We hear all about people complaining and having Taiwan moments when it seems the whole of the country is working against them, but rarely we get to hear about the other kind of Taiwan moments:
The kind when the things of this culture come together.
Share your positive Taiwan moments here.
I’ll start. Yesterday, I needed to run to the bank to wire some money home and decided since I was on the way, I’d get dropped off at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall and walk over to the Chinatrust before heading to Warner Village to watch Hero (amazing movie by the way). As I began to cross from the Guang Fu S. Rd. side, I watched a plethora of kids playing, riding bikes, flying kites, rollerblading, and blowing bubbles. With bubbles floating past me and the sun shining on me, I felt such a moment of happiness in my two-minute walk crossing in front of the monument that was beyond words. It left me with a smile for the rest of the day. That was one of my recent Taiwan moments.
Or (I guess this is similar) you see groups of up to 15 kids (loaded onto about 7 bicycles) cycling near a cornfield or sugar cane field, laughing and clearly having one of those moments of pure bliss upon which all happy memories are based. They’re carefree and it’s classic childhood or adolescence against a background of classic lush, green, tropical farmland.
Makes me want to cry for joy… or just join in the fun…
When I see a child playing with his/her guardian (rarely the parents in Taiwan) in the park, I think of how happy I was the younger I was. It’s great to be so young that you don’t have a single care (including where your parents are) in the world.
I saw a great-grandmother type with some very young children in the Park. The kids were running around chasing each other, and having such a great time.
My wife asked the old lady why she was crying . . . seems she was thinking about all her relatives who were killed in the 2-28 incident after Chiang Kai-shek’s troops came over to the island.
Yes, it was just one of those Taiwan moments . . . .
Sandman wrote it best. I’ve developed the same opinion about the shite to bliss ratio. Yep, about 20% shite, 80% bliss. The homeland isn’t any better than that.
I have these great Taiwan moments most every time I work with one of my suppliers to the business I run. These guys are class acts all the way. They’ve become good friends, in addition to people I make money with.
I am also lucky to teach for a bushiban owner who, despite his harsh exterior, is one of the most honest, generous people I’ve ever met. My local teaching colleagues are primarly Taiwanese, and they have assisted on numerous ocassions with subbing, helping me design a class, and promoting my classes to their students.
I was joking last night with my friend and the driver of the taxi we were riding in about my status as a foreigner, calling myself attogah, bikolang, laowai, etc., when the driver, a middle-aged Taiwanese man, said: “Actually, I never think of people as Westerners, Easterners, etc. None of that is important. People are simply people.”
Went with a friend to his hometown in the countryside in Daxi, and visited his family in a traditional house set around a courtyard. After lunch the kids took me out to the fields nearby where we had a yam bake – they built a fire in a hollowed out earthen mound, heated the dirt til it was red hot then buried the yams in the dirt.
30 minutes later, yumm! I was told the technique works for baked chicken too. burp
