TAIPEI 101

With 101 floors and a height of 508 meters (or 1,667 feet) it's the tallest building in the world (for now).


Here are the views from the observation floor. [you can click for bigger but I'm warning you it looks a little surreal]



My new home is right about where the little white square is, just below the white dome that is NTU's gym.


Here, you can see some of the mountains that surround the city as well as the particulate matter that perpetually clouds the air. Just beyond these here hills is where they grow some of that tasty Taiwanese oolong tea.


Screens display all the elevator activity in the building. The fastest in the world, these elevators travel at 1010 meters/minute (no, I have no idea what those 'meter' things are either, but trust me, it's real fast). The trip up to the 89th floor took something like 39 seconds and made my ears pop from the pressure.


My friend Carrie, demonstrating her impressive height:


The base of the building is a six story mall filled with ridiculous amounts of luxury brand stores: Louis Vuitton, Vivienne Westwood, Gucci, Prada, and so on. The interior of the whole building was designed by a feng shui master. But I was happiest about the A/C.


At night, they light it up all pretty.

CAUTION IN THE CAFETERIA

Yesterday they put liver in the tofu dish, today, I think it was just pork. Um, I think I'll just have rice and french fries thanks.

GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT

My first week of school is over and I can already tell that it is going to be rad. The primary reason for this is that part of the deal I made here so that I could stay in level 4 and keep my fellowship was that I couldn't attend group classes. Oh darn! As most of you, especially you Bloomington folks (who have allowed me to drink your martinis and to weep on your shoulders and who have generally been very tolerant of all my pouting), I'm not really a big fan of the grinding humiliation of going to Chinese class. However, I love the language and find it very rewarding when my skills improve. So basically, having two hours a day of one-on-one time with Chinese teachers is the best possible thing. I couldn't have dreamt of a better outcome.

Unfortunately I am rather out of sorts as I still have much of the weekend ahead and all of my homework already done. Jeez, what gives laoshi? (teacher) aren't you supposed to be terrorizing me with the Chinese educational system? It's not so much that I want to spend all day cooped up in the library, but at least it is air-conditioned there. Every day the heat index is in the 90s (today it is 104) and it really makes exploring the city unappealing. Besides, I came to study and I want as many opportunities as possible to do so. Therefore, I make my own opportunities. I try to think in Chinese as much as possible. So when I find my mind wandering over a particular conversation or plans for the day, I try to translate whatever it is. All of my to-do lists are now written in Chinese. Also, when I get a song stuck in my head, for example Hall & Oates' "Out of Touch" (thanks a lot rydo), I try to translate the lyrics as best I can. Unfortunately I'm not very good at this, so I often end up with a rather unwieldy chorus (in the case of the former, it becomes bu baochi lianluo, or 'not able to maintain contact'), but at least I will surely never forget how to chide my Chinese-speaking friends for not staying in touch.

I do have a couple of Taiwanese friends here and they are a great help, even when they allow me to cheat a little too much with English. Yesterday I went to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world, with my friend Carrie (an English alias, her real name is Bohshuan). I was very much looking forward to it, but didn't expect to enjoy it quite so much. The views were just spectacular, and I had forgotten what a heady feeling you can get from really extraordinary architecture. I took lots of pictures, but it will be a few days until I can post them.

Afterwards, we went to her friends' going-away party at a place I never could have imagined: a fancy (and rather expensive) bagel restaurant.

THE PERFECT PLAN

Not so long ago, I promised the Misses Aprile and Etling (as well as Mister [Master?] Elston) that I would post the film my Chinese classmates and I made for our spring semester oral. Turns out that it already exists out there on the web-o-tron, hosted by the IU Language Center website.

Chinese Film Festival 2007

Note that the film won third place (I think we deserved better, but only one of us was able to attend the festival and cast a vote). By way of further recommendation, note that after a viewing, the eminent Tommy Smith was moved to write the following:

Erika Kougar's "A Perfect Plan" is a complex investigation of humanity at its most base. The plot structure recalls the bloody revenge tragedies of the Grecian stage, but Kougar -- in a deft subversion of form -- sets her action in a seemingly banal environment of suburban middle America. The film, which uses largely untrained Chinese-speaking actors and shot on consumer grade digital cameras, is a revelatory mixture of psychologiocal realism and low-grad camp. Notice the performances in the now classic "morgue" scene -- at the height of the dramatic tension, an actress looks directly into the camera and diffuses the moment with a high-pitched yelp. Some say Herzog pioneered the technique of using natural settings and pedestrian enviroments to tell stories of a deeper emotional resonance, but Kougar has taken the form one step further. For anyone wanting to see the next phase of filmic history, "A Perfect Plan" is not to be missed.

Not that I don't want to take full responsibility for this masterpiece (or for my very poor tones), but I must share the glory with my castmates and co-creators: Guo Kaiyi, Hou Anmei, and Jian Mosi. They were all a pleasure to work with and not only because they all thought I looked no older than 22. I'm so glad I started early on the Botox.

f- you, you f-ing foreigner -- I may look stupid but at least I'm cooler this way

Sorry the picture is fuzzy, but frankly I was afraid to get any closer

Less angry, more forlorn:


Elsewhere, I saw another innovative, if slightly vulgar, feline cooling method.

NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM AND CHIANG KAI-SHEK MEMORIAL

Turns out the Dragon Boat Festival is really just a race that commemorates the suicide by drowning of an ancient poet. Yawn. Pass me another zongzi. So instead of sitting in the hot sun watching a bunch of morbid rowing, I decided to see some sights. One of my new friends here offered to take me to the National Palace Museum. I tried to take some pictures of the building and the adjacent park, but my Chinese-bought camera was malfunctioning. I'm assuming it had nothing to do with the issue of whether the Guomintang was "protecting" or "looting" the treasures of the mainland displayed therein when they hightailed it to Taiwan in 1949.

But this picture is better than I could have taken anyway. As you can see, the National Museum (Gugong bowuguan) is painted a vibrant yellow with a teal roof and sits pleasingly nestled in the lush foothills on the outskirts of the city.


Inside, you can see the famous meat stone and the equally famous jade cabbage, and you can listen to audio commentary about these "mouth-watering" treasures and try to wrap your head around about 8,000 years of history.

After casing the joint and learning new terms for words such as 'porcelain', 'intricate', 'touch', and 'fish-head-dragon-body', my companion and I headed back into the city for lunch and a visit to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial.

This huge monument consists of four large structures on each side of a large square, with some nicely landscaped park areas within. Here is the imposing front gate.


The National Theater was undergoing renovation, but we were able to explore the National Music Hall across from it and to watch a couple of groups of teenagers on the terrace hanging out, breakdancing and doing kung-fu.


Everything on these buildings, from the railings to the doorways to the lamps and the eaves is incredibly detailed. Photographs don't do much to capture the vibrance of the colors. I was honestly almost hypnotized by the gorgeous ming red of the pillars.


Apparently the square itself isn't much used for congregating or recreating, but it is refreshing to stand in a wide open space, even a concrete one, in the middle of the dense city. Unfortunately, it is also very, very hot.


The memorial hall itself is opposite the gate. You can enter the lower level from one side, but I don't much recommend it. Better not to see the tacky souvenir shop and the jade hawkers and to instead imagine the grandeur that must lie within.


There's a pond on one side of the Music Hall with blessed shade and a pretty little bridge.


You can buy fish food from this machine and watch the Koi swarm. They make wonderful squishy sounds as they come to the surface and open and close their giant mouths to try to suck in some of the pellets. Yeah, I know - I never get pictures of the good stuff.

SUMMER SCHOOL

The second of a planned three stops on my world tour of the greatest national universities has commenced. Behold, my student ID for National Taiwan University:


I am still totally freaking out about it. I pull this out every so often just to marvel at the strangeness of how things turn out -- I am going to the best school in Taiwan dudes! -- as well as to remind myself of how far I've come. I can sort of feel the logic of the grammar taking over my brain but I have been assured that much is also happening at an unconscious level (or at least that is my excuse for watching a whole lot of Chinese television). For now though, there is the daily frustration of sometimes understanding very little. My Chinese teachers in Indiana were able to confine their speech mostly to words and patterns we recognized and to speak at a reasonable speed. But here, I am faced with rapid fire homonyms that I sometimes understand nothing from, even in the simplest transactions. It is extraordinarily demoralizing and infantilizing.

Last night I saw a room I really liked for sublet. It's on the fifth floor in a really nice area, down a quiet alley, very convenient for school, and has a rooftop garden. I hope they choose me! As much as I appreciate my current landlord stopping by at 10pm to check on me and to bring a gift of rice and herring snacks, the room I am in now is windowless and rather musty and the bed appears to be made of straw. [UPDATE: I got the new room, but won't move for another two weeks. Still, yeah!]

This weekend is the dragon boat festival. I'm not really sure what it involves, because everytime I ask someone about it they insist on feeding me a zongzi, the festival's traditional snack. Needless to say, I am concerned that it may not involve actual dragons.