Taiwan

Taiwan is a ridiculously hip place.

There's so much Japanese influence, but the Korean Street-style is everywhere, and they're all so friendly and unreserved, and the guys sound like Jay Chou when they speak in that half-slurry Chinese of theirs. :3 I couldn't help comparing it to Myanmar, where everyone is pretty reserved. And I'm pretty sure it's not the language barrier. I remember F saying, "Omg, everyone here is so reserved, even the animals, did you see the way the ducks looked at us?" ahahaha. But there's such a sunny, open nature to the people generally.

I had fried chicken everyday, and there were these amazing sweet potato balls, just sweet potato dough deep fried until the dough puffs up so that you're left with a hollow shell of sweet, fried, chewy dough. Man those were excellent. The street food in Taiwan is really good, but the unfried things were kinda mushy. Simple food like noodles and fishballs, braised meat and rice that's more fat than meat. And once in a while you get a whiff of smelly tofu, but its not thaat smelly. It smells like drains and pepper, really weird. But the smell can get really strong and in your face. We didn't dare try it though haha, the smell was quite off-putting.

The thing about Taiwan is that speaking Chinese there feels so comfortable. Now I am painfully aware that my Chinese is far from that of a native speaker, and like in English, the way I write has always been much more eloquent than the way I speak. But being in Taiwan, speaking Chinese was almost second nature. No one cares that it's interspersed with English cause people speak like that sometimes, though not as much as in Singapore. And I didn't have to rack my brain for the right words/ have to translate because the words just came.

And I was really moved by how in the stations, the screens show information that teach people how to escort blind persons around the station or onto the trains, and how you could ask for a sticker so you can sit in the priority seat if you're pregnant, injured, elderly, sick etc. Caring for the other person next to you is so ingrained in their culture, it's quite amazing.

And the shopping was a lot of fun heh. Cause while some of the clothes are ridiculously tiny, cause most of the Taiwanese girls are ridiculously skinny, they still had my size haha so whoots for that. The best street market was probably at Shida cause it's near a university town, so the clothes are a bit more well-made and cooler haha. But it rained so hard all the time we were in Taiwan. My shoes were drenched practically everyday and the buckle on my new sandals came off >( stupid New Look sandals. Note to self: never wear new shoes on your travels.

Shilin market was pretty disappointing, I feel like they marked up all the prices because of tourists. And I don't know how to bargain let alone in Chinese hahaha. So I didn't buy anything except food. Heh. I ate so much and was so happy. I can't decide whether my greatest sin is pride or sloth or greed. There is such a pleasing sweetness to be had when one is languid/ languorous. Although, I daresay I indulge myself a bit too much.

Anyway, Taiwan was heaps of fun (: it's a good place to be in.

Coriolanus & Frankenstein

Went to watch Coriolanus and Frankenstein as filmed by the National Theatre Live in London, and screened at the Esplanade. And they were such good plays. Not sure how to feel about the staging of Coriolanus though, I mean for a Shakespeare play. The set was very modern, staged in an abandoned ex-banana warehouse in Covent Garden, brick walls with graffiti-style English and Latin words projected onto them. Blood and water sprayed from the ceiling in particular scenes. And ideas about democracy thrown about in that beautiful language of his, it was like listening to rap music in the sense that the play is written in blank verse, and iambic pentameter so the cadences are very distinct, but when coupled with the various English accents, it doesn't seem as if the actors are speaking poetry of a higher register, but everyday language. They brought Shakespeare very up-to-date, so that was cool.

The main draw was Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus himself. But my sister and I fell to talking about it, and it would have been better if Coriolanus were older rather than some upstart young punk, because his views that the plebians were, well duh, plebian (in the derogatory, peasant sense of the word) and must needs be led by rulers who were exclusively noble would have more suited and older, worldly-wise, war general who was cynical about the masses rather than an arrogant young man.

But Hiddleston was fantastic in the role though. When he said "Sir, it is no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion" and "O Mother, mother, mother", after his mother had interceded on behalf of Rome to spare them, his eyes were glistening with tears. He'd inhabited his role so completely. And the actress playing his mother, just whew. For the first time, I realised the stage directions hidden in Shakespeare's words.

When she talked about Cauis Martius's son, and wife, she brought them out and presented them before Coriolanus. It was so heartfelt and earnest, you could feel the sincerity and strength it took the woman to bow before her son and beg for his mercy. The wife was a bit extra though, whatshername, Virgilia, she did nothing much except cry and kiss Coriolanus. And no chemistry whatso'er. It was weird. But overall a good play. Yay Shakespeare.

We followed that up with Frankenstein, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Frankenstein (the scientist creator) at 11.30pm. Hahaha it was pretty tiring but hey literature. Frankenstein has been one of my favourite novels, although Dracula wins hands-down, so I was really pleased that the Esplanade decided to screen the play cause I've been dying to watch it.

Watching the film of the play made me wish I could have travelled to the UK just to watch it live with the audience. It started off with a full 15 minutes of incredible physical theatre. The ceiling was covered in hanging lights that flashed and shimmered according to the soundtrack in the beginning which was a heart-beat, it was as if the audience was in a womb, and we were witnessing the birth of Creature. First the hand pressing against a stretched membrane of skin, and then Creature falls through, a fully formed man, almost naked. He falls sprawled on his front, and his leg twitches uncontrollably in time to the sound of the heartbeat lub-dub. And the he tries to stand up and falls and staggers and fails. Watching him, you begin to realise how difficult it is to walk, but yet still how much more amazing that a child begins to walk and then we walk, and take our learning to walk so fore granted. And in the process of learning to stand on his own 2 feet, Creature contorts his body into grotesque shapes, his limbs sprawled and flailing, his waist twisted. How beautiful and what a marvel the human body is! And yet how grotesque and ludicrous it is! The opening sequence was perhaps overlong, but you do get an appreciation for the struggles Creature, and we too have with life, and he's endearing even if he eventually becomes a killer. Cumberbatch was amazing. The physical theatre in the beginning was enough to make me want to applaud. What a use of the body!

And in his dream dance with a girl who looked like Creature, that was beautiful.

The parts with Frankenstein's family fell a bit flat. It kinda sounded like they were bored their youngest son had died, in the most trite, cliched of speeches they spouted. O my son, he's dead. Seriously. I didn't need you to tell me that. But Lee Miller as Frankenstein conveyed just the right amount of condescension and arrogance, in his daring to play God. The tension between Frankenstein and Creature was so electric whenever they met on stage and spoke and sneered at each other, or begged or tried to reason. Whew. Such bloody good actors.

In the end, the play was a lot darker than the novel, possibly because it was so physical whereas the novel delves more into the psychological, and a lot of the bits from the play could have been trimmed, but it's really a stunning piece on the morality of good and evil, and bioethics. Is a person born good and then influenced by the evil around him, or is it ultimately the choice of the person to behave goodly or badly? What happens if life is created from death (a dead body and electricity) rather than life from life (sex), who is the creator then, does the creator have a right to put to death his creation? Is a creator a parent? Can he abandon his creation. What is this parent-child relationship we ascribe to the Creator and the Created? And then the bigger issues of abortion and abandonment. Like wow. That's why Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a classic.

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”

-Paradise Lost by John Milton, epigraph to Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley