Less Traveled Path

We started a Taiwan Tour the day after arriving in Taipei. The van picked us up and two couples at other hotels before we were on our way. After our third stop, our tour guide tried to figure out which language he should use on our journey. One couple was from mainland China, so Mandarin was their vote. Then there was the couple from Brisbane, Australia who could speak both Cantonese and English, but couldn’t understand Mandarin very well. I was excited at the prospect of using Cantonese (since I can understand it so much more than Mandarin), but since our tour guide didn’t speak Cantonese, Mandarin with some English was the winner.

She was 52 and her husband, a software engineer, was 57 and they had one daughter, though she did not accompany them on the trip. Both had retired and were taking the time to travel. We traveled with them for two days on the tour and I would frequently see them snacking on something; they didn’t let the possibility of water-related sickness affect their gastronomical pursuits.

Time it took for our van to reach our first official stop on the tour: 3 hours and 30 minutes
Time it took for the Australian-Cantonese lady to suggest to my mom to find a son-in-law (husband for me): 3 hours and 50 minutes

Ah, how Chinese.

Taipei, a big city with bright lights as my good friend describes it, reminded me of Hong Kong, but not as busy. Her parents learned that we were going to be in Taipei and offered to show us around. Her father used to be a department chair at a state university in the United States, but now serves as the president of university in Taiwan (with an enrollment of about 16,000). As it turns out, we discovered that his family and my mom’s family are from the same village. (Family origin generally comes up within the first few Chinese conversations.)

They live about an hour away and drove in to Taipei and greeted us with various tropical fruits for our journey: bellfruit (crunchy, juicy, without a strong flavor), guava (lots of seeds and doesn’t taste as sweet as the boxed juice version), and Chinese oranges were among the welcome gifts. We were also treated to various dusk and night views of Taipei including the Presidential Office Building, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, Taipei 101 and its shopping complex, and The Grand Hotel.

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