Tim's Vacation to Taiwan

Morgan's job was to add the pics, lucky me. It only takes about an hour to add 10 pics with our internet connection. I was experimenting with the layouts (bad idea) and now I am too tired to try to fix it, so bear with me on this poorly laid out post. My goal for the week is to try to figure out how to add a slideshow.....probably easier than I think. I realized that if we post many pictures, it is a must have. The problem lies with my ability to view the blog, most of the time I have to use a proxy site and so the host site for the slideshow won't appear. Enough, here is Taiwan!

Doesn't Tim look sext on the scooter next to the banana tree!

Ready, set, go!

Dogs can ride on scooters too! (Binx doesn't have my permission to hop on one though....)

Traditional Chinese grave, this holds two people. In mainland China, they bury your body for 3 or 4 years and then creamate you after that.

Scooter man!

Here comes the typhoon!

Tapei 101

Now that we’re already on a trip to Qingdao, I’d better write a bit about my Taiwan trip while it’s still relatively fresh in my mind. Fresh is actually a good word as Taiwan was very refreshing – it was a great time. We travelled all over the island/country/disputed 23rd province of China and found the people throughout the country to be friendly, orderly, and in general, happy. It definitely isn’t as crowded in Taiwan as it is in Shanghai. Taiwan and Shanghai both have 23 million people, but Shanghai puts those people into 2,239 square miles where as Taiwan has 13,892 square miles.

We (Morgan, the kids, Josie and I) got home at 10:00 pm after watching the Women’s World Cup championship game and then it was time to pack. My flight was the next day and I had to leave at 7:00 am. So I grabbed some clothes for a small carry-on suitcase and some books for my backpack and went to bed.
I went to Taiwan with fellow Olmsted Scholar “Steve.” Steve is also in the Air Force, but this is his second year of living in China. He came up with the idea of going to Taiwan during China’s week-long National Day celebration (oxymoron, week-long… day?) since everybody in China has the time off to travel, and travel they do. So to beat the crowds, we left the country and let our spouses/families deal with the crowds in China!
Flying to/from Taiwan from/to China is a confusing process. The flight to Taiwan would be a nice short flight, but due to the diplomatic difficulties between China and Taiwan there are no direct flights between them. The options are flying to Hong Kong, Macau, Korea, or even Japan, then to Taiwan. I understand flying to Korea or Japan, but it confuses me as to why flights are allowed between Macao/Hong Kong and Taiwan since those cities were returned to China ten years ago. At any rate, we flew to Macau, then we flew to Taiwan.
We spent the first couple of days in the capital, Taibei. I should probably talk about the “romantinization” systems used in the Chinese language to help non-Chinese speakers read Chinese words. The current most-widely used system is “pinyin” which was adopted by the Chinese government as the standard. Pinyin is what we use when typing text messages or on the computer. You type the pinyin, then get to see a list of characters that have that spelling, then you select which character you want. This is a tedious process, but fortunately computers present the more commonly used characters first so you don’t have to scroll through as many characters and then it predicts based on the previously used characters in the sentence which character you probably want to use. Without a romanticized language, I have no idea how the Chinese would be able to easily send electronic messages.
A system previous to pinyin used less letters, but had some weird rules that you had to remember and that led to romanticized spellings of, for example, 香港 as Hong Kong，北京 as Peiking, and 台北 as Taipei, instead of Xiang Gang, Beijing, and Taibei. Some of you old people may remember the name of China’s capital as Peiking – no, the city didn’t change its name, it just changed its spelling due to a different romantization system, but the pronounciation stays the same – and it is pronounced Beijing. That’s all to say that we spent the first couple of days in the Taiwanese capital of Taibei (prounounced with a “b”), even so Taiwan still uses the old system and spells the city Taipei. Ok, now we can move on…
Taibei was great. Since my friend and I are both university students right now in the Olmsted program, we qualified to stay at the YMCA, so we did! It was a great room, right in downtown Taibei, and very cheap… so what the heck?!
The first thing I noticed was how friendly people were. Instead of stares, I was greeted with “hello” or “ni hao” from people on the street. After checking into our hotel we went out to find some dinner. We just went to an area with lots of vendors selling food, which leads us to…
The second thing we noticed - the food was great! Unlike food in Shanghai that is bland and oily, this food was just good. We bought small portions from several shops and were pleasantly surprised to find that everything we ordered tasted great. And back to the first thing, the folks working at these food stands were friendly and patient. And they SMILED!! It was so pleasant to be there. They made jokes and were very helpful. In Shanghai they all in so much of a hurry to get the order and get away from you that there isn’t any interaction.
The third big thing we noticed was a sense of order. On the subway, passengers waited in lines to get on the train, and waited for passengers to get off the train before getting on themselves. This is a huge contrast to China – when you come to Shanghai, you’ll see how insane the subway is, with people pushing to get on the subway before people even get off. Above ground, cars stopped at red lights and pedestrian crossings – again, something they don’t do here in Shanghai. It was so nice to be in a more orderly culture. The Japanese possessed Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, and it is said that the Taiwanese learned their order and discipline from the Japanese.
Taibei - we flew into Taibei and spent two days here. The weather was perfect, comfortably warm and beautiful skies. The highlight was visiting Taibei 101, currently the world’s tallest skyscraper at 101 stories. Unlike Shanghai that has multiple skyscrapers in the world’s top 100 tallest and 2 in the top 10, there are no other very tall buildings in Taibei, so we could really see the entire city from the observatory on the 101st floor. It was an impressive sight.
Hualian – we took the train down to Hualian, a city located on the east coast of Taiwan and spent two days there. The highlight was renting scooters and driving through Taroko Gorge National Park. It was stunningly gorgeous, mountains, trees, rivers, waterfalls, tunnels and winding roads - the weather was perfect and so our ride on our little scooters was just perfect. FYI – these scooters are pretty quick and get up to 50 mph, they were a blast! The second highlight was hanging out outside of the Air Base in Hualian at the end of the runway where we watched their F-16s and C-130 taking off and landing – something about American-built warplanes that makes me happy!
Taidong – this was our next destination with plans of taking the ferry to Green Island, a resort island off the coast of Taiwan, but unfortunately a Taifeng was coming right for us. Taifeng is the word where English gets “typhoon” from. A typhoon was approaching Taiwan. While we were at a beach in Hualian, we watched pretty large wave come crashing in. Based on the weather forecasts and seeing how bad the water was getting, ferries were cancelled out to Green Island, so we got back on the train to our final destination…
Gaoxiong (spelled “Kaohsiong” in Taiwan) is Taiwan’s second largest city – we originally just planned a day here, but ended up staying three days here. Gaoxiong is on the south-side of the Taiwan and the eye of the Typhoon was hitting the north-side of the island. So it was really windy in Gaoxiong, but very little rain so we were able to walk around town and see the city. We stayed with fellow Olmsted Scholar “Mimi” who was very gracious in showing us around her city, despite the challenging weather! Gaoxiong is the city where all of your “Made in Taiwan” products get shipped from. The latest statistics show that Taiwan makes 49% of the world’s laptops – wow!
We flew back to Shanghai from Gaoxiong through Macao again. Just like that our 8 day “business trip” was over. What a great trip…

Family on the Bund ...... the 5 of us!

Here's a recent photo of the five of us from the Moon Festival. A night they spend with their families, eat "moon cake," and sit outside and look at the moon. Six more moons to go...

Suzhou, the Venice of Asia

Josie and I decided it was time to get out of town. We went to the train station and bought tickets to a little tourist town called Suzhou (population 5.7 million) about a 45 minute train ride from here. It has lots of gardens and waterways for streets. We didn't have time to take a boat through them, but hope to next time. We could take the 9:00 am train there, but the earliest tickets they had for the evening were for 9:30 that night. I asked Josie if she really wanted to do this and she did, so early Saturday morning we packed a day of supplies and off we went. This is Josie in the train station waiting area, one of the many waiting areas, plus all the people outside....people everywhere!

I had researched a few places to visit and had a map and figured we would figure it out from there. I had planned on taking the tourist buses they have to get from sight to sight. That proved to be much more complicated than I thought and so what is the next best plan? How about hop on a little moped with a trailer to get there. You have to bargain for these too, I probably paid more than the Chinese would, but the girls loved it! The first guy told me 40 RMB and I was able to get another guy for 10 RMB. Some people must think all foreigners are idiots, why would I pay him 40 RMB when I could take a taxi for 10 RMB.

The first garden we went to was beautiful, but had way to many people there and was barely enjoyable. There were tourist guides with their megaphones yelling everywhere and the paths were quite tight. Another day this place would be a great get away. Next time we may go there for a peaceful stroll and take more pics of the actual gardens. Here are just a few of the pics from the Humble Administrators Garden.

We then headed for a Buddhist temple, not really that exciting, but something new for Josie. We left there I told the taxi driver we would like to go to a place called Tiger Hill. It was recommended to me by my Chinese teacher. I thought we were heading there and he started to tell me that there would be way too much climbing with my small kids and he had a better place for me to go. I told him thanks, but that is where I wanted to go. He again said there is lots of climbing, I told him I understood what he is saying, but that is where I wanted to go. (This was all in Chinese with my mad Chinese skills!) He pulls up to a place and I didn't know what it was supposed to look like. I quickly figure out he didn't listen to me and then we start to argue about it. I told him that is what HE thinks, but I can decide for myself. I had already unloaded the girls and strollers (of course with Josie's help) out of the car. I told him I was very unhappy with him and then he tells me get back in and he will take me there. I told him no way, I then tried to pay him, and he wouldn't take it. I threw it in his car and I told him we would figure out another way to get there.

At this point the girls were very tired and they really needed to nap. They had been up since 7:30 and it was about 2:00 pm. We read a few signs and decided to go ahead and check this

place out. There were very few people there and maybe only 2 foreigners, so we were able to get the girls to sleep for about an hour while we hung out on one of the paths. The place actually

turned out to be quite beautiful (maybe mostly because it was fairly quiet), but we definitely enjoyed it. Our entrance ticket included a short ride in a boat on the river, the girls thought it was great!

The funniest part was the the following picture of kids on the water in giant beach balls rolling around like gerbils. When we first arrived, there were probably 10 kids out there playing bumper balls! How fun, dangerous, Chinese, whatever it was quite a sight!

On our way out, this little old lady attacked us to have us buy her toys for the girls. They try to just give it to the girls, hoping I will give in. I have started telling them thank you for the present and will start to walk off. They quickly walk away and take the toys with them. I left Josie with the girls to see what kind of ride we could get to the next stop. I came back and there are a few Chinese surrounding her (5 or so). Tally had started to cry and is standing up in the stroller trying to get away. The old lady that was trying to sell her toys started to tell me how dangerous this is. Using my mad Chinese skills again, I told her that if she wasn't in her face scaring her that we wouldn't be having this problem! She turned around and left. The small Chinese that I know is very useful!

We then had time for one last site and ended up at another Buddhist temple, because I wanted to be in a decent area to get a taxi and be somewhat close to the train station. These temples seem to be the same to me, a pagoda and then various statues all over. It was nothing too exciting, but the following picture made it totally worth it. Tally has what we call her Buddha Belly....the Chinese got a kick out of it too!

All day, Adayla had noticed these "lion" trashcans. I told her not to touch them because they were so dirty. We did find some trash for her to put it in it and she was so scared, she thought it was going to bite her! She didn't want to shove the trash in the rest of the way.

It was now only 6pm and we had about 3 hours to kill. We decided to just walk until we found something good to eat. We came to a McDonald's, how convenient! The girls ate a bit and were able to play on the slide. We then found a smaller version of Nanjing Lu, a huge pedestrian zone in Shanghai. We hit up a couple of the local shops selling junk that we probably didn't need, but it was fun!

The girls did quite well all day, considering all things involved, and did okay on the train. Finally about 2 metro stops before getting home they were out! What a day!

National Day....Week

Monday is National Day in China (October 1, 1949 is the day the People's Republic of China was officially founded). Beginning in 1999, China celebrates this holiday with a week off of work so that the People can be with the People in the People's Republic of China, got it?
It's a busy time with most of the 1.5 billion people travelling during the week, so I decided to go with another Olmsted Scholar to travel to Taiwan (since Taiwan obviously doesn't celebrate China's National Day, right?!). In preparation for my 8-day trip to Taiwan, I've been busy this week trying to get all of my and my group's homework/projects done so that I wouldn't have to worry about it while I was in Taiwan.

So meanwhile, Tim heads for a nice relaxing vacation and leaves his wife and kids Ayi-less (thankfully Josie was here) to face I think the 500 million that came to visit Shanghai. Monday morning we, I don't remember, but we hadn't seen the extra people at this point. (I just remembered, I took Josie to see what a Walmart in China was like.) We decided Monday evening we will take the ferry across the river and head to a small street in Puxi that happens to sell all sorts of hair/nail products. Once we arrived at the ferry station, our plans changed. There was a festival of people there selling food and carnival type items. Usually this area this late at night has only a few people walking and a few more on bikes or mopeds. Totally crazy! The ferry usually leaves every 10 minutes, this time it was every 3 or so minutes and it was packed!

People were literally everywhere. They were doing there typical "lets run ahead of the stroller and then stop while the stroller is still moving and stare at the little Western kids." I have learned just to run them over. This was just to get on the ferry, why did they need to run, there was enough room for them, and they weren't going anywhere for a few minutes. I was a bit grumpy for a minute and then I was over it (until the next day......)

The next day we went to Yuyuan where we had been before, see previous pictures of how it could be on a typical week day, this time it was crawling with people. Seriously, barely room for all people to keep moving. On the way there was the best part though, I decided I must go to the bathroom. This was my first time in China, that I had to use the public squatter. I usually plan my bathroom trips around when I will be home or hold it until I get there. This didn't happen, I will spare all the details, it was disgusting to say the least!






I left Josie for a minute as we decided to try a bit of Chinese food, these days I am just not into it and usually opt for McDonalds..... I left Josie with the girls and they had no place to go to get away from the people. Pretty soon I look back and Josie is just mobbed with people. She stood there while they ask her questions she can't understand and realized that the foreigners are taking pictures of the Chinese taking pictures of her. Understand?? I made it back and found a small corner we could hide a bit and "enjoy" our Chinese cuisine. We ate a bit of it and then found a McDonalds and happily ate a burger and fries! Even though the people are a bit annoying and if it was like that everyday I would hide in my house, but for one week a few times a year I find it fascinating and exciting.

Here's a quick story on Adayla. So one night we went to a German pasta place and then planned to go shopping at a local favorite market. I told Adayla that she could have some new dancing pants (little sweat pants that she wore to dance class)....the ones I bought back in the states are quite short on her. The stores closed early and we didn't have time to get them. She threw a fit! There were tons of people at the metro station and one guy thought that while she was in the middle of her fit would be a good time for him to go touch her. She smacked him! Go Adayla! I
can't punish her for that one, I don't blame her.



Random pic of Tally to show that just like Adayla, she has a mullet....that will some day grow into long beautiful hair. It curls and curls here in the Shanghai humidity!

For you Football Fans

Here are some of Tim's more recent comments:

Another year, another BYU victory over Air Force. That's just life for Air Force, for whatever reason.It's interesting how teams match up against each other. Air Force owns a winning record over every conference foe except BYU. BYU owns a winning record over every conference foe except Utah. This year has stayed true to history thus far with Air Force beating Utah and BYU beating Air Force. All-time records

BYU vs Air Force: 22-6

AFA vs Utah: 15-10

BYU vs Utah: 28-49-4

Air Force just didn't show up to play this week against BYU. Still, Air Force has to be happy with being 2-1 against the league's preseason top three teams (TCU, BYU and Utah). And what happened to Utah this week? How can you blow out the #12 team in the country 44-6 and then the next week get shutout by UNLV 27-0?! What's going on there? I said it after Wyoming beat Virginia (who is now 3-0 in ACC conference play) and I'm saying it again now after Wyo's victory over Ohio, Wyo is a tough team this year and will have a major role in determining the conference champ.- I feel sorry for BYU having to travel to Laramie to play on Nov 17th. Whoever scheduled that for BYU should be fired!Cincinnati: nice 4-0 start for Bryan's alma mater

And for this weeks:

As for last week's "other" action:Air Force got sunk by NavyAFA led 20-17 in the fourth quarter, then Navy scored two unanswered touchdowns. Air Force had 474 yards of total offense and 25 first downs, but did not score three times when they were within the 20 yard line. That's five in a row for Navy now (sigh). Overall I think the Falcons are ahead of where most people had put them. I had thought they would be 1-4 (see my opening game e-mail), so I'll still take 3-2 at this point. BYU was tied with New Mexico after three quarters, and won by a touchdown. As I thought, BYU would when, and it was not a pretty game.#20/24 Cincy rolled over SDSU as expected- ranked for the first time since 1976! Wyoming had the week off. They did such a good job taking the week off that they picked up a vote in the polls! Maybe they should take more weeks off? Go WYO!



There isn't much better than a good upset, and this past Saturday we had a ton of upsets. In fact, #3-#7 all lost and 6 of the Top 10 lost! I love chaos. The BCS-mafia keeps trying to come up with a perfect plan to keep their money in the the BCS bowls, but a tournament is becoming more and more necessary. Parity is becoming the norm, and a tournament is needed to really decide who the best is.

Women's World Cup Final

Tim's Pre Game Chatter

At 5 pm we'll cheer on Team USA against Norway in the consolation game, then at 8 pm we'll cheer on Germany over Brazil in the final (but hope that Marta gets a couple of goals, too!). Argentina was South America's champion, Brazil its runner-up. We went to the game and watched Germany destroy Argentina 11-0 in the first game of the tournament. Even though we know that the theory of transitivity doesn't work in sports, Germany wins the World Cup tomorrow!

Some interesting comments by ESPN on US women's soccer:"It's time to face facts. Brazil and Germany, who'll contest Sunday's final, have caught up and overtaken the American women.
The bigger question to be addressed is this. Can the USA change course and placing the emphasis on technique, or will it be more of the same robust, but ultimately uninspiring football, come the next Women's World Cup?" Ouch! More on women's soccer after the World Cup...Enjoy the weekend of games, we will!

We let the girls take a long nap knowing we would be a little late to the USA vs Norway game, but figured it would be worth it as we knew it would be a late night. We headed to the Metro station to catch a train to the game. We had no idea how packed the trains would be...see the pics, a sea of black hair! It was the night before the National holiday where most people are off for 7 days. Oh well, we made it and were ready to cheer on the USA!

Can you find the foreigners??

We arrived about the end of the 1st half with USA up 1-0. The team looked great and we were excited to have them win (4-0). Adayla cheered and Tally ate, taking after her mom, I think she put away nearly a whole bag of microwave popcorn! She was happy. Adayla was excited to go see "Abby" play, she is #20 on the team and we had told her at the previous games that she was Josie's friend. All week she kept asking if Abby to come to her house and play. After the USA game was finished, the party started. Those CRAZY Germans were everywhere and boy were they having fun.

The stadium was packed and what a great game! Brazil actually dominated the game, but just couldn't finish it off. Tim was definitely rooting for Germany, but I think wanted to see Brazil take it. Germany ended up winning 2-0 and we headed home for Tim to finish, I mean start packing, so he could be on his was at 7 am the next morning to Taiwan.