Greetings from the land of musical garbage trucks! I excrete you not. The garbage trucks play music just like the Good Humor Man. This is so people will know to come out and hand over their refuse. It is just one of many odd things here in Taiwan.
Most of all, imagine a densely populated and polluted city of one million plus with little to no litter and almost zero graffiti. Only last Sunday after nearly three weeks in Taiwan did my friend point out a wall in an alley that actually had some tagging on it. Talk about a study in contrasts! I suppose with such a productive populace, they’d rather be spray painting a fender than a wall. This place is a hotbed of capitalism. Want to open a shop? No problem, just park your truck along the side of the road and start selling your wares right off of the sidewalk.
There are umpteen-million little stores selling everything from block ice to betel nuts (the mildly stimulating and addictive product of the betel nut palm). The betel nut stores are an institution unto themselves. The older women sit in the back delicately wrapping the peeled nuts in their individual green leaves while their more comely daughters perch on barstools in the storefront’s picture window to better lure in the hapless addicts. The girls are referred to as “Betel Nut Beauties”, and seem to be a veritable fixture wherever you go. The level of commerce over here is hard to envision. Try to imagine a store in the U.S. that sells only fresh squeezed orange juice. That’s it, not even a napkin to go with it. Such is the depth of enterprise here. All of this is especially ironic in view of the fact that the economy most antithetic to capitalism, Mainland China, lies a few dozen miles across the straits of Formosa.
Thank goodness I like Chinese food, because there isn’t much else served here. The service engineer and I went into the capitol, Taipei, and ate at Tutto Bello, an Italian restaurant. The asparagus appetizer was fantastic, perfectly steamed spears in browned butter with shaved Parmesan cheese. Did I say fantastic? I meant astronomic! Effing $10 US for five, count them, five verschluginer spears! That’s $2.00 a stalk and barely enough of them to make your urine stink! Yes, they were good, but not that good. Let me rephrase that. The over seventy-dollar tab was almost worth it after a week of noodle soups and stir-fry, but we won’t go into that right now. Besides, they did proper justice to the salmon cannelloni and my partner’s veal shanks. Still, I have begun to have fantasies about diving onto a well-charred, medium rare New York steak like some teenagers dream about Claudia Schiffer. Somehow, the Burger King in Taipei wasn’t able to alleviate my cravings. This is probably because I gave up fast food years ago, but who’s counting?
My hotel room is the proverbial lap of luxury. I sit in my terry cloth bathrobe, typing into my high speed Internet connection, sipping freshly brewed Oolong tea with this morning’s copy of the Taipei Times that just slid under the door. In a few minutes I shall wander down to the breakfast buffet, replete with bacon, toast and soft cooked scrambled eggs. If I wish, there is a selection of cereals and milk, or I can have some octopus salad, smoked fish, pork tenderloin and pastrami (don’t ask), if I want to go the Chinese breakfast route. All of this is washed down with copious quantities of freshly brewed black tea or the juice of my choice. Please explain to me why tomato juice is so popular over here.
Soon I will go to the customer site and once again beat my brains out on our Chemical Vapor Deposition tool as we slowly bring it to life. Everyone was willing to stand back and let me foolishly initiate the first reaction in the process chamber. Fortunately for me, it went off without a hitch, else wise my scientific reputation would have taken a serious hit. Thank goodness I know how to interpret such arcana as high vacuum leak back rates and machine start up procedures. The customer’s research staff working at the installation site is almost too friendly. It makes me worry what will happen if they finally decide to get pissed off about something. How will I be able to tell? Every American should spend at least a week here in Taiwan. It would go a long way towards dispelling the typical myths about the “inscrutable” Orientals and other such childish notions. The people here are warm, friendly and open hearted towards us all (with the exception of one cabby who almost ran us over).
“Engrish” is rampant here and the instances are too numerous to detail. Suffice to say that we got a hoot out of a restaurant titled “Chinese Fart Food”. Either the sign maker got stiffed and took his revenge or the place must specialize in serving nine kinds of beans. Either way, I’ll pass on that one (as it were). One of the bitterest disappointments is the dim sum. I’m talking about a pinnacle of Chinese cuisine, the brunch that consists of myriad dainty and toothsome dumplings, cooked to perfection and all served piping hot. Upon arriving, visions of overflowing little teacarts crowding the restaurant aisles like a Los Angeles rush hour danced in my head. Instead, I’ve had better quality and selection at Sam Kee in Silicon Valley. So much for all that advice about going straight to the source.
In particular, there is one spice that is used almost universally in everything but dessert (and even that is suspect). I think that it may be galangal, a Malaysian form of white pepper. The aroma of it is all pervasive in every restaurant and even as you walk down the street. After a week or so, the odor follows you into the bathroom and will not leave. It reaches a pinnacle in the dish called (approximately) May Lay Cho Dofu. This consists of chunks of a dense tofu variant floating in a tomato-based broth that is redolent with nearly toxic quantities of galangal. The smell rivals even that of the fullest diaper I have ever encountered.
My compatriot and I were walking through the legendary Snake Alley in Taipei’s night market one evening. A particular stall must have had a bathtub of the stuff brewing. The aroma hit us like a brick wall and both of us nearly tossed our cookies on the spot. Just the memory of it makes my stomach do back flips even as I type this. Between the barbaric treatment of the reptiles and the whiff of that noxious soup, the very idea of eating some cobra meat evaporated long before that vile odor finally departed from our nostrils. This is coming from a pair of world class chowhounds, so you can rest assured that it is something to be reckoned with.
Why, just the other night I was nearly held at gunpoint (actually, pointed chopsticks but who’s keeping track?) until I sang some karaoke at the noodle house I frequent. A quick round of “House of the Rising Sun” got me off the hook though. Alas, however, I am eternally doomed. Now whenever I go there, the microphone is thrust into my hands again and I am coerced into yet another throaty rendition of an English language song. It seems as though all you need to do is scratch a Taiwanese and you will find a budding entertainer underneath.
Speaking of noodle houses, my $60.00 US per day per Diem sure goes a long way. Between the hotel’s free morning breakfast buffet, the $2.00 US work lunch and my extravagant two scallion pancake and bowl of udon noodles with wontons at another $2.00 US, I’m socking away over $50.00 a day of my expense money. This is a good thing because I blew out $100.00 US easy meat at the outdoor Jade Market last weekend in Taipei. You bet I’ll be going back again this weekend as well. I’ve got pictures of some of the exquisite carved jade, red coral and rock crystal. It is quite amusing to see the occasional polished sphere of fiber optic glass nestled amongst the hand carved jewelry.
I thank my stars that I have studied jade for so long. Many of the vendors who spoke English enquired as to whether or not I was a gem expert. This gives me some small hope that I may have picked out some decent pieces to bring home. As a hard bargainer, I quickly learned that when someone punches in a number on their calculator in order to show you the price, you grab the calculator out of their hands and enter a number that is 50% of what they quoted you. From there on in, the fun begins. I have routinely reduced my final cost by a minimum of 25-50%.
The traffic is unbelievable and makes Silicon Valley’s legendary rush hour look like 3:00 AM on a Sunday morning in Podunk, Kansas. At the changing of each green light, a swarm of motor scooters scurries forth like cockroaches out of a tenement’s kitchen drawer. Imagine exactly one bazillion Vespas piloted by another gazillion suicidal maniacs and you haven’t even come close. I have seen an entire family of four perched precariously on a single moped. The rules of the road seem to be very similar to what I have heard about in India. Namely, the heaviest vehicle moving at the greatest velocity obtains the most right of way. Needless to say (then why say it?), the motor scooter drivers are entirely oblivious to this fact and dart in and out of traffic like so many lemmings on their way to the nearest cliff edge.
In order to insert yourself into the stream of traffic, you do just that. You shoehorn your vehicle into the path of all the others and play a near-deadly game of chicken crossed with a Mexican standoff. Pry bars and a quart of Vaseline must be standard issue with every registration tag they mail out. Your best option is to pull out in front of a late model Mercedes Benz or BMW, as they are the least desirous of any new Nevada pin striping. For the more timid souls, left turns can consume a significant portion of your waking hours. As it stands, my company refuses to even allow us to rent a car for this exact reason. Here in Taiwan, if you cripple or kill an individual you are liable for the support of that person *and their entire family *for the rest of their lifetime.
Although probably not the case here in Taiwan, it is common in other nearby countries for a foreigner to be held liable in an accident regardless of whose fault it is. This is based solely on the fact that had you not bothered to come to that country, the accident would never have happened. Not particularly sound legal courtroom logic, but it seems to work for them.
It stands to reason that Chiang Kai Shek (whom I iconoclastically refer to as Chiang Kai Shrek) is revered here as a near deity. It seems as though every other school, plaza, major public building and structure larger that 100 cubic meters is named after him. I suppose they may be onto something when you consider what life is like in Mainland China. Nonetheless, it can make for a bit of confusion when you ask to be taken someplace by taxi. “Is that the Chiang Kai Shek municipal train station or the Chiang Kai Shek public passenger terminal?” All in all, it adds up to even more fun in this foreign and exotic land.
So much concerning my exploits in the Far East for now, more adventures to follow and tape at eleven.