taiwan tiger 台灣的老虎: One Down, a Lifetime to Go

a world of bloggers

The View from Taiwan (台中 TW)
great source of information for academia and general life in Taiwan
Eating China 中國食跡 (TW)
Eating China or eating Taiwan? Whichever, a lot of information about the always fascinating world of food in Taiwan.
Writer's Block (高雄 TW)
Another Kaohsiung blogger.
frogfree.com (TW)
A well-designed site that has many photographs of climbs throughout the mountains of central Taiwan
Psychopompous 夜鷹瘋鳥 (TW)
Bitterkat (WA,US)
She=Used to be in Kaohsiung. Now in Seattle. Me =Used to be in Seattle. Now in Kaohsiung. Go figure.
Greg Veen (CA, US)
Confessions of a Grade School Role Model (JPN)
Picturesque Kant (WA, US)
Culture and Theory
Yan's Glutter (HK)
Glutter is a Mixture of Glitter and Gutter. What better way to describe my home city?
l'atlelier d'anais (US)
blog and some great artwork
Yank Free (TX, US)
taiwanese american in TX
Life of Brian (TW)
observations (often about the web) from Taiwan
Sketchblog
cool little sketches adorn
Shenzhen Zen (PRC)
blog from China, often quite funny

second city specifics

The Lowdown in K-Town
BB format listing, including some charming homemade maps to things you need
Access Kaohsiung Community Services
Local information in English! Why did it take me 2 1/2 years to find this?!!
Central Weather Bureau Web Site
weather, typhoon tracking, maritime conditions, and earthquake reporting, all in English
taiwanfun: South magazine
semi-useful site, but ad-supported, so tends to hype up mediocrity
kaohsiung living
extremely useful usergroup for any and all information. Due to number of posts, digest format is highly recommended. Beware of administrator's somewhat dubious agenda.
Need Editing or Translation?

2004/8/28

One Down, a Lifetime to Go

Yesterday I completed my first year of Chinese study here in Taiwan. About 600 hours of class time. Whoa. That sounds like a lot. Chinese is a strange language at times in that, for speaking, it is designed for peasants, but for writing and reading, it is designed for scholars. I find myself somewhere in the middle, I guess. You can study Chinese for a lifetime, I imagine. My thoughts are: I really love learning and speaking Chinese. I have gone from basically nothing to be able to get around proficiently and have conversations about real things--life, death, religion, politics, and the lot. A lot of credit for this improvement goes to my wonderful instructors at NSYSU and my many friends here in Kaohsiung. So it is time to change the byline of my blog. I am staying on here. There are just so many things I like about Taiwan, Asia, my life here, that leaving after a year of study just isn't going to sit well with me. The culture here is terribly important to that decision as well. It isn't just about language, of course. I just haven't satisfied myself with my understanding of Taiwanese/Chinese culture. Like all good things, more time must be spent with this. 台灣的老虎加油！

2004/8/28 | Permalink

Comments

I hope you had a fun year. Good luck with your next segment in life!

Posted by: FrankLin | 2004/8/31 at 下午 1:48

May I ask whether you had any Chinese background before studying in Taiwan? I'd like to learn Chinese, but I've got a backgroud in Japanese (and German, Spanish).

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Cheers to completing your first year in Tw!

Posted by: tom | 2004/9/8 at 上午 4:01

你好老虎先生 *roar*
我喜歡你的像片
恭喜你中文進步

哈哈!

Posted by: mungbean | 2004/9/11 at 下午 1:34

Thanks for the support, everyone. I am continuing on here in Chinese.

I didn't speak at all before I came here, but I think it's quite possible to be conversational within a year, though with limited vocabulary. New vocabulary is much easier than English, though, since Chinese borrows many portions of words internally.

Posted by: tiger | 2004/9/11 at 下午 3:57

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psst!!

Kin Men 金門 July 2006
Anti-Secession Law
This blog stands against the fictitious law passed in March 2005 by the P.R.C. proposing that unification is Taiwan's legal and moral duty, even to the point of the P.R.C. using force to uphold that fiction. TaiwanTiger ascribes to the statement of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council that:
"The Republic of China is an independent and sovereign nation and its sovereignty rests in the hands of the twenty-three million Taiwanese people. Only the twenty-three million Taiwanese people have the right to make the final decision on any change to the nation's status and future."
Taiwanese Food
This gallery is gaining a life of its own. Check out the good eats!

4 月 2010

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Taiwanese Food

So, this seems kind of crazy, but hey we all love to eat, right? In Taiwan, it's considered a hobby. When you go on a trip, you need to stop at such and such town for their great ______. Noodles, shrimp rolls, chicken thighs, soup, whatever. Everyplace seems famous for some addition to the Taiwanese culinary tradition. So here I am attempting to document some of the traditions of eating, the places to go, and the food itself. This will be a difficult and slow moving project, because I feel really strange photographing food in the presence of other diners, especially when I have to stand on a chair to get it all in.
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