We’re back, and the pictures are up!

It was a fun day. The festival was like a big fair – carnival games, music and dancing, lots of food, and in the middle of it all, the dragon boat races. In Taiwan the winning team has to climb up on the dragon’s head and snag a flag with their team’s colour at full speed right at the finish line. We didn’t see anyone fall in, but we had the camera ready just in case.

If PEI got big enough we could enter a team, but for now we resigned ourselves to taking goofy pictures with the dragons, eating lots of food, and taking it easy. We attempted stinky dofu again, on a stick this time. It’s an aquired taste (which we have yet to aquire). It was gross, and juicy. And the lady cooking it was wearing a mask, and we don’t blame her! It was a rare cool day, but even with a breeze and cloudy skies we felt sticky all day long from the humidity.

In the photos you’ll see little bird eggs on a stick, spirit money stuffed in the dragon’s mouths on most of the boats, the teams approaching the finish line and their teammate stretching for the flag, and lots of other stuff, including a whole dragon boat team walking and singing on their way to their waiting area, entirely naked save for some (not enough!) spandex.

It’s 端午節, the Dragon Boat Festival (May 31 this year; 5th day of the 5th month in the lunar calendar)! In the morning we’re off to 碧潭 (part of the Xindian River) to see some dragon boat racing and whatever other stuff they’ve got going on (apparently a lot).

We first learned about the Dragon Boat Festival from Anita, one of our level four students, during the Culture Sharing Night Martket trip. She shared 粽子 (rice dumplings) with us, and they form part of the story behind the Dragon Boat Festival. I’ve copied this verbatim from China-on-site.com (hence the unique rendering of English), which also has the whole story (with pictures!).

The Story of Ch’u Yuan

Ch’u Yuan was an excellent political official in Chu Kingdom during Zhanguo period.At that time there were several kingdoms fighting for leader of the country.Therefore each kingdom arouse its all efforts to make the kingdom prosperous.As a brilliant politician,Ch’u helped his king very much,and go without saying,his king attached importance to Ch’u,which made other politicians’ jealousy.They said bad things about Ch’u in front of the king,so Ch’u was ousted.Ch’u couldn’t see his country decline by the evils,so he jumped into the river,and died.People hold Gragon Boat Festival and eat Zongzi every year to show their deep love and respect to Ch’u Yuan.

What on earth do rice dumplings and boats have to do with a guy jumping into the river because he was so disgusted with his government’s corruption (I feel for him)? The people wanted to save Ch’u Yuan but couldn’t. So they went out in their boats and threw rice dumplings into the river so the fish would eat those instead of Ch’u Yuan’s body. The dragon boats and the drums were to scare the fish away from the body.

You can eat 粽子 all year round if you wanted (it’s common food), but they’re special during the Dragon Boat Festival. They wrap sticky rice into triangles with bamboo leaves (or sometimes lotus leaves). The rice is stuffed with different combinations of things: squid, shrimp, red beans, nuts, mushrooms, pork, egg yolk… that’s what we’ve found in ours so far that we can identify. They come with sauce and in lots of different flavours, including sweet red bean ones for dessert. Some were really good, and some were… mǎmǎhūhū. It’s been pouring rain non-stop for three days, but we’re going anyway.

Pronounced: f?i zh?u
Means: Africa

It’s a small world, after all. Imagine a painting of “The Lost Son” parable set in Africa with African characters, and the text of the story pasted on top in Chinese. And your translator is Taiwanese but speaks English with a heavy Australian accent. Such was our night: We were N.Americans speaking partly through a Taiwanese guy educated in Australia to Asians about Africa (using a parable originally told by an Aramaic-speaking Jew but later recorded in Greek). I’m not sure what to think about all that, but it was a great night. Africa is about the most foreign place on earth for Chinese, so we had fun humanizing and spiritualizing it a bit for them.

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There’s an election coming up. That means the loudspeaker trucks have multiplied and we get free political toilet paper. It comes in plastic with the candidate’s face and name on it – almost enough for one trip to the can. We’ve got it twice in as many days, from different candidates. Mingdaw explained that many public restrooms in Taiwan just aren’t well-stocked, so it’s a very practical, cheap gift. I guess they don’t put much stock in associational conditioning (I made that term up for Pavlov’s dog and all that).

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In case anyone thinks we’ve been exaggerating about our first stinky doufu experience, here’s some supporting testimony from EatingChina.com:

Deliciously Malodorous
Chinese stinky tofu: love it or hate it, there’s no ignoring it.

…as we walked down the street …my father stopped in his tracks, spun around, mildly frantic, as if searching for the source of some impending disaster.

…smelly hardly seems an adequate adjective to describe the reeking power of this fermented bean curd. … It is roughly comparable to the smell of a fetid, open sewer anywhere on the planet, (though I have a friend who disputes this: he reckons you would never notice the smell of the sewer with a sticky tofu stall nearby).

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Steven Curtis Chapman – and his three adopted Chinese daughters – just sold out the Shanghai debut in his first Asian tour.

For almost every song he sang, the audience stood, sang and applauded. The concert was turned into a place of joy; a group of orphans from all over China also attended.

It turns out that he’s heavily involved in helping fund adoptions for orphans all over the world, especially China. For the Kids from The Shanghai Daily. Interesting how they first got involved with adoption.

Chou-chou here.

The big cats have gone to bed. I overheard them snickering and laughing a few minutes ago. When I got into their computer, I found… THIS!

I’m not sure whether to laugh, or cry, or go throw up now. In any case, I’ll be on my best behaviour for the next few days!

If you were a fly on the wall at PEI yesterday…this is a conversation that you would’ve overheard between a prospective student and myself.

Me: Hi! What is your name?

Prospective Student: No.

Mother: can you tell her?

Prospective Student: Um. Okay. My name is David.

Me: It’s nice to meet you David.

David: It’s nice to meet you too.

Me: How old are you?

David: I am 6 years old

Me: What grade are you in?

David: No grade.

Me (unsure if he knows what “grade” is): Are you in Grade 1?

David: No. Also, me not in grade 2.

Me: Oh! Are you in Kindergarten?

David: Yes.

Then I spent a few minutes asking about whether he likes baseball, his teacher, favorite food, etc. All went smoothly until we came to this question:

Me: So, how many years have you studied English?

David: Um…(he thinks about it)…ummm…12.

I really had to work not to laugh about this. I’m sure he just didn’t understand my question…but in my head I thought “If your mom could’ve figured out a way to have you start studying English 6 years before you were born, I’m sure she would’ve!” Then again…maybe he’s been studying all 6 years of his life…but it’s just felt like twelve.

Anyway, just wanted to let you overhear this somewhat funny snippet from my yesterday.

Well…it’s official, I must be getting acclimated to Taiwan. My dreams of the last few weeks have begun to reflect the realities of this place more than the realities of North America.

Here’s proof:

1. Some parts of my dreams are now (semi-regularly) in Chinese. Not that I understand it, mind you (even in the dream)…but it’s in there! (I wonder…does my brain really know Chinese in a subconscious way, if I can dream in it? Too bad it’s locked in there where my conscious mind and tongue can’t unlock it! Help, I need the key!!!!)

2. Even familiar places from my past are now located in hi-rise buildings, rather than their real-life structures. I had a dream three nights ago that was located in “The World Famous Bean” – our former school’s one-story cafeteria. There was a bomb in the Bean and nobody would believe me….somehow, that wasn’t nearly as shocking to me as the realization that the Bean was now located in a twenty-story building. :D

3. I’m no longer dreaming about demanding parents of my residents in the dorm. Now, I’m dreaming about the demanding parents whose offspring we are attempting to teach English. Last night, I dreamed that a mom wanted us to teach her two-year old child English. And, she wanted us to provide transportation, meals every x number of hours, and make sure that there was a rigorous load of homework. And in the dream my boss said, “I think I’m probably going to have to tell her no, but is there any way we could possibly make this work?” (I was so relieved when I woke up and realized that it wasn’t really happening…much like the relief experienced when I used to wake up from dreams about getting fired after giving the obnoxious parents and residents of my dorm a piece of my mind…)

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In other news, I’m finally finished with this semester’s classes! (Joel finished about 6 weeks ago). Unfortunately, I think our next set of classes starts in June or July…so it may be somewhat shortlived relief. Nevertheless, I’m determined to enjoy it while it lasts! First on the schedule…an end-of-semester-hot-date with Joel. We’re going to try and see if Ice Age 2 is still playing anywhere around here. (=