The Escape Artist

Coffee shops are really common in Taipei. It’s a place where you can shill out, meet people, and forget a few hours the rush of the big city. One of my favourite is The escape artist. This is an artist studio, and a coffe shop in the same time. If you feel to express yourself, you can buy a painting canvas, and paint. Then you have free acces to all the painting equipment: easel, paint, brushs … It’s a  very good place to chill out for a rainy day! http://www.escapeartist.com.tw/blog/

Hitchhiking to the south

My friend Laura and I decided to go to the south of Taiwan, to enjoy our “no mid-term week” at the beach. But as we are adventurous, we decided to make this trip more challenging with this rule : going there, only by hitchhiking.

We leaft Taipei monday, bagpack on our back, holding our cardboard “南” (South), with one goal: be in Kaohsiung in the evening.

I don’t know if it’s because we were 2 foreign girls, but we never waited more than 4min to find a car.  The next stop, we got into a big truck, and the driver help us find another truck to go to Tainan. Thanks to them, we discovered unlikely places like loading and unloading shares, the uge harbor of Kahisung… Finally, we arrived in Kaohsiung around 8:30pm, successful goal! We kept doing hitchhiking all week long, and even to go back to Taipei.

All of our drivers were incredibly nice with us. Even if we barely didn’t know them, they all worried a lot for us. I knew that in the Chinese culture, sharing a bill is not well-seen, and people like to offer everything to their guests, but here, I really realized how it was true ! They gave us so many presents, that we had the feeling to be princess ! Of course, they took pictures, gave us their business card, numbers, and ad us on facebook !

This week was really amazing, and I really want to thank one more time all of our drivers!

Our truck

Taiwanese and foreigners

Up to now, I have never meet a population that is as friendly as Taiwananese people. And it’s even more true with us, foreigners. They are always happy to meet us, make us discover Taiwanese culture, help us for something,  hang out with us…

By exemple, you don’t need to ask for direction in the street, because a Taiwanese already saw that you were lost, and is are already checking on google map which way you should go! Almost every Taiwanese are really excited about the idea of meeting foreigners. They will never miss the opportunity to get to know you a little bit more.

This is realy nice to live with so nice people, but sometimes,  it becomes a little creepy…  Here are some exemples:

Every Taiwanese that you meet  will ad you on facebook 5min later, and will take a picture of you. If you are blond and have white skin, many strangers will take photos of you. A lot of grandma will also tell you that you are pretty, even if you know that today you look really bad: huge rings,  durty hair, no make up…

When you are in a club, if you start dancing with taiwanese people (boys AND girls), they will become literraly crazy. As a matter of fact,  a lot of  Taiwanese love to be in clubs with  foreigners. That’s why the bigger the number of foreigners in a club is, the “cooler” is the club. So clubs are trying to have a lot of foreigners customers, to attract the Taiwanese.  To reach that position of “Cool club” , there is special prices for “non-asian foreigners” on entrances. I think that it’s racist to asian people, but people doing those rules are racist to themselves!

Impossible to do that in France !

Any way, I love Taiwanese people, even when they are a creepy!

The Chinese New Year (CNY)

This week is a little bit special here because it’s the Chinese New Year ! So almost everybody in Taiwan is in holidays for one week. Taiwanese people really diserve that holidays, because they have only 1week of holidays/year. But it also implies that EVERYTHING is closed, so that’s not the funniest week of the year because you can’t do many things…

First let me explain you very fast what people usually do during the CNY(I am really tired of being in holidays right now, so I will go right to the point. If you want more information about traditions, just ask wikipedia like everybody):

The Hongbao is little bit like our presents for christmas

• Eat
• Stay at home with family
• Watch new year programm on tv
• Give or receive HongBao (a red envelop with money inside)
• Play fireworks anytime, anywhere
• Gamble
• Clean your house before the CNY to expel the bad spirits and the bad luck
• Clean and decorate their house with red and gold decorations

One of my taiwanese friend invited me to do the CNY with her family. I had a very good time there, but some stuff were also very suprising!  So I asked many people around me what they did for the CNY, and their opinion about the event. That’s why I decided to do a little “For-Against CNY list” to summarize the discussions that I had with people here.

For:

• the one week of holidays, because it means 1 week of lazy mornings.
• being well seen  to eat a lot, because that means that you make  honor the tradition.
• having a decade of dishes on the table, so even if you don’t like something, there is only a few chances to be starving at the end of the dinner.
• the fireworks, cracking in the street just like that, for nothing.
  

  Be careful, any fireworks can sudenly appear anytime, anywhere during the 5 days of CNY !

• being a (not working)child, and receiving hongbao (=money).
• the cute, chinese, red and gold, decorations eveywhere.
• the new year sales (people buy many new clothes right before the CNY, so a lot of shops take that opportunity to do sales)

Against:

• the new year programm on tv (too noisy and shining).
• the food: it’s really good, but it’s only everyday dish. So I guess people are not as excited as french would be before christmas knowing that a fabulous “foie gras” is coming on the table soon.
  

  All the dishes on the table have a special meaning.

• all the things that you can’t do because it’s  close, because of the CNY.
• being a working child, because you don’t receive hongbao anymore, and (the WORST):you have to give a hongbao to your parents!! (even if they earn more money than you do)

10 reasons why it’s impossible to have a bad day in Taipei

1. Because even during the rush hour, you can breathe in the metro.
2. Because if you have a foreigner’s face like me, the flyers distributors and the fundraisers of  NGO won’t take the risk to talk to you  (as only 0.05% of the foreigners are able to  properly speak Chinese here).
3. Because in your wallet you have 1000NT$ bills.
4. Because there are CLEAN restroom in every metro station.
5. Because if you get lost anywhere, a stranger will systematicly help you and escort you until your final destination without asking your number.
6. Because when you forget your camera, or if you are too lazy to immortalize a moment, there will always be a nice Taiwanese person to take a picture with his Iphone 5, and post it on facebook right after.
7. Because when you find an old receipt in my wallet, you are really happy to have one more chance to win to the National lottery! (In every receipt in Taiwan is printed a uniform number. These numbers are used as lottery numbers, and almost every 2 months, a list of winning numbers is published online. The prizes range between 200nt$  and 2000000nt$).
8. Because every morning  I walk in front of Hello Kitty, and Barbie Coffee to go take the metro.
9. Because you can shop Sunday at 10pm and buy oreos, no  matter what time, in the 7-eleven downstairs (there is necesseraly a 7-eleven downstairs, or you are not in Taipei).
10. Because if you want to wear a mini-skirt you will be a normal person, and nobody will  bother you.

My internship

I am currently spending most of my time doing an internship. I decided to become a volunteer for The Garden of Hope Foundation.

The Garden of hope is a Taiwanese NGO which takes care of victims of sexual harassment, domestic violence, and sexual traffic.  To help the victims, the Garden of Hope has opened a telephone hotline and few shelters. In these shelters victims can:  rest, talk with counselors, feel safe. The organization has also created:

• A V shop: it provides multi employment services like a coffee shop to relax, and also the possibility to buy clothes, books, dolls…. The “V” means treating your ‘valentine’ well, being ‘vagina’ friendly, stopping ‘violence’, and promoting ‘victory’ through win-win love relationships.
• The “Ising Share House”, where you can donate or buy secondhand goods.
• Two social and sustainable projects. They have launched a chocolate factory, and a hotel which employs the victims of domestic violence, sexual harassment (…).  It enables them to have a professional training.
• Summer camps for teenage girls to teach them about these issues.
•  The Garden of Hope also contributes to research and government discussions on policy. This has included several key laws involving child welfare and women’s rights.

Since my arrival here, I have been working on the launch of the One Billion Rising campaign. This is an international Campaign fighting for the end of violence based on this affirmation: One billion women on the planet will be raped or beaten on their lifetime. This event is an invitation to ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. So here, I help the international affairs staff, to  launch this campaign. I have also participated to many press conferences, and a radio register! I also did french translation, organized  a flash mob,  and, I went to Taitung during 4 days to visit the solidary hotel, and enjoy the life there!

I am really happy to see that our One billion risiong campaign realy worked in Taipei! We even appeared on the tv:

Janelle is curently doing a bike tour around Taiwan, to rise people for the One Billion Rising campaign.

What a fruit !

Thanks to its location on a sub-tropical zone and its cool climate,Taiwan is a fruit paradise! That’s why there are so many little shops selling fruits juice everywhere here.

In france, we see a lot of exoctic fruits, but it’s nothing compared to what you can find here ! So I decided to do a fruit-testing-session to try every exotic fruits that I have never seen in my entire life! I’ll try to do my best to describe the taste, and how to eat these amazing fruits. I will complete this article step by step.

Click on the photos to see them larger

Watermelon texture, with an apple taste

The guava is a mix between an apple, and a peach, with crispy seeds ! The tast is a litlle bit bitter.

Eat eat when it is soft.

Open the fruit in two parts. Eat pulp by pulp. But do not eat the black seeds inside each pulp!

Cut it in 2 parts, and if you are lazy like me, just it it with a spoon like a kiwi ! Inside it is fresh, pink and sweet. Amazing

It is a mix between an apple and a peach, but in harder.

There are many different kinds of cucurbit here ! I haven’t tried this yet

Guava and star fruit

Funny signs

I had a lot of fun seeing all of this strange signs and posters  in the MRT (Taipei’s subway)!  So I decided to track all of them to make a collection of the best sign ever seen in Taiwan. I declare the sign-poster track open !

Feel free to help me if you have seen good ones.   

A very clever idea to make me take the stairs !

Adverstisement for luposuction

How to have bad conscience…

How the Ming Chuan’s stairs receive you every morning !

Rude foreigners

 

Click on the photos to see them in big format

Taipei city

I just arrived yesterday evening in Taipei ! I didn’t visited the whole city yet, but have read many stuff about it. Taipei is the capital of the Republic Of China (Taiwan). (I know, the official name of the country is really confusing… ). It’s situated on the nothern tip of the Island.

Wikipedia write that “Taipei was founded in the early 18th century and became an important center for overseas trade in the 19th century. The Qing Dynasty of China made Taipei the provincial capital of Taiwan in 1886.When the Japanese acquired Taiwan in 1895 after the first sino-japanese war, they retained Taipei as the capital of the island, and also advanced extensive urban planning in Taipei. The Republic of China took over the island in 1945 following Japanese surrender. After losing mainland China to the Chinese communist party in the Chinese civil war, the  ruling Kuomintang (KMT) resettled the ROC government to Taiwan and declared Taipei the provicional capital of the Republic of China in December 1949.”

Now that we are less dummies, I can share you my first impression on the city:

• There are tones of scooters everywhere
• It is raining almost all the time since my arrival whereas it’s supposed to be one of the dryest months of the year
• There are many exotic trees in the street, and balconies
• Side walks are uncommon (at least in my neighborhood), so I almost died 3 time this morning
• My “adventurous” lunch was a disaster: sweet soup with beans and rice. I won’t do that mistake again !
• Tawanese people are really kind with me
  

  The 101 tower