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I cannot believe that yesterday, October 28, 2007 is 6 months from the day that I married my beautiful wife, Hui-chen. As you know, I didn’t really write an article on our marriage. I did write a small blurb and at that time was content to let Michael Turton’s post tell the story. Here are some of the considerations that stopped me from writing an article at that time:

1. Less than 2 weeks after our marriage, I photographed 5371 just before it crashed. We had to deal with the unexpected attention and disruption to our lives. That situation lasted for well over a month, including representatives of the families and others contacting us for copies of the photos, and our own civilian investigation.
2. We moved into a new house and it took a few weeks to get everything organized.
3. We took on some new business aspects that created more work for us.
4. My health problems that became an issue shortly after we were married (and also interfered with #2).

Naturally, we were worn out from the wedding itself, and then moving into the new house. Right after that, the 5371 incident prevented me from working on an article about our wedding. The timing just wasn’t right.

Not writing my own article about our wedding and how I felt on that day is something that I have come to regret a great deal. So, on this 6 month anniversary of our wedding, I have decided to write an article from my perspective on the most amazing day of my life.

Credits: The vast majority of these photographs were taken by Mr. Michael Turton. It was a great relief to not have to worry about the photography. When one of my sisters got married, the photographer made a mistake in the darkroom during processing and all of her photos were lost. At my other sister’s son’s wedding recently, the hired photographer didn’t do as well as expected and the photos were disappointing. Poor wedding photos cause continued disappointment into the future as well. Fortunately Michael was there for us and we very much appreciate his help. Hui-chen’s sister Ping-chen was another huge help to us. She was there at every possible moment, lending a hand.

Introduction

I’m not a young guy. Hui-chen’s family would probably have preferred her to marry a younger man, quite frankly. I give her family a lot of credit for accepting me as I am, but like a lot of things in Chinese society, it’s not about what you say, it’s about what you do. They all have seen how I treat her with love and respect and those are the most important qualities for a potential Groom to possess. Nevertheless we did fall in love and decide to get married with the full support and cooperation of her family. I have heard about marriages in Taiwan where the family did not accept the foreign husband, to the point of not even attending the wedding or communicating with him afterwards. That is such a shame and both families suffer in such cases. I am indeed fortunate to have joined such a wonderful family. After our wedding, Hui-chen’s father gave me permission to take his family name as mine. Her mother gave me a Chinese name and that has become my official name in Taiwan. I am very happy to bear this name.

Lastly I want to mention that I thought I should color my hair so I looked younger at the ceremony and in the photos. I’m not ashamed of how I look or who I am – on the contrary, I’m very comfortable being the “old guy who knows how to do stuff” in most situations. I thought that I would show face to Hui-chen’s family by altering my appearance so that in the future the photos would look different. Again, speaking frankly, at 51, my appearance does not alter very much over the span of 4 or 5 years. My hair was already gray (I stated going gray in High School) so if I hadn’t colored my hair and someone were to look at our photos in 5 years from now, I would look pretty much the same now as then. In the case of our wedding photos, sure, everyone knows I colored my hair but according to the comments I’ve received, most people think it looked good and I have the benefit of “aging” as time goes forward. Hui-chen’s father also colored his hair, but he looks great all the time anyway.

Our Wedding Day

April 28, 2007 was the most amazing day of my life. The family of this beautiful woman gave her to me in marriage. I look at her and I still can’t believe she is really mine. This is the story from the beginning of that day, with new photos that haven’t been published until now.

(more…)

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This week our guest article was written by David Reid, author of one of the most widely read and informative Taiwan blogs, David on Formosa.   We hope you enjoy this guest article as much as we do!

I am not lihai.

It seems that everywhere I go in Taiwan people tell me I am very lihai. This is a commonly used word in Taiwan that in this context means something like amazing or extraordinary. If I do something that is amazing then by all means praise me. However, it seems that even the most ordinary things, when done by a foreigner in Taiwan, make them in the eyes of the locals extremely lihai.

Here are a few examples of the conversations I might encounter.

You can eat stinky tofu?! Oh, you’re very lihai.

You can take a bus around Taipei by yourself. You’re very lihai.

You can speak Mandarin. You’re so lihai.

What does this say about Taiwanese people? I think it means that their experience or expectations of foreigners is limited. They think Taiwan is something that foreigners can’t meaningfully experience or participate in. Admittedly I think some foreigners who come here do live in a relative degree of isolation. Some of them would think doing some of the things mentioned above is lihai. But just because I live in Taiwan and do things that most Taiwanese people ordinarily do I don’t want to be regarded as lihai.

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This is the first in a series of 3 photos that I have for you from Shao-hui’s birthday party.

You know what to do, so get busy!

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One of the reasons that we upgraded our blog to the WordPress platform is because there are so many things you can do with WordPress that are just not possible using Blogger. This is a good example.

On our home page, you’ll find several navigation links at the top. One of them is called Geotagged Articles Map. Clicking on that link will take you to a page within our site that will display a Google map, with location balloons that indicate the location of geotags that exist within certain articles. Clicking on one of the locations will open a dialog with an excerpt from the article. If you wish to read that article, simply click on the title link in the excerpt dialog and the article will be loaded.

As we visit more places and produce articles with geotags, you will see more and more articles on the map. Be sure to zoom out and pan around because not all of our articles are about Taiwan.

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UPDATE: 10/26/2007:

Feed issues with the “Subscribe” icon in the corner of the header have been resolved.

If you wish to manually configure our feed, use:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNewHampshireBushmanInTaiwan

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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen Meals featured: Grilled homestyle hamburgers; teppanyaki.

UPDATE: November 2, 2007: Here is a photo of the bread type that I talk about in this article. Notice that there are seven slices:

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The other evening I told Hui-chen that I felt like eating hamburgers for dinner. Funny, but she rarely asks me if I want to eat hamburgers, which is strange considering that a full-blown Taiwanese stereotype about Americans is that we only eat hamburgers. I’ve been to places with new Taiwanese friends who in all honesty, apologized to me because there were no hamburgers available on the menu where we were eating! Other times I have had Taiwanese friends celebrate my return to Taiwan by going to McDonald’s and bringing back bags of their inedible garbage, thinking that I would be pleased with their selection of American food (I pretended to be). I didn’t eat that crap in the US, so why would I eat it here?

Forget about McDonald’s! On this occasion, I decided to show Hui-chen how we would make hamburgers at home when I lived in New Hampshire. Hui-chen went to the store and procured some ingredients (while I got the grill going) and then I combined them in a bowl as shown here:

1. 1/3 ground beef
2. 2/3 ground pork
3. Chopped garlic (a ton)
4. 1/2 onion, diced
5. Black pepper to taste
6. Soy sauce

The only thing left to do now is to grill them.

While the grill was still heating up, Hui-chen grilled a few Chinese sausages because these really do come out better when the heat is low. They burn easily.

In the meantime I decided to try taking a few shots in near-total darkness using my Nikon SB-800 flash on the D80.

This is the monstrosity of a building that’s across the street from us. I was astonished at how well the SB-800 lit up the scene!

That gave me confidence to try something even more ambitious:

Wow, hard to believe but even this shot is usable! So now I really wanna see what this thing can do, so, I shot this scene:

Here is what happened: Directly over the word “here” at the beginning of this sentence is part of my house reflecting the full power of the flash back. Naturally, that part is totally washed out. Next is the house across the street on the left side. Then further out you can see that the light from the flash illuminated the windows on the buildings on the next block! Notice the car reflectors too. Even though the distant portion of the shot is not usable, I’m officially impressed!

So, I wonder if I could take any useful photos at night in near-total darkness from the 4th floor balcony? I did some street level zoomed shots using the Sigma lens:

This shot is pretty convincing evidence that I could successfully photograph something on the street at night using my flash. The exif data is available for all these photos by clicking on them and selecting the link from the flickr photo page.

So now that I’m done playing around, let’s get back to the burger business!

Notice any difference in these 2 hamburgers? I made the one on the left. Hui-chen made the one on the right.

One thing that I need to explain about Taiwan is about our weird sliced bread. Not only do you have to ask for “toast” and you will actually see “sliced toast” on the bread packaging (no one told Taiwanese that the bread must be toasted in order for it to be called “toast”) but the size is weird too. It’s like an A3 sized piece or something. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean: (more…)

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I’ve asked the author of this article to allow me to re-publish it on TheNHBushman.com because I know our readers would love it! Except for the formatting and one comment interjected by me to explain a term, this post remains unchanged from the original post on the blog Issan Style.

Brunty lives and works in the Issan area in northeast Thailand. This article is about enjoying the local cuisine. Hui-chen and I have been to Issan many times and we love it there. We hope that you enjoy this guest article as much as we do!

A Day In an Issan Village

So in the village as usual there is a temple but it isn’t like some of the amazingly beautifully decorated temples you come across in Thailand. The temple is just a simple building that you might see in any small town in Thailand.

The temple has donated these water tank holders with money that was donated to it. These tanks are for the local school.

Noot was missing eating somtam or papaya salad and it hadn’t even been a day yet. We went to visit Doy at about 9.30pm and she was more than happy to knock up some somtam for Noot and Ben.

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After thoughtful consideration, I have decided to import the posts and comments from Bushman’s Asian Food Blog into our main site and discontinue posting to the food blog site.  The food blog has 34 posts and 22 comments, not bad since it all began in January, but not an earth-shattering number of posts.  The main reason that I’ve decided to import and combine the 2 blogs is because the articles of our food blog appeal to the readers of TheNHBushman blog.  So, from now on, all posts that would have gone to Bushman’s Asian Food Blog! will appear right here.  URL redirection has been setup so no one will be left behind!

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It seems that today is a day where my photos are being featured on prominent photography blogs.

First, there is Taiwan Photographers, which featured this weeks “Caption this Photo” submission.  Many thanks to author Carrie for this feature article.

Next, A Photo A Day From Planet Earth has featured a photo by yours truly of a street scene in Vientiane, Laos.  I panned the camera to capture the center of the photograph in focus while allowing the rest of the photo to show movement.  I really like this shot.

Thanks for featuring my photographs!

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Kicking off the new hosted domain, I want to have a little fun by introducing a new feature on The NH Bushman blog. Leave a comment with your best shot at a caption for this photo. Please, one submission per person on this one. I can’t wait to see what our readers come up with!

View Location In: Google Maps, Platial, Google Earth, 24.876937,121.057062
Geotagged with Flock: geotagged, geo:lat=24.876937, geo:lon=121.057062,

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