Culture 文化

(It's more than clothes!)

Taiwan is an interesting place.

I don't just mean there are cool people here and many interesting things to do- you probably could have guessed that by reading the other posts in this blog. It's interesting because in many ways, it feels very familiar. There are things that are the same the entire world- eat food, drink water, find someplace to sleep, make friends. How you actually do those things and what language you speak change, but at their core they are the same.

But in some ways, it is a very different place, and traditional customs are one of those places. No place's customs are entirely good or bad, of course. One custom is they are, traditionally, very respectful. For instance, if your friend invites you to a restaurant, no one leaves until he stands up, and no one starts eating until he starts, because he invited you. He doesn't have to pick up the bill, but if it was his idea he's the "host". 

Another example that my teacher told me about, if you're younger than, say, 25, your parents can forbid you from being friends with someone... and typically, you actually stop being their friend. If that seems a bit odd to you, don't worry, it did to me as well... but then, we Americans really love our freedoms. The Taiwanese are surprised that we'd be willing to risk our lifelong relationship with our parents to take a gamble on a friend, and to highlight how independent we are. I don't necessarily agree with either country's customs or the stereotype of them, it's just interesting to think about.

This week in service has been really good.  I've had the opportunity to work with Br. Liang (梁弟兄, the one in the blue) a few times- he's a special pioneer assigned to the area- and it has been really good for my ministry. His manner of speaking to people is really good, and he's been helping me pick better words to say to people, to be more polite in my phrasing. This is one area where my university doesn't help so much yet- most of the words we learn there are very useful but direct at this stage, all information and no subtlety. Hopefully I get to work more with him in the future!

This week as far as activities go, the biggest one is finally, after three months of living here, I went to see the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. I've walked past it many times, it has a subway stop inside it, I've talked about it, but it took me this long to actually go there.

Main gate, facing Roosevelt Street

Chiang Kai-Shek was the President of the Republic of China from the 1930's to the 1960's. He started his career by unifying the various squabbling warlords in China back in the late 20's, fought the Japanese and Communist Chinese for a few decades until he was forced to retreat to Taiwan, and with America's help started modernizing the country. He did some good things, he did some bad things, but the Taiwanese people revere him and built him a really nice mausoleum in the center of their capitol city.

That thing is really nice!

That photo was taken standing in the middle of the plaza, with the main building right in front. Behind and to the left, there is this building:

...which is the National Theater House. There wasn't anything playing there at the time, but Joseph says he went to see a Beijing Opera there a few months ago, which is pretty cool! On the other side...

Similar but different!

That's the Nat'l Concert Hall. They had some pop band or other playing at the time, no one I had heard before. Speaking of, if anyone is interested, this song is really popular in Taiwan right now. :-)

Walking up the stairs to the main building, you get to see inside the mausoleum:

It's quite formal inside, with color guards and everything wearing mirrored helmets. Here's the man himself:

I gotta say, I like that his statue is smiling.

But by far, the best part was downstairs, in the gift shop:

Memorial liquor: The true patriot's choice!

Actually, they had a lot of stuff downstairs. They had quite an extensive art collection, mostly done by just one guy, Zhang Qiyun, who also happens to be the founder of my university. So that was pretty cool! Sadly I couldn't take pictures of any of the artworks, but here's me next to some of his calligraphy:

That character is "Long 龍". It means Dragon, so he tried to make it look like a dragon!

Later in the week, I went out in service with Xie again, in Daan Park. The weather has been quite weird here- we had a solid week of 70 degrees and sunny in January, which everyone said was odd, and now it's been cold until just a couple days ago, which is later than it should have been. But that day had the perfect weather.

Beautiful!

Less beautiful, but hey. :-)

We had a really nice conversation with a pair of actual sisters doing Tai Chi. Normally we wouldn't approach people exercising, but they actually stopped to come talk to us. The older one of them had moved to Boston for work, lived there for 14 years, and just came back to Taiwan to visit family. She's not Christian herself, but she noticed that pretty much all Christians more or less get along except for Jehovah's Witnesses, who no one seems to like. Simply put, she wanted to know why. We talked for about a half hour (It was kind of nice to use English), she wrote down our website and said she'd check it out.

Daan Park's southwest entrance

Also, this week we had a hall cleaning. We have quite a large hall, and it includes the missionary home too, but about fifty people showed up so it went quickly. I like the brooms they use here, none of that fancy plastic bristles and ergonomic design. It's bamboo with sticks tied to it, and it works pretty well!

Ryota and Yang Jie, working hard!

We also had to sweep the street outside the hall, which was interesting... every time a car came by it would drop more leaves, so we had to do it again. I think it lasted exactly two minutes after we all left. That said, it was a pretty good witness- most places, religions included, that hire foreigners use them as kind of trophies- "look, we hired a foreigner, so we must be good, or else why would he work for us?"- and as a result most foreigners working for Taiwanese companies have something to do with management or customer relations. So when people drove by and saw a bunch of foreigners sweeping the street of all things, it made an impression- people stopped to talk to us about it!

Ryota again, joined by Br. Dai and Ahda

One last thing- here's another shot of trash time. When you hear Fur Elise blasting down the street, rush outside with all your trash and throw it in the trucks! Quick, before they leave!

Which results in this madness! :-)

Mason only has a couple days left before he leaves. :-( Although, Terry says he's found an English brother looking for a room for three months who will be moving in on the first, so at least we won't have a problem with rent.

See you next time!