Random Oddities

Before I leave Taipei, I'm posting about some unrelated oddities I experienced during the summer.

1. The trippy, glow in the dark, black-lighted temple decoration.









2. Wheelchair accessible motor scooter!









3. I don't know what to call this, but I feel sorry for this dog. The dog is inside the shopping mall, in a stroller, on a blanket, wearing doggie-clothes, wearing a doggie-visor, has a neck support pillow, and is being forced to listen to monks chanting sutras playing on the cassette recorder attached to the stroller by a bungee cord. Um, yeah.



4. I don't think this brand name would fly in English speaking countries - "Sweet Camel: Jeans for aggressive woman" - I just don't know what to say about this...?! I tracked down a pair of the jeans made by this label, and they are tight.

Ghost Month in Taiwan

Ghost Month recently began according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar. During this month, Taiwanese believe the underworld gates are opened, so the ghosts of the dead can come to earth. These ghosts can be good or bad; the ghosts who are adequately venerated by their descendants will bring good fortune to them. Hungry ghosts, or those who have no descendants or descendants who do not take care of them, can bring bad fortune. So you see a few special behaviors in Taiwan during this time.

In the temples, there are special offerings and decorations. There are elaborate paper houses created for the ghosts to reside and lanterns hung to light the way toward them. People come to the temple and leave fruit, cigarettes, booze, cooked whole chicken or duck, candies and cookies, and 'paper money.' The paper money is special money that looks like Taiwan dollars but is meant for burning to give to the ghosts. People set up special altars in front of their stores to make offerings to the ghosts, so their businesses will be protected from misfortune. As you walk down the street at this time, it will be lined with tables on the sidewalk full of various foods and goodies for the hungry ghosts, and a laoban (owner of the business or the boss) burning incense and paper money to ensure the ghosts receive the offerings.

Taiwanese will feel very superstitious during this time. They won't want to say 'ghost,' go swimming, travel late at night, go to any old sites (like the Lin Family Mansion) and generally pay close attention to personal safety. They fear the 'ghosts will get them' or cause them to have some kind of misfortune. One of our friends even received a gift from his lab because he works with fish in the water and would need to go swimming during this month. They gave him a piece of jade to wear around his neck for protection.

I used to feel this was so superstitious and silly - however, if you compare it to the American superstition of avoiding a graveyard at night or on Halloween, it makes a little more sense.

Aubrey and I went to one of the temples to see the festivities on "Open Day" - the day the gates of the Underworld are opened. We burned incense, and then a man told us we were doing things in the wrong order. Aubrey was worried she would be haunted by ghosts due to our incorrect ritual performance. I assured her however, that in my opinion, I think it is the intention that matters, not the specifics of the practice.

I made a short video of some women burning paper money in front of their store. I uploaded it here - I hope it works.

Maokong Tea Farms

Yesterday I went to Maokong, a town at the very end of the Taipei MRT route. From there, you can take a small bus up into the mountains to areas where people keep tea farms. There are many 'tea houses' there, too. It is really beautiful, quiet and pleasant. The view from the tea house I visited was great. You could see Yangmingshan, Taipei 101, and the city.

It was hot, but cooler than down in the city. There are places to walk around and look at people's farms. At the tea house, I sat outside under an umbrella, enjoying the view. I drank 'grapefruit and lime' tea which was delicious, but a bit too sweet. You can eat snacks with your tea, such as peanuts and popcorn, which was fun. I read my book and enjoyed a delightful afternoon.






I am not sure what is in these jars - some kind of pickled vegetables or spice.

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Check out this ad poster from the Taipei MRT. :)

All the happy little cartoon poo poos jumping out of the large intestine! (??)

The Grand Hotel

Aubrey and I in front of the Grand Hotel



Inside the lobby of the Grand Hotel










The Golden Dragon Room at the Grand Hotel

The Grand Hotel is a Taipei landmark. It is featured in any photo or film about the city. I have never been there despite living here for two summers. When my sister came to visit, I made a reservation for us to have dim sum lunch there. It was a delicious splurge and definitely worth going to check out. The room has a beautiful view as the Hotel sits up on a high hill. I suspect there are actually more luxuriously comfortable places to spend the night in Taipei - the Grand Hotel seems a tad bit worn in the lobby - but none with such characteristically "imperial" decor.

Info about the Grand Hotel from Wiki:

The hotel was established in May, 1952 and the main building was completed in October 10, 1973. It is owned by the Duen-Mou Foundation of Taiwan, a non-profit organization, and has played host to many foreign dignitaries that have visited Taipei.

After Chiang Kai-shek's retreat to Taiwan in 1949, Chiang felt it was difficult to accommodate foreign ambassadors, as there weren't any five-star hotels in Taipei. Thus, he wanted to build an extravagant hotel to treat foreign guests. His wife Soong May-ling suggested to build it on the old Taiwan Hotel on Yuanshan Mountain, the site of the ruins of the Taiwan Grand Shrine, a Shinto shrine during the Japanese rule. Chiang decided on a Chinese palace-style architecture to promote Chinese culture to the West through its extravagance. Taipei-based architect Yang Cho-Cheng was responsible for the design of the new hotel.

The hotel was established in the May of 1952, but it was expanded several times before it became the landmark as it is known today. The Golden Dragon Pavilion and Golden Dragon Restaurant opened in 1956. In 1968, the hotel was rated as one of the world's top ten hotels by the US Fortune magazine. And finally, in the Double Tenth Day of 1973, the main Grand Hotel building was completed, making it an instant Taipei icon.

My sister and I also went to town called Wulai. It is up in the mountains and has a very tall and lovely waterfall. You can hike up to the waterfall; or take the "log train." Aubrey and I opted to take the tiny little train due to the hot weather. We walked down the mountain though. Later in the day we found the public hot spring which was ....interesting.



One of the most relaxing things to do in Taiwan is to get your hair shampooed at a salon. It costs about $5 US and lasts at least one full hour. First, someone massages your back, neck and arms. Then, they shampoo your hair for almost one half hour, massaging your scalp. It feels SO good. They pile your hair up on your head, slowly adding more soap and water until you end up with an enormous head of bubbles!

A Birthday Party!

My good friend Charlene and I. Charlene was my first language exchange partner 4 years ago when I came to Taiwan. We have stayed in touch, and visited one another in Canada and Seattle. After working as a nurse, she began living and doing research among the Mosuo minority group in China. Sidenote: The Mosuo have been a 'matriarchal society' where one lives with one's mother throughout life. Instead of living in 'nuclear' families, the Mosuo live in matriarchies, where children are raised by their mother and her brother (who are both living with their mother). The woman's sexual partner (of which she may have more than one) will help raise his sister's children living in his household, not his own biological offspring. It is very interesting to think about this type of social organization. Charlene is now pursuing her PhD in Sociology (Chinese Social Policy in agricultural reform and migrant worker rights) in Hong Kong.



Last night Jesse and my friend Charlene and I celebrated my birthday. We ate at Madame Jill's Vietnamese Restaurant (very tasty barbequed pork) and we had ordered a chocolate cake from the bakery near our apartment.












The cake came with 'age candles' ! :(

My beautiful chocolate cake!

Beitou Hot Spring

The hot spring resort building



The entrance












On my birthday, I decided to take a day "off" from Taipei's noise and traffic and experience one of Beitou's hot spring resorts.


Taiwan has some extinct volcanoes and a lot of geothermal activity, so there are hot springs all over the island. One of the best places to visit a hot spring is only a half hour subway ride north of the city in a town called Beitou. After consulting the guidebook and internet, I chose to visit a resort called Asia Pacific Resort. People can stay there overnight or you can just visit for the day.




They give you a robe, slippers, locker, and towels when you arrive









The hot spring costs about US $15.00 to visit for the day. There are two public pools fed by Beitou area springs - one for males, one for females. This is because they do not allow any clothing to be worn in the hot spring pools (and everyone must wear a shower cap to prevent hair and hair products from getting in there). The women's pool is all wooden construction with stone in the pools. It is very pleasant. Beitou is up in the hills, so there are lots of trees. The pools are outside, which is one of the reasons I chose this resort. Its kind of like a hot tub on your deck - kind of outside, but kind of inside, too. There are 3 areas - the main hot spring pool which is L shaped and 40 degrees Celsius (roughly 100 degrees Fahrenheit), a small cold water pool, and an 'in between' jacuzzi tub where you lay down. The hot spring area has waterfall 'massage' jets.

As it was a weekday, midday, it was just me and 3 other women. It was wonderfully refreshing and relaxing. I just kept moving among the 3 different pools. I have absorbed some of the Chinese thinking about medicine, and I know that moving from the hot pool to the cold pool and back to the hot pool should be good for getting your qi moving (moving qi is healthy; stagnant qi makes you sick). The massaging waterfall felt great on my arms and stomach. It was much much quieter than Taipei, but not really quiet, as the locusts this time of year are positively raucous, and someone was doing construction, which was too bad. However, it was wonderful and I highly recommend visiting a hot spring if you have a chance.

Shitoushan (Lion's Head Mountain)

From the Lonely Planet guide to Taiwan: It is quite difficult to get to Shitoushan. No kidding!

I wanted to try anyway because the description of temples built into the sides of the mountains was very appealing. Living in Taipei is great, but it certainly makes me yearn for some peace and quiet.


Relatively early on Saturday, Jesse and I made our way to Taipei Main Station to get on a train headed for Hsinchu, the largest town near our destination. From there, our plan was to go to the Hsinchu Bus Station, tell them where we wanted to go and see what our options were. We considered the possibility that we would need to sleep overnight, but we were trying to avoid it.

There are two different rail systems now in Taiwan - the High Speed Rail and the regular train system. The HSR is brand new, very fast, more expensive, etc. If you are going to a major city it is definitely the best option. More expensive - but comfortable and fast! The regular train system has both express and local trains. It is clean and airconditioned and everything. Its not a bad option at all. The local can take a long time, but if you are prepared for it, it isn't so bad. The tricky thing about the regular train is that this time of year it is pretty crowded as kids are out of school and visiting their grandparents and what not. In Taiwan, they issue tickets on the train even if there are no seats. People simply stand in the aisle, sit on the floor, sit in the gangway or the bathroom or whatever the entire trip. If the trip is only one hour, that isn't so bad, but if its the entire length of the island, that could be tough. So the disadvantage of the regular train is 1. it may be hard to get a seat this time of year and 2. even if you have a seat, there will be people crammed up in the aisle next to you. Jesse says this does not bother him, but I find it uncomfortable.

So we have seats about half of the one hour long trip to Hsinchu. In Hsinchu we ate lunch at the department store food court and walked to the bus station. There, our timing was great because we immediately got on a bus headed in the direction of our destination. I spoke with the driver and told him where we wanted to go. When we arrived at the appropriate stop about 45 minutes later, I heard a loud, "Hallo!" and I knew that was where the foreigners were supposed to get off the bus! :) If you tell the bus driver where you want to go, I find they almost always tell you when it is the correct stop.

Now we were in Jhudong, which was still not our final stop. This is a small town, and there wasn't an attendant at the bus station office. So Jesse and I hung around for a few minutes. When I saw a driver get on his bus I got on and told him where we wanted to go, and he just told me to wait for the office attendant. Jesse in the meantime tried to figure out the timetable on the wall, but it was all in Chinese so it is pretty tough. I asked another driver who went to find out for me. Yet a third driver emerged from the office and informed us the correct bus would leave in about 45 minutes. Great! He was even prescient enough to ask me if I planned to return today. I said I would if possible. He reminded me the last bus left at 5:35pm - pretty crucial information I should have asked.

So we wandered around town for a half hour. We checked out their local temple / opera stage set up and I bought an iced sour lemonade.

Sidenote: I can never get enough ice or cold drinks here. When I purchased the lemonade, I asked if I could please also have one cup of just ice. No. I said, I will buy 2 drinks. One lemonade and one 'just ice' drink please. Much discussion. I mentioned I understood this was strange, but all I really wanted was some ice. The shopgirl said she could give me a little ice in my bag (they give you your drink in a cup, in a bag here). I said again, I will pay you whatever you want for a cup of ice. No. I finally gave up and said, ok, please can I have a large lemonade. This kind of situation makes my inner American crazy! I do not think there is a problem I do not know about with giving me ice, it is simply not one of the options on the menu list. I have asked for something that is not part of the set options. Even though I think I expressed clearly that I would pay for this, to make such a transaction that is not from the menu is impossible. I have encountered this type of refusal several times. My American thinking is, "I am giving you more than the asking price for this product - you are getting a good trade from this request, so why can you not do this for me?" I suppose another way of thinking about it is, "These are the options we are offering you. Choose from this list only. Other choices are not within the realm of possibility."

At 2pm, we boarded the bus to Shitoushan. I asked the driver to drop us off at a specific trail head listed in the guidebook. He informed me the bus did not go that far, but he would take us to the visitor center. Ok, good enough.

Up the mountain we went, of course, in the rain. When we reached the appropriate stop, we were the only people left on the bus and the driver worried we did not have umbrellas. I actually did, it was just in my backpack. There were some signs in English there, indicating the trail and the direction of the visitor center. Jesse was eager to get up the mountain, but I was worried about the time, so I suggested we stop at the visitor center to inquire about lodging.

So we found the visitor information desk, and I tried to ask about the trails, their length, and if there was lodging at the monastery. About 6 people were trying to help me. I was feeling really good about my Chinese because I thought the attendant understood me and was calling the monastery to see if they had a room for the night. Instead, she was calling a park ranger who spoke English!

A young man dressed in a park ranger uniform, in his twenties shows up and asks in perfectly American accented English, "Can I help you?" Now, really, this was a very good thing, but I was feeling a little disappointed about my Chinese when this happened. After quite a lengthy discussion about what trails and roads were washed out, how long the various hikes were, and where buses ran, he suggested he could just drive us to the location we were interested in and from there, we could catch a bus to a different town, where we could catch the train back to Hsinchu and ultimately Taipei. Wow! In the van a few minutes later, I pointed out he must have studied in the States because his American accented English was so great. He went to UC Irvine! Amazing. Turns out he is completing his mandatory Taiwanese military service by working as a ranger at this remote area. He speaks 4 languages - Taiwanese, Chinese, English and Japanese, so his unique skills qualify him to do 'alternative service.'

Twenty minutes of a curving mountain pass later, we arrived at our destination - the Temple Trail at Lions Head Mountain. It was 3:30pm. We ascertained the last bus to Nanjhuang - our alternative route home - left at 6pm, said goodbye to the park ranger who lives in the same town as my own parents, and began exploring.

There is much more to say about our trip, but this will have to be it for now. More details later!

The Scoot-ocracy

Well, it finally happened. Jesse and I witnessed a scooter accident. I had been told they are fairly common.

Walking home tonight, we saw a small crowd gathered on the corner about one block from our street. As we approached the intersection, we saw a bus stopped in the center, a firetruck and a couple police cars surrounding it, and a man lying in the street. As I was trying to comprehend what I was looking at, Jesse said, "Uh, dead body in the street." As I tried to get a good look, I gasped, "Was he hit by the bus?" Yes, he clearly was. But then Jesse noticed the man's chest moving, and we realized he was alive. He was bleeding from the head and arms. Just as I began to ponder why no one was doing anything, but just directing traffic around this man lying, bleeding in the street, the ambulance arrived. They placed the man on a gurney, and as they cleared him from the street, Jesse pointed out the remains of a motorscooter underneath the front bumper of the bus, shattered to pieces. There was a puddle of blood where he had been lying in the street, like in the movies.

The police were trying to manage the insane traffic around the intersection, as scooters and buses weaved around the accident. The traffic is already insane, so now it was really chaotic. I became scared to cross the street at that point, because the traffic was all screwy and the police were not really noticing the pedestrians - probably because most of them were still standing around chatting about what happened. I started waving at the police and grunting what I call my "Chinese language grunt" (which is not something I made up but actually other people make this sound, too) and then Jesse just found a clearing and I crossed close at his heels.

I hate the scoot-ocracy!!!

Eats

My friend Mandy and I at her family's home/store in Longtan eating dinner prepared by her mother.

Judith Farquhar, an anthropologist of China, wrote a book titled Appetites in which she examines the cultural politics of food and eating. In a country where millions died of starvation when the countryside was mobilized to fuel the industrialization of the cities, food is still sustenance for many Chinese.

Given Chinese people's reputation for eating just about anything, people have asked me a few times what strange things I have eaten. Sometimes eating something unusual is a result of poverty (like chicken feet) and sometimes it is a fetishized dish loved more for its expense than its tastiness (such as shark fin soup). Because the cultural memory of starvation is only one generation away in China, I feel as though I have an obligation to try everything placed in front of me if I am a guest. So, the strangest things I have eaten include shrimp with the shell, deep fried grubs, and chicken feet. I accidentally ate a barbecued chicken head once, but that was my own doing. Jesse's collaborator returned from a conference in China recently and ranted about how the Chinese will eat so many disgusting things (in contrast to the Taiwanese - himself included - who would never dream of eating sand worms).

However, typically, I really like all the food I eat here. Some of it I will even crave when I return to the States (like I crave Mexican food, American style birthday cake, and blue cheese right now).

Eating is, at its heart, a communal experience in Chinese culture. Of course many people eat meals on the run - a quick lunch break - or some noodles to go. All my Chinese friends would never skip a hot lunch. They would not even consider a 'sandwich' - eaten cold - a meal.

So whenever I have visited Chinese friends, I am always served a meal that looks something like this photo on the left. One of these dishes is Hakka food - Hakka is one of the ethnic minority groups in China and Taiwan. Mandy's family is Hakka and her parents speak the Hakka language with one another. The other dishes are more typical and include scrambled egg cooked with radish, steamed fish served with soy sauce and ginger, sauteed or boiled vegetables, and chicken. The fish is always served whole, and you peel back the skin with your chopsticks. And you never flip the fish over because it could mean your boat will capsize, or some other form of bad luck will come your way. Everyone has a bowl of plain rice, and you pick up bites from the communal dishes with your chopsticks, then eat them with your rice.

If you are not with a large group or a family, you probably eat something more like the dishes featured below.


The soup to the left has "soup dumplings" in it. Soup dumpling does not mean a dumpling inside soup, but rather, the inside of the dumpling has liquid. These are pork dumplings, but these are special dumplings which are quite sticky- made with the rice flour in mochi. The broth has all these wonderful fried onion bits in it that are so delicious. I don't care too much for the texture of the dumplings though.


Even more typical is a noodle dish called gan mian. This has ground pork cooked in a brown sauce, green onion, bean sprouts, and an egg boiled in soy sauce. This is delicious and can be found everywhere. There is a place in the Shi Da Night Market which serves this on top of hand made, hand shaved noodles. Yum.






If you are really hungry, you can eat some cold dishes with your soup or your noodles. My two favorite cold dishes are cucumbers marinated with green onion, garlic, soy, and vinegar and the dish pictured here - baked tofu served cold with green onion and bean sprouts. If you are lucky it will served with a sauce that tastes a bit like oyster sauce perhaps?




I have quite a lot more to say about food but that is all I will write for now. My newest favorite food is a noodle soup called 'winter mushroom' that has the most delicious mushrooms I have ever tasted outside of a really expensive truffle. They are served in broth with greens and noodles made from green beans. The next time I eat it I will take a photo to put on the blog.

diner dash: street vendors on the run

A street vendor in Taiwan might have a stew pot like this with a gas or coal fired stove. This vendor often serves noodles and soups. This photo was taken because my friend Mandy asked the elderly woman who cooks here if we could take her picture and she was very embarrassed, replying that I should be in the picture. I was very embarrased to pose at this woman's stove, which I could not possibly know how to use, but anyway, here it is.

This is a food cart that sells these sweet rolled cookies that they call eggrolls, but I am hesitant to call them that because they are nothing like an "eggroll" you order at Panda Express in the US. They are tasty.





Street vendors also sell prepared foods like this; you can choose what you want and they will cook it into a stew or deep fry it for you.

And, of course, street vendors sell everything young women want - cheap clothing, shoes, jewelry, etc. Here are a pair of short shorts with nonsense English painted across the bottom. A must have.

There are tons and tons of street vendors in Taipei. To be a street vendor - either to have a food cart, or to sell fake handbags from a blanket, or whatever, you are supposed to have a license from the government. However, this law is widely broken. It is broken for the same reason any laws are broken - because it is possible. There are so many vendors, it is not possible for the police to effectively patrol and ticket them all for violating the license law.

In one neighborhood of Taipei, Ximending, there are quite a few food carts and street performers. Both times I have spent an evening in Ximending, there has been an incident involving the license law.

The last time I visited Taipei, I watched a street performer stop mid-act and leap behind a garbage can to hide from the police. That was pretty amusing.

This summer, one evening Jesse and I were wandering around there and he was hungry. We found a guy who sells a sort of halal sandwich with meat, peppers, onions, tomoatoes, etc. on a piece of french bread. So Jesse is standing there holding out $NT 100, and I am trying to ascertain the various contents of the sandwich so I can help him order, when suddenly this guy just grabs his cart handles and takes off. I'm totally befuddled until I hear the screeching voice of another woman running toward us with her rattling stinky tofu cart yelling, "Kuai le! Kuai le!" or, "Hurry, hurry!" It is then I see the police officer giving one of the other street vendors a ticket. So, laughing bemusedly, Jesse and I begin to vaguely walk in the direction our halal sandwich vendor ran to see if we can find him again, but not really at all certain we will. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, he emerges from the crowd holding a fully prepared and wrapped sandwich for Jesse. He had found us! Jesse gave him $NT 30 ($US 1.00) and laughing, we thank him. I do not see his cart, so I don't know where he went. I think they all have little hiding places where they go when the police show up. ? I have no idea.

I asked Jesse why the police give tickets to anyone if there is such flagrant violation of the law. All of the vendors were back out and working less than 30 minutes after the police left that particular area. We agreed the ticketing probably gets some vendors to buy the license and prevents too many from operating in the area.

To see that woman running full speed away from the police with all her stinky tofu equipment jangling was quite a sight to see. You would have to be in pretty decent shape, honestly, to run while pushing all that stuff.

On the corner near the university the last few nights there have been some guys selling handbags. This is clearly an operation they wanted to complete as fast as possible because they were yelling to everyone to come check it out and they had people carrying signs around showing where they were. They seemed to doing a brisk business. However, last night the police were standing over them as they packed up the many boxes of goodies they had for purchase.

Yeliu

Yeliu is a small town on the north coast of Taiwan. The cape there has a fishing harbor and remarkable rock formations. It is a beautiful view of the ocean, but also the rocks there are interesting.




Jesse explained how all these different formations were created, but I won't bore you with the details. (I think it is interesting though.)







Despite being very windy out on the cape (witness the total destruction of our umbrella), it was still quite humid, hot, and sweaty. We ate delicious mango 'icecrushers' at the park cafe after we returned to the entrance. Most of the other restaurants around there serve seafood, which Jesse really does not care to eat here. It is not because he does not like fish, but rather, he does not like 1. the many snake and snail like sea creatures served as seafood here and 2. the way it is prepared and 3. excavating your meal from its shell. So we decided to go back into town for dinner. We ended up at the famous dumpling restaurant DinTaiFung which will have to be another blog entry.



We were also really interested in the boats in the harbor. Here you can see two crab boats (the white ones) and two squid boats (the blue ones). The squid boats fish at night, so you can see the lights strung across the top of the boats. We took lots of the photos of the boats and their equipment. The fishermen thought we were strange or lost. I asked one man if we could photograph his boat, and he responded that he did not own the boat, so he did not know. I think some of the men who work on the fishing boats are Indonesian, Malaysian, or Filipino.

Jiufen

Recently, Jesse and I went on a day trip to a town called Jiufen. I have been here before- the last time I lived in Taiwan I spent the day there with my friend Charlene and her brother. Jiufen was once a gold mining town.









The amazing view from the hills of Jiufen.




It is in the north coast of Taiwan settled amongst mountains that rise next to the sea. They built the town up the side of the mountains there.


Because it was the period during which Taiwan was under Japanese imperial rule, there are old (rebuilt) buildings there that are quite charming and pleasant - using lots of wood with traditional style windows and doors, a courtyard layout, and Japanese aesthetic. It has very narrow, steep "streets" that are more like a lane.





Naturally, since this is a tourist destination, most of these streets are lined elbow to elbow with food stalls and souvenir shops. However, nearly all the visitors remain in that area, so once you leave it walk around the residential areas of town, it is quite pleasant.





I do not have a photo of it, but Jesse and I stumbled upon a Buddhist temple in the neighborhood. Most temples outside the city in Taiwan have "hosts" - usually a couple of elderly people who care for things and give tea or hot water to visitors. The hosts at the busy city temples mostly sell the ritual paper and incense for burning, collect donations for perpetual lights, or other more administrative tasks. Jesse and I were greeted by the hosts are this temple and I attempted to talk with them for at least an hour. This was both surprisingly difficult (there are a lot of specialized religious vocabulary I do not know) and easy, considering the Buddhist monk there reads Sanskrit, and the "English" words we use for Buddhism in the US are based on the Sanskrit.

The main sanctuary there has an Amitou Buddha - which is the representation of the Buddha as having many (10,000) arms and several (is it 7?) heads. This might seem creepy, but the idea is that he has so many heads so he can see all of humanity and so many arms in order to help them all. I have actually never seen this Buddha in Taiwan before. The Seattle Museum of Asian Art has an example of this Buddhist statue so I tried to tell them we had seen it before. This created a very unfortunate miscommunication because a clearly devout woman understood me as saying Jesse had seen this Buddha in his dreams! I felt terrible about this, but there was not a good way to correct it.

The Buddhist monk we chatted with read to us from the Sanskrit versions of the sutras he used and then translated it into Chinese. With a combination of hearing the Sanskrit, his body language, the context, and the Chinese words he used, we communicated rather well. It was interesting because he told us the most important thing was not to bai bai - which is the Chinese word for making an offering to the god at the temple, by bowing, burning paper money, or burning incense. Rather, the most important thing was what is in your heart. He also said that Jesus, Solomon, and Buddha are all the same - I do not think he meant they were the same human individuals, but rather, they are all paths toward the same place. I wonder whether or not this is really what he believes, or if his appeal to the Christian figures was simply a strategy he used to try to communicate Buddhist ideas to people from the US. I will never know, but Jesse and I spent some time after our encounter talking over the differences in our encounters with American mormons here (on mission) and the monk.