Road Trip - Taipei & Yilan Counties

As you may have seen on FB, Josh and I purchased a motorcycle a few weeks ago. The first drive through Taipei’s hectic traffic alongside monster buses and hordes of scooters was literally heart-stopping. But there’s nothing more refreshing than taking Rodney (Yes, I named it.) for a spin outside of the city, zipping through clean mountain gusts and fresh ocean breezes. Two weekends ago, we took a road trip through Yilan county, and it was incredible!

To beat it out of the city, we took Provincial Highway 9. This road cuts through some breathtaking mountains.

At some points, we were so high that we were literally driving above the mountains’ cloud cover.

And of course, there were some impressive temples to see along the way.

Hwy 9 connects to Provincial Highway 2, which is renowned for spectacular coastal views. It didn’t disappoint.

There are several fishing villages sprinkled along the coast that make for a great pit stop. We alighted in Dali and got a tub of fried seafood for $100 NT. It was scrumptious. And seeing as we lived in Boston before this, we’re pretty much fried seafood connoisseurs.

The fishing market we ate at overlooked the docks, and you could see fishermen lugging their wares up the hill and selling them to the stand owners right in front of us. This stuff was FRESH.

Here’s the map!

Or at least, that’s the route you’re supposed to take. Scooters and motorcycles under 550 c.c. are not allowed to drive on major highways in Taiwan. We knew this – kind of – but still wound up taking the 62 expressway back to Taipei. It was an accident – kind of. Do not do this. The police will stop you, and you will have to resort to acting like dumb American tourists to avoid a ticket. Or maybe we weren’t really acting. After all, we are amateurs.

Herb and Dorothy

Last May, I attended BookExpo America in New York, NY, a glorious four-day convention for everyone in the book biz. I was working the event for Godine, the house I interned with this spring, and one of our debut titles was Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel, an illustrated book about Etta and Claribel Cone, who purchased Matisse’s and Picasso’s work before they were discovered by mainstream collectors. One author who dropped by our booth recognized the cover’s illustration of the Cone sisters, which surprised me, seeing as no one I pitched the book to had heard of them. We got to chatting, and I commented that I wished I had the resources to collect art. She enthusiastically replied, “But you can!” She proceeded to tell me about Herb and Dorothy, a documentary about a Manhattan couple who, without any professional training, amassed a selection of art worth millions. “Watch it,” she said. “It’ll change your life.”

Well, I just watched it. Twice. Consider my life changed.

At first glance, Herb and Dorothy Vogel seem like your average elderly couple. In many of the film’s shots, they sit at the kitchen table, Herb watching TV and Dorothy fussing over her cat, Archie. But the backdrop for these scenes is anything but commonplace. The otherwise stark white wall is canvassed in paintings, sketches, and colorful paper constructions. As the camera pans through their one-bedroom apartment, you realize their place doesn’t function as a living space – it’s a sanctuary for thousands of artistic creations. They don’t own living room furniture because their stockpile takes up too much space, hence the filming in the kitchen. The real mind-boggler is that this isn’t even their full collection. They donated 4,782 pieces to the National Gallery of Art in 1992. The pieces you glimpse in the film are just what they’ve acquired since then.

Throughout the documentary, Herb and Dorothy narrate their life story. Dorothy was a librarian and Herb a postal worker who didn’t graduate high school. So how does a middle-class couple come to own one of the most renowned late 20th century art collections? By buying art no one else wanted.

Herb and Dorothy explain that when they started collecting in the 1960s, pop and abstract art were the popular styles, and experts weren’t interested in the fledgling minimalist and conceptual movements, making these productions affordable. They spent Dorothy’s salary on living expenses and Herb’s on art. Dorothy said they only had two rules for purchases: “It had to be affordable, and it had to fit in our apartment.”

The artists interviewed in the film speak not only highly of Herb and Dorothy, but also warmly, as if talking about life-long friends. And for some of them, that’s the case. A few artists said they get a call from Herb once a week just checking in on them, and one referred to them as “friend collectors, not collectors collectors.” Christo and Jean-Claude, an artist team-couple, said they even traded the Vogels art for cat-sitting. It’s inspiring too that they genuinely collect art for art’s sake. Dorothy said, “I never thought the artists we collected in those days would become so famous. It wasn’t a goal for us. We liked the work, and when they got recognition, we shared their joy. We sort of became of part of it.”

But the documentary’s point isn’t that everyone can collect art or even that everyone should learn about art. The message is more universal than that. Dorothy says it best herself: “You don’t have to be rich. You can enrich your life.”

You can watch Herb and Dorothy for yourself here: Herb and Dorothy
And check out Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel here: Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel

Since moving to Taipei, something’s been bugging me, and I feel the need to mention it: Americans are way too concerned about “protecting” their native language.

In Taipei, many people speak English, even though their island society could function just fine without it. But in an attempt to market themselves to the Western world, they learn. Not only do they learn, but they also use their knowledge to help little lost foreign girls (exhibit 1: me). I’m never standing on a street corner looking perplexedly at a map for long before a local is at my elbow, offering to help. What makes this even more indulgent of them is that Americans are not their first, not their second, but only the third largest group of international visitors in Taiwan. In other words, they’re not assisting me for the tourism revenue; they’re just doing it to be nice. In fact, out of deference to English-speaking foreigners, many signs are in English. (And by “many signs,” I mean every sign related to public transportation or any road sign.) I can count on one hand the number of times someone here has gotten frustrated with my inability to communicate. The first time it happened, I have to admit, I was offended. But I mean, I guess I am living in their country, eating their food, earning a salary from a local business. It’s only fair that I learn their language.

And then I realized that those lines sounded familiar.

Oh yeah. It’s like, every American’s mantra about Spanish-speaking immigrants.

I’ve never bought into the whole let’s-make-English-the-national-language battle. But now that I’m experiencing the foreigner’s side, I realize just how miserly that mentality is. If native Chinese speakers can learn English, which is an overwhelmingly dissimilar language, I think Americans can learn some basic Spanish. Despite the fact that the U.S. was built on the backs of immigrants, we can’t subtitle a few simple road signs in Spanish? We begrudge them the Mexican bakery that now fills the empty building down the street? We refer to any neighborhood populated by Latin Americans as “the bad part of town”? Please. The most shocking thing is that my Christian friends are the most stringent supporters of this movement. Jesus went through some pretty inconvenient stuff for slaves, for women, for all the outcasts of the day. Shouldn’t we do the same?

For those of you who find it irksome to press 1 for English: stop being selfish in the name of nationalism. If Lady Liberty had pose-able thumbs, she would beat the bejeepers out of you.