Amazing Kota Kinabalu

When I got out of the plane, Nixon style, and stepped on Borneo, I felt a flash of heat. I thought it was the engines of the plane. No, this was just typical heat of Borneo, right here, just a few kilometres short of the equator.

Dave and I were the only white people in the customs line. Most people ignored us, and the few that didn’t, only glanced up briefly. Every third woman wore a headdress, and some of them wore long-sleeved dresses in beautiful fabrics all the way down to their ankles. Customs were easy. The lady stamped my passport and off we went. We weren’t even subjected to putting out luggage through security checks. One of the officers waved us on.

The airport was air conditioned, so I was a bit shielded. I didn’t quite comprehend the heat I was going to have to put up with for the next week. We booked a taxi for 20 Malaysian Ringgits, which is so far my favourite currency name (this is about $6 Canadian). Our cab driver hung a rosary off of his rear view mirror, but still proudly pointed out the giant mosque that we passed on our way to the hostel. “First mosque in Borneo,” he said. The yellow and gold building looked like–well, to a Canadian girl like me who has done little to no travelling in Muslim countries–it was from Aladdin. It was beautiful. We still haven’t visited it. That is next on the agenda.

But as we were passing through these tiny streets of Kota Kinabalu, there was something very mesmerizing about the place. I was falling in love already and I knew nothing of the people, tasted its food, or seen its beauty. Not at that point, anyway.

The lady who checked us in at our hostel was very sweet and polite with pretty good English, and bears a resemblance to Maria from Coronation Street, if she was Malaysian.

Try and imagine it.

The view from the room in our hostel gives you a pretty good idea of what most of the streets in Kota Kinabalu look like:

The street isn’t without its noise. Of course there are cars, but every once in a while an airplane flies overhead, making a huge ruckus. I would love to know what birds frequent the trees next to our window, as usually once a day they gather in enormous crowds and chirp like mad. Also, there is a man who uses a leaf blower very early in the morning. I could do without that.

As it turns out, if you’d like to visit Kota Kinabalu, you don’t need to know much Malay, if any at all. We learned the words for “thank you” and “you’re welcome.” We have only been to one restaurant that didn’t have someone who could speak English, and that happened to be the first one we visited.

And speaking of restaurants, the food is amazing. Absolutely marvelous, as Dave’s father would say. I don’t think that I’ve had anything I’ve truly disliked – except a strange episode with some fruit at a night market. There were several stalls of old ladies selling green fruit. The fruits were peeled and sliced by the ladies right there, and then packaged in clear plastic baggies. Then, once you indicated that you’d like one, she’d put in salt and soy sauce (we think??) and add some skewers for easy eating. So many stalls and so many people eating them, I assumed it must be good. Boy was I wrong.

It tasted awful. All the wrong flavours came together in one baggie. I waited until we were well out of sight and found a trashcan. Dave have a bit more luck with his baby squid on a stick:

It seems the best way to eat anything is on a stick and out of a plastic bag.

Besides, I found something tasty in roasted corn-on-the-cob-on-a-stick. The absolute best way to have corn. We’re going to venture to the night market again, but with a bigger appetite next time.

As far as restaurant cleanliness goes, you sort of have to remember where you are and let go of previous ideas of “clean.” Most places we went to were as clean as anyone’s kitchen at home would be. We haven’t gotten sick from any restaurant except the ONE Westerner restaurant we went to: a little Italian joint where the salmon wasn’t so fresh, we don’t believe.

But suffice it to say, especially if you’re at an outdoor place, expect that, in addition to regular customers, you will see rats, cockroaches, and cats visiting as well. You’d think the cats would get the rats, but the rats are almost as big as the cats. Sorry to gross you out. As I mentioned to Dave though, as long as they aren’t feeding me the rats, I don’t care.

I have hardly met nicer people though. It’s true when they talk about Malaysian hospitality: it’s probably some of the best in the world. Even when they aren’t treated that well (most of the foreigners here make me very, very ashamed), they still continue to provide excellent service and smiles.

The wonderful thing is the clash of cultures. Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, and many others all live here in the same place. Many are Muslim, some are Christian, some are Taoist or Buddhist, and some still practice folklore religions. Unlike Taiwan, no one looks at Dave and I as though there’s something wrong with us. Sometimes they are surprised to see us, especially if it’s a local hangout that’s not frequented by foreigners, but never are they rude.

I suppose the only exception to that rule was the music store we went into. Working there were four or five teenagers that didn’t seem to know much about music, nor about how to treat any customers – foreign or not. We ended up buying a cheap guitar there, however. Best $50 ever spent.

It's difficult to do much else in the heat.

For the enjoyment we’ve gotten out of the guitar, it was well worth dealing with the teenagers. It’s been far too long since we’ve gotten to play music.

Also–as a very random sidenote–our bathroom is outside. There is something very charming about that.

The stall doors next to the sink and balcony. I would have taken a picture of the view off the balcony, but it's just another building.

A very funny story on that note: there is a nice old Muslim lady who cleans our floor every morning. I woke up and went to the bathroom. There are two bathroom stalls there. That morning, both doors were closed. I asked her, “Are there people in there?” She smiled and nodded, saying “Yes.” I nodded back and smiled, and sat down on the bench, waiting for my turn. She then puts down her mop and bucket and opens one of the stall doors, closes it behind her, and uses it for herself.

…I see what you did there.

Overall, everything is so wonderful.

On our second day here, I had a conversation with a Norwegian who was also staying at the hostel. He, on the other hand, found Borneo to not be worth the money and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

I think he and I must be staying at different places. It’s magical here. Dave and I are planning to come back someday for sure.

In the meantime, we’re going to go look at moneys tomorrow, namely the Proboscis monkey, which is indigenous to Borneo, and there’s only 1,000 of them left.

Yes, these guys. Image from wikipedia.org

In short, while the heat is a bit much for this Irish/English/Scottish girl (my face is bright red constantly), I couldn’t recommend Borneo higher. If decent wage English teaching jobs were available around here, we’d probably never leave.

Taiwanese Goal #2 Completed: Storyland – And Other Adventures

If you recall (that is, if you’ve been keeping up), I wrote back in this entry that I would like to visit Storyland, a recreation of Taipei from about fifty years ago. It seemed like an excellent opportunity to see what Taipei was like before the Western influence and the rise of technology.

What a disappointment. As it turns out, it is a bit of a tourist trap. And when I say a bit, I mean a lot. It cost Dave and I $400 NTD ($13.43 CAD) to take a gander through this quasi-theme park-like tour underneath the K-Mall. I have to say, it was quite a waste. We spent probably 15 minutes there at best, and 5 of those minutes were spent trying to get out. There were only about 5 or 6 other people in the whole thing with us, which should speak volumes about its popularity.

I’ll try and give credit where credit is due: there were a couple cool, old cars and scooters parked everywhere, which were nice to look at. Also, a few rooms had been set up to look like old shops with antique children shoes and other trinkets; one had been set up to look like a dentist’s shop. I took a photo of it and posted it on facebook with a note to my mom, telling her that dental care in Taiwan was very cheap and state-of-the-art:

Open wide...

So while Storyland was a bust, we’ve done plenty of other fun things while we’ve been here.

Most notably, we visited the Lungshan Temple, which dates back to 1738. It was absolutely stunning. We arrived at just the right time, when hundreds of people gathered to provide offerings to their ancestors. Everyone had a different number of incense in their hands – some three, some just one, some five – which I wonder if it holds any significance. They would bow with it, holding to their foreheads briefly, and continue in prayer while monks chanted hypnotically from inside the temple. Dave and I were too sheepish to take too many photos since everyone seemed in a very thoughtful mood. We watched for a long time.

You can even see how much incense was being burned.

There are more photos to be seen, which I’ve posted on facebook. Most of you are my facebook friends, but if not, you can see what few I have here. We’ve just been too busy looking at things to bother taking photos. But hopefully we’ll remedy that soon!

Until next time!

Taipei: First Impressions

Finally! I’ve been here a grand total of 8 hours and finally feel a little bit less dizzy, so I’m able to write something up about the short adventure thus far and I have a few first impressions. Sadly, there are no photos just yet. I’m pretty bad about that. I tend to take in too much with my eyes and use nothing to document it for others.

But a couple things:

1) The Taiwanese are really okay with small spaces. Truly. Our hostel room, while very clean and cozy, is ity bity. It’s about 12×8 at the most, if I had to eyeball it. But it has a bunk bed with leopard spot sheets and covers, which remind me of my sister, Bethany. Not only that, but everything is tight when you walk around the streets. The shops are reminiscent of my closets: everything packed in very tightly, with just enough room to grab what you need.

2) They love scooters. I was already told that there would be a lot of scooters, but when I heard/read that, it wasn’t emphasized enough. There may as well be a scooter show on every street. They crowd the streets and are much, much more plentiful than cars, buses, trucks, and bicycles. But they don’t stop at the roads. Many a time I’ve been passed on the sidewalk by someone riding their scooter. No one bats an eyelash at this onslaught of scooters, which makes Dave and I stand out even more than we already do when we gawk at them. Did I mention I’ve only seen one other non-Asian person since we’ve been here?

3) They can sleep anywhere. On our flight over, Dave and I struggled to fall asleep in our seats. At best, we had sporadic sleep, certainly never reaching the REM cycle. But all the other Asian passengers seemed to fall asleep instantaneously, some of them sleeping while sitting up very straight. While exploring our neighbourhood, I spotted a man on his parked scooter with his feet on the handlebars and leaned back, sleeping.

4) They are very friendly. While they are thus far not super eager to talk to us as foreigners, I suspect it might be because of their lack of English. Those who can speak English smile and say hello, and are very appreciative of any Mandarin we can muster (mostly, it’s been “thank-you” so far).

5) Stuff can be quite cheap. We found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant for lunch called Milky, which served breakfast type dishes and tea. We paid for two iced green teas and two dishes (mine was a strange but cool meal: spaghetti in some sort of sauce with pepper and corn wrapped in scrambled egg, served with a couple potatoes), and the total came to about $3.25 CAD. Afterward, we stopped at the corner store and got 1 giant bottle of water, 2 big bottles of Chinese beer, one small container of milk tea (which tastes like Earl Grey tea with lots of sugar and milk), and a big bottle of fruit juice, all which came to around $4.00 CAD. Also, our transportation total from the airport (bus to bullet train to taxi) came to $16.50 CAD for the two of us. It’s nice to be in a city that is budget-traveller-friendly.

As for myself, I’m doing quite well and so is Dave. Both of us are jetlagged, dehydrated, and a bit assaulted by the air pollution, which, as one can imagine, is much stronger here than in Halifax, the closest city to us in Canada. But it’s nothing a good night’s sleep can’t cure.

Until next time! (And I will have photos.)

Taiwanese Goal #4: As Many Markets As Possible

This one sort of goes without saying. It would be such a shame to explore any region of the world that had as many markets as Taiwan does and not visit them. Because it is not a place like 7-11 (and Taiwan is particularly notorious for its 7-11 culture) or any other enormous big box store, I would love to visit these markets almost exclusively for my food. Of course this will all depend on their prices, among other factors, but I feel this could be accomplished.

image from icouldiwilltravel.blogspot.com

You can watch a 10 minute clip of someone walking through Yongan Market on YouTube right here. It’s not quite the full experience and maybe watching the whole ten minutes might be a bit redundant after a while, but it gives a wonderful perspective on what these booths and streets look like. Pay special attention to the sheer quantity of motorbikes parked at the beginning of the clip. From what I’ve read, Taipei has more motorbikes than it does people, much like L.A. has more cars than it does people.

Taiwan has a particularly excellent night market scene from what I read on several websites. Dave tells me this is quite different than Seoul in Korea, and he’s very excited for this change – as am I.

In reference to the entry I posted about thousand year-old eggs, many bizarre foods can be found in these night markets. So much so that this scene was featured on Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman (you can take a look here). I’m looking forward especially to the stinky tofu. Apparently it’s wonderful if you can get over the smell. Andrew Zimmerman doesn’t think so on the show, though.

image from asianfoodgrocer.com

Dave keeps reminding me on how I will basically have to turn any perception I have of normalcy upside down for this trip. I’m sure he’s right. That’s why I’d just like to throw caution to the wind and try everything. Duck tongues, stinky tofu, 30 day fermented pork… bring it.

Taiwanese Goal #3: Have a decent conversation

This goal isn’t particularly exciting. It doesn’t involve anything unusual or outstanding, and it’s something everyone takes for granted… conversation.

The official language of Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese and it is my goal to have a normal conversation with a native speaker of this language while in Taiwan.

image from nouvellesimages.com

I’m not looking for anything amazing. I’m not trying to discuss politics or Russian literature, I just would like to have a conversation of a few lines in which the person I’m speaking to doesn’t have a hard time understanding me. For example, I would be quite thrilled if the conversation went like this:

Amelia: “Oh hello, how are you?”

Unsuspecting Taiwanese Taxi Driver: “Fine, and yourself?”

Amelia: “Very well, thank you. Can you tell me how much it costs to get to [neighbourhood]?”

UTTD: “Oh about $3600 NTD.”

Amelia: “That’s absurd!”

UTTD: “Throw in a bubble tea and I’ll lower it to $3000.”

Amelia: “Fine.”

Something like that.

I have been learning some rudimentary Mandarin, and so far I can say “Hello,” “how are you,” “fine,” thank you,” and “thank you very much.” There are more words I know but I can never remember them when I need them. I’ve also been practicing the sounds of the Pinyin alphabet, which is Mandarin translated from the written characters into the Latin alphabet. But of course, like in any language, the letters don’t always make the same sounds as they do in English.

But it seems I have bigger fish to fry, linguistically speaking. I found out there are five tones in Mandarin, four of which I learned the basic concepts of. The tones in the words have the potential to change its meaning entirely. We have much more freedom speaking in English in terms of our tones. I feel this will be the hardest part in learning the language.

Taiwanese Goal #2: Storyland

What I didn’t say at the beginning of my last post was that I’m planning on coming up with a list of twenty goals for my experience in Taiwan. I figure this is quite doable since we’ll be there for a year. But, especially since I’d like to get some of this done in the first couple weeks of us being there, I’m trying to pick especially cheap endeavours. Next item on the list: Storyland!

No, not the Storyland you would find in New Hampshire, US:

photo from headtripusa.com ... how appropriate.

The Storyland you’d find in New Hampshire is themed around kid’s fairy tale stories, and features Humpty Dumpty and everyone else in between. It also features a large fake cow with rubber udders from which you can squirt water. No joke:

I don't want to know how many kids have secretly put their mouths on it.

But I digress.

The Storyland in Taipei is much, much different than Storyland, USA. The Taipei version is a recreation of Taipei streets in the mid 60s-70s. Using all the aesthetics like ice shops, cart vendors pushed into crammed, dimly lit streets with paper lantern lights, it’s supposed to be a really accurate depiction of life back then before Taipei became very mordern.

Taipei then, according to Storyland:

image from filigallery.com

A street from Taipei, present day:

image from wikipedia.org

As a foreigner, I think it would be very interesting and maybe even valuable to see Taiwan as it was before. I’m extremely curious about the culture, even more so than I was about Japan when we were planning to go there. I think perhaps because Taiwan seems to be quite prideful – but for much different reasons than other countries. It is a very new culture, the Chinese intermingling with the Aboriginal Taiwanese to create something brand new, only in the last century. And because they are so brand new, they stress so much of their old culture as well as finding ways to create new culture, in order to preserve it in the future.

This is all my own observation from afar, of course. I don’t know this for sure. This is just what I read and hear. From what Dave tells me, most Asian countries are all about preserving their old culture. But not all seem to be that concerned with creating new culture. More about that in a future entry about artist villages. But I am just aching to see this other side of the world. I am romanticizing everything a bit, admittedly. But why the hell not?

Taiwanese Goal #1: Thousand Year Old Egg

Dave and I, for the first few weeks in Taiwan, will have the fortune of being on vacation, in a way. The poor guy hasn’t had a proper vacation in almost two years. There are a lot of places I want to go (Taipei apparently is chock-full of museums) and a lot of culture I want to experience (I have to catch up on my Mandarin before I go), but there is a ton of food I’d like to try.

First and foremost, I would like to try that disgusting thing that has endlessly fascinated me through photos and fables online: The Thousand Year Old Egg.

Photo Credit: oneinchpunch.com

This is preserved duck egg, and no, it’s not actually 1,000 years old (obviously). It’s actually 100 days old. Its colour comes from the preservation method, and it looks like a really twisted version of the eggs from Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham.

Who knows where these things come from

Apparently, you can get thousand year old egg by itself as an appetizer or served on top of other dishes as a topping. Dave is scared of these things. This coming from a guy who ate dog in Korea, otherwise known as bo shin tang, and liked it.

But, I regretted not trying black pudding when I was in Ireland, and I feel I would regret not at least trying some cultural culinary oddities when I’m in Taiwan. I’m not saying I’ll like it. But damn it, I’m going to try it.

Blue Sky with a White Sun: Taiwan’s National Emblem

For those of you who don’t own a television (like myself), you might be interested to know that this week is Shark Week on Discovery Channel. Apparently this tradition is in its 23rd year!

Shark Week got me thinking about animals. Canada’s national emblem is embodied in an animal – the beaver. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t know this.

image from wildlifeandpeta.com

Most countries have an animal as their national emblem, but sometimes not. Taiwan is one such exception.

image from wikipedia.org

It appears more like a flag than it does an emblem or a symbol, but it is the emblem nonetheless. It is referred to, quite simply, as “Blue Sky with a White Sun.” Straight and to-the-point.

But like many emblems which seem simply designed, there are many hidden meanings behind it. There are twelve points on the sun, for example, to represent the twelve months and the twelve Chinese hours. (The Chinese had their own systems of measurement, much like the Western world has Imperial or Metric units. Most of the Chinese measurements were changed in the 20th century to fit the Metric system.)

Officially, it has its origins as the KMT party flag, and it’s not so common to see it anymore by itself. Now as the Taiwanese flag, you see the same picture but it’s featured in the corner (much like the blue and white stars on the American flag) with a solid red colour taking up the rest of the flag.

As cool as this all is, I was curious as to what are the other national “stuff” of Taiwan. Here are some of the things I found:

National Flower – Plum Blossom

image from placestovisitinchina.com

National Bird: Blue Magpie

image from pixdaus.com

One source indicated that the national animal is a goat but I didn’t trust it enough. But it would be awesome if it was. Especially if it was a tree climbing goat like the ones in Morocco.

image from laughingsquid.com - if only it were photoshopped. It's not.

As a final closing note, I’m going to start putting my sources in each entry. While I haven’t claimed and never will claim to be an official source on anything, I figure it’s fair that I should cite any information I put in here. I do use Wikipedia, but I try to only use articles that aren’t in question.

Until next time!

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_hour#Time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Sky_with_a_White_Sun

http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/aboutroc/national_flower.htm

http://en.wildatheart.org.tw/archives/national_birds_stolen_from_nest.html

Coffee and Tea: How the Taiwanese Ingest Their Caffeine

image from thatsweird.net

Currently, I work as a barista in Nova Scotia, so I thought it quite appropriate to make my next entry about coffee and tea. I can’t think of one country where neither are consumed, but the coolest thing about different cultures is that everyone drinks them very differently. Some are very ritualized (like Japanese green tea rituals) and some seem to be consumed with a strange combination of utility and art (see your local snobby Starbucks).

So I figured that Taiwan must have their own thing. As I found out, Taipei has no shortage of coffee and tea houses. I found what looks to be at least one hundred listed here – and that’s just in Taipei!

In this entry then, I’ll list a few phenomenons of tea and coffee that seem unique to Taiwan.

1) Bubble Tea

I may as well get the most talked about thing overwith. Bubble tea is outrageously popular in Taiwan. As it should be – it originated there.

Bubble tea bears a striking resemblance to any blended ice drink at Starbucks or Tim Horton’s, but if you look at the bottom you’ll see tiny “bubbles.” These are actually little pearls made of tapioca. This is topped with tea and cream, sealed with a plastic top and sipped through a fat straw.

You can get many different flavours of bubble tea, usually fruit flavours, and the tea is often green or black tea. As often is the case of popular commodities, no one can really agree on the tea house which first began making the presumably delicious drink.

According to Wikipedia, however, the drink came to Canada before it became popular in the United States.

2) “Old Man’s Tea”

Taiwan, like China and Japan, has a particular tea ritual which translates from lao ren cha to “old man’s tea.” I like that. Despite its misleading title, “old man’s tea” is practiced by the newer generation as well as the old. This is also referred to as Gongfu Tea ritual, which the Chinese practice as well.

This involves oolong tea, which I was pleased to hear, as I’ve been really into Oolong tea as of late, and apparently Taiwan in particular is known for their Oolong tea. Oolong tea – and I can tell you this from some previous research I did on tea – is a semi-fermented tea, more potent than white tea but less potent than green. Unlike white, green, and black teas, the recommended steeping time for oolong teas is 6-7 minutes (as opposed to 1-3 minutes).  At least this is the case in Western practice, and that’s just for tea snobs like myself.

image from squidoo.com

But anyway. I digress.

There is a pretty exceptional article here on Taiwanese tea culture, especially as compared to Chinese culture. It seems that the major differences are that Taiwanese people still insist on using a tea set (like the one pictured above) whereas the Chinese offer tall cups with tea leaves in the bottom. If you’re really curious about the whole ritual, I highly recommend the link above.

3) Coffee, anyone?

I found several interesting articles on Taiwanese coffee:

Monkey coffee: Taiwanese farmers find coffee beans that monkeys have spit out (because they could cause indigestion) and use them to make gourmet coffee. It’s like selling the seeds your cousin spit out while enjoying his watermelon for three times the price.

Salty Lattes: A Taiwanese chain coffee house is selling lattes with sea salt in them, which apparently brings out the flavours in the coffee, and they’re trying to score big in the U.S. coffee market with their unique product.

Aside from some of the weirdness, I have read that Taiwan is particulary heavy with the coffee culture, according to this article – which was interesting but not particularly informative.

To conclude, unsurprisingly, Taiwan has an exceptionally interesting coffee and tea scene, and it has given me yet another reason to bounce in my seat in excitement to go. The autumn can’t come soon enough.

Taiwanese, Not Chinese: Part 1

When I first started mentioning the country “Taiwan” to people as a travel destination possibility, some of the first comments I was offered was, “Don’t call them Chinese, they’re very proud to be Taiwanese.”

And my immediate thoughts were, “As they should be.” Having done a fair amount of research for a dramaturgy project in university involving Serbia-Kosovo relations, I could relate to the idea of a separatist nation from a larger nation. However, this was an uneducated view: I’ve never learned about Taiwanese-Chinese relations, in high school or university. No classes I took in either institution allowed me the opportunity to learn the famous five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. As a recent university graduate who hasn’t shaken the desire to learn just yet, I used my trusty Google to find out.

In doing so, I discovered that there is so much information that it can barely be condensed. Look for Part 2 in an upcoming entry.

Image from dismalworld.com

I found a particularly excellent, albeit slightly outdated link from PBS on the history of the Chinese-Taiwanese conflict. It’s short and well explained. To summarize, it began in 1949 when Communist Chinese leader Mao overtook the China mainland, and a revolutionary leader named Chiang Kai-shek escaped to Taiwan – with two million refugees in tow.

Now, this makes me wonder, what of the native people already living in Taiwan? Most articles I came across made little mention of them, and it seems to me their integration with the new surplus of Chinese immigrants is significant.

image from wikipedia.org

The Taiwanese aboriginal people are made up of several different tribes and have a history of about 8,000 years prior to Chinese influence. Much like the Aboriginal societies in Canada and other places in the world where invaders, refugees, or explorers have taken over, they suffer from inadequate education systems and high unemployment rates. The Taiwanese government is trying to change that, much like the Canadian government for its Aboriginal people, but as is the general opinion by many here, the process is going very slowly.

Before the Chinese Han invasions, there were Dutch colonists arriving in the early 1600s, and so the native Taiwanese history has largely been written by the outsider perspective. Following the Dutch came the Spanish, the Chinese, the Japanese, and then Chinese again, which brings us up to 1949 again. As usually happens in such colonization, the intention is to “civilize” these “savages,” much to the detriment of their culture.

One of the cultural aspects that seems to have suffered the most from outside influence would be their language. 10 out of 36 indigenous languages originating in Taiwan are extinct and the rest are in danger of becoming the same. It’s true that, sadly, many languages die all the time, but Taiwan is particularly significant because linguists believe it to be the original starting point of the Austronesian languages.

What the heck are those, you ask?

I’m no linguist so I would feel inadequate answering that incredibly complex question, but just to get an idea of how significant this group of languages is in the world, here is a map to display:

Obviously the key is impossible to read at this size, but the light pink that takes over much of the Indian Ocean islands and Madagascar represents the Austronesian language group. While certainly not the largest chunk of languages, it is still quite significant.

Nowadays, the Taiwanese aboriginal languages remain a secondary but still official language of Taiwan, second to Mandarin Chinese.

When Chiang Kai-shek led his Chinese refugees to Taiwan, the response from the native Taiwanese is unclear. What is clear is that the education was aimed at getting rid of Japanese influence in the culture; the Japanese had just ended their rule in Taiwan four years prior. It is confusing to me as to why the education was so proudly steeped in KMT ideas (Kuomintang, or the Chinese National Party), especially considering that I’m under the impression that Chiang Kai-shek was fighting the KMT on mainland China. More on that when I do some more research later on Chiang Kai-shek versus Mao.

The government at first was authoritarian and has slowly turned into a democracy over the years. In the legislative Yuan today, six out of one hundred thirteen seats are held by Aboriginal people. A little over one hundred thousand ethnic Taiwanese people live in Taiwan today.

image from wikipedia.org

It seems as though racism against the Aboriginal people existed then as it does now. Yet some progress has been made: the first native Taiwanese president was elected in 2000, Chen Shui-bian, who at the time called for an independent Taiwan.

Which appropriately brings me right back to the subject of Taiwanese-Chinese relations and the shaky subject of independence. I’ll be writing on more of that in my next entry.