Taiwan thread

DUMPLINGS!

yeqaaaaaa!!!!! just saw the request. you probably know the town better than i do now

figuring it all out, yeah. doing a lot pointing at things. everyone here has so far been extremely kind and helpful. and the food...good lord. ive just been ordering stuff randomly since i got here and im at probably at about a 90% success rate in terms of dishes that i could happily live off for weeks at a time. also enjoying figuring out the traffic & and hoping to graduate from my bike to a scooter as soon as i get the cash together. so far, though, i gotta say im kind of loving taiwan, and i still haven't really left the urban sprawl of my little hub.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1517307/three-killed-taiwan-subway-stabbing-spree

I'm in Taipei right now and took the subway 4 times today :\

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/04/asia/taiwan-plane-crash-transasia/index.html

Jesus

That taxi that gets clipped by the wing, it's a miracle the driver just has minor head injuries.

Video in link is pretty intense btw

it's been a very bad week for unsettling/horrifying accidents and other acts of violence.

at least the ones that appear in the news

i think i need to step away from mass media for a while

prayers for more survivors

going back in a couple of months, i don't know if ilxors care but eh

The DUMPLINGS! in Taiwan are far superior to all other DUMPLINGS!.

I am half dumpling. (taiwanese).

oh cool!

otm re the dumpilngs, they are incredible in taiwan

I haven't been back since my early 20s. My mom doesn't like to go back because everything is automated now and she is just not having that.

okay i don’t quite understand that

sure you can buy a drink with your train pass but

how're yr traditional characters, AA? been listening to a bunch of taiwanese bands who play/tour on a japan-taiwan-xiamen-guangzhou-hong kong circuit.

(been slacking on my chinese so a bit embarrassed to post in the relevant ILx threads plus now I'm back on twitter I feel vaguely engaged by liking dylannn's tweets, heh)

my trad chars are exploding, mainly because i’ve spent at least the past six months chatting almost exclusively to people in taiwan and forcing myself to use the trad keyboard. it’s sticking. this will be my fourth time in taiwan, and i can’t wait to see how much easier it is to just read all the stuff that baffled me in 2014.

if you feel your chinese is waning, keep up something on a regular basis. watch youtube videos, listen to podcasts, anything to keep it moving. that’s what i did in my horror year (2016–2017) and it paid off enormously.

My mom is super old school. She won't even use a computer. So she gets stressed out about having to use a machine to buy tickets, etc.

ohhh, yeah that would be stressful if you don’t want to learn how to do a load of things that were once done for you

i had planned to stay in taipei and meet a load of people, but (a) having realised most will just english at me the whole time and (b) one guy i haven’t even met was desperate to travel across the country just to meet me (despite me saying no a hundred times), i’m going off on my own. fuck it.

definitely going to hualien because the earthquake has rendered the locals desperate for visitors/income and because the damage was relatively minor beyond those four buildings that fell down. enough of taroko’s open to make it worthwhile. also i’ll probably go back to kaohsiung for longer than a few hours this time. really loved it the first time round.

tainan? i took a day trip up from kaohsiung and really liked the city

i’ve spent time in tainan before, also getting around is a pain in the arse. not compelled to rush back there tbh.

i’m in tianmu (failing to find a bluetooth keyboard) and have just eaten a deconstructed hamburger

oh and hualien is all running as normal, apart from some completely unremarkable car parks where the damaged buildings used to be. everything i wanted to see in taroko is accessible. also i’m convinced there’s more soft jazz per capita than anywhere else in the world.

i’m in tianmu (failing to find a bluetooth keyboard) and have just eaten a deconstructed hamburger

i have no memory of tianmu or the deconstructed hamburger, but i did find a six storey building full of bluetooth keyboards

i had planned to stay in taipei and meet a load of people, but (a) having realised most will just english at me the whole time

i’m going back soon (fifth time iirc) and would be open to a lot more englishing, since my chinese has gone backwards recently and i need a leg up to get back in.

towards the end of the above trip i ended up going to drinks with some people who spoke varying levels of english and played cards against humanity all night. it was fun. usually i put so much pressure on myself to achieve that i forget to just enjoy the place.

this time i have put very little pressure on myself to achieve and as a consequence i have achieved. made an absolute pantsload of friends too. i love the hell out of this place.

Pig intestines flew in Taiwan legislature as fist fights broke out in bitter debate abt Taiwan gov decision to import US ractopamine pork which is banned in EU and mainland China pic.twitter.com/XVRd5OM6wG

— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) November 27, 2020

I would religiously watch PMQ every week if it ever got this good

I want to see similar resistance to that ghastly US chlorinated chicken in the UK as well. I want to see chicken guts getting thrown about like confetti!

A Taiwan politics perspective

https://labourreview.org/labor-politics-in-taiwan/