Life in Taipei

I had a great week with my parents in Taipei. Friday night we went to a concert at a church near my apartment. The violist, Ms. Xu, was educated in America and had taught at the University of Missouri. She was phenomenal, as was the pianist. They played music by Kol Nidrei, Carl Maria von Weber, Rebecca Clarke, Max Bruch, George Enesco, Henryk Wieniawski, and York Bowen. To finish it off, she played an old Jamaican song "Go Mango Walk" as an encore. My mom had learned the words to the song as a little girl.

Saturday we went to the Taipei zoo, which was a lot of fun though tiring. Unfortunately, I lost my camera while there and have to borrow my fathers. This week we also visited the Sun Yat-sen memorial and City Hall. We were struck by how much Sun Yat-sen looks like my grandfather with his handsome features, mustache, and fine clothes.

We got an opportunity to try some of the foreign food near my apartment including a less-then-stellar Mexican restaurant, a very good Pakistani restaurant, and an incredible Russian restaurant. A Thai food restaurant a short bus ride away was so good we went back a second time and chatted with the owner, who moved to Taiwan from Burma and loves swimming in the rough waters along Taiwan's northern coast.

One of the highlights of the week was getting to have dinner with my parents and my former TA from Yale. Lu Yuching, who just graduated from Yale's School of Forestry grew up in Taipei and went to Taiwan University for her undergraduate education. We went to a famous dumpling house named Din Tai Feng.

I love my new neighborhood. I'm right across the street from the university in a building whose tenants are also students, mostly Malaysian students my age though there is one student from Hong Kong and one fifty-something year old Taiwanese undergraduate named Mr. Qiu. Mr. Qiu and a heavyset Malaysian student named "Fat Cat" were the first two people I met when I moved in. They were very friendly and showed me around the neighborhood. Both of them have strong interests in history, China-Taiwan-America relations, and Tang poetry. Mr. Qiu has been teaching me some Lao Zi and Tang poetry. Two of the other guys in the building study animal science. Two more students study at universities outside of Taiwan University - one studies finance and the other one studies photography. I might do some traveling with the photography major and his friends before classes start.

Not only is my apartment a short walk from campus and Ta-an forest park, it also near a small park which is home to a Taoist shrine (Fat Cat calls the black faced deity the spiritual landlord of the neighborhood), a courtyard, a playground, and some excercise equipment.