KLIM

Milk in Taipei is expensive! Half a gallon of the fresh stuff will set you back NT$120, or about US$4!!! There aren't as many choices either - full-fat or low-fat only, none of the fancy schmancy 2%, 1%, or skim that I've come to take for granted.


Powdered milk is much more affordable at about half the price of the fresh, so roughly about what a gallon of fresh milk would cost at home. The powder comes in cans, and my goodness the breadth of choices can be dizzying! One whole aisle in the supermarket is devoted to milk powder, and you can buy it according to the nutritional needs of your age group. So how do you know which one to buy, especially if you're like me and have a very limited Chinese vocabulary? After meticulous research, I've developed...


JEAN'S POWDERED MILK SELECTION METHODOLOGY:

1. Look for a name you can trust or have tried before.
I wouldn't dare buy any that was produced in China or Southeast Asia. KLIM was a brand I've come across quite often in the homes of my relatives, and it tastes pretty good (I sometimes think it tastes better than fresh milk). KLIM, as it turns out, is made by Nestle, a Swiss multinational conglomerate hell bent on dominating the world one chocolate crunch bar at a time, so I figured they know what milk should taste like.


2. Look at the picture on the can.
Some of them have pictures of babies, which I gather is formula for babies. I wouldn't go for the ones showing the old couple with cheeks radiant from drinking milk, or quite possibly Metamucil. Maybe the young gringos frolicking, or the young Asian woman doing yoga. As for the cans without pictures, I'm afraid they were some of the first to be eliminated from my careful selection process.


3. Read all the English on the can.
Some of them are fortified with vitamins, "Calci-N," or have the word "super." I also like the play on words with "KLIM" - get it? It is "milk" spelled backwards!!


4. Go for a pretty color.
I have to look at this can day in and day out while I slowly deplete its contents, so it might as well be a pretty can. Let me tell you, it was a toss up between the purple yoga lady and the baby blue gringos.

In the end I chose the gringos, mainly because the word "Super" along the bottom of the can (Criteria #3) tipped the scales.

The Clam, the Crane, Crusts, and That Hard Thing On Toast

One of the lessons this week is about a crane who spots a clam sunning itself on the beach. As the crane pokes its beak to extract the tasty clam, the clam clamps down on the crane's beak. Neither would budge, waiting for the other to die of thirst or hunger. A fisherman sees them and snatches up both of them with his net. The moral: When two people fight, someone else stands to gain from the conflict.

We're learning the word for shell, "ke" 殼, as in clam shell, and the same character can be used to describe the Earth's crust. So I ask the teacher if it can also mean a pie crust, pizza crust, or crust on bread. She says, "No, there's no term for that in Chinese because these are foreign items, they would just say "that thing on top of the pie" or "the thing along the side of the pizza" or "that hard thing on toast."" Then we talk about how to say a loaf of bread as opposed to a slice of toast. My teacher used the same phrase to refer to both toast and a slice of bread, to which I had to explain that toast is a slice of bread that has been toasted, and that a slice of untoasted bread is still just bread. She gave me a blank look, then said, "That distinction doesn't exist in Taiwan."

Maybe Eskimos have the same frustration when we refer to the cold white stuff as simply "snow."

La Vie Revee des Anges

Found a happy place in my happy place, a little cafe/bar in Danshui called La Vie Revee des Anges, which means the dream life of angels.

Check out my photo journal of an afternoon in the fishing town of Danshui http://picasaweb.google.com/heebyjeany/FortSanDomingoSunset

Everything and the Kitchen Sink

So I was wiping down the kitchen counter last night, and was rinsing the rag in the sink, and then suddenly I felt a rush of water on my feet. Water was coming out of the cabinet underneath the sink, and when I opened up the cabinet, I saw that the pipe that was connected to the sink drain came loose and the black electrical tape that had held it together came undone...I could not believe it! I calmed down by the time I was done mopping up the kitchen floor, but I still could not imagine why anyone would employ such an obviously temporary solution when it is not much more expensive to install a more permanent and durable attachment. It was 11pm, and a bit too late to call the landlord to get someone over to fix it, and because I wasn't planning on doing any heavy-duty cooking for the rest of the evening I figured I'll call the landlord the next day.

Next Day: Got home around 8:30-ish after a long day of classes and studying at the library, and was getting ready to call the landlord, when I noticed that 1) the door to the balcony via the kitchen was closed and locked - we rarely close it and NEVER lock it, and 2) the "Sink is out of order" note I had posted above the sink the night before was now lying face down on the small dining table, and 3) my curiousity got the best of me, so I opened up the cabinet underneath the sink, and lo and behold, the pipe had been reattached, this time with YELLOW tape. So obviously, my lock-happy landlord had been here, perhaps at the beckoning of one of my roommates. I don't know what it is with fixing things with tape. I mean, seriously, it's like using bubble gum to plug up a leak. It is working fine for now, but I'm a little more cautious about using the sink. Maybe he figures this is a good way to get us to mop up the floor every once in a while?

Land of the Hot Springs

I am feeling a bit deprived of fun lately. My class is working me pretty hard, and I often find myself studying and trying to finish up homework until about 2 or 3am, then going to bed, then waking up in time for my 10am class.

I had been hankering to go out and explore Taipei more, especially with the decent weather we've been having, so I went up to Beitou on Tuesday to check out the newly renovated Taiwan Folk Arts Museum, perched up in the lush hills, which was originally built by the Japanese as an officer's club and used by kamikaze pilots during the Second World War. This itty bitty island in the Pacific is actually host to some of the best hot springs in the world, and the hills of Beitou are well known for the many natural hot springs and hot springs resorts. I remember spending time up here as a child, occassionally boiling eggs in the sulfuric pools bubbling from the ground, and once during the Lantern Festival, my brother and I paraded through the dark hilly streets carrying round red plastic lanterns lit with a long red candle.

A few weeks ago, my Aunt sent me an email with photos of the new branch library in Beitou. The library looks like it was ready built for a cover spread in Modern Architecture magazine, and I've been itching to check it out since it is right in my 'hood. The building is supposed to be one of the greenest in Asia.

Here's a great article about the Beitou branch library and green buildings in Taipei: http://www.culture.tw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=242&Itemid=157

Here are some photos from my afternoon in the land of the hot springs: http://picasaweb.google.com/heebyjeany/Beitou

Tibet

I'm a little disappointed that I've missed the Tibet protests both here in Taipei and in San Francisco. There was a 49 hour sit-in at the Chiang Kai-Shek/Taiwan Democracy Memorial in late March, on the very day that I had arrived in Taipei, but I didn't hear about it until a few days later. I guess I will just have to make do with wearing my displeasure with China on a t-shirt...anyone know of a good place to get politically inflammatory apparel?

Ancestors are Not For Rent

Chinese lesson for the day --

There is a subtle difference between the Chinese character for "ancestor" 祖 and for "rent" 租. That's Chinese characters in a nutshell - tiny strokes can represent something completely different.

My friend gave me a handy little black Moleskine notebook, and I've been using it to jot down some of the words and phrases I encounter. Here is a sampling of some of my favorite entries:

• 阿華田 "ah hua tien" for Ovaltine
• 虎頭蛇尾 "hu toe sheh way" which translates to tiger's head snake's tail, which means to start something with vigor but fail to see it through

and my personal favorite

• 江洋大盜 "jian yang da dao" which means notorious bandit leader. Incidentally, one of my local friends told me never to say this because it's archaic and people will think I am weird, and she will pretend not to know me, haha. Still, my biggest deterrent is the fact that the opportunity to bust out with this choice phrase is virtually non-existent in modern Taipei.

I go to class for two hours every morning, with a 10 minute break in between. We have a total of 4 students in the class (myself included), and everyone has grown up abroad with either one or both parents being Taiwanese. There's a kid from Thailand, probably 13 or 14 years old, one gal from Southern California, and a guy from South Africa, both around 20 years old. The Thai kid is annoyingly vocal about every little thought that pops into his spiky little head, while the other two are quiet as mice, and I'm somewhere in between. The Thai kid keeps yelling out the wrong answers to just about everything, even in the absence of a question being posed, and I just want him to shut up, but at the same time I can't help but smirk when the teacher tells him that he is wrong yet again. Makes me wonder what is more annoying - a smarty pants who is always right or a nitwit who gets nothing right? Tough call.

Tomb Sweeping

Grow cupcake. They say that more it grows, the more your wealth will grow. If only it were that simple!


Extended members of the clan hiking through the bamboo forest.


A stone lion protects my ancestor's grave.


The Land God watches over the land.


My hard-boiled egg.


Long overdue blog entry about my first ever Tomb Sweeping. Tomb Sweeping Day is a national holiday that falls on the April 4th, the deadliest day of the year because the number 4 sounds like the Chinese for death, and so it is associated with death. You've probably heard that a the superstitious will avoid living on the 4th floor, phone numbers or street addresses with the deadly digit, and it is a definite no-no to give anyone anything in 4's. The actual tomb sweeping can occur on any of the days preceeding, on or following April 4th, and many families will spread it over several days. In my case, I went on the 4th and the 5th.

Tomb Sweeping - Day 1
Our clan chartered a tour bus to transport about 50 of us to two gravesites that are across town from each other, and finishes with a family reunion luncheon.

The first site is that of the 14th generation patriarch, who was the first to settle in Taiwan. He left Fujian Province, China with nothing but the shirt on his back and an umbrella, and ventured his way to the "New World" of Taiwan to seek his fortune. Over the years, he became a shrewd and prosperous farmer. We're told that in an extreme act of filial piety, he took went back to China, unearthed the bones of his parents from their resting place in the dead of night, and brought them over here to Taiwan to be buried. I guess he wanted to be closer to his folks. His final resting place was up high in a beautiful bamboo forest, where you get good feng shui and a great view. We followed a little brook up a hill, negotiating over fallen tree trunks and rocks slippering from moss and yesterday's rains to get to his final resting place. I thought we hired caretakers for our family's gravesites and that the sweeping was more or less a symbolic gesture of our reverence. Not so. We brought machetes and knives to cut through the overgrown brambles and bushes, felled a small tree, and swept the grave's courtyard of all the weeds and dirt.

Then some members sprinkled color strips of "grave paper" on the grave mound, which symbolizes putting a roof or cover over it, for protection I'm guessing. Then there's the burning of the ghost money, lighting of incense, and making food offerings. They handed us each a hard-boiled egg, which symbolizes a new beginning with the cracking of the shell, and the shell had to be sprinkled on the grave, then we all ate the egg. Some people added a bit of salt to their egg, no symbolism there, it's just for taste.

We hopped back on the bus and headed over to another site, but this one was actually kept up pretty well so no maintenance work was required. Again with the grave paper scattering, ghost money burning, incense and food offerings, and one more egg with the scattering of the shell.

Afterwards, we headed to Banciao for the annual family post-tomb sweeping luncheon. Family members came out of the woodwork for this free meal. I looked around, but did not find a strong family trait or facial feature running through our shared bloodline. The fact is, I wouldn't be able to recognize most of these people on the street.

Tomb Sweeping - Day 2
We visited the Lin Family Mausoleum, which is perched on a hill that over time has become developed and a bit dilapidated (the hill, not the mausoleum). Back when it was built, the hill was just in the outskirts of the city and probably offered a good view of the skyline. Currently, there are mid-rise apartment buildings surrounding the foot of the hill and blocking the views, plus there's trash strewn along the paths to the graves, which I find simply disrespectful and irresponsible.

Some family members from the 15th, 16th, and 17th generations are kept here, and there's room for more. I belong to the 19th generation, but honestly have no intention of ending up here if I can help it. Same ritual as in Day 1, but much, much warmer weather and more mosquitos.