Southern Culture

Friends,

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The above photo is one of many wonderful little scenes around the Pier 2 area of Kaohsiung . We spent the weekend exploring the city — the last of Taiwan’s major metro areas for us to have visited, currently famous for hosting a pair of gigantic rubber ducks just beside a pier (not to be confused with the giant high heel shoe beside a pier in Chiayi). I love the duck because it’s so simple yet so successful. Think of all the multi-million dollar tourism campaigns out there that might invent characters, apply a theme to a place, commission new and exciting art, and still might accomplish nothing. Kaohsiung put a giant rubber duck in the water and everyone wants to visit it. There were duck headbands, duck crowns, and duck t-shirts everywhere we went in the city. There was a duck gift shop. The crowds taking photos at the duck included multiple daycares, many multi-generational families, and several international tourists… and this was on a Monday morning.

I hope whoever came up with the idea was lightly ridiculed and then well-rewarded.

We also took a day trip to Sandimen, home of the Taiwanese Indigenous Culture Park . After being greeted by a reminder about the powers of colonialism via a gigantic Christmas tree at the park’s entrance, you’re treated to dance and music performances, all of which are well-contextualized with both the meaning and the current iterations. The park features a ton of information about Taiwan’s sixteen tribes, and had both hands-on experiences (musical instruments, crafts, and toys) along with sections where you could just wander around and check out recreations of housing, work rooms, and meeting spaces. I used a loom to weave for approximately four minutes before I realized a cat also enjoyed being in the loom room and my allergies almost killed me.

On the list of ten largest cities in Taiwan, the only one we haven’t visited yet is #7, Hsinchu, home of TSMC . I’m just waiting for them to invite me.

Taiwan is frequently broken into two parts–南部 and 北部, the north and the south. In some cases, the city of Taichung (whose name literally means the middle of Taiwan) marks the dividing line between the two, while in others, basically everything outside of the Taipei/New Taipei metroplex is “南部”. There’s a cultural difference, which you can read a lot about from a variety of perspectives (there’s even a Wikipedia page for it ), based in the fact that more than 40% of people who left China with the KMT settled in Taipei, then power and wealth continued to be concentrated in the city, and the economic differences since then perpetuate a cycle of exacerbation. Taipei is sometimes called the sky dragon city, a slang pejorative supposedly from One Piece , though I have a hard time believing that One Piece and the slang don’t have a common ancestor ( previously discussed in 2021 ).

In daily life, however, the main differences everyone talks about is food and weather. Basically everyone thinks Taipei’s weather is the worst in Taiwan. Some people say Taipei’s and/or the north’s food is worse, many people say Tainan’s and/or the south’s food is best, and an overwhelming majority says that southern food is sweeter. The most decisive opinions come in the summer, when people argue about where the best zongzi/粽子 come from. To quote Taipei Times :

“A recurring accusation leveled against northern zongzi is that they are not real zongzi, just the common oiled rice (油飯) stuffed into a leaf. Detractors of southern zongzi are no kinder, hurling abuses at the perceived mushiness of the rice.”

Reader, I am going to be controversial for a minute. I agree with both sides of the above quote: all 粽子 are mediocre. I can’t comment on the weather, except to say that of course being in a mess of concrete and having mountains and skyscrapers blocking a lot of wind is probably not doing Taipei any favors. I sweat while walking around Kaohsiung the first weekend of February, which is a big negative mark against their city, but most people who are not me would prefer that to the rainy coldness we came home to in Taipei. I have not noticed a consistent difference in sweetness (north and south non-desserts seem equally guilty of frequently having unnecessary sweetness). The consistently best food, though? Taichung, hands down.

Does that mean a compromise, 南部 and 北部 are happy? Or does it just mean everyone outside of Taichung thinks there’s something wrong with my tastebuds? Regardless, I will happily continue sampling food, accumulating more data, and making more controversial pronouncements.

Further reading:

• We had a presidential election here in Taiwan! One side got more votes than the other, and under Taiwanese law, that means they win! And the other side accepted the results and conceded! Amazing. There was lots of good writing, but as usual what resonated most were words from Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu: “ Pre-Election Jitters ” -> “ A Teary-Eyed Post-Election Missive “. Michelle also wrote about the election for a broader audience at The Guardian , importantly contextualizing Taiwan’s longstanding rebellious/revolutionary political scene.
• Kevin Chong has a really great essay about the pros and cons of his mother moving in with him in Vancouver . Here in Taiwan, this living arrangement is common, and even has its own colloquial name: 三代同堂, three generations in the same building.
• Charlie Warzel writes in The Atlantic about how the massive digital photo albums and algorithm-curated memory notifications in everyone’s pocket have changed the way we grieve . I love the idea of being served reminders of absent loved ones as an opportunity for pause and reflection. Peggy, the dog that’s the subject of the story, was one of my own parasocial Instagram dog friends (ironically, another is also named Peggy , Nicole Chung’s amazingly photogenic golden retriever). Whereas my students know all the personality quirks of VTubers , millions of people dissect every utterance from celebrities, and others turn to sports fandom as a substitute for good old-fashioned gossip , I am content to pretend like other people’s pets and zoo animals are regular parts of my own social circle.
• Mia Sato does a thoroughly depressing, depressingly thorough breakdown of how search engine optimization has ruined the internet . It’s so sad that to get answers to basically any question I want to ask, I now have to add “reddit” to the end of my Google search, though it’s likely that avenue will be closed off as well. Cory Doctorow (of the scam article from the body of this email) has accurately described this process (on Google and elsewhere) as “ enshittification “.
• Speaking of enshittification, Riley MacLeod rightfully places the push for using generative AI in journalism (by people who don’t want to pay journalists) as being cut from the same cloth as NFTs and “pivot to video” and urges journalism organizations to hold off on implementing it. Unfortunately, the reduction in quality argument is probably not very persuasive to the people who need to hear it.
• Author Cory Doctorow, who makes a living writing about technology, was scammed out of a large amount of money by someone pretending to be his bank. He wrote about the experience , and why it was so easy to be fooled (some his fault, but some blame in even banks outsourcing their customer service). I’m glad I don’t have to worry much about the new wave of AI voice scams! I’m told AARP has done good work writing about them, including this article from way back last April.
• Something more positive! I played some good video games this month. God of War: Ragnarok was a fantastic experience, and the free little update they put out, Valhalla , is a great epilogue to the game. Unravel 2 is a wonderful physics-based platforming puzzler that was really fun with two players. West of Loathing and Spiritfarer are very different, lovely little games — the former has stick figure art and a ton of silly jokes, the latter is a gorgeous contemplation on how to prepare for death and loss and grief — but ironically they share the same problem, which is that they were each undercut their own power by being 30–50% too long.
• I am out of episodes of The Way of the Househusband on Netflix and I am very sad about it, but I can share its joy with you. It’s an anime about a former Yakuza hitman who has gone straight by becoming a stay-at-home husband without kids. He takes his Yakuza skills and applies them to cleaning, cooking, shopping, and more. The animation is very simple, it’s extremely silly, and it’s perfect. You should watch it. I don’t know what I’m going to watch next! Give me a suggestion.

Tomorrow begins the Lunar New Year holiday here. Everyone will be rushing off (including the many many who will be leaving the big 北部 city for their 南部 hometown), traffic will be awful, stores will be packed. We won’t partake in that part of the holiday, but we will use the days off to do one important tradition — cleaning . I’m going to tell you it will be both literal and metaphorical cleaning. This is partially aspirational.

We’re also going to be drying out tomatoes to jar, trying out a new recipe or two, and getting together to stuff some dumplings, which get more attention to their shape during Lunar New Year to make sure they look like money bags. The Lunar New Year table is full of puns and lookalikes! As every table should be. May your February be full of puns and lookalikes as well.

-g