Days 3 & 4: Winston, Angela and the Modern Toilet

I should’ve known from the moment I boarded the plane at Hong Kong Airport that my presence in Taiwan was not going to be swallowed easily. Upon seeing me – apparently the sole Westerner on CX546, and a big one at that – the lovely flight attendant let out a ‘Hello, Sir!’ that was at least an octave higher than her Mandarin greetings.

A late-middle aged couple took the seats next to me and I smiled at the lady. People usually assume I won’t want to say hello to them when they sit next to me on a plane, so they avoid eye contact as long as they can, as this lady did. But I stared her down and gave her a warm ‘hello’. She said ‘hello’ back and laughed the laugh that says ‘I’ve got nothing else to say to you.’ But she scraped together a thoughtful ‘you happy?’ which I mulled over as if she’d asked ‘Are you happy, truly happy, with the direction your life is taking?’ when really she just meant ‘how are you?’ (The literal translation of the Mandarin greeting ‘ni hao’ is, apparently, ‘you good?’ The gulf between goodness and happiness is lost in translation.)

The baggage claim at Taiwan Airport revealed to me just how much of a fish out of water I had become. Not only did it appear that I was the only Westerner on my flight, but that I was the only Westerner in the entire airport. Having only ever travelled to foreign countries with fellow Westerners, this was an entirely new experience for me. I felt an enormous sense of responsibility to represent the whole of Western society in the best possible way, desperate to employ the tiny gaggle of Mandarin phrases I had managed to commit to memory.

Of course, not one customs official, queue wrangler or bus ticket seller would dare address me in Mandarin. Not ol’ Whitey McWest. My pathetic hsieh hsiehs (thankyous) were met with baffled indifference. I eventually managed to purchase a bus ticket into Taipei and made it to my hotel without getting even slightly lost.

I was thrilled to find that the Dandy Hotel Tianjin is a stylish, thoughtfully designed and decorated place, with fantastic desk staff who, despite my months of practising for check-in, speak in mostly unbroken English.

After settling in, I gave another TravBuddy friend, Winston, a call and he popped around, quick as a flash. A Taipei local his whole life, Winston had agreed to show me around Taipei and join me for a few meals and maybe a daytrip down the coast. We hit it off immediately; this is one kooky character. With thick, rectangular black-rimmed glasses, neckphones and hoodie (featuring a cartoon version of no less than Che Guevara) I pinned him immediately as the quintessential Taiwanese hipster, but a few hours rid me of my preconceptions.

Darting around the streets of Taipei like a famished, coke-addled Sherlock Holmes, stopping suddenly every twenty metres to speed-read another menu, then tripping over his own feet ten metres later, he was a man possessed by the need to find good dinner. When we passed McDonald’s he told me that at 10 o’clock he would have to stop in and get French fries. When I asked him why, he explained that it’s just what he does at ten o’clock. Okay.

We finally decided on a well-known and –regarded restaurant named Hawji (which apparently translates as something like ‘good place’) and selected a few small dishes to share: a delicious omelette; bamboo shoots and minced pork in a Szechuan sauce; sliced Chinese sausage eaten with slices of raw garlic; prawn wonton noodle soup; and steamer (small) clams in a sweet and sour sauce. All were delicious except the clams, which were more salty than sour, and too sweet. We washed it down with some local beers, which were both good, but made Winston quite drunk.

On the walk home, we passed the McDonald’s and I asked Winston if he wanted to go in for his fries. He said, ‘You crazy? It’s nine thirty!’ then went home to his parents in Keelung, north of Taipei. He spends a lot of time deriding them as ‘unbelievable boring’ but seems unable or unwilling to work enough to become independent.

Sunday started with breakfast at the Dandy Hotel’s buffet: a bizarre spread for a Westerner to be faced with, including daintily arranged plates of pasta salad, coleslaw and potato salad, small bowls of daikon topped with tuna and fish roe, along with bain maries of fried rice, soft, streaky bacon, and what looked like custard but was labelled ‘eggs’, completely smooth and glossy. To my delight, when I cut into the eggs, I found slivers of rice paper (?) embossed with pictures of bright pink flowers. It was a bit like finding the dollar in the Christmas pudding.

I spent the morning hunting down some CD stores Winston had recommended to me, never abandoning my search for rare and valuable soundtracks. Unfortunately, the directions he gave me were a little off, but I did manage to find a couple of okay CD stores. Wandering the streets of Taipei alone, I felt quite stared-at. Indeed, in the course of the day, I could have counted on one hand the number of Westerners I saw and on one finger the number of 6’5” Westerners (including the one in the mirror).

Frustrated by my search for the perfect obscure soundtrack, I took refuge for the first time in my life in a Starbucks. Even before I could say ni hao, the lady at the counter had her English on. Hrmph. I ordered the smallest coffee available, which apparently is called ‘tall’.

After sitting a few moments to catch my breath, I heard a sweet, sheepish ‘hello’ from the next table and looked up to see the smiling face of a young local woman, nursing a couple of shopping bags but, strangely, no coffee. She seemed keen to try out her limited English and I was all too happy to finally be able to try out some of my Mandarin. Through the course of our stilted, comical conversation, I learned that her name was Angela, that she was a Mormon, a former nurse and currently a fashion model. She showed me a picture of a woman on the front cover of Elle magazine and convinced me it was her. It was refreshing to hear her speak of how beautiful she felt she was.

I told her I was from Melbourne and she remarked on the coincidence that she wanted to move to Melbourne. It soon emerged that she had recently broken up with her boyfriend (also her English teacher) and was looking for a husband. Her sister, six years her junior, had already married and had a baby on the way. It also emerged that she had no interest in Asian men because all Asian men between the ages of 18 and 38 were like children. She wanted to be a ‘boss’ while her boyfriend had wanted to keep her at home, or at least in a low-paying job. I realised she might be what Winston had warned me about: a white-hunter.

It wasn’t long before I got up the nerve to say, ‘Jee dien?’ (‘What’s the time?’) because I had arranged to meet Winston at a park some distance away. We got a photo together before we parted and that was as married as I will ever get to Angela.

Winston took me to see a couple of very crowded Sunday markets, but there was nothing there I was interested to buy: mostly wooden or jade trinkets, bad paintings, and faux-leather wallets. Still, they appeared not to be tourist traps as, if there were any tourists, I did not see them. We lunched at a divey little place in a side street that served me up a very satisfying plate of fried rice, perfectly textured and flavoured, and a drink of iced jasmine tea. The chef came out from the kitchen, apparently just to ask me where I was from. He told me (through Winston) that he was from Hong Kong and I explained I had just been there. A few moments later, the waitress brought along a big bowl of hot carrot and radish broth. Apparently, I had said the right things.

Reinvigorated, we set off to find the CD stores Winston had told me about. On the bus, a woman couldn’t help laughing at me. She explained to Winston that she wished she could have 15 centimetres of my height. I tried to gesture that she could have them if she wanted them, and I think it worked. Suddenly I was feeling more welcome and at home, even if I was only being appreciated for my freak value.

We spent about two hours looking at CD stores and I bought a couple much more cheaply than I could’ve at home. We went to look for somewhere to have dinner.

Winston knew that I was interested to go to a restaurant I had seen photos of called Modern Toilet and he saw that the time was right to take me there. It’s hard to explain the feeling of seeing in real life something you’ve only ever seen in a viral email. Those things usually seem so far removed from reality, but I can assure you that this place is all too real and, even though toilet humour is really not my thing, I had to see what all the fuss was about.

Perhaps the most disarming thing about the place is the nonchalance with which the waitresses slide onto your table a Thai coconut curry served in a miniature toilet bowl and cistern as if it were the most normal thing in the world. My favourite parts of the meal were my drink, cumquat and lemon juice served in a miniature black urinal, and my visit to the actual toilet where I found it difficult to shake the feeling that I might be damaging a piece of furniture or crockery.

Finally, Winston and I went to Taipei train station to sort out tickets for a daytrip to Hualien in the south, near which lies the apparently beautiful Taroko Gorge. At the station, we stopped to look at a small gallery of photos documenting Taiwan’s steam trains in the 60s and 70s. A number of people had stopped to look and admire the excellent monochrome images, one man even remarking to me as I took a photo, ‘It’s beautiful,’ his sincerity and genuine respect for this aspect of his country’s history genuinely touching. It occurred to me that something similar in Melbourne would most likely be either ignored or vandalised. It certainly said something about the pride taken by the Taiwanese in their surroundings. (This pride also evinced by the potted plants dotted around the city, especially near construction work, and the paintings of flowers on otherwise ugly fixtures and columns.)

For Winston, the train station seemed to offer genuine solace, mostly because he is fascinated by train timetables. He carries around with him two large green books filled with the things. After noticing some other peculiar behaviours, such as his careful arrangement of dinner items on the table and his open confrontation of drivers who dare to stop across the thick white line at a pedestrian crossing, I asked him if he knew about OCD. He said he didn’t but admitted he was a control freak. He wasn’t offended when I concurred; at least I don’t think he was.

After nearly 22,000 steps on my pedometer for the day (about 10 miles), I retired to my Dandy room and slept like a baby.

See next post for more photos.