fest 2007!
    • beef stroganoff [2 points]
    • frog stroganoff [7 points]
    • rabbit stroganoff [7 points]
    • Michael Strogoff stroganoff [7 points]
    • tofu stroganoff [8 points]
    • Kung Fu stroganoff [10]
    • Shaq Fu stroganoff [12 points]
    • Hufu stroganoff [25 points]
20. TOYNBEE IDEA
    IN MOVIE 2001 
    RESURRECT DEAD
    ON THE QUADS [100 points]
21. Only one Cucumber can survive! It’s Larry vs. Bob, à la Extreme Championship Wrestling. Now on DVD.
22. Domesticate a Hyde Park parakeet. [20 points]
23. Distribute the pamphlet “Putting the ‘Sensual’ Back in ‘Non-Consensual”’ on the Quads. [? points]
24. Affect the Rapture Index. [20/3 points]
25. Regenstein Puzz-3D. [13 points]
26. Schönfinkelised chicken. [3 points]
27. The Blagoynich manuscript. [12 points]
28. Hello Kitty® Litter. [5 points]
29. Pyjamas in bananas [2 points]
30. Do any of the above, on a numbers station. [10 bonus points]

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Day 1: New Year’s Eve

The adventure began now three Wednesdays ago, when I took the high speed rail down to Kaohsiung (高雄). Andy showed me around the city a little bit (including the nearby temple with the European-looking knight) and we had the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner, which is one of the most important parts of the New Year. We all stayed up watching TV (and the adults playing Mahjong), then Andy and I then set off some fire crackers at midnight.

Day 2: Exploring Kaohsiung

The next morning I was greeted with more fire crackers and a delicious soup with Nian gao (年糕), a type of mochi, very reminiscent of the traditional Japanese New Year’s お雑煮.

We went out with the family to the park surrounding the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. The park features many different public sculptures.

There was also a number of pieces as part of their current exhibit on “container art,” which was pretty cool.

Many people were out in the park on this holiday, and there were many kites in the sky as well. It was a beautiful day. We then walked around through a super busy street market and went home.

Andy and I walked around at night, checking out the night market out behind his grandmother’s house, and near the neighborhood temple. A lot of great things were for sale, like various dried fruts and candies, bootleg DVD’s, and Spongebob Squarepants New Year’s decorations. I had a great time in Kaohsiung and enjoyed meeting Andy’s family.

Day 3: Taichung

On Day 3 we took the high speed rail up to Taipei, where Andy’s other grandmother lives, but stopped in Taichung on the way. Not really knowing what to do in Taichung, we decided to check out the National Museum of Natural Science—in retrospect, a fabulous choice. It was an easy free shuttle away from the high speed rail station.

Andy mentioned that he’d been there when he was very small, and only remembers that he was really scared by the animatronic dinosaurs. Most of the exhibits were in Chinese only, but we both had a fabulous time. We spent the entire day there, from about 10–4, yet only covered half the museum. A highly recommended visit in Taichung.

For some reason, though, there was a flying pig in the evolution exhibit…

And here are a couple photos from the streets of Taichung. Andy pointed out that the “Price Impossible” store actually looked emptied out, making the prices actually impossible.

Day 4: Wulai

The next day in Taipei, we decided to go to Wulai, a more rural township of Taipei county, which is home to another tribe of Atayals. The whole area is quite touristy, but the land was absolutely beautiful, even in the rain. I would love to go back again on a nice spring day.

Taking the old “Wulai wood cart” up along the side of the river, you get to one of the main attractions, the Wulai waterfall.

We then walked around up in the surrounding mountains and the Waterfall Park (we didn’t find the waterfall ). We had lunch, including some bamboo-steamed rice, and visited the Wulai Atayal Museum which, unfortunately, did not allow photography. It was a small but very nice museum, covering the lifestyle and traditions of the Atayal all across Taiwan, with some nice fun interactive features as well. I thanked the workers in Atayal, “mhuway su,” when I left, and they complemented me on my pronunciation. ^^

At night, we went out to see CJ7 (長江七號), the new Stephen Chow movie, which was a very touching, cute kids’ movie. I highly recommend it. Apple has the trailer up, so it’s probably coming to the US, and not dubbed! It’s kind of weird to have a kids movie not dubbed, though.

Day 5: Going home

The next morning we went briefly to the 228 Memorial Park and National Taiwan Museum before I left to come back to Nanao. My train ride coming home was almost three hours, and it just felt stupid, now that I know that you can go all the way down the island by high speed rail in an hour and a half. Meh.

All in all, I had a fabulous long weekend and got a good Chinese New Year experience. Thanks Andy and family for your hospitality!

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2. Family in Taiwan
3. A Saturday in 台北

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Before we finalized our plans to go to China, K80 just had one criteria for an itinerary: to go to the Great Wall of China. We reserved all of our final full day in Beijing to going to the Wall. After our delicious breakfast, we hit the roads, taking a bus from the Dōngzhímén bus station out to Mìyún (密雲) and then a taxi to Sīmǎtái (司馬臺). Compared with other more popular Great Wall sites, Simatai is less restored, less touristy, and a more challenging hiking experience. We gave in to the adventurers within.

The weather was actually pretty nice, hovering right above 0°C, with beautiful clear skies, making up for the rest of China. We could see miles across. The higher up we went, the more of the Wall we could see.

They weren’t kidding when they said Simatai was more challenging of a hike… with some sections >45° up, sometimes it felt like a climb rather than hike… the path also sort of disappeared towards the end.

The whole experience fills with you a sense of awe, especially when you think of the people, real humans just like us (at least, we think), building this hundreds of years ago. Its scope is mind blowing. We made sure to make our visit memorable and well-documented as well.

In the end we turned back after climbing for a couple hours, and when we saw that the next peak ahead of us looked particularly menacing. We took some final pictures and turned back.

K80 made sure to steal a brick on the wall down. Shh… We also saw a frozen river which excited the Floridian.

Noodles for dinner

For dinner we met up with Anna again and her friend. Anna recommended a noodle place where you can watch the guys whip up the different kinds of noodles in front of your eyes… there’s a guy lassoing some into a pot, a guy beating some dough into submission, another shaving little noodle bits off a ball of dough with a knife. These are the Chuck Norris of noodles.

For desert we had what I describe as Chinese 大学芋… some chunks of sweet potato, dipped in hot candy-ness. You then pick some up, dip it in water to let it cool off, and eat it. It was wonderful.

Thus concludes our haphazard trip to China. We all had a fabulous time, enjoying many cultural sites and seeing and making many friends.

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1. Going to China just got more expensive
2. 北京 Part 1: Fulbright love, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and Houhai
3. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei

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Day 3 begins with the Summer Palace. After Magi, K80, and I finally met¹ in the morning, we hit the (new) Summer Palace (頤和園). The Summer Palace is way out north-west, past Tsinghua University (the Beijing one), but well worth the trek. In retrospect, I would recommend going earlier, as I could have spent more time there.

The Summer Palace is built around a lake which, apparently, is quite shallow, as it was covered completely in ice on our visit, making for some great skating/sliding.

Much like the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace houses a museum-style areas, with various cultural relics on display. Again like the Forbidden City, however, the architecture and gardens are the reasons to visit.

The main attraction is probably the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which involves going up stairs after stairs, moving up this small mountain. At the top is a beautiful Guanyin.

Behind this tower is a little temple with many beautiful Buddhas on the walls.

We had a great time at the Summer Palace, with one exception…

Suzhou street: a warning

I must warn any potential travelers away from the part of the Summer Palace known as Suzhou Street (蘇州街). But first, an aside on park ticket pricing.

In some parks, such as the Summer Palace, you can buy two types of tickets at the door: a “gate ticket” (門票) and a “through ticket” (聯票). The gate ticket will let you into the park, but it doesn’t include the separate tickets for a number of “special sections” of the park, while hte “through ticket” includes these. You can also just buy a gate ticket, enter, and pay the 10 yuan or so for each special section. The Summer Palace has four such special sections. If my memory serves me right, the gate ticket was ¥20 and the through ticket was ¥50. Each special section was ¥10 if you paid as you went. So the through ticket is a great deal!

So if you’re cheap like me, you’ll buy the through ticket, and then make sure to go to each of the places listed on your through ticket. After all, you paid for them, right? One of these was the Suzhou Street. Suzhou Street is on the north side of the Palace and is a little hard to get to… many signs make it seem like you’re just a few steps away, when in reality it is still at least a 15 minute walk. Once you get there, it’s the definition of a tourist trap… it does look nice and you must pay or have the through ticket to enter but, once you’re in, you must walk around this lake (it says one-way, so you can’t get out quickly), along which there are stores with touristy junk and little tea places. There are no exhibits or anything of real cultural interest here. You have to walk around the lake, at least half way, in order to leave.

In conclusion, the through ticket is convenient, the other three “special sections” were great, and you won’t be wasting money if you get one and don’t go to the Suzhou Street. Just don’t waste your time finding or visiting the Suzhou Street.

Bargaining

After the Summer Palace we went back into the city and to the Hongqiao Market (紅橋市場), a mall in the city famous for pearls, which the girls were interested in. I realized I just don’t have the attitude to bargain properly—I’m just too soft. I tried, and I believe we did get a fair price, but I’d definitely need more practice to get good at it, and it’s not the kind of practice I particularly enjoy. At least the price did immediately drop to half or so once they saw that I spoke Chinese. Funny how things work.

The Tree and fried apple pie à la mode

Finally we met up with Magi’s friend who took us to The Tree, a great pizza place in the Sānlǐtún bar area. Magi reminisced about darkly-lit bars like this in Germany, and we enjoyed the conversation and hearth-baked pizza. I highly recommend The Tree.

Finally, we went over to another bar called Rickshaw for desert, and I had the deep-fried apple pie. I felt like I was back at the state fair.

Related posts:

1. 北京 Part 1: Fulbright love, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and Houhai
2. Midyear conference in Hualian and Taroko
3. Hong Kong

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Day 1: 北京，你好！

After getting into Beijing two Mondays ago, we took some time to explore the city. Our hotel arrangement (the Red Wall Hotel) was much nicer than in Hong Kong, with windows, free internet, nice decor, and a great location, on the north-east corner of the Forbidden City.

Walking around in Beijing, we were both immediately struck by the size of the city, in particular of the amount of open space. The streets were incredibly wide, with sidewalks and space between buildings! The landscape looked much more like an American Midwestern city than any other city I’ve been to in Asia.

In the evening, K80 and I met up with my high school friend Anna. Anna and I never took Chinese together in high school, but it turns out Anna now is on a Fulbright in Beijing researching environmentalism in China, particularly leading up to the summer olympics. She mentioned she would bring along a friend from her Chinese program who taught English in Taiwan last year, “doing something similar to you.”

It turns out this friend was one of the English Teaching Assistants from last year, in the exact same program that we’re in now. What a small world! K80 and he even lived in the same apartment! We had some great Korean food and shared had a wonderful time catching up.

Day 2: The Forbidden City

Magi and we met up in the morning for some breakfast, and then it was off to the Forbidden City (故宮)! The Forbidden City is quite literally a “city,”¹ but it now a museum with many gardens and historical relics, about half of which is off limits to the public. While most of the “better items” are in the National Palace Museum in Taipei (the joint result of ”history” and Mao, for he is beyond history), I was pleasantly surprised by the items in the City. That being said, I do think the best parts were the architecture and the gardens, which include various perilous hills.

We started in the back (north)—the rather unconventional route—having curry for lunch halfway through. The north half houses most of the exhibits, after which the second half is mostly the larger-ticket items, and a number of large courtyards. The City is definitely not just preserved history… Starbucks most famously had a brief stint in the City for a few years, though it is gone now. The curry was good and it was nice to be inside for a bit, satisfying priority one.²

There were a few items of particular note here. First of all, I was surprised by all the signs having both Chinese (traditional, the real Chinese) and Manchurian on them… it turns out the Qing dynasty court used Manchu as a primary or secondary language throughout its rule. I never expected to see that interesting script there.

Second, I was surprised to see a bicycle inlay on the ground… this led to my skepticism of the Forbidden City actually being built in the 1400’s.³ I present Exhibit A:

Finally, but not least: my four-star toilet experience.

Meet Mao

South of the Forbidden City is the Gate of Heavenly Peace, though you might have heard it as 天安門 Tiānānmén. You know, where the tanks ran over protesting students in 1989.⁴ Everyone and their mother has seen a picture of the huge wall with Mao on it… what you don’t realize is that it’s HUGE. I was standing in front of it, a decent ways away, and it didn’t fit in my camera’s viewfinder. K80 did one of her American Pledge of Allegiance photos there too.

Temple of Heaven

Afterwards we went to the Temple of Heaven (天壇), a large park a little south of Tiananmen Square. There were some really cool trees, including the camouflage tree, below. The gardening organization of the vast expanse reminded me of the Gardens of Versaille. Surely it would have been even more beautiful in the spring or summer.

Afterwards we had some Beijing duck for dinner, though priority one was sadly unfulfilled.

Houhai café

On our final leg of Day 2, we went up to the hip Hòuhǎi (後海) area, basically a lake with many bars and restaurants around, with many traditional Chinese streets (胡同) nearby. We stumbled upon a cute café where we drank some citrus tea, tea, and some cakes, all ordered off of their hand-written menus. It was a little hold in the wall, but fulfilled priority one, and had some great conversations about life, politics, and food. Thus concludes Day 2.

Related posts:

1. Going to China just got more expensive
2. Midyear conference in Hualian and Taroko
3. Hong Kong

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K80 and I got into Hong Kong last Friday after staying overnight in a hostel in Taipei. After taking care of our Chinese visa and settling into our hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙嘴, or TST in English) in Kowloon (九龍), K80 and I walked around the neighborhood, first snacking at a cha chaan teng (茶餐廳), a kind of Chinese diner, where they serve an interesting mix of Chinese and western food. I got a hot milk tea (熱奶茶), Hong Kong style, which entails some strong, way-overbrewed tea with condensed milk, as well as a roast pork sandwich, and K80 got some noodles, both of which were advertised as part of their “afternoon tea” menu. They were all delicious, though the tea did need some extra sugar… but maybe I’m just too used to Taiwanese drinks. They also had prices written using Suzhou numerals, an interesting form of writing numbers which I’ve never seen before in Taiwan, though I recognized them as it was described in McCawley’s Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters.

Museum time

We spent a little time walking to the nearby Hong Kong Museum of History (香港歷史博物館). The main exhibit is a walk through of the history of Hong Kong, starting with a geology primer and the land that Hong Kong sits on, through the four ethnic groups of Hong Kong, then the British, Japanese, and finally the return to the Chinese. It was a great museum with many life-size buildings and cultural relics, making it much more engaging than just some artifacts behind glass cases.

Dinner and stand-up

We met up with Michael/Kikai, who’s going to school in Hong Kong now, and his friends. We took the world’s largest system of interconnected escalators up from Central to Taco Loco. It was probably the first time I’d had Mexican food since I’ve been in Taiwan, so that was great. We then went out to see Paul Ogata and a couple openers at TakeOut Comedy’s first anniversary show. TakeOut Comedy is Asia’s first full-time stand-up venue, and they also recently started stand-up in Cantonese. Paul Ogata is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii, who recently won the San Francisco International Comedy Competition and also an avid Mac fan. The show was fantastic!

Afterwards we went out to a bar nearby, where I randomly met a guy I who was in my Computational Complexity class at Chicago. It’s a small world. K80 and I also got to know Kikai’s friends, including two students from France and Magi from Germany. K80 and I mention we’re going to China, and Magi (below with me and my duck) says maybe she’ll join us…

Day 2: Dim sum brunch

I cajoled K80 into having Dim Sum (點心) for breakfast. We went to a restaurant that Magi recommended in TST and had some fantastic dishes… our favorites were the fried shrimp wontons and pork buns.

10,000 Buddhas Temple

In the afternoon we visited the 10,000 Buddhas temple on 寶福山. After some introductory guard animals and shrubbery, you take the escalators up to the temple, which is made up of a sanctuary with 10,000 Buddhas, and then probably 50 or 60 rooms, each of which house hundreds of graves. K80 happened to see a family bringing in an urn. I was amazed by the number of plates in these rooms which had Christian crosses on them.

Ladies’ market

The Hong Kong Ladies’ Market, as it is called, is like a huge day market, much like Taiwan’s night markets, but with much taller stalls. Kikai took us around the market and then to one of his favorite snacks: a hot waffle layered with peanut butter, butter, condensed milk, and then sugar. It was both delicious and deadly. K80 then saw a Krispy Kreme (nonexistant in Taiwan) and went over for a donut (after the deadly waffle).

Symphony of Lights

At night we walked around and saw the Symphony of Lights on Victoria Harbour

Hong Kong Miscellanea

K80 and I both got saw Hong Kong as a stereotypical yet fascinating mix of east and west. It’s also a very cute city: the emergency man runs even faster than in Taiwan, some trains have a quiet car, a “do not trespass” sign has a cute enter (入) man, and Oracle is 甲骨文, literally oracle bone script. We had some great food, met great friends, and I’ll be sure to go back again—now much more of a possibility as I’ll most likely be back in June for the Association for Language Awareness conference.

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1. Going to China just got more expensive
2. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
3. Family in Taiwan

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We were coming in from Taiwan a.k.a. the Republic of China. If you’re a Republic of China national¹ you can get a visiting permit from Taiwan. But if you’re a foreigner in Taiwan, you have to stop in some other country to apply for a Chinese visa. (China can’t have an embassy in Taiwan, because Taiwan is part of China! Duh.) Thus, we’re spending this weekend in Hong Kong.

Lesson 1: If applying in Hong Kong, give yourself a good weekday or two

Here’s the deal. You can apply for a Chinese visa at China’s Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR. They’re open Monday through Friday and, for express service, you need to get the visa to them before noon (1:30 at some travel agencies) and pick it up in the evening—you can’t pick them up, either, on the weekend. You may have heard that you can get a Chinese visa even on the weekend: this is only if you have a longer layover in the Hong Kong airport, and you can get the visa in transit—you can’t get the visa on the weekend just by going to the airport.

As our flight to China is scheduled for this coming Sunday, that means we need the visa today. In our case, as our flight came in around 11 this morning, this meant an adrenaline rushing couple hours to apply for the visa before a travel agent’s 1:30 deadline. When we finally applied for our visas, though, we encountered another surprise.

Lesson 2: China just raised visa fees for US citizens. Because they love us.

Normally a single-entry visa to China costs HK$150 for most countries, plus whatever expediting charges. Fine. But going to China just got more expensive. As of January 20th, 2008, the base fee for US citizens went up to HK$1020. Not for everyone—just for US citizens. Because they love us.

Now you know.

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1. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
2. Survival Tips for Visiting Taiwan
3. A Saturday in 台北

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Day 1: Trains, buses, and talk

I met up with everyone in the morning at the Hualien train station. Living in Nanao, I actually live really close to Hualien (about 40-50m) so I just elected to take a local train and meet the crew there. We then drove around to a couple interesting coastal points. (The one taking pictures below is Dale… I’m sure his blog will soon have photos more beautiful than mine.)

An unfortunate theme of the trip was riding coach buses on ridiculously narrow roads atop steep cliffs, winding back and forth for thirty minutes at a time, and then check out a vista for 15 minutes, then get back on the bus for another half hour.

In the evening after dinner we had the Midyear Conference proper. We got status updates on all the grantees’ research projects, and we ETA’s presented on our experiences thus far. Some of these research projects are really fascinating, and I had a great time listening to everyone. I felt the same thing as the last time I met many of these scholars at Orientation, that I miss academia: the research, the people, and the stimulation. ^^

Day 2: Taroko National Park

The Taroko National Park (with a beautiful website worth reloading over and over) is one of Taiwan’s six National Parks. Taroko is named after the Taroko people (“truku” in their language, Seediq, the other Atayalic language¹). It is a mountainous region a main river and its thirteen tributaries, with rich ecosystems. Hualien is known for its stone exports and Taroko also is quite rocky. That said, the photos speak for themselves. ^^

Ah, Fulbright fraternity. ^^ We had lunch at the Grand Formosa hotel up in Taroko. More camaraderie ensued. ^^

After lunch many of us walked over to the Buddhist temple across the river. The sky which had stayed overcast for most of the day actually was sunny for this one hour window or so, resulting in gorgeous photos. I also got to have Erik fill me in on a number of temple-related subjects, including who Dizang (地蔵, じぞう, in gold below) actually was. The white bodhisattva is Guan Yin (観音, かんのん). There was also a beautiful pagoda.

Again, they’re Buddhists, not Nazis. Finally, here’s a scene from Myst VI: Buddhist Temple:

In the afternoon we took an hour and half hike along one of the many trails in the park. Many of the trails require some sort of permit, even with a tour guide, but this was one of the open ones. At one point I found a bunch of white shells along the trail—odd, as the trail was a good ten feet away and five feet above the river.

There was a bridge right outside the trail with some cute stone lions.

A couple of them looked just like me!

At night, a number of us walked out toward Hualien downtown, which was about a 30 minute walk from the hotel. We checked out their pretty big and hip night market, and I was amazed by how large the city felt, and how many young people I saw (sorry, no pictures). Maybe it’s just where I live now, where the people my age are either out in another city at school or already married, but it’s really refreshing to see people my age.

Day 3: Hualien: American streets, rocks, martial law, and cheerleaders²

Hualien is a beautiful city, one of the largest on the east coast (larger than Yilan or Luodong), known for its jade and mochi (麻糬 in Taiwan, pronounced in Taiwanese, like mwájǐ or something like that—don’t ask me for Pe̍h-ōe-jī.) This morning one of the grad student researchers Katie and I took a walk. Our first stop was a nearby museum with a strange rock (奇石) collection, including the head of Lee Teng-hui, and an outdoor sculpture park.

Right behind it was a pillbox on the hill above the ocean, a relic of Taiwan under Martial Law. Note that the pillbox is pointed at the city, not at the ocean.

As we walked around, we saw some old run down Japanese houses, and then ran into some cheerleaders. We were totally confused as to what was going on, but it was apparently some sort of fire department demonstration/show for kids, and that was some supplemental entertainment.

We then walked down to the Pine Garden (松園別館), a café, art and concert venue, which originally was a Japanese government building. The lore says that this was where Japanese soldiers were given their sending-off sake before going on their kamikaze missions, some of which left from Hualien. It seemed like a beautiful little venue, and had some cool decorations on a few of their windows.

There were also some trees with IV’s in them. Apparently they’re pesticides.

Something I was amazed at how American the streetscapes felt. Walking down their sidewalks (!) along their wide streets, it just felt like the geography of a spread-out, hilly Midwestern city. They even have English on the post boxes (sort of). Not quite rows and rows of houses with the windows painted blue, but very American nonetheless—it was oddly both comforting and disconcerting. ^^ I’m sure there’s even more in Hualien still worth checking out and as it’s so close from where I live, I’m sure I’ll be back again.

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1. Family in Taiwan
2. Weekend update: 師大 café, 南方澳, and 淡水
3. A Saturday in 台北

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It tasted alright… mostly like a sweet coffee drink, though K80 and Dale thought they could taste the egg. (I tried to stir the egg in.) My guess is that if it came with the raw egg stirred in the drink rather than sitting on top, I would have had no idea and would have really enjoyed it.

My next adventure was this past Saturday, when Michelle and I went out to 南方澳 (nánfāng’ào).¹ We took Michelle’s scooter from Luodong, taking the better part of an hour to get there. Nanfangao is a port city, right next to the port of Suao. There’s a famous temple there and the weekend streets had many people walking around with incense.

We also checked out a tourist spot, 豆腐岬 (dòu.fujiǎ), Tofu Cape. I asked some random tourist why it was called that and she said it was because the rocks cut off into square-ish pieces there, which made sense enough. However, my co-teacher Jennifer later told me that that was wrong and it was called that because some tofu-eating fish that can be caught in that area.

The tofu, by the way, doesn’t taste very good. I also saw that other people take jumping photos as well.

We then drove around, checked out the beach (and a temple nearby), ate some delicious seafood noodles, and finally went to see a lion on the hill.

Finally, yesterday Jennifer took me with her son to Taipei to shop at CostCo. While I’ve never been a fan of CostCo, Wal-Mart, or any of those huge stores, this Taiwanese CostCo was both frightening and awesome. There’s something great and very comfortable about someplace where you can get gallon jugs of ketchup but also green tea, six packs of Pocky, and huge packs of udon noodles; with どら焼き right next to the pumpkin pie. Afterwards Jennifer’s sister and her husband took us to 淡水 (dànshǔi), a touristy port city north of Taipei, where we ate some great food (fish/pork-ball soup and deep fried shrimp rolls).

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1. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
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3. Exploring Nanao, part 1

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The conference was held at the Chien Tan Youth Activity Center which has a beautiful pond and great view of the Grand Hotel, on the site of an old Shinto shrine.

As I recently did a little editing for a journal on English teaching here, I was invited to the presenters’ dinner Saturday night. While it was slightly awkward at first, not being a presenter myself, I soon met two representatives from the Korea and Philippines TESOL organizations who were very kind to me and we had some great conversations and laughs. (They are the two on the right in the first photo. The second photo is with the Filipino representative, Bernard Spolsky and me.)

I stayed overnight Saturday at the Eight Elephants hostel. Less than a year old, Eight Elephants is stylish, clean, and comfortable, though not the cheapest hostel in town. My experience there was great… I made a friend, a student of Special Education from Kaohsiung, and we went out to the nearby Shida night market. After randomly running into Kate who was in Taipei with her host family, she took me to a cafe she knew and we had a great time talking. While her English is great as well, we were talking completely in Chinese. After spending the day thinking about comprehensible input, it was great listening to her, understanding about 80%, and chiming in once in a while. As her interests were teaching and learning languages (including Japanese), we hit it off well with some great conversation. I look forward to seeing her again when I visit Kaohsiung in the near future.

On Sunday morning I saw another talk by Andrew Cohen, had lunch, and met up with a couple of the interns at the Fulbright Taiwan foundation who showed me around Taipei. We went to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and randomly ran into Dr. Wu Jing-jyi, the director of the Foundation, on the plaza. We then went to check out the Taipei Modern Art Museum (with the first .museum address I’ve ever actually seen), which was super cheap and very enjoyable, albeit being relatively small. (The last photo below is at the Taipei Story House, which is a historic building—we just took a picture outside without going in.)

We had some Hong Kong-style 燒臘 preserved meat for dinner. I came back to Nanao Sunday night feeling fulfilled and blessed by the people I’d met all weekend, at the conference, at the hostel, and around the city.

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I walked around and successfully found 台灣e店 (Tâi-ûan ê Tiàm), the bookstore with everything Taiwanese. If you ever want to learn Taiwanese, learn any of the other languages of Taiwan, or learn about her native peoples, this is the place to go. Edith Aldridge recommended the store to me for finding some Atayal resources, and I picked up a Beginning Atayal book and a reference grammar both by Lillian Huang (黃美金). The dialect described is Mayrinax, a subdialect of C’ioli, rather than the Squliq that I’m studying, but it should still be a useful reference and starting point for studying the morphosyntax.

Afterwards, we met up with some other girls (Katie, Kate, and Meg) and walked around Taipei 101. I also checked out the local Muji, but quickly realized that what was borderline expensive in Japan wasn’t getting any cheaper with my Taiwanese sense of money. In the same vein, there’s Katie saddened by the roughly-equal-to-the-U.S. Coldstone ice cream prices. As consolation, though, we got some gelato gently and carefully served as perfect pyramids on our cones, thanks to a perfectionist gelato stand owner.

Here’s a poster I saw for the new Hero movie coming out in Taiwan in November! I’m there!

We then checked out the (relatively) new Sogo department store, built across the street from an older Sogo.² I’d heard about this huge new Sogo from a couple Taipei friends, but had yet to check it out. The whole building is in a gorgeous blue glass. While the inside is like any glamorous Sogo (Fendi bedsheets? Why, yes!) the top floors house an open courtyard area, complete with Japanese zen garden and tea house. We spent some time taking pictures, especially looking down at the intersection.

We walked around and found a nice little faux-Western restaurant to eat at and got some desert. Afterwards we went to a bar decked out in Halloween decor, as many of the bars seemed to be.

It was an altogether great (albeit long) day!

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