New Year’s Eve in Taiwan

                The last day of the year marked our first day of class at Tamkang University. Since there are three of us who have had 0 experience in Chinese, we were placed in a level one class, with a couple days crash course in pinyin, which is their mandarin phonetic system. With about two and a half hours of going over the Hanyu Pinyin, Mandarin phonetic symbols and some useful phrases, our first class ended. I did not realize how layered the language was, and it was kind of difficult for me to pronounce a lot because I’m used to a more level volume of speaking. There are four main intonations in the language that helps differentiate words and meanings. I also keep mixing it up with the intonations that I know from Vietnamese. We also had a two hour calligraphy class, which was pretty interesting. The best way to do it was to have a strong stroke—I had too slight of a hand that made rash, uneven strokes, but we managed to create some New Years banners. 

We ended 2013 at Taipei101 to watch the four minute fireworks display that shoots out of the tower. (Picture below.) The insane amount of people to see was just as bad if not worse than watching the fireworks in D.C. I still cannot believe that $2million is spent on putting on [kind of short] display. 

The first day of the New Year, we went to see the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial and the National Museum of History where we got to see a lot of pieces of arts throughout the history and the changing of guards. It was nice having Elaine, Vina and Travis come along to show us around as well. Talking to Elaine and Vina was a fun experience because we got a chance to talk to them. They had a chance to ask us about any United States specific topics, most in particular our colloquial languages and pop culture. They would ask us what phrases were in right now, and I taught them “Hot Mess” and “Ratchet.” They talked about their school schedule and it was interesting to see the differences in our calendars. We asked them how they felt about the reunification. They discussed the pros and cons about it. The main pro they talked about was the economic benefit that both countries would receive. By pooling the amount of resources that the two countries have, it would result in greater trade and increase the country’s’ GDP. The main con they discussed was the clashing of each respective country’s political culture—with Taiwan being democratic and China still under a communist regime. Overall it was an ambivalent feeling towards reunification.

Another interesting fact I had learned about them was the emphasis on different holidays. Though there are a lot of Christmas/ holiday related decorations around the city and campus, on the day of Christmas it is not widely celebrated. They do not really get a break or any kind of holiday. Their main winter break is in February, staring with the Lunar New Year (from my understanding.) Vina also said if she went to the United States she would love to go during Halloween to see what all the fuss is about. 

In the next few days, we are finishing up our pinyin crash course and moving on to the level one course, which I am not really at all prepared for. Trying to learn how to write traditional Chinese and learn more phrases in the second class was overwhelming. Right now my main focus is trying to fix my pronunciation because it is terrible right now.