ONE LAST LOVELY WEEKEND

Most of the people I love are asleep right now but I am wide awake in my room in Taipei, packing, and plotting. I'm trying not to get down on myself for not making as much progress in Chinese this summer as I had hoped. It has been a very rewarding summer and there is no use in pouting over my failures, whether real or perceived. This last weekend was even more jam-packed than usual with good people, interesting places, and tasty things.

Things started out slowly on Friday when I finally met up with my China advisor (distinct from my Economic Anthropology advisor) who arrived in Taipei a few weeks ago to start her newest research project involving immigrants, citizenship and the politics of marriage. She came with her husband and their 8-month old daughter, who I spent a few pleasant hours babysitting on Friday afternoon. The child of two PhDs, she is obviously smart and curious, and is also a very happy baby with a habit of waking up in an incredibly good mood, all squeals and smiles. She also moves like a guerilla. Whenever she spies something interesting, she uses a combination of rolling and crawling and climbing to get to it. Georgia will know what I am talking about.

I had dinner later with her parents and though I was deathly intimated they did their best to make me feel like a peer. I left feeling wonderfully inspired by their intelligence, principles and commitment and generally hopeful about the future. Then I went home and drank beer and watched a pirated film on the web-o-tron.

Saturday saw the completion of more errands, including an afternoon visit to a tea proprietor near Nanshijiao. Alia had asked me to bring some Bao Jong back from Taiwan for her and sent me to do some tasting at Mr. Fu's shop. I sat on a narrow bench while Mr. Fu prepared several bowls of loose leaves with wide porcelain spoons for tasting. I was a bit torn between two of the teas. One had an extremely delicate nose with just a hint of lilac, as if it was coming off of a breeze, but the body was rather flat. Mr. Fu thought it was the better tea, but seemed to agree that the other, with a more robustly lilac nose and sweetly vegetal taste, would be more popular in the States. I'm a little nervous though, since I just bought a whole bunch of tea on Alia's behalf. If you go to August Moon in Winslow (and you should! go! go! go!), make sure to tell Alia how delicious the Bao Jong is. I like this whole glamorous anthropologist/international tea taster gig and I'd like to keep it up.


I met up with Carrie later that afternoon and we boarded a bus for Jiufen. I napped happily, perhaps because I was coming down from my caffeine buzz. I woke up to the sharp to and fro of mountain switchbacks and looked outside the window to see this:


Jiufen is a picturesque cliffside town with gorgeous ocean views. The village is built into the rocky hillside and looks a little like a Mediterranean town, only with temples.


Beautiful, scenic, and not too far from the city, it is of course ripe for colonization:


On the weekends, the medina-like maze of old market streets selling tourist kitsch and foods and sweets unique to the area is thick with day-trippers.


There were stone steps connecting the alleyways, and lots of cats milling around. I took advantage of the opportunity to shake my favorite Carly Jayne-made bustle skirt in the faces of all those we overtook (Carly: you need to get in on the Asian market - everyone adores your skirts here!). Carrie and I got a snack of chewy taro and green and red beans at a place near these steps. We ordered our food in the front, from a handful of teenage boys who kept trying to upstage each other with ever more boisterous voicings of "hello!" apparently meant to demonstrate not only their impressive English skills, but their correct identification of me as a native English speaker. Escaping the proud young men, we reached the restaurant's dining area through a long corridor and what was obviously the living quarters of a family or two. We walked right in front of some grandparents watching television before we made it to the back room, with a wall of windows and a pretty view:


Here is Carrie and some toothy chick in the restaurant.


Jiufen is also well known for its teahouses, and we went to one that had been recommended to Carrie, meeting her very friendly and charming mother and aunt there. You can see a woman in the window of the teahouse we went to here, beckoning to passers-by from above the alleyway.


Here is the courtyard of the same teahouse:

I say it very rarely, so know that I mean it when I see that the place and the evening were approaching the realm of the magical. It also had almost an amusement park feel because of all the kids and lights and sweet things to eat. While we were waiting for the bus home, I wandered around an arcade with about a dozen of these rip-off claw games, which are everywhere in Taipei.


I also watched some kids play this game, kind of like Dance, Dance, Revolution, only with drums.


Drum game from Le Kougre and Vimeo.

A good night's sleep later, and it was my last day in Taiwan. Everything was so bittersweet as I said my goodbyes to the grocery store, the night market, the smell of Osmanthus flowers as I turn the last corner on my way home, the smell of stinky tofu from the vendors on Shida road...

I also made some time for one last excursion -- to the Martyr's Shrine;


I had heard they had an impressive changing of the guards ceremony and felt I hadn't quite got my fill of shiny helmets. At the shrine, one set of guards stands watch over the inner sanctum, while another pair mans the front gate ("watch" might not be the right word for it since they must stand stock-still and stare straight ahead, facing each other). Here are the guards at the front gate, swarmed with bystanders just before the ceremony begins.


These guards get a lot more exercise than those stationed at the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial, starting out in the front, marching all the way to the inner shrine to relieve the guards there, and then back to relieve those at the front gate. As they march across the square, white-shirted minders clear the way, brush aside the children, and make sure every detail is perfect.


I took a series of little movies of the various stages if you would like to watch them.


Changing of the Guards, Martyrs Shrine (1) from Le Kougre and Vimeo.


Changing of the Guards, Martyrs Shrine (2) from Le Kougre and Vimeo.


Changing of the Guards, Martyrs Shrine (3) from Le Kougre and Vimeo.

Leaving the inner shrine:


I love the reflections off of the helmets:


Returning to the front gate:


After re-kindling my newfound appreciation of nationalistic performances, I met up with Fiona and Yi cheng for a low-key dinner at a nice cafe in my neighborhood with an impressive selection of Belgian beers.


It wasn't a particularly exciting last evening, but a quiet and happy one, enjoying the company of my friends and our always interesting conversations. I know I have been lucky to find such cool people here, and I will miss them very much.

And if I ever find myself missing Ethan, my hard-partying, band practice in the living room-having, stumbling home at about the time I left for school expat-roommate, I am lucky enough that he sometime borrowed my camera for his all-night excursions, and that I would discover images like this one in the morning when it was returned.


So goodbye Taipei. Goodbye Osmanthus flowers and stinky tofu. Goodbye friendly citizens of the R.O.C.

Watch out for those typhoons and earthquakes and crazy drivers, ok?