Sunday 3/2-Monday 3/3/03          Trip to KaoShung

 

        I was scheduled with fellow scholar Rory to go to KaoShung, the second largest city in Taiwan and all the way on the southern end of the island, to do a guest talk to some university/grad students who wanted to learn about study in the U.S.  FSE had arranged for all of us to do it at some point and most others had done it already at FSE, for students in Taipei.  Why we two were chosen for KaoShung I wasn’t sure, and at first I wasn’t thrilled to have to go, especially right after getting back from HK; but it was a chance to see KaoShung and I don’t remember if I’ve been there before.

 

        Our two hosts from FSE met us at ShongShan, Taipei’s domestic airport, very small with only a few airline counters.  The plane still was bigger than I expected; Hanying explained that’s because we’re taking the farthest domestic flight; if we were going to TaiZhong or Tainan we’d have a much smaller, rickety plane, “they’re kinda scary,” she said. 

 

        As I’d been told, there wasn’t much to see in KaoShung.  Had the same crazy traffic (maybe worse), motor scooters, street shops/vendors as Taipei, but less cosmopolitan.  Our hotel though, was very nice.  There were art displays in the lobby,

 

a fitness center and pool upstairs, several nice restaurants on all floors, and our rooms were really big,

 

with that bathtub plus separate shower stall again.  I made note to take another bubble bath (took one in HK before we left, explaining to Gin that I can only take bubble baths in hotels, so I gotta grab the chance every time I stay in a hotel).  Even got a fruit plate.  Big window with what would have been a nice view, if KaoShung made a nice view.

 

        Since Rory’s been here several times, he suggested we go to the all-u-can-eat buffet Bola in town.  It was one of the most monstrous buffets I’ve ever seen, with all kinds of Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Western; salads, seafood, sushi, made-to-order noodles, made-to-order steak/pork chops, Mongolian BBQ counter, soups, desserts, drinks.  Impressive selection, quality bleh.

 

        After that we went to the CKS Cultural Center which is similar to CKS or SYS Memorial parks in Taipei, with lots of people exercising/dancing (traditional Chinese and Western swing), kids playing, and statues of Chiang Kai-Shek.

 

        Next morning we went to the university to present.  Was sunny and kind of hot.  I went first, talking about public health and what public health programs in the U.S. were like.  I started out with simple Chinese (introducing myself) and then switched to slow English; the students seemed to understand (no one raised their hands when Hanying asked if English was a problem) but we wondered if they were being honest.  Only one person asked me a question:  “[How much is tuition normally in the U.S.?]”  I had to convert $25,000 to NT (when it gets to the 100,000s it gets confusing because they use the word “Wan” to mean 10,000 so you say ten “Wan” for 100,000 not “[one hundred thousand]”) and when I finally wrote “840,000NT/year” on the board, people yelled in shock.  I made sure to clarify this was private schools, and that almost everyone I knew took out government loans, but “Er, international students can’t take out U.S. government student loans.”  I later asked Hanying if the students don’t realize how much U.S. tuition costs.  She says they know, but to hear it out loud still makes them jump.

 

Then Rory went, who had the clever idea of telling people to write their questions down and pass them forward, so he would read and answer them anonymously, out loud.  He got a lot more questions that way.

 

When our plane landed back in Taipei, it was pouring rain.