Settling into Zhengda

Update at February 21 6:00 PM: I now have internet access! Hooray!

I still don’t have internet access so this is going to be posted when I do.

So I’ve gotten a chance to do a little exploring of Zhengzhi Daxue (政治大學), my university for the next roughly three months, and meet some of the other Americans, but our free time so far has been too managed and organized by the program for us to get a chance to explore on our own very much. I hope that this will change soon, as I hope to make Taiwanese friends while I’m here. After all, the benefit of language study in a foreign country is the opportunity to practice interacting with people of that country, and not just Americans.

Despite being in Taipei City, our campus is very far from the downtown. To get here I had to ride the subway to its end stop at the Taipei Zoo (south-southeast Taipei City), then take a taxi from there to the campus. Being so removed is nice in ways but inconvenient in others. It is very peaceful, but very far from the excitement of downtown Taipei. It’s not as picturesque as Xiamen University’s campus was, but it does have a rather green appeal; the whole campus is covered in green trees and bushes, even during this cold(er) time of year. It has a tropical feel to it.



Also, this area of Taipei seems to have a rather serious stray dog problem. At random times the dogs will congregate, growl at one another, or wander into buildings. There have even been stray dogs wandering into our dorm. I can only hope that they don’t attack or have rabies.



Coming from Tokyo, where I could read well but speak little, to Taipei, where I am decently competent at the language, is quite a relief to me. I can easily buy things, ask directions, act as a quasi-interpreter for others, and order food. Our Taiwanese student “ambassadors” seem surprised to find that I have studied Chinese for so long (even though they have almost all studied English for just as long!), and are all very complimentary about my skills (far too complimentary, I am sure, for I am still far from fluent).

Linguistics nerd section: When I was in Xiamen, people told me I had a Southern Chinese/Taiwanese aspect to my speech (certain phrases and pronunciations I use are regionalisms of this area), but here in Taipei they say I have “mainland Chinese strength”, or “大陸強” of speech. I think that by that they refer to my precise differentiation of several consonant pairs. In Southern China and Taiwan, people conflate “s” and “sh”, “c” and “ch”, “z” and “zh”, and “l” and “r”. As I do not conflate these consonants, I have mainland strength. I suppose seven years of studying Taiwanese Mandarin and three years of studying Chinese mandarin have left me with a mixture. [End of nerd section]

I take a placement test on Tuesday morning, and our language courses start the following Monday (March 1). I really hope that I am placed into an appropriate level here. Last semester, I was placed into intermediate-mid level. As I have studied Chinese for ten years, this class was far too easy for me.

Impressions: Now that I’ve had more chances to explore Taipei, I am finding that it is quite different from mainland China in ways I had not expected. There are, of course, the obvious differences; there is a strong Japanese influence here, a vestige of the fifty years (1895-1945) that Japan controlled Taiwan. Unlike most of Japan’s imperial possessions, the Taiwanese don’t mind their occupiers, because the Japanese rebuilt the island’s infrastructure and were much less cruel to Taiwan than they were to China, Korea, or Singapore. Thus, Japanese language and writing can be found in many places, and young people (especially girls) dress more similarly to Japanese youth than Chinese. Taiwanese also seem to be more accustomed to foreigners than the people in Xiamen were, and (to my great joy), they seem to LOVE milk here. Which is wonderful. Because I also love milk.

Tomorrow we have another full day of planned events, and hopefully I will have internet by Monday at the latest.
-Sunday, February 21 4:20 PM