Tingchun Chen 陳亭君

Extra large Kuai Kuai for extra large luck.

#OnlyInTaiwan

It’s “le daily”. “Daily” as in “daily life”.

My eyeballs have been working so hard today reading all those posts hyping about 小紅書 （Xiaohongshu, Red Note). The screenshots sum up so well the gap between those who actually read Mandarin and those Westerners just discovering this new land and already feeling like they have everything figured out.

Are American zoomers actually using 小紅書 (Red Note)? Do they even know that just the name of the app so obviously hints at its CCP connections? There’s this ⬇️ 小紅書 (Little Red Book) that PRC Chinese used to have to read.

I could see how this place was a hunters’ favorite. I’ve never seen so much animal 💩 along a trail before. And though I didn’t get to see one, apparently you can sometimes spot a flying squirrel gliding in the forest in the area, too. 3/3

This area used to be where the local Atayal people trained and tested their youth. A 15-year-old boy had to prove that he could survive in the area on his own to be considered an adult. 2/3

Ptlaman Trail
(北德拉曼, Beidelaman)

The trail’s Atayal name “Ptlaman” says a lot about what this place used to be. The word means “where one makes someone try”.

⬇️ This is how the word comes about.

p-talam-an
causative-try-where.one.does.sth
(talam > tlam is a result of vowel reduction)

1/3

a tabby cat shouting aaaaaaaa

Started Octavia Butler’s «Parable of the Sower» at the end of last year mostly because the story starts in 2024 and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to synchronize my reading with the real life? “

Fun.

Bland food on top of quarantine is just too much 😂

asked if she could get a pair of chopsticks because she’d really like to dig in and the trip was still 2.5 hours to go. Customer service told her to wait between car 4 and 5 at a particular station. A station staff member would be there ready with chopsticks.

Customer service in Taiwan

This person bought one of those popular railway bentos, got on a train, and realized that the bento didn’t come with chopsticks. She messaged the railway’s online customer service, told them her train and car number and …

Mt. Youluo (油羅山). Last hike of 2024.

Syakaro Historic Trail (霞喀羅古道) in Hsinchu. Originally built by the Japanese so they could keep closer tabs on the Atayal people in the area who had fought against colonial rule for years, the trail is nowadays a popular one/two-day hike especially during the Fall foliage season.

I’m only just starting to explore this area. I’m planning to do 北德拉曼 (Ptlaman) and maybe 外鳥嘴山 (Wainiaozui) in the next few weeks. And 油羅山 (Mt. Youluo) after that.

I did 外鳥嘴山 (Mt Wainiaozui), starting from 馬武督 (Mautu). It was fun. And this restaurant is right on my way home.

I was just thinking going there after a hike last week but didn’t in the end. Now I have to go.

Me yesterday: Just two more reps. I can do this.

Me today: Legs should be alienable nouns, too. I don’t feel like I own them now.

🌚 My face at that particular faction of DPP supporters who are now saying that Lai Ching-te should follow suit and declare martial law in Taiwan, too, just so KMT and TPP won’t be able to mess around at the parliament anymore.

It took decades to end dictatorship in Taiwan. We are not going back.

Wuliaojian (五寮尖) in New Taipei is such a fun hike. Lots of climbing up and down, including a descent down a cliff.

"I write in order to answer the question of: What is a Taiwanese person. I write about Taiwan’s past as a step into its future," says Yáng Shuāng-zǐ in her acceptance speech the 2024 National Book Award ceremony.

We know that multilingualism is cognitively beneficial. But this got me wonder if being able to speak lang’s that are drastically diff in structure and vocabulary, e.g. Amis & Mandarin, could have a much bigger impact than multilingualism in similar lang’s. Are there studies that try to answer this?

Then I asked an Atayal student in her 50s who frequently works with Atayal elders. She also said that she didn’t know anyone that had dementia. 3/n

Out of curiosity, I asked a local PM&R doctor if she’d worked with Indigenous patients with dementia. She said no and she wondered if Indigenous people were less inclined to get treated. I thought that even if that were true, that couldn’t have been the real cause. 2/n

A while ago, a student who wrote his thesis on dementia in Amis communities said that he wanted to but wouldn’t continue the project because he had difficulty looking for participants for his study. He asked everywhere but could only find two Amis elders that had dementia. 1/n