Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Near my home is a huge market, more like an open-air bazaar, I suppose. It’s an area the size of a football field, under a huge red and white tent. It’s overcrowded with tables and stalls; people selling fish (live and dead), noodles, dumplings, meat of all sorts, fruits and vegetables. In the typical Asian fashion, whole pigs sit next to slices of cake, next to live chickens, next to Sashimi stands… its a wonder the whole country hasn’t died. These markets are more common than supermarkets here, and I assume this is where most of the country buys their groceries.
For hundreds of years, while Europeans had salt to cure their meat and the Middle East had spices galore, East Asia never caught on to any of this. Without proper refrigeration and without any preservation, a careful, maybe paranoid culture developed. Still to this day, though refrigerators are as commonplace as motor scooters and temples, Chinese culture has an obsession with freshness.
Many Americans would claim the same marriage to fresh food, but here, the rule of thumb is, If I didn't see it alive, I don't know how long its been dead.
This means these huge open air markets are chock full of chickens in cages, shrimp sitting (or walking) on ice, pathetically blinking their eyes, fish flapping around in a few inches of water and pig legs, still complete with split hooves and furry legs.
I have been frequenting these markets for about 3 months now. I've noticed the small cages crammed with chickens; I've noticed the live sea creatures and I've definitely noticed the meat being sold. Subconsciously I obviously knew what was to come of these pets everywhere, but I had never realized the brutality of it all.
As I walked yesterday, I stopped to watch a woman wearing thick, rubber gloves. She pulled a live chicken out of its cage while it clucked and kicked. She slammed its neck on the bloody rim of a trashcan and sliced its head off with a cleaver. The head fell into the garbage, sitting on a pile of hundreds of others. The body, wings still flapping, legs still kicking, fell to the floor, resting atop dozens of dead chickens.
The whole process, from cage to headless, must have taken less than 10 seconds. The woman did it without hesitation, not as if he'd done it before, but as if he'd done it hundreds of times that day. She did it with the ease that I type my name MATT; 4 strokes... I could probably do that with the absence of all five senses… a reaction… there is no doubt I my mind that this woman could kill a chicken without her five senses… an act that would have taken me hours to prep for and months of therapy to get over.
She never noticed me; had no idea that someone was traumatized by her actions that day (no… I am NOT a vegetarian, yes… I know the hypocrisy involved here, no… I have never drilled for oil, picked a head of lettuce or built a home either), had no idea that I felt guilty about my eating habits for a couple of days, had no idea that his action would ever be deemed important enough for someone to write 1,560 words about it.
The punch-line here is not that I have gone vegetarian now, nor is it to say that the Chinese are savages. I am merely pointing the small differences in culture or people’s lives and how mind-boggling they can be.
Why are we so afraid of being reminded where our food actually comes from? Why are they so afraid of food that was frozen, shipped for 6 hours, delivered to a market and wrapped in plastic?
The list of small cultural idiosyncrasies could go on until my hands fell off. Why do we eat chicken breasts, but not their feet? Why do we eat fish, but not their eyes?
Culture seeps into every corner of one's existence, how one wakes up, how they walk, how they get to work, how they greet others each morning, how they get ready for bed, and everything in-between. It’s all dictated by their upbringing, by the community and the people that raised them.
Most of these details go unnoticed, even to the watchful eye of a foreigner. It is no wonder that immigrants tend to stick with their own people. The list of everyday occurrences here that make me slightly uncomfortable is long and constantly morphing. And on parallel, I can only begin to imagine all that I must do to make these people's teeth cringe.
The traveler takes these differences as exciting awakenings; a good traveler must think of himself as an anthropologist/ sociologist, using these changes in perspective to see himself and his culture. And to see that we do in fact have our own culture, that we are unique, (for good and for bad) this is a priceless gift, one that every human deserves.
I listen to University students across the US, complaining of our lack of culture and scoff… they’re not even worth the thirty seconds it would take to prove them wrong… When did we decide that it takes dragon puppets or candy skulls or bull fights to signify a true culture.
The working immigrant however, never asked for this enlightenment. For him, these cultural divides, these points that are lost in translation, are just another headache after a long day. I guess Tom Sawyer said it best: Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
I am still having fun asking myself if I am in fact an immigrant. Do immigrants need to have dark skin? Must they come from a poor country? Must they themselves come from poverty? I have met white people here, people from first world countries who came to Taiwan to escape poverty. Are they immigrants? And wages for people of my educational background are in fact better here, so is poverty all relative? If I am $ 30,000 in the hole, with no savings, but I am well fed and have a car… what is my economic status?
At home, foreigners are almost always treated as second-class citizens. They are often feared, sneered at, marginalized and trampled upon. Yet I have been embraced here, the locals toy with my lack of ability to communicate, wait for my pantomimes, let me draw pictures of chicken legs and rice and often offer me forks with my meals. They almost always wear a smile while I take their time to explain my distaste for onions.
And for the life of me, I can't figure out why… I am not in Zimbabwe; I am not in El Salvador; I am in a developed nation. The people here have money and spend money, meaning that I am not the only source of income to these countless people who baby me. I am just another customer, another person on the street, another bus passenger.
It isn't even my American passport that makes me loved here, but my white face and protruding nose (it is quite common for children to come up to me, touch my nose and run away, while women like to call it beautiful). This is still relatively uncharted territory for the Australian businessman, or European vacationer; there is a definite air of curiosity and mysticism regarding white people here.
So… is it just curiosity? If America didn't have large populations of virtually every ethnicity imaginable, would we also be so friendly to the outsiders? While the Chinese seem to be excited, are we jaded by all who are not like us?
And then again, I must ask… do reasons always exist? Perhaps the Chinese history, and these tales of fresh meat have nothing to do with the chickens kept in cages. And perhaps I am dealing with a different culture, one that enjoys my company, when mine doesn't particularly enjoy theirs. Maybe it’s all that easy…
I haven't found the person whom I should thank for this one, nor have I gotten down the proper pronunciation for the word thank you. I am trying my best though and have not gotten any sneers for my poor pronunciation.
*This was written almost two years ago, when I was still a freshman to Taiwan and I have to say I am no longer amazed by what I see... it is less and less often now that I look twice at anything I see here. I'm more and more used to it all and realize that this was written at a time when I was still a backpacker to this nation. Now I don't know what to say... I have overstayed my anthropologist phase and am now in my - I don't know what to call it- phase. But I can properly utter the words for thank you, onions, and quite a few others.
Near my home is a huge market, more like an open-air bazaar, I suppose. It’s an area the size of a football field, under a huge red and white tent. It’s overcrowded with tables and stalls; people selling fish (live and dead), noodles, dumplings, meat of all sorts, fruits and vegetables. In the typical Asian fashion, whole pigs sit next to slices of cake, next to live chickens, next to Sashimi stands… its a wonder the whole country hasn’t died. These markets are more common than supermarkets here, and I assume this is where most of the country buys their groceries.
For hundreds of years, while Europeans had salt to cure their meat and the Middle East had spices galore, East Asia never caught on to any of this. Without proper refrigeration and without any preservation, a careful, maybe paranoid culture developed. Still to this day, though refrigerators are as commonplace as motor scooters and temples, Chinese culture has an obsession with freshness.
Many Americans would claim the same marriage to fresh food, but here, the rule of thumb is, If I didn't see it alive, I don't know how long its been dead.
This means these huge open air markets are chock full of chickens in cages, shrimp sitting (or walking) on ice, pathetically blinking their eyes, fish flapping around in a few inches of water and pig legs, still complete with split hooves and furry legs.
I have been frequenting these markets for about 3 months now. I've noticed the small cages crammed with chickens; I've noticed the live sea creatures and I've definitely noticed the meat being sold. Subconsciously I obviously knew what was to come of these pets everywhere, but I had never realized the brutality of it all.
* * *
As I walked yesterday, I stopped to watch a woman wearing thick, rubber gloves. She pulled a live chicken out of its cage while it clucked and kicked. She slammed its neck on the bloody rim of a trashcan and sliced its head off with a cleaver. The head fell into the garbage, sitting on a pile of hundreds of others. The body, wings still flapping, legs still kicking, fell to the floor, resting atop dozens of dead chickens.
The whole process, from cage to headless, must have taken less than 10 seconds. The woman did it without hesitation, not as if he'd done it before, but as if he'd done it hundreds of times that day. She did it with the ease that I type my name MATT; 4 strokes... I could probably do that with the absence of all five senses… a reaction… there is no doubt I my mind that this woman could kill a chicken without her five senses… an act that would have taken me hours to prep for and months of therapy to get over.
She never noticed me; had no idea that someone was traumatized by her actions that day (no… I am NOT a vegetarian, yes… I know the hypocrisy involved here, no… I have never drilled for oil, picked a head of lettuce or built a home either), had no idea that I felt guilty about my eating habits for a couple of days, had no idea that his action would ever be deemed important enough for someone to write 1,560 words about it.
The punch-line here is not that I have gone vegetarian now, nor is it to say that the Chinese are savages. I am merely pointing the small differences in culture or people’s lives and how mind-boggling they can be.
Why are we so afraid of being reminded where our food actually comes from? Why are they so afraid of food that was frozen, shipped for 6 hours, delivered to a market and wrapped in plastic?
The list of small cultural idiosyncrasies could go on until my hands fell off. Why do we eat chicken breasts, but not their feet? Why do we eat fish, but not their eyes?
* * *
Most people here, from construction workers, to doctors, to bankers nap for about an hour each day; they just put their heads down on the desk, while construction workers and road workers lay down on the sidewalk. Why do we regard naps as childish and slightly embarrassing?Culture seeps into every corner of one's existence, how one wakes up, how they walk, how they get to work, how they greet others each morning, how they get ready for bed, and everything in-between. It’s all dictated by their upbringing, by the community and the people that raised them.
Most of these details go unnoticed, even to the watchful eye of a foreigner. It is no wonder that immigrants tend to stick with their own people. The list of everyday occurrences here that make me slightly uncomfortable is long and constantly morphing. And on parallel, I can only begin to imagine all that I must do to make these people's teeth cringe.
The traveler takes these differences as exciting awakenings; a good traveler must think of himself as an anthropologist/ sociologist, using these changes in perspective to see himself and his culture. And to see that we do in fact have our own culture, that we are unique, (for good and for bad) this is a priceless gift, one that every human deserves.
I listen to University students across the US, complaining of our lack of culture and scoff… they’re not even worth the thirty seconds it would take to prove them wrong… When did we decide that it takes dragon puppets or candy skulls or bull fights to signify a true culture.
The working immigrant however, never asked for this enlightenment. For him, these cultural divides, these points that are lost in translation, are just another headache after a long day. I guess Tom Sawyer said it best: Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
I am still having fun asking myself if I am in fact an immigrant. Do immigrants need to have dark skin? Must they come from a poor country? Must they themselves come from poverty? I have met white people here, people from first world countries who came to Taiwan to escape poverty. Are they immigrants? And wages for people of my educational background are in fact better here, so is poverty all relative? If I am $ 30,000 in the hole, with no savings, but I am well fed and have a car… what is my economic status?
At home, foreigners are almost always treated as second-class citizens. They are often feared, sneered at, marginalized and trampled upon. Yet I have been embraced here, the locals toy with my lack of ability to communicate, wait for my pantomimes, let me draw pictures of chicken legs and rice and often offer me forks with my meals. They almost always wear a smile while I take their time to explain my distaste for onions.
And for the life of me, I can't figure out why… I am not in Zimbabwe; I am not in El Salvador; I am in a developed nation. The people here have money and spend money, meaning that I am not the only source of income to these countless people who baby me. I am just another customer, another person on the street, another bus passenger.
It isn't even my American passport that makes me loved here, but my white face and protruding nose (it is quite common for children to come up to me, touch my nose and run away, while women like to call it beautiful). This is still relatively uncharted territory for the Australian businessman, or European vacationer; there is a definite air of curiosity and mysticism regarding white people here.
So… is it just curiosity? If America didn't have large populations of virtually every ethnicity imaginable, would we also be so friendly to the outsiders? While the Chinese seem to be excited, are we jaded by all who are not like us?
And then again, I must ask… do reasons always exist? Perhaps the Chinese history, and these tales of fresh meat have nothing to do with the chickens kept in cages. And perhaps I am dealing with a different culture, one that enjoys my company, when mine doesn't particularly enjoy theirs. Maybe it’s all that easy…
I haven't found the person whom I should thank for this one, nor have I gotten down the proper pronunciation for the word thank you. I am trying my best though and have not gotten any sneers for my poor pronunciation.
*This was written almost two years ago, when I was still a freshman to Taiwan and I have to say I am no longer amazed by what I see... it is less and less often now that I look twice at anything I see here. I'm more and more used to it all and realize that this was written at a time when I was still a backpacker to this nation. Now I don't know what to say... I have overstayed my anthropologist phase and am now in my - I don't know what to call it- phase. But I can properly utter the words for thank you, onions, and quite a few others.
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