January 13th, 2014: 好久不見!

"Is it not delightful to have friends from distant quarters?" - Confucius

Meeting up at Shi Lin night market

After a mildly difficult test on the latest chapter of Chinese vocabulary (which I managed to score decently well on), I had the rest of my night to head to Shi Lin night market (土林夜市) to meet up with a friend who I haven't seen in over six years! Crazy, right? We were friends in in high school (a lot of memories which included goofing off in orchestra class, and creating our own unwritten, often unwanted, harmonies), but he moved to Taiwan at the end of the 9th grade because of his fathers career. He was able to show me around the night market, and show me some craaaazy foods that I hadn't heard about when I previously explored there myself. For one, did you know there is an Oreo flavored milk tea? Well, I certainly know it exists now.

Oreo flavored milk tea?!

After some catching up on how we both have been, I got to ask him about how different his experience was between Taiwan and the United States. First and foremost, the language and education: although people might generally know some bits and pieces on English, but in order to actually study in Taiwan as a native student requires a extremely high level of Chinese proficiency. Actually, the education in Taiwan is generally extremely grueling; students are given vast amounts of work to do, while having to go to cram school (補習班). If you are someone who has never heard of cram school, it is exactly what it sounds like: many students crammed in a small room crammed around small tables, cramming more and more information into their heads everyday. Cram cram cram. As a student who was used to the United States educational system, he was caught off guard and had to suffer quite a bit while adjusting to a new culture. 

Taiwan is also a more conservative society, although social norms of younger people change with each generation. This may manifest itself in many ways, according to my friends, such as neatly defined gender roles and ways to act, being more reserved and quieter in public, and more modest clothing. One comparison one may make, is that while some girls in the United States would wear a tank top in public, that would be seem as a bit indecent in Taiwan (although this trend may be changing because I often see some quite daring skirts).

However, the general people seem more reserved and conservative perhaps due to being a country that is formed by an odd conglomeration of Chinese, Western and Japanese culture. Yet the largest connection between Chinese and Japanese is that they both have roots with Confucianism. As we are learning in Class from our very own Professor Liu, Confucianism speaks much to being a gentlemen, such as being truthful, respectable, a good example, and a wealth of positive qualities. Therefore perhaps the conservative is an underlying way to remain true to Confucius philosophy.

Showing off our piano riffs to each other!

Perspectives and analysis aside, from my friend's point of view, getting used to Taiwan as a true native is difficult! On a side note, one of the finer points he told me were that ladies here generally are more interested in foreigners rather than natives, which I thought was quite funny. And a bit odd. Ah well. 

After talking for a bit we went to a guitar shop and jammed for a bit (like learning duets or showing each other what kind of things we learned over the years), finally returning to my aunts house to play piano, much like how we used to hang out after high school. 

It's definitely fun to hang out with people who you haven't seen for many years. Oi! I'm not that old though! At any rate, I've entered my last week in Taiwan and I hope to soak up as much Chinese I can before I leave. The native people who we've been with are all pretty funny and so far even the worst moments of this trip have been easily bearable.

Until next blog!