Chapter 1: People

I'm in Taiwan barely for a day, and its diversity overwhelmed me already. Yet, despite the jet lag, a super-busy week before I came here and a culture shock - I feel strangely at ease. No doubts - it's due to a hospitable Taiwanese people, who took such a wonderful care of me, it would be a dishonour to feel lonely.


Here goes the sentimental part:
I strongly believe, that people are the soul of the country. Even if that's not the most original thought (I don't think I have a single one left in my brain after studying Polish philology for 5 years...), it is worth considering. At first glance, the former Formosa's soul is astonishing, because so are the people. Everybody I've already met made it so easy for me to acclimatize... Who are they?


Cerita picked me up from the train station and carried me around Puzih on the very first night. Seeing her handling sleeping-standing-up me, her two after-school-but-still-full-of-energy boys, calling, driving - and all of this usually in high heels! - I can just repeat after the lastest US blockbuster: "I don't know how she does it". (Again, big thanks, Cerita!)


Next day, Principal Wang invited me to have a dinner with his family, the other school directors and teachers, so I could have yet another delicious meal and even more inspiring conversation (about almost every subject, from counting in French to the story of a foreigner who eat a bamboo leaf his rice was wrapped into. Mental note: Don't.)


And, to make my fisrt days in Taiwan even more exciting, one of my work colleagues from Siang-He Elementary School invited my to her wedding banquet (Note: Not to the wedding itself; the marriage ceremony is held first, followed by a feast in groom's house and then the bride has her own wedding feast... But I'll get to that later.) On the way to Tainan I interviewed Cerita about their wedding traditions - and these are just the bits and pieces of what a Westerner should know:

• In Taiwan, the date of the wedding is specially chosen for the married couple by, as I figured, a fortune-teller. Based on the bride and groom's (and also their family) date of birth, he (or she? I have to exam that fortune-telling part more carefully) picks up the luckiest day for all. It is also resonable not to come to the wedding if you have a bad luck, written in the stars, on that day. I couldn't agree more - who needs a black cat, wandering around the kitchen tables?* Good news: a "bad lucker" can join the feast at the bride's house later on. (Actually, when I think about it, it seems like an extremely wise thing to do. Think of traditional Polish wedding, where you have to bring together sophisicated wine-lovers from Warsaw and moustached uncles from Zielonogórskie, with a sausage in one hand, and a vodka glass in the other - separate feasts might not me the worst idea...)

•  If you want to bring a gift, don't bother. In Taiwan, people usually give money to the married couple, glamorously packed in a red envelope (Why? Wikipedia explains it thouroughly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope). In return, a wedding couple hides a little envelope with a present under one of the tables. Guess, under whose table what is this time? ...  Thanks to my courteous collegues, who decided that I'll keep the present, I now am the owner of a beautiful, jade green bracelet. Can somebody think of other ways to say "thank you" to the people who are so nice to you? Because I'm kind of running out of ideas... (Oh, and by the way, "thank you" it's "xièxie"  谢 谢 - in Chinese; that was actually one of the first words Cerita's sons teached me.) Back to the wedding: I felt like the most honoured guest at the wedding. Especially when the mother of the bride came to me, bringing another gift (a box of little handmade cookies - how did she knew I'm a Cookie Monster?) and looking at me in that warm-hearted, mommy-like way... I had a flashback of my own Mum back home. See, Mum - I'm in good hands. 

• Did you ever watch "Mulan" and wondered whether the matchmakers still exist? Well, they do, at least in Taiwan. And do you know what? (Pay attention, this will sound a little bit strange, coming from the mouth of the third-wave feminism lover) I wish we had those wise, old women in Europe. It seems that they have a great knowledge about our character and personality. They know more about us, than we do. Plus, we bring such a mess to our relationships, that a Western marriage counselor can't clean it up, and they just deal with that before not after the wedding. So guys, what do you think about bringing Polish matchmakers back to life? (Not literally, of course.) 

I should now switch to describing a b s o l u t e l y   f  a b u l o u s Taiwanese food I had in the last couple of days, but I feel like it deserves the whole other chapter (-s) in this little book of Taiwan.

Once again, for the wonderful first days, to all my friend in here (and my supporters back in Poland)


xièxie!  谢谢