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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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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I do believe she made it herself. The large bead on top is unique… it is very geometric and features diamonds. In Atayal culture, diamonds represent the eyes of ancestors watching over us. I love the green color of the beads too… it complements my phone very well. ^^

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1. the first proposal with tribal elders meeting with the families to discuss whether the two should get married—the first proposal always fails, to add value to the marriage;
2. the second proposal, again with tribal elders, this time accepting the terms of the marriage;
3. an offering from the groom’s family to the bride’s;
4. the wedding itself, with the groom carrying off the bride on his back.

A couple famous aboriginal singers came, as well as a number of local primary and secondary school dance groups (complete with pyrotechnics). The (very nice) high school gymnasium was packed.

We sat near the Nan-ao elementary school contingent—here’s a photo of me with some of my kids:

A few other ETA’s came to check out the event as well, and got to play with my kids. (One later told me, in English, that Jeannie is beautiful.)

The real highlight of the show, though, was my kids’ dancing act. Somehow I was under the impression that they were going to do a traditional dance, but it turns out it was a hip-hop routine set to Beyoncé and Sean Paul’s Baby Boy and what I believe to be an Amuro Namie single. Remember, these are elementary school kids. Pretty amazing talent, especially given that this is over 10% of the students at the school.

(Some photos courtesy of Katie.)

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Under an affirmative action program set up by the Ministry of Education, members of Taiwan’s tribes are entitled to have their high school and college entrance exam scores raised by 25 percent. Under a policy expected to be made effective next year, those who pass a tribal language exam would have an additional 10 percent added to their scores.

The article is directly addressing the Kangke (寒溪) dialect of Atayal, which apparently received more Japanese influence during the occupation than did other dialects, making the new Atayal aboriginal language tests difficult for their students to pass.

I’ve heard Jennifer mention a couple times now how some student (often in their middle elementary years) who is half-Atayal had changed their last name from their father’s clearly-Chinese last name to that of their mother’s, precisely to be (more) eligible for such affirmative action down the line. While it struck me as strange that the student’s last name would be a real consideration in such policies, the language incentive makes more sense for me. My views on affirmative action aside (I’m not sure exactly where I stand, and of course Taiwan’s diversity is a whole other ballgame), I’m a fan of government systematically encouraging the continued use and study of aboriginal languages, especially given their rich connections to heritage and culture.

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