Taiwaneers

The other day I took the train down to Yilan City. First of all let me say that the train ride was beautiful. As you can see from that map the train goes right along the coast for a ways. I love the ocean and seeing it again made me remember it all over.

I met up with the girl who was selling me the bike outside the train station. I gave the bike a test ride, we talked a little bit, and then I gave her my money and she took off.

She had suggested I take a bus back to Taipei since they can cut through the mountain using a tunnel slicing my traveling time in half. I went over to the bus station to make an inquiry. The dude behind the counter wasn’t too good at English and my Chinese still isn’t that great. He seemed to indicate I needed to take the front wheel off my bike and put it in a garbage bag to be able to load it onto the bus. When I tried to explain that I didn’t have the necessary tool to do so he told me that the bus was “all full.” When I asked him when the next bus would go to Taipei he told me 11:30pm. “Really?” I asked him since Taipei is a pretty hot destination and it was only 4:00pm at the time. He said yes that was indeed the case. I don’t know but I suspect he figured I was too much hassle so it would be best to just get rid of me. I guess I’ll never know the truth.

I went back over to the train station and went to the window to buy a ticket for me and my bike. “eega ren hu eega bi she cal zai Taipei” I told the man which means ’1 person and 1 bicycle to Taipei.” He kind of hesitated at first not knowing what to do about the bicycle but then asked me if 6:55pm would be okay. Even though that was 2 hours later which would mean I’d have to bum around Yilan for a while I just decided that I was lucky to be going back to Taipei at all and said okay. He sold me two tickets (1 for me and 1 for the bike) on the slow train back to Taipei for 6:55pm which was about $8 USD or so. After taking the tickets I called Emily to tell her how long I’d be.

To kill time I decided to try out my new bicycle and see a little bit of Yilan. There were rice fields everywhere. You could look out at a whole bunch of rice fields and see a house in the midde of it and a few roads going through them. It was weird because rice fields are basically like ponds with little walls protruding about a foot up around the edges. Buildings in the middle of a bunch of them look so lonely and solitary since Taiwanese construction normally means every house and building mashed up against the sides of those beside it.

I loved my new bike. Smooth, easy, pretty, and the ten-speed style I had wanted. God is so good to me! Then all of a sudden the back tire went flat.

I walked the bike back towards the train station and decided to study in the McDonald’s close by it. After finishing dinner I got out my Classical Myth by Barry Powell textbook and started on the Trojan War.

Next to me was a high school girl and guy studying. After about 30 minutes they finally got up the nerve to all of a sudden pass me a slip of paper with “Where are you from?” written on it saying a hasty “excuse me.” I read the paper and told them I was from America. For the next hour or so I would study a little bit and every once in a while answer a few of their questions. The boy always did the talking and the girl always would turn her head away and give one of those embarrassed laughs while he did so.

After discussing what my favorite basketball team was and getting the foundation of Helen & Paris’ elopment covered I got ready to leave and asked the two high schoolers if they knew of a bike shop nearby so that I could fix my tire. I was surprised when they immediately packed up there stuff and took me around the corner to a scooter store where they asked the guy if he would patch the inner tube in my bike tire. He was so slow. A middle aged Taiwanese guy who before we came along was peacefully watching tv now tried to patch my inner tube. While I stood there worried I would miss my train he moved as deliberately as possible. Taking out the tube, rubbing some goop on the hole, blowing on it to dry to goop, putting a patch on top of that, putting some air in it, and then sticking it in a bucket of water to see if the hole made bubbles indicating a leak. The two high schoolers stayed right there with me nodding reassuringly at me and trying to speed him up.

Before it was fixed I decided I better be off. I gave him 50NT (about $2 USD) for his trouble, grabbed the bike and set off for the train station. Looking behind me I saw the high schoolers still right there. They walked with me down to the train station. Then when the ticket taker became unsure about the bike they went with me down to the package guy. He explained that bikes aren’t people and I was going on a people train back to Taipei and that I needed to go to the ticket window. As a rush of worry and tension seized me I told him ‘I know but that the dude at the window had sold me these tickets and told me to ride the 6:55pm back to Taipei in the last car.’ He looked at some paperwork or something and then all of a sudden said “oh yes, okay. I’ll talk to the train conductor for you.”

As I, my bike, the two high schoolers, and now this package guy walked out to the platform down to where the last car of the 6:55pm train was pulling up I was relieved. The package guy talked to the conductor, I hopped on the train and leaned my bike up against some empty seats and sat down next to it. The high schoolers tapped on my window. I turned around and waved goodbye to them as the train pulled away and then after noticing strange looks from those sitting around at me and my bike I popped in my headphones and sat back to listen to Viva La Vida.

This is only one of the myriad of stories like it. Whats the moral? You can live in another country and get by just fine, even if you don’t speak the language very well. You can even find good deals and bikes! You just have to be prepared for mistunderstandings, long waits, and expect everything to be more of a hassle than back home.