clothing stores and being white
I have wandered into a few clothing stores. There is nothing like going to clothing stores in Taiwan to make you feel huge. I get gently nudged over to the extra, extra larges, or to the mens shirts. I mean, I am just curious as to what's around. I just want to look! Oh well. I don't think I will be buying a ton of clothing here. I feel like such a strapper.
So, anyway, I have been going into clothing stores and investigating Taichung and Taipei chic. Turns out, I don't know if I can make fashion mistakes over here. I was persuaded, before I left Seattle, by wiser heads than mine, to return the visor that I had bought to wear over here. Now, I hadn't bought the visor to look cool, I had just bought it because I thought some protection against the sun would be a good idea. I have a hat or two, but I thought a visor would be another useful thing to have. However, my visor was vetoed by my caring friends, because I look like a dork in a visor. However, after checking out some of the merch available on the streets here, I am thinking that the visor might have helped me blend a little.
It doesn't matter though, that the clothes here are a little silly here. The women here can pull off almost anything.
Those sort of baby doll shirts that come out all loose and flowy around the stomach are in around here, but the general style makes me think of The Limited in the 90s, or, like K-mart weirdly cut and colored clothing. And I haven't been looking at the cheap stuff either. (I am serious. The clothing is expensive and awful. Like $100 for something that I wouldn't pay $10 for at Target.)
Everything here is just as expensive as Seattle, except the restaurants. There are restaurants that are expensive, but the 2 places that I have been hitting are the Buddhist buffet near my hotel, and the Buddhist buffet near where I work. I can eat at those places for about $3 American, (90$ New Taiwanese) which I love. And they are all vegan. I think the proprietors of the 2 restaurants are starting to know me. There is only one problem- the posted hours that they are open are very open to interpretation. Like, open at 4:30 can be interpreted as open at 5:30, not b/c the food isn't ready, but b/c I have an errand to run. And open until 10:30 means open until 8, b/c that is how long the food lasted. And normally I can totally get behind that kind of ethic, but sometimes I am hungry and want to get home, or got home late and want some damn food.
At the place near my work, the owners have a 3 year old kid. I think he was terrified of the white lady (me) at first, because he screamed and cried the first few times I came in. (Or he just screams and cries almost all the time. I don't know.) But now he is used to me, and last time I went there he came over and sat with me, then showed me his cup with juice, then danced for me. Hmm, so, dinner and a show. Sophisticated.
The guide books on Taichung all listed the expatriot places to go and eat and hang out, which I think is a little weird. I mean, why go to Taiwan for Italian food? There are, like, 4 Italian places here. It is so strange. I mean, I can see wanting some familiarity after being here for a while, but why put stuff like that in a guidebook for tourists?
One evening last week I wandered around and found "Little Europe" in downtown Taichung. There were Italian restaurants, of course, and British and Irish pubs, a French bakery, and some other stuff. What I thought was really odd was that when I found it, I wandered through, and it was the most conspicuous I have felt while in Taiwan. Like, instead of being anonymous Caucasian lady poking around, with nice Chinese people nodding indulgently at her like she is a 5 year old (I don't speak Chinese so I think the theory is that I am a little slow.), instead of that I had a bunch of Caucasian ex pats who noticed me as -well, sort of as one of them. Like, seeing a bunch of white people made me feel like I should say hello, and be a part of their group or something. Or maybe it was strange because I looked like I was wandering through Little Europe looking for something, as though I had to be there for a reason. I guess maybe I am not entirely sure why it was strange, I just know that I felt really weird going through there.
One related thing. I totally have played the white card. It is great. Like, I took the train up to Taipei last weekend, and I guess being in a foreign country takes away your common sense, because I got my ticket and just got on the train and sat down. Turns out the numbers on the ticket mean something. In fact, they mean that you are supposed to sit in a specific seat. Whoops. So after a few stops, some guy comes up and very nicely explains to me that the numbers on his ticket correspond to the numbers on my seat. I look apologetic, get my stuff together, and we all have a good chuckle at the crazy foreigner who has never ridden a train before. Hey, I'm not from around here! We don't have trains where I am from! Or numbers!
Then I walked back to my seat and there was a guy in it. I looked confused, and showed him my ticket. Then he showed me his ticket. They were the same. Then he talked at me very kindly in Chinese for a while, and everyone around nodded and smiled and looked at me, so I nodded and smiled and stood in the aisle for an hour until a random seat opened up. I still don't know what happened. Maybe I was on the wrong train. Whatever, I got to Taipei.
posted by evelyn in taiwan @ 1:04 AM
3 Comments:
From Jane I am so enjoying your journal. It reminds me of being in Okinawa, getting lost on the bus,which I rode for 5 cents, the same bus I had ridden many times. I had learned a few of the kanji characters,and I thought I knew that this was the same bus, but this one took me a long way from home and to the bus terminal. I then had to get a taxi, not having a clue where I was. I was telling the taxi driver to take me to Oroku, and he apparently was telling me that I was already in Oroku, but it was a while before I recognized anything I knew. Being "large", as if you are, reminded me of buying panty hose on the Okinawan market. I sure had a brain cramp that day. When I put them on, they barely pulled up to above my knees. I was laughing so hard that I waddled next door to my neighbor to show her. The would have been a good fit on a 90 pound 4'11" person. Ken and I always enjoyed wandering through the local markets and buying bean sprouts, etc. There were a lot more "white" faces as there were many military then and a lot of the Okinawians spoke some English. Your blogs are terrific. I hope that you are truly having a wonderful experience. Keep on writing!
From Gareth, I know how you feel about being outsized. I felt that way in Japan, but we quickly got used to it, as did the Japanese and it didn't cause me any problems. Your train trip came out okay but one I took on Hokkaido wasn't as happy. We were going to a resort but got on the part of the train that was detached and sent somewhere else. One of the guys spoke some Japanese but because he didn't look Japanese, no one could "understand" him. We eventually got to the resort but it took most of the day.
kpt just sent me the link to your blog. It's terrific! I'm glad you're getting to find out what its like to be really, really BIG. Eventually (or Evelyntually)you'll get used to it but the rest of the little world won't. While you can stop noticing, you can't stop noticing the other people still noticing. In my family, my generation all have a much large bone structure than previous gens. I blame the mothers' for all that neonatal nutrition nonsense and not letting me miss any meals. One more doubling of the cells when you were but a well-fed fetus and you end up just a bunch bigger. I wonder if body size in this world (and I don't mean obesity) is an overall advantage or disadvantage? It seems like small is better but that may be the predictable greener grass thing.
I'm sure you've been noticing the hallucinogenic effect of true culture shock. I think maybe the input/output stimulus overload means that simple situations normally irritating now just leave you kind of shocked. And its on to the next overload without sufficient time to indulge one's ordinary emotions.
I've not had the train ride experience yet, but I had an incident in the Chilean Andes that involved me, the spanish language, a bus schedule and a resultant 50 mile forced march at 12,000 ft in a desert to get me somewhere buses would be again in the foreseeable future. If anybody I know had been with me boy would they have been pissed. But generally, adventures are better when shared.
I hope you continue to have fun. I continue collecting music and sometimes getting it together enough to pass it alone to -k. The wildflowers have been spectacular in the cascades this season. I hope you get the chance to make a bit of a horticultural tour of the place.
You should harrass -k into getting you music to stream. We should have enough for that.
You must save me a story for the next time I see you at 3rd Place.
p.
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