lost, with much to learn

We are going to be lost here. So so lost. We can’t even get a cab without help – someone bilingual has to tell the driver where we want to go or write it for him. We’ll have a car, but Taipai traffic is not something you want to face unnecessarily, and cabs are cheap. There are also buses and light rail, though the latter is not yet in the area where we found an aprtment.

However, if we’re lost, at least we can shop on the way. Shopping is awesome here – more designer stores than I’ve seen anywhere, everything from Gucci to Ralph Lauren to newer names like Anna Sui, midrange stuff like Esprit and Benetton, and of course lots of names I’ve never heard of. There is a 24-hour bookstore. There’s an utterly enormous bookstore in Taipei 101 that has as much English-language stuff as your average Barnes and Noble – to give some idea, it has a section on travel writing with everything from recent collections to Isabella Bird to Cherry-Garard’s The Worst Journey in the World, and that’s in addition to the actual travel guides. There were not one but three page-a-day calendars counting down to 1/20/2009, the end of GWB’s term. Unlike in Europe, where a normal paperback can cost 11 euros (where one euro is currently about $1.45) books prices seem to be about the same as US ones. I have seen yarn for sale in two places already (which is as many as I saw in the Netherlands in my entire time there) though neither had much selection.

Smells are different and intense. You have no idea how strong the scent of a lily is until you’ve been in a taxi that has two large ones in a vase. Chinese restaurants smell the same, only since of course that’s the default cuisine, entire blocks smell that way. Incense is everywhere, and lots of places are clearly perfumed on purpose, with scents that are pleasant but definitely different than anything I’ve smelled before.

So far I can say exactly one Mandarin phrase with confidence, “xie xie”, which means thank you. (The x is pronounced somewhere between ‘s’ and ‘sh’.) It’s used often here, and is often mutual. (As in, “Thank you.” “No, thank you.” This clearly needs to change – my vocabulary, that is, not the exchange of gratitude. We need to learn to read and write, too; of course I can’t read Chinese but I was surprised to learn I can’t write it either. That is, I can’t copy a written character, even a handwritten one, and be sure I’ve gotten it right. Like – if you’re speaking and you pronounce “aunt” as ‘ahnt’, as a Bostonian would, or as ‘ay-ant’, as a Philadelphian would, that’s permissible variation. But you can’t say ‘int’ and expect anyone to understand you. I have a related problem here; I don’t know which parts of a character have semantic meaning. If I make a line too short or too long, I don’t know if the character is still readable, and I don’t know how long a little flourish on the end of a line needs to be to make it clear that it’s not just a misstroke of the pen.

People live in Asia for years without being able to speak or write the language at all, but I think I’d feel horribly muzzled and muted. It’s clear much learning needs to ensure.