Roger Gordon’s Blog

As most of you know, I study Chinese at a local university here in Taichung. They had a sports day a few weeks ago, and I represented the Chinese Language centre in the men's 5000m running event. Well when I finished, I was told to my surprise that I placed second. So here's the medal I got a few days later.

Hilarious!

Made with Pano - an automatic photo stitcher for iPhone.

I was lucky enough to attend a free traditional Chinese tea tasting ceremony today. 4 other foreigners and I spent the afternoon trying to taste the subtle flavours of a partially oxidized tea repotedly named "Oriental Beauty" by the queen of England (who must have taken quite a liking to it) when she first tasted it. This uniquely Taiwanese variety of tea gets its slightly sweet flavour from the saliva of an insect which eats the leaves. I guess it's best not to think too much about drinking bug spit, and just accept it for what it is. Actually it has quite a pleasant flavour, and would make a great uniquely Taiwanese gift for someone who is into their tea.

In the photos:
The tea teacher at work, the uncultured foreigners getting a lesson, a variety of common Chinese teas (each with a different colour due to differing levels of oxidation) and dessert- a dried persimmon, stuffed with a sweet red bean and chestnut paste.

                     

Click here to download:

Tea_Tasting_Ceremony_tag_Taiwa.zip (5265 KB)

Finally, a week late, here are some pictures from my university-subsidised trip to the Islands of Peng Hu, west of Taichung city. It was a pretty good trip, but unfortunately was only 48 hours long, and the budget nature of the excursion meant that we took rather tedious modes of transport (bus to the southern port city of Kaohsioung and then ferry) to and from the islands. This meant travelling times of 7 hours each way. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing though, and I enjoyed getting to know some people from my Chinese language centre whom I otherwise wouldn't have had an opportunity to spend time with.

In the photos:
1. The deep blue ocean
2. A classmate with her awesome reflective shades on the deck of the ferry
3.Catching a tan on the deck
4. Watching scenery go by during a bus tour of the island
5.An entrance to a bridge that is famous for some reason
6. On the way to some scenery
7. A native cactus fruit remarkably similar in external appearance to a South African prickly pear
8. Mike, checking out the view
9. Some decent scenery (finally!)
10. "It's a bird, it's a plane..."
11. The old town of Peng Hu, nicely preserved for tourists.
12. A section of a wall, showing how the bottom half is made from stones, while the top is built with pieces of dead coral.
13. The entrance to a 500-year-old temple covered with an unbelievably big Banyan tree.
14 - 16. Some other random images of the temple
17. Our Ferry
18 - 19. Some social pictures on the ferry ride home.

                                     

Click here to download:

Peng_Hu_Field_Trip_with_Dong_H.zip (13579 KB)

Click here to download:

LED-lit Baseball Stadium.mp4 (5151 KB)

Taiwanese people have a great affinity for LEDs. They use them to bling-ify their scooters, blind you into buying betel nut from their scantily clad women, and occasionally they even do something useful with them, like use high-powered white LEDs to light the way in front of their folding bicycles when they go for a night ride, or advertise that you can get 20% off if you buy a couch this week.
However, that was all just a warm up, really, for this - the practical replacement of neon. Check out what Taichung city has done to their new baseball stadium with a gazillion LED's and a computer control program. Pretty impressive.

Writing my Chinese homework still takes me AGES, but I'm definitely getting faster at it, as I'm finding I don't need to look up the stroke order for every character any more. Perhaps I'll be able to complete all my homework on time soon...