From the annals of absurdity: The Cape No. 7 Tour

When the movie Titanic came out in 1997, throngs of teenage (and adult) girls flocked to theaters to watch the ill-fated romance of Jack and Rose. To call it fanaticism would be an understatement. When I finally saw it 2 or 3 months after its release, the theater was so crowded I ended up sitting in the aisle surrounded by sobbing adolescents who recited every line with the movie. It was impossible to go anywhere (even to sleep) without hearing Celine Dion's biggest hit ever, "My Heart Will Go On." I never thought I'd witness anything like Titanic-mania again.

11 years later, however, I find myself in the midst of another pop culture phenomenon: Cape No. 7, the total body experience. Cape No. 7 is a Taiwanese movie that combines the three things Taiwanese people love most: love stories, pop music, and discussions of national identity. The plot involves two story lines--one between a Japanese man and a Taiwanese woman at the end of the Japanese colonization period, and a present-day love story between a Taiwanese postman and a Japanese concert organizer. Both take place in Hengchun Township, a provincial, beachy area at the southermost part of the island.

The local response to this movie has been nothing short of fanaticism. I have co-workers who have seen it at least four times. Earlier this year, the local news reported that the Hengchun County Post Office received thousands of love letters from movie fans sent to the fabled address, Cape No. 7. Discussing the movie is the equivalent of talking about food or the weather. Everyone likes it, no one argues, we all save face and go home happy. Singing either of the hit songs from the movie (if you're a foreigner, that is) is a guaranteed, no-fail recipe for making Taiwanese friends, especially if you sing it at a KTV (that's Karaoke TV, pan- Asia's favorite weekend hangout.)

Recipe for instant friendship with the southern Taiwanese population

Hengchun Township has tried (successfully) to capitalize on Cape No. 7 Fantacism by putting together a Cape No. 7 Tour, where crazed Taiwanese people of all ages drive around Hengchun taking photos at all the sites where the movie was filmed. Hengchun looks exactly like any other provincial area of Taiwan, except with a nicer beach. Just like everywhere else that's not Taipei or Kaohsiung, there are weather-worn houses, stray dogs, lots of scooters and the faint-but-ubiquitous stench of fish. Yet, in spite of its ordinariness, people flocked to Hengchun to take photos of themselves at what appear to be the most mundane sites on the island including but not limited to 7/11, a random house where the main character lived or a shabby old alley. All the postmen trying to deliver mail got mobbed by tourists demanding to get a photo with themselves and a real Hengchun postman.

The following slideshow is from my fellow Fulbrighter Billy and I's trip to Hengchun with his host family and a few of my co-workers. Do you see the mobs of teenagers? Do you understand why they're so excited? Do you see why I'm confused?

Normalcy

I accompanied my 70-year-old host parents to a luncheon celebrating the 90th birthday of their priest hoping something absurd would happen, like the birthday celebration actually turning into a secret Jews for Jesus concert. Instead, I got nothing.  No exorcisms, no conspiracy theories, not even weird outfits old people think they can get away with wearing but actually can't.  NOTHING.

It just goes to show that you never get exactly what you wish for.  Except for the fact that they just repeat "Happy birthday to you" over and over again instead of singing the "Happy birthday dear ___" line, there was nothing strange about the music.  I chatted with an American man named Father Chuck from California, and another man told me about his days at MIT.  Nothing extraordinary came out of these conversations.  

Even the food was normal--no pigs feet, no animal intestines, no coagulated pigs blood.  The only thing slightly weird was this green bean-filled rice bun shaped and dyed to look like a peach, and even then, food made to look like other foods is not uncommon (ex: veggie burgers, swedish fish).

How disappointing!

Tchoukball Fans... GET READY!

Taiwan  in 2009 is the place to be for sports fans who happen to follow athletic activities nobody else cares much about.  Last year, Beijing had the Olympics.  This year, Taipei will host the 2009 Deaflympics (something about that name seems like it should be offensive even though it's not) and Kaohsiung, my current home, will host the 2009 World Games.   

"What do you mean by 'athletic activities nobody else cares much about?'" you may be asking.  Please raise your hand if you've heard of the following sports:

-Competitive Tug-of-War

-Tchoukball

-Korfball

-Fin Swimming

-Canoe Polo

More ridiculous than the event itself is the city of Kaohsiung's attempts to build hype around a generally lackluster competition.   For starters, each elementary school must play host* to one competing country and we're supposed to teach our students about the guest country.  Maybe that's easy for my roommate Dan, whose school will host the USA.  My school will host Uzbekistan.  If I were to teach a lesson on Uzbekistan (which I won't because we barely have enough time to finish our curriculum) it would go something like this:

Me: Good morning class

Students: Good morning Teacher Vicky!

Me: Today we are going to learn about Uzbekistan.  Can you say UZ-BEK-I-STAN?

Students: UZ-BEK-I-STAN (repeat)!

Me: Very good!  Now, Uzbekistan is a very important country for illegal trade.  Does anyone know how to say illegal in Chinese?  (student answers) Very good!  Now, who knows how to say "guns and drugs" in Chinese?  (student answers).  Excellent! Uzbekistan is famous for selling illegal guns and drugs....

Then there is the theme song, as shown in the following music video.

I'm surprised I haven't memorized the words yet because it plays non-stop during commercial breaks, AND schools all around the city have to learn dances to the song.

Which brings me to my observation of the day: Some fellow ETAs and I were walking through the Cultural Center (the big park near my apartment) tonight when we saw a group of about 30 or 40 elementary school students performing a dance to the theme song. Most of them were dressed in normal clothes, but there were 3 randomly placed students wearing full animal costumes (dragon, unicorn, and lion).

And I thought I'd seen everything....

*I don't totally understand what "playing host" really means, but everyone I've asked makes it sound like they'll be using our schools as locker rooms.  This seems strange because the desks come up to MY knees and I'm only 5'2, yet most of the World Games athletes I've seen around here are comically tall.

Count Your Blessings

It's already Tuesday, but I've still got a "case of the Mondays." I guess it's kind of like a hangover without the liver damage. After my month -long winter break during which I promised myself to make the most of this final semester in Taiwan, I find myself sliding back into my old habits and attitudes; it seems that the good will and positive thinking built up over a month of seeing old friends, travel and meditation depletes itself pretty quickly.

I know that giving thanks is usually an activity reserved for Thanksgiving, but it seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the little things that bring me joy out here.

1. The Internet: thank you for bringing me Skype, GChat, the online graduate school application and The New Yorker.

2. My roommates: Good company goes a long way, and luckily for me, good company is never far away.

3. Emails from Paul: "so i spent valentines day [at my sister's college] with my mom; it was nice to know you are never too gay to be oedipal."

4. Employment: the only thing worse than being employed is being unemployed. Truth.

5. Coworkers who send me photos like this:

Taiwan: Touch Your....

Today an old woman walked up to me as I was waiting for the bus to work.  She said something to me in Taiwanese, and I looked at her quizically.  Then she reached out and touched my chest, one breast at a time.

Then she laughed, got on the next bus, and rode away.

Cute or Cruel?

The best thing I've purchased all year...

Apple Bottom Jeanzzzzzz

At the night market near my apartment, something hideously fur-lined (including but not limited to BOOTS!) lurks around every corner.

When I return to the US, my suitcase will be full of poached stuffed animalz.

Photos to come. That's a guarantee!

Addendum

Also found at Kansai International Airport (thank you, Ben Isaac!):

Vibrators

Look carefully at the corner of that shelf

Crunky

Jesse Ventura + Adolf Hitler

**ok, he was actually seen in Switzerland. But imagine if these things came together in the Osaka airport...

"Pump Up The Volume" from Jock Jams would make like an appropriate soundtrack choice.

Lost in Trasit

In the airport terminal, you're neither here nor there, held in some in-between land designed to disorient. Osaka, Japan's Kansai International Airport feels like a space station. All things within its curved ceilings come perfectly illuminated and uniformly cast in colored plastic.



The facility also contains many mini things like tiny hand dryers (for this small-handed nation) and astronaut-appropriate food sources.




On the Sunday afternoon after Thanksgiving, I stopped in the Detroit International Airport, where I have spent every Sunday after Thanksgiving for the past four years. The experience never changes from year to year--the same trilingual announcements (English, Japanese, Chinese), the same lazy people taking the tram to their departure gates, the same IN-HOUSE TIME WARP!



Except this year, my layover lasted for 3.5 hours, giving me enough time to walk past all 128 gates twice and buy $30 worth of American magazines, which seems extremely decadent when you realize that's about 1000 NTD. Esquire Magazine, I hope you're worth it.

Guess Where I Went Today?

What is this? Where did I find it? Answers to come when I'm not so exhausted...

QiGong--Keeping us 22 years-old Forever

Ok, I know that Power Rangers in Space doesn't have anything to do with QiGong, a traditional Chinese spiritual practice, but I simply can't find anything that sufficiently captures my experience at QiGong class today.

We (my flatmates, another ETA Gered, and I) were invited to the class by a local friend's mother who promised that the practice would preserve us at whatever age we were when we started the practice. We were also told that it would hurt a lot but not actually be strenuous. The woman warned us against eating anything before going to QiGong class. She also claimed that when we left class, we would be so full of qi (roughly translated as spiritual energy) that we wouldn't need to eat. These promises seemed somewhat far-fetched, but we were curious about a practice that wasn't strenuous but extremely painful. Also, the promise of staying 22 for eternity was too good to pass up...

Due to the language barrier between us and Jane (the woman who invited us), it was never completely clear what exactly QiGong was before we showed up at the class. Nor did we know what would be appropriate attire or where the class was. All we knew was that someone (presumably Jane) would pick us up outside the Family Mart at 6:50 pm.

So we showed up outside Family Mart and Dani called Jane to ask what we should do next. All of the sudden, a man none of us have seen before ran up to Dan and excited yelled "Daniel! Daniel!" while stretching his arms towards the sky and lowering them several times (Dan later said, "I don't know why I nodded and said "Yes! Yes!" when this strange man ran up to me yelling my name, but I'm glad it happened). The man opened the door of a black SUV and we piled in--6 of us for 4 seats. Somehow I ended up stretched across Dan and Gered's laps--and I definitely didn't ask if it was ok first--while Katie perched on Dani's lap. We bumped along for several blocks until we pulled up in front of a community center hidden behind a fruit stand.

As it turns out, QiGong class is sort of like yoga class, except with a few key differences. Most notably, most yoga studios have a gentle, quiet atmosphere with soft lighting and warm-colored wood floors. The QiGong class definitely took place in a room that made me feel like I was being dissected for science class. There was bright fluorescent lighting, made more intense by the shiny white-tiled floors and stark white walls. We also did our exercises on shiny silver mats that looked like spacesuit material (hence the Power Ranger video).

Our instructor was also not like any of the yoga instructors I've had in the past. My previous yoga teachers have all been female, spoken in soft voices and emphasized that we should challenge ourselves but know our limits. "Do what you can," "feel your arms stretching towards the sky. Breathe deeply, let go of your troubles," or "feel your inner beauty" they always say. This instructor was a 45 year-old guy who liked to show off how young he was by doing crazy headstands and the splits and getting the older members of the group to do crazy QiGong stunts like headstands and the splits. He barked his instructions ("Lift your leg into the air! Now the left one!) and kept coming by to tell me that if I did this or that pose, I would be prettier. He told one of my flatmates that her body was unhealthy but QiGong would fix it. He also didn't seem to believe in limits--Dan was having trouble laying flat on the ground with his legs bent, knees together and heels pressed against his thighs. The instructor kept telling him to "RELAX!" and Dan kept saying, "I am relaxed, but I'm also in excruciating pain. I don't think I can do this" and the instructor kept pushing. It was a strange 2 hours indeed.

In spite of the fact that the class was strange and at times ridiculous, I would highly recommend it. I felt great when I walked out, and it's true that there were some young, fit-looking 58 year olds in the room who could do cool things like balance on their heads while holding their legs in the air in a perfect straddle. I'm really looking forward to being 22 for the rest of my life!