Last night after work I was in a Gongguan copy shop printing out a book on photography that I’d downloaded when a young white guy walked in to ask the clerk about some name cards. He noted the cover of the book I was printing and asked, “You a photographer?”

“Just an amateur,” I said.

He said he found it impossible to take pictures in Taipei. “The haze, the light just don’t work.”

“I’ve gotten a couple that turned out alright,” I said. He nodded noncommittally. The a/c was off, and the shop was melting hot from all the printing machines venting into the air.

“I know one guy who takes really good pictures here; his name is Wayne.”

“I know Wayne.”

I had dinner at the Sababa around the corner. I’d forgotten how much I like that place as I usually end up at the Yongkang branch these days. Later I walked over to Witchhouse to see Chalaw Passiwali play a show. They were warming up and doing a soundcheck when I arrived, but the hostess told me to get out and wait to buy a ticket like everyone else, so I walked around the area taking pictures for a few minutes before coming back. This time I found my college friend DJ writing at one of the tables. Later we were joined by a friend of his.

The show was very good. Chalaw told me that his album, which David Chen and I played on, was up for a Golden Melody Award this year. The ceremony is in a couple of weeks.

I didn’t get home until after midnight, frustrating yet again my attempts to go to bed earlier so I can get up and get more editing work done in the mornings, but it’s good to get a night out once in a while.

You’ve probably heard about the Uncanny Valley phenomenon, which describes how people are comfortable with obvious robots and fine with obvious people, but are seriously creeped out by robots who are almost indistinguishable from humans. As I was watching some foreigners interacting with Taiwanese people the other day, I began to wonder if there is a corresponding phenomenon with spoken Chinese (as well as other languages). That is to say, many native Chinese speakers seem to go into a kind of “foreigner mode” when speaking with non-native speakers, dumbing down their grammar and slowing their speed, taking pains to put things as plainly as possible. They may even not realize that they are doing this, or see it as the obvious thing to do in such a situation. When speaking with other native Chinese speakers, a greater fluency occurs, of course. What I’m wondering is if there is a point in between these two states, something neither-here-nor-there, that causes confusion and even discomfort for native Chinese speakers, i.e. an Uncanny Chinese Valley?

From the Wiki page: “If the entity is ‘almost human’, then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of “strangeness” in the human viewer. In other words, a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a good job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person.”

In the Chinese Uncanny Valley, then, at least according to the above theory, the confusion would arise from the native Chinese speaker seeing the other person as either a foreigner doing a good job at pretending to be Chinese (“Oh, your Chinese is so good!”), as opposed to seeing them as a really slow, difficult Chinese person.

I think relatively homogeneous societies where language and ethnicity are closely associated, like many in Asia, are where such a phenomenon would be the most easily spotted. When I’m chatting online or talking on the phone with a native Chinese speaker, there is no hesitation or discomfort, although eventually if we talk long enough it’s likely that I will make a mistake that lets them know I’m not a native speaker, but sometimes while talking face-to-face, I occasionally sense a certain amount of confusion in the other person. Most of my Taiwanese friends don’t have this problem with me, but when I meet someone new, they usually start out in the default “foreigner mode” and then move into this zone of discomfort, and are either so freaked out they can’t deal with me, or they overcome it and things smooth over (my sparkling personality doesn’t really help in this regard either, I admit).

I’m not sure how much of this has to do with reconciling an obviously non-ethnically Chinese person speaking the language, and how much it has to do with the level of Chinese that is being used, but it seems to me that, for many native Chinese speakers, dealing with a foreigner who speaks basic or intermediate Chinese comes across as an easier task than dealing with someone who speaks well enough to almost (but not quite) be taken as a native speaker. Perhaps it has something to do with the way people like to have things (and people) neatly and simply categorized in their minds, which, added to a longstanding association between ethnicity and language, interferes with such categorizations and causes this phenomenon. I’m neither a psychologist nor a language expert, so I really have no idea. It’s an interesting concept, though.

Google Maps has been steadily updating its street view. I found one of the places where I grew up on it yesterday:

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This is our house in Maitland, Florida, where I lived from 1981 more or less up until I came to Taiwan. I went to Maitland Junior High and Winter Park High School while living here, departed for trips with bands, orchestras and the boy scouts from that driveway. I drove my ’77 Datsun up it, wobbling from an encounter with a street racer, resulting in a huge fight with my dad. I played with our cat, Henrietta, mowed that lawn and lugged the garbage out to that curb. They planted those trees by the street, part of a neighborhood program, when I was in high school. The window on the far right was my bedroom after my brother left for college. The reason there’s a hedge on one side but not the other is because my dad hacked the other side down and then realized it was a bad idea, so he left the other one up. Originally there was a huge Christmas tree in the middle of the yard that was uglier than the hedge, but for some reason it stayed.

The living room with a pink sofa and blue carpet was home to a grandfather clock but was never really used; we watched TV in the family room. My parents added a sunroom in the back where the porch was. The main reason we bought that house instead of nicer ones in nicer neighborhoods, I think, was the pool that took up most of the back yard, leaving room only for a small patch of grass and a grapefruit tree that provided breakfast on many a Winter morning. I, at least, insisted on a pool, as it is, after all, Florida, and we’d had one at our other Floridian house we’d had before the long, dark years of schoolyard fights and general loneliness that exemplified my time in Texas. But that’s a story for when Street View catches up with El Lago.

UPDATE: I just found out that they’re going to tear down Dommerich Elementary and Maitland Junior High to create a combined new school. So many memories, it makes me a little sad that I won’t ever get to go back there to have a look around the old place.

I really didn’t feel like venturing out into the deluge for the Hoping for Hoping music festival, but we’d been invited, and it had been pleasant in past years. I was sure it wasn’t going to do my persistant cough any good, though. Sandman picked me up in front of the 7-Eleven downstairs, and we drove to pick up David, who was recovering from a cold, and then Slim, who was recovering from a fierce hangover. Following instructions from the Internet, we made it down to Longtan with no problems, but when we arrived at the Kunlun Gardens, we found that we were no longer allowed to drive up to the site, and had to wait for the van. We waited for a long time as other people who had been waiting longer were shuttled up, including a group of aborigine kids who played drums.

Finally, we got a place in the van, but when we arrived, we found that Peacefest had become a series of tents pitched in a sea of mud. Most of the hippies, and there were many, were going barefoot. I imagined there were all kinds of dangerous objects, natural and man-made, buried beneath the surface. We found a mud-covered Lynn Miles inside the local temple.

We were on at 4pm, so we had a little practice session on the second-floor stairway of the temple before we went on. I wasn’t quite awake yet, so I had to go grab a quick whisky coke as the rest of the band took the stage.

The show started out great; the audience was dancing and bobbing to our beat, and you never would have guessed we hadn’t had a real rehearsal in months. The sound guys did a great job, and we were hot. We’d only played a few songs, however, when we got the signal to wrap it up. WTF? But apparently there was some kind of scheduling problem, so we played “Riverside” and left the stage.

The aborigine kids’ group played for a while, accompanied by a mostly naked firebreather who happens be the chief of the Dream Community, followed by some foreign bands. Each of these played for what seemed like hours. One song went on longer than our entire set. I was driving back, so I wasn’t having any more drinks. I stood chatting with the guy I have a small crush on, wondering how cool he must be to not be creeped out by that embarrassing fact.

A giant peace sign was lit on fire, and then another. A giant inflatable chicken bobbed around the area. People shot off fireworks, and the Peace Circle began with some chanting. We were still talking off to the side, and got some hostile glares from the Circle for our insolence. There didn’t seem to be any focus to the event.

The rain never really stopped; there was no place to sit down. Everything was covered in mud. We’d done our tiny bit, but as night fell the line for the van going back down the hill was too long to consider. We grabbed some sub-par hamburgers at a stand and extricated ourselves from the situation, hauling our gear back down the mountain on foot in the dark. I wore the tub on my head as a makeshift umbrella. Back at the bottom of the hill, we met some Japanese musicians, one of whom, Syusaku Kanda, was also a washtub bass player. I set up the bass so he could play it, and he seemed impressed. I was sorry I hadn’t heard his group play.

The whole experience, however, was rather disappointing. If I’d known about the no-car policy, even for bands with heavy equipment, as well as our only being allowed to play a handful of songs while other bands went on as long as they liked, I’d have rather just skipped the whole mess.

The drive back was uneventful, and I ended up at Darrell’s and Judy’s for his 40th birthday party. There were many people there I knew vaguely, and I’m afraid I spent a bit too much time talking shop with Paul and Darrell instead of chatting with other guests. But it was fun, and the food was good. Judy insisted on offering me a huge slab of birthday cake to take home, which I found a little embarrassing (but too good to refuse).

Sunday was spent editing and coughing, mostly at the same time. This morning I went to see the doctor, who said I had acute bronchitis and tonsilitis, so now I’m on the loopy pills for a few days. The rain hasn’t let up, either. Every time I think full-on summer is here, I’m wrong.

My friend Chumble got some free National Symphonic Orchestra tickets, so I went over to CKS Hall last night to attend the first classical music performance I’ve been to in years. When I asked him what was on the program, Chumble said, “Beethoven, Haydn and Brahms,” which sounded nice. We met up with a couple of Chumble’s friends, a young Canadian man and his Taiwanese girlfriend, who nearly ran and hid when she was introduced to me. Meh, I’m used to it.

We got what we thought were reasonably good seats, but in addition to the chairs on stage was a large whiteboard. It turned out that this was going to be a classical music concert with lectures. Many people in the audience had brought notebooks. The short woman in glasses sitting next to me was all ready with a multicolored pen.

Ever since the debut of Taipei Philharmonic Radio in the mid-90’s, it seems that many people here have become interested in “understanding” classical music. There are programs dedicated to “explaining” all kinds of classical pieces, and game shows where you guess the piece and its composer. You can even buy expensive CD series to listen to in accompaniment to your favorite classical tunes, telling you just what it is you’re listening to. Other CD series are aimed at younger listeners.

The musicians walked out to take their seats and tune, and then conductor Yin-fang Zhang, a young woman, came on stage followed by a man in a white suit. This was professor Chu-wey Liu, and he began to explain the piece. The orchestra would play a bit, and just when I was getting into it, they’d stop, and the professor would talk a bit about phrasing, themes and motifs. I found it incredibly annoying. All of the emotion of the piece was lost. As if that weren’t enough, the woman next to was letting off silent farts every few minutes. Actually, I’m not sure it was her, but the wind was from that direction, and she just seemed guilty. Her pen clicked on and off as she took different-colored notes on the music, and she clapped between movements.

The full orchestra came on stage for the next piece, and I was relieved by the appearance of some very nice eye candy in the second violin section. During the intermission a concert hall employee came over to tell Chumble’s Canadian friend to stop moving his head during the show as it was apparently distracting the people behind him. I turned around to see who could be so easily distracted, but nobody met my gaze.

The final piece, Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, was picked apart once more, but I love Brahms and managed to enjoy the last part when the orchestra played through it in its entirety despite the waves of noxious odors coming from my left. The conductor didn’t seem to have a very firm hand on the orchestra, which was loose and often out of tune, especially the woodwinds, but the sound was quite nice and made me want to upgrade my stereo. It’s been forever since I played in a classical group; I played in high school with the local youth orchestra and once with the Florida Symphony Orchestra, and in college with the Central Taiwan Orchestra, both excellent groups, but I haven’t done anything like that since. I kind of miss it.

This morning on my way to work I saw some people spreading a net across the underpass on Zhongxiao West Road, underneath the pedestrian overpass. There was an ambulance and some policemen walking around, so I went up to have a look. I couldn’t see anyone in trouble and thought for a minute that a baby had inexplicably gotten caught underneath the overpass somehow, but it turned out that they were shooting scene for a made-for-TV movie. I asked one of the crew if it was difficult to apply for that particular intersection, but he said it had to be there, as the movie was based on true events, and someone had apparently done something of note while perched on the outside of the overpass. So it had to be that one, and they had to get the shot then, because they weren’t going to get a second chance. I took some pictures and left, wishing them luck.

A while ago, Sandman told me of a fascinating large-scale photograph of Bitan from years ago on display at the Cardinal Tien Hospital in Xindian. “You should see it, ” he told me, “and take another one today from the same place.”

When I did get around to visiting the hospital, however, the exhibit was long gone. I asked the people at the help desk what happened to the photos, and they put me in contact with the photographer, Huang Jin-fa of Alpha Photography. I called him up and arranged to meet him at his studio in Xindian a few days later.

Huang used to work for a newspaper as a photojournalist until the paper shut down. Alpha is basically his garage, converted into a studio, the walls covered with huge prints of his photos, including the one Sandman had mentioned seeing. Many are taken from helicopters, a testament to Huang’s standing as a photographer, and the stages of Bitan’s development as seen from the air are fascinating. The picture Sandman saw was taken from the expressway bridge before it was open to traffic, so reproducing it would be difficult without a car. Many other photos he’s taken and collected over the years show views of Bitan I hadn’t seen before. One shows his daughter in front of the old Xindian Bus Station, the site of the present MRT station. Others show the various suspension bridges throughout the Japanese period and since. Besides the bridge, the Bi-ting pavilion is another constant throughout the pictures; that little place is ancient.

The riverfront was just rocks up until relatively recently, forcing people interesting in taking a spin in one of the huge-wheeled paddle boats of the time to pick their way down from the top of the riverbed across rocks of all sizes. “US servicemen on leave from Vietnam used to come down here to swim all the time,” Huang said. The catchment under the traffic bridge was originally much more fragile, being swept away with every strong storm and drastically lowering the water levels. The original bridge, built by the Japanese, was a single-lane plank construction, with heavy cement planks that could take the weight of vehicles and animals. The second bridge was divided into two lanes and was of a lighter construction. I remember the second bridge from my early days in Taiwan. The current version is again one lane, with a lighter construction method.

The road on which I live now was apparently a tiny alley before they widened it, bordered by what looked like a wooden shantytown on both sides. In fact, a plan has been on the books for years to tear down the ugly 70’s-era tile buildings that now fill the triangle between my building and the shore, as it is government land, in order to build a park. The people who live and work there have fought to keep things the way they are, however, and the plans stay languishing on the books. In a way, it’s good, as I could never have afforded my place if they had improved that space. Property values would be double what they are today.

I noticed a collection of old lenses on a shelf in Huang’s office where he was showing me the old pictures, along with a Canon 20D. I asked him about these, and he said that it was very easy to plop on an adapter ring to use any old lens on the 20D body. He demonstrated with an old Leica lens. I took a few test shots and was impressed with the effect. You have to focus manually, and the viewfinder is too dark, especially if you close the aperture too much. With good old lenses going for dirt cheap at camera stores as people rush to more modern offerings, however, I might just go see what I can find on Camera Street in the old downtown area. “Young people aren’t interested in these old lenses,” he said. “They want immediate gratification; it used to be that you composed a shot. Now you take a million and hope for some accidental goodness from the camera’s AI.”

I told Huang that he should set up a Flickr account, but he waved his hand, saying, “I don’t understand these Internet things.” His son and son-in-law were more savvy and set up the company website, but they don’t seem to see photography in quite the same way as their father. When I told Huang about the feeling of regret I get when I pass up potential shots, his eyes lit up. “That’s just the way I was when I was younger,” he said.

There was an unfamiliar guy sitting on the curb with everyone, away from our usual spot, which had been taken over by a rather amorous couple. Teacher X was talking with him, and pointed at me as I walked up, and the guy shook his head. Later, as I did some form work, he pushed with Weeble and things got a bit violent. I was glad it wasn’t me, to be honest, though it’s always interesting to practice with new people.

I practiced with Teacher X’s son, who is “serving” in the alternative service instead of military service. He’s put on some weight and is more flexible, but still relatively easy to get off balance. He’s a bit taller than me. Later on, Guo and Weeble were trying to shove each other over in an almost comical fashion, as Teacher X and I looked on from the curb. Teacher X was talking a bit more about our group’s history, how it was a combination of Yang and Wu styles thanks to Teacher Song’s studying not only with Zheng Man-qing, but also with the Wu teacher.

After Teacher X had left, I went through some sword form, while Guo and Weeble watched, disapprovingly. Guo took out his sword, which he has been studying recently, and gave me a few “tips”. “I am a more serious student, so I picked it up quicker, only two months,” he told me. Yeah, whatever, I thought. He tells me the same thing about tuishou. I’m not exactly sure why he seems to want to impress me. I don’t terribly mind being known as the worst sword student in the class as well as the worst tuishou student; it doesn’t really matter to me where I stand, as long as I’m still doing it.

It’s amazing how fast Prince Roy‘s tour went, but we had a lot of good times over the past couple of years. Last night I met up with my former classmate as well as Mark and Wayne at the Red House bar on Shida Road for a final night of drinks and conversation. The rain pattered on the canvas awning above our heads, and the smell of the mosquito coil reminded me of our Tunghai days. We all agreed that after PR left, we’d lead healthier, if less interesting lives.

After the bar closed, we walked around the area in search of other hangouts, all of us (except possibly Wayne) reluctant to let the night end so soon, though it was well past midnight by the time we left. “Hey, friends, where are you going?” one guy yelled to us, in Spanish for some reason, as we walked past. We ended up sitting outside a place on Xinsheng South Road across from the park, where we had kebabs, sanbei chicken and veggies, chatting for a few more hours. The restaurant was also closing, so we walked down Xinsheng to Heping East Road, where Wayne turned west and home. Mark, PR and I walked the other way, all the way to PR’s empty house, where we bade him farewell and found cabs home in the rain.

As I watched the lights across the river flow by from the big wet expressway, I tried to imagine what it must feel like to pick up everything and leave Taiwan for a life in another country. It was difficult. In a way, it’s an exciting idea, but I’m so content with my life here as it is that it would freak me out more than a little bit. Eventually I settled on imagining leaving on an extended trip, with the idea of roaming the world for a while before eventually returning here. A bit more comfortable thought. By the time I got to bed the sky was already light.

The departure from our fair island of Prince Roy and Spicy Girl marks the end of an era, especially accompanied as it is by our new administration, the possibility of a new US administration on the way, the Olympics, three links, and a host of other developments. Things are afoot. Someone asked me the other day how many cycles of friends I’d gone through here. It’s a fair question, I suppose. Many foreign friends have come and gone. Some came back. Taiwanese friends have gone and come, as it were. In any case, none of us are the same person we were or will be; I heard once that all of our cells are replaced over a period of seven years, so that you’re literally not the person you once were. So things change, people change….alright, I’ll stop trying to be all Deep here and let you figure out what all of this means, if anything.