Hong Kong 香港

(A brief interlude...)

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the long delay between updates this time- as you may be able to tell, last weekend Harry and I went to Hong Kong! Besides that taking a weekend of prep time away, my school has recently redoubled its attempts to cram Chinese into my brain- since the big government TOCFL test (Test Of Chinese as a Foreign Language) is in only three weeks (gah!), we're attending our normal three-hour course each day and then an additional two-hour course each evening, with additional homework and studying. It's useful information, but successfully kills off most of my free time. In fact, even my service time is going to be pretty low the next couple weeks... but it's only temporary, and if I get good marks on this TOCFL it'll help me out for a long time.

But the actual class isn't too interesting to talk about. (Although quick quiz for those of you who read/speak Chinese: What is the difference between 普通, 普遍 and 通常?)

Instead, have a picture of the fuel that puts me through school!

Xiaolongbao! (Or actually Shengjianbao, which is a Shanghainese variant)

Pork dumplings with green onions and sesame seeds inside, fried on one side to a crispy brown and steamed on the other to a fluffy texture, served with soy vinegar and hot sauce. Delicious and cheap! Probably not very good for you, but as long as you only eat them once or twice a week no problem!

Last Friday morning Nikolai and I woke up early to man the cart at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall for a few hours, which was cool.

Nikolai is in white, our overseer Giancarlo is in blue.

It's interesting hanging out there, because we mostly talk to Mainland Chinese people coming off tour buses to see the sights. It wasn't an especially productive morning- Giancarlo said the first time he worked there he placed over thirty books, whereas we only placed a few brochures- but it was a nice witness nonetheless, even if we both looked like lobsters afterwards! (We figured it was only a couple hours, why wear sunscreen? Taiwan's sun is harsh!)

Anyway, now on to Hong Kong! Because my scholarship will be over soon (already?!), my student visa will also end soon- the seventh of May, in fact. Because I want to stay in Taiwan longer than that, I needed to leave the country before May 7 and get a new stamp in my passport- Americans get a 90 day tourist visa by default by arriving in Taiwan, so at the very least I could use that time to find a job and get a work visa or something.

The best time for me to leave Taiwan, then, is exactly May 7th- let's get as much extra time as we can! But I didn't want to leave the country alone, that's boring. I talked with Harry, and between us we decided that this last weekend, April 19th and 20th, was a good compromise between us (he wanted earlier, I wanted later).

And so, in the darkness of a Taiwanese pre-dawn morning, we hailed a cab to the airport, and after an uneventful 90 minute flight arrived in Hong Kong!

Hong Kong! I forgot how much bigger it is than Taipei!

Hong Kong and Taipei, in theory, have just about the same population- they're both sitting at around 7 million in the metro area- but Taipei is much more spread out than Hong Kong. They have nowhere to build but up!

But when Harry and I disembarked, we didn't waste much time gawking at the big buildings. No, we had a plan, a goal- Disneyland! 

Disneylaaand

Harry in particular loves all things Disney, and I hadn't been to a Disneyland since I was like 12, so we figured- we're going to Hong Kong, when will we have another chance to go to HK Disneyland? Let's go!

They have their own line on the subway!

HK Disneyland is, according to the brochure, quite small- the smallest Disneyland in the world, in fact. I gotta say, I didn't really notice that! I mean, yeah, it's smaller than the last one I went to, but in fairness that was Disneyworld, in Florida, so you can't really compare the two.

Disneyland Station of the HK Metro

It was a lot of fun, more than I was thinking it would be! When we were discussing the idea, I kinda thought Disneyland would be too cliche to be much fun, mostly aimed at kids, with maybe Space Mountain being its only redeeming feature. In fact, the only area that was completely for kids was Fantasyland- everything else was pretty much fun across the board!

It helps that, for whatever reason, not many people were there that day, so the lines were quite small and there was plenty of space!

Main Street, USA

Why is it still Main Street USA even when we're actually in Hong Kong? Why not Main Street China? Although, that might be a bit more depressing...

I will say, the people who designed Disneyland did a great job. They really manage to completely capture a mood and atmosphere in each separate zone, and when you go from one to the other it can change to be entirely different in the space of five steps.

Although they appear to be still building this one... notice a difference between the right and left sides?

Some buildings were just painted plywood facades of themselves- I guess they're still under construction? Those were the exception rather than the rule, though- most things were well built and pleasing to the eye.

So remember how I said there were very few people in Disneyland that day? That led to us riding Space Mountain no fewer than five times in one day!

Oooo, space!

I thought about trying to record us actually going on a ride, but I didn't want to risk my camera flying off never to be seen again (or worse, hitting someone!), so you'll just have to live without video of Harry screaming on the rides.

Although here's one pre-ride!

Harry is a really cool guy to go to a theme park with. We really had a lot of fun!

The Castle as the sun begins to set

And, of course, Tomorrowland!

We hung around all the way until the park's closing, which they did in grand fashion with one of the better fireworks display I've ever seen!

I'd show the video but it's like 150 MB in size- a bit too big for this blog!

After all that excitement, we took the subway out to a sleepy suburb of Hong Kong called Sha Tin, with only a little over 1 million people, and walked the rest of the way to our hotel.

Ah, suburbia...

The view from our hotel room's window

So on Sunday, we decided to go to an English meeting in Kowloon and try to meet up with some of my old friends. We ate a nice Western-style breakfast at the hotel's restaurant (a bit expensive, but worth it- in Taipei even "Western-style" things still taste Chinese; not so much Hong Kong!), then went off in search of the Kingdom Hall.

Harry and I walking through the City

Look, I'm in Hong Kong! :-D

The Kingdom Hall was still in the same place it was two years ago, last time I visited Hong Kong; despite that, it was hard to find, since its opening is a little tiny unmarked doorway between two fruit stalls! We did manage to find it though, and after being let in it was really nice to attend an English meeting after so long. It's like, I think of things, and then I can just say them! It was amazing!

Look at all those languages!

Although it is an English hall, it could be better described as the "other" hall- pretty much everyone who speaks a language that doesn't have its own congregation just attends English, as English is the international language. So they had lots of Filipinos of course, and Nepali, and Africans, and Mongolians, and...

An older missionary sister from the Philippines and her three bible studies

It turns out that two of the three people I knew in this congregation had already left- one got married and moved elsewhere in the country, another went back home to America. But I still had one friend- JQ Lee! Last time I was in HK he had just been transferred from South Korea Bethel to work in the HK Branch, and he's still there and going strong. It was awesome to catch up with him and his Nepali study, a guy named Shaobin, over delicious hot pot. 

I cried tears of joy and pain while eating it. Mostly pain. But it kills parasites, which is nice!

He says in the last two years, HK Bethel has gone from having only 70 people to having over 180, and new people are announced every week. Very cool developments are happening!

Unfortunately, we hung out a little too long, so we had to rush off to the airport! 

JQ and I rushing!

As a matter of fact, Harry and I missed our plane and had to wait four hours for the next one, but Cathay Pacific was nice about it and let us transfer at no extra cost. Seriously, they're a bit more expensive than the budget airlines, but for the extra comfort and convenience they provide I'd choose them every time I could.

So that's the story of that one time I went to Hong Kong Disneyland with Harry Sparks! How was your weekend?

Memorial Week 耶穌收難紀念的禮拜

(A busy time of year!)

As you guys know, this last week was the final week before the annual Memorial of Christ's death, which here in Taiwan happened last night. That in itself makes pioneers very busy, as we try to finish our entire territory before the event, not like that happens often. But besides that, I have a very big test- the concluding test for my scholarship, called the TOCFL- on May 3rd, and we've just started studying for it in addition to my regular classes.

So needless to say my free time has been very restricted this last week! However, that doesn't mean we couldn't fit anything in...

Last Monday, Cameron and Michelle Farrell, originally from Reno NV of all places, invited a bunch of us over to show us their pictures from the Myanmar Int'l Convention last year. I already heard a little about it when Adam and Drew flew through Taipei on their way home from it, but hearing again how all those thousands of our brothers and sisters literally sold everything they had and trekked for months in some cases to show their hospitality to the international crowd coming in... they really do live in a different world. (Also, I'm told that the branch paid for their trips back home if they arrived in Yangon and ended up being stuck there.)

Besides pictures, they brought these back!

So yeah, we totally tried on skirts traditional male men's manly clothing from Myanmar. It's actually quite interesting how they tie the things on- essentially they're a huge ring of fabric that you step into, you just pull the sides so the front is tight against you, then quickly snap your arms inwards and tuck the resulting ball of fabric into your waist. The idea is you'll have a perfect V shape of folded fabric in front of your legs, which makes it easy to walk and run and also makes the... okay, skirt, look like it's actually a man's item of clothing.

And there were girls there too, it's not like a bunch of guys just decided to meet up and try on skirts or anything.

They also told us about a city in Myanmar called Mandalay, a city of about 1.5 million people- 800,000 of whom are Chinese-speaking! It turns out that for whatever reason Mandalay is an incredibly popular place for Mainland Chinese to immigrate to, but despite the large number of there there are only two Chinese-speaking Witnesses assigned to the city. Just goes to show that, just like Brian Chow in Rwanda (link to his blog, by the way), you really can use Chinese anywhere, because Chinese people are all over the world.

And now, for some pictures of the preaching work!

Both in the day...

And at night, we go!

This invitation campaign is always like a vacation from "serious" work. There are always big groups out, you have a very easy presentation, it's a special event so it's a bit easier to get people asking questions than usual, and you have a clear goal at the end. What's not to like? Although we didn't get our territory done, we did run out of invitations, which is almost as good. (We had 14,000 invitations to place but 150,000 people in our territory- this was the desired outcome :-) )

Later in the week, our Korean friend Hyunjit (very hard to transliterate and to say for that matter- his Chinese name is Li Xianzhi) had a good idea- let's everyone go to Daan Park and have a picnic!

Hooray picnic!

Taiwan is really nice because there's no public drinking laws- you can totally walk down the street drinking a beer if you want to, and I have a couple times. Of course, they're pretty strict on public drunkenness, but oddly that isn't too big of a problem. So we brought a bunch of food, chicken and chips and fruit and such, and a couple beers each and had a nice evening!

My mom always asks me to post more pictures that have me in them, so here you go mom! :-)

People in this picture from the top left, clockwise: Chihiro, me, Ginger, Hyunjit, Felicia, Aika. It was actually pretty funny how we managed to communicate- there were quite a few newly arrived people at the picnic, some of whom really couldn't speak Chinese well, so for example they would all speak in Korean to the Korean person who spoke the best Chinese, who would then translate it for the group! But, you know, we're all making progress. Taiwan is a great place to learn Chinese quickly!

After we'd hung out and chatted for an hour or two, we decided to play Ninja.

Ninjaaaa

Ninja is a game where you all strike a pose, then starting with whoever won last round (or arbitrarily) make one move. The idea is to hit people's arms- if your arm is hit, you can't use it, and if you lose both you're out. However, you have to start from wherever you ended your last move, so if you tried to hit someone and they dodged out of the way, and now you're in a deep lunge facing the wrong way- well, stay like that, and next turn you start from there and try to hit someone else. It's a lot of fun, and although it's stereotypical the Japanese friends are way better at it than the rest of us! I still won one match though, after like a fifteen minute duel with Chihiro. Victory! (She said I cheated because I have long arms, which might be true but doesn't mean I didn't win! :-D)

I'm not going to give this picture context... it just is.

Later, on Friday morning we had a new pair of missionaries move into the home on top of our Kingdom Hall. Considering we're in the process of selling it I'm not really sure why they're moving in now, but I guess the branch doesn't want to waste the space... in any case, I went over on Friday to help them move in.

Stuff has arrived!

I don't have any pictures of them unfortunately, but they're a Korean brother and sister who will be serving the Indonesian group attached to the Wenshan congregation. They were very excited to start their new assignment, and I wish them the best!

Sunday evening, Giancarlo and his fiancee Sara invited us all to go to Danshui for the afternoon, which I gladly agreed to. The weather was beautiful- about 85 degrees, wind coming off the ocean, humid but not unbearable.

Just arrived, making plans

We didn't really do much of anything- strolled around, looked at stuff, bought some fried squid.

It is indeed fried squid!

One of the sisters in our congregation, Rebecca, had a hilarious encounter with a Turkish ice cream vendor- she ordered ice cream and he basically messed with her the whole time, giving her her ice cream then pulling away the ice cream leaving her with a cone, keeping it just out of reach- I have a video but it's 50MB, way to big to post! If you want to see it and you have my email address, send me an email and I will send you a link :-)

After a while we found ourselves at this really nice old building from the Dutch colonial days that is now a coffee shop!

It's called "Red Castle Coffee"! 

So we chilled there for a while, but they have very odd rules- apparently they will not serve you until everyone in your party has ordered something, but not everyone in our group wanted something. I get that the building is probably expensive and they need to make sure the people visiting are actually customers and not just tourists, but it's not like there was a line of people we were preventing from sitting down, and by not allowing the people who wanted coffee to get coffee you're actually getting less money that you would have.

Well, whatever- weird business practices aside, it was nice!

And then of course, the Memorial itself. I haven't heard the total attendance- we split up into two times, because there would be just too many people to all fit- but my half had 202 attending, which is great! If we split evenly, that means that ~90 Witnesses and ~110 guests came! I was picked to be a server, which is always a nice privilege. 

Personally, one of my classmates who I invited came, which is awesome. His Chinese isn't good enough to get everything from the talk, but I made sure he sat next to a Japanese-speaking brother who could help explain things to him.

Thanks for coming Tatsu! I'm afraid he was a bit intimidated by all the people though...

He agreed to go over the "Good news from God" brochure- I'm going to give him one in Japanese, I'll use Chinese, and hopefully we'll be able to work this out!

Afterwards, we all went out to eat at Saizeriya, everyone's favorite Japanese-Italian restaurant.

Too many people for me to get a clear shot!

Naturally, because it was a special event, everyone dressed up in their nicest clothes, which led to pictures like this:

It's a shame there really isn't an equivalent to qipao for men...

If there's one thing I regret about my choice of language groups, it's that I don't get to wear cool ethnic clothes to assemblies and such. There are such things as traditional Chinese clothes I can wear of course, but in Chinese culture nowadays they're seen as relaxing clothes, not formal dress like Qipao dresses. Ah well, worse things have happened...

And here's an unrelated picture:

This is what happens when you ask Nikolai and Yang Jie to pose

So that's it for this week! How was your Memorial campaign?

Interesting Places 有興趣的地方

(Even small places in the world are big...)

Hello everybody! I'm not dead!

I say that as a way to give you guys an update on the protesting here in Taiwan. (Smooth, right?) After the police cracked down on the lines, the protesting died down for a couple days, then resurfaced again- this time, 700,000 people arrived, from all over the country! I understand they also got overseas Taiwanese students in New York City to stage a protest as well. The government responded by making a deal with the protesters, agreeing to set up a committee overseeing all cross-Strait (between Taiwan and China) deals. Some students are still not happy with this, saying more must be done than simply setting up another layer of bureaucracy, but the majority of the protesters have gone home.

But in the meantime, the protest has been a very effective (if somewhat dangerous) topic to bring up in the ministry- I haven't met a single person who doesn't at least have an opinion about it, and some are willing to go on to hear about how the Kingdom, mentioned in the Bible, relates to it. (I had one long conversation with a cabby for about twenty minutes, which was nice!)

We went into this market and preached while eating delicious pineapple!

But besides that, I've had some nice conversations just from being friendly and open.

For example, one day last week I had to visit the doctor. Nothing serious, but still. In Taiwan, when you need to see the doctor you go directly to a hospital, so I did... but when I tried to register, the secretary told me to go to a different line. I went there, and the nurse told me to just go wait in the waiting room. After fifteen minutes, a different nurse came out and asked me why I was waiting there if I hadn't registered at the counter. I went back to the registration counter, where the secretary ignored my question and started saying to her friend that she can't understand what this foreigner wants.

It was at this point a random Chinese woman comes up from behind and basically takes over for me, arguing in the heartfelt but totally natural way that only middle-aged Chinese women can pull off. After she got me all registered (finally), she explained that she used to live in America, and seeing me having trouble with the Taiwanese staff in the hospital reminded her of herself trying to visit the doctor in America when she'd first arrived.

She was so nice (her name is Judy), she stayed with me until I got out and made sure everything was okay. We, naturally, started talking about why I came to Taiwan, which let me give a witness and ended up with her accepting an invitation to the memorial; we also made plans to meet up again on Monday at the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, and she'd show me around a bit.

In Chinese it's called "Father of the Nation Hall".

So that Monday we met at a nearby McDonald's (for those wondering- no, the food is not the same) and Judy did, indeed, show me around! She was obviously born in Taiwan, so she knew all about the history, but she'd spent ten years in America so her English was pretty good. Before I talk about the history, I should mention that this place is a major tourist spot for Mainland Chinese to come visit, since when Sun Yat-Sen was doing things Taiwan and China were still one nation; as a result, I got lots of stares. Most Mainland Chinese people not from a Tier 1 City (Beijing, Shanghai etc) don't see many non-Chinese people outside of television, so while they came to see Sun Yat-Sen, a real live American was also an attraction!

View of the courtyard (and 101!) from the steps

So Sun Yat-Sen (孫中山, better transliterated as Sun Zhongshan) was a doctor working in Hong Kong in the late 1800s, during the Qing Dynasty. He was trained in Western medicine, but his contemporaries and the government often would not allow him to practice his medicine on patients who needed it- Chinese medicine only. (Not that Chinese medicine is bad, last time I got a cold I ate lots of "powdered green dragon scales" and it seemed to help the symptoms... but I could see why someone with, say, a bullet wound would want surgery and not acupuncture) He later came to associate that with the Qing Dynasty in general- ignoring the future for the sake of the past, and allowing the country to fall behind as a result. During this time, the Imperial Japanese were also carving up parts of northern China and claiming them for Japan, so it's easy to see why he felt something needed to be done.

The man himself- this statue isn't smiling

That "something" turned out to be a revolution. Over the course of a decade, he got enough support from within and without China to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, and ended up being China's first, and so far only, democratically elected leader. He took steps to build schools, attract Western professionals, bring electricity and motor vehicles to China and in general made China a more modern place.

Different angle on him- actually, he looks quite stern

He died of a stroke in 1924- he succeeded in overthrowing a three thousand year old dynastic system and improving the lives of many, at the cost, some would argue, of some Chinese culture and on the backs of the peasants in the fields, for whom he did almost nothing. That last bit would become important for a peasant boy named Mao Zedong a few years after Sun's death...

While I was in the Memorial Hall, I got to see the changing of the guard

I understand the Changing of the Guard is very formal, is very respectful, etc, but it seems kind of... comical, honestly.

Taiwanese Superman or Ginyu Force?

Anyway, this excursion ended a bit awkwardly... Judy said she was going to step outside for some air, and to meet her at a bench she pointed out after I'd looked at the art gallery. I came out a half hour later, and she was nowhere in sight! I walked around for a bit looking for her, waited at the bench for fifteen minutes (had a nice chat with a man from Mainland China, too- he was blown away that I wan not only American, but could speak Chinese), but then with school to go to... left. I realize there's an even chance she just decided to leave too, but I really hope I didn't just ditch her there. Still, what are you gonna do? I hope she comes to the Memorial, not only because, you know, Memorial, but also so I can apologize.

The middle of the week was filled to the brim with school. My midterms are actually tomorrow, but it's not really a test, more like a project- I needed to interview another foreign student about his life here in Taiwan and the differences between Taiwan and his home country, then write a report on it, then make a powerpoint on that, then present it to the class in a ten-minute report. In addition to our usual tests and homework.

Still, this last Friday was a holiday, which was nice. (Tomb-Sweeping Day, if you're interested.) Most of the young Witnesses in my congregation went to tour Bethel, but way more people showed up than they were expecting- too many, in fact- and since I'd already seen Bethel I got bumped out of the group. I decided to spend my day instead touring the Botanical Gardens, and then wandering over to the hot springs in Beitou.

By all appearances, it was worth it!

This looks like a great place for a nap.

I love the roots on this tree!

Right before I took this picture, there was a family enjoying tea in that pagoda- it's a shame they left

Amidst all the natural beauty, which did me a lot of good (I spend too much time in the city), they also had this building kind of sticking out, not meshing with the surroundings. I went inside and a very nice Taiwanese tour guide explained to me that the site of the Botanical Gardens used to be the Qing Dynasty's provincial capital government building, and that although most of it was torn down by the Japanese this building had been preserved as a museum.

She also spent a great deal of time explaining to me the significance of the clothes the men painted on the doors were wearing- quite interesting for me, but probably boring for you guys :-)

This building, she was sure to point out, was just one small part of one building of the large complex. The main hall was still here, as was the"Etiquette Courtyard" and the galleries on either side. The living areas off to either side had been torn down, but apparently the Taiwanese government is trying to build a recreation of at least a couple of them so you can see how people lived.

One of the main galleries- I love the traditional Chinese windows, seriously

Back when this was actually used, the compound was all that was officially considered "Taipei"- they had this governmental office, with about two thousand people inside, about ten thousand merchants and craftsmen and farmers outside in the rest of the city, the city walls, and outside those nothing but countryside and natives until you reached either Tamsui, which was a Dutch trading port to the north, or Tainan, two hundred miles to the south.

This courtyard is full of etiquette, apparently? Can objects have etiquette?

After I left the Gardens, I took the subway up north to Beitou. Beitou is well-known locally for its hot springs and relaxed atmosphere, but I had yet to go there, so I figured this was a great opportunity.

Inside Beitou's MRT station- Taiwan is weird sometimes

And it was still really nice! I didn't really know where to go, so I just picked a street that looked like it had stuff on it and walked on up. Before long I started following signs that said "Hell Valley"- no idea what that was, but it sounded interesting at least! Along the way, there was a creek filled with hot springs water and people, so I stopped and soaked my feet with the locals for a while.

I also have a picture of my ugly pink feet in the water, but no one wants to see that :-)

After I'd relaxed for fifteen minutes or so, I kept going walking uphill, refueled now by some guy selling eggs he'd hardboiled in hot springs water. A few more turns, and I was rewarded by this lovely lake:

Hot springs! Seriously, don't dive in, they're really really hot!

These hot springs are hot because of a magma pool below the area. One of the mountains around Taipei, Yangmingshan, is in fact a volcano, although they say it's dormant and is no threat to anyone. Beitou has two major hot springs pools- this one, the only one I saw, has translucent water and is said to be good for your bones, while the other one, a milky white, is said to be good for your skin. I spent some time reading the sign (My Chinese is good for most things, but both medicine and geology are still beyond my reading comprehension- happily I have a dictionary in my phone), and as it turns out this water is not only full of sulfur and phosphorus, but is also quite acidic- it has a pH of 1.4. It is also high in radium, which gives it that lovely pale glow at night!

Okay, so these hot springs are totally radioactive. But lots of people use them, so surely they can't be that bad for you, right? I mean, only visit them once a month and you're probably fine... Also, maybe the actual hot springs resorts filter out the radium somehow? I really have no idea, but it's not like Taiwan has no doctors or scientists. Although it's a bit odd, if they allow people to use the hot springs it's probably safe.

One last experience- as I sat down, after having irradiated my legs in very relaxing hot spring water and now eating some food, another Taiwanese woman struck up a conversation with me and, when she learned I could speak decent Chinese, offered to show me around Beitou. We ended up talking, predictably, about religion- she's a Christian, she said, because she was once in a car accident and she prayed to not die, and when she didn't she felt that she owed God a favor in return. I showed her a few scriptures out of the Bible- she said although she's been attending church for six years, she's never read the Bible- and offered to get her in touch with one of our sisters who could teach her more about God if she wanted. I got her email address and phone number, so hopefully we can develop her interest!

She showed me a Buddhist temple near where she lives- we didn't go inside

So yeah, this last week has been nice. I think the informal method of the ministry is a lot more effective, for my situation right now at least. And now, writing this post has taken way too much time, so I need to get back to work on my midterms. :-) Take care!