One of the greatest things about Taiwan is its markets (food markets, night markets, shopping districts).
As I’ve been increasingly able to deal with the problems I’ve had in Taiwan, enjoying the country and life here has gotten easier. This morning my host mother asked if I wanted to tag along to the market to buy some vegetables. It ended up showing me for the first time in a great long while how interesting and full of life Taiwan can be.
We took a bus together to an area near QiZhang MRT Station. I’ve never taken the bus with my host mom cause they have two cars and use a specific taxi company, so it was fun. We had a nice conversation about education. (As usual, it’s just her talking and me asking questions).
Then we walked leisurely (is that correct grammar? Should it be “leisurely walked?” or something else?) to this outdoors food market she frequents. On the way, we saw two or three stores with super cheap clothing (a whole bin where everything was only NT$50 (US$1.50)! Those have gotta be the cheapest clothes I’ve ever seen in my life. They were pretty ugly but bearable. Actually, I don’t know if you know anything about poor people fashion, but to someone who’s gotten almost all her clothes for her entire life from Family Dollar or donations, I can see the immense value in them. It actually warmed my heart to see them… kinda strange, right?) Okay, sorry, moving on.
We looked around and had a good time window shopping together. The funny thing about clothes shopping with Taiwanese is that they think the ugliest clothes in the world are “cute” or “good-looking.” When you just wanna throw up on it. So, the Taiwanese person is always like
Host mom: “Josie, come look at this!” [English translation: Josie, you should seriously consider buying this. It’s so great.]
*shows me a hideously cropped, bright pink shirt with lots of fake “diamonds” and bows and childrens characters and bad english and…*
Me: “Uh… yeah… ‘cute…’” -_-’
Host mom: “?” [English translation: you’re saying I was wrong?]
Me: O.O’ Oh god… “Uh, hahaha… It’s so great! I’ll go try it on!”
[fyi, this is an exaggerated version of the stories happening all across the island to exchange students]
You have to be careful with this kinda stuff. You never, ever wanna tell, indirectly or directly, a Taiwanese woman she’s wrong. Trust me.
Anyways, she ended up buying me a nice dress made of stuff similar to bathing suits. 
I’m gonna wear it tonight when I go for sushi. Later on she bought me a little purse.
Then we get to the actual market thing. I love this stuff. I don’t know why, but I get a lot of energy from this “renao” kind of setting (it means like bustling, busy, noisy atmosphere). There are tables with a certain kind of food on them. We first stopped by this vegetable stand. The weather was perfect. It was sunny but not bright, it was hot but not unbearable (just enough to where you’re sweating but you can still breathe [around 80 F] ), people were all around but it wasn’t too crowded. It felt like early summer even though it’s still March.
I didn’t have my camera so I took pictures with my phone. Even nearly 7 months into being here, I’m still discovering strange and exotic-looking fruit and vegetables. Today I found a giant cucumber-type thing that looked a little like a small watermelon, a lettuce-like thing with tall “roots” coming off of it, HUGE carrots, long, slightly twisted purple things, and much more. I’m adding it to my collection of pics of small orange pear-shaped fruit things, giant orange fruit that looks like a pear, an orange, and an apple combined, and “yellow-fleshed” watermelon.
I am most definitely gonna miss the fruit and vegetable culture here. Everything is so fresh and local. You can see the fruit of the farmers’ labor and it’s beautiful to me. And vegetables and fruit are such a huge part of the culture here. I don’t know about you, but I never ate vegetables except the few times I ate them out of a can. And fruit was also pretty scare in my household for most of my life. But here, vegetable preparation is like it’s own world/league. -_- Bleh. Can’t explain it. They eat veggies every meal and in fact vegetables and tofu are the main dishes (outside of rice). Meat is either not present or presented as a complimentary side dish. I gotta say, I’m really loving it.
Actually, food in general is one of the best things about TW. I’m gonna cry everyday for like 3 months in the US due to missing a lot of the food here. I’m addicted. I really dread living the next chapter of my life without them. T.T
Another really great aspect about these markets is the human interactions. The “laoban” (the people who sell the products, literally “bosses”) are almost characters in a story. (I used the word “laoban” because the English equivalent of the word doesn’t do it justice. It doesn’t sound right and most definitely doesn’t have the same connotation. Some things are just meant to be in Chinese, like “huai ren.”) Watching them be is in itself an adventure.
In my life in Taiwan, there are specific kinds of Taiwanese worlds I interact with. One world is the world of youth. Another world is the world of rich middle-aged people. Another that I’m not as involved in is the world of working class people. This one has gotta be my favorite to observe though. Each world is in its own bubble and it’s really really easy to get wrapped up in it and forget that there are other worlds out there (that’s something I’ve been really struggling with. For long periods of time, I only see, hear, deal with lots of negative aspects of TW that I forget that there are many amazing things outside of all that).
The markets and this area of TP particularly represent the working class world. I really like being among working class people here. It’s so different and alien to me. The middle class and beyond have always been alien and weird to me, but now even my own class is unrecognizable. I love this. I get to compare my life to them (not in that douche-baggy, condescending way), try to figure them out… it’s like a puzzle.
In the US, it takes me one or two glances to figure out working class things. I “know” people I’ve never talked to just because I can see them in their behavior. (Remember that siren I told you about a long time ago that goes off? It’s kinda like that for everyday stuff too, just not so urgent and panic-inspiring).
The “clues” I used no longer apply, people’s interactions with each other are utterly foreign and inunderstandable (that’s not a word…) to me. I just get to sit back and observe and not participate. It’s a great feeling. I hope you all get the chance some day with your own classes.
The interactions between the laoban and the customers is one of the best parts of these markets. I can only try to describe it with an example and hope I do it justice. My host mom goes up to this table that she might frequent a lot because she kinda bee-lined it to that one and all the other tables look exactly the same to me. On the table are dozens of disgusting-looking “appetizers.” (I don’t know what to call them. They are a purely Chinese creation. Basically, you buy tiny “appetizer” things and serve like 5-10 of them at a table and that’s dinner. Okay, later I’ll do a post of the “round-table” meal experiences and maybe then you can get a visual.)
When she’s looking down at them (inspecting or whatever) she suddenly just holds her hand up and waits. The laoban then does this quick, frantic-looking-in-my-opinion movement and produces a bag that’s been “aired out” and kinda just throws it in her direction. On top of the food. My host mom looks up, grabs it, and starts stuffing it with food, and throws it back at the laoban who then ways it. Btw, she’d been handling all the food with her bare hands, taking some off, handling the money with her hands, then adding (using her hands) extra “bonus” food to the bag after my host mom had paid.
It was a semi-aggressive, marvelous aspect to behold. My eyes were wide and moving back in forth between them. It was absolutely fascinating. In the US, this kind of interaction would be considered rude. But here, it’s not. Not only that, but there are rules, methods, behaviors, and much more dictating these interactions. I was completely out of the loop so I can’t tell you what they are, but man. It’s systematic. I know everything has it’s own cultural-understanding-based rules and whatnot, but this is the first time I’ve got to see this so obviously. Needless to say, in the US I know all of the unspoken agreements between everyone in my culture so I don’t see or think about it. In Taiwan, I read about a lot of their unspoken stuff, so I was prepared and expecting it. But this was completely off the map alien to me. Loved every minute of it.
Afterwards, we ate at a brunch/sandwich/coffee place that my host mom’s been going to for years. (Also, apparently my younger-older host brother who goes to college in the south loves it and always brings his friends here. I don’t know how true her description was though because TW women exaggerate EVERYTHING, especially when it comes to their children [the centers of their world and value].)
I gotta say, those were the best cooked sandwiches I’ve ever had. Tomato, cucumber, chicken, and whatever else never tasted so good. It was tiny and expensive but worth it. I at 1.5 of the small sandwhiches and my host mom only had .5. Then we split a delicious cheese, meat sauce, and other stuff piece of bread. I knew my host mom barely ate, but this woman is borderline anorexic. It makes me feel sad for her.
We had a nice time together. Plus, like I think I’ve said earlier, she is a good Chinese teacher. She explains words with other chinese words, she speaks slowly most of the time, she repeats stuff for me, and she’s started “quizzing” me on different chinese words. I LOVE this last one. She’ll be talking about something, use a word, then a few minutes describe that word in other words and ask me which word she means. It really keeps me on my toes. I’ve learned so many different words from her (like “sunlight” and “troublemaker”) cause she talks so much.
I also got to meet the man whose dumpling-type-bun shop my host mom repeatedly buys from. I LOVE this stand’s buns (actually, I don’t know the right English word for this. It’s “baozi” in Chinese, but “bun” is the only thing I can think of. It’s a special bread that I’ve never had in the US with meat and veggies or disgusting sweet stuff inside). My school sells really great baozi but I actually kinda like these better cause the meat quality is better. My school’s are disgusting because you always find weird hard things in them and it looks really gross. Okay, enough of that. Actually, while we’re on the subject, never buy baozi at 7-11. They’re absolutely disgusting. Taiwanese love sweet meat, so that’s what you’re gonna get. Don’t do it.
Josie's Taiwan Exchange 
Leave a comment