asian baseball tour 2009: taiwan!

so back to my promised posts about taiwan. one of my main goals for my trip was to see a baseball game, something which i did on my third night but had almost forgotten about when i left. by the end of the trip, when people asked what i did on the west coast, i had to think pretty hard for something besides walk around night markets and drink milk tea.

but yes! i saw the uni-president 7-11 lions (hereafter 7-11) take on the sinon bulls of the chinese professional baseball league in taichung. like in korea, major corporations own the baseball teams, but unlike in korea, they have no home stadiums. instead the four teams travel all over the island playing games. the taichung stadium was pretty decent, much smaller than the one in korea but substantially larger and well-kept than the tianjin stadium. it probably compares to an older AAA stadium in the states.

the crowd was fairly small, probably because it was a tuesday night and there was a light drizzle for the first part of the game. nevertheless they seemed really into it, pumped up by what appeared to be professional cheering teams (you can see the 7-11 side below). it's unclear actually how much of the crowd was actual crowd, and how much was the cheer squad. nevertheless, things felt fairly professional. they even played a series of american classic rock covers throughout the game, with words changed (in chinese) to relate to baseball. for example, the eponymous chorus of highway to hell was replaced with "aishang bangqiu," which basically means "to fall in love with baseball" or kinda "to be crazy about baseball (in a loving way)." the first translation is easier.

anyway, i actually left the game at the top of the 9th because i was getting really hungry (no concessions in the cheap seats), but by that point sinon was crushing 7-11 12-1, so i don't think i missed much in the last inning.

snow in beijing!

tis quite beautiful outside. only problem is now it's ball-freezing cold and they don't turn the heat on for another two weeks.

another life-changing post about my plant

excuse my brief diversion from taiwan pictures, but i know how popular posts about my plant are. i just wanted everyone to know that the thing is blooming like crazy, not only is it only the second time it's bloomed in nine months, but there are more flowers than i've ever seen on it. there are so many flowers they're falling to the floor! it's like springtime for hitler in here!

but seriously, despite being very small these guys are super fragrant. it's actually a little suffocating close to the plant. but nice to know i can actually nurture life out of something.

how to succeed in free, democratic, progressive china

the typhoon ended up being quite disappointing, though to be fair, i guess when it finally "hit" taiwan, it was only a tropical storm. what we got out of it was two days of solid rain, which in itself is impressive. i've never seen it rain so hard for so long. nevertheless, for something that royally screwed up many of my plans for the trip, i was a little let down. i didn't even get to say "batten down the hatches!"

though i guess it did have its upside. by the time it was clear when the storm was going to hit the island, i was already ensconced in an excellent hostel in hualien, a city on the scenic east coast of taiwan. because pretty much everybody had been canceling trips due to the storm, i was one of three people in the place, and during the day the owner would just lock up, put up the equivalent of a "gone fishin'" sign, and drive us around, showing us the sights. we went to a swimming hole in a river, saw a beautiful restored japanese military building, slept in book stores and had an amazing sashimi lunch at the local fish market.

one of the most striking differences between taiwan and china is how good the food is, no matter where you get it. the sashimi we had was, while not quite as good as the sushi at tsukiji, definitely the second best i've had in my life. (and at three dollars for the whole meal, easily tops on a value basis.) while taiwanese cuisine itself isn't too interesting, the food everywhere was fresh, lite and delicious. i pretty much drowned myself in fruit juice and milk tea, my favorite of the latter being the lately discovered (by me) roast japanese tea flavor.

as for a quick rundown of my itinerary, i basically did a counter-clockwise circle, starting and ending in taipei. major stops were taichung (where i saw baseball and met up with andy), kenting (where i learned to surf), and hualien (where i was basically a bum for 6 days and went on several scooter rides). i had originally planned to hike one of the 3,000+ meter peaks in the center of the island, but the storm put the ol' kibosh on that idea. i did get to do a bit of hiking on my last full day there, climbing a 1,000 meter peak in a small national park north of taipei, but the weather was horrible, redeemed only by a soak in a free public hot spring i shared with 15 old naked taiwanese men.

by the end i found it very hard to leave taiwan. the place is beautiful (and we're talking haiwaii beautiful, combined with lots of really tall mountains, it's like sticking the sierra on kauai), the people are polite and friendly, and there are absolutely no hassles when traveling around. you aren't constantly worried about people trying to rip you off, like here in china, and even the subway bathrooms are nice and clean. with no language barrier either, it was honestly one of the most relaxing vacations i've ever had.

a detailed account of the trip will probably take too long, but i'll try over the next couple days to put up some pictures in individual posts, explaining parts of the trip.

taiwan post forthcoming

so i'm back from a great trip to taiwan. apologies but i won't get around to posting on the trip for a little bit as i'm somewhat occupied working through some issues locally, among them studying for the GRE. but never fear, posts are bubbling around in the back of my mind.

in the meantime, you can check out pictures here. explanations will be forthcoming.

weeeee!

i leave tomorrow to go to taiwan, the other china, for two weeks, so expect e-mail, etc to be spotty. and don't worry; posts on the trip will be forthcoming.

also good news: i got off my ass and downloaded hot spot shield, so i can post from home again. sorry for the dead time this summer. things will pick up again going forward.

tanks in beijing

1 october is national day in china, which celebrates the founding of the people's republic. this year is the 60th anniversary, and every ten years the communist party literally rolls out the big guns and parades them down the street in beijing. so we've been treated to another round of traffic restrictions and heavy police presence. on the actual day of the parade, most people seem to believe it's unlikely that any joe shmoe (or laobaixing as they're called here) will be allowed down to chang'an avenue, and i'll be in taiwan anyway (sticking it to the man), so i've had to get what little exposure i could to the military madness in the meantime.

the first real glimpse of the preparations was three weeks ago, when one night stumbling out of a bar i came across an endless line of enormous trucks covered in tarps driving at about 5 mph one of the main drags. these i assume were the structures of some of the floats in the parade, which are being stored in worker's stadium, near where i used to live.

the second, and more exciting, exposure to the preparations came this past friday night/saturday morning. pretty much everybody in the central part of the city was forced to go home early, as they were closing chang'an avenue and one of the subway lines in preparation for a full rehearsal, which took place at 3 am on saturday morning. so after an afternoon of lazing around and making t-shirts, emmy and i headed out to meet up with jeff at a notorious russian club called chocolate for his birthday. (yes, russian clubs. i am that much of a baller.) as soon as we got in a cab (this is around midnight), however, the driver told us he couldn't take us where we needed to go, because the entire second ring road and several other streets were shut to traffic. so after bailing from the cab and walking over to the second ring, we were treated to the tail end of a line of tanks, armored personnel carriers and missile batteries driving to the starting point for the parade.

i imagine on the actual day of the parade, the whole city will be a mess. they are shutting down all flights into and out of beijing (just announced) for the whole morning, which should also be fun (i'll be long gone at this point).

in other news, i have had many encounters recently with the huang shu lang, an odd ferret-type thing that lives in the hutong areas in beijing. i've seen them twice before, but just this weekend one appeared in our apartment complex (confirmed by emmy and clark). they are supposed to be good luck, unless they steal your chicken or soul, so i'm feeling as lucky as can be.

seoul baseball game videos