God Bless The Chide
[Taoyuan, 9/30/24]
Are Taiwanese insane? Within three minutes of me is a toilet themed restaurant where diners sit on lidded commodes to savor dishes made to look like shit. Their aromas reassure. Sick enough is a cheeseburger with two layers of peanut butter. I just walked by that sign. I’m sure residents know many more offerings just as weird. So square, I can’t even tolerate two sips of bubble tea. Tapioca balls alone already suck major ass. Somewhere in town, there must be stinky tofu ice cream, yogurt or cheesecake.
What are you going to do? Since there are just days, if not seconds, left, you won’t ever get a chance to try the boiled egg with rosy salt, truffle flavored egg and veggie burrito, taro and pork floss burrito, chicken cheese curry rice ball or fangs burger, etc. Unlike you, I can still dash to the 7-Eleven on Xining Road to go apeshit on all those dubious delicacies. Alas, resignation, inertia, senility and sadness have settled in. My soul wilts, but so does Tomorrow’s transcendent dancing girl. Everything we look at, even eternal videos, must die. Virtual flesh also decays.
Every performer begs for parental approval. Pissed at the lame applause at the end of Eroica, conducting Beethoven didn’t nod. Since Sylvia Plath’s daddy wasn’t there to witness her blossoming genius, she got even with the most childishly spiteful poem ever. At the premier of his Ninth, Beethoven was too deaf to hear the sustained love erupting behind his back after the last note. Junge, war das gut! Death was near.
God bless the chide. Freezing time, cartoons approximate eternal youth. It’s goofy how ubiquitous they are in Taiwan. Even more than in Japan or Singapore. Societies filled with the decrepit pretend they’re stuck in preschool. Everything here, trains, cops, cars and food items, is often turned into some smiling, big eyed cartoon character. Admonitions are delivered by cartoons. We are the chillun.
Ageless, a high mileage, white haired woman in New Taipei had this cute declaration on her bare shoulder shirt:
SEXY POWER LET YOUR CRAZY HORSES LOOSE to buzz you like a bee!
Two tables away is an old Chinese listening to TikTok laugh tracks. Now, there’s a little girl singing a ditty I can’t understand. Though trying so hard to be amused, he doesn’t smile. I have visions of throwing a perfect pitch just past his ear. He’ll have his Trump moment, all right. Tomorrow’s dancing girl would be impressed.
Orientals are overschooled and overworked. Most are jammed into megacities with too many rules. Though more laid back, Southeast Asia is also poorer than China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Land scarce and Chinese dominated Singapore is unlike the rest of Southeast Asia.
In San Francisco, Los Angeles and other fabled American burgs, savagery is making a fierce comeback. Feral packs suddenly attack lone victims. Dumped citizens shit on sidewalks. Cocooned in exurbs, the forever smug deny the US is already a shithole.
In Taipei, I also see the destitute scavenging food from trash cans. So bent over, one man seemed designed for digging through garbage. You’d have a hard time, though, convincing most Vietnamese there’s an impoverished minority in Taiwan.
Phong Bụi has a YouTube video featuring a Vietnamese who’s been married to three Taiwanese. The first two were apparently so old or sick, they died before her paperwork could be finalized. Successful, good looking men don’t go overseas to find wives who don’t even speak their language. With her third, this lady made it to Taiwan, only to go mad, apparently from abuse by her in-laws. They did give her $5,000 before sending her back. In the video, she gives mostly one word answers. She is plump and giggles often, even when admitting she misses her daughter, still in Taiwan.
Just as New York or DC isn’t typical of the USA, Taipei, even with its beggars, is Taiwan’s richer and more glamorous aspect. A Vietnamese bride is more likely to find herself living in some rundown building in a grim provincial town. She may have to trudge up five flights of stairs to reach an apartment she shares not just with her poor husband, but his senile if not incontinent parents. Taking trains to Taoyuan, New Taipei and Keelung, I saw many grim highrises. Remote villages aren’t likely to be more cheerful. Men stuck there are those most desperate for foreign brides. No Taiwanese woman wants them.
Viets in Taipei are the luckier ones. At a noodle joint on the next block, I overheard two female kitchen helpers speak Vietnamese. I’ll go there for dinner. This afternoon’s lunch was also delicious. Ximen Noodle on Neijang is always packed with locals. Outside, there’s often a line standing behind rope, as if it’s some hip nightclub. On the wall are two movie posters from at least half a century ago. Everyone but me and children know who these stars are. Shared history reassures. Normal folks crave continuity.
By chance I walked by gorgeous Taipei Arena yesterday. So this is Jeremy Lin’s new home, I thought. It wasn’t that long ago he owned not just NYC, but the entire USA. Even Sarah Palin bought a Linsanity shirt. Turns out Lin is playing for the New Taipei Kings, in an arena, Xinzhuang Gymnasium, that can hold just 7,125 fans.
Younger readers may ask, “Who in hell is Sarah Palin?!” Only Tomorrow’s dancing girl will live forever.
[Keelung, 10/1/24]
[New Taipei, 10/1/24]
[Taipei, 9/30/24]
[Taipei, 9/26/24]
Cartoon characters seem to be everywhere in Taiwan. "Hello Kitty" may be a Japanese trademark, but the Taiwanese have plastered it on more stuff than even the Japanese. Noodles, boba tea, you name it. It was even painted on the last Boeing I rode on to get there, with the theme replicated throughout the cabin and even on the dining implements.
There is a bit of truth in saying that successful men need not leave the country to find a wife. But in their defense, men have it tougher than before over there. Many Asian women have been infected by Western ideas and also now have more opportunities in the more prosperous Asian societies to make a go of it alone. The men have not yet caught up with these ideas, and still seek more traditional partners. As a result, many women have since concluded that marriage is not a great deal for them any more. Many men report that women won't even go out with them unless they can first report that they have a suitably high salary and other trappings of prosperity like property ownership.
On the flip side, young women from poorer countries are often more than happy to marry some old fart from Taiwan who is drawing a nice pension from his time in the ROC military. If they can put up with him for just a few years, they will inherit his pension when he finally goes to meet his maker. This has apparently become quite common.
Your reports on the weird food choices are spot on. One thing I noticed in Taipei is that they have elevated the concept of "fusion cuisine" to a whole new level. Though some of these experiments yield something unexpectedly good, most are just as bizarre as they sound.
The old, impoverished, and repulsive still wanting to be loved and desired is one of life's more tragicomic aspects. And unless you're Mick Jagger or Rupert Murdoch you won't be getting any action in your 80s. Heck, even the not-so-old like Plath died craving more love from absent parents and lovers. I recall silent film icon Louise Brooks, who tossed husbands and suitors away like so many used tissues in her youth, calling up her sister one day in her late 50's and sobbing: "There is no one in this world who loves me!"
Many conclude they have to make themselves hard and unlovable merely to survive in this world. So they survive, unloved. Just ask Israel.