Rooftop adventures

Friday was like it ought to be. After university I went to sleep for some hours before Chung, my Couchsufer/NTU friend, picked me up to go see a theater play: “Memoirs of a Zombie”. Already the way there was a unique experience because never in my life have I experienced such a rush hour traffic. Gazillions of scooters cram the streets, making it hard to move forward and to breath.

The play itself was a prime mime play, so despite my ignorance of the Chinese language I was fully able to understand everything. It was a one-actress comedy, played so convincingly, with so much love of detail, needing so little props as I have seldom seen it before. The plot itself was simple but cute: a figure runs away from a bar into a witch’s house. There the witch casts a spell on the figure who turns into a zombie and starts eating people. It ends with the zombie eating the witch, turning him/her back into a human and s/he lives happily ever after.In elevated spirits we went to drink a beer at the Simple Market, talked long about academic aspirations, plans, dreams, hopes about the future and funny stories of the past. Chung wants to be a documentary director, a goal I can easily sympathize with. Being close to Elephant Mountain we went up there and enjoyed the night view of Taipei (101). It was good to leave the city once again and look at it from a remote point of view.

We concluded the night with a rooftop adventure near my dorm. There is a government building, which is open all night, which should not be a problem because there is a security guard watching it all night – well he is supposed to watch it but was asleep when we came. So we went past him, up the elevator and enjoyed yet another amazing view of Taipei, which I was fortunate enough to capture on digital film. A night to be repeated sometime!

The philosophy conference is great and fortunately it turns out that I do not have to be an expert on Kant’s philosophy already. Martin Schoenfeld, a German Kant scholar from Florida, tries to teach us something about the Critique of Practical Reason and as far as I’m concerned he is quite successful at that. Around lunchtime one of the participating philosophy professors took out a bottle of Scottish Whiskey being already the second philosopher in a short time who advocates the consumption of high quality alcohol. I can’t say that I minded…

At night we went to a percussion concert at Chang-Kai Check Memorial Hall. Besides the fact that this is an awesome venue, the concert was really well made. It was my first percussion concert, so I didn’t quite know what to expect but I was not disappointed. Classical percussion has little to do with metal-drum-solos (no offence)…

The second day of this exhausting weekend ended with a hippie-birthday-party from Cecilia, for which I was a little bit late. I came when it ended. I don’t mind though – I need some sleep!!!

Another side of Taipei

After realizing that I had spend too little time with cultural and social activities I went to discover several movie theaters, watching ‘of Men and Gods’ (which was boring as hell) and ‘Buitiful’ (which was awesome). I also spent lots of time having dinner with friends and got to know my roomy a little better. Very nice.

One dinner was quite remarkable. I went to visit Lisan in her neighborhood. She showed me around, saying that ten years ago the sewage system was so little developed that at every downpour she would get a day off at school. We went to a hot-pot restaurant. Hot-pot is a typically Taiwanese dish that originates from the early Chinese military settlements in Taiwan (early 20th century). It used to be a way of cooking left-overs during times of scarcity. Like in a fondue you put vegetables and meat into boiling broth and let it boil until its good. While we were sitting, chatting and boiling our food, a huge cockroach suddenly crept onto Lisan’s food, scaring me to death. The waitress was a tough one and just grabbed and smashed the bug between her fingers. After that my food suddenly tasted deliciously like bug…

After dinner we retuned to her place and I was given the chance to see a Taiwanese house from the inside. Coming from a wealthy family she lives in a quite spacious house which is nothing like what I was accustomed to, though. Instead of a mansion, it is a five story-tall building and only one room wide and two rooms deep. At first it does not feel big at all but when you keep climbing those stairs you get a feeling for it. The rest of the night we watched a crappy German movie and a totally incomprehensible French-Taiwanese movie “Visage”.

Wednesday (18.5. that is) I wanted to catch up on my blog so I took my bike and went out on a desperate search for a café where I could sit outdoors and enjoy the fabulous weather. The seven days before that it rained every single day, with not only plunging temperatures but also plunging spirits. So I went around town and it took me over an hour until I found a promising site. Out of nowhere, very close to Taipei 101 there suddenly were old, transformed barracks that now hosted a museum, an art shop and an all-natural café. You could buy sustainable clothes, made in Taiwan with organic fair-trade cotton and delicious fruit shakes. Plus there was free wifi so I got all I had been asking for. Incredible. Only the fact that the place was air-conditioned as hell seemed a little hypocritical to me. I spent there all afternoon, editing pictures, remembering stories, drinking funny-smelling tea and eating yummy scones. At the end of the day I was deeply satisfied.

A typical neighborhood in Taipei City

101

The simple market and the café – awesome!

All natural clothes

I took my camera and went to Elephant Mountain that offers probably the best view of Taipei. Tired as I was I didn’t go up all the way but I got some pretty good shots of the sunset over Taipei.

101 peeking out

On the way back I had one of those moments when I realized that Taipei is a livable city after all. In the middle of a street market there was a small French bakery with baguettes and pastries so delicious that I couldn’t resist. Crazy that I am in Taiwan craving for something as European as this but what can I do, my taste-buds don’t care about the food’s nationality.

Coming up is a philosophy conference this weekend and two presentations next week.

Campus impressions

One morning the weather was just too tempting…

My dorm

Pond behind my dorm

Chachacha dance class I see sometimes when I go to Chinese class.

My breakfast place

The Blue Building on my way to Chinese class

View from Chinese class window

View of the front gate

Royal Palm Avenue

Parasols…

These guys are everywhere

Ups and downs…

It has become some sort of tradition that every Tuesday afternoon I have time to answer emails, catch up with friends on facebook and peruse online news. Because every Tuesday afternoon I am privileged to enjoy a class with the opaque name of Ecological Poetics. The readings are basically all from different strands green theory and most of them are fun and enlightening. Unfortunately the discussion of the texts is a less fruitful endeavor. My beloved professor might be a genius in his field (English literature) but I would not know because his three-hour monologue is one big mumble. And quite frequently he reminds me that I am apparently not in an English-taught class but one for ESL. That is when he starts discussing words such as platform, metaphor and red herring in Chinese with the rest of the students, leaving only me and Natalia whom he always calls Natasha dumbfounded. When I finally plucked up my courage to ask him to make his class a little more foreigner-friendly he preempted me, saying that he thought that he should speak more Chinese in class so Natasha and I would get used to the sound. At that point I gave up: Tuesday will stay my email-answer-day.

Recently I have been plagued by a Tinnitus, which increases my already existing insomnia. It could very well originate from the loud puppet show or from the film/art party at the old brewery. But it’s basically impossible to find the reasons. Hopefully it won’t stay all my life, that would really suck. For now I am just taking it easy, since my depressingly small room and school work really stressed me out. I am actually looking forward to a summer without too many obligations. Did I mention? I will spend next year in Berlin!

In the week of May 2nd I fell ill with a cold and spend quite a few hours in bed coughing and sneezing. In this week I realized that I would need to take my social life more seriously to feel more secure in this foreign culture. That means spending less time by myself in my room and more with friends from BOT or my Taiwanese friends. This is also what I did immediately, going out to dinners with friends and watching a great, but very disturbing Ingmar Bergman movie (‘Whispers and Cries’) with Anna (my Swedish friend with whom I have started a language exchange Swedish-German).

Most recently I have gotten a new roomy. Abhilash is from India and studies economics. We get along well, although I have to get used to sharing my tiny room with another person. What also happened lately was that my dorm is undergoing renovation. Without any prior warning we are no longer allowed to use the bathroom on our floor (2nd floor) and now have to use the one on the 6th floor, which means that for each time I go pee I have to take the elevator. IT’S A PAIN! But I am too tired to complain about it. I have already complained several times unsuccessfully. For those people who are wondering how I have been, this is what I mean (among others) when I say that there are ups and downs (these are the down parts I mean).

And all people who say that you would never get something stolen in Taiwan have a distorted image of the realities here. After I lost and never found a pencil case two weeks ago I got my cell phone stolen today. Both are basically worthless but the first contained a SIM card and the latter all of my phone numbers… Bad luck!

One of the most interesting things I heard about Taiwan’s history was the personal account of Lisan. She told me that only a few decades ago Taiwan was an extremely poor country. Her Dad did not even have enough money for sandals when he was a teenager. Then he made a small fortune with steel. And as previously noted: this is what parts of Taiwan still look like today. They look like the result of the attempt to get as many people as possible from slums into houses. But as I will show you in the next post, Taiwan is transforming rapidly!

Crazy parties and slave chocolate

When the weekend finally came (April 29th that is) I recovered largely and went with the gang of the BOT dorm to dinner and Karaoke. Let me say a few words about this gang. Once upon a time NTU mixed exchange students with local students across several dorms on campus. After too many complaints NTU decided to offer only places to exchange students in two dorms one for the well-endowed and the budget option (my dorm). Let me drop a few words about complaining in Taiwanese culture. According to our teacher a Taiwanese person would never, ever, ever complain directly in your face. Instead s/he would rather spread more and more rumors until it reaches the alleged wrong-doer, or in an extreme case s/he would complain to an authority such as the dorm supervisor (which happened in this case). Since Western people would generally choose the exact opposite strategy, conflict is quite likely to happen. Back to the gang: the majority of exchange students being distributed on only six floors in three buildings in the BOT dorm, they almost inevitably live in a bubble inhabited virtually only by exchange students. That’s the gang ;) I am saying this without prejudice because this is hardly preventable and for most students not even undesirable.

So I went to dinner with the gang. We had all you can eat Movenpick and Hagen-Dasz ice-cream. After desert I also had some traditional Taiwanese hot-pot, which was also worth every penny. Karaoke in Taiwan is radically different from European Karaoke since friends rent a little room in which they sing among themselves. It is also radically different from ‘Sing Star’ nights that I am familiar with because people are actually singing well, instead of mocking the song.

On Saturday, April 30th Lisan took me to an awesome film festival/ art party in a transformed brewery to arts-space (there are many of these places in Taipei. You must only know about them). There were several live-acts and apparently all artist expats of Taiwan convened at this place on that night. It was great to just dance all night long until sunrise. We also met Chung who is one of Niko’s couchsurfing friends. Lastly, I got to know a famous Taiwanese newcomer artist who wants to come to Germany to display his paintings. While I liked his works, I thought that they all looked very much alike. Sunday was lazy.

Crazy party...

The band with bike helmets. Lisan and me in the far back.

Monday night Iri and Bruno invited me for a dinner. I have to say I have never in my life had pasta this good. With little more than eggplant and tomatoes Bruno performed a true miracle. Deeply satisfied I went to sleep and had enough energy to go to language class the next morning (the first time in a week).

Realizing that I a) wanted to become less of a hypocrite in environmental matters and b) that I like adventures I decided that I wanted to take the sea/land route back to Europe. Taipei – Keelung – Xiamen (China) – Beijing – Moscow – Berlin. It looks so easy and you only need to take one ferry and change trains twice when you are in China. Spending 8 days on the train is also an experience worth making and a little price for the environment given that the trip pays you with exciting experiences. However, two weeks later I must admit that efforts for this trip already failed at first instance: without a Taiwanese resident visa you cannot apply for a Chinese visa. They didn’t let me have a resident visa. Taking the plane on June 25th.

Being somewhat of a political activist I stumbled across the following documentary.

Actually my sister recommended it to me. Unfortunately I could only find it in German but being appalled that apparently all of the chocolate available in supermarkets (except for specifically certified one) has been done at least partially with the help of child labor, I send two angry emails (in nice language of course) to Nestle and Albert Heijn. Only the latter responded with the following email, basically not denying that their chocolate is done with the help of child slaves (NO we are not talking about child LABOR, which would commonly denote paid labor but we are talking about SLAVERY, meaning no-wage labor):

“Dear Mr.,



Thank you for your email. Unfortunately we are unable to answer your question in English. Therefore you will find our answer in Dutch. 



Albert heijn is bezig haar gehele chocolade assortiment te verduurzamen. Momenteel zijn er nog niet voldoende duurzame cacaobonen beschikbaar. Wij volgen een schema waarbij tot 2015 alle chocolade duurzaam is. Euroshopper zal ook verduurzaamd worden, maar is dat op dit moment nog niet.



Sincerely, 


Marjan Schoon
Albert Heijn Klantenservice”

Sad story but enough information for me to not buy any chocolates (or other cocoa products) that are not certified until 2015.

A failed attempt for routine

Although I’ve written this as one piece I will divide it into several parts to make it more easily legible.

After my trip to Hong Kong I had one primary objective: get settled in a routine and face my everyday challenges which I had been distracted from to that point. To make a long story short: it wasn’t easy.

I returned from Hong Kong to a dirty room and a pile of work. From Monday, 11 April to Saturday, 16 April I spent my days studying despite marvelous weather. In the morning I would go to Chinese class and in the afternoon I would study for Chinese or philosophy in the library. On Friday I went to a keg party at one of the dorms in the underground parking garage, which was as American as it could get, including red beer cups, peer pong, lots of drunk people, show-offs, etc. It must be because I didn’t drink that I was glad to leave when we got kicked out at 11.

Something that really dragged me down those days was a pain in my right foot which I had since the huge hike in Hong Kong.

On Saturday, I met couchsurfer who wants to learn German, Lisan. Primarily she walked me around the Sanshong district in New Taipei City (former Taipei county: Taipei’s extension which bloats Taipei’s metro area to over 8 million people). It rained as hell so we hunched from restaurant to café hiding under an umbrella. We got along really well, both of us being adherents to the Burning Man ideals. She lived in San Francisco for the past three years, studying English. It was great to finally find someone who is equally interested in independent films, arts and neat cozy cafes,

The whole of next week a Finnish couchsurfer from Australia came to stay with me. Niko was a great guest and even though my tiny room became even tinier we got along really well. He is an extremely lively yet thoughtful person. We had several good conversations on topics including (but by far not limited to) the symbolism of health in the forming of culturally dependent beauty ideals.

Niko and I on our fighter jet.

We went around town and I got to see new sides of Taipei that I have not had seen before. One of the highlights was an abandoned building on my philosophy campus which has seemingly been embraced by artists for horror parties and the like. It was a weird atmosphere and it was obvious that the building had been abandoned for about two decades already giving it a distinctive ambience of decay and neglect. It seemed like from a post-apocalyptic novel where nature is slowly regaining control over human-made spaces: Ferns were growing in rooms and the wind blew newspapers and plastic furniture covers through the room creating an obscure scene. Many things look like they have been left in a hurry when the building was abandoned. But see for yourself.

The BOT dorms

We also went to a flea market in Yonghe District – according to one of my professors the most densely populated neighborhood on the planet. The flea market itself was not particularly exciting but we shared a bike, which was lots of fun and it was amazing to see how the space below a bridge had been turned into a communal space where people do sports, dance and play music. We also watched a fabulous movie, which I would like to share with you. It plays in Taipei and has a really fine sense of humor.

When Niko went down south to visit his friend, my life felt admittedly a bit duller. He brought lots of positive energy into my tiny room. What also happened at this point was that I realized that I would have to turn in a paper on the German philosopher Kant only a few days later and my days became overcharged with work and my nights sleepless.

I took a short break to go with Ron (from HK) who lives in my dorm to a traditional Taiwanese/Chinese puppet show. Both the puppets and the performance were incredible although neither I nor Ron understood very much because the performers spoke Taiwanese. Only two generations ago (Lisan’s grandparents) did not speak anything but Taiwanese, which is close to Chinese but still an entirely different language. And until a few decades ago the rural population was hardly able to communicate with urban people. Today virtually all people can speak Chinese and it is also the first language for most people. One annoying feature of the performance was the unbearable noise-level of the performing background music. On the effects of this later.

Me and Ron (to the left of me) with puppets