I was standing in front of the movie theater on Linsen on Friday night, after taking a lengthy stroll around town with my camera to try and capture a wet night-time version of Taipei. I hadn’t been there in years. After Warner Village opened there wasn’t much of a point.

But I used to go there all the time. Mindcrime and I would see movies there when I got leave from the army, and it was what I looked forward to most when I walked past the guards and off base to get on a bus to Taipei. I’d even write down when certain movies were premiering in my little notebook, just to take out and look at when I needed a pick-up in the barracks.

As I walked by this time, it was like the last decade had never passed; nothing had changed except for the movie posters on the wall. Vendors were selling smoked sausage, and clothes on sale were strewn all over the sidewalk.

I half expected to see Mindcrime and Janice standing there waiting with tickets to the next show, after which we’d go to a coffeeshop and wonder about the new Star Wars movies.

After hearing that a friend of mine found some unsettling news concerning a close aquaintence of hers after a Google search, I thought I’d do one myself to see what came up.

Alas, it seems I am not the complete angel you thought I was. From this ESL site, way back in 2003, a user by the telling handle “B-S” wrote this about me:

“This ignominious and obviously rather desperate-to-get-out-of-America (why? who really knows?) individual´s last claim to fame was slagging foreign teachers in Taiwan in the debate over the proposed “Taiwan JET” scheme. He wrote in the Taipei Times that foreign teachers are lazy and greedy, so a big chunk of their salary under the scheme should be held until their contracts have been completed satisfactorily!

I don´t know, do you want to become one of those????”

At first I thought: Oh noes! My carefully hidden past existence as the infamously heartless Mexican bandit El Mono Feo has finally come to light! But hold on a minute, I can’t recall ever having anything published in the Taipei Times, much less anything about English teaching, which I know next to nothing about.

Reading on, it appears I also have a suspicious, possibly criminal past:

“I think it is humiliating for anyone to receive citizenship in such a way (except an orphaned child, of course). The R.O.C. officials wondered what Locke was running away from in America and such questions would certainly crop up in your case too.”

I can’t seem to add any more comments to the thread, and my email to the webmaster just bounced back. But wow, this guy knows so much about me! Except for the thing about the Taipei Times, my past, exactly what happened in Hong Kong, and, well, just about everything else.

Next thing you know he’ll be going on about those traffic tickets…oops, I’ve said too much already! Forget I wrote that!

Lightning Blues

Two of the more violent newer students were going at it when I got to the park last night. They both typically use brute force as much as possible, though both have improved a lot since they started. I went through my sword form several times, once to recall the moves, once as slowly as possibly and once quickly, while they struggled with each other.

Not long after Teacher Xu arrived, big fat drops began to spatter the ground, and we moved into the shelter of the battle memorial along with the 30 dancing women and several hip-hop dancers. It was a tight fit, and the rap music clashed with old US dancing tunes under the concrete roof as the rain poured down outside. A heavy man in a black shirt watched us practice for a while, and he and his wife asked our instructor some questions as I did tuishou with one of the other students from before.

Having an audience and face to lose seemed to make him even more determined to win, and though he started out softly, trying to use the principles of tuishou, he soon gave that up in favor of a rougher, more forceful approach. I had to keep telling myself not to follow his lead, to keep trying to do it the right way, purposely losing to him again and again.

Teacher Xu stepped in several times with advice: Don’t let your opponent speed you up, take your time. Find and create a direction of resistance, and then reverse it, effectively trapping your opponent. I found that, while straightforward pushing wasn’t effective, I could knock him off balance quite easily by suddenly changing direction.

I didn’t get much form practice in last night, but that’s ok, I am not in a rush. By the time we finished, the rain had stopped, and deep puddles littered the park.

I hadn’t been to a bear bar since the Taiwan Bear Club closed its doors a while back, and I just couldn’t bring myself to go to Funky or Fresh for various character deficiency-revealing reasons. The last time I was at Scorpio Ah-bu told me about a bear club on Linsen North Road called “Dragon Star”, so after a particularly long and difficult day at work on Friday, followed by some shopping, I made my way over to the area to have a look.

I stopped along the way to take pictures several times, and it was after 10pm by the time I made it to Linsen North Road. There was no external sign, but I followed the clues Ah-bu had given me and found the right building, with a small innocuous sign in the stairway leading to the second floor. I walked up and through a small wooden door decorated with Christmas lights into a shady bar.

The place was over half full, and there were still several tables available. I was shown to one near the small karaoke stage. After I sat down and ordered a drink, I looked around. It was a comfortable space that felt as if it had been there for quite a long time, in spite of the attempts to mondernize via strategically placed, well-lit art. The ceiling and all the fixtures were painted mustard yellow, with lots of old wood on the walls, and the windows had been painted over. Boxes and beer carts were stacked up neatly against the wall, and the stage was adorned with small red Chinese lanterns that blinked off and on.

Most of the patrons seemed to be around 30 to 50 years old, hefty with short hair, and gathered in groups. I was the only one sitting alone, but I didn’t feel too uncomfortable as I dug into the complimentary dishes of cold pork and fresh oranges. On the contrary, I felt quite at home, even though I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I’ve become used to it.

That situation was soon remedied, however, as one of the staff, a husky dark man a little older than me with a wide face and spiky hair, came over and chatted with me and another guy who had been seated nearby. In the course of our conversation, our host told me about two other bear bars in the area, the Panda and Any Bar.

“Any Bar was opened by the former owners of the Taiwan Bear Club,” he said, holding up his glass for another toast. “But it’s like the TBC was in its last days, you know, lots of women.”

“Why are the women there?” I asked.

“I don’t know, maybe they think it’s trendy,” he said. The Panda, however, was for younger bears and cubs, he said. “Really fat ones, too.”

I sat back and listened to the songs for a bit. One couple sang “Those Were the Days”, and a few Japanese songs came and went. But I had to leave just after midnight to catch the last train home. I’d seen what I came to see, after all, and wasn’t particularly interested in answering the host’s inquiries about what type of guy I preferred. Another time, I said.

The next night I was planning to spend at home, but two friends, Ray and Michael, called me wanting to know if I would like to go out, so I thought, here’s a chance to see the other bear bars. Ray picked me up in Bitan in his Saab, and we drove into the city, Ray lamenting the sheer size of the car as we parked under the Xinsheng Overpass.

Our first stop was Any Bar, located in a narrow alley off of Linsen. All of those alleys are lined with pseudo-Japanese bars with strange names. We found the white door leading to Any Bar and went downstairs into the basement to find the elegantly decorated interior nearly deserted. “Maybe we’ll come back later,” I told the guy at the desk on our way out.

We headed north up Linsen, under the flashing neon entertainment signs, nearly to Minsheng East Road before we got lost trying to find the Panda. It was near a restaurant, the business card of which I’d obtained from the Dragon Star waiter the night before, but we couldn’t seem to find the place.

Then we rounded a corner and saw two things simultaneously: the restaurant, just closed, and a large group of large young men milling around outside while the owner locked the door. It turned out they were headed to the Panda, so we followed them a few doors down and into the basement of a neighboring building where the club was located.

The Panda turned out to be quite a bit larger than the Dragon Star, so large in fact that about a third of it was closed off. Its blue walls were decorated with a variety of bear-themed posters, from the traditional panda to Winnie-the-Pooh. Disco lights hung from the ceiling surrounding the karaoke stage. Between the blue color and the freezing air conditioning, the place felt quite a bit colder than the Dragon Star or even Any Bar.

The beefy young customers, however, did their best to make up for the temperature. We learned that that night was the first-year anniversary of the Panda, thus the celebratory mood. The sounds and shouts of dice games and drinking games and drinking dice games puncuated the karaoke while husky guys cuddled in corners. I took several calls from Michael as he tried to get his cabbie to realize what part of town we were in. Eventually he made it there, wincing at the blast from the A/C as he sat down. Though Ray likes bears, I don’t think Michael’s really into that scene.

We stayed until around 3am, chatting above the din of the karaoke or watching Ray sing a couple of songs, but the cold was getting to us as well as the late hour, so we called it a night and drove back south, Ray dropping first Michael and then me off on the way home.

It was an educational weekend, as far as my study of Taipei Bar Bars is concerned. I’ll have to do some more research in the future.