Wednesday, January 25, 2017

First days in Taichung

The other day Laura and I met up with an American coworker's husband and daughter who live in the building with us, and we went to see the National Museum of Natural Sciences, which is just at the end of the block.  It fancies itself an international institution, but only some exhibits were bilingual.

I should say something about the language.  The official language here is Mandarin Chinese, but the commonly spoken language is the Minnan dialect from the central coast of mainland China.  Most people speak some English.  Young, fashionable-looking people speak the best English.  Older or downscale workers tend to speak less English.

Signage and product packaging is inconsistently bilingual.  Luckily we have the Google Translate app on our phones, which can take a picture of text and somewhat translate it, and more reliably, it can listen and audibly translate.  We used this facility at the grocery store, where we were able to talk to a stocking clerk to locate various items.

For the one or two of my readers who know and care about such things, where Chinese is written in English (mostly roadsigns), Taiwan is slowly transitioning from Wade-Giles romanization to Pinyin.  Most roads have been renamed (our street is Guanqian, formerly Kuan-ch'ien) but cities are still rendered in Wade-Giles.  So it's T'ai-pei (usually without the apostrophe and hyphen, Taipei), not Taibei, and Taichung/T'ai-ch'ung, not Taizhong.  I'm fond of Wale-Giles for being old-fashioned, but it's really a mystifying system.  I mean, how is it that Peking and Beijing are the same word?

The museum is very nice, and despite not being to read a lot of the displays, it was informative.  The coworker's daughter is 5, and she eventually tuckered out, so there is still another wing or two we haven't explored.  Which is fine, because the tickets are something ridiculous cheap, like 100元 (yuan, or New Taiwan Dollars, NTD/TWD), which is US$3.  Also on the grounds are the botanical gardens, of which we saw a little, but there's a lot more we didn't.

When we left our friend, we wandered off to find a grocery store.  Sidewalks are interesting features here.  They tend to be extensions of the shop they're in front of, so you may find yourself stepping around tables or merchandise.  The materials for sidewalks can vary with the storefront--cement, wood, tile, sometimes marble--and are often not level from store to store, so one has to continually watch their step in areas thick with shops.  Also, sidewalks tend to be used as parking spots, so there's a lot of squeezing past parked cars and mopeds.  Crosswalks are a little scary, as vehicles turning don't wait for pedestrians to finish crossing, but weave around them, particularly the mopeds.

For walking, the weather is lovely.  It has been consistently in the low-70s during the day and mid-50s at night, sunny, and humidity around 60%.  It's very much like California in the winter, after the rainy season is over.

We found our grocery store and while small, it had most of the items you would need, of course with the caveat that the packaging is occasionally a hermeneutical adventure.  We ended up with mostly produce, since it is very obviously what it is.  We got a dragonfruit, which is Laura's favorite, but red inside instead of white.  Alarmingly, it can turn your pee red, but it's a harmless effect.  We also got oranges, which are unusual in that they are somewhat smaller than American varieties, sweet, with a fine flesh and little membrane, a thin rind, and little pith.

This is a convenient spot to mention that trash in our building is sorted into paper and packaging waste, and organic matter.  Packaging waste we can leave in trash cans on the landings in the service stairwell, but organic matter has to be brought down to the lobby and out a side door near the parking garage.  So far fruit trimmings are the only thing we've had to discard separately.  Most of what we eat at home is either packaged food or leftovers from dining out.  Dining here is very cheap, and we of course don't have much in the way of cookware.  Our microwave temporarily stopped working last night, and it was a moment of panic.

The night before, we went to a pizza place across the green from our apartment building with Laura's coworker and family.  The pizza was very creditable, with a thin, chewy crust, nicely toasted.  They served Sierra Nevada beer, which was a comfort to our companions.  The staff were young, trendy people with a good handle on English.

Later, we went to the 7-Eleven around the corner, and passed a halal Indian restaurant.  The owner or one of his employees saw us and invited us to dine, and we replied we would soon.  I've said this elsewhere, but there is something comforting about encountering Indians abroad.  Our cultures overlap, they speak English, and it's as good as meeting with a Briton or Canadian.  It's one of the happy accidents of the often dubious legacy of the British Empire.  When we were in Montréal and I was too tired to navigate the French-Canadian culture anymore that day, we went to an Indian restaurant and it was a very soothing, welcoming place to be.

We went back there last night for dinner, but did not see our proprietor friend.  I had the tandoori tikka with onions and peppers, and Laura had butter chicken curry, and it was quite nice.  The clientele was entirely Chinese, as was the woman serving us and working the register, though I glimpsed South-Asian men working in the back.  But it does seem to be a place of meeting for whatever Muslim community is in Taichung (there's supposedly a pretty mosque somewhere around here), as the bulletin board is full of inspirational quotes and informational flyers for Muslim youth daycamps and charities.

The Chinese new year is fast approaching (Saturday), and can last the whole week, during which stores are closed or have reduced hours, and cabs are scarcer and charge higher fares.  Already we're finding ATMs are emptied out, as one of the customs of the new year is to exchange red envelopes containing auspicious sums of money (800 or 1,000元, I'm told).  So this afternoon we're going back to the Carrefour (where we can use a credit card) to stock up as best we can and hope for the best.  Supposedly the greenway out front is the setting for a lot of organized new year festivities, so we're well-located to observe the goings-on.  I hope to see a dragon costume, but who knows.  There is probably a schedule posted somewhere, but I doubt it's in English.  Nevertheless, photos (on Facebook) and text will follow.

No comments:

Post a Comment