The Young Curmudgeon

Hey Everybody! I Found Another Big Box of Slides from my Vacation!

Aren't you excited!? Make yourself comfortable. I'm popping some popcorn. The doors are locked from the inside.

(Click to Enlarge) This is "Sun Moon Lake", the largest body of fresh water in Taiwan and probably its most popular tourist attraction. The natural beauty there is absolutely stunning, and the omnipresence of this slight fog gives it all an ethereal, heavenly quality, simply awe-inspiring.

(Click to Enlarge) This is (I think) Wenwu Temple at Sun Moon Lake. Impressive, no?

 
(Click to Enlarge) In the temple was this weird vending machine. I could never figure out what was in there? It looks temple play sets or monk action figures or something. Strange.

(Click to enlarge) This is a random no-parking sign in Gaoxiong/Kaoshiong/whatever. I post it here to illustrate the proposition that in Asia everything must be cute.

Go See the Movie Saving Face (UPDATED)

Last night I braved the hell of Times Square to go see Saving Face - the charming, original new romantic comedy by first-time writer/director Alice Wu - on opening night at a screening with one of the leads in attendance. I'd been wanting to see this film since I read an interview with Wu in Time Out New York. [I'm not linking it because it's behind their ridiculous pay firewall - ed.] Some of the things which Wu said about Chinese-American culture and her relationship with her mother (such as the fact that Wu said her mother always said that everything she did reflected on Chinese people everywhere) resonated with my girlfriend. At the same time, the story behind the making of the film really resonated with me, and should resonate with anyone who yearns to escape bland day jobs. Apparently, she had some boring sounding corporate job and decided to take a screenwriting course for fun. The screenplay she came up with was so good that her teacher wanted to option it. Instead, Wu was very insistent on her vision for the film so she embarked on a five year plan to turn herself into a director and Saving Face is the result.

For these reasons I planned on seeing the film anyway, so it was serendipitous when my friend Sally called and said she was going to see it with a big group that included the beautiful and winsome Lynn Chen, one of the leads. Chen said that, as with all films, the opening weekend is absolutely crucial. The film is in both New York and LA now and will be moving on to San Fransisco and San Diego (essentially anywhere that has a big Chinese population) next weekend. Good numbers for this first week are pretty much the determining factor as to whether there will be a wider release after that.

Having seen the finished product resulting from Alice Wu's Cinderella story I can say without hesitation that this isn't one of those Good Will Hunting situations where the story behind the making of the film is better than the film itself. This is legitimately a good movie - fresh, funny, richly observed, deeply felt, and with a remarkable performance by a coming-out-of-semi-retirement Joan Chen.

The plot concerns Wil, a 28-year-old Chinese-American Doctor originally from Flushing who now lives in what appears to be Brooklyn. (This is a very, very New York-centric movie so all New Yorkers should support it, but it has universal themes that anyone could relate to at the same time.) Wil is a lesbian but still goes to Flushing every weekend to go to dances where she meets generally awful Chinese guys whom her mom, played by Joan Chen, sets her up with. At one of the dances she meets Vivian, (the part played by my friend's cousin's wife, got that?) another girl originally from Flushing, and the proverbial sparks fly. The two start a torrid affair, but the closeted Wil refuses to engage in any PDAs or introduce her new girlfriend to her mother. At this point the film would seem to have the makings of no more than a fairly typical ethnic comedy or gay coming-of-age story, but what moves this film beyond those genres is everything having to do with the mother character.

It turns out that she's pregnant, and she won't even say who the father is! Grandpa kicks her out of the house and she shows up on Wil's doorstep. From that point on, it's a fascinating ride watching the two women not communicate and both live in terror of their own desires and feelings. This is all shown with a real eye for character and detail.  It's not one of those ethnic comedies with broad stereotypes, but one in which the cultural milieu is shown interacting with individual characters in a subtle way. The movie's also really, really funny. Much of the comic material is kind of broad, but the actors handle it with real deftness and sensitivity. Joan Chen is simply amazing. She indelibly creates a woman who is fierce, independent, disagreeable, crazy, and still somehow sympathetic with her performance.

This film should be of special interest to anyone who has the slightest interest in Chinese American culture, New York City, or indie-film-type romantic comedies. Go see it and make sure that more people have a chance to. What else are you gonna do? See Star Wars twice, you geek?

UPDATE: I'm so incredibly excited because who else has e-mailed me but Saving Face writer/director Alice Wu herself!! She sent me a gracious, warm note thanking me for my post and saying how much she believes in blogs being an important tool in helping films like hers to build an audience. She says maybe she feels this way because she has "geek roots". I just looked on the "production notes" portion of the official site for Saving Face and I see that she has a Bachelor's and Masters in Computer Science from Standford. Geek roots indeed!

Congratulations Naima!

For the second year in a row the best, smartest, most likable girl won. I was rooting for her from the beginning.  America's Next Top Model Cycle 4's producers did a great job misdirecting you, making you think that evil bitch Keenyah was going to win and then making you think it was Kahlen, but in the end they picked the cool girl from Detroit with the mohawk and the buttery smooth, soft speaking voice. I also liked the bit she said about being "a black girl, a Mexican girl, an Irish girl. I'm America's Next Top Model". It echoed exactly how I view race in America. I'm sad that the show is over but look forward to the next cycle. Watching it isn't a guilty pleasure. It's simply a pleasure.

Taipei 101

(Click to enlarge) This photo makes me cry. It's Kim's Grandma looking out from the observation deck at Taipei 101, currently the world's tallest building, and it probably will be for a while given the way things are going with the Freedom Tower. Sure there's not much of a skyline to look at, but still it's a really nice observation tower with a very sleek design and when we were there there happened to be a jazz orchestra playing standards for some event, which really heightened the experience. Grandma was really happy about the fact that they offered the audio tour in her native language of Taiwanese as well as in Chinese, Japanese, and English. When she was growing up Taiwan was a mostly rural, agrarian backwater under Japanese occupation. Now, here she is in the downtown of a Taipei that has literally more than ten times the population it did when she was a girl, looking down from the world's tallest building at a modern, democratic, free Taiwan. She looks quite pleased.

(Click to enlarge) Here we are in front of a photo that shows you what the building looks like from the outside. It's strange design is meant to somehow evoke bamboo shoots tied with ribbons. I don't see it either. The other white guy is Kim's Cousin's boyfriend who is German. He's moved to the Taiwan and is learning Chinese. He works at the building part-time giving tours to groups of Germans.

(Click to enlarge) Here I am with Kim's cousin in the shopping mall part of the tower inside Barista coffee, a charming little coffee shop with an eye-catching logo that reminds me of something or other, but I just can't place it. Actually, the funny thing is that while the English characters say "Barista Coffee" the Chinese name is simply "Seattle Coffee".

Damshui Fisherman's Wharf

(Click to enlarge) This lovely shot (which is as close to the promised Blade Runner-esque chaos as I've come to offering) was taken by Kim at the Damshui Fisherman's Wharf area, a sort of a non-seedy Coney Island [So not like Coney Island at all then - ed.] near Taipei. Though touristy, it's really a pretty good time, with shops selling every imaginable thing, a lot of great street food, a diverse crowd of Taiwanese and foreigners, and arcades!

(Click to enlarge) This is me playing a video game that by all rights should become the next Dance Dance Revolution and sweep the world. Instead of hitting an arrow on the floor with your foot at the proper time as you do in DDR you hit one of those traditional Japanese drums. You're actually drumming along to some sort of traditional Japanese song and it's really fun. The first time I played I only got 40% rhythm, but then I let the rhythm move me man and I got 72%. A whole crowd was gathered around to watch this foreigner play. I would love to see this game in American arcades but it would never work because they couldn't trust people with these heavy drumsticks. Kids would either steal them or hit each other with them. Too bad.

(Click to enlarge) I took this picture too slowly to get what I was going for. A second or two before I snapped this guy was making Indian roti or naan bread by throwing it into the air like a pizza crust. I thought it was cool that there was Indian food right on the Fisherman's Wharf. In South Korea, where I've lived for a year, they have Indian food, but that just means a handful of high-end restaurants in Seoul and Pusan that cater almost exclusively to foreigners. I was pretty impressed that Taiwan, besides these types of Indian restaurants, also has little places tucked into corners of everyday street scenes and catering to Taiwanese people as well as foreigners.

(Click to enlarge) In Taiwan, the trucker hat menace continues apace. Apparently, they're huge fans of Suicidal Tendencies over there. Who knew?

McDonald's is not Blandly Universalist! (UPDATED)

(Click to Enlarge) Some people use McDonald's as a shorthand to mean roughly "Bland globalized/homogenized crap which is killing off local cuisines and cultures", but what I find fascinating is how Mickey D's actually tries to adapt to local cultures by offering slightly different menus all over the world, or at least the menu has been different in every foreign country I've been to. I didn't actually eat at McDonald's while I was in Taiwan - after all I was only there for two weeks - but when I dropped in to use the restroom I snapped this picture of the value menu. Sure, 1 through 5 all have equivalents on the American McDonald's menu, but what manner of strangeness is number 6!? Rice cracker buns around lord knows what!? And than there's number 7 with a completely different looking type of rice cracker bun. And number 8 is fried chicken, which we think of as American but which is incredibly popular throughout Asia and which McDonald's doesn't offer in the US. It's hard to see but below the value meals is a poster for some kind of special on corn soup. Fried chicken and corn soup is in fact the most popular combo at a Taiwanese McDonald's. I love taking pictures of things like this, things which are both foreign and familiar at the same time. In case you're wondering, the price in NT Dollars translate to roughly the cost of McDonald's food in the US, though a little less expensive, like most things in Taiwan.

UPDATE: Karol points out something I should have noticed, there's no Royale with cheese. They didn't just translate it as something different because of the metric system. This staple just isn't there.

The Inaptly Named "Art Street"

(Click to Enlarge) This is taken in Taiwan's third largest city, Taizhong (Taichung), on "Art Street". Art Street is breathlessly hyped up in all the guidebooks and websites as this hip, eclectic little neighborhood of cool shops, restaurants and galleries that's a viable destination in which to kill a whole afternoon or so. It turned out to be a short couple blocks or so, mostly filled with stores selling the same kind of crappy knickknacks you could find at a million other places in Taiwan, and little, if any, art in sight. There were a couple of nice cafés and it was a  pleasant enough little area (as you can see), but I really don't see how you could while away more than a couple of hours unless you were really desperate. Don't believe the Lonely Planet (and everyone else) hype!

 

Elyse Sewell! Elyse Sewell! Get Yer Elyse Sewell Here!

For those of you who came here looking for information on Elyse Sewell, which is to say my entire reading audience, here's an update. She was back stateside for awhile, in LA, where she spent an evening with America's Next Top Model season 1 winner and current Christopher Knight (Peter Brady) swain Adrienne Curry. She was casting about for another market in which to ply her modeling trade. She really wanted to go to Kuala Lumpur, but found out that that wasn't such a good idea. Eventually, she ended up going to Santiago, Chile. There, she "still got love for the Chile" but is having no end of troubles with her agency. You can find out this and more, by reading her well-written and widely read livejournal, the internet's #1 source for all things Elyse Sewell (though this blog is apparently somewhere in the top 10).

CKS Airport Clash

(Click to enlarge) Like people in South Korea or (I imagine) Israel or like commuters and office workers in Manhattan, the people of Taiwan lead rich, full lives and relatively seldom think about the overarching conflict/danger that is all that outsiders know about them. No one I talked to in Taiwan spoke once of the China issue, despite their having
been several recent developments on that front.

(Click to enlarge)

 

One big China-related news story, however, literally stared me in the face, since I watched it unfold on live TV. Lien Chan, the chairman of the KMT - now narrowly the opposition party in Taiwan - decided it would be a good idea to take a trip to China, in defiance of President Chen, whom he refuses to even call by his appropriate job title. A very, very rough equivalent in US politics would be Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi going off to conduct foreign policy without President Bush's blessing. On the day Lien left both supporters and detractors were there to greet him at the airport. The pictures at left are an attempt to convey the melée that ensued. Hooligans for both sides and for no side showed up and there were quite a few injuries. The worst incident - according to a report in the Taiwan News for which I have the dead-tree version but can't find online - was when some young punks attacked a man in his 60s who was a supporter of the pro-Independence DPP "pan-greens" with nunchaku, leaving him face down and bleeding.

Needless to say, both sides blamed the other for how out of hand things got. Everyone also blamed the police, who did seem to be totally ineffectual. The second picture down is of Wang Shih-Chen, a DPP (pro-independence) legislator who showed up at the airport even though his party begged him not to. Supposedly, he encouraged his pan-green homies to throw eggs at the pro-China (KMT) people. Probably not a smart move for a politician, but I find the idea of a country where it's acceptable on any level to throw eggs at commie accomodationists rather appealing.

The violence by both sides was unacceptable, but it's probably a good thing that the pan-greens showed up to demonstrate their displeasure with Lien. Initially, he seemed to be saying he might just go to China and unilaterally negotiate for Taiwan. Ultimately, the trip became more symbolic and involved simply going to shrines etc.

What insight I got on the Taiwan/China question came from watching this incident unfold and seeing the commentary about it. One interesting fact is that, contrary to what an outsider might think, it is the Nationalists (KMT) who came to Taiwan after losing to the communists on the  mainland who are actually more accomodationist towards China. Despite the fact that they and their forefathers fought against the same PRC that still rules China, they still think of themselves more as Chinese. Parties like the DPP are composed of people who have roots in Taiwan dating back 400 or 500 years. They think of themselves more as Taiwanese than as Chinese. In fact, they have preserved their own language, Taiwanese, despite attempts to stamp it out by both the Japanese and the KMT, which tried to force everyone to switch to "Mandarin" Chinese during their dictatorship which lasted from the end of World War II until May 2000 at varying levels of brutality.

Despite the differences between those who trace their roots back to the coming of Chiang-Kai-Shek and the Nationalists and those who trace their Taiwanese roots back further, their appears to be general agreement that no one wants significantly less sovereignty than they have now. According to the Taiwan News editorial about the airport incident, "A poll of 1,075 Taiwanese adults released by the Taiwan Thinktank Monday showed that  . . .67 percent opposed any peace agreement that would accept the PRC's 'one-China' principle and downgrade Taiwan into a 'local government' or a special region under Beijing's 'one country, two systems' formula . . .A telling fact that these views crossed party barriers and included majorities of identified supporters of both the KMT and PFP."

I read elsewhere that majorities also say they don't want outright independence. It appears that a majority of Taiwanese like the ambiguous status quo.

Great Thai Food in Xin Beitou (Shin Beitou)

(Click to Enlarge) Taken inside aThai, the excellent Thai restaurant that's part of The Aegius Club, a hot springs bath/day spa/health club in Xin Beitou, a sort of Northern suburb of Taipei known for its hot springs and general beauty. Thai food is really popular in Taiwan and, based on this experience at least, the Thai food there seems to be far better than most of what's offered in North American Thai restaurants. The food we had was spicy, more complex in flavor, and involved none of the gloppy, greasy, sweet American-Thai standards like Pad Thai noodles.

The first of the dizzying array of family-style courses to go around the table were a Papaya Salad - somewhat similar to the version typically found in American Thai restaurants but with a more complex, more bitter flavor - and a lovely green salad. Next was a huge whole fish (the whole animal is almost always served in almost any Asian country) served in a lemony/lemongrassy broth that put you in the mind more of Vietnamese cuisine than Thai. Still, delicious. Next were some juicy, succulent skewers of chicken and pork with a variety of spicy sauces to dip them in, and none of them that overly-sweet crap (What do they call it, peanut sauce?) that they give you in the US. Then it was time for the main course of two different coconut-milk-based curries served with pork and beef, each perfectly creamy and spicy. After that there was something I'd never had before in any type of restaurant, squid wrapped around  meatballs. The combination of the rubbery, unyielding texture of the squid with the softer meatball inside - and the different tastes - made for a hearty, slightly spicy treat.

The dessert was one of those things that I love about being in virtually any Asian country -or in an Asian neighborhood in the States - one of those shaved ice/condensed milk/fresh fruit concoctions, a perfect refreshing counterpoint to the heat and humidity outside and to the somewhat heavy meal.

(Click to enlarge) This is a picture from outside of the restaurant/spa/health club/whatever so you can see how cool it looks. The people in the picture - whom I caught unawares - are our friends' Uncle and Aunt, the coolest funnest people I've ever met. It was their idea to go to this restaurant.

I got a card from the restaurant. The English part of the card (I can understand and speak a fair amount of Chinese but I'm close to illiterate) says:

No. 6, Lane 20, Chung-Ho Street, Pa-Tao, 112, Taipei, Taiwan

All I know is that it's very near the Xin Beitou station on the MRT. If you get out there and walk around you see a 10 story or so building, taller than the ones surrounding it, which says "Aegius". On the ground floor of that building is where you want to go. (Yes, I think what they're going for is "aegis").