Dragon Boat Day 2020

端午節, the Dragon Boat Festival, was on Thursday. Duanwu is a party holiday. There are plenty of sacred and commemorative holidays, but this one is about watching boat races and eating too much. In some circles, it is also about drinking too much, but that applies to pretty much any holiday.

But Duanwu is also a commemorative holiday, where people remember the death of Qu Yuan, more or less. Qu is the grandfather of celebrity poets. While poetry existed long before he was born, he was one of the first rock stars of the poetry world. More importantly, he inspired Li Bai, who was a true superstar of the Tang Dynasty. Li really was a star. He had an encyclopedic command of literary tradition and turned it on its head, which made him wildly famous. He was also a bit of a whore and a raging alcoholic.

Today, most people don't really know all that much about Qu Yuan or Li Bai, which is a shame, but they know to eat zongzi in Qu's honor. Racing dragon boats is just something thrown in to make the day unique.

I watched my share of dragon boat races when I lived in Hong Kong. This was my first holiday in Taiwan. Unfortunately, I was too busy to go out in the blazing sun and push my way through crowds of people. I don't mind. Taiwan celebrates Duanwu almost exactly as Hong Kong. The biggest difference is that Hong Kong races are in Victoria Harbour while Taiwan races are on some of the larger rivers.

I did, however, see a team practicing last month in Taipei.

Annular Eclipse

There was an eclipse on Sunday. I am not entirely sure how often an eclipse is visible, but I know that I am almost never in the right part of the world to see them. When I live over there, all the eclipses are over here. When I live over here, all the eclipses are over there. Not to mention everything going on in Africa and South America, where I will most likely never live. And even if you are in the right place at the right time, a cloudy day can ruin everything. Sunday's eclipse was visible in a thin strip over Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Pakistan, India, China and Taiwan. As luck would have it, I live in Taiwan. The best places to see the eclipse were Chiayi, a big chunk of Yunlin County, the northern tip of Kaohsiung, and Taitung. The forecast for northern Taiwan was heavy clouds, which gave me low hopes, but southern Taiwan was relatively clear.

As it turns out, I happen to live in Kaohsiung. But the part of Kaohsiung where the eclipse was visible is mostly a national park. That might be a great place to see an eclipse, but it is difficult to get to by public transportation. Taitung is on the east coast; easily reached by bus, but it would take hours. I don't know anything about Yunlin County, but I know that I can get to Chiayi in about 90 minutes from my apartment. The MRT gets to the high speed train in two or three stops, the high speed train gets to Chiayi in 30 minutes, and there was a quick shuttle bus from the train station to one of the viewing areas set up by the county government.

The eclipse was scheduled to start at 14:49:15 and end at 17:26:02. It only made sense to go to Chiayi in the afternoon, look around a little, and leave when everyone else was having dinner.

I can't think of a good reason to go to Chiayi. Fortunately, everything we saw that day was in Taibao, a smaller city in Chiayi County. Taibao is not the most exciting place in the world either, but it has the high speed train station, a large lawn outside the government buildings that is ideal for public gatherings, and a pretty big museum.

The Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum is exactly what it says it is. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has anywhere from 700,000 to one million pieces of Chinese art, depending on whose figures you read. It is, objectively, the largest collection of Imperial Chinese art in the world, with over 300,000 Qing documents, 200,000 books from Song to Qing, 25,000 ceramics, 13,000 jade pieces, 10,000 paintings and calligraphy, and a bunch of other pieces covering 8,000 years of Chinese history in a space about the size of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. There are so many pieces that the museum can only display 1% at any given time, which means you can see a completely different museum every time you visit, if you time it right.

The people who run the National Museum of China in Beijing are quick to point out their larger collection, but that includes prehistoric and ancient artifacts. The National Palace Museum has the largest collection from Qin to Qing, which is easily the most interesting 2,000 years of Chinese history.

The National Palace Museum collection was either stolen or protected by Chiang Kai Shek and his minions in the 1930s and 1940s. When Japan started invading China, Chiang had everything in the Palace Museum in Beijing moved to a few safe locations. During the last Chinese Civil War, Chiang moved most of the collection to Taiwan, though a large chunk was captured by Mao's people. Eventually, a museum was built in Taipei and became a major political issue between China and Taiwan for the next 40 years. Today, Beijing's Palace Museum occasionally lends pieces to Taipei's National Palace Museum, but Taipei never lends anything to Beijing out of fear that it will never be returned.

Five years ago, they opened the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum in Taibao, which makes it easier for people in southern Taiwan to see a tiny fraction of the enormous collection and also lets the museum display slightly more at a time. When we went on Sunday, we immediately decided to watch the eclipse from the museum instead of the county viewing area. Not only did the grounds around the museum have more open space, but everything around it looked better than old government buildings.

As one of the best places in the country to see the eclipse, the area between the museum, county government and the pedestrian street that connects the two was pretty crowded. Chiayi is the smallest major city in Taiwan, with less than 300,000 people. It felt like all of them were there that day. It probably did not help that this was a Sunday.

The eclipse itself finished very quickly. It must have been a male eclipse.

New Stuff

One thing you have to consider when moving from one country to another is what to do with all your stuff. I originally moved to China with a suitcase and backpack. I have far more crap now. When we moved into the Yau Ma Tei apartment, we all threw away more than a few boxes full of clutter. Moving from China to Taiwan, we knew we would have to get more drastic.

Shipping boxes of stuff between countries is fast and easy. Both Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are port cities with large airports. It takes two days by sea and two hours by plane, not including all the sitting around and waiting time. Given that Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are so close to each other, we calculated that it would be cheaper to ship everything rather than unload in China and buy new in Taiwan.

The exception being large appliances. There is no benefit to shipping a refrigerator internationally. They are large and heavy, which means expensive, and brand new Japanese or Korean refrigerators in Taiwan are pretty cheap. Our washing machine was getting old anyway. And, not an unimportant point, Hong Kong and Taiwan sockets and voltage mostly do not match.

We sold and/or gave away our old refrigerator, washing machine, TV, sofa, beds, and all kinds of tables and chairs. That meant one pretty expensive shopping spree at the new place. We have been good to Taiwan's economy. As a city of almost three million people, Kaohsiung has more than a few places to buy a few things.

We bought our new refrigerator, washing machine and TV from Carrefour, which is probably not the ideal place to buy electronics. But they had what we wanted at a good price and delivered everything at a convenient time. Since we were in the middle of moving between countries, delivery time was important to us. And by getting several big ticket items at the same time, we were automatically made members of their super special VIP club. Realistically, that will probably only save us a few dollars a month, but we will likely use Carrefour as our main grocery store, so why not.

Buying furniture did not get us any special membership, but when you buy an apartment's worth of beds, tables and chairs at the same time, stores tend to be extra attentive. They also knock down the prices of everything. The sofa was custom made by some guy who makes sofas. I was more than a little skeptical at first, but he did a great job and delivered on time and in the rain what turned out to be larger than I expected. It is also far more nappable than our previous sofa.

New Apartment

We moved to the city of Kaohsiung. For several reasons. It is where Kevin's company relocated, it is where I got the best job offer and it is home to one of Lily's two school choices.

Most foreigners go to Taipei, at least at first. That makes sense since Taipei is the nation's capital and largest city. Expats like to have as many tastes of home as they can find. Taipei is far more international than the rest of the country, though not nearly as international as Hong Kong. I have no idea where to find authentic American food in Taipei, if possible. KFC and McDonald's are all over the place, but I do not consider that food.

Kaohsiung is the country's third largest city, and almost as far south as you can get. I spent a weekend here before we moved. Most of my time in Taiwan was always in or near Taipei. I have no idea where to find anything even close to American food in Kaohsiung, but I know where to get Israeli hummus. Even though I have spent more time in Taiwan than Lily or Kevin, none of us really know Kaohsiung. Yet.

Finding our new apartment was exceptionally easy. Kevin and I took separate trips and looked around. It took about a month to find my first Hong Kong apartment, and I was living in the city 24/7. Knowing the culture really makes a difference.

The new Kaohsiung apartment is slightly bigger than our last Hong Kong apartment, at about 1/4 the price. Everything is cheaper in Kaohsiung. A bottle of water is half the Hong Kong price. The downside is that pretty much everyone makes less money. According to one website, for whatever that's worth, the average salary for a 7-Eleven clerk is roughly US$6.50/hr in Hong Kong and US$3.50 in Taiwan. One of the reasons Kevin's company moved was for the lower labor costs. The incentive/bonus Kevin got from his company to move was that they would not cut his salary too much.

I like the Hong Kong kitchen better. Both apartments have separate rooms, with doors, cabinets and counters, but the Kaohsiung kitchen has no oven. There is a stove, sink and everything else one might expect in a kitchen, but no large metal box that gets hot. Apparently in Taiwan, just like China, most people eat out most of the time. Genuine kitchens are seen as a luxury. The new kitchen has room for a variety of appliances, but no space to put an oven even if there is a store somewhere that sells them.

Like China, Taiwan apartments seem to all come with laundry balconies. Ours is larger than average. We can't have a party on the balcony, but we can easily hang all of our clothes out to dry. We have enough room to hang every stitch of clothing we all have, if such an urge ever struck. Our Hong Kong apartment had a large balcony outside the living room, with partial views of Victoria Harbour. This one has tiny balconies off each bedroom and the living room, with views of other buildings and a surprising number of trees lining the streets below. It looks like every building in the neighborhood has tiny balconies everywhere, and none of them are laundry balconies, as far as I can tell. Like our building, they all might be hidden from the street.

The Kaohsiung apartment has the usual amenities of 24 hour security, ample underground parking and a small gym. An unusual feature that I have never seen in any other apartment anywhere in the world is what someone did to the master bedroom. The room was originally designed to look like the other bedrooms, only larger. But some tenant at some point in time added some kind of acoustic treatment/soundproofing. Yes, those are two different things, but this room seems to have a combination of both. Every apartment I have seen in Taiwan is relatively soundproof already, by American standards. Since all of the buildings over two stories are made with steel and concrete, it is much harder to hear the neighbors than it would be in a New York tenement. Our apartment does not share a wall with any other apartments. Our neighbors are on the other side of the elevator shaft and stairwell. There are people above and below us, but with all that steel and concrete, we cannot hear a thing. The reason I call the master bedroom soundproof is because, with the door shut, you can make a fair deal of noise without anyone in the rest of the apartment hearing anything, unless they stand in front of the door.

Someone tried to hide the upgrades with wood panels to match all the wood throughout the apartment. We figure that either whoever put it in did not want the owners to know about it or the owners do not want future tenants to know. I assume a previous tenant was a musician. If he needed a soundproof room with good acoustics for some other reason, I might not want to know about it. When we were first shown the apartment, the agent apologized and offered us a discount on rent. I'm not sure why they don't seem to understand the advantages of an acoustic quiet room.

Ordinarily, Kevin and Lily would share the largest bedroom and I would choose among the others. Whatever was left would be our guest room. In this case, we did the obvious thing and made the master bedroom our music room. As the second largest room in the apartment, after the living room, it has enough space for my drums and miscellaneous instruments, all of our stereo equipment and everyone's record/CD collection.

The apartment is in a pretty good neighborhood. That is a hard thing to gauge when looking for apartments in an unfamiliar city. We got lucky. The apartment is less than a 30 minute walk to the Israeli restaurant, several bakeries, a nice looking breakfast restaurant, more than a few Chinese, Thai and Japanese restaurants, Love River and its riverside park, several small parks, Jinshi Lake, what looks like a brand new library, both a jumbo Carrefour and a mini Carrefour, Jasons Market, Costco, a famous night market, the nearest produce market, and Lily's school. If we want to walk for more than 30 minutes, we can get to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Science and Technology Museum, Lianchi Pond, which is three times bigger than Jinshi Lake, despite its name, another famous night market and more produce markets.

The nearest MRT station is 20 minutes away. The Kaohsiung MRT is not nearly as comprehensive as Hong Kong's MTR, but it is better than nothing, and gets Kevin to his job easily. There are only two lines in the entire city. I have to take both to get to my job. It is not especially convenient, but I assume I will find a better alternative sooner or later.

New City

We moved again. By we, I mean Lily, Kevin and me. We were in the Yau Ma Tei apartment for six years. It was a good apartment, definitely better than anything any of us ever had in Hong Kong, but it was time for a change. For several reasons.

Kevin's company relocated out of China. They were talking about it for a long time. Long enough that some of us were starting to think it would never happen. But it eventually did. That left Kevin with the option of moving with his company or staying put and trying to find a new job. That was a big decision that required a few conversations. He probably could have found a comparable job in Hong Kong, but he wanted to keep climbing his ladder rather than start at the bottom somewhere else. As a Canadian in China, he does not have as many options in the corporate world as he would if he were Chinese. He speaks the language, understands the culture and has the legal right to live and work in Hong Kong, but he will never be Chinese.

Lily wanted to stay in China, but she also wanted to support Kevin. Once upon a time, she had a pretty good job in Hong Kong. But then she went back to Canada when her father died. That cost her the job and her work visa. In the eyes of the government, that meant her first day in Hong Kong was when she got her new visa, even though she had already lived there for several years. She kind of got screwed on that deal.

I voted to leave China. Not because of anything Hong Kong ever did or said. She has always been nice to me. I was ready to move because Kevin's company went to Taiwan.

One of life's greatest adventures is moving to another country. I recommend it wholeheartedly. But it is definitely not for everyone. You have to be an open minded person. You have to be curious about other cultures and the crazy shit they do. You have to be ready for change. The single biggest mistake any expat can make is to want the new country to be just like the old country. That's not the way it works. You have to adapt to your new home. It is not going to adapt to you. If you are ready, willing and able, living in a completely different country can be a highly educational and rewarding experience. If you are set in your ways and hate change, moving to a different country will kill you.

Having said that, Taiwan is a similar culture to China, and I already speak the language. So it's not really that much of a change. It is absolutely a different country, but almost like moving from Toronto to Milwaukee.

The biggest difference between moving to China and moving to Taiwan was what I knew about each place ahead of time. I knew pretty much nothing about Hong Kong before I moved there. I knew the basic Chinese to British to Chinese history. I knew they had strange food and their people were different from my people. I knew what most Americans know about China, which is pretty much nothing.

I'm far from an expert on Taiwan, but at least I visited a few times before moving. I understand the culture. Living in China helped a great deal. I can't necessarily explain why the people do things the way they do them, but their ways are familiar to me, and I took some of them as my own years ago. An easy example is that no one around here wears shoes in the house. Where I come from, we wore the same shoes everywhere, even the bedroom and bathroom. When I tell my Chinese friends that, they wonder what is wrong with my backwards culture. I can understand their disgust. No matter where I live in the world from now on, I will never wear shoes indoors again.

The biggest pain in the butt to moving to a different country, other than dragging all your crap from one place to another, is all the paperwork. In Hong Kong, Kevin and I are as close to being citizens as you can get. Legally, no one is actually a citizen of Hong Kong. You are a citizen of whichever country you hold citizenship and you are either a permanent resident or a temporary resident of Hong Kong. Kevin and I are permanent residents, while Lily was a temporary resident. The main difference is what they call the right of abode. Kevin and I can legally live, work and vote in Hong Kong without any visas or threat of deportation. It is also easier to buy property. As a temporary resident, Lily needed a visa to work in Hong Kong and could not vote in elections. The government could also kick her out of the country for any or no reason at any time, though that is rare, unless you blow things up or go on a murder spree. When anyone with the right of abode leaves Hong Kong for three years, their status is automatically changed to the right to land. That means that after three years, Kevin and I will still be able to live and work in Hong Kong without visas, but we will not be able to vote and will not be as eligible for all those free government handouts. We will also lose the option of becoming Chinese citizens, which neither of us were ever going to do since we would have to renounce our Canadian and American citizenship. My country has a lot of problems, systemic and temporary, but a US passport is far more useful than a Chinese passport in most of the world.

To move to Taiwan, we all had to start from scratch. Kevin moved for work, so his company got him a work visa and alien resident card, which is pretty much the same as the Hong Kong Identity Card. He had to sign a piece of paper and other people did everything for him.

I have gotten a few job offers from Taiwan over the years. I always turned them down because I lived in China. That would have been a long commute. But I spent the last year mostly unemployed. As soon as Kevin's company formally announced that Taiwan was happening, I looked at my options. The job I got in Taiwan just might turn out to be a lot better than the unemployment I had in China. With a job, I also got a work visa and alien resident card. The biggest difference with Kevin is that I had to do all the paperwork myself, which was really not all that complicated. I went to the government office, gave them a lot of paperwork and a little bit of money, then went back later to pick up the card. I don't know if it was easy because Taiwan made it easy or if it was easy because I have experience getting work visas in several other countries.

Technically, I taught ballet to little girls for the past two years. But that was always a part time job and not something I would ever put on my resume. I had to say goodbye to my students, but they are young and will get over it far faster than I will. They have probably already forgotten me.

Lily's situation is a little different. She spent the last four years teaching English in China. That makes it sound like she was a teacher, but she worked in a cram school, which is more like babysitting than teaching. Actually learning English was not a priority for the school or parents. The school was there to make as much money as possible. The parents used the school to keep their children occupied until they got home from work. If the children's test scores improved a little, all the better. Lily considered herself a babysitter/tutor.

But she enjoyed working with the children. Taiwan has a similar cram school system, and as a young woman from an English speaking country, she could probably get one of those low paying, part time cram school jobs. She had other ideas.

Lily is now working on a master's degree in early childhood education. As it turns out, Taiwan has two schools where she could do this without really being able to speak much Chinese. One of those schools is 350km from our new apartment. The other is about a kilometer and a half. It was an easy choice.

With a student visa, she cannot legally work in the country. That means Kevin and I will be paying her bills for the next two to three years. Or, more likely, she will eventually find a job and get a work visa so she can work and go to school at the same time. Fortunately, tuition will not be one of those bills. Taiwan invests heavily in education and they love people who want to study education in order to educate future generations. With scholarships from both the university and the government, Lily should not have to pay a dime on classes or books.

Since we are all starting over, we are all foreigners once again. We were always foreigners in China, but at least Kevin and I were de facto citizens. In daily life, that never really made much difference, but when going through the airport, it was terribly convenient. Hong Kong International Airport is known for their long lines, though they move quickly. As “citizens”, we could avoid them completely. At Taoyuan International Airport, we are foreigners in every sense of the word. I have no idea if we will be here long enough to get any perks, which usually takes about seven years. In the meantime, we have to fill out forms, wait in lines and keep our visas up to date. None of us can vote or live here unrestricted. For now.