Now…don’t be too quick to assume that I’ve had no clueless moments since “Clueless…pt. 1″. I’m certain that I have had many, but people are probably trying to help me “save face” by not clueing me in to how clueless I am.

The other day, however, I had a new one. My first thought was, “Oh…there’s a clueless post to share!” :)

We had just finished skyping with Ruth and family and our PTA meeting with the parents, and we were hanging out at the local Thai restaurant (which is SO good!) with our boss (Mingdaw), his wife (Iris), and his mother (Yang Mama). Yang Mama has been away from the school for awhile, as her mother (Mingdaw’s grandmother) has been really ill and in the hospital. She is better now though, and was released from the hospital a day or two before our big Skype event.

Yang Mama doesn’t have much English…but she takes such good care of us, and I really want to be able to talk to her more. So, for about 10 minutes I tried to work out how to say “Your mother went home from the hospital?” in Chinese. Then, for maybe another 5 minutes, I tried to work up the courage to actually give it a shot.

Finally, I decided to give it a go and said (or thought I said): “你的媽媽 去 的 家?” ni(3) de mama(1) qu (4) de jia(1)? But evidently, I really said “你的媽媽出 家?” ni(3) de mama(1) chu(1) jia(1)?

Yang Mama looked a bit confused at first, but then smiled and said “對” (dui4). So, I doublechecked with my boss to see if I’d said it right.

He just started laughing, and then explained why. It seems that, “出 家” (chu1 jia1) is a phrase that means “exit the family.” Apparently, this expression is usually used to indicate that one has become a monk.

So, basically, what I said to Yang Mama was not, “Your mother went home?” but “Your mother became a monk?” :o :o

Like I said…we’re clueless. Fortunately, everyone is really gracious about our attempts to speak Chinese. But really, in my opinion, this newfound ability to make everyone (including ourselves) laugh is not such a bad thing. :D

One of the nice things about not having homework is that I have more time to talk with people in park during my morning exercise; I don’t have to hurry back to get in a couple hours of studying before work.

If you don’t mind waking up a little early and you’ve got the time, early mornings in the park are a great time to sit around and yak, and maybe get some exercise while you’re at it. That’s what everyone else is doing, unless they’re doing tai-chi or a musical choreography routine. Morning exercise is a social event.

Today I got to talk with Wang Xian-sheng (Mr. Wang) and Zhang Mama (Mrs. Zhang). We went through the usual stuff about where we’re from and how long we’ve been in Taiwan and all the people they know that have been to America and how I am so tall and my hair is curly and Americans are so big and Chinese are small – all in a humourous combination of my very sparse Mandarin vocabulary and Wang Xian-sheng’s slightly larger English repertoire (Zhang Mama has zero English); just barely enough to get the info across. These are the things they (people in the park) bring up almost every time, but the repetition is good practice so we don’t mind.

Then Zhang Mama asked if I was Catholic, or at least said something about praying to Mary, which a first I mistook for asking whether I was Buddhist/Daoist because the praying motion she made looked like how they wave the incense in the temples. I got it when she asked again while crossing herself. So we had a little exchange in Mandarin (with very bad grammar) about, ‘No, I don’t [praying gesture while vaguely parroting the word I thought she'd used] to Ma-li, but my xi-wang (hope) is [someone else].’
‘But in America everyone goes to church.’
‘But in America most people’s xi-wang is in money, not [someone else].’ After another 15 minutes of ‘conversation’ both myself and Wang Xian-sheng had to go, but it was fun, and they said if I bring paper next time they’ll write some words down for me.

Another guy – one of the sword tai-chi guys – showed up right before I left with a bag full of weapons. He hung it on one of the chin-up bars and started stretching. He wasn’t very talkative, but he did show me his sword (wouldn’t let me play with it though). Maybe he’ll warm up and I can get my hands on it one of these days.

This morning, before an hour-long hot-seat PTA meeting where obsessive, suspicious parents* examined the details of our educational philosophy and curriculum package, our kids had a live internet video chat with Ruth, Joel (the other), Catherine, Joseph, and Nathan!

Ruth has already posted about it on Blessed 2b Home: Talking across the World and posted pictures. Check it out!

*The kids’ parents aren’t all neurotic; some are actually really nice. But some are doing their best to perpetuate the stereotype.
 

And now, for something a little different…

Julia was in South Africa recently, doing all kinds of stuff. Click the picture to see more photos!

Lots of stuff should go in this gallery that isn’t here, like the tai-chi or the exercising or the plague of puppies, because tons of stuff (almost everything) expresses aspects typical of an Asian worldview that are easy to see if you know how to look. But to avoid having 90% of our photos in one category accompanied by really long explanations, we’ll just put the most explicit stuff here.

Sidewalks aren’t lined with offerings to the gods/ancestors every day, but it’s not uncommon to see them since there are plenty of auspicious days in the lunar calendar. And this is not just a case of poor, uneducated peasants clinging to comfortable traditions; these are business owners – including (especially) the upscale businesses – that make a point to appease/appeal to the perceived personal and impersonal spiritual forces around them (and/or appeal to their customers). Incense, food and paper goods (money, cell phones, cars, etc.) are often burned so that the ancestors will have what they need in the afterlife (and thus be happy and therefore kind to their still-living descendants). On the certain days the smoke and incense wafts into our classrooms and we breathe it for hours.

For now, here’s some pictures from recurring offerings on our street, and a local god’s recent birthday party. I left some files large if they had interesting details, like the temple photos. We’ll be continually updating this gallery.

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When I was in Uganda, I kept a running list of funny English phrases I spotted. T-shirts were one of my favorite sources, but another favorite place to look was on the back or sides of the matatus (taxi-vans). Often, somewhere on the taxi would be a little slogan…some of my favorite ones included: “Road Rocket” (which is apt, because these things usually tear down the road as fast as their motors can carry them), “Vaya con Dios” (okay, not English…but still appropriate considering the safety factors…and the unusual sight of Spanish in the middle of Africa!), “Shake, Rattle, and Roll!”, “Bill’s Gal” (with an accompanying painted Monica Lewinsky on the side…Joel spotted that one in Mwanza, Tanzania), and “Ghetto Love.” I know there were more, but I can’t remember them right now.

Recently we’ve been paying closer attention to the finer details of the local scooters and have noticed that the names on some of them are really great. Even better (and more amusing), many of them have English slogans. It sure makes walking around and around the park a lot more fun when I’m on a quest for “scooter english”!

Some brand/model names we’ve spotted:

Hip-Hop, Sniper, Man Boy-Go, Filly, Fuzzy, Freeway, Fever, Attila, T-Rex, Heroism, Joanna (though this might be the name of the owner, and not the brand…we’ll get a picture of it for you, Joanna!!!)

Some slogans:

“Heroism: Scooter of the world”

“Freeway: Get away from it all, Get away with it all” (I wonder if they’re trying to tap into the market of people who’d rather have a motorcycle but can’t afford it….ooo, look…Freeway, the rebel scooter!)

“Scooter of the wind called”

“Friendly scooter of the world”

“The new generational scooter fron Earth”

“Giving you the best function and sensation all I have”

and our two top favorites so far:

“Hold me: enjoy the lovely satisfaction on the road”

“Sniper: We reach for the sky, Neither does civilization”

Go here to enjoy some of the pictures of the local scooters. We’ll keep adding to it, and we’ll let you know if we get pics of some of the really good ones.

In Taiwan, mom’s don’t drive minivans, they drive scooters. 22 million people, over 11 million scooters. They’re cheaper and more convenient than cars and the MRT (subway). They form endless lines on virtually every sidewalk in the city and often come with fantastic slogans splashed across the front. There’re a couple great slogans we’ve seen a few times but haven’t photo’d yet – we’ll add those to the gallery when we get them. The rules of the road are different here: traffic flows around obstacles like water. Scooters are ideal for this, and it is normal scooters to ride past the cars to the front of the line when traffic is stopped, forming a “scooter army” at the red light that takes off in a cloud of smoke when the light turns green (the older scooters use two-stroke engines). Some sidewalks are lined with barriers to keep the scooter drivers from using them to detour around traffic; it’s hard to walk in sidewalks without barriers because they are full of parked scooters. These pictures show kids on their way to school, the after school pick-up, which involves mom’s on scooters piling into an side-street intersection before whisking them away, a couple of scooter armies, some slogans, and the ever-present endless parking lines.

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These scenes are daily images of life in Yonghe. When I get to the park at 7am it’s already full, and the largest groups are formal clubs performing tai-chi with various weapons. Most of these shots were taken over two mornings between 7-8am as I walked from our apartment to the exercise bars I work out on, which is why the sky is gray and it’s a little dim. The last four were taken out the front door of PEI, around 8:15am. I reduced the file size on all of them so they’ll load faster.

The second morning workout gallery is below this one.

Every morning the park across the street is full from before 7am (when I show up) until after 8 with people exercising. There’s lots of tai-chi, low-impact aerobics set to music (everything from traditional Chinese to cheesy primary school synth to sassy Britney Spears-ish Taiwan pop), ball-room dancng classes, dog-walking, and countless individuals doing their own personal exercise regimen – much of which we didn’t recognize as exercise at first (the tire pictures are a great example, as are the ingenious ways people try to stimulate circulation by repeatedly slapping themselves or rubbing their legs/arms/shoulders/backs/heads/necks/butts against trees and metal poles). All this not counting the old folks yaking it up and the kids shooting hoops.

Exercise a big part of life here that we see everyday, and is one place where the worldview differences between the Taiwan and the West become apparent. Exercise for us is entirely a biological/emotional enterprise; for the Chinese their concepts of ‘health’ and ‘wellness’ include a spiritual component that is manifest in how they exercise. Tai-chi aside, much of the other physical exercise reflects these beliefs, like by activating certain pressure points in the step-aerobic choreography.

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We showed our boss the video we took (he doesn’t live in the neighbourhood) and got his take on it. He’s not all that respectful of the local temples, as he sees them primarily as ‘religious businesses’ that seek profit from a market niche just like any other business. To him this whole thing was just as much fundraiser as it was religious event, though he also conceded that these people were serious.

Anyway, apparently some local deity was having a birthday party in the street the night before our term papers were due, complete with live Chinese horn/gong ensemble, possessed costumed dancers, and a self-lacerating swordsman (who was also supposed to be possessed). There were at least two tour buses parked near the temple; many of the faithful had apparently traveled some distance for the event. Now that my grad schoolwork is done until June, I might actually get back to my cultural research and get a clue or two for stuff like this.

Our video is mediocre; we were on the periphery of the crowd at the back on narrow side streets and didn’t get the most colourful stuff on camera. But you’ll still get an eyeful (and an earfull).

If I ever get these edited and spliced (with three other clips) into something more manageable, I’ll stick it up on the video page, but consider these files temporarily-available windows into our cultural adventures… for a limited time only!

We were innocently minding our own business, typing our papers this evening, when all of a sudden the sound of hundreds of bottle-rocket-type firecrackers, which soon became thousands, started going off down the street. Then there was all this gong-banging and loud tradional music played by a crowd of uniformed musicians (we could see them in the intersection through the window. So we abondoned the still-nameless kitten and ran down with the camera to see what was going on. There was a big crowd, most people had handfuls of incense and were following a procession that included two large altars, or shrines, or something on poles, lit with all kinds of flashing neon lights and trailed by a generator on wheels to power them… plus the things in the picture below (you can decide how best to describe that yourselves). There were two guys in thes big elaborate costumes dancing around, and one shirtless guy dancing with a sword who looked like he may have nicked himself a few times: there appeared to be blood running down his back. We took some video, which I haven’t seen yet but will probably post a little bit tomorrow. We don’t have good pictures because by the time we got there the crowds were too thick to get close, and the procession was winding down narrow side streets. Plus we had no idea what it was all about and didn’t want to go intruding when we weren’t sure what we were intruding on. The photo below is the end of the procession… not where all the action was, except that tall cylindrical thing was spinning. I got a few sideways glances for using the flash, but it was a big crowd with lots of random spectators… maybe they didn’t notice it was me… the 6-foot-4 white guy.

Sorry we don’t have info on this – we’ll find out in the morning at work – but it’s not like anyone clued us in before they started holding up traffic with bricks of fireworks. I suppose if we weren’t spending so much spare time writing papers about our attachment disorders we’d have more of a cultural clue, but we’ll get the scoop at work. It’s after 2am our time, so I’m going to bed!