in a twilight zone island called Taiwan 或 ¿Cómo va el chino?

The music video I helped with

2010-02-02T00:40:00.003+08:00

Last Spring/Summer, I bumped onto a mysterious ad at a pizza place that sought hands for a 'creative project.' It sounded vaguely related to shooting film/video so I emailed.
Smash cut to:
A film crew of creative types (a minority of us with any specific interest or experience in film) are shooting a music video for local band The Rising Hedons in an abandoned military housing district strewn with rubble, broken glass, a dead dog, etc.
I'm in the crew, fluidly adapting my job title as needs arise. We shot in other, nicer, locations of course.

I met good people on the shoot like Joe -who posted the music video on his blog and inspired me to do likewise.

The song in question is 'Money' and you'll most clearly appreciate my contribution as an extra at 1:14. Fifty points for finders.

Smile, you're on TV

2009-12-19T01:12:00.002+08:00

My grizzly appearance made several newspapers and TV news shows, through no merit of my own.

Professor asked us to go listen to the Senator who'd come to give a talk at our university.

I understood none of it and I know as little about him as I know about 95% of political figures in Taiwan: nothing.

At the end of it our prof asked us to step forward to take a picture with the Senator. My Taiwanese classmates, slow to care continued resting their buttocks.

Me being a fame-starved whore on the other hand and seeing the half dozen reporters jumped at the chance for a souvenir. Besides the picture and caption, I got a couple more mentions among the articles published. My favorite said I pushed my way to the front to meet my long-time hero.

Here's an article with a video.

http://news.cts.com.tw/cts/life/200912/200912020354481.html

Here's an article with a picture.

http://life.chinatimes.com/2009Cti/Channel/Life/life-article/0,5047,11051801+112009120300031,00.html

Here used to be another article with a picture but has since been deleted or re-filed. I hope to recover it somehow.

http://www.nownews.com/videosite/index.php?avId=1014538&avType=1

One

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Arson, the Death Penalty and the Scientific Method@ The New Yorker

2009-09-01T14:18:00.001+08:00

Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty: newyorker.com

Even in this modern age fire remains misunderstood, even by the 'arson experts' who are called to testify in court.

Even in this modern age proponents of Capital Punishment mindlessly parrot that there have been no cases of clear, mistaken convictions leading the innocent to wrongful execution.

We need more compassion and less tolerance for the unreasonable and unscientific.

16,000 words to urge you to agree.

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The Uyghurs (and welcome back)

2009-07-10T20:49:00.010+08:00

I cringe when I think of this blog because I never post and I've yet to find a way to restrict my uploading impulses to any specific topic - related or not to my life in Taiwan.

So I've redesigned. The two biggest differences to the earliest versions of this place is my twitter feed going front and center, with my del.icio.us feed top-right. The other difference is going from the two-column template provided by blogger to an adapted three-column template I googled and then tweaked the code in notepad to preserve all the widgets (it took me a long time to do that properly.) I will tinker a little more but I'm much happier already having de-emphasized the blog post.

On the news in the past week or so has been Xinjiang (aka East Turkestan.)

Here I'll put up some links to articles and blog posts I've found informative recently.

Who are the Uighurs and why are they protesting? @ Crikey

July 9, 2009 - All Eyes On Xinjiang @ the Far Eastern Economic Review.

July 11, 2009 - Rumbles on the Rim of China's Empire @ The New York Times

July 13, 2009 - Xinjiang Energy Risk Rises w/ a flash sidebar Who are the Uyghurs? @ Radio Free Asia

Death, Repression and Political Violence in Xinjiang @ the International Centre For The Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.

Why China Has Clenched Its Fist In Xinjiang & Urumqi unrest:China's Saavier Media Strategy@ The Christian Science Monitor

July 15, 2009 - Toy Factory Melee Set Off Western China Violence @ New York Times

China: Urumqi mass incident and beyond @ Global Voices.

And here's a nice video on the subject (via The Uyghurs: Persecuted Muslim Minority in NorthWest China @ Global Voices.)

Hope

2008-10-29T02:57:00.000+08:00

La elección presidencial es en menos de una semana y siento mucho miedo. Me temo que les vuelvan a robar la elección a los demócratas. Las últimas semanas en que toda encuesta ha otorgado a Obama una clara ventaja sobre McCain han puesto mis pelos de punta. El bando de Obama anuncia que no aflojará el paso por más que la victoria parezca certera pero la pesadilla Bush tiene aterrados a gran parte del electorado estadounidense y a millones de foráneos interesados como yo sin voto.

¿Qué sucedería si lo impensable sucediera? ¿No sería una tragedia incalculable que el sistema anunciara una presidencia McCain-Palin?

De solo pensarlo siento nauseas y depresión. Vacilo entre lo que sería la continuación de la pesadilla retrógrada republicana, y la enorme pérdida de lo que pudiese haber sido un capítulo nuevo en la escena internacional. No es que sea masoquista pero, ¿se puede imaginar que hubiera pasado si hace ocho años los Bush no hubieran tenido éxito robándole a Gore los votos de Florida?

A quién tenga alguna noción, ¿Ha cambiado el proceso electoral desde el 2000?

The beginnings of a book buying obsession

2008-03-26T00:15:00.004+08:00

Draft Readiness Rating -not so happy but I must sleep now and it's about time I posted something.

It's been brought to my attention by Steph that author R. L. Stine is reviving his 'Goosebumps' series. Right on. I think it's great and it got me thinking about my Goosebumps days. Inspired by JIM's new bloggings on his decade-old Firenze trip I decided to drop the pretense that this blog would focus mainly on my present cross-cultural reactions and dive into the past. Or else this will never get updated.
It was so long ago that I read him I cannot say why I liked his stories so much.. which is just as well because they must have come to me before I was sucked into asking the whys of literary pleasures. A dozen of his books are still on a shelf back home. Perhaps only half a dozen but they seem like more when I think back on how I ached to steal every available moment to finish reading them. They got me hooked. I remember reading 'Hit and Run', 'The Hitchhiker', 'The Boyfriend', 'The Girlfriend', 'The Dead Girlfriend', and all 'The Babysitter' ones. Perhaps if I could choose again which of the series' books to read I would go for a more diverse collection of titles but I had little to go by besides the title and the creepy pictures on the shiny paperback covers.
It struck me that babysitters were widely fetishized -although surely it occurred to me without the adjective. I wanted to understand why and so I was sucked into that fetish when I bought my first R. L. Stine book. Don't remember much though, something about dead people phoning where she babysat maybe... anyway, I loved it.

When I was in elementary school our teachers reminded us every few months that the new mail-order book catalogues were in the front office. Come time to go home I would stop by the office and essentially tiptoe into that civilized grown-up place where the deadly serious administrative staff humored no loitering students.
On an otherwise empty counter rested a stack of glossy triptychs. Their existence was mind-blowing. This was a small stack, like these there must have been hundreds, or maybe even thousands of stacks in schools all over the world and hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of kids like me getting their fix of the likes of R. L. Stine, The Boxcar Children and Roald Dahl. Could they also be Mickey Mouse Club fans? I had no way of connecting with them so this would remain a mystery until clues like today's surfaced.
Surely kids nowadays go online for their peer to peer raving and ranting but at the time the internet was, on the one hand, a cyberpunk fantasy I was only vaguely aware of through the antics of Max Headroom, and on the other, and tapestries of grainy ads for electronic bulletin board systems in the regional, computer enthusiast, pulp magazines. Back in the early nineties, the colorful grids in the catalogues were my Amazon.com.
I was hooked to the brands. 'Scholastic'. Wow, what a great word I thought... and the strange way they print it, such weird letters, so fat, so exact, so architectural.. and 'Penguin', oh, their picture! an elegantly subdued orange oval with a cute, but dignified, black and white penguin on top. Woah, what class! These vast menus whet my appetite for more not-really-niche-at-all fictions.

Anyway, to R. L. Stine: good luck with the Goosebumps revival and thank you.

2007 ended

2008-01-01T08:46:00.001+08:00

Draft Readiness Rating - Abruptly interrupted.

This year is ended.
What happened? Let me tell you. I got mhyself into a strange place, as I bound to do, that redfines my preconceptions and expectations of this world. This Hualien place is where Taiwanese come to admire nature, where they come to spend some time away from the out of whack lifestyles they live by in bigger cities like Taipei or Kaoshiung or even Taichong. Here is different. Here is a peaceful town, close to the Taroko Gorge where the Taroko aboriginal people hail from. But things are eerily peaceful and quiet here. Here in Hualien is also some sort of military base. Combat aircraft scrape the skies with military drills, their thunder is heard all of Hualien City as they fly right above us, be it by the beach or be it around the Tzu Chi Buddhist University campuses.

People love Cheng Yen here, a buddhist leader and inspiration of sorts, responsible for the birth and life of the radically awesome Tzu Chi social organization. These guys aren't that many when compared to some other religious groups around the world, but they have spunk when it comes to social work. They'll go anywhere and everywhere to lend a sympathetic hand of assistance. When the hurricanes hit Tabasco this fall they were there, in modest numbers, helping people cope with the aftermath, building houses, feeding the hungry, etc. These guys are cool.

But so many of these guys are cool like that. They revere Master Cheng Yen and her messages of unity and eagerness to save our world from a lack of, what they call, the "Great Love" - Da Ai (or 大愛).

The geography of my campus is cuadrilateral, going through the gates you find the academic buildings on the left and a fully equiped gym just a few steps ahead. On the right you find a funky looking buddhist temple, the Hall of Stil Thoughts, or ADA, they call it here. If instead you walk between these and straight ahead you can follow the path to the dorms. Walking you can hear the wind on the treetops and the insects screaming their mating pleas. On a bicycle you can ride over the path and hear the squishing bricks underneath. The bricks are set spaced out so that the earth can breath, so that the tile and the earh are one, so that the institution has a sustainable relationship with the earth. If it's rained recently you can hear the squish, tile after tile, if it's dry you hear the wind rush past your ear.

On the train, on the way here you travel mostly on the coast, by the rocky shore, through tunnels in big rock mountains WHOOM! it all goes dark, your ears pop as the air pressure changes and you're riding in the darkness into the mountain.

There are so many rocks here, after some place in Italy this is the second biggest producer of Marble rock. Like my classmate Chris, there are many great sculptors in Hualien.

As weekend 4 comes to a close.

2007-09-30T20:37:00.000+08:00

Saw Ang Lee's latest film today - "Lust, Caution".
Film's awesome. From the first moment I heard about this movie I decided to watch it even if I wouldn't understand any of the dialogue. Turns out the movie was subtitled in chinese AND english! It was actually kind of dissapointing, I was looking forward to not understanding dialogue. The english subtitles were right under the chinese subtitles and I wonder if all major releases in chinese come with this kind of bilingual subtitling. I hope they do, throughout the movie I was able to pick up characters here and there and retroactively distinguished the words from what the actors would have just said.

The movie theater itself was not so bad.. I was prepared for worse. The audience here was overall pretty cool. Three motherfuckin people's cell's rang and all three answered them though. The theater was sold out though so statistically speaking it wasn't that bad.

Three weeks of classes have gone by. We've learned around 100 character-words in class. Plus a few words in daily life which I wish we could have learned in class the very first week so I could order food in restaurants. I mean, how important is it to learn 'floor', 'chair' and 'table' at this stage? 'Noodles', 'rice', 'beef', 'chicken', 'spicy' and 'fish' would be immediately useful.

The First Week - Taipei to Hualien

2007-09-11T19:43:00.000+08:00

Tuesday morning

I wake up early, with plenty of time to catch the train or bus to Hualien. The hotel will begin serving the complimentary breakfast till about an hour later though, so I clean up and go out for a walk with my whatever-you-do-don't-lose-these documents. I reckon I have time to visit the Mexican embassy (or as mainland China would want you to believe and as most countries that defer to their nomenclature call their diplomatic outposts, shoulders shrugged: the Mexican 'commercial liaison office' or 'trade and investment office' or some such nonsense).

The hotel is on the north of the city, just a few blocks north of the main road crossing east-west so I start walking towards the sun and like johnny walker just keep going east, away from the river and the main railway station, and towards Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world -these days, although there's plenty of taller buildings in the works, including several in, of course, the United Arab Emirates.

The city is clean. It's also empty when I first leave the hotel and over the next hour or so that I walk into the livelier part of the morning it fills up as the crowds start flushing out of their buildings, getting ready for work or school, dodging the drizzle that comes and goes, threatening to materialize into something heavier.

When I get to Taipei 101 I'm told at the information booth on the ground floor that the building I'm looking for is not in fact the Taipei 101, and thta my building is only a couple blocks away. There's scores of school kids in the lobby, crammed into asphixiating rows in the otherwise deserted lobby. I wonder if such massive school trips occur the torre latinoamericana in df or at the empire state building in nyc. They probably do, but what for? are geography classes being imparted? it's sort of ludicrous I think. I suppose though that as a part of those herds any excuse is good to get out of school. Were these kids even heading to the observation deck?

I consider going up myself, but I don't have all day and I gotta keep walking. When I get to the right building, the right floor and the right door I ring the buzzer. A female voice answers in chinese (or swahili or hopi... I cannot be certain) and I answer "Buenos dias" and something like "are y'all open for business?"

She groans "No, we're closed. we open at 11" (or whatever the office hours printed on the glass door behind me were).

"Oh. OK... Bye". I look at the guy next to me. He doesn't look Mexican. The door opposite of the Mexico office is for the Argentina office. The guy still isn't looking any more latin.

Back on the first floor I line up at the coffeeshop. I ask for 'kafei' and point at a sausage-in-a-croissant. She asks me something I don't understand so I point at the picture of a coffee & sausage-in-a-croissant meal on the colorful counter menu. It works.

A third of an hour later I return to the Mexico office and the asian dude is inside, speaking in foreign to the asian looking woman on the other side of the glass pane. When they're finished I approach her in spanish and she unexpectedly lights up and tells me that the consul hasn't arrived yet but I can fill out some of my contact information for them.

Later, the deputy director of this enterprise arrives and leads me into his office a few feet inside, past two desks with cheery asian women. The woman from the counter walks by to the cubicle next to this one and as she sifts through paperwork on the desk her complete attention, from the shoulders up, is on our conversation. I feel like an emissary from La Nueva España, taking a detour on the nao de china -the Manila Galleon- to bring good news of peace at home and booming trade between our lands.

The guy is from Acapulco and has been here for two years. He tells me about a recent film festival they didn't submit any mexican films for, not in time for the festival people to do the subtitling. I tell him I could help him out with that, get him some films or contact info of filmmakers or film distributors through my peeps in df.

He tells me they'll be hosting a cocktail party to celebrate the mexican independence on some coming wednesday.

The consul might be a while, he says, I'll tell him about you, he says, you might wanna get going. I say 'okay, buh-bye' and I move on.

It's almost noon and if I want my free breakfast I should take a cab back to the hotel. If I walk for an hour before getting on the subway again I won't make it. So I look for the 'Taipei City Hall' station I got off at.

There's basically two main subway lines. I think of them as the x and the y, or the horizontal and the vertical, or the red one and the blue one. They both intersect at Taipei Main Station, which is just south of my hotel and close, although not the closest of all the stations. There's a few more lines but they seem shorter. The fare minimum is NT$20 and goes up in increments of NT$5 with distance. The ticket machine gives you a chip, blue poker-style chip, that's loaded with your payment information -I suppose they're RFIDs. To get in at the turnstiles you tap the single-use chip on the RFID reader (or your card for multiple trips if you have one).

On the edge of the subway platforms are long translucent walls preventing absent-minded strollers, or really lazy potential suicides, from falling in. The trains slow down carefully when they arrive, matching the position of their doors with the sliding gates on the platform walls.

The cars, like the stations and the city streets, are clean. Taiwanese subway drivers are smooth.

I arrive at the hotel about two minutes too late for the complimentary breakfast.

I check-out, hail a cab and show the driver the symbols for Taipei Main Station in my pocket-sized notebook.

The train time-tables have just enough english for me. There's several kinds of trains going to Hualien, some faster and more expensive, some slower and cheaper, some sooner, some later. I line up to buy my ticket. I ask for 'Hualien'. They ask for money. It works and they give me a ticket for the next train which leaves in about an hour.

I go down two floors to the platforms to wait for the train. I leave my luggage and go back up one floor to 7-eleven and ask for a hotdog. They don't understand me so I point at the sausage on the 24 hour electric grill thing they have at every 7-eleven. She smiles, comprehending and gives me a sausage. Uh, how do you say buns in chinese? ugh, forget it, I'll take it.

Back on the platform I pick up a forgotten newspaper and dread someone making conversation with me while I'm holding the chinese newspaper so I soon go back to my book (a thought provoking but ultimately unsatisfying pop psychology book on east-west cultural-cognitive differences).

Trains and passengers come and go. An older woman sits next to me and makes intermittent conversation and I feel as if I should stop reading my book and try to raise the bandwidth on our conversation. I decide against it; I still have a long time wait ahead of me and if she's leaving on the same train I am it could become a long and excruciatingly boring wait as closing my book would make it all the more awkward later to cut short our frustrating conversation to get back to reading and I'd be forced to sit there blank-faced.

She leaves on an earlier train and through her mangled english she tells me as she's leaving that she lived seven years in New Jersey.

Fuck. Seven Years. And english is 'easy'.

A train arrives just at the time my train is supposed to leave and I get on hoping for the best.

The ride is about three and half hours long since the train makes about ten stops. It's a scenic ride. The first leg of the trip the train heads northeast, to Keelung on the coast, and then it just follows the coast, through Yilan and a bunch of other smaller places.

Tuesday Afternoon

The last half hour of the trip I'm freaking out at every station cause I can't be sure that I've recognized the 'Next station: Hualien' announcement on the speakers and I'm not sure I can drag my luggage a full car length to exit the train in the minute-long stops the train makes. Then, as the time on my cell phone becomes the ETA on my ticket I hear through the speakers, in perfect english: "We are now arriving in Hualien. This is the last stop."

Outside the station I hop on a cab telling him I want to go to Tzu Chi University, once again mispronouncing Tzu Chi because I don't actually know what the correct pronunciation is. I show him a doodle on my notebook and he takes me to Tzu Chi Hospital. Luckily he understands me when exasperated I reprimand him, waving my hands dramatically, screaming 'No, no, no, no', pointing at the Tzu Chi Buddhist Temple I see a few hundred feet down the road and tearing my hair out to get my point across. What I'll do when I get to the temple I don't know, but it's the one landmark I recognize from a picture on the school website.

We drive up.

The First Week - DF to Taipei

2007-09-08T13:01:00.000+08:00

I am arrived.

I narrate, before I forget, although I'm sure I've forgotten all the really interesting things.

Saturday 1st Sept

檢視較大的地圖

All night I pack, but mostly I burn mp3 cds (my third generation ipod broke down and is unfixable this day and age) and print out maps, directions, schedules and potentially useful information on hotels and train stations. Finding information on Hualien in english is tough and i find the same information about the same three hostels over and over again. I've emailed a couple of the hostels asking if they have vacancies for monday evening, when I land in Taipei. They haven't answered so I'm thinking I'll stay in a hostel in Taipei and go to Hualien the next morning. I email a third hostel.

I print out some key emails I've received from George who lives in Taipei. He's a friend of a friend of a friend's dad. That's four degrees. There's fifth degree acquaintances in Hualien which I should meet in the future. The world really is quite networked. George is going to pick me up at the Taiwan International Airport in Taoyuan.

Sunday 2nd Sept, early morning.

I am lined up outside the United Airlines desk at the Mexico City International Airport with Vic. I look for asian faces. Soon there's one behind me. I wonder... not really my type though, she's about 10 years too old for my broad and flexible requirements... she's maybe in her late forties...

I have two carry-on bags and two bags for documentation. Of the latter the wheeled one is about three kilos too heavy, the other one about eight too light. We move some stuff over to the lighter bag, it's not me who's gonna carry it now anyway and when we arrive I can move them back.

We have starbucks coffee in the food court. Friends and family arrive at this unbearable hour, don't they have anything better to do? oh well, it makes me happy.

I line up at the idiotically long security check line outside the boarding gates. Two kids scream incessantly and try running away. Do they enjoy the attention? Are they victims of abuse? Are they being kidnapped? Does anybody care? (Yes mr. security guard, speeding up their entrance through the crew-only line is completely fine by the rest of us, thank you)

Finally the line crawls forward and I'm lost already; which of the long corridors should I take? I choose randomly. I choose correctly.

I'm in the airplane sitting by the aisle. A fidgety teenager sits at the window. Luckily no one sits between us and I can ignore the world.

Morning

I wake up in San Francisco. We all line up at immigration.

"Why do you want to study chinese?" the inspector asks.
"mmhh... they say it's the language of the future" I say faux naively -shall I tell him the truth that I have no clue what I'm doing?
"Who's they?" he asks.
"...everyone... (duh)" I say.
"Everyone?"
"Yeah, you know, business magazines and all them."
"Are they learning chinese?" he asks.
"Gee... I don't know... I guess you have a point there" I say, not adding "officer dickwad."

And so he sends me to secondary revision. Great.

"Good luck" he says and I just want to blast that smirk off his face with my bare knuckles.

I wait in secondary revision.
And I wait.

Then I talk to this guy whos asks really open questions and I explain my life story. He doesn't interrogate me any further and lets me through. Nice guy really.

I have about three hours to kill. I buy the New York Times, the last one I'll see in a long time I bet. I buy this book "The World Without Us" and, from the asian bartender at the mexican bar, I buy a Sam Adams I do my best to drink in no fewer than two hours . I fantasize about running into somebody famous. I fantasize further about running into one of those cult figures noone else I know has ever heard of. No such thing happens.

In the paper I read a review of the book I just bought. "I'm so smart" I think, "choosing such a great book based on the cover". But in truth it's Jon Stewart who chose it -Alan Weisman, the author and a gloomy looking man, was just on his show. He says if mankind was to suddenly disengage from this existence our cities and the worlds we've built around us would soon be reclaimed by nature, the new york subway would soon crumble. Lexington avenue would soon be a river again. Cockroaches would perish soon after they finished off all the trash we leave behind for them. So scratch that cockroaches-survive-it-all urban myth.

It's time for the flight to Taipei. I get on the plane. It's big. I'm in the aisle of one of the middle seats. Across the aisle this cute girl smiles at me. Then her mom smiles at me. I focus on my mp3 discman and my reading material.

I get a choice of some chinese newspaper and the Wall Street Journal. I fear I'd expose my stupidity by asking for the chinese one so I ask for the WSJ and through the space between the seats in front of me I ogle the layout, pictures and bizareness of the chinese paper of the guy sitting in front. On my right are about four empty seats and then some western dude with a goatee. He has the same book I have on Taiwan. It's a different edition, with a different cover, but it's the same book. We don't speak.

Almost everyone's chinese and through the speaker system they say way more in chinese than in english. The plane lifts off and I think I've crossed some point of no return. I wonder what would happen if I started freaking out asking to go back home. Then I remind myself I'm actually doing this out of my own free will... then I revisit deterministic arguments against free will...

For lunch, and dinner, we have noodles and they're good. I warm up my chopstick skills. I listen to Boxer from The National, Our Love To Admire from Interpol (I just heard the ridiculous story that they're called Interpol because Paul Banks had the nickname 'Interpol' as a kid) and Crazy Itch Radio from Basement Jaxx.

Monday 3rd, 5pm

The flight is good. We arrive and I'm not even tired as all the naysayers say I would be.

We get off the plane and I reach the immigration area. Immigration is fast, easy and stress-free. It's exactly the same process, fill out a card and line up to see the inspector. The inspector here asks no questions. Then again, he doesn't say welcome either or anything remotely similar so he might not really speak english and he'd rather not tire his vocal chords and try his patience trying to communicate with me.

Evening

George is right outside the arrivals area and I don't have to carry my luggage far to the parking lot.

His car is nice. It has a screen above the audio system that I suppose is standard around here. The highway(s) we take on the way from Taoyuan to Taipei are nice. Nothing special about them except they're not fucked up and we're not used to such professional work in Mexico. As we approach the city I start seeing way more scooters and bicycles. Quality pavement is crucial with this sort of traffic.

George takes me to a Korean restaurant. The food is delicious. Spicy meat and vegetables that I have no idea how to order later. In our table is a charcoal grill where they bbq our meat. It's really good.

Soon I am intoxicated and it's not mainly all the chinese I hear, or the nonstop spiciness of the bbq, or the strangeness of Taipei or some new age awareness that's taking of hold of me or rather the bbq which is really, really spicy, it-s mainly that I've gulped down the pain with generous amounts of the local lager favorite: "Taiwan Beer". That's what it's called. "Taiwan Beer". It's not a very creative name I suppose and the look of it is heineken-bizarro, but the taste is as good as any other and they give you a small glass you have to constantly refill if you don't want to sip it like some fine tequila.

We call a hostel and they have no vacancy. George has insisted all the while that I stay in this hotel he knows where his friend (i.e. my third degree acquaintance en route to George) stays when he's in Taipei. What can I do? I give in.

I need taiwanese currency and we stop by an ATM. It has an option for English and it further motivates me to learn chinese as quickly as possible. You'd think a bank would take translation work a little more seriously than the t-shirt makers.

I withdraw a few thousand NT$ (which stands for New Taiwanese Dollars) and realize that easier than converting the NT$ amounts to US dollars is converting straight to mexican pesos (the ones we stopped calling 'new' -and writing N$- over a decade ago) by dividing by three. So NT$9,000 corresponds to $3,000 pesos. Converting to US dollars was a burocratic algorithm anyway, multiplying by three, or dividing by three, and dividing by ten or a hundred.... or multiplying by 32 which is the same as 2 to the power of 5 so just doubling the amount five times. It was fun math, but not very efficient and just as (im)precise as dividing by three to get the peso amount.

NT$33 is approximately equal to $11 pesos which approximately equals $1 US dollar.

So we go to the hotel where an Indian father and son are trying to check in with the wiry attendant. I don't say much as George does most of the talking and the two Indians seemed intrigued by me. Eventually I take my passport out and stamp it on the desk where they can see it so that they have a conversation starter and they can stop staring like I'm from some other planet.

We get some beverages across the street and say our farewells, next time I call him up I'll speak some chinese we say. I click through the cable channels, there's at least four crappy looking talk shows of the same sort that dominate mornings on public television in Mexico or the US, so unable to decide on the unappealing asian or american porn I end up moving on to CNN or some other newschannel in english with which I promptly fall asleep.

Ni hao means how are you

2007-08-02T11:06:00.000+08:00

Me subí al trolley junto al centro de convenciones de San Diego, de regreso del Comic-Con International al departamento, para regresar con pilas recargadas al día siguiente a intensear con los demás geeks, y dos chavos asiáticos se sentaron frente a mí, hablando algo que yo me inclinaba a creer era japonés.

Mi hipótesis estaba firmemente basada en mis extensas horas (veinte máximo) de estudiar chino, mis lecturas sobre Asia, y mi experiencia con cine, televisión y videojuegos de Asia. No nada mas tomé en cuenta sus rasgos étnicos (léase prejuicios racistas), también consideré la modulación de su voz, el uso de tonos, la distribución de frecuencias de los distintos grupos fonéticos que dan esa textura inmediatamente reconocible a un idioma, etc... japoneses seguro concluí.

Les pregunte si venían del comic-con, obvio todos los taka-taka son super nerds ¿no?, pero no me entendían. Debían ser bastante obsesivos para venir a Comic-Con cuando hablaban tan poco inglés, sobre todo cuando en Japón tienen un montón de convenciones como éstas, que si mas pequeñas, con mayor frecuencia durante el año.

Pues resulta que son de Taiwán. ¡Ja! Están en E.U. para aprender inglés.

"¿Oh yeah, you're from Taiwan? I'm going to Taiwan, to Hualien"

"¡¡HUALIEN!!"

"¡YES! Ni hao"

"Ni hao means how are you"

"Yes, I know, it's the only chinese I know"

Y uno de ellos y yo nos reímos como imbéciles. Bueno, yo, porque a veces así me río, sobretodo con extraños para que no me crean ojete, porque aparentemente es común que cause esa primera impresión (y segunda, tercera, etc..). No sé como reírme como idiota implica que no soy ojete pero ya es un tic nervioso mio.
En todo este alboroto ya se había parado de su asiento el otro chino (y ahora sí es debatible si la etiqueta de chino le quedaba o no porque país independiente o no, Taiwán es culturalmente chino con el comunismo remplazado por primer mundo) porque ya debían bajarse en la primera parada.

Ni tiempo tuvimos de intercambiar mails o teléfonos.... . ¿para qué? no sé, para hostigarlos con pregunta ridículas supongo, como ¿qué me depara Taiwán?, como si aparte de chinito de la suerte fuera bola mágica de cristal.

-------------
Unas imágenes de Taiwán de 360 grados:

http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f12b-taiwan.html

Excellency

2007-07-23T14:39:00.000+08:00

Hoy nos invitó la OECT a comer al Excellency, un restaurante chino-taiwanés en Lomas de Chapultepec.

La ocasión fue la entrega oficial de nuestros certificados de beca.

Mi nombre oficial quedó así:

Dice Tony. Es mi nombre completo. No conseguí un apellido así que me quedo con este nombre que es, más bien, como Tuo-ni.
Por lógica china, o mi comprensión de ésta, siendo que el primer símbolo representa a mi apellido y el segundo mi nombre, si reoccidentalizo mi nombre me llamaría Ni Tuo.

Qué cosas.

La visita al Excellency fue reconfortante si solo porque nos conocimos todos por primera vez.

Después de la comida fuimos a la OECT, que está a menos de diez minutos del Excellency, a recoger nuestros pasaportes con nuestras Visas para la República de China.

Taiwan de noche, en Asia del Este

A History of Taiwan in Comics

2007-07-17T13:31:00.000+08:00

Yo quiero.

http://www.thirdnature.com.tw/project/books/index.htm?s_id=107

Todo es muy diferente

2007-07-17T12:03:00.000+08:00

Así que en el fin de semana logré conseguir unas horas, para platicar, con una amiga china de un pariente.

Ella es del norte de la China donde, según me explicó, se habla un mandarin mucho más correcto que en el sur de China y que en Taiwan, donde sufre de un acento muy marcado por los idiomas nativos taiwaneses.

Ella lleva cuatro años en México y le pregunté que había sido para ella la diferencia mas impactante entre las dos culturas.

Ella, vacilante por un instante, lo meditó, volteó a verme con completa seriedad y dijo:

"Todo.
Todo es muy diferente."

Okay.

Fair enough.

Sin embargo, hablamos un poco más sobre las curiosidades lingüísticas del chino y me sugirió una alternativa para "Tony" que es aceptada y reconocida en su uso por extranjeros.

Aquí les pongo mi versión chafa en paint del elocuente garabato que ella escribió para mí sobre un folder.

El autorebautizo

2007-07-09T06:39:00.001+08:00

Un poco más sobre los nombres en chino:

El chino, cada signo-escritura es monosílaba fonéticamente. Normalmente tenemos tres signos—el primero es el apellido y los dos siguinetes son los nombres compuestos. En total son tres signos. Tambien puede ser simplemnete un segundo signo como el unico nombre tuyo, en este caso, en total son dos signos. Algunos de vosotros os importara más el significado de los signos, mientras otros prefieren los signos con trazos más sencillos. Todo depende del gusto de cada uno. -Blanca

Así que la idea es que el nombre completo consista de tres símbolos inluyendo apellido...

Aqui están algunas posibilidades para mi nombre, sin apellido, de acuerdo a un sitio que encontró Johnny McDonalds -www.formosa-translation.com- que tiene una base de datos de, supuestamente, mil nombres.

¿Cómo ven?

Me parece que solo las tres primeras opciones me sirven por ahora, en lo que encuentro otro símbolo que pueda sintetizar alguno de mis dos apellidos trisilábicos en una solo 'grafía'.

1. Tony

2. Tony/Toni

3. Antoine

4. Anthony

5. Antonio

¿Cuál será la diferencia entre los primeros dos?

Han habido quienes me llamen 'Tone' (en inglés) y sospecho que este apodo monosilábico pueda tener su contraparte en chino en un solo caracter. Pero, no está la opción en el sitio...
¿Y "Toño"?
¿Existirá el sónido de la Ñ en chino?

Dónde está Taiwan

2007-07-08T18:50:00.000+08:00

Aquí esta Taiwán
RDC -República de China, o República Democrática de China - o Ilha Formosa (así llamada hace siglos por los portugueses)...

algo de geopolítica

Esta junto a la China grandota -o China continental, o República Popular de China (RPC).

La relación entre los dos es polémico.
La RPC no reconoce la soberanía de Taiwán y Taiwán se considera independiente.
Y en la práctica lo es en gran medida...

La división de las dos Chinas sucede cuando la revolución cultural de Mao Zedong tomó control de la China continental en 1949 y el Gobierno desalojado -el Kuomintang- huye a Taiwán y ahí se establece.

Por años ha esperado el Kuomintang recuperar el poder sobre el continente y fueron reconocidos como autoridad legítima de China hasta los años 70. Desde entonces la China continental, la 'comunista', ha crecido en su poderío económico, y político y ha ocasionado que las lealtades internacionales, legitimidarias y 'fácticas', cambien de Taiwán a ella, la RPC.

Como ejemplo, está el último país en romper relaciones diplomáticas con Taiwán, Costa Rica, el pasado 6 de junio.
“Taiwán ha sido muy generoso y doy gracias por la solidaridad y cooperación que ha tenido por casi 60 años, pero he tomado esta decisión pensando en todo los costarricenses”, hubo dicho Oscar Arias, presidente de Costa Rica (1).

La RPC usa su peso para exigir relaciones exclusivas con sus países socios y le está ganando la batalla a Taiwán. Ni la ONU ni la OMS reconocen ya a Taiwán.

Con la osadía de Sta. Lucia, de reestablecer relaciones con Taiwán alrededor del pasado 1 de mayo, se suman a 25 la cantidad de países que le reconocen (2).

Taiwán es el primer país de chinos en haber escogido democráticamente a su presidente.

mas geo y menos política

Está al suroeste de Japón y al noroeste de las Filipinas.

Pasa por la isla el trópico de cancer.

También forman parte de Taiwan las islas de Lanyu, Pescadores, Isla Verde, Kinmen y archipielagos como Matsu y Quemoy.

Las dos ciudades mas importantes Taipei y Kaohsiung, están en la punta norte y sur respectivamente del lado poniente de la cordillera que divide la isla, dando cara al estrecho de Taiwan, escenario histórico de conflictos militares entre Taiwan y la RPC.

Hualien, donde yo, da cara al pacífico.

Por ahí dicen que en Taiwán hay 23 millones de habitantes... En el condado de Hualien, hay 350 mil, y en la ciudad de Hualien, 110 mil.

Dónde estoy ahora

Aquí vivo yo, en el noroeste de la capital y area conurbada. Un poco mas allá de Satélite, en Atizapán -o Ciudad Lopez Mateos- con una población de casi 600 mil.
Al centro y hasta arriba de esta foto. Abajo y a la derecha se ve el aeropuerto. De lado izquierdo se todo Chapultepec.

Por ahí dicen que los habitantes de la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México ya suman mas de 24 millones.

Nuevo Laredo, Mazatlán y Cuernavaca tienen poblaciones comparables al condado de Hualien.

The unknown stares back

2007-07-05T15:08:00.000+08:00

La incredulidad, negación y shock que se apoderaron de mi tras enterarme que la dependencia diplomática de Taiwán en México ha decidido otorgarme una beca para estudiar mandarín en Taiwán, ha dado lugar a nuevas sensaciónes de pánico y miedo y shock.
Tras la reacción inicial me percato que tengo muchisimas preguntas y ninguna respuesta.
Pero como se dice por ahí: El camino de mil millas, comienza con un solo paso.
Así que continuó con mi tarea de redefinirme, o sea, renombrarme, rebautizarme. Resulta que lo usado en la nomenclatura propia en el mandarín es que un nombre consista de tres símbolos. Talvez ideogramas sea el termino adecuado. Debo construir mi trìgrafo propio (por llamarle de alguna manera).

En esta aventura que estoy emprendiendo muy pronto se dará cuenta usted, estimado lector, qué yo sé muy poco de lo que me espera, y qué usted probablemente esté mucho mejor informado que yo de los mundos que pronto me rodeen. Espero que la presente bitácora sea fuente de un suspenso adictivo, y dependiendo de su filosofía también lo sea de humor así como espero que esta documentación le sirva de entretenimiento didáctico.

Por lo pronto, me enfrento al reto de mi nuevo nombre. ¿Cómo construirlo?

¡Yo?

2007-07-03T15:25:00.000+08:00

Recibo mail fresco.

Es de Blanca, de la Oficina Económica y Cultural de Taipei (algo así como el consulado de Taiwan)

Lo leo y digo, despistadamente, en voz alta:
¿En serio?

Seguro hicieron algún error y al rato voy a recibir otro email pidiéndome mil disculpas por que en realidad no me van a dar esta oportunidad de ir a Taiwán a aprender chino.

Termino de releerlo y me percato que la barra superior de Firefox dice: Gmail(1)

¿otro?
¡Demonios, lo sabía!
Seguro éste es el mail en el que nos van a explicar que se infectaron de algun virus en su outlook y que no es la intención de la Oficina becarnos a todos los que nos llegó el correo.

Pero leí el mail y esta vez venía mi nombre, deliberadamente tecleado en el cuerpo del correo, bajo el nombre de la universidad que va a dirigirme en mis estudios.
Este engaño hubiera sido demasiado sofisticado para un virus como los que conocemos hasta hoy.

Habían otros nombres bajo otras escuelas, pero ahí, bajo Tzu Chi University, estaba mi nombre, tal cómo me lo había imaginado: el mío el único, bajo Tzu Chi.
Pensé que así sería tras ser seducido por su ubicación remota en Hualien y estilo budista.
Si el occidente de la isla es industria y tecnología, el oriente ha sido naturaleza y tradición, o al menos así me lo he imaginado basado en mis indagaciones cuyos frutos seguramente han sido superficiales.

¿Qué voy a hacer? Se acaba el tiempo.
¡Que stress!
¿Por qué me estoy apanicando?

¡Chin!
Nuevo mail: "Para ir tramitando la visa..."

¡ 'inguele!
Otro mail: "Recomendaciones para ir comprando sus boletos de..."

¡ 'ingue su !
"¿Cuando vienes a la Oficina...."

¿y luego estos mails que no son de la Oficina?

"Hola todos, me llamo... y estoy muy contenta por que nos vamos..." (500 palabras)

Otro: "Saludos a todos, Yo soy... y estoy muy agradecido....." (400 palabras)

En ese momento me di cuenta que esto no se trataba de una pesada broma cósmica.
Hice una lectura de los enviados y me enfoqué en la tarea más misteriosa que nos estaba dejando Blanca, quién leyó nuestras solicitudes, nos entrevistó y nos estaba deleitando con las buenas noticias.
En su correo puso:

- NOMBRE EN CHINO.

Es necesario. Todos tenéis que decirme vuestro nombre en chino.

Me tengo que nombrar. ¿Cómo habré de llamarme? Es una responsabilidad de dimensiones metafísicas y yo no sé escribir ni diez caracteres chinos. ¿Qué hacer?

Tengo otra tarea inmediata, descifrar mi carta de aceptación. Por suerte usan números arábigos y alcanzo a comprender que ellos esperan que comienze mi aventura el 10 de septiembre. Sin embargo, podría comprender mal, por ejemplo con el otro par de números que parecen indicar el 5 de septiembre. Bueno, si llego el 4 ya la hice.

Debo llevar esta información a ser procesada.

Mientras tanto, Taiwan me ha hecho la invitación.
El llamado ha llegado, y eso redefine todo.