Outside the karaoke box

A dude named Rolex asked me last month if KTV – karaoke rooms – are popular in the States. No, I replied, they’re more or less nonexistent.

“Then … where do you sing?” he pushed.

I paused to consider the question, then explained, “In the shower.” And it’s free.

“Ah,” he said, restrained pity in his voice.

The question brought me back to one of my only pre-adult memories of Taiwan: sitting in a darkened karaoke room with my parents and family – then being denied my only solace, a Coke, because a typhoon had just wiped out the joint’s water supply. I resisted KTV then (as I do now), but was dragged into it on the premise that Taiwan is all about KTV, and that I should leave with at least the memory of having gone once. I guess it worked.

It turns out, though, that music here isn’t all amateurs croaking into a mic for hours on end.

Taipei Times and the president’s ‘pot plant’

Here’s one my copy editor buddies should enjoy. The Taipei Times on Thursday reported that the Presidential Office here removed a statue of “nation founder” Sun Yat-sen from its grand hall and replaced it with … a “pot plant.”

Not marijuana, but, according to the story, a Taiwan cypress tree. Though depending on your perspective, an actual pot plant might explain some of the president’s finer pronouncements.

Looks like the paper has a British copy editor on its payroll. Though they seem to stick to an augmented version of the Associated Press’ style (meaning American English), they went Brit on this headline – according to Wikipedia, “pot plant” in the U.K. means the same thing “potted plant” does in the U.S. For all the emphasis on learning meiyu (“American English”) here, the Taipei Times chose a pretty questionable – if funny – story to go Queen’s English on us.

To Seoul and back

A flickr photoset accompanies this post.

I had this dream once – or was it a vivid hallucination? – that time and space were together a polygonal, jointed dragon that could, stretching and twisting, reveal itself all, its multiple surfaces unfurling as time curls backward, then slingshots forward.

What if Seoul were that dragon, and a turn into one alley revealed a past glorious and violent, while a step into a hidden tunnel was a step into the city’s future, yet unseen?

It’s amazing what you can learn about a city when you start from scratch, and last week I did just that during a seven-day visit to the capital of South Korea that taught me both its space and time – its urban geography, its history and maybe future.

Preflight Korea
Not that there was any shortage of preconceptions about Korea (the non-evil one). For the last few years the country has been enjoying what’s being called the Korean Wave in East Asia – exporting culture to neighboring countries via massively popular soap operas like “Winter Sonata” and “Jewel in the Palace” (“冬日戀歌” and “大長今” in Taiwan). In Japan the wave has brought with it housewives who weep like pilgrims at the sight of Bae Yong-joon, the mild-mannered, bespectacled star of “Winter Sonata.”

Lantern gazing in Pingxi

On Sunday, a horde of outsiders descended on Pingxi (平溪), a rural town of about 6,000 people, to celebrate the fifteenth day of the Chinese new year – the Lantern Festival.

Pingxi has a unique take on the holiday that deserves worldwide fame. Its annual Sky Lantern Festival invites visitors to light lanterns, each about the size and shape of a large garbage bag, and send them – along with your dearest hopes – twirling into the evening sky like hot air balloons.

I had just returned from an exhausting seven-day trip to Seoul the night before, but I had specifically planned my return so that I could attend the Sky Lantern Festival, and I wasn’t about to miss it.

The train ride from Taipei to Pingxi, which would take about an hour under normal circumstances, took us three hours, owing to a 45-minute train delay and our inability to squeeze onto the overflowing train when it finally arrived.

But when we finally got there, we knew where we were. Gray shapes floated in the overcast sky, with more and more being sent up every minute. Every other vendor on the street was selling the sky lanterns, which came in different colors. The mood was electric; the darkening sky was blushing orange.

Dozens of sky lanterns, flames ablaze, filled the sky.

It was like when Timon thought stars were fireflies that got stuck on that big bluish-black thing, or when Pumbaa thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away. And then there were hundreds more.

As we painted our wishes on our own lantern – peace, prosperity, happiness, along with hot bods and democracy in Asia – a couple kilometers away on a field, visitors were releasing their lanterns in massive coordinated shots of hundreds at a time. And still then, there were more and more.

And more. Like a candlelight vigil held by angels. The celebration is by no means religious, and our hopes are by no means prayers. But the lanterns are like our messengers, agents of dreams come true. Later, when they drift down, dark and deflated, we know their job has been done – our wishes are floating above us in the night sky in the company of the full moon.

One of Youtube user paolothecat’s videos from last year’s festival:

For some really good photos of the sky lanterns, check out nttjason’s flickr photoset.