Our Trip to Taiwan: Part I

Okay, so it our trip to Taiwan wasn’t officially part of the “road trip” as the road to Taiwan hasn’t been built yet. However, since the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts offered to fly us out for Sean to show his wearable biofeedback art works, it was hardly an opportunity we could snub our noses at and we figured our readers might be interested in this part of our wild and crazy journey.

Our first indication that the trip to Taiwan was going to be just a titch different than our normal international traveling experience was when we emerged from customs at the Taipei airport to find a man holding a sign with “Sean Montgomery” printed on it. We walked up to him, waving, and then were quickly and politely escorted outside to a waiting shuttle that drove us the entire way to our hotel in Taichung. As I sat in the back of the shuttle van trying to get a sense for what our first trip to Asia might be like, with darkened silhouettes of palm trees whisking in and out of view from the highway, the driver hands a cell phone to Sean. It was one of the museum’s staff asking if all was going well and informing us that a shuttle would pick us up at the hotel promptly at 9 the next morning and transport us to the museum. Before we had a chance to register that our marathon 27 hours of travel was over, we were in our room on the 24th floor of the Splendor Suites looking out on to downtown Taichung.

The next morning came quickly (especially since our jet lag pushed us out of bed at about 5:30) and we were soon on our way to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts to begin setting up Sean’s exhibit. Since we arrived under the cover of night, it was my first chance to visually acquaint myself with this Taichung place. Motoscooters stopped at lights, looking like a roving gang of scooter buddies, only to part ways as soon as the green light flashes on. Tropical plants right at home in the urban jungle, hinting at the island paradise that might lurk beyond the edges of the city. And signs everywhere. I’ve never consciously acknowledged how much I use the written language to feel at home in a new place. My usual method of reading anything and everything around me just didn’t work here. It did, however, allow me more time to notice other things: smells, colors, the expressions on people’s faces, the little social rituals that make up a culture. It was definitely a lesson in moving beyond my love of written language to appreciate other modalities for learning about a new place.
While we were on our way to the museum that first day, we witnessed the most complete solar eclipse of the century. We didn’t even know the names of all the artists being shuttled to the museum with us, but as soon as someone pulled out some eclipse viewing glasses everyone’s excited curiousity created a momentary communal happiness….a good omen for the week to come.

We spent that entire first day inside the museum working on Sean’s exhibit. To our great surprise, we were also introduced to Charline, a college student from Taipei who, along with others, had volunteered to work as a translator and personal assistant to the artists. All week long she facilitated our work inside the museum and made our time outside the museum fun, interesting and much more navigable (our Chinese skills leave a lot to be desired, although now we can say hello, thank you, please, excuse me, and cold beer….all the necessities).

Thursday, our second full day in Taiwan, was again spent entirely inside the museum, happily working away on finalizing Sean’s set up. Lucky for us, the museum staff fed us lunch, brought us water, and even took us out to dinner every night. On Thursday night several of the artists, along with the exhibition’s curators, went to dinner at Taiwan Banana New Paradise, a restaurant made to look like the streets of post-WWII Taipei, complete with store fronts, street signs and period music. The dinners out with the other artists were greatly appreciated, since it was really the only time we had to get to know them (during the day, everyone was holed up at their own exhibition space, working away).

On Friday, we were fortunate enough to be able to complete the exhibit set up before lunch, so a group of our translators/personal assistants/guardian angels took us, and our new friends Jay and Jodi, out into Taichung. We stopped at a local Buddhist temple, wandered the streets of downtown and gorged ourselves on mango shaved ice and bubble tea (invented in Taiwan, as any native will proudly tell you). We returned to the museum for a pre-opening dinner and then met Frankie and Ishtar (two of our friendly and helpful interns) at the Feng Jia night market. Night markets seem to be the social and recreational center for many cities in Taiwan, and Taichung has some of the most famous night markets of them all. It is a combination of a street fair, a carnival and an outdoor shopping mall. You can eat, you can shop, you can play carnival games or you can just watch the thousands of other people walking by. Frankie and Ishtar made sure that we tried some of the best that the street vendors had to offer which included: stinky tofu (fermented tofu, fried and served with kim chee and pickled cucumbers), dragonfruit, taiwan sausage (a sweet and fatty pork sausage), fried sweet potato dough balls (most Taiwanese delicacies involve sweet potato in some way, shape or form), and shaved ice topped with sweetened condensed milk, black tapioca pearls, red beans and sweet taro paste. There were plenty of other tempting food options, but my stomach just couldn’t accomodate anything more. It was a  culinary adventure, and I loved every minute.

Saturday was dedicated to the exhibition opening (Freeze!: 2009 International MedTech Art Show) at the museum. The ceremonies included plenty of formal speeches, but also some super cool demos by Jay Silver and his wife, Jodi as well as by Daito Manabe. After the hoopla at the museum, all the artists and curators went out to dinner and gorged on 14 courses of incredible Chinese food, including the best stewed pork I’ve ever tasted (from a recipe created by 11th century Chinese poet Su Dongpo).

Sunday was the last day for museum related duties. The museum held a day-long seminar, open to the public, in which several of the artists, including Sean, gave hour long talks on their work. It was an incredible chance to get to hear more in depth about all the new ideas we’d glimpsed in the exhibited works. Equally as amazing was the system set up for translation. Each person at the seminar got UN-style headphones with two channels (one for Chinese, one for English) and for the entire day there was simultaneous translation of all the speeches and even during the question and answer sessions! I am now decidedly convinced that translators are some of the smartest people on the planet.
More to come about our trip in Taiwan: Part II!