There's a point (well, really a stretch) on the Piccadilly Line going South in which it is impossible to tell who is coming or going.
If you take the train bound for "Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3, & 4," you'll eventually reach all of them, but not before stopping at Terminal 4 for "up to 8 minutes." It is between terminal 4 & the stop leading to the rest that your existence as a traveler becomes entirely indeterminate (whether coming or going, no one is without baggage).
A woman asked me, "Been anywhere exciting?" (She'd been to a peace conference in Jordan.) I responded, "I'm going somewhere exciting, hopefully."
Though in my haste to respond I chose the obvious, I could have answered anything. If I were willing to give up the pretense of having more important things to do, I think that I'd be inclined to inhabit this apparent anomaly, and perhaps spin a few tales. I'd be neither coming, nor going, but could pretend all the same.
Is this stretch of ten minutes or so along the tracks not a dramatization of our everyday existence?
So much about public transport seems to be just that.
21 December 2009
11 December 2009
When you alight
I must admit, my loyalties are conflicted. I came here to teach English (and not just any English, but the Queen’s own English, since our textbooks insist on such civilized phrasings as “If you become ill, you should go to hospital”), yet I adore the fractured and accidentally poetic dialect already in place. Taiwanese English in general inspires great affection in me, but I have an especially soft spot for MRT English.
At each station, a recorded female voice cautions us, “When you alight, please mind the gap between the train and the platform.” It’s grammatically correct, but it transforms us all effortlessly into little birds in someone’s seventeenth-century sonnet.*
[ * or picaresque novel: Don Quixote, part I, book 4: ‘Here comes a fair troop of guests, and if they will here alight we may sing Gaudeamus.’]
Those of us on the platform, moreover, are requested to allow passengers to alight before boarding the train, and this request is invariably honored. Taipei residents, when not driving, must be the most considerate people in the world. Everyone lines up v. properly to board or disembark (alight) from the trains, and then lines up v. properly to ride the escalator. (Beware, Great Britain — you’re about to be usurped as the monarchs of queuing!)
Inside the train are v. few seats, which are intended for “elderly, infirm, or passengers with baby” [N.B.: the baby may be either inside or outside the womb]. The reminder of this fact reads: “Let each and every seat be priority seat.” It struck me as a beautiful phrase, somehow, like the proclamation of peace after a war over blue plastic territory, and I could imagine the author of that sentence proudly recalling the phrase ‘each and every’ from his or her English class several years before.
P.S. Some of my favorite instances of Chinglish ( = Chinese + English) are those which have an unintentional but amusing compounded significance. At Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall yesterday, we saw a little dispenser of hand sanitizer labeled HANDY WASHER. Little handies, v. handy indeed, and in Germany it would mean a place to wash your cell phone. ;-)
At each station, a recorded female voice cautions us, “When you alight, please mind the gap between the train and the platform.” It’s grammatically correct, but it transforms us all effortlessly into little birds in someone’s seventeenth-century sonnet.*
[ * or picaresque novel: Don Quixote, part I, book 4: ‘Here comes a fair troop of guests, and if they will here alight we may sing Gaudeamus.’]
Those of us on the platform, moreover, are requested to allow passengers to alight before boarding the train, and this request is invariably honored. Taipei residents, when not driving, must be the most considerate people in the world. Everyone lines up v. properly to board or disembark (alight) from the trains, and then lines up v. properly to ride the escalator. (Beware, Great Britain — you’re about to be usurped as the monarchs of queuing!)
Inside the train are v. few seats, which are intended for “elderly, infirm, or passengers with baby” [N.B.: the baby may be either inside or outside the womb]. The reminder of this fact reads: “Let each and every seat be priority seat.” It struck me as a beautiful phrase, somehow, like the proclamation of peace after a war over blue plastic territory, and I could imagine the author of that sentence proudly recalling the phrase ‘each and every’ from his or her English class several years before.
P.S. Some of my favorite instances of Chinglish ( = Chinese + English) are those which have an unintentional but amusing compounded significance. At Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall yesterday, we saw a little dispenser of hand sanitizer labeled HANDY WASHER. Little handies, v. handy indeed, and in Germany it would mean a place to wash your cell phone. ;-)
10 December 2009
New affection and noise
Taiwan is absolutely full of stuff:
On my first or second full day in Taipei, I went to Longshan Temple, the oldest and one of the most sacred Buddhist temples in the city. I arrived just as the evening service was beginning — a v. beautiful affair with incense and chanting and gorgeously intricate shrines. It was v. crowded, so I was trying to stand somewhere unobtrusive, admiring but not really understanding what I was watching. After ten seconds, maybe, there was a tap on my shoulder and a girl my age-ish said, “Please, may I introduce you to this?” She started telling me the history of the temple and explaining the ceremony — the tables full of food were offerings to Buddha or the worshipers’ ancestors. Although various offerings correspond to various wishes (pineapples and oranges = good fortune; green onion = intelligence), people left all kinds of things — Oreo cookies, even, which I thought was delightful (Buddha likes Oreos!). The worshipers collect them again after the ceremony, but in the meantime they can pray at the main altar or at any of the numerous shrines around the periphery. This shrine is for medicine and health, my friend explained, and this one is for success in business, this one if you want to have a baby, and this one is to fall or stay in love — “this one is the most popular,” she grinned. Inside the shrines are hundreds of tiny little candles, each one representing a family who has prayed there and donated money to the temple. My friend said that she liked coming to Longshan Temple in particular because they were generous — they don’t charge for incense or candles, nor for fortunes, which are written on small scrolls of delicate paper by a monk calligrapher. I was in awe of everything there (spiritually and physically — the architecture of the temple is opulent and graceful, and there are exquisite gardens of orchids [as tall as me or taller] flanking the main altar), but mostly entranced by the unstudied kindness of this girl, who kept apologizing for her hesitant but elegant English, and who had to leave to get back to her university before I got a chance to ask her name. I know karma is Hindu, not Buddhist, but still — I wish her good karma.
- neon signs, advertising je ne sais pas
- smells, including but not limited to: moisture, dumplings, stinky tofu, sewage, bonsai trees, perfume, plastic, asphalt, fried chicken, guava juice, disinfectant, fresh meat (fresh as in barely five minutes deceased), scooter and car and bus exhaust, occasional whiffs of mountain and even sea air...
- monks on cellphones
- buildings with totally dilapidated frames but shiny automatic glass sliding doors
- women with eerily perfect hair (the first things I want to learn in Chinese all have to do with food, but as soon as I’ve mastered that I want to learn to say, “Excuse me, what hair products do you use?” [my hair has gone rascally and unwieldy in the humidity] Whenever I think about asking this question, though, I think of that bizarre segment of Paris je t’aime that deals with Asian hair products, and then usually get distracted and walk past wherever I’m going)
- stray dogs and cats, particularly in my neighbourhood. The cats are high-strung and suspicious, but the dogs are surprisingly meek.
- temples (Buddhist, Taoist, and syncretic)
- scooters (motorized)!! And it’s astonishing what can fit on a scooter. Great Danes, 2-year-old children, enough food crates to load a small cargo ship, up to four mostly-grown people: these are relatively common sights, and everyone drives like a maniac.
- jungly mountains that territorialize the city suddenly and unexpectedly
- people in anti-H1N1 masks, many of which are designer and/or Hello Kitty-themed. People are taking the epidemic v. seriously; I sneezed innocently on the MRT (= the underground) yesterday and was immediately a cause of alarm. I smiled weakly and tried to look healthy.
- 7-Elevens: v. disconcerting. There must be more 7-Elevens in Taipei City than there are in the whole of the United States. They sell hot dogs, and also hard-boiled eggs marinated in tea, and exceptionally good soy milk in tiny little green cartons.
- noise: imagine the smells, only auditory. And add to it Beethoven, who is omnipresent in Taipei thanks to the garbage trucks, which drive around all day playing “Für Elise” to advertise their presence. When people hear this they run sprinting out of their apartments to throw their trash into the back of the trucks, which wait for nobody.
On my first or second full day in Taipei, I went to Longshan Temple, the oldest and one of the most sacred Buddhist temples in the city. I arrived just as the evening service was beginning — a v. beautiful affair with incense and chanting and gorgeously intricate shrines. It was v. crowded, so I was trying to stand somewhere unobtrusive, admiring but not really understanding what I was watching. After ten seconds, maybe, there was a tap on my shoulder and a girl my age-ish said, “Please, may I introduce you to this?” She started telling me the history of the temple and explaining the ceremony — the tables full of food were offerings to Buddha or the worshipers’ ancestors. Although various offerings correspond to various wishes (pineapples and oranges = good fortune; green onion = intelligence), people left all kinds of things — Oreo cookies, even, which I thought was delightful (Buddha likes Oreos!). The worshipers collect them again after the ceremony, but in the meantime they can pray at the main altar or at any of the numerous shrines around the periphery. This shrine is for medicine and health, my friend explained, and this one is for success in business, this one if you want to have a baby, and this one is to fall or stay in love — “this one is the most popular,” she grinned. Inside the shrines are hundreds of tiny little candles, each one representing a family who has prayed there and donated money to the temple. My friend said that she liked coming to Longshan Temple in particular because they were generous — they don’t charge for incense or candles, nor for fortunes, which are written on small scrolls of delicate paper by a monk calligrapher. I was in awe of everything there (spiritually and physically — the architecture of the temple is opulent and graceful, and there are exquisite gardens of orchids [as tall as me or taller] flanking the main altar), but mostly entranced by the unstudied kindness of this girl, who kept apologizing for her hesitant but elegant English, and who had to leave to get back to her university before I got a chance to ask her name. I know karma is Hindu, not Buddhist, but still — I wish her good karma.
08 December 2009
Wie Goethe sagt ...
Wer sich selbst und andre kennt
Wird auch hier erkennen
Orient und Okzident
Sind nicht mehr zu trennen
— West-Östlicher Divan (1819)
HELLO WORLD! What follows are the musings of two American girls who are slowly migrating east: Lauren is in London, attempting to study critical theory and find the holy grail of soups; Maddy is in Taipei, teaching English to hoards of adorable children and compiling a catalogue of strange fruit. Although physically separated by the Eurasian landmass, here on this blog, East does indeed meet West. HAPPY READING!
Wird auch hier erkennen
Orient und Okzident
Sind nicht mehr zu trennen
— West-Östlicher Divan (1819)
HELLO WORLD! What follows are the musings of two American girls who are slowly migrating east: Lauren is in London, attempting to study critical theory and find the holy grail of soups; Maddy is in Taipei, teaching English to hoards of adorable children and compiling a catalogue of strange fruit. Although physically separated by the Eurasian landmass, here on this blog, East does indeed meet West. HAPPY READING!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)