I Speak Mandarin With A Little Help From My Friends

I met Stephanie when we were studying abroad in London. She joined me in an adventure to Brussels and Amsterdam, so we've traveled together before, but she's wanted to show me her home city of Taipei for a while now. She had told me about the motor scooters and the amazing food and the friendly people, all of which were present in Taiwan's capital.

What made Taipei different was the group I was with. Stephanie had a few friends vising from the United States, so, with the help of some of her Taiwanese friends, she led us through the city. Our crew of new friends ate the best soup dumplings ever ("You have to eat it right. Bite into it a little first and let the soup fall on the spoon. Then eat the dumpling, then drink the soup"), learned how to pray at Longshan Temple (Put a stick in each pot with your left hand for good luck), and climbed Taipei 101 for... Well, we didn't seem much through the clouds, but we were very high up - higher than any office building in North America.

Knowing the locals has its perks. Stephanie and her friends were our translators and our tour guides for our time spent in Taipei. She introduced me to some of Taiwan's local cuisine. Milk tea is delicious. Pig's blood is somewhat less delicious. Even if I didn't know what I was eating, I was always told after. Sometimes, the identity of the food was hidden so my new friends and I would try it without thinking it was too different from what we were used to. Sometimes, though, that isn't even necessary. Rich was eager to try snake blood at one of Taipei's night markets. He loved it and said it tasted very sweet. Even Stephanie wasn't too excited about that one.

Though some of the meals might seem really strange to those of us raised outside of Asia, I could tell that Taipei's food was really good. Even though I didn't like the grilled dried squid, I knew it was probably the best grilled dried squid available anywhere. The food's just really different. I think it's easy for Americans raised eating typical American foods to go to Italy and love Italian food. The animals-and different parts of animals-used in food here take some time to adjust to eating. The food's excellent, it just sounds really bizarre to us. When I asked one of Stephanie's friends about it, she said American food seems just as weird to them. When I think about it, I know what's in pig's blood. I don't have any clue what, exactly, is in my hamburger.

Freedom of Press

It's okay, I have a good excuse as to why I haven't posted lately. The Chinese government censors certain sites on the internet, including Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, Blogspot. The owner of our hostel called it the Great Firewall of China, a phrase the locals use to denote the censorship.

Guangzhou's only a two hour train ride into the People's Republic of China, the full political name for the place that's considered the most populous country on the planet. It's the first city I've ever visited that's bigger than New York, at 11 million residents. The Metro system is chaotic, with everyone pushing and shoving to get on and off the train. The American rule of waiting until everyone gets off the train before getting on doesn't seem to exist.

On the street level, Guangzhou's pretty crazy as well. Bicycles, which are fading from the city's streets but still a popular means of transportation, carry heavy and bulky loads of cargo and sometimes two or three passengers. The entire time I was in Guangzhou, I did not see a single traffic light. There was only one walk/don't walk sign ("We have to take a picture," Rich said. "It's so rare.") Traffic seems to follow a set of mutually understood rules, but there are no visible signals to control cars on the streets. A bunch of new buildings line the streets, all very tall with lots of glass stretching into the thick layer of smog that coats the city.

Canton Tower is the single tallest thing I've ever seen. It's about 300 feet taller than the Empire State Building. When I got off the metro station by the tower, I couldn't immediately see the top. Not far from the new, enormous tower, however, was an old pagoda. It was one of the few pieces of old China I saw while I was there.

Guangzhou was called Canton during its period of British colonization. As the name implies, it's the heart of Cantonese cuisine. One morning, our hostel owner, Huang, took Rich and I to "drink morning tea," which is the literal translation for the Cantonese term for having breakfast. He ordered us porridge and dumplings, but Rich and I both agreed that the cakes were the best part of the meal. We sat at a round table with complete strangers who spoke Cantonese as we ate. Breakfast was delicious, but neither Rich nor I were adventurous enough to try pig's ears or chicken feet.

The most interesting part of Guangzhou was simply being white. According to Huang, most of the residents of the city are migrants from rural areas of the country, but there are very few immigrants from other parts of the world. It was extremely rare to see any non-Chinese people there, and Rich and I both frequently caught strangers staring in passing or on the Metro. One group of guys about our age even started talking to us in English as they passed on the escalator. It seemed as though people of our race were a rarity in Guangzhou. The stares and the hushed talk and glances by the locals were not so much unnerving as they were interesting. I'd imagine it's tough to live with such a thing on a daily basis, however, which really puts issues such as immigration and racism into perspective.

Where it all Started

Sixteen hours on a plane will do things to a man. We flew over Montreal before shutting the window shade. When Rich opened it again, there was nothing below us but miles and miles of the frozen Arctic ocean. By the tenth hour on the plane, I was exhausted and I had to stand up every so often just to move around. Eventually, all the snow of the arctic faded to the brown and green land of China, and the plane began its descent into Hong Kong. I had boarded the plane at 3:00 on Thursday afternoon. Now, after a twelve-hour time change and a full waking day on the plane, it was Friday evening.

"One day I will travel to Hong Kong."  These were the first words of my college admissions essay. Now, at the  end of college, it seems so appropriate to be here. That essay, which was about how I love exploring the different transportation and infrastructural aspects of cities when I travel, was the precursor to both majoring in urban studies and taking this trip. Back in 2007, I imagined being here and enjoying the streetcars, the busyness of city, and the beauty of the skyline rising above the water but below the cliffs. It's everything I hoped it would be.

Rich and I took the bus from the airport to the hotel. We grabbed the front seat on the top of the bus, as any tourist just off the plane would. A big man sat across from us. He was one of the only other white guys on  the bus. "Where are you from?" he asked with a thick accent. We told him we were from New York, even though I know I might not be able to live there again. He was from Russia. He seemed drunk, but he told us about the city that was slowly growing with each harbor bridge we passed. "People of Hong Kong," he said, "Have two brains. A European brain and a Chinese brain. They understand us." The English only turned their Hong Kong territory over to the Chinese fifteen years ago, so the age of colonization has left its mark here by means of spoken English. This Russian guy said he was here teaching English and translating for students. He had just dropped one of his students off at the airport for a flight home to Taiwan. He said he lived in a tiny apartment on one of Hong Kong's outer islands. He warned us of the heat. Then he said he had sex with the student in the airport bathroom.

On the first morning here, Rich and I woke up to grey skies and the most humid weather we've ever felt. Not only was the lens of my camera fogged over, but the entire camera was damp from the water in the air. We set out early, jetlagged, for Central to see the skyscrapers, ride the world's longest escalator, and see the busiest part of Hong Kong. As we stepped off the rickety double decker streetcar and into Hong Kong's Central district, the skies opened up. We headed for the Central Mid-Level Escalator since it was covered. It's not even monsoon season here, but the downpour seemed to overwhelm the drainage system and flooded the sidewalks.

Tai O is one of the more interesting places we've seen so far. On the end of Lantau Island, Tai O is a fishing village with houses on stilts. It smells terrible from all the seafood that is caught and then dried out and sold, which, to my American eyes, hardly looks like food at all. All over Hong Kong, seafood seems to be sold in two extremes: Either completely dried out and aged, or still alive and swimming in a tank. Of course, the animals consumed are exotic as well - squid, sea cucumbers, and an unidentifiable sea creature that looked sort of like a sting ray are some of the most interesting things I've seen so far. Tai O is the first piece of Hong Kong I've seen in which people do not live entirely in high rise apartments. Instead, some Tai O residents live in houses that are completely open during the day. Their living rooms have retractable walls that pull back from the sidewalk, giving passersby glimpses into the private lives of the villagers. Tai O seemed so quiet and old fashioned, but it was an hour's trip from downtown Hong Kong by local public transportation.

Hong Kong has a really pretty skyline. It speaks English and Cantonese, it's both urban and rural, and, best of all, it's everything I had read about before I wrote my college essay. Fifty year old antique ferries cross the harbor, double decker streetcars slide across Henessey Road, and the MTR (subway) is extremely clean and fast. If this is Asia, I'm a fan.

Life, unscripted

Back in October, I asked Rich if he wanted to adventure through Asia with me. We've been friends since the first week of college. Six months ago, we admitted to ourselves that we probably would be jobless right after graduation (we were right), and we recognized that a trip like this would be difficult to take once we have jobs and wives and lives to worry about. So we booked the flight in November, and then booked shorter flights to get to and from Taiwan and places to stay, and we read a ton of information on what we're going to see and do and eat and experience. Japan's a place we both really wanted to see, but since we're flying that way anyway I also really wanted to see Hong Kong, and we decided to stop a few places in between as well. The final list: Five cities. Hong Kong. Guangzhou. Taipei. Kyoto. Tokyo. We leave next Thursday.

Before we head out into the land of dim sum, temples, and bullet trains, though, we have to graduate. Senior year of college comes to an end Sunday. I've had a great time here at college, but I'm ready to leave. I'm just not sure what's next. I've been applying to jobs across the country, and I've applied to graduate school, but I'm not completely sure what I want yet. I hate all this uncertainty, but it's also pretty cool that I have no idea where I'll be just three months from now. It certainly helps that so few of my friends know what they're doing yet, either. I take comfort in being part of the clueless masses who will toss their caps in the air on Sunday afternoon. Since this trip's been planned since November, though, it's provided a few weeks of certainty in an otherwise very confusing time in life.

Author Junot Diaz came to talk at school this semester. Before he started the formal portion of his talk and reading, he chatted with my creative writing class about writing and school and careers. He told the graduating seniors in the class that this is the start of free-form living. Prior to graduation, there's been a script to follow, and the script's been there since we've been old enough to make any sort of decisions on our own. Wake up, go to school, do homework, have summer vacation, go to college. Then what? Then everyone starts going in all different directions, and some people go to graduate school and some find jobs and some join service programs. Monday, the day after graduation, is my first day of living without a script. It's the first time that there isn't really any pressure to choose one decision or another, and I'm finally free just about anything I want to on my own. It's the start of life unscripted.