learning Chinese, life in Taipei and some bad things!

This week my Chinese course began and I will go a bit deeper in my experiences, plans and advances with my Chinese here.
I am actually highly motivated to learn this language by now. For me, the only reason to learn a foreign laguage is the utility-focused perspective of beeing enabled to talk to more people in the world. Therefore learning something as Dutch or Swedish would not have much value for me as I can already talk English with most people of these countries and as not so many people live there. However, especially after travelling through massive China where nearly no one spoke English and also the experience of living in Taipei where I don't understand too much of the information in the public space, I now feel certain that mastering Chinese would give me huge benefits. Additionally I hope this will give me professional advantages as an economist interested in the international economic sphere.

usually Chinese characters are based on the visual picture of the object. Here an example of the historic development of the character for elephant 

My Chinese class takes place 4 times per week totalling 10hours/week! Plus homework and studying vocabularies on my own, I hope that I will be able to get a lot of progress in the next weeks.
So far, I think that my Chinese teacher is very good and in contrast to all my university language classes before, it even seems that I am not the worst pupil in class this time - hooray! ;-)
However the language is really, really hard. Even though there is not much grammer at all, learning vocabularies is really difficult as you also have to learn the writing and the sound seperately as they are independent from each other. And to make matters worse, in 1950-1960 mainland China introduced a simplified system of characters which was not adopted by Taiwan though ("stupid Communists - we stick with the old system"). Therefore these two countries have a slightly different writing system.
Nevertheless I feel that I made lots of progress already. My listening ability (which used to be abysmal) improved a lot and I can already communicate the basic stuff.
Lets see how far I'll get!


Last week, I did a bike tour with Anker to see some more of Taipei, which was quite nice. Its always very adventurous to bike around inside the local traffic :-)

my awesome new bike! With the German flags colors!
As you might see from the picture, the seat is actually ridiculously high^^

our breakfast that day from a buffet

mjami!

cool clouds

After biking around for a while, we thought that it would be a good idea to get a nice massage as they tend to be much cheaper here than back in Germany. After finding a place we ordered an hour for 10€ and received a rather painful massage by two old taiwanese ladies. After nearly one hour passing and my masseuse still working on my legs, we realized that there must have been some misunderstanding and ended up with two hours of massage there (for 20€)... whatever - could have been worse I guess ;-)

As always, here are various impressions of life in Taiwan:

Cheerleaders at my new university

Anker made us buy these completely overprized caps to improve our cuteness level
I guess he watched to much of moneyboy :D
(I still don't really know why we bought them...)

babam! What a tree!

huge vegetarian buffet with Anker - I go here very often

And I also went hiking with Sascha and Tientien to the nearby Maokong mountain:

cable car!

Xiaschiasha and Tientien

Bananas!

Taipei 101 in the clouds!

hotpot! mjami!

view from Saschas dorm...

Now some bad things:

Whats really, really annoying is that there's a guy playing the flute at my dorms all the time! A few days ago I heard him in the morning and then again in the evening starting at 10pm and playing till fucking 1am in the night!!! I wanted to sleep but instead I had to listen to his skewed tones of Hobbit/Auenland music -.-
At the next morning, when he played again (of course) I finally managed to identify his room/window where I could literally see him standing at his window holding out his stupid flute! Seriously?!
Bah!

An other morning was also ruined by exterior circumstances: At the local 7/11 convenience store (love these - they are open 24/7 and you can do/buy everthing there: groceries, fresh food, banking, postal services, printing etc.) whenever you buy stuff, you get angry birds stickers. If you have 40 of these stickers, you can exchange them for awesome, differently colored angry birds cups like this:

That morning I had already 39 stickers and sure about getting the last missing sticker there, I was excited to receive my second cup. However, what I got that morning after paying for my stuff was not an angry birds sticker, but instead a stupid manga-something sticker. Angry birds sticker season was over and they were not willing to make an exception for me! No angry birds cup for me!
Bah!

And even two more bad things happened:

Firstly, as there is a national holiday, with Anker, Tientien and Sascha we had planned to travel around this extended weekend to see the eastcoast of Taiwan. However, there is a Taifun coming, which might get pretty bad! Therefore we decided just to stay here in Taipei where we will also have to celebrate Ankers and Tientiens birthdas on Saturday and Sunday. There was even a weather warning in my dorms elevator about this taifun - I'm curious how bad it will turn out...

And secondly, I got sick again. This time it's a tonsillitis :-/

On that bombshell, it's time to end!

First week of Taipei: courses, partying and Lihong proving cultural sensitivity

More than one week has already passed since my arrival here in Taiwan and so much has happened since.
I met lots of people - including lots of German guys actually. It seems the Germans are invading something here. But mostly I hang out with my Berliner friends Tanja, Sascha and Anker (Karls new Chinese name - I like to switch between calling him Anker and Kuang), as it is always lots of fun to hang out with them. I didn't get to know too many Taiwanese people yet - but I'm working on it.

Now to some first experiences at my new university:
My universities campus is really pretty - comparable to UC San Diegos - very spacious and lots of palm trees :-) love that!
On the weekend there were many events for the new incoming students including a campus tour, orientation, concert and student club fair. Especially the student club was very interesting: There must be literally hundreds of clubs with the most diverse topics imaginable - fairytale club, cocktail club, military club, meditation club, rockclimbing club, Christian bible club etc. etc. Wanna join them all :D
I also had my first classes this week. In one class on Tuesday we were told that the course would take place on Saturdays instead - awesome! I'll drop that!
I'll probably take courses in Microeconomics, Applied Macroeconomics, Introduction to Eastern Philosophy, Exploring Taiwan: natural environment and resources (we go to te zoo! :D) and of course an intense Chinese class. Hope it's not going to be too much work...

student club fair on the campus

hip hop club performance

On Sunday I have been to a local club with the lovely name babe18 together with some other exchange students. It was quite cool - overall not that different to European clubbing though. However it seems that you often get free drinks after paying a relatively high cover charge here.

partying in Taipei with Tanja and Sascha

I also got a chance to prove my extensive cultural sensitivity: After talking with a Taiwanese girl about stinky tofu ("of course all Taiwanese like stinky tofu - it's so delicious") we went to a nearby convenience store to get something to drink. It was a branch of family mart. At family mart, whenever someone enters or leaves the door, this melody comes up (Listen!). I think it is really really annoying and whenever I hear this melody, I can't get it out of my head for the rest of the day -.-  So I told her that if I had to work as a cashier in one of these, I would go mad after a while and run amok. Aaand that the reason for the Taiwanese people enjoying stinky tofu must be that they got brain damaged from the family mart melody!
After that she seemed a bit distanced and said something about arrogant Germans... whoopsy^^
But if you would smell stinky tofu and get to listen this stupid family mart music all the time - I bet you'd feel the same!

Topic change: It's sooo hot here! I was really looking forward to going here to escape the German winter but these days it's even to much for me. I'm always sweating and not I single time here did I get the usually common Lino-idea "yeah lets go out to enjoy the sunshine!".

you see those wet parts on my shirt? Comes from the strenuous effort of sitting in my room

What doesnt improve matters, is that we have some kind of prepaid electricity card for our dorm room that tells you exactly how much electricity/money you've consumed. So I always feel like I have to save energy! "Okay, I'll turn on the air conditioner - but only for 5 minutes!"
Therefore even though I have a high tech air conditioner, I end up sitting in my room and sweating all the time -.-
Feeling a bit ashamed, I have to admit that I am looking forward to the Taiwanese winter (~15 degree).

Some last impressions of live in Taipei:

Kuang said, this fountain would remind him of something impure...

Vegetarian food from a vast Buddhist restaurants buffett! Sooo good! (this meal is about 1€)
Tofu is so much better here

Can you feel the joy? :D
Here, Anker ate some "Chinese medicine" I really recommend you to have a look at his food blog, where he describes his experience in some detail!
In general you should follow his blog if you are interested in Taiwanese food!

Taipei, arrival and first impressions

Here is my first post about Taiwan!

I had a funny situation on my flight to Taipei: Right after entering the plane, when I wanted to take out my Kindle ebook reader out of the pocket in front of me, I found a Tablet computer there. Obviously someone forgot it there, so I called the stewardess to hand it to her, so that she could give it to someone at the airport before we left for Taipei. However the stewardess reacted rather confused to my inquiry. It turned out that there was also a tablet at the seat next to me .. and at the seat next to that... good job, Lino!^^

Before describing my first impressions, I feel that I should start with some history that might make it easier to understand Taiwanese culture.
I feel a bit embarrassed about it, but I have to admit that the first time I actively remember hearing of Taiwan was at UCSD when I met Iris and she said that she's from Taiwan. A bit later that day I googled "Taiwan" to overcome my worst ignorance and found it to be a small island at Chinas coast that basically has a Chinese cultural background but became politically independent from Mainland China after a civil war around 1949. In short: During the civil war, the Communists with Mao won and obtained mainland China and the Nationalists, called Kuomintang, lost and from all over China had to retreat to the island of Taiwan.
As a result of this, Taiwan has cultural influences from many Chinese regions all over China and is very culturally diverse. Secondly because it used to be a Japanese colony before, there has been some Japanese cultural influences as well. Therefore Taiwan is culturally extremely diverse.
By now Taiwan is a proper and economically developed democracy. However relations with China are still somewhat unclear and even though the situation is relatively relaxed nowadays it is still quite complicated in tems of diplomatic issues. Whats I found particularly interesting is that Taiwan officially wanted to reconquer mainland China until 1992!

very ambitious if you look at the proportions... :D

All in all the history is quite interesting, so if you want to learn more, read this!

Now to my first impressions:
I think I can say that my arrival could not have been any better: Iris (Taiwanese friend from UCSD) picked me up at the airport and when we arrived at the universities dorms, in the lobby my friends Tanja (Tientien) and Sascha (Jiaxiasha or something) that I got to know in my Chinese class in Berlin were waiting for me. With lots of help from Iris I quickly finished the paperwork and we got to my room which was quite nice - better and bigger than I had expected.
Shortly after, together we went to a nearby Japanese restaurant where we enjoyed delicous ramen and later some frozen yoghurt with lots of tasty toppings as desert.

Iris

first dinner in Taiwan with Tanja, Sascha and Iris

In the next days I had to organize lots of stuff and buy things for my room, which is quite neat by now. Things here tend to be quite cheap - I got an office chair for 35€ and a new bike for 60€.
Here you see the different stages ;-)

Stage 1: Chaos

Stage 2: Organisation

Stage 3: Finetuning

and here the other side

What I also like, is that my room is in the 13th floor, nearly on top of the building with a nice view :-)
One afternoon, Tanja and me checked out the accessible roof of our dorms building ... and got locked out! WTF?
Finally we had to call for help down from the roof until someone from the reception came up and helped us to get out. It was not our fault though - the door had a technical problem :-/

view from the rooftop - in the back you can see the Taipei 101 tower

During the last days, together with Sascha and Tanja, we also explored some more sights of Taipei and ate lots of good foooood! And yesterday night my friend Karl from Berlin also arrived here. His room is only two doors to the right - very convenient!
Here some impressions of Taipei:

in a temple

you can see the Taipei 101 from everywhere - its massively huge!

huge nightmarket - pretty neat!

this was a massage where we were beaten with sticks - and we had to pay for that!

From the first moment here, I felt that choosing the National Taiwan University has been the right decision. The people seem very friendly and open, the food is very diverse, delicious and cheap, my new university seems to be excellent and the whole city feels very vibrant, stimulating and likeable! I can't wait to explore more of Taipei and all the other parts of Taiwan in the next months.
Maybe I would even say that from all the Asian cities I've seen during the last months, Taipei is my favourite!

Xiamen, Kinmen - last stops before Taipei

From Huangshan I took a flight to Xiamen, a city at the southern coast of China, close to Taiwan.
This would be my last stop in China.
Furtunately I had been able to find a host via Couchsurfing there, who also seemed to be quite interesting.
After arriving at the airport, I was faced with the decision to take the easy and more expensive way (taxi) or the cheap, adventurous way (bus) - of course I went for the adventure!
...not such a good idea.
It seems the Chinese bus system requires you to know which bus you are supposed to take before arriving at a bus station. There were probably 100 different bus lines, dozens stopping at every stop and there were just no maps, just a list of the buses that are supposed to stop there, which ususally seemed to be incomplete though; and of course everything was only in Chinese -.-
So instead of the expected 30 minutes, it took me over 2 hours to get from the airport to my host. That I had taken the right bus in the wrong direction at first didn't improve matters. But finally I made it at least.
My host Bill was really hospitable and gave me lots of good advice for sights in Xiamen. He was actually from California and was teaching English to Chinese children in Xiamen for 3 years now.
Shortly after, I went for the nearby beach and I have to say it was sooo nice to be at a beach again. I realized that it had actually been about one and a half years since the last time I had been to one back in San Diego. Way too much time!
One funny occasion was when a strangers came to me who seemed to be just interested in meeting a foreigner. He didn't speak any English though so that we communicated by him writing Chinese characters in the sand and then me copying them in my phone for translation and then trying to use my limited Chinese skills to answer. When he left, all the sand around me was full with characters.
For the next day I rented a bike and explored the city a bit more and of course went to the beach again. I also got lots of good and cheap food - mjami! I had also gotten better and better in reading the Chinese menus - usually I used an app of my smartphone that could translate photographs of characters, so that I had to study and translate the menu for a while before I was ready to order - looked probably very weird: Me with my phone taking lots of pictures of menus on a wall and then looking very concentrated at my phone^^

Here some impressions of Xinmen:

my host Bill

Beach!!!

a tunnel to the university with lots of arts

street market

bah seafood! This market smelled actually sooo bad, after walking in about 10 meters, I had to walk back because of the smell! :-/

typical Chinese apartments

After two days in Xinmen, I took a ferry to the nearby Taiwanese island of Kinmen. After arriving and while asking for help for the bus, I met Calvin from Hong Kong. He was also visiting Kinmen for sightseeing and so we decided to get around together. He was really nice and together we rented out bikes to explore the island. I might visit him in Hong Kong in a few month :-)

very rural

As Kinmen was on the Taiwanese forefront to China, there are lots of military facilities and barracks around everwhere

Calvin from Hong Kong

In the early evening I took a flight to Taipei, where I'm now sitting in my dorms room.
So that was it - one month of travelling through Asia is laying behind me. It was quite an amazing time! Overall probably as good as my US exchange - new and new experiences all the time; life beeing so intense.
Not everything was pleasent, but I personally think that life is less about pleasent moments than about personal growing through collecting lots and lots of experiences.

Now some lessons regarding travelling that I've learned:
Firstly, I found that transportation expenses were the largest part of my total expenses and that getting around also takes lots of time and stress. Therefore next time I would probably move around less and stay longer at single places.
Secondly, I would definitely devalue flights as a means of transportation. Even though at first it seems that a one hour flight is so much faster than a 6 hour train ride, if you take into account the additional time (and money) it usually takes to get to an outer city airport (and to get away at the destination); and the additional time you need to be at the airport early often the usually much cheaper train isn't so slow anymore.
Thirdly I feel that you can't put too much effort in the organization regarding transport and getting around. Usually it's possible to save lots of time and money if you find the best way to get around. Also you shouldn't underestimate the importance of your hotels location. A location close to city center compared to a location at the cityring with a 10min walk to the next subway will save you hours of time!
And last, don't forget to take breaks and sometimes maybe even a whole day off. There is no point in processing sights like its work to be done. Sometimes you just need to reload some energy and for this you should also schedule some time at each destination. I found that 2 days of sightseeing and 1 day of resting is a good ratio.

All in all I was lucky that everything worked out quite smoothly -I've to admit that I had been quite paranoid at times that stuff might go well. For example that my suitcase that I sent to Taiwan would get lost, that I would miss airport connections etc. But except my upset stomach in Japan, everything worked out very well.

Some last info about my costs in China:
In total I paid about 770€ during 13 days. This included 2 flights for 250€ together and probably about 100€ more for other travel expenses. Accomodations was in total about 170€. So the rest, about 250€, for food, entrance fees etc.
In total 770€ might sound like a lot, but if you take away the flights, I actually think I got good value for the money - the hotels I stayed in were usually very good, I had massages, took taxis for hour-long trips, ate in restaurants all the time etc.
For my whole trip I had paid about 1700€ (770€ Japan, 200€ Seoul, 740€ China). Lots of money but definitely worth it!

Now I'd like to come to the end of this post with describing some of the best experiences I've had.
One thing that was really, really great was experiencing the incredible hospitality of many people - often friends, but sometimes even strangers.
Also meeting up with numerous old San Diego friends (I think 13 in total) was really great. When I left San Diego last year, I hadn't imagined I would see so many of them so soon!
Because of all this, even though I have been travelling alone, I have rarely really been alone. Meeting Bridget and Ellis on Huangshan and turning from strangers to friends so quickly was also a very special experience.
So far the social part.
Regarding sights and culture I feel, I can't really pick one favorite. It was experiencing this massive width of sights, cultures and landscapes that I enjoyed most. And every single city and sight had something special about it. What I realized though is that I enjoy sights in nature and hiking more than cultural sights or exploring a foreign city.
I am really happy I wrote this blog that preserves many of my memories, so that I can never forget them!
Some experiences I remember most vividly are these:
- after arriving in Tokyo the feeling of finally really being in Asia
- driving the Shinkansen train
- seeing temples and their beautiful gardens in Osaka and afterwards going to an Onsen
- the feeling of Seoul
- experiencing China: the traffic, construction everywhere, huge cities
- eating loads of incredibly cheap delicious Chinese food
- hiking on top of Huangshan

However after all I also feel that one month of travelling has been enough time. I might have preferred to stay one more day in Tokyo and Seoul but by now I am also happy to leave the nomadic life behind and have my private and permanent room again.
Now its time for my new life in Taiwan!