two months in taiwan

For the past 5 years or so, my wife and I have been traveling to Taiwan near the end of year and coming back early next, staying usually for two, three, and once even for four months, to spend time with family and friends there.

Our long stay this time, once we got there in early December, started with a family outing--with my mother-in-law, brothers-in-law, nephews, nieces--to a hot spring resort in southeastern Taiwan, followed by a field trip to some orange/strawberry farms in mid-central Taiwan with a group organized by a college friend of mine, then a day visit to the beautiful Mediterranean-blue coast of northeastern Taiwan, taking advantage of an unusual sunny weather break in January.

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​Unlike the 9-day round-the-island bicycle tour I took around this time of the year last year, I went conservative this time and took only a couple leisure rides close by: one in metro Taipei alongside a river embankment that I found surprisingly serene and scenic, the other on the northeastern coast where--instead of fighting rain, wind and cold like I did last year--I rode with ease and segued into the winding country roads to visit a historical old farmhouse sitting on the rice paddy fields, each time with a relatively new acquaintance whose companionship I enjoyed.

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Eating good food and dining out with good company are the run-of-the-mill activities you do in Taipei. Among the many feasts we had with family, friends, relatives, alums, etc., the one with my aunt and cousins and two Japanese born nephews who were all grown-up now should count as one of the more special, for the simple fact that we've been missing seeing them for years and will continue to miss if they had not happened to come to visit here on a rare vacation/holiday break from their work in Japan. As for fine dining, we found a gourmet Italian restaurant at an up-scale hotel that we thought gave us the best foreign cuisine experience we ever had in Taipei, exceeding even those Michelin rated ones we'd been to in the city.​ We took a photo with the Italian chef for the record.

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Continuing on my accidental intrigue into philosophical studies that started last May when I was here, I went to a couple of open seminars that same university philosophy department offered: one on Buddhism logic (present by a Japanese professor from Kyoto University), the other on a main Confucian philosophical derivative (朱熹理學) hosted by the same German professor whose seminar on Mysticism I attended last time.

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Also continuing on my general interest in keeping in touch with what the next generation people here are thinking and doing, I went to a couple of open interviews with some young entrepreneurs and their startup stories. The first one was a near-30 young man who started a social enterprise business that helped homeless and disenfranchised people some 4 years ago. As he explained why and how he started and operated his business, I was touched not only by his ideals but his realistic take on the societal, psychological issues that came from years of spending time with these socially marginalized people and his determination to have his business stay sustainable and build ever expanding community networks for society as a whole. The second interview was with a successful internet security product developer who started in Taiwan and made it in the Silicon Valley, who talked about the blockchain technology--the latest talk in town in the island, its security issues, opportunities, etc. Again I was impressed not only by his technical knowhow but more importantly his deep and all-around take on the technical-economical-social eco systems around the world, for now and in the future. Proud of these fine young men this tiny island country has produced and hope will continue to produce in the future!

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I was pretty ignorant about painting art, but there was a special exhibit at the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院) where the famous Pushkin Museum from Moscow had loaned a series of precious French paintings for such an event, and we knew a friend of ours was a volunteer docent there who would do a personal guided tour for us, so off we went.

Boy did we get the best museum tour experience ever! Our friend, Tiffany, a painter herself, not only knew the theories and singularities of all these different schools of paintings, she articulated the minute and obscure, the thoughts and sentiments, the stories in front and behind the paintings and their painters, and how they evolved from the realistic to the abstract to the surreal to the post modern in the span of 250 years. I felt like having taken a dose of fine art manna and my knowledge of painting just went up 10 points!

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"New York Cat English Workshop" was a meetup group I signed up after arriving here and finding it online. "Kat", the organizer of the group, was a Taiwanese American girl raised in Michigan and later became a writer and certified ESL teacher based in New York who taught in community colleges in the US and schools in China and Taiwan, before/while traveling and hosting such mixer events around Asia and other parts of the world. I was amazed not only by her prolific meetup topics that ran the gamut from philosophical (e.g., Stoicism) to contemporary (e.g., pros and cons of social media) to book studies (e.g., "1984", Chinese martial art novels) and writing practices, but also her ingenious ways of using little games to enable all in the group to dialogue with one another. The most energetic and enthusiastic meetup host I'd ever seen, as I commended and gave her top thumbs-up rating every time after I attended the event!

Due to its international nature (events were conducted entirely in English only), besides the locals, I met and talked with people who originated from Taiwan but later emigrated to Australia, Germany, Canada, US, etc. and now came back for visit or from break of work. To my great surprise I also met an American born Korean kid who lived in Aliso Viejo, and a Caucasian girl who came from San Clemente, both cities just miles away from where I live in Southern California. What a small world we do have today!

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Finally, I learned international standard dancing from my high school English teacher during this stay. Huh?! Let me explain:

We reunioned last year with our junior high school English teacher, who, besides being a great English teacher we all loved and respected, we learned later, had been a great ball room dancer also, with some international standard dancing championship title to his name! So before I went back to Taiwan this time, I chatted with him online and jestfully asked him to teach us how to dance right, just like he used to teach us how to speak and write English right, if he would.

And he complied, set up the date and place for those who were interested to come and learn from him. Three of us showed up, and immediately we found out to dance well is hard work, no fun job as we might have imagined it to be. After a couple weeks of practice, I was the only one left going.

Teacher Chang is indeed a great dancer--even though he said he stopped dancing since his wife (best partner ever, he said) died some 21 years ago, and a great teacher too, as we'd all known since our junior high years. He explained things well and spotted the wrong moves instantly and gave instructions clearly, with me being the sole beneficiary of such one-to-one, hands-on teaching. Because of that and because I was the one who initiated it, I hung in there for a full month, went practicing once or twice a week, 2 hours per session, and finally "graduated" with a passable grade of dancing all 18 steps of basic Waltz in one procession without any retake, as the following video can attest: https://youtu.be/ONrpxj_YCG4

And here are his hand written notes of those 18 steps:

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Great many thanks, Sir!