After returning from my disaster of a trip to Hong Kong, I e-mailed my friend Jacky, of whom I have made passing mention. He had taken me to the airport and would have picked me up had I not been forced to stay abroad another day. I apologized profusely and said I hoped we would be able to get together soon.
Last night, we did. I had e-mailed him again after the kerfuffle caused by my meeting at Head Office two days ago, and said I needed someone to talk to about all of this visa nonsense. Over coffee, I told him what had happened. He basically echoed my sentiments that Eve and Ruby are dealing with the situation in a completely unprofessional way. They brought me over from America, knowing they didn't have the license to operate their school and wouldn't be able to apply for a proper residency visa. Even if I had succeeded in getting a 60-day tourist visa in New York, I would still have had to go out to Hong Kong again in December.
The more I've looked at it, I've realized that asking teachers to come on a tourist visa in more of a convenience for them than an end-run around Taiwanese immigrationl laws (though it is that as well). Dave Roberts made clear to me just how much time and money it would have taken to get a residency visa from America, and that pretty much put to rest any idea I had that Shane and other schools do things this way to save money. I agree that two months from the time an agreement is reached to the time a teacher can actually set foot in Taiwan is too long to be viable for schools. Unfortunately, Taiwanese officialdom places everybody in a bad spot.
In any event, it was good to see Jacky again. After coffee, he and I both had time--my only class today isn't until 6:00 PM, so I really didn't have to get up this morning--so we ended up taking in the night market in Jonghli, a town (city?) about 15 minutes from Taoyuan.
Night markets are a Taiwanese peculiarity. Operating from dusk until midnight or so on weeknights and until 3:00 AM or so on weekends, they sell just about every kind of cheap knock-off of anything you can imagine. But, more to the interest of a Westerner, they offer an abundance of what Jacky assures me is the authentic Taiwanese food.
Now, I have written about Taiwanese cuisine before. But last night was truly eye-opening. In the course of the evening, I saw the following for sale:
1) Duck blood cakes on sticks.
2) Cooked intenstines of every species known to man, or at least known to Chinese man.
3) Snakes. Yes, it really is true. Chinese people do eat snake. I had always assumed this was an urban legend.
4) Fruits of every description. I kept asking Jacky the name of various fruits. He didn't know what they were called. I suggested that they may not even have a name in English--they may only be known in China and, in some cases, Taiwan. We sampled one that, as far as I could tell, was an oversized orange, though Jacky insisted it was much more sour than a real orange.
The only thing I was really brave enough to sample was the Chinese version of chicken soup. Now, chicken soup may be Jewish penicillin, but we Jews have nothing compared to the Chinese. They cook the chicken broth with rice wine, which gives the soup a quality of heating you up on cold nights. This quality is especially desirable because of the weird weather patterns in Taiwan. While the island does not have winters of the kind people enjoy in say, Vermont, it can get into the 40s and 50s in the winter months. On the other hand, buildings are often built without heat, because most of the time the weather is much warmer and heaters are expensive. So the Chinese deal with cold weather through good rather than ventillators.
Jacky dropped me off home about 12:30 in the morning, and we made plans to see each other again Sunday night. He gave me a couple of children's picture books, out of which I will be getting my first lessons in Chinese. If it will get me to the point where I can read menus, and avoid the pork (and snake), it will be worth every bit of effort I spend on it.
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2 comments:
My good friend Arye Barkai writes from New York:
Yes, it's true. Chinese DO eat snake. I saw (and videotaped) snake for sale in the market in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Since Xinjiang has a sizable Muslim population and Muslims and Jews have similar dietary restrictions, the only customers were Han Chinese and not Uighur Muslims.
You have got to be kidding. I always thought the snake-eating was a Japanese thing passed on to the Taiwanese during the colonial era. I myself have never witnessed a snake-eating myself, my A-Ma (z"l), my mother tells me, was fond of not only frog (Field-chicken) and snail (both present in the southern Taiwanese peasant diet), but also the occasional rat. Mmm.
That oversized orange is most likely a pomelo (柚子). Interesting story: I saw a cultivar of pomelo while taking a tour of the Moshav in the Golan. They picked some off the ground to eat, but seeing as it was Shabbos (and they were covered in dirt and G-d knows what), I couldn't bring myself to even touch them.
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