Day 1: Taipei

After an early breakfast, we boarded a nicely air-conditioned bus to the OCAC headquarters for an introduction to the program by Wu Ying-yih, the minister of the OCAC. His recurrent message was his hope that we come to understand Taiwan through our own experiences during this trip.

The subsequent tour of Taiwan Storyland resurrected the atmosphere (plus air-conditioning) of Taipei during the 1960's, when children played with stilts, street vendors sold peng tang (fluffy, crunchy caramelized sugar), and neighbors watched the television through open windows.

The reconstructed town's narrow streets and simple lifestyle struck me asquaint, yet bustling. I wonder what it would be like to have grown up in that environment and witnessed lifestyles grow ever more complicated and fast-paced with improved technology and computing power, the way our parents probably have. Lunchtime brought a line-up of Taiwanese specialties: sour plum juice, Tainan noodle soup, ou-ah-zen/oyster pancakes (How do you Romanize Taiwanese? And is that what they're called in English?), and dou hua for dessert.

For our afternoon adventure, our group trekked to Yang Ming University where we met up with members of the traditional Chinese orchestra. We learned about the four main types of instruments (chui, la, tan, da), and then we got to (carefully) mess around with them. The di zi was not as difficult to play as I had imagined. I thought I wouldn't squeeze out any sound, but I managed to produce enough noise such that I could play through hsiao/xiao mi feng before fainting from hyperventilation. I learned that the er hu's bow's horsehair is actually manipulated by the bowing hand when the inner string is played; this of course made it harder to coordinate bowing up and down and switching strings. Vibrato involves squeezing/unsqueezing the strings, rather than wiggling one’s fingers back and forth as in Western stringed instruments. I also encountered an previously unfamiliar (for me) instrument, the chung juan/zhong ruan, which was kind of like a Chinese guitar, as it sported frets and was played with a pick similar (but not identical) to that of a guitar. It has a different body shape and tuning than the guitar and is held almost vertically. Lastly, there was the yang ch'ing/qing, the Chinese dulcimer, which was tricky to play since all the bridges looked the same to me and I kept getting disoriented. I enjoyed watching the actual musicians play it; it seemed miraculous that they could play so fast and still strike all the strings precisely. I had always dreamed of playing the er hu and di zi, and all the other instruments too, since I’ve never had the chance before, and I don’t know when I will next encounter them. At least I've now played each of them once.

For dinner, we paid a visit to the Shilin night market, where we enjoyed some sort of crunchy roll (what was it called?), fried chicken, and shaved ice. Then we roamed around the night market to soak in the jostling crowds, frantic salespersons, garish and glittering racks of clothes and trinkets, and sweet aroma of food.

Sadly, during our night market foray, Luke's beloved banana was snatched from his backpack by a crafty pickpocket. However, the banana miraculously teleported itself back into its side pocket right before we stepped off the bus we rode to the hotel. Luke could not have been more pleased with this sudden turn of events: