Use of Mandarin: Success!!

Today my roommate and her friends met us for lunch. I had spicy dumpling soup, it was huge bowl. It was so spice my nose started to run and I coughed a few times (it was sooo good though). I had a sweet tea with it called Mai cha (cha being tea). Jordan and Kaitlin had noodles, those looked good too. After that we got some milk tea and took the bus… That was an adventure, it was a lot bumpier and rougher ride than the MRT. 

We took the MRT to Longshan Temple. It was beautiful. I did make my first cultural mistake here T_T. It was very crowded because its Ghost month and besides that Longshansi is very famous. I was trying to keep up and was  a little overwhelmed trying to see was going on. At the door way (not the gate, the first door) you’re supposed to jump over the step for good luck and to let the gods know that you’ve arrived… I stepped on the edge of the step… ><. It was corrected at the end when we came back through and I made a good on it.

We had a handful of sticks of incense that we lit and went around to all the local deities in the temple. You bow three time with the incense and say a prayer, and repeat if necessary. Then you take one of your sticks of incense and throw it into a big pot near the shrine area and repeat for each deity. It was hot and there was a lot of smoke, because it was so crowded with people making offerings. I held the incense up like one of my roommate’s friends told me too. I was so afraid of burning someone with the ash from the incense I ended up burning myself a few times as we went around the whole temple. It was pretty intense.

Then Kaitlin and I threw two red moon shaped stones three times to get a red thread (lol). For those that don’t know its like the red thread of fate in Japan. You tie the red thread around her wrist, finger or bag and its supposed to aide you in finding love. Same thing in Taiwan, the stones were in front of the deity in charge of love. My thread is in my bag, Kaitlin tied hers around her wrist XD. After that we drank an herbal tea that was supposed to be for health and said to be good for staying cool. It was 89 degrees with 60% humidity today… so it felt more like 98 according to weather.com and I believe it. The tea tasted different, you could really taste the grassy/dirt flavor of the herbs and a bit of mint I think.

After that we went to Ximen, a popular shopping district. It had a big movie theatre and a lot of stores. We went into one called Uniqlo, it’s a store from Japan. Jordan was excited it to see, he shopped at the store in Japan before he arrived in Taiwan. It sold a lot of flannel shirts and jeans and jackets and vests, that sort of style. There was a really cute pair of shoes, but they were around the equivalent of $70 US dollars, I don’t have that kind of money to spend on clothes right now, not with gifts to buy, music I want to get and not to mention school books. Which clothes and shoes cost that much in brand name stores in the US, but yeah… I’m watching my budget.

Having to explain that was different. A lot of things are cheaper than in the US and by a lot, but brand name clothes and especially imports from like America and Japan and other places are still expensive and I’m still a struggling college student and like I said I have other priorities. I would rather buy a few CD’s for less money and maybe a movie or a book.

We stumbled upon a free concert while we were there. The singer’s name was Yen-J. He’s pretty famous and popular in Taiwan. A few of the students I know that weren’t with us, said we were lucky to have just happen upon him singing. He had a nice voice.

 

 

We also watched a street performance. He rapped about people in the crowd, it was really good and entertaining. I could understand some of the first one, talking a guy with pants too tight (kuzi) and a few random words. The last one was really fast, I couldn’t catch a word of it other than the few mentions of CD and EP. My roommate was wonderful and did some translating for us. He was talking about how he had been doing this for seven years (wow!) and was trying to get into music it sounded like, oh and he had a facebook (lol). He was pretty talented I think.

After that we went to the Ximen Red House, it’s the oldest building around. The first floor was like a museum with displays of the building over time and the upper levels were like art and crafty type stuff. Super interesting.

 

Then it was time to go home to Jingmei, we went through the night market to get food. I tried another sort of milk tea instead of using black tea (hongzi cha) it was a different kind. Dinner was a sort of omelet with like a deep fried breading of a sort on the outside (reminded me of an elephant ear in looks without the cinnamon and sugar) and was egg and scallion and lettuce inside, it was very good.

I was able to use lots mandarin today, I even remembered to say bu hao yisi. Kaitlin and I were going through shang (up) and xia (down) on the escalators in Uniqlo with some of the native students we were with. I asked where things were and tried new words. I got complimented on my Chinese and that meant a lot. I can’t wait to keep learning more!