今ここに生きる意味を 明日がくるわけを

[highways]

Pretty much everybody we met in Tainan was an asshole, it was sort of astounding. One family had me pose in their family photos in a "wow, we caught us a foreigner!" sort of way (we'd had zero interation beforehand, and they completely ignored my friends who were obviously with me and also foreign) and one tea salesman, knowing nothing about us, gave us a long lecture on how my Chinese was pretty good but that was just to segue into how my friends' Mandarin needed work, what with them being from Hong Kong and all (?!).

We visited some temples and then decided between an art museum and the zoo. The art museum was closer, though it turned out to be a compromise between the two, since it housed the largest taxidermy collection I have ever seen, or ever, frankly, imagined to even exist. It was all housed in a weird corporate building and they made us go through an orientation in a special room before they'd even let us inside, and they apparently had some corporate connections and were trying to sell us their flat screen televisions—it was all sort of strange. Despite what it sounds like, and I don't actually know what it sounds like, they had a pretty extensive collection of a lot of shit. Like a whole floor devoted to antique, ancient, and rare musical instruments that I thought was pretty cool.

Dreamwidth requires me to log in again all the damn time now, like on every new page. Totally irritating though IDK if it's on my laptop's end or the site.

Have discovered MUCC, which apparently is going to be one of those bands that I can't believe I ever lived without.

Got a 98 on one of my midterms, holy crap. Mostly I'm glad my transfer grades don't matter, especially since my attendence this semester is shit, but sometimes it makes me go nooooo.

Comments

[shadowings]

isn't tainan the way poorer part of the nation? so like, they get less tourism generally, especially "foreign" tourism, and foreign tourism definitely equals money. so while that's totally unacceptable and they were being assholes, I think the tea person just wanted to suck up to you so you'd buy his stuff. also glorification of "Westerners" will cause families to want to pose with you all the time. the fact is you're not the same as your friends, even though you're all foreigners. =/

[highways]

Yup you're right on all counts. Well I'm not sure about the tea selling guy—people show me favoritism a lot, but we'd already paid and were waiting for him to hand us our drinks, plus he directed pretty much all of his lecture to my friend he thought was Hongkongese (she's actually Thai). So that could've been a "you're Chinese why don't you speak Chinese" thing, I dunno.

But yeah, you're totally right. Most of my friends here are actually Southeast Asian so they get treated like crap a lot or just ignored, especially if they can't speak Chinese fluently, whereas when Westerners manage a "xièxiè", then it's OMG YOU ARE AMAZING TALK TO US MORE. :/