I Can Read Chinese

This weekend I was brushing my teeth. The toothpaste has a picture of a smiling guy with a bow tie and a top hat. I didn’t think too much of it. The toothpaste works and it was on sale.


I've been using it for a while but it wasn't until recently that I could recognize some Chinese words so while brushing my teeth I started looking at the words on the tube.



I could recognize the words "Man" and "Black". What? Yes, that's right, the toothpaste is called "Black Man Toothpaste". I had to ask someone if I was reading this properly. Surely, you couldn’t launch a blatantly racist ad campaign in a country as civilized as Taiwan. Turns out that you can and I have been unkowningly using racist toothpaste for months. No cavities though.


Black Man Toothpaste

Trouble With the Law

I got a speeding ticket. The only problem is that it was 3 months ago, the first week I had a car. So now I am paranoid that I have a bunch of tickets over the last 3 months that I don't know about yet. They have cameras everywhere that snap your picture if you go 10 kmh over the limit. That's like getting caught doing 36 mph in a 30 mph zone so it is easily done. It's also a problem when you aren't really sure what the speed is and there aren't any cars around.

My co-workers pointed out the sign that warns you that a camera is coming up. All in chinese. Sweet. I couldn't ever figure out why people were going pedal to the metal and then would suddenly jam on the brakes for no reason. I was taking that as my cue to go around the crappy driver with no sense of maintaining speed. Oops.

The good news is that the ticket is only $50 USD (assuming the USD doesn't continue to tank). I have to pay at the local 7-11. I think the girl behind the counter is going to get to know me and my legal troubles pretty well.

Some Photos

Recently flooded rice field near my house.

Yer another field. These water logged fields are excellent mosquito incubators. That means I have to go on mosquito patrol before bed every night. Nothing worse than buzzing in your ear right before you fall asleep.






Lion's Head Mountain- A trail network with a bunch of temples.

View at Lion's Head. Cool pagoda.
Huge temple up there in the mountains.

I didn't know you could headbang in Buddhist heaven.

Check out the earlobes.

Lobes.

That is my office on the left. We have our own farm. Well it is not really my company's farm but I guess "zoning" is relative so things are all mixed up. I like to watch the farmer on my break sometimes and I am pretty sure that stuff he sprays is not organic.

We also have our own chicken. The only explanation I have been able to get is that he is good for eating centipedes.

Also next to the office we have a pretty cool gate and a guard dog. Don't worry, he is just sleeping. Actually all he does is sleep in the street, bark at cars and show up in the restaurant to eat left over pork chops. I am jealous.

Elections and a Few Photos.

Taiwan Resident who made me think of Elections




Guess what, America is not the only place that needs a new president. As much as the news wants you to think that Hillary and Obama will either save America or squabble away certain victory, there are other countries that have presidents. Taiwan is one of them.

So allow me to bring you up to speed:

Taiwan bugs China, so China has aimed a whole bunch of missiles at the island.



Missile Defense System

Taiwan likes money, so they are one of the largest direct foreign investors in China (that means Chinese people get more jobs and don’t riot).

The current Taiwan president has spent a lot of time saying Taiwan is its own country. This angers China a lot and that scares a lot of people on the island (remember the missiles). Plus, if China blows this place up, it will be hard to keep making money in China. Not to mention that it would be blown up.

So, they had an election and believe it or not, the guy who keeps angering China and its army, well, his party lost. A guy won who thinks Taiwan should be more friendly with China and its money making opportunities. People like this because they like money and they don’t like being carpet bombed. I heard one guy call it “supply-chain diplomacy”. Anyway, this new guy starts in a couple of months. It might make people ease off on their conspiracy theories that China is going to attack right after the Olympics.

Here are some funny “facts” that are probably close to reality but I don’t care to look up for sure. It was Taiwan’s 4th democratic election. The current president got shot the day before the last election 4 years ago and people honestly think it was staged for the sympathy vote. They had something like 75% turnout this time. People can’t vote by mail-in, so thousands of citizens flew in from other countries to vote. The 75% turnout was lower than last time. I think it is kind of like a new toy; since it is only the 4th time had a democratic election, people are still pumped about voting.

Enough. Since Taiwan people are so passionate about voting, they sometimes riot (and try to assassinate candidates). I was scheduled to go to our office in the south and then do tourism but my co-workers made me wait until after the elections in case of rioting. There was no rioting and I ended up in the south last weekend. I stayed in a Taiwan version of a resort town. Which is a little dirtier, noisier and more crowded than you might like but still warm and fun. It is called Kenting; all the at the southern tip of Taiwan. Enjoy some photos.

OK Hill Hotel- Notice the Astro-turf

Some bird.

Coral Beach

A little noisy with jet skis but still nice.

Swimming lessons aren't big over here.

I like the picture of the snake.

Chinese version of Paradise.

A Few More Photos

I guess it was a special day a couple days ago. People told me it was the last day of the Lunar New Year Festival and it was the Lantern Festival. The only thing is I am not really sure if they are supposed to fall on the same day or not. I heard 3 different versions of the timing. I should have tried out my Chinese language to get down the timing of the days, but then I don't really care that much.

What I do care about is big time fireworks. For some reason, it is more important to scare the demons on this day than on the first day of the New Year Festival. So all of the 7-11's stocked up with the best bombs money can buy. I walked downtown for the festivities. People were getting hit with fireworks left and right. I saw one mom yelling at her little boy because apparently he had the mortars aimed the wrong way.

People were launching launching paper lanterns with flames that gave them lift. It was really cool to watch all of these red glowing lanterns floating over the city with fireworks going off everywhere. I guess no one is worried where they come down or what they might burn to the ground when they do. Sorry, I couldn't get a good photo.

I did get some photos of some Joes with an arsenal in the middle of an intersection. They had some blow torches and an endless supply of serious fireworks flowing out of the mini-mart. I am not sure who was more at risk, the pedestrians, the firework technicians or the motorists. Enjoy:

A Few Photos

Here are a few photos. I hope I get some better ones later but for now it's a little taste of Taiwan.

This is a typical restaurant. I have been eating in places like this a lot. They only boil stuff. I get lots of beef noodles and seafood noodles. They also do wonton type things and vegetables. They also have lots of cold dishes like tofu and animal parts that they put on a scale and then chop up for you.

The National Musuem in Taipei. Most of the stuff here came from the Forbidden City in Beijing. It really irritates the Chinese government that Chiang Kai Shek took all the best stuff from China. The funny thing is that the artifacts almost definitely would have been destroyed when Mao flipped out and had the Cultural Revolution.

This guy is in Hsinchu. That must be a 10 foot tall Thumbs Up.

Just to give you an idea of how lush it is. This is a park in the city. Actually this photo doesn't really convey the reality so forget it. It's really leafy and green in Taiwan though. Trust me.

Hsinchu Harbor. This is about 10 minutes driving from my apartment. They have a good seafood market and jogging trail.

Longshan Temple in Taipei. There are temples everywhere in Taiwan. Even a small temple/shrine in the home is common. It is a stark contrast to the mainland because Mao decided it would be a good idea to knock down all the temples. Genius.

The temples in Taiwan typically have these really colorful cartoon characters on the rooftops. This one is in Beipu about an hour away from Hsinchu.

Rats, KTV and 6 Year Old Pyrotechnicians

It is Chinese New Year time. 2008 is the Year of the Rat. I guess it is a good year for wealth and marriage. But I think the translation is messed up because almost everything is good for wealth and marriage.

It is one of the most important times of the year for Asia. It’s like Christmas for western people. I got invited to New Year’s Eve dinner with a local family. So that’s like inviting a Chinese guy into your home for Christmas Eve and all the dude can really say in English is “Merry Christmas, I am very happy to meet you”. How cool and hilarious would that be? Well, that was me.

It is very important to light off lots of fireworks at the New Year to ward off bad spirits. I think last year I wrote that it was to ward off dragons. I found out later that dragons are actually really lucky. So it was a translation error that I am now retracting. I dare you to guess how many “facts” I have written over the past year are completely off base…..

Anyway, people have been blowing off professional grade fireworks for the last two weeks. At the local family’s house, they put a kid who looked like he was 10 in charge of the pyrotechnics. His assistant was probably about 6 and they were using the back porch as a platform. The best is when a firework accidentally shoots sidways and the kids run and hide and then start laughing and wrestling around in the dirt before lighting another bomb. Since the children had firework duty, the adults were free to chug wine and eat way too much food indoors.

I actually attended two dinners since the guys were brothers who lived next door to each other. One guy was pretty excited to drink wine with foreigners. Lots of neighbors and relatives kept stopping by and they wanted to chug with foreigners as well. So the brothers had to go find more wine in some dusty, cockroach ridden boxes. The wine was pretty crappy but the food was a nice combination of seafood, pork and pork stomach….

After dinner, everyone retired to the “living room” of one of the houses for karaoke and mahjong. Actually, the living room had roll up garage doors and in addition to the couches and entertainment center, they also had 5 scooters, an office and lots of pump repair supplies (the brother is in the pump business).

I was learning mahjong and singing karaoke at the same time. It was very difficult to understand the mahjong instructions since we had to crank karaoke to 10 in order to hear the singing over the bombs going off outside. With the high ceilings and concrete floors, it made for a fairly insane after dinner entertainment. I do understand money and it turns out that mahjohng is a gambling game and you should yell whenever someone wins or loses. Oh yeah, since there aren’t heaters in Taiwan and it had been in the low 50’s lately, I didn’t take my jacket off the whole time. So I was yelling, singing, freezing and paying out money to people who thought I was a pretty funny side show.

So there you have a little taste of a Taiwan version of Christmas dinner. Let me tell you that after all of the crappy wine, KTV cranked to 10, ridiculously confusing mahjong instructions (in Chinese and broken English) and bombs going off on all sides, I had a pretty bad headache by the time I made it home….

I guess Taiwan is similar to China in that if it is not loud, confusing and slightly insane, it’s not worth doing.

Happy New Year!