Childlike Wonder

Do you remember when you were five years old and you would go out to eat with your parents? Usually, your parents would read you the menu and give you your options, then you’d pick what you wanted and they’d place the order for you when the waitress came back. That’s exactly how it's been  here in Taiwan. I completely feel like a five year old again. I can’t read or understand anything, only have the most rudimentary sense of how things work, and everything I do just seems like a series of guesses where I hope for the best.

But it hasn’t been as bad as it might sound. I find that this situation creates a childlike wonder in me. For example, I wandered around the grocery store for two hours trying to decipher what things were was based on the pictures on the packages. It felt like a game to me. I'm currently writing this post from a coffee shop and I don't really mind that I'm completely ignorant to what everyone around me is chatting about. It's much less distracting! 

Before coming to Taiwan, I assumed that traveling here would be similar to Southeast Asia where tourism is heavily geared towards Westerners. Well, I was totally wrong. Almost all of the visitors are either from mainland China or Japan. In fact, in my five days in Taiwan I have only spotted less than ten other Westerners. Therefore, English is not really spoken here…at all. Everyone speaks Chinese to me and I just awkwardly smile and shake my head yes or no depending on what I think they're saying. When I go out to eat, all the menus look like the picture below. I’ve been trying to look up more words and phrases to say but Mandarin Chinese definitely isn’t the easiest language in the world to speak. The phonetics are so different that most of the words I don’t even know how to make my mouth make those sounds.

During my first two days here, my friend Alan took me around and helped me get set up with everything. He taught me how to use the public transportation system, ordered my food for me, and basically served as my personal translator. I’m so grateful that I had him to help me. However, on my third day here, Alan had to go back to work so I was on my own. It was time for me to grow up.

So how did I manage to get around Taiwan without my personal translator by my side? Well, this was the solution I came up with. I asked Alan to teach me how to say four different phrases in Chinese and practiced them over and over and over again until they were memorized.

1. I do not speak Chinese.
2. Do you speak English? 
3. Do you have an English menu?
4. How do I get to _____?

And surprisingly, I was totally fine.  I was able to explore and do everything I wanted to do with limited communication and a little charades. Taiwan is an incredibly safe country and the people are very polite. The most difficult part of each day was ordering food. One day, I went to McDonald's, said to the cashier in Chinese “Do you have an English menu?” and she shook her head “No.” No English menu at McDonalds? Really? I still find that hard to believe. I tried the same scenario at about six other food stands/restaurants and always left defeated. Will I ever eat? The only English menu I’ve found so far was at Subway. Therefore, I decided that if I wanted to eat, I would have to limit myself to food places that had food I could point to – either in person or on a picture. And boy, I’ve managed to eat some of the most interesting food this way. Stay tuned for another post to hear more about the Taiwanese food delicacies I’ve tried!

Have you ever been in a situation like this? How did it make you feel?