A visit to the grocery store in China

a variety of canned meats for sale


My mother in law, Pat, likes to go to the grocery store when she goes to a new place. I think this is genius. For a variety of reasons, the grocery store, or food market, provides a window into the everyday lives of people without the mediation of the tourism industry. And this is just as relevant in different parts of US as it is when traveling abroad. For example, consider the following:

• the Ralphs in Hermosa Beach, CA was voted by Playboy magazine as the best grocery store for single people
• the Safeway in Columbus Circle, Washington, DC, was nicknamed the "Soviet Safeway" because it had long lines and nothing on the shelves; this situation was allowed to continue most likely because the store was located in poor section of the city
• in Tucson, AZ, the local Safeway carries a very large selection of Mexican foods and spices as well as La Virgen candle offerings to cater to the local market demands

Anyway, going to the grocery store can give you some good insight into the everyday lives of the people in a particular place.


Here are a few of the highlights of the grocery store here:

seafood flavored chips of all sorts - I think it is mostly just MSG with some powdered squid skin or something.





'korn dorf' multi-cereal mix. of course.






a large variety of 'Pocky' - a cracker dipped in various flavors; mostly chocolate






and, this being China, you also have the knock off 'Pocky' ...'Chocky'








The regular grocery store is very tame compared to the open air 'traditional' market. No one is yelling anyhow. Hope to get some video of the traditional market before we leave.

update: Danshui and visting the fortune teller

Yesterday, Jesse wanted to get out of town, so we went the Danshui River, where there is a boardwalk-type area.







We took the ferry boat to the other side of the river to the town of Bali. Here is a photo I took of the passengers seated in front of us. Looks like a grandpa and his granddaughter to me.








I saw some fortune tellers in the underground mall, so I asked my friend Charlene to help me to go visit a fortune teller. She was actually kind of ambivalent about this since she considers the fortune tellers to be leftover from the "feudal system," but she took me anyway because I said I was curious and she is a good friend.





There are about 20 different fortune tellers there. They work in these little booths. Strangely, you can also get your facial hair plucked here. ?! Charlene helped me choose a fortune teller who used a combination of methods: your birth date and time, your face, and your hands. There are other methods but she does not think they are as good. (Feeling your bones, for example) Actually, she does not think any of them are good, because the fortune teller has a very 'traditional' way of thinking. It was funny to listen to her translate my fortune because she said things like, "This is a very feudal way of thinking, but the fortune teller says you are a woman but you have the strength of personality of a man. She says you should be softer in your relationship with your husband." I could see the pain on Charlene's face as she translated this message to me. This - coming from the woman who was told she should give up her dream of earning a PhD and find a 'good husband.' She definitely did not follow that advice!

I think I will keep the specifics of what the fortune teller told me to myself, but I will say it was an interesting experience. I will remain a skeptic, based on Charlene's advice and my own understanding of the world. However, to hear someone else talk about your life provides a different point of view. What I mean is, the fortune teller allowed me to see myself through another's eyes and with that, the potential of thinking about myself in a new way. I will admit that I did not like all she had to say, and I hope some of it is wrong. However, by considering the 'fate' she predicted for me, it offers me the chance to even consider how I feel about it. She described my fate as being very good in certain areas of my life and not as good in others. She advised me, however, that this was something I should accept because I have such good 'luck' in the first areas. Its very close to what Americans mean when they advise to be "thankful for your blessings' in light of some misfortune.

Charlene says the fortune teller she saw many years ago told her she would die when she was 84 years old. The fortune teller I saw asked if I had any questions, but needless to say, I did not ask "At what age will I die?" If she were to actually give a specific answer to that, as was Charlene's experience, that would be too strange. I don't think I want to know that kind of information. Would you?

Trash - think about it

I have been thinking about trash a lot lately - how much I generate, where it goes, what can be recycled, where it is stored...that sort of thing. Jesse and I have always lived in apartments, and I HATE taking the trash to the dumpster. I would rather wash 100 dishes than take out the trash. I would cram trash into the can rather than take it out and start new bag. It drives Jesse crazy. But, I am very lucky to have a very generous husband who regularly takes out the trash...so for me, trash has pretty much magically disappeared when it filled the can.

There are no dumpsters in Taipei. That would be wasted use of valuable space. (Another blog someday on use of space in Asian cities and vertical living) I live in a six floor apartment building but we do not have a dumpster. There is a schedule for trash collection, and you bring your trash down to the end of the street at the appropriate time and day. Sounds easy enough, right?

Kind of. First of all, I didn't know how to KNOW the trash man was here. Then I finally put two and two together and realized Taipei children do not have an inordinate desire for ice cream, but rather, the music playing each night that sounds kind of like an ice cream truck driving by is not an ice cream truck, but the trash truck!

Ok, so now that I know when the trash man comes, I need to gather up my trash and run down 180 steps to the front of the building and then get to the end of the street before he leaves. Hmm.

Or, I can place my trash bag in the general area where the trash truck stops in the evening around the time he comes. But this is also where I walk every day. It just feels wrong, you know? I have been trained by the PSA's of the early 80's - litter in the living room and the crying Native American man? - NOT to litter. And to leave even a small bag of trash on the streetside seems wrong. Especially because I walk those streets every day.

Oh where, oh where is my magical American-size garbage can that takes itself to the dumpster when it is full and the magical dumpster-fairy who takes away the dumpster trash? (Granted, if you live in Tucson, you know Tucsonans have only a 'theoretical' understanding that the trash goes inside the dumpster. They also think the area next to a dumpster is a good place to leave old furniture and grocery carts. Its part of the charm of the place. Perhaps I will blog another day about Jesse's awesome idea of the "urban-dog-sled race" which involved chaining all the abandoned shopping carts on our street together and harnessing them to Rosie...)

Back to the topic of trash. Then there is the question of recycling. I use a lot of plastic water bottles because I don't have drinking water access in my apartment. So now I am collecting those to take to 7-11 because I am pretty sure they will recycle them there. The City of Seattle trained me really well to recycle.

However, all of this is birthday cake and bunnies compared to what I will mention next...Toilet tissue. Not to be too disgusting, but Taiwanese do not flush toilet tissue; they trash it. I am pretty sure it is related to the pipes and water usage and other urban planning/development issues. Thank you, American plumbing! You can't flush a Barbie doll down the toilet, but most of the time, your toilet tissue is OK.

Now, I am completely sold on the squat toilet thing - that is no problem for me. Ergonomically sound and less physical contact - I like it! Except when it comes to bathroom trash. I mean, that trash is a SERIOUS biohazard. This is not one of those metal containers with a lid they have in the states for feminine waste - this is just a regular old trash bucket. I want to be as far away from that bucket as possible and the squatting only brings me closer to it. (Consider the size of a public restroom stall) So, I have effectively avoided the "public Western toilet that you never actually sit on" problem, only to encounter the "squat toilet brings me into closer proximity to the poo-poo trash" problem.

Trash is a serious issue! This does not even take into account the piles of burning trash Jesse told me he saw in the slums in Argentina or the stories I have heard about the US putting big trash barges out into the ocean.

So, I have been forced to think more about my trash and I know it is good for me to do. The stuff in my 'magical trashcan' goes somewhere real. It has to take up space somewhere. And most likely it is piling up near someone poorer than me. They tell me we are eventually going to run out of space on this planet. I guess that means I should get used to trash being more complicated.

Main Station Mania

Taipei Main Station fascinates and scares me. This is the hub of the subway, or MRT, in Taipei, as well as the primary bus station and regular and high speed train stations for Taipei. All of this is connected in one enormous maze. Additionally, there are 3 (!) shopping malls that spur off from Main Station like the arms of a hurricane. There are at least 12 ways to exit the MRT, at least 4 floors, and



an incomprehensible document mapping all of this.









The underground shopping malls connected to Main Station are chock full of cheap consumer goods of almost every type. Their main advantage is they are, well, underground. To wander here is to avoid the humidity, rain, heat, and sun that form Taipei's weather. And they are connected to the MRT - so they are convenient. These malls are full of 'crap' - inexpensive clothes, bags, sunglasses, and wallets.




There are piles and shelves of shoes - knock off Converse in every color; sandals with fringe and baubles, heels that shimmer with plastic coating, flip flop style shoes with fake flowers attached between the toes...








You will eventually get caught in a rain storm in Taipei, and in the underground mall you can acquire umbrellas of every color, style, and size - sun shades with UV protection and rain umbrellas with teflon. Especially 'girly' ones with ruffles around the edges, or your masculine dark plaid.





You can buy stickers galore, books, play games, have a fortune teller read your fate, DVDs and video games, and one of my favorites -every sort of hair clip and barrette you have ever seen. They are all really sparkly - bedazzled with rhinestones, flowers, bows, etc. There are also, of course, food stores. They sell some kind of bun down there that smells vaguely like Cinnabon, but worse, and just like Cinnabon, I think they pump it through the air vents in the entire mall so you can smell it miles away from the actual store.

The shoe stores down there are irresistible to me because it is rare to find something over $10 US. This kind of shoe pile seems to draw me in like some people are drawn to beautiful women, new techno-gadgets, or fried chicken. Its like I HAVE to look. There is always the promise of some cheap-o shoe that is simply perfect - a must have.



The reality of the shoe stores all over Taipei is that they are mostly full of shoes I think look pretty (sometimes) on display, but that I would not actually want to wear. Consider the trend in shoes and hair baubles the same - the frillier and more sparkles you can add to it, the more desirable it becomes.



Or sometimes, the shoes are just plain ugly.













So, despite the fact that I cannot help but look at the display of cheap-o shoe hedonism, I rarely actually buy any cheap-o shoes. They are mostly so useless as to be better to look at than to try to wear - much less on the streets of this city.

Hungry Girl's Guide to Taipei

I have been enjoying reading the blog "A Hungry Girl's Guide to Taipei." There is a link to it on my own blog. It has tons of reviews of restaurants / street food from a woman who splits time between LA and Taipei. She has organized the reviews by food type as well as by areas of the city. Very cool! If I am craving some non-Chinese food, for example, she has recommendations. This is crucial, because non-Chinese food is NOT reliable. Since Taipei is a big city, it is possible to get a decent kabab or indian curry, unlike in the smaller towns. However it varies greatly by restaurant. When in doubt, go with Chinese food - but if you have a recommendation, especially from an American, you are likely to have better luck finding pizza that does not include corn kernels!

More from the south of Taiwan

Here are some photos of Jesse's fieldwork in Hengchun peninsula.

Here you see Vincent, Jesse's collaborator on his project at NTU.

It was a great chance to get out of the city and enjoy the beautiful Taiwan coast.

Transport in Taipei

My original idea with the blog was to do a photo a day. That has not actually happened. I was not inspired to write much today - hard to say whether it is laziness, intimidation, or what. But then I remembered that I really committed myself to writing everyday, so I came back to my blog to post.

Here is a photo taken in our neighborhood near the Guting MRT stop on the Taipei subway system. You see this sort of transportation less and less in the city as cars become more popular and affordable. However, the tricycle cart used to be everywhere and used for moving everything. Occasionally you still see one of these human-powered vehicles. Here, the man is obviously moving fruit - I think the long sticks on the bottom are some kind of cane.

More ubiquitous than the tricycle cart is the motouche - the motorscooter in the right corner of the photo. I once heard an Australian living in Taipei call it a "scoot-ocracy" - rule by motor scooter. Another day I will post a photo that gives a better sense of the scootocracy in Taipei. They are EVERYWHERE. They scare the pants off me - I would never, ever ride a motor scooter in Taipei. Chinese are said to "drive like water flows" - in other words, if there is an available space, it gets filled. It is considered drive-able. Americans, despite road rage and speeding tickets and what not, tend to follow rules of the road. Driving here feels like insanity to me. When I ride in a taxi here, the scooters speed up the right side of the road past us making it impossible for the taxi driver to make a right turn. He does - I would also never want to be a taxi driver here - but only in the short moment in between scooters whizzing by. I asked if there are many accidents with scooters and my friends say yes - although I have never seen one. At least the people here wear helmets. A law was passed 10 years ago requiring it and it seems to have taken root. More on buses, taxis, scooters and the like later.

food stall v. restaurant v. night market cart

There are 3 major ways to eat in Taiwan: a restaurant, which approximates a restaurant in the US with chairs and tables, a server, a menu, etc., a street food vendor at the Night Market - which is kind of like something you see at a county fair or festival - a cart that serves one or two things and you take the food to go. The Night Market vendors are only available 'at night' of course. I am told one cart can support a whole family in Taiwan because the Night Market occurs every night and they are always packed. The Night Market will get its own blog entry someday soon - so much to talk about there. Here are a couple of photos of carts - one is serving 'fried milk' and the other serves a kind of BBQ sausages and pork chopped up together with onions and garlic. I skipped the fried milk - the BBQ was tasty.

A food stall is completely different from both of these. A food stall has an outdoor kitchen. It is a coal or gas fired stove with huge pots for stewing and sauteing. The stall has one or two cooks and one or two helpers. They usually serve noodles, fried chicken parts, various tofu dishes, or soups. There are a few variations on what you can be served there - but there isn't really a menu - just a sign that says generally what they cook. You just talk to the person at the stove and tell them what you want. All of the food is right there because it was purchased that morning most likely. It is all fresh for that reason - there is not storage or a large fridge. This stall may have some stools to sit and a couple tables or a counter which may be inside or outside. There may be water and beer served, maybe not. This is a quick, cheap meal - often eaten at lunchtime. The food stall is a little intimidating to those who do not speak Chinese because it is not clear what they serve, there is not really a menu, and while I have never ever been sick from the food there, the appearance of a food stall is not confidence inspiring, though I trust them completely.

Here are a few photos of a food stall. It does not look like much from the outside. They almost always serve noodles - with or without soup. The noodle dish shown here is my current favorite - gan mian. It is a ground pork stew on top of noodles garnished with bean sprouts and green onion. It is served with a 'tea egg' which is that brown hard boiled egg - it is brown because it is stewed in soy sauce. This should not be confused with the pidan which is also a brown egg - but it is jellied somehow. It is not clear to me how it is done. Its not bad - the texture is strange though.

7-11 Lions vs. FamilyMart Elephants

Last night Jesse and I attended a Taiwan League baseball game in the neighborhood in the north, Tienmu. It was great fun. Many aspects of the baseball game experience are similar to games in the US. Some aspects are uniquely Chinese. I was most struck by the 'crowd leading.' In the US of course, the jumbotron shows images of the players portraits and what not. It is the same here. However, instead of a DJ type announcer playing music and talking to the entire crowd, there are 'crowd leaders' for each team. This is a group of 10 guys - flag bearers, drummers, trumpet players, and a yell leader who lead the crowd in various cheers and chants for the team. Its loud and participatory, and everyone bangs together these noisemakers. Its totally cool - especially the drums. The yell leader occasionally sounds like a Chinese opera singer, too. Anyway, here is a short video of the whole thing. Enjoy!

Taiwan's Hawaii

07.06.2010
Kenting Beach
Nan Wan (South Bay) Recreation Area


Yesterday I went to “Taiwan’s Hawaii” – Kenting Beach. Kenting is a peninsula in the south of Taiwan and most of it is protected as a National Park. The bay to the west of the peninsula is very calm and the beaches there are popular for swimming and recreation. The National Park designation means the water is by far the cleanest and clearest I have seen anywhere in this part of Asia. (Compare to the trash actually floating in the water in the swimming beach in Hong Kong). The water is green blue, clear, and surrounded by lush jungle covered mountains. (Which my husband Jesse had to try to ‘machete’ his way through to dig up rock samples) The sand on the beach is not bad and is kept pretty clean for the number of people visiting and leaving behind cigarette butts and napkins en masse. I have to say it is the best I have seen a ‘scenic recreation’ site kept in Asia thus far. It was very enjoyable to swim here – the water was warm and clean. The comparison to Hawaii is a bit of a stretch, but not too far. It is beautiful – but it is developed, too, as with all scenic areas I have encountered in Asia. If the crowds, traffic, noise, grime, and grit of Taibei are getting to you, a weekend in Kenting swimming at South Bay beach would be a welcome respite.

Having lived in southern California and grown up going to the beach in Florida every year, I have particular expectations about ‘beach behaviors’. Going to the beach in China is completely different than in North America. For example, there is a small area designated for swimming, rather than the whole beach. Some places in the US divide the beach between surfing and swimming areas to avoid collisions, but in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan there is a designated swimming area and needless to say it does not extend beyond where an average person can remain standing in the water. In some places there are also shark nets, though I do not know if they are actually necessary or part of some sort of paranoia. I understand the tides and undertow in the ocean here are strong and dangerous, but I also think there is an element of feeling that if everything is controlled and organized it is better. The focus on control and organization runs throughout Chinese culture in nearly all of my personal experiences. To have a free for all on a public beach like in the US would be much too chaotic.

Also notable is the Chinese desire to avoid the sun. At the beach in Kenting, similar to vacation spots in Mexico, the banana boat, jet ski, and inner tube rides are very popular. There are many things to entertain oneself because to lie in the sun is simply not one of the choices. Now, we all know sun exposure is harmful and can cause skin cancer. I suppose the general American approach to this is to either not care, or to lather on sunscreen, throw on sunglasses and a ball cap and then not to worry too much about it. The Chinese really, really do not want to burn or even grow tan because it is considered a sign of lower class to have brown skin. So you see then in long sleeves, full face covered with a scarf, and always, always under a large umbrella. It is without question you will purchase the large sun umbrella. I enjoy the sunshine and being a ‘healthy’ tan – although I am pretty sure such a thing is a fiction. I wear sunscreen, but I do not avoid the sun as Chinese women do. They comment on my brown skin – I am not sure how to take it – as, “I am worried about your health,” or “I am confused why an educated woman would have brown skin,” or “How hideously ugly your brown skin appears,” or “You should worry about looking like an old woman, lao wai (term used for foreigners in China and Taiwan meaning ‘old foreigner’).” I guess it is all of the above. It is interesting to travel and to experience different conceptions of beauty – it is good for all of us to experience the slight discomfort of not fitting the local idea of beauty. I hope it allows us to experience the covers of the magazines at the grocery checkout and their ubiquitous ‘beauty advice’ differently. At least we can recognize them as a local cultural hegemony – a product being sold to American women using subtler marketing techniques than the used car salesman yelling “I can make YOU a deal!”

Speaking of the cover of Cosmo magazine, Chinese women are much more conservative in their bathing attire than European or American women. Although I saw bikinis for sale in the stores near the beach, I never once saw the bare stomach of a Taiwanese woman. If they were wearing a bathing suit at all, it included shorts or a skirt and a short or long sleeved t shirt over top of it. This is partly related to sun exposure but also a conservative culture of body exposure. I always wear a one piece here - I do not go so far as to also wear shorts and a t-shirt to swim, but I know better than to sport my string bikini welcome on the sands of Salt Creek or Newport Beaches (in other years when I was a few pounds lighter).

Hengchun in the South of Taiwan

07.04.2010

Click here to see where Hengchun is located.

Jesse and I joined the National Taiwan University undergraduates at their field camp in the south of Taiwan yesterday. After lunch with his host professor, Sun-Lin, and a collaborating graduate student, Vincent, we boarded a coach style bus for a long 8 hour drive to the town of Hengchun. Jesse and Vincent discussed their research on the bus – sharing their methods and tools for analyzing ‘detrital zircons’ – I have no idea what that is. It is pretty cool that English is more or less the language of science worldwide – it means Jesse can come here and practice his discipline with the best scientists in the world and they share the same language – though that language is completely foreign to anyone who doesn’t study geoscience. They will collaborate on the project Jesse intends to complete here. We stopped at two different highway rest areas which are enormous and include at least 10 different places to eat in a food court type arrangement. We had a tasty dinner of noodle soup and onion pancakes with egg. We tried Tainan traditional food which is a glutinous rice dumpling with specially spiced meat inside. It is a bit sweet. The chewy and sticky glutinous rice texture used in many East Asian foods does not bother me when I am eating something sweet, but when it is a savory flavor it is a little more difficult for me to enjoy.

The ride was comfortable, but long. After dinner we switched from the coach bus where all the undergraduates were riding with us to a smaller passenger van for a reason that was not clear to us. The driver of the passenger van was a woman, which seemed remarkable to the professor with us as he commented, shaking his head to us, “The driver is a lady but it is ok.” He is a bit more old fashioned, in my brief observation, than Jesse’s host professor. He smokes in his office and on the bus. Although Sun Lin (Jesse’s host professor) does not use his title all the time, there are other ways respect for age and status are revealed in the student teacher interactions. Vincent, the graduate student, must do many things for the professors that would be a little unusual in the US – carrying various equipment to the bus, for example. Also, Professor Chan’s wife telephoned Vincent’s cell phone at dinner last night and asked for him. I do not know if this is because the Professor does not carry his own cell phone or if Vincent somehow serves as his professor’s “secretary” at times. At lunch, I noticed Vincent served rice to the table in order of deference – Professor first, then Jesse, then me, then himself.

At said lunch, I felt really stupid when I commented that many Taiwanese liked Jesse’s sunglasses, but Jesse had somehow found himself on the topic of Taiwan-China-US relations and politics and couldn’t seem to get away from it, and I felt I needed to change the subject quickly. Usually Jesse and I are decent enough at being respectful of age and status in our interactions in Asia – the cultural norm I have found myself in violation of more often is the American tendency to be direct and to perhaps act too close too quickly. Taiwanese act very hospitable, friendly and warm with us, and we receive their welcome. The American tendency then is to respond with warmth and friendliness, and for Americans that often means being more open with conversation. This has led me into circumstances where I think I may be too open – sharing a sort of information that is too friendly, too quickly. Nothing intimate or anything, but, for example, asking someone’s opinion of American culture or sharing a detail about myself or Jesse that in America is not at all embarrassing, but for Taiwanese feels embarrassing. There is a tendency in America to self-deprecate to help endear oneself to another and while a certain amount of this is proper in Chinese culture, use too much and the other person does not think you are funny, but actually feels uncomfortable because they feel embarrassed for you. To be indirect is a skill with which I need more practice.

So they (Jesse, the graduate student, and the undergraduates) are out doing fieldwork today – taking samples and wandering around looking at rocks. That did not sound too appealing to me. I am not sure what I will do as I know nothing about this town except that the beach is about 5km away. I need to eat something and I would love to have a cup of coffee although that is probably unlikely. I may simply work on the blog most of the day as I have not written very much at all for a variety of reasons. There may be an internet café in town that I could use – although it may be filled with smoke and a dozen young Chinese playing online games. Yea!