Culture Shock

If you have ever traveled abroad for any length of time you have probably experienced “Culture Shock”.  While the name implies that there is a specific definition, in reality everyone experiences culture shock in different ways and even differently over time.  Culture shock is also not always a singular event; you can experience it many times and over time as you continue living in another culture.  I am not an expert on culture shock, nor do I have an extensive researched knowledge of this phenomenon from a scientific or anthropological background, I do have some experience with it though.  I think for anyone who travels abroad or wants to travel abroad that it is important to understand culture shock and to know when you are feeling it.  If we understand what culture shock is, we can more easily overcome it and have a more interesting time while abroad.

The first time I experienced culture shock I was a junior in High School spending the summer with my parents in Europe on a summer abroad.  I did not know what culture shock was, and being a teenager I think my parents probably just thought I was being moody.  However, I specifically remember that during the summer I became less and less enamored with my surroundings, spent more time on the internet, and ate fewer interesting foods.

The second time was on my visit to Japan after graduating from High School.

The third time I felt culture shock was two summers ago when I did a study abroad in Amman, Jordan (you can read about my adventures here).  There were times in the summer when I felt useless, depressed, and wishing I was back in America.  The fact that my fiancé was on the other side of the world probably aggravated this feeling but I definitely felt it and battled it over the summer.

Fourth time was last summer, and fifth time is now.  That’s right, I’m currently suffering from culture shock.

How do I know it is culture shock?  For me, one of the easiest ways to recognize culture is a yearning for familiar foods and drinks.  Right now I really want to drink Mountain Dew and specifically Code Red Mountain Dew, which I don’t think people drink out of the states.  In addition, I have found myself inexplicably tired and making excuses not to go out and not to do things.  This may sound weird and especially ungrateful to those who read this blog and wish they were on this adventure but I promise it happens.  Knowing that this is happening, however, helps me to force through the feelings and go on cool experiences.  This week went to Sun Moon Lake and spent three days having wonderful adventures.  Tomorrow we go to Taipei, and next week we go to the East side of Taiwan for more adventures.  By understanding that I have culture shock I can address it more easily and also don’t get mad at myself for feeling this way.  Culture shock is frustrating but I doubt it will ever end (unless I get into the foreign service and live in other cultures for years at a time and maybe not even then). 

Hopefully as you travel you will be able to understand what it is you are feeling and work through it too.  Don’t worry, you aren’t the first person to feel it and won’t be the last but you do need to conquer it in order to have the most amount of fun possible.

Movie Going in Taiwan

I am not a big moviegoer when I am in the states.  Normally I cannot justify spending $20 going to a newly released movie when I can just wait a few months and see it for $3 at the dollar theater or on Redbox.  Call me a cheapskate, lame, or whatever you want but it is simply the reality.  Going to a movie in Asia, however, is so much fun.

Close to where we are staying there is a giant Japanese mall with a huge movie theater on the top floor.  Last year when we were in Taiwan I noticed that Avengers came out a week earlier in Taiwan so we saw it and it was amazing.  Last week we actually went to the movies twice and saw Iron Man III (very good) and Star Trek II (Even better than Iron Man III).  Besides the fact that the movies themselves were all really awesome, the experience of going to a movie theater in Taiwan is quite awesome.

First, the movie theaters are massive, clean, and air-conditioned.  The seats are very comfortable (and assigned so you are sure to get a good seat if you buy your tickets early) and the sound system is ridiculously amazing.  After seeing tons of badly down Korean and Chinese Dramas is it nice to see professionally done Hollywood movies with great acting, good special effects, and beautiful soundtracks.  It is also nice to hear English for a few hours.

Second, because the movies are in English with Mandarin sub-titles interesting things happen.  For instance, sometimes they use an English idiom or saying that is only funny if you are from the United States or are a native English speaker.  This almost always means that I laugh quite hard, out loud, while the entire rest of the theater is awkwardly quite.  At other times the rest of the audience will read a joke that they say before the actor actually says the joke, which means that I have a delayed reaction, and again am laughing when other people are quite.

For the first time in my life, someone actually answered their phone during the movie and had a 30 second conversation with them!  Apparently I was the only one appalled by this because everyone else just kept staring at the movie and not even noticing this total breach of movie etiquette!  I’ve seen people answer their phone in movies on TV or in comedies but to actually experience it in real life was sort of perplexing!

Finally, remember how I said that the movie theaters were pretty clean?  That is because they actually clean the theater in-between each showing, but also because people clean up after themselves.  In case you forget to clean up after yourself, right after the movie ends and the lights begin to fade up a little Taiwanese lady walks out and yells in a high pitched voice that everyone should remember to clean up after themselves and pick up their area.  This doesn’t sound that bad, but think about what we normally do at the end of a movie in the States.  If you are like me, it is a time to think about the movie, make some comment to your number, and return to the real world where your legs barely work and you have to stumble into the bathroom because of the huge soda you just drank.  There is no time for reflection in Taiwan, and the first time the little lady came out and screamed at us I almost had a heart attack and thought she was saying Taiwan had just been attacked!

So there you go, that’s what seeing a movie in Taiwan has been like.  It may not be what you thought you would read from me but maybe more will come in the future as we get better internet connects.  If you ever get to see a movie in foreign country, do it, it is really fun and is a cultural experience to boot!  

Hong Kong: Not the Asian Manhattan

Hong Kong Skyline from Kowloon

This past week saw my wife and I visiting the beautiful and exotic Hong Kong.  As a former British Colony, semi-autonomous region of China Hong Kong has become an economic powerhouse in the Far East and along with Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore is known as one of the "Asian Tigers".  Hong Kong is known as financial city and is often referenced in the same breath as New York, London, and Tokyo.  All of this things meant that I was expecting Hong Kong to be very similar to any and all of those cities that I have previously visited.  I was very wrong.

One amazing thing about Hong Kong is that as far as I could see there were not any bridges to Hong Kong Island.  There were tunnels, mass transit, and plenty of boats but not a bridge.  This lends the skyline an amazingly pristine look and probably makes traffic to and from the port a lot easier to manage.

All of the black in this picture is wilderness (except the water)

Second, Hong Kong is not as large (space wise) as London, New York, or Tokyo.  Each of those cities has a downtown or central area that everyone associates with the city.  This is where rich people live, tourists visit, and major companies have their offices.  However, around these central locations there are usually sprawling metropolises that go on for miles in every direction as smaller towns are eaten by suburbia and the infrastructure of these mega cities.  In Hong Kong it is very different.  The city in Hong Kong is very compact and is scattered around the edges of the main island and the associated areas but never more than a half-mile from the water after which is almost complete wilderness and isolation.  No sprawling suburbs and no shantytowns on the edges of the city.  The reason for this is geography, after about half a mile the sides of the mountains become much too steep for people to travel up in anything other than the funicular railway to the city's highest observation point.  This interesting geography was completely unexpected and made this major city appear to be both isolated and pristine even though it housed millions of people and tourists.

Our Cable Car to the giant Budha statue

 The geography of Hong Kong also means that space is at an even higher premium than other big cities so almost every building is a skyscraper.  Manhattan is probably the best known town for skyscrapers in the USA but it has nothing on Hong Kong because not only is the financial district crawling with massive buildings but apartment complexes are regularly more than 50 floors tall in every part of the city.  Although buildings in New York, London, and Tokyo are usually 4 or 5 stories it is nothing compared to the sheer height of the buildings in Hong Kong.

The previously mentioned Giant Budha Statue

Finally, I was impressed and surprised by how easy it was for a non-Cantonese speaker to get around and function in Hong Kong.  There were a few times when Jade's Mandarin came in very handy to people who could not understand English very well but overall it is a city that is easy to manage and quite enjoyable.  One thing to note, however, the hostels in the Tourist district are really expensive for what you get (basically a cell).  It was difficult to make this our first stop after massive jet lag because we did not want to spend any time in the nasty hostel but also needed to rest earlier as we got our clocks on the right schedule.  

Hong Kong was an amazing place and 3 days there was absolutely perfect for how much we wanted to see, spend, and do before our main destination of Taiwan, which I will write about soon.  I hope you enjoy the post and if you ever need any pointers about visiting Hong Kong just ask!  Also, feel free to ask me any questions about my travels or the photos included, it's always nice to know that people are reading your blog ;-D.

The janky little "cell" at our hostel