TheNHBushman.com

This is what I’m reading, and what I recommend for this week.

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Dear Readers,

We apologize for not featuring Bushman’s Picks last week, due to the Lunar New Year holiday. We were out of our office, enjoying all kinds of cool foods with our family and friends. So, on the one hand you didn’t get the picks, but on the other hand you’ll eventually get to see the pics! (more…)

Here’s what I’ve been reading since last week folks:

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These are my blog picks for the week: (more…)

I wasn’t sure how well received my Bushman’s Picks would be, but the response on the comments sections, and amount of emails I’ve received convinced me that I should continue the practice, so here it comes for this week!

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Todd just blogged on this.  I’m also mentioning it because I don’t want anyone to miss it!

Holly has created a new blog which is an online KTV!  You can watch videos and sing along with the lyrics thanks to her incredible effort of romanizing the Chinese.

The upshot of this is obvious: now your drunken nights in the local karaoke can actually count for something as you practice your Chinese skills on singing!

Here are a few words from Holly herself:

“After a few months in Taiwan, I began to study Chinese, and I became attracted to the idea of learning Chinese songs to a) improve my Chinese skills, b) expand my selection at KTV, c) impress others with my ability to sing in Chinese, even if only a few songs, and d) increase my awareness of Taiwanese pop culture so I’d know what people were talking about when they were discussing Jay Chou’s latest album or the most recent rumor about Wang Lee Hom. What’s more, I feel that I’m musically inclined, and find it easy to remember songs. I’m one of those people who can sing an entire song, word for word, but couldn’t tell you the artist or title.

Remembering Chinese songs, however, is much more difficult. For me, it’s nearly impossible to sing a Chinese song from memory simply from having heard it over and over. And although these days I can read a lot of Chinese characters, enough to get me by at KTV, I need to visualize the lyrics in pinyin if I want to sing a song to myself while driving my scooter through Taipei.”

Even if you aren’t studying Chinese, Holly’s new site is fun!  People around the world love these catchy tunes but most people don’t have a clue how to sing them.  Thankfully the romanized lyrics make it easy for anyone to sound like a pro.

Hui-chen and I want to thank Holly for her excellent new site.

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.

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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Tags: asianfood blog