Darn, I Got Mandarin in My English

English is my native language, whereas I did not even start learning Mandarin until I was about twenty-one years old. So there is no way that Mandarin can mess up my use of English … HA HA HA HA HA.

There are a few ways which Mandarin makes it harder for me to use English correctly. I’ll go over a couple of them.

First of all, I recently have been doing more Chinese -> English translations than … I ever have before. This means that not only am I exposing myself to a lot of Chinese written by native speakers, but I have to pay much more active attention than when I am, say, simply reading a book in Chinese. Ever since this recent spate of translations started, I have found that sometimes the Chinese way of expressing an idea is popping into my head before the English way of something pops into my head, and then I have to translate my thought into English before I speak/write. I had not experienced this much since I left Taiwan, and I find it interesting that it is working on Chinese -> English translations as opposed to other ways I have of using my Chinese language skills which is triggering this.

Second, even though English is my first language for most subjects, there are a few areas where, in a sense, Mandarin is my first language, and English is my second language. Tea is a good example. I barely ever paid attention to tea, let alone drank tea, before I moved to Taiwan, and practically everyone who introduced me to tea and taught me more about it did so using Mandarin. Therefore, I find it much more natural to talk about tea in Mandarin than English. This is why I sometimes talk about ‘red tea’ in English, even though that is the incorrect term. That is also why I tend to talk in Mandarin in tea shops in the United States, even though the people who work in those shops are fluent in English (fortunately, they also tend to understand Mandarin, otherwise speaking to them in Mandarin would cause communication problems).

Since I first got serious about hiking/backpacking/camping while I was living in Taiwan, I also feel that Mandarin is a first language for me there. I also always had a significant level of communication about hiking/camping/backpacking in English, so I was never so far behind in talking about hiking/camping in English as I was with talking about tea. However, when I went on my backpacking trips this year, it felt strange to me that I was talking about it exclusively in English, and not using Mandarin at all (yes, I’ve also done hiking/backpacking/camping in Japan, but I used a surprising amount of Mandarin while I was travelling in Japan, including rural Japan).

That said, English is still by far the language I know best, so when my thoughts appear in Mandarin, translating them into English is generally pretty easy. And I am glad that there are some parts of this world which I got to know in Mandarin before I got to know them in English. Perhaps that is the takeaway for people who are learning a new language – once one has a sufficient level of proficiency, take something you know little about, and explore it using the language you are learning rather than your native language.

Living in the ‘Ugliness’ of Taiwan

I recently read the essay “Formosa the Ugly?” which is about how, in spite of Taiwan being a ‘developed’ country, there is still an abundance of cheaply constructed buildings which makes it look ‘ugly’ compared to many other ‘developed’ regions of the world. In the comments, there is a spirited discussion about whether it is actually bad that Taiwan is this way or not.

I’ve seen plenty of photos of urban Vietnam on travel blogs, and if weren’t for the fact that the street signs use Vietnamese instead of Chinese, I could have believed that those photos were taken in Taiwanese cities. This is in spite of the fact that Taiwan is materially wealthier than Vietnam.

Ultimately, it’s because the Taiwanese have chosen not to invest as many resources into their buildings and streets as many other societies with comparable wealth (though, as some of the comments point out, new buildings in Taiwan do tend to be nicer).

Well, there is the distorting factor of Taiwan’s terrain – it takes more resources to make infrastructure functional in Taiwan than in many other parts of the world, so even when the Taiwanese do put in more resources than other societies, the results may look equally humble. For example, a well-travelled engineer I knew said he had never seen any place on earth which uses as much stainless steel in its street infrastructure as Taiwan. Most places would not use so much stainless steel because it is so expensive, but in Taiwan’s case, the maintenance costs would be amazingly high without the wide use of stainless steel. Yet to the casual eye, stainless steel does not make the infrastructure look any more aesthetic, or even more like part of the ‘developed’ world.

Like the writer of the essay, I have learned how to mentally crop out the sight of such buildings, so that seeing shack built out of corrugated steel does not interrupt my appreciation of, say, a natural landscape.

And to be honest … I like the rough and unvarnished look of Taiwanese settlements. I liked that, with few exceptions, there is little appealing about the architecture and streetscapes of Taoyuan City. I found something refreshingly unpretentious about it. Function, not form. I even came to almost like the tacky faux-bamboo which the article lampoons (if nothing else, that photo brings out quite a bit of nostalgia from me).

I also remember another comment I heard from a foreigner living in Taiwan. There was a TV in the room, and said foreigner commented – “That [place being shown on TV] looks like a Taiwanese home!” What he meant is that Taiwanese homes often look ugly on the outside – but the interiors are immaculate and pretty and reflect the aesthetic investment of the occupants (they also often are not – it depends on who lives there). Taiwanese generally would prefer a beautiful interior over a beautiful exterior for their homes – and that appeals to me.

I also cannot help but notice that one can have a relatively high quality of life (okay, it depends on how you define ‘quality of life’ – I’m using my own subjective definition) at a relatively low cost in Taiwan. Certainly the quality-of-life/cost ratio is better in Taiwan than anywhere else I’ve been to in Asia – Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea (and even after factoring in the incomes of those respective places, Taiwan still comes out ahead).

So, yes, the unaesthetic nature of Taiwanese cities and towns is noted. But if Taiwan had been filled instead with beautiful buildings all over the place, I don’t think I would have been much happier there.

Seven Rare, Unusual, or Otherwise Distinct Taiwanese Foods, Part 2

This photo of ban tiao “客家板條” by lumei is licensed under Creative Commons.

4. Hakka Ban Tiao
Region: Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Kaohsiung, and Pingdong, but it’s most strongly associate with Meinong (in Kaohsiung).

I notice this list has a bit of a Hakka bias (about 10-15% of the population of Taiwan is Hakka). Both aiyu and Oriental Beauty Tea originate from Hakka regions of Taiwan (Fenqihu and Hsinchu).

Ban tiao is basically a kind of thick rice noodle, though there are certain other ingredients (namely the typical ingredients of Hakka cuisine) which are usually stir-fried with the ban tiao.

I did not realize that ban tiao was a distinctly Taiwanese food until I did some search engine queries, and found that Ban Tiao is mostly strongly associated with Taiwanese Hakka, not Hakka people in general.

I love Hakka ban tiao, and whenever I went to a Hakka town I would eat it. Ah, okay, I *did* live in a Hakka region, and I could get ban tiao in my neighborhood in Taoyuan City, but the ban tiao in the rural Hakka towns tastes a lot better.

“Taichung Sun Cake”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taichung_Sun_Cake.JPG#/media/File:Taichung_Sun_Cake.JPG

5. Taichung Suncake
Region: Taichung (isn’t it obvious?)

This is a flaky pastry with a sweet, chewy inside. I find it tasty.

Note: some people will tell you it is not possible to find vegan Taichung Suncake. They are wrong. When I lived in Taiwan, I could buy vegan suncake right inside Taichung train station.

This photo of mud volcano tofu, “泥火山板豆腐” is by flashguy, and is licensed under Creative Commons.

6. Mud Volcano Tofu
Region: Southern Hualien, Taidong

To make tofu, you need three ingredients: water, soybeans, and coagulant. There are many coagulants which can be used with tofu, and different coagulants will produce a different texture.

The recipe for Mud Volcano Tofu is water, soybeans, and liquid from a mud volcano.

Of course, people don’t actually want to eat the mud, so the the liquid from the mud volcano must sit for at least three days so that the mud separates from the clear liquid (the mud particles are so fine that they cannot be filtered out).

Of course, the need for mud volcano liquid means that this kind of tofu is only made in places which have mud volcanos. There are mud volcanoes in various parts of southern Taiwan (this post is a good overview of Taiwan’s mud volcanoes). I have eaten a lot of tofu in my life, and mud volcano tofu is definitely one of the most delicious kinds of tofu I have ever eaten. I ate it in Luoshan, the Hakka village in Hualien (I told you this list has a Hakka bias) which is best known for mud volcano tofu. I have also heard that it is possibly to buy mud volcano tofu in Taidong City, which means that it is probably produced somewhere in Taidong County (probably Guanshan, since there is a mud volcano there).

There is a blog post describing the process of making mud volcano tofu here.

Okay, so what Taiwanese food could be even rarer than tofu made from mud volcanoes? Well, it is…

7. Kolitan Fruit
Region: Green Island, Lanyu, and apparently some other coastal areas

You can find a photo of the fruit here.

Kolitan is so rare that a) most Taiwanese people have never heard of it and b) it has no name in English. I borrowed the name of the fruit from the Tao language since it the name which is easiest for English speakers to pronounce. The Latin name for the plant is palaquium formosanum. The Chinese names include: 大葉山欖 (Big-Leaf Mountain Olive), 台湾胶木 (Taiwanese Gum Tree), 杆仔樹 (not sure what this means because my Taiwanese is no good), 臭屁梭 (Stinky Fart Shuttle, a reference to the scent of the flowers), and 蘭嶼芒果 (Lanyu Mango). (I think this is a lot of Chinese names for a fruit which the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people, let alone Chinese-speakers, have never heard of – but maybe people kept on making names for it because they did not realize it already had a name in Chinese).

I ate Kolitan on Green Island, and even saw an old man harvesting the fruit from a tree. It tastes a bit like avocado, but it is sweet.  Apparently, the plant is related to the plant from which shea butter is made, so it probably tastes like avocado because of high fat content.

The people on Green Island told me that this fruit only grows on Green Island and Lanyu. However, when I was looking up the name on the internet, I found that it also grows in mainland Taiwan, though it is very rare on the main island. It also apparently grows somewhere in the Philippines, which is not surprising since Green Island and Lanyu are ecological melting pots of Taiwanese and Filipino species.

***

Have you tried any of these foods, and what do you think? Which foods would you want to try? Which of these foods is the weirdest?

Seven Rare, Unusual, or Otherwise Distinct Foods of Taiwan, Part 1

The vast majority of people familiar with Taiwan love the food. Taiwanese cuisine is basically a blend of Fujianese and Japanese cuisine influenced by indigenous cuisines, which has drifted from both Fujianese and Japanese cuisine over time.

The cuisine which is most similar to Taiwanese cuisine is Okinawan cuisine (another melting pot of Chinese and Japanese cuisines on a subtropical island), so much so that if someone told me that the ‘traditional’ Okinawan meals I had were actually Taiwanese, I would have believed them. Taiwanese people who have been to Okinawa have also told me that Okinawan food seems to be just like Taiwanese food to them. And if you look at the labels of some of the ‘Okinawan’ specialties sold in touristy parts of Okinawa, you might notice that some of them are imported from Taiwan.

When I say a food is ‘distinctly’ Taiwanese, I mean it is a food which is primarily consumed in Taiwan and not in other parts of the world. For example, even though Taiwanese people eat a lot of stinky tofu, is not distinctly Taiwanese because it is also widely eaten in certain parts of China. Likewise, even though mochi is very Taiwanese, it also happens to be very Japanese. Thus, they are not distinctly Taiwanese foods. That said, I do give myself a some wiggleroom with regards to whether a food is exclusively Taiwanese.

So here are the seven foods, presented in order most common to rarest.

This photo of aiyu jelly is by brappy! from Taipei (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Aiyu jelly
Region: Everywhere, but originally from rural Chiayi

This is a very common food in Taiwan, so much so that I don’t feel it belongs on a list of ‘rare’ foods at all. However, my research indicates that it is only produced and consumed in Taiwan and Singapore (and I am guessing that, due to a lack of farmland, the Singaporeans have to import the raw ingredients from Taiwan).

I really like aiyu. It is sweet and a little sour and very refreshing.

Aiyu jelly originated from Chiayi county, and the best aiyu I’ve had was in rural Chiayi, made from wild plants. There are also some villages which specialize in farming the plant in various parts of Taiwan. I’ve even been at the very spot on the Fenqihu-Rueili Historic Trail, where a man bent down along the path to drink water from a pool, only to notice the distinct taste and texture. He figured out that the water became that way because some seeds had fallen in it, and he figured out how to make jelly from the seeds. His daughter, Aiyu, sold the jelly in Fenqihu, and the jelly was named after her.

Here is a blog post about the Rueili-Taihe trail, which is connected to the Rueili-Fenqihu trail, though unfortunately since the blogger went to Taihe and not Fenqihu he probably missed the spot where aiyu was discovered.

A drawing of bird’s nest fern.

2. Shansu (Bird’s Nest Fern)
Region: Everywhere. It is one of the most common plants in Taiwan, and it grows abundantly in every county except Penghu.

Bird’s nest fern grows in many subtropical and tropical Asian countries, but Taiwan is the only place where people actually eat it. It’s a fairly common vegetable in Taiwan.

Personally, I agree with all of those Asians who refuse to eat it. It is my least favorite Taiwanese vegetable. I much prefer another species of fern which Taiwanese people eat and which is eaten in other countries where it grows, probably because it actually tastes good. But hey, this is a list of rare, unusual, and distinctly Taiwanese foods, not Taiwanese Foods I Like. Shansu is common, but it is unusual, and as a food, it is distinctly Taiwanese.

This photo, “Oriental Beauty”, is by Cosmin Dordea, and licensed under Creative Commons.

3. Oriental Beauty Tea
Region: Hsinchu County

This is a kind of tea which is only grown in Hsinchu County (though there are similar teas grown in a few other spots). It is an unusual kind of oolong tea. Oriental Beauty Tea cannot be grown with pesticides because it requires a certain kind of insect to bite the leaves and flavor the tea.

I think most of the Oriental Beauty tea I’ve had was low-grade and/or adulterated because the price was too low to be high-grade/pure. The one time I’ve had Oriental Beauty tea which I am sure was the real thing, it was refreshing and a bit tangy. It’s not my favorite kind of Taiwanese tea, but it’s nice and different.

There is a more detailed description of this tea at this blog.

The next four foods appear in Part 2…

Further Thoughts on Drinking and (A)Sexuality (Part 2)

In the previous post, I focused on drinking alcohol. In this post, I focus on drinking tea.

My mother raised me with the attitude that a drug is a drug, whether it’s legal or not, and both alcohol and caffeine counted. Actually, she emphasized caffeine and tobacco more than alcohol or any of the illegal drugs. She never explicitly forbade me from using drugs, she simply assumed that I would have better sense than to get into them, which in a way was more effective than an explicit ban would have been. Most importantly, she set a example, making sure every beverage was caffeine-free before she would drink it (she occasionally would drink alcohol, demonstrating to me as a youngster that caffeine was worse than alcohol).

Yeah, it was odd being the one kid who never drank cola beverages. I once found a caffeine-free Coca-Cola at a party, and drank it so I would finally know what a coke was like without having any of that yucky caffeine in it. I have never drunk any cola beverage since. And avoiding caffeine was never an issue for me socially – at least, not in the United States.

Then I moved to Taiwan.

Taiwan consumes more tea (and by tea, I mean the beverages derived from camelia sinesis) per capita than any other society on earth. That should give you a clue about the importance of tea in contemporary Taiwanese culture.

And tea contains caffeine.

I once wrote about my mother’s attitudes towards caffeine/tea and its impact on me in Chinese, and then posted it online. I think that is one of the most read/commented upon things I have ever written in Chinese, and the comments were along the lines of “Tea is so healthy, you should drink it every day, your mother is so ignorant and silly” (okay, the comments were politer than that).

I tried to avoid tea in Taiwan – at first. But I quickly discovered that this would make my social life more difficult, particularly if I wanted to interact with Taiwanese people rather than other foreigners. In Taiwan, refusing to drink tea stirs up a much bigger reaction than refusing to drink alcohol or coffee.

Well, I caved in. I went against how my mother raised me, and started drinking tea.

In the beginning, I did it only for social reasons. However, an early encounter with Taiwanese tea was with the kind which is rapidly becoming popular around the world – the sweetened and with little black tapioca balls. As it so happens, I had developed a taste for beverages with the tapioca balls years before in San Francisco, but in there such drinks were generally available without tea (I say ‘were’ because it’s getting harder to find shops offering tea-free tapioca drinks). Thus, this kind of tea was more familiar to me than the more traditional kinds of tea. And though I eventually learned which kinds of “tea” in the Taiwanese tea shops were caffeine-free, I didn’t know when I first arrived in Taiwan, which meant, to scratch my itch for tapioca drinks … I had to order it with tea.

Then I got used to drinking tea, and I didn’t notice the horrible effects of caffeine (tea only has low to moderate amounts of caffeine).

Then I started to like tea.

Then I became obsessed with tea – by American standards (I am *not* obsessed by Taiwanese standards). I can compare Muzha Iron Goddess tea to Dayuling Mountain tea (Muzha and Dayuling are both places in Taiwan – a true connoisseur of Taiwanese tea knows which town, or even better, the specific plantation, where the tea was grown) (Muzha Iron Goddess is better, but some Taiwanese people disagree with me).

And now, I drink tea – real tea, where my mother can see me. Her opinion of tea hasn’t changed, but since I’m an adult now, I am free to indulge in drugs as long as it doesn’t become a destructive habit.

So, does it mean that it was a good thing that I had that social pressure applied to me? I liked the results after I caved in, right? Why not cave into other kinds of social pressure – say, the pressure to drink alcohol or have sex?

Well, I have four responses to that:

1) Even without the social pressure, I would have noticed that tea is a big deal in Taiwan. I would have probably become curious and tried it anyway, thought it might have been a much slower process.

2) My life was satisfying before I got into tea, and I imagine I could have had a full and satisfying life without ever discovering the goodness of tea.

3) What if I had had a medical reason to avoid tea?

4) Tea is relatively low-risk compared to alcohol and sex. Tea does not impair my judgment or motor skills. Being a teaholic isn’t as potentially harmful as being an alcoholic. Tea cannot get me pregnant or infected with an STI. Tea doesn’t have the same potential to spoil my relationships with other people that sex has. I caved as easily as I did partially because I was, intellectually, aware that drinking tea was a low-risk activity.

You may be wondering what asexuality has to do with this. Well, there is the parallel between compulsory tea-drinking and compulsory sexuality. I also wish to bring asexuality into a different angle of this discussion, which will happen in Part 3.

***

FUN FACT: The word ‘tea’ originally comes from the Taiwanese language (okay, it comes from Hokkien, but Taiwanese is a dialect of Hokkien). In fact, ‘tea’ is the only English word I know of which originates from Taiwanese/Hokkien.

White Men Tell White Women That They Won’t Find Attractive Taiwanese Men

While I was living in Taiwan, multiple white men told me about the ‘problems’ white women had with dating Taiwanese guys. They never were specific, though they all implied that a white woman like me would have trouble finding an appealing Taiwanese boyfriend. For an online example of this, there is Michael Turton’s website – “The dating situation in Taiwan is excellent for males. Neither sex will lack for attention, although most Western females will not like most Taiwanese males.”

Now in my case, it was true that I didn’t meet any sexually/romantically attractive Taiwanese men. It’s also true that I find Taiwanese men just as attractive as white men. That’s because I am an aromantic asexual. However, as far as I can tell, if I had wanted a boyfriend, Taiwanese men would have done just as well as white men.

But you know who didn’t ‘warn’ me that I wouldn’t find Taiwanese guys attractive? White women in Taiwan.

Some of these white women were dating and/or married to Taiwanese men. And the ones who weren’t made it clear that they would consider dating Taiwanese men if they weren’t already in a monogamous relationship / once they were more settled into Taiwan, etc.

And among the people I’ve talked to (anecdotal sample, I know) it seems the white men in romantic relationships with Taiwanese women had more romantic troubles than the white women in romantic relationships with Taiwanese men.

It seems pretty clear to me that these white men in Taiwan didn’t get the idea that ‘white women can’t find sexually/romantically appealing Taiwanese men’ by talking to white women living in Taiwan (unless they were talking to a completely different set of white women than I was, which I suppose is technically possible). So where do they get this idea?

My guess is that they get this idea from a cocktail of subconscious sexism and subconscious racism. This sexist/racist cocktail claims that white men are the most attractive kind of men, and that white women, being the highest-status kind of woman, wouldn’t want to be with the lesser Asian men.

One white man said that it was a generational thing, and that while younger generations of Taiwanese men may be OK for white women, it wouldn’t work with older generations of men. I have met a number of old Taiwanese men, and while I made no attempt to engage with them in a romantic manner … well, let’s just say that that I am skeptical of this thesis. Sure, Taiwanese attitudes about male-female relationships have changed over the decades, but that’s also true of practically every society with a large number of white people.

Of course, in Chinese-language media (Taiwanese or not), white women (who tend to be European princesses) totally love Chinese/Taiwanese men, far more than they like any white men. Go figure.

Six Days in Shikoku: Summiting Tsurugi-san

This is a continuation of my previous post, in which I describe how I got to Tsurugi-san.

Near the summit is a complex of Shinto shrines.

Practitioners of Shinto have a tendency to set up shrines on mountain tops, even in Taiwan, but this is by far the largest Shinto shrine complex I’ve seen on a mountain that is 1000+ meters above sea level.

The fog reached the summit at the same time I did, obscuring the views.

I rushed around with my camera, trying to catch views in all direction before everything was obscured with grey and white.

Several trails converge at Tsurugi-san – if I had time for a multi-day hike (or even a very long day hike) I would have taken one of the trails at the Tsurugi-san junction.

I must catch that patch of blue sky with my camera!!!

There are a set of boardwalks at the summit, probably to prevent hikers’ boots from eroding the area.

I am guessing that rope on the rock circle has some religious significance.

The sign says ‘Tsurugi-san mountain summit’ in Japanese, which conveniently is in kanji so I can readily understand it (I am one of few white people who while visiting Japan found hiragana/katakana to be more intimidating than kanji)

In addition to the shrine buildings, there is also a mountain hut where you can stay overnight (for 4,800 yen per night, more if you want meals), which has its own (Japanese-only) website.

The mountain hut seemed to be undergoing renovation when I was there.

When I realized that the clouds weren’t going to part any time soon, I decided to descend.

Of course, once I got lower, I was able to see a little blue sky.

It’s those cool rocks again!

When I got back to Mi-no-koshi, I thanked the shopkeepers for watching my luggage, bought some snacks (it was the least I could do), and went to the road just next to the store, which happened to plunge straight into the Iya Valley.

I saw the bird which finished the last of the sunflower seeds when I returned to Mi-no-koshi

This time, I only had to wait about 15 minutes before a young Japanese woman and young Japanese man agreed to take me in their car (they were heading into the Iya Valley anyway, and there’s only one thru road). They dropped me me off at Oku-iya-kazura-bashi (the Inner Iya Vine Bridges), which I will describe in my next post. However, I want to share some of my observations of the Iya Valley in this post.

I had read that the Iya Valley was the Shangrila of Japan. I think that’s an exaggeration, at least nowadays. It reminded me a lot of mountain roads in Taiwan, The highest section of the road, from Mi-no-koshi to Inner-Iya-Vine-Bridge, had very, very, very little human settlement. However, past Inner-Iya-Vine-Bridge, there was more and more human settlement, more than I was expecting to be honest. It certainly seemed more settled than vast swaths of Hokkaido. Sure, all of the development in the valley is concentrated around the road, but you can go long distances on Hokkaido roads without seeing even 10% of the buildings that you’ll see on the road between Inner Iya Vine Bridge and Oboke. Of course, a lot of Hokkaido is much flatter than the Iya Valley, which is probably why the Iya Valley looks more like mountain roads in Taiwan.

One glaring difference between the Iya Valley and mountain roads in Taiwan was all of the nice cars. Most people in the mountains of Taiwan can’t afford nice, shiny, clean cars, so they try to maintain the vehicles they already have and run them until they fall apart – and it shows. Residents of the Iya Valley probably have higher incomes, and cars are probably cheaper in Japan than in Taiwan. However, the buildings looked like they could have fit in many mountainous areas of Taiwan – basic concrete structures for people who ain’t rich.

By the way, all of these photos were taken during the descent from Tsurugi-san – I won’t reveal any photos from the Iya Valley itself until the next post

I’ve read that you shouldn’t try to compare different places you’ve travelled to – that you’ll get more out of travel if you experience everything for what it is, and don’t try to decide which one is better, and which one is worse. I think that’s good advice. I also couldn’t help feeling that, after building up all of this anticipation for seeing the Iya Valley, from guidebooks, and then from seeing the road from Sadamitsu to Mi-no-koshi, that the Iya Valley was a bit of a letdown. For all that it reminded me of Taiwanese mountain roads – possibly more than any other road in Japan – it doesn’t have the stunning scenery of the more remote parts of Taiwan’s Northern, Central, and Southern Cross-Island Highways, let alone Highway 14 + the Dayuling-Hualien section of the Central Cross, which is the most beautiful long-distance road in Taiwan.

I did, however, notice some guò​dù​ kāi​fā​ – that is, over-development (I think the fact that the Mandarin word comes to my mind faster than the English word says something about my experiences in Taiwan). Too much of the forest has become a cedar monoculture (I finally learned what was up with the cedar monocultures during my evening in Oboke – but that’s for an upcoming post). Too much concrete has been poured. The mountain slopes are being destabilized, which aside from the aesthetic problem, means high landslide risk. That’s a big problem because Taiwan gets hit by a lot of earthquakes and typhoons which can bury entire villages alive, but luckily there are never large earthquakes or typhoons in Jap- oh. Oh. Crap.

Here are some beautiful flowers from the slopes of Tsurugi-san to balance out the negativity of this post

Based on this, you might think that my trip to the Iya Valley was a downer, but it wasn’t. I want to concentrate most of my negative thoughts in this post so that my next post will have a happier tone. I do think one of the most important things I do during travel is learning, and if I shut the bad things I observe out of my mind I won’t learn as much.

Next post: the Inner Iya Vine Bridges, which are very cool.

Guo Jing as Demisexual

Huang Rong (left) and Guo Jing (right), as depicted in the 1994 television adaptation of The Eagle-Shooting Heroes

For those of you who are unaware of Chinese popular literature / culture, Guo Jing is the protagonist of The Eagle-Shooting Heroes (Shè​ Diāo​ Yīng​xióng​ Zhuàn​), which is one of the most popular Chinese novels ever, and thus one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century. It is more popular in the Chinese-speaking world than Harry Potter is in the English-speaking world, and it has been that way since it was first published in the 1950s.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that Guo Jing may be demisexual. Now, I headcanon him as being demisexual.

And … it’s pretty darn close to being canon that he is demisexual. The novel is very specific about him not being sexually attracted to Huang Rong until they’ve become emotionally close to each other, and it is heavily implied that he is never sexually attracted to anybody else for his entire life. After thinking it through, it’s hard for me to think of him as ~not~ being demisexual.

In the Asexual Agenda’s interview with Robin from Taiwan, Robin says “Also, the Chinese culture considers everyone to be demisexual, so it is supposed to be normal not to have sexual desires outside of marriage.” On the one hand, I disagree with his assessment of ‘Chinese’ culture – I have encountered many examples in Chinese-language media of people expressing sexual interest in strangers. On the other hand, I see his point. I have noticed way more characters who could be interpreted as demisexual in Chinese popular literature than in English popular literature. Furthermore, being plausibly-demisexual is idealized, and showing too much sexual interest in strangers is considered a character flaw.

I do not want this to be construed as meaning that being allosexual (as opposed to demisexual) is stigmatized in Chinese culture. I am really not a good person to judge this for quite a few reasons, but my (possibly incorrect) understanding is that, in real life as opposed to fictional dramas, Chinese cultures regard being sexually attracted to strangers as annoying/unfortunate, but it can’t be helped and doesn’t reflect badly on one’s character.

As that post in the Asexual Agenda brought up, “Chinese culture doesn’t like to talk about sex”, which is my experience is very true. It took me years to even learn what the Mandarin word for ‘sex’ is since it’s hardly ever used, and even now I have difficulty using the word correctly because I almost never encounter native speakers using it, and thus can’t get an intuitive sense of it. English speakers have a tendency to use the word ‘sexy’ to mean ‘good’ or ‘appealing’ even in non-sexual contexts … suffice to say, Chinese speakers do NOT have that tendency.

This is no doubt a relief for people who prefer not to have sex constantly brought up in conversation. The flipside is that it is harder to know how other Chinese speakers experience their sexuality. Even in the English speaking world, plenty of asexuals assume everyone is asexual until they one day realize that other people really do experience sexual attraction/feelings. I imagine this is even more intense in the Chinese-speaking world, possibly to the point that even allosexuals may think that many people are really like demisexual Guo Jing.

Yes, lets get back to fictional wuxia characters.

Even though there are plenty of wuxia characters who might be demisexual, I think Guo Jing is the only one I can think of (I might think of others if I really prodded my memory) who fits ‘demisexual’ much better than ‘allosexual’. Characters who have as much evidence of being demisexual as Guo Jing are actually not that common at all, if only because the kind of details which would really shift the odds from ‘allosexual’ to ‘demisexual’ are often not included because of a generally tendency not to talk so much about sex.

Just to do a quick comparison with other Jin Yong protagonists (because they are easy for me to review in my mind quickly)…

Chen Jialuo – probably heterosexual
Yuan Chengzhi – probably heterosexual
Yang Guo – I’ve discussed this plenty already
Zhang Wuji – almost certainly heterosexual
Hu Fei – almost certainly heterosexual
Di Yun – possibly heterosexual, possibly demisexual
Duan Yu – almost certainly heterosexual
Qiao Feng – not much evidence in any direction
Xu Zhu – probably heterosexual
Shi Potian – I don’t remember
Linghu Chong – definitely heterosexual
Wei Xiaobao – definitely heterosexual

Not many characters who I can headcanon as demisexual. Jin Yong characters tend to notice pretty quickly when a certain person is really pretty and special, and it’s plausible (and in some cases, confirmed) that this interest has a sexual component from the start. It’s only in Guo Jing’s case that it’s spelled out that the sexual component to his feelings for Huang Rong doesn’t come until he’s been close to her for months. Of course, it’s obvious that Yang Guo was close to Xiaolongnü for years without any sexual feelings for her, but since it’s never demonstrated ever that he has sexual (as opposed to romantic) feelings for her, I interpret it as those sexual feelings never existing.

Finally, I personally like to headcanon Guo Jing as demisexual, Yang Guo as monoamorous asexual, and Zhang Wuji as polyamorous heterosexual because they are each protagonists of a single part of the Shooting Eagles trilogy. I like how they complement each other in quite a few ways – for example, their approaches to vengeance – and show different faces of the human experience. Think of them as demisexual – asexual – heterosexual adds yet another layer of contrast.

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Why Cherry Blossoms Are Such a Big Deal in Japan

I have known for a long time that sakura (cherry blossoms) are a really big deal in Japanese culture. I did not understand the fuss. I have seen cherry blossoms in San Francisco, and in Taiwan. They look nice, but not so much that I would throw a party just because the cherry trees are in bloom.

But there is an important different between San Francisco/Taiwan and Japan.

San Francisco and Taiwan are mostly subtropical/tropical.

Japan is mostly temperate.

I wanted to go hiking during my first Japan trip, but … ha ha … I was in Japan in winter, and I do not have the equipment/experience for hiking through deep snow. I did do some hiking in light snow, something I had never done before.

There was one mountain, Karakuni-dake (in Kirishima), which I really wanted to hike, but I did not want to hike it in the snow, so I waited until just around when I thought it would be snow free.

My timing was almost exactly correct. When I hiked Karakuni-dake, there was still some ice and snow patches, but the trail itself was essential snow/ice free.

And that just happened to be the day that cherry blossoms were erupting around Kirishima. In fact, they were the first cherry blossoms I saw in Japan.

Then it clicked for me.

I have experienced winter in southern Japan (with an escape to Okinawa prefecture), with modern conveniences such as indoor heating, and the inconvenience of constantly having to bundle myself to go outside in Kyoto.

Japanese people deal with much more severe winters than what I experienced, and they have done so for as long as Japanese culture has existed.

Sakura are a sign of spring. Sakura are a sign that the Japanese winter is over. That is a reason to throw a party.

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If China’s Highest Priority Was to Take Over Taiwan, They Would Give Into the Hong Kong Protestors

This Forbes article says (bold added by me):

If it was merely a question of Hong Kong in isolation, perhaps Beijing would consider some of the protestors’ demands … But Beijing will not and cannot consider Hong Kong in isolation, because of the implications for separatist movements in Tibet, Xinjiang, and in a different context Taiwan, which is already a democracy but which China one day hopes to incorporate back into the Mainland and which is therefore watching events in Hong Kong very closely. The Chinese state does not believe in displaying weakness and is not about to start now.

I cannot comment on Tibet and Xinjiang, but if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were primarily concerned about annexing Taiwan, they would give into the protestors demands in Hong Kong. Refusing to give into the Hong Kong protesters makes it harder to annex Taiwan.

The protesters in Hong Kong are basically asking for the Chinese Communist Party to keep the promise made when the sovereignty of Hong Kong passed to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The CCP is choosing not to honor this promise. So why should Taiwanese people expect the CCP to respect promises made to Taiwan, and how does breaking promises make it easier to annex Taiwan?

The power in Taiwan which is most inclined to accept annexation by the PRC is the Kuomintang (KMT), which is also Taiwan’s most powerful political party. Yet even Ma Ying-jeou, the chairman of the KMT (and current president of Taiwan) is officially siding with the Hong Kong protesters (Michael Turton’s cynical take on that) – short version: if the CCP is not respecting Hong Kong’s autonomy, it can’t be expected to respect Taiwan’s autonomy, which means that the KMT would not be able to hold onto power post-annexation, so why should the KMT accept annexation by the PRC?

If the CCP were primarily concerned about annexing Taiwan, they would give into the Hong Kong protesters to show Taiwan that the PRC Can Be Nice. After all, they could stop being nice when the annexation is complete.

Taiwan is still independent of the PRC because a) they have their own military b) highly defensible geography c) the US military might get involved and c) the aftermath of a Chinese military attack on Taiwan might cause the CCP itself to lose power. I don’t think the CCP cares how many Taiwanese or Chinese would die or suffer, but they sure care about their potential downfall.

I think the CCP is most concerned with China, not Tibet, Xinjiang, or Taiwan. Most Hong Kongers (including most of the protesters) accept Chinese sovereignty, unlike Taiwanese people, so this is a conflict over governance, not sovereignty. If the CCP accepts democracy in Hong Kong, that will strengthen demands for democracy in other parts of China, and democracy could challenge the CCP’s hold on power. That is why the CCP will not give into the protesters’ demands unless it must. Not concern about Taiwan.

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