Taiwanese Hospitality

A couple locals who befriended Wendy and me at a little restaurant.

After spending time in Taiwan and Mainland China, I often wonder how Asian visitors to Canada or America find us as hosts. When was the last time you approached people on the street looking at a map and asked them if they need directions? Have yo ever walked up to a table of people speaking a different language and tried to start up a conversation, regardless of whether you spoke that language or not?

If you’re like me, the answers to the above questions are “never” and “no.”

I’ve mentioned the hospitality of Mainland China in previous posts, but it’s even more pronounced here in Taiwan. We’ve been here a month and we’ve already lost track on the number of times people on the street have offered us help without a request from us. It will happen when we’re reading a bus schedule, or looking at the subway guide, or standing on a sidewalk looking at our map.

“Hello! Can I help you?” is something we’ve heard many times since arriving in Kaohsiung. On one of those occasions Wendy and I were trying to get our Taiwanese cell phone numbers. This is incredibly easy in Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China, where you just hand a vendor the equivalent of $20 Canadian and he gives you a SIM card with a local phone number. It’s a little more involved in Taiwan. When looking for a cell provider office, we stopped at a TGI Friday’s where we knew the staff spoke English and asked for directions to a place where we could buy a SIM card. The host gave us directions and even wrote the name of the place in Chinese so we knew what sign to look for. We didn’t have any luck finding the place he told us about and we kept retracing our steps, thinking we had missed the place.

As we walked by TGI Friday’s again, one of the hostesses who was getting off work noticed we were still looking for the Taiwan Mobile office. She looked at the address we had and realized the first guy gave us directions to a location that had moved. This young lady had difficulty giving us directions we could understand, so she actually went out of her way and took us to a store…then she actually stayed and did the interpreting for us!

Getting away from receiving help on the street, I’m even more impressed with basic hospitality from locals who just start talking to you out of the blue. This often happens in a little mom-and-pop restaurant that doesn’t have any English menus or pictures of what they sell. These are the places where I try to muddle through in my survival Chinese skills and hope to hell I get what I think I just ordered. If I can’t get through with my Chinese skills, I usually end up in the kitchen, pointing at ingredients and playing charades trying to demonstrate how I want the stuff cooked.

In those situations, someone in the restaurant – sometimes the owner, other times a customer – will come to our table and start a conversation, usually beginning with “Welcome to Taiwan. Where are you from?”

They usually only speak a couple words of English, and more often than not, the “where are you from” part is in Chinese. I muddle through with the little Chinese I have, often referring to the Chinese-English phrasebook in my pocket, and before you know it, a few other locals have joined us at our table and we all share a few laughs on how we butcher each others language.

Broken English or broken Chinese may not be the most effective way to communicate, but never underestimate the power of either of them!

Taiwan: China, but not China

One of many building-sized billboards in downtown Kaohsuing

Taiwan is a bit of an oddity. To the Taiwanese, it is an independent country called the Republic of China. To the Chinese, it’s a province of the People’s Republic of China. To the rest of the world, it depends on how your government recognizes each place. During the height of the Cold War, most of the world recognized Taiwan as the Republic of China, completely ignoring the Godless Communists of Mainland China. The list of countries that officially recognizes Taiwan as the Republic of China shrinks daily, thanks to the Mainland’s economic clout and massive pool of cheap labor that other countries want to exploit. To further confuse matters, countries that move their official recognition to Mainland China still maintain “Economic Trade” offices in Taiwan. These offices are actually embassies in disguise because if you recognize the Mainland as “China,” it cannot also recognize Taiwan as “China.” Because of that, Mainland China has all most of the world’s embassies while Taiwan is home to a very long list of trade offices. Basically, it’s a huge diplomatic tap dance that tries to keep everyone happy.

The Dragon and Tiger Pagodas at Lotus Pond in Kaohsiung

Despite the political/diplomatic quagmire and the complex history that makes Taiwan what it is today, it is still  Chinese in culture, with a few differing cultural characteristics which makes the Taiwanese markedly different from their Mainland counterparts.

To further illustrate this, a brief history of Taiwan is necessary. After being colonized or conquered by a few different countries over the centuries (the Portuguese and Dutch claimed the island at different points in history), Taiwan ended up under Japanese control for 50 years from 1895 to 1945. After the Second World War, an international tribunal determined that Taiwan should be returned to China (Mainland China, that is). This was a bittersweet moment for the Taiwanese. Although they were controlled by a foreign government, Taiwan prospered and developed well under Japanese rule while Mainland China remained undeveloped. Making matters worse, Taiwan was handed back to the Mainland while the country was in the midst of the civil war between the ruling Kuomintang party and Mao Zedong’s Communist forces.

When the communists defeated the Kuomintang on the Mainland, Chiang Kai Shek and the remainder of his forces fled to Taiwan where he stubbornly entrenched himself as the President of the Republic of China. Rather than following Chiang to Taiwan and defeating him there, Mao let Chiang operate in Taiwan. Unfortunately for Mao, the rest of the world was slow to recognize his government as the People’s Republic of China. That basically brings us to where we are today.

Wendy at the top of the Dragon Pagoda

If you have ever spent any time in Mainland China, the differences are often subtle – much like the differences between Canada and the US. The Taiwanese are more worldly. They don’t live behind the Great Firewall of China, so they have far more contact with the rest of the world – and none of the Mainland’s propaganda. Taiwan has a well established middle class, so the spread between rich and poor is not as evident in the Mainland. The Taiwanese are more polite than their mainland counterparts (you can really see the Japanese influence come through here). They bow like the Japanese, politely stand in line or take a number, speak quieter…the list goes on. This is not to say the Mainland Chinese are impolite – they just have a different set of values regarding what is polite. One thing the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese have in common is they will kill you with kindness and hospitality.

For the visible differences between Taiwan and China, Taiwan is much cleaner. The cities seem more organized (from an engineering/infrastructure standpoint), the driving is less crazy (but still very chaotic compared to Western standards).

A colorful 22-meter statue of the God Xuantian, which houses a Daoist temple.

Going to the other end of the spectrum, Taiwan is more “Chinese” that Mainland China in some ways. Unlike Mainland China which was plundered of its historic architecture during the cultural revolution, Taiwan is home to countless pieces of classic Chinese architecture – temples, pagodas, courtyard homes, etc. It’s difficult to walk any distance here in Kaohsiung without passing a temple of some sort.

So that’s my take on Taiwan so far. It’s only been a month and we’ve only been in one city so far and I’m sure I’ll discover more differences and similarities as time goes by.

For more photos from Kaohsiung, go to http://www.facebook.com/lenlangevin#!/album.php?aid=427709&id=850395130

Frenetic pace of Guangzhou construction

The new GZTV Tower – the world’s tallest free-standing structure

When I lived in Guangzhou from 2002-2005, there was a joke going around that if you took a three-hour river boat tour/dinner cruise, the city’s skyline would change by the time you got back.The joke wasn’t all that far from the truth, either.

Well, believe it or not, the pace of development in Guangzhou has gotten even hotter in the past five years. When I left, GZ had two subway lines. Five are now running with a sixth scheduled to start in May. A few more major interchanges and expressways were added making a trip through the city very fast. Before 2005, a taxi ride from the train station to my school area always cost around 50 RMB. Today you can get pretty much anywhere in the city for 35 RMB. It’s a good thing I didn’t try to haggle with the taxi driver when we got in. I’d have happily paid 50 RMB for the trip.

Much of the current construction is due to the 2010 Asian Games which will be held in GZ in November. In addition to a multitude of new venues, roadways and attractions being build specifically for that event, most of the city’s buildings and neighborhoods are going through a massive renovation. I was in neighborhoods I used to regularly visit and could not recognize a thing – partly because of the new buildings that had popped up, but mostly because every other building was covered with scaffolding and green netting.

All the new construction is getting rid of neglected old neighborhoods and replacing them with shiny new ultra-modern glass and steel structures that dwarf most buildings in North America. The most recently completed building is the GZTV Tower which overtook Toronto’s CN Tower as the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

Old meets new in GuangZhou

With all the new developments obliterating older neighborhoods, it is refreshing to see certain old structure being protected. The Chinese have a saying that “the new won’t come unless you get rid of the old,” and the country has lost a lot of historical structures because of that. The cultural revolution didn’t help matters much either. Guangzhou has no shortage of ugly Mao-era that really need to be bulldozed, but it’s also a 2,800-year-old city which should have a lot more historical structures than it does.

It was great to see that the 400-year-old Chigang Pagoda still standing in the shadow of the new GZTV Tower. Although the grounds to the pagoda are accessible, the area is not maintained and the building itself is not open to the public. It does, however, look like the place will be going through a major refurbishing as the area surround it is somewhat cordoned off and a building that was once a restaurant now only houses a caretaker for the area.

Another place we visited was Liu Rong Si, or the Six Banyan Pagoda Temple. Liu Rong Si was originally built in 537 AD, then rebuilt in 1097 and 1373 after being ravaged by fires. The current 1373 structure that still stands was restored in 1900 and is an extremely popular temple to visit – for locals and tourists alike. A Buddhist monastery is on the pagoda grounds and visitors can watch the services led by monks. When I last visited the temple in 2005, tourists were able to enter the pagoda and visit each of the nine floor. Tourist traffic must be taking its toll on the building as it is no longer open to visitors.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the city, new buildings are built to look old. In one subdivision, a replica of Beijing’s Summer Palace Pagoda was built at the top of a mountain an houses a popular restaurant and tea house.

Replica of Beijing’s Summer Palace

Guangzhou has long been an industrial centre of China that really didn’t have much going for it as a tourist destination, nor did it have much visual appeal, architecturally speaking. That has changed dramatically over the past 10 years and Guangzhou’s skyline easily rivals that of Shanghai, New York, Chicago or London.

On the down side, Guangzhou is still the buckle of China’s industrial belt and the air quality is among the worst in the world.

The city may have a great skyline, but it can be difficult to see on most days.

Wendy discovers the challenge of breathing in Guangzhou

Chen Clan Temple – Guangzhou China

On our first full day in Guangzhou, one of my former students and her husband took us to one of my favorite spots in the city – Chen Jia Ci, or the Chen Clan Temple. It is also known as the Chen Family Academy….I don’t really know why it has a couple of different English names, but “Academy” is a far more appropriate term to use that “Temple.”

The place was originally built as a family temple and a sanctuary for family members to study, but is now used as a traditional/folk art academy and is considered one of Guangzhou’s top tourist attractions.

According to one of the official tourism sites, here’s some history about the academy. “In the late of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), a man named Chen got the third place in the highest imperial examination and had conferred upon him a distinguished office title which made the Family Chen well-known. Later someone suggested that all the Chen’s families raise money to build a temple to sacrifice to the ancestors and encourage their offspring likewise to study hard. Therefore, the temple was finished in 1894 with the money donated by Chen’s families in 72 counties of Guangdong Province as well as some overseas members of Family Chen.

“The temple is a compound complex consisting of nine halls, six courtyards and nineteen buildings connected by corridors, all separated by walls from the outside world. A pair of stone drums in front of the entrance door, measuring 2.55 meters (about 8.36 feet) in height and two colored drawing pictures of door-god of four meters (about 13 feet) height are said to be the best in Guangdong.

“The compound was constructed in the traditional Chinese symmetrical style and the main hall, the Juxian Hall is in the center of the temple. Juxian Hall was once a place for clansmen to assemble before the establishment of the temple and now it is used as an ancestral hall. In front of the hall is a stone gazebo surrounded by stone balustrades. In the hall there is an exquisitely carved folding screen which is an excellent example of woodcarving.”

The top photo is one of the many corridors in the complex that connects the different buildings. The bottom photo is one of the stone lions at the entry. The lions signify power and are there to keep evil and misfortune away.

The temple was somewhat pillaged during the Cultural Revolution. Most of the contents were burned, but the structure itself miraculously escaped demolition. If my memory serves me correctly, the building were used as either a factory or a slaughterhouse during the cultural revolution and it fell into considerable disrepair. Since then, the all levels of government in China have been spending a lot to restore the place to its former glory. There is currently a very large construction project going on in front of the Academy that will give the place a massive courtyard-styled entry way. Both Wendy and I are looking forward to a return trip to Guangzhou to see the changes. We suspect that most of the construction should be finished by November when Guangzhou hosts the 2010 Asian Games.

For Wendy’s take on the Chen Clan Temple, check out her blog.

Riding High in Hong Kong

If you’re ever in Hong Kong, try to make your way to Ngong Ping, which is on Lantau Island, away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong proper. And if you go to Ngong Ping and take the cable car, make sure to spring the extra cash for the “Crystal Car” which has a glass-bottom floor that gives you a gut-dropping view of the ground below you – about 200 feet below you in some places. In the above photo, my wife Wendy looks like she’s sitting on a floating bench as our cable car approaches the landing dock near the Hong Kong airport.

The cable car ride from Ngong Ping to the landing dock is about half an hour long and the views are spectacular in any direction. For those who don’t like heights, you can also get to Ngong Ping by taking a ferry and bus or hike up the mountain following the cable car lines. You can see a bit of the path in the photo above.

Once at Ngong Ping, the main attraction is a giant Buddha and a Buddhist monastery. You will also find some hiking trails that will take you up and around the many mountains in the area. We didn’t do any of the hiking, however, as we were still suffering from the jet lag.

Soon….back in Asia

We’ll soon be seeing this view from the Star Ferry in Hong Kong!

We’re down to our last few days in Nanaimo before Wendy and I fly to Toronto on to visit her family for a while before heading to the wonderful city of Hong Kong.

I really look forward to being back in Asia. That’s where I first became interested in photography, and when I look at my photos from China, Hong Kong and Malaysia, I’m quite disappointed in them. It will be nice to have a chance to get some better shots of places now that I know what I’m doing with a camera.

This photo of the Hong Kong Convention Centre is among the first digital photographs I ever shot. It was back during the 2002 Chinese New Year celebrations and I had just bought a digital camera in Kowloon. Straight out of the electronics shop, I walked down Nathan Road and hopped onto a Star Ferry to Hong Konk Island.

Crippled jeeps and beer-drinking pigs – a day on St. Croix

Never underestimate what you’ll find in a public bathroom when vacationing in a Caribbean paradise

Being travelers who prefer less touristy things, my wife and I always look for activities that don’t draw the crowds like the glass-bottom boat, dinner cruises or excursions on pickup trucks converted into open-air taxis – all tourism staples on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things – we just prefer to zig when others zag.

Ironically, it was in the bathroom while waiting to get on a glass-bottom boat to the snorkeling Mecca of Buck Island Reef where we spotted a poster offering our kind of trip – an off-road jeep tour to locations few tourists see. Making things better, the maximum group size of four was perfect for us and the couple traveling with us.

With a small armada of modified jeeps, Tan Tan Tours takes intrepid tourists off the beaten track into the heart of St. Croix. Tours begin in Christiansted, a charming seaside town with cobbled sidewalks and narrow old-world streets dominated by pastel-colored Danish colonial architecture dating back to the early 1700s.

Although we started with a “safety briefing,” that briefing also informed us of a beer cooler conveniently strapped to the jeep’s front bumper and the consumption of alcohol in a moving vehicle is not illegal in the Virgin Islands – driver excluded, of course.

With that nugget of information under our belts, our first stop was a gas station that sold beer and ice. With the cooler full of beer, our off-road experience began with the roar of the engine and the pffft of opening beer cans.

Just before going off road, our driver Carl stopped to show us the company’s namesake – the tan tan tree. As the company’s motto goes, “Where the tan tan trees grow, we go.” And the tan tan grows everywhere on St. Croix, much like the Scotch broom covering Vancouver Island. Like Vancouver Island’s Scotch broom, the tan tan tree is an invasive species choking out native vegetation despite attempts to eradicate it.

Going off road anywhere on the Virgin Islands can be a bit of a relief. Sure, you’re bounced around like a bingo ball and low-hanging branches tend to whip passengers in the head and arms, but you don’t have the disconcerting feeling of driving on the wrong side of the road. The Virgin Islands use left-hand-drive vehicles but you drive on the left as in England. Despite a week of driving a rental car on St. Croix, oncoming traffic from the right still had the effect of migrating your heart into your throat. Being on the left and knowing you’re in the right seems to only work when speaking politically.

But I digress. Back to the off-road experience.

Leaving the paved road, we began ascending a very steep rocky hill. Shortly thereafter, the jeep started lurching and making weird noises. We stalled a couple of times and then discovered the accelerator was sticking. Despite the mechanical difficulties on a remote mountain road, we never felt stranded or in danger. Our driver was very experienced and in constant contact with the office via walkie-talkie. Besides, how stranded can you get on a small island?

Carl jerry-rigged the accelerator cable and we continued toward Goat Hills summit, which offers incredible views of the surrounding aquamarine Caribbean Sea and neighboring islands of St. John and St. Thomas. The jerry-rigging, unfortunately, didn’t hold and we stopped on a plateau about halfway up the mountain. As Carl attempted to fix the problem while communicating with a mechanic back at the base, we cracked open more beers, checked out the views and took a few pictures.

Carl decided it wouldn’t be safe to continue up the mountain and arranged to have a mechanic meet us at a nearby resort. We limped our way down the mountain and got to the resort – stopping once to let the engine cool. While Carl waited for the mechanic, we perched ourselves at the beach-side bar and ordered a round of Painkillers – a concoction of dark rum, cream of coconut, pineapple and orange juice all topped with fresh-grated Grenadian nutmeg. The drink is ubiquitous throughout the Virgin Islands, but originated in the 1970s at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke Island in the British Virgins. Jost Van Dyke and the Soggy Dollar are worthy of a story on their own, but if you ever find yourself in the Virgin Islands, not making a trip to this tiny island and famous bar could be considered vacation sacrilege. It’s worth a day trip just to see how the Soggy Dollar got its name.

Once again, I digress.

As we polished off our Painkillers, Carl announced the jeep was fixed and it was time to hit the road. Four more beer cans went pfffft and all was good in the world – but not for long. Minutes later the engine started making a very loud clacking and produced a smell that usually precedes an engine rod pushing through the hood. Carl pulled into the next service station, radioed the office and ordered a different jeep. Minutes later a new jeep arrived and with it, Max – our driver for the rest of the day.

All this fun and action and it wasn’t even noon yet.

After a lunchtime pit stop at a palm-studded beach, we returned to the mountain trails, stopping at the ruins of a sugar mill abandoned since the early 1800s. Walking through the structure’s remains, it was difficult not to think of the slave labor that built the mills and sustained the Caribbean economy for a few centuries. At the same time, it was easy to see how much the world has changed, especially with the rise of Barak Obama whose image is emblazoned on the t-shirts of many locals a full year after his election.

From the sugar mill ruins to our next stop, the jeep was in 4×4 low most of the way, traversing trails with deep gullies between the tire tracks. Navigating these gullies formed by runoff from frequent tropical rains meant our jeep was often precariously balanced on two diagonally opposed wheels.

It was worth every hair-raising moment once we got to the beach at Annaly Bay. A short hike along some pretty rugged coastline brought us to a massive tide pool filled with warm Caribbean water, sheltered from the surf by a huge rocky wall. It was also free of any other people. According to Max, the tide pools are only visited by their clients and a few other adventurous tourists who take the 4-km hike from a nearby resort. Rarely is there more than a half-dozen people at the tide pools at any given time.

We spent at least an hour in the tide pool just floating in the super-salient water, watching the colorful tropical fish and listening to the surf crash on the rocks between us and the open ocean. Had the day ended here, we’d have gone home happy, but there was more.

Backtracking past the mill ruins, we eventually reached the aptly-named Mahogany Road, lined for several kilometers by huge mahogany trees with their branches creating a massive green tunnel leading into the island’s rainforest and our final stop for the day – the Montpellier Domino Club.

Looking at the club’s construction, it’s difficult to believe this long-standing bar and restaurant is in the buckle of the Caribbean hurricane belt. This dirt-floored, open-air structure is basically a bunch of posts holding up a thatched roof that looks like it would blow away in a stiff breeze. Despite its haphazard appearance, it has wonderful atmosphere and serves up killer ribs, roast chicken, johnnycake and a rum-honey-spice concoction called the “Mammawanna.” Unlike the painkiller, Mammawanna ingredients are closely guarded by the club’s affable owner and drink inventor “Miss Norma” whose wide smile defies her incredibly tight lips.

The food, drink and rustic ambiance, however, is not the Domino Club’s main attraction. That honor belongs to a couple of beer-drinking pigs. Yes, you read that correctly. I said beer-drinking pigs – and I’m not referring to the hygiene of any undesirable customers.

These are true porkers who guzzle cans of non-alcoholic beer fed to them by tourists who line up to pay $1 admission plus $2 per can of brew. Taking the entire can into their mouths, the pigs create an explosion of suds with an initial chomp, chew until they can’t squeeze out another drop of brew then spit out what’s left of the can.

In all our travels, the jeep tour was one of our most enjoyable experiences, even with the mechanical problems. It ranks right up there with the shark diving we did in Hawaii and visiting an indigenous family in the Ecuador Andes. My wife and I are in our mid 40s, but the off-road tour made us feel like teenagers again. We did all the things we weren’t allowed to do. We rode in open vehicles without seatbelts, consumed alcohol in a moving vehicle; we laughed and screamed as we bounced over the bumps, we fed beer to pigs.

We had a blast – and no one lost an eye.