+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Links: family / facebook / twitter / linkedin / google / instagram / random | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | _______ | What's another word for thesaurus? | | ,--'.:::::.`-._ | | | /..:::::::::::..\ | | | /..:::::::::_;::::| | | | || `---'----' _|:::| | | | || `;:::| | | | |' ==== ==== |-::| | | | |-( @ )-( @ )--|O):| | | | | ` | ` |/::' | | | . v |:/ jeremy@ | | | | ___, || malcolm | | | \ -- _/| .id.au | | | \_____.-'__/-.__ | | | _| _/|::.\.::-._ | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | [*] news [ ] about [ ] writing [ ] journal [ ] images [ ] guests | | +--- last 10 | | |->> archive | | `--- search | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +--| South Korea and Taiwan |-------------------------------------------------+ | | | Our family just visited Seoul and Taipei. Of the two, South Korea seems | | much more Japanese, and Taiwan much more Chinese. Although not an | | unexpected observation, it's not quite so obvious as you might think. | | Taiwan was Japanese for half of the last century, and even before that was | | linguistically and culturally quite distinct from mainland China. When | | the nationalist Republic of China took Taiwan as its new seat of | | government, ousted from the mainland by the Communists, it undertook a | | concerted programme of "sinocisation" of the island, radically reshaping | | its culture and demographics. Today, aboriginal Taiwanese (thought to be | | the ancestors of the Malay people throughout the region), Japanese, and | | their mixed descendents remain significant segments of the population. | | | | South Korea was also occupied by Japan, but its neighbour to the North | | seems to have acted as a more effective buffer against Chinese influence | | than the Taiwanese strait has for Taiwan. Today South Korea feels very | | much like a sister to Japan, except a little younger, having only become | | fully industrialised in the last decade. In fact, large areas of Seoul | | really are new - the area south of the river where we stayed was developed | | from farmland into a bustling city only since the 1970s. Taipei is not | | too far behind, boasting the world's second-tallest building, and feeling | | much like a more spread-out Hong Kong. However, Korea certainly has the | | edge in terms of urban maintenance. Even old parts of Seoul are kept | | looking new, whereas Taipei (and Malaysia even more so) is more weathered. | | | | In both Seoul and Taipei, shopping is a cultural experience in itself. | | The ground floor of many Korean office blocks are given up to shops and | | restaurants - which is not so unusual, except for the way in which they | | are packed so tightly together and connected by such narrow corridors. In | | Taiwan, we came across some even tinier shops in the night market areas, | | some no wider than the front door by which you enter them. The night | | markets themselves are also quite different from those found in Malaysia, | | with fewer temporary stalls and more permanent outlets. They also open | | every night, rather than just weekly. | | | | In one the larger shopping malls that we visited in South Korea, we were | | amused to find uniformed staff stationed at turns of the car park, bowing | | and individually greeting approaching cars with an microphone and | | amplifier. Whilst we didn't witness the video gaming obsession of the | | Koreans, we can confirm their attachment to their mobile phones. Our | | hotel room even came complete with one, which we could take away and use. | | Commuters are often seen watching TV on their phones, some models coming | | with extensible aerials for this purpose. | | | | Like the Japanese, the Koreans seem very conservative and well mannered. | | Everyone diligently returned their own food trays at the food court (this | | never happens in Malaysia), the men we saw all wore the same black | | business suits, and others wore similar casualwear (accessorised with | | oversized glasses and wide-brimmed caps). This made a contrast with the | | rather more shambolic Taiwanese, who could still be heard loudly | | expectorating in public (a habit of which I have bad memories from my year | | in China in 1987-1988). | | | | Food-wise, we made sure to tick the necessary boxes such as kim-chi in | | Korea and dumplings and noodle soup in Taiwan. We also tried their street | | food, picking up tasty omelette sandwiches for breakfast from a street | | vendor in Korea, and flattened spicy crumbed chicken steaks in Taiwan | | (these are also sold as Taiwanese street food in Malaysia). In some cases, | | in the absence of an English menu, we had to order completely at random. | | In Korea this worked out well enough, giving me a spicy vegetable hot pot, | | bibimbap. In Taiwan, I ended up with a large beef rice, together with a | | side dish of... small beef rice. At least I remembered a word or two of | | spoken Chinese from my trip 25 years ago (mei yo - "don't have" came in | | handy). | | | | It's also interesting to see the chain restaurants from different places. | | We tried a steakhouse called VIPS in Korea, and a casual dining resturant | | called Taipei Milk King in Taiwan. In both Korea and Taiwan (and Malaysia | | for that matter), you also get a lot of outlets serving gimmicky food like | | pizza in a cone, or ice cream and fruit (and even cake) in a pancake wrap, | | and of course the ubiquitous bubble tea. | | | +----------------------| posted 385 days ago via news | reply (1 comments) |--+ | << Back | | page generated in 0.261 seconds sadlittlewebjournal 3.2.4 | | content (c) its respective creator(s) web administration | | valid html 4.01 transitional rss feed | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+