No, I Don't Remember Land of the Lost
I was too busy watching Sea Prince or Mazin.
I attended the Evangelical Formosan Church of the Twin Cities Sunday and met a lot of "fellow" Taiwanese. We had a good time remeniscing about Taiwan and eventually the conversation between myself and a couple folks around my age turned to the cartoons we watched as kids.
My friends here talk sometimes about shows like Land of the Lost but I'm usually lost on the subject. There's a whole era of American culture I simply wasn't around for, basically the whole of the Carter Administration. Land of the Lost's first season started in '74 and went off the air in '77, I believe. So, before going to Taiwan I was too young to watch that kind of show anyway. I believe my American friends know it from syndication through the end of the '70s and early '80s, so I was either in Taiwan or on the reservation where our choice of TV stations was quite limited.
So, it was quite the release to join with others in remembering cartoons about a boy and his white dolphin or big robots and their adventures. We also shared our collective love for the little box lunches you'd get on the train from Gaoshung to Taibei that were not much more than rice, a piece of meat and a brown, hard-boiled tea egg. A lot of the folks there were actually from Ping Tung Province where Hai Ou is located. Of course, nobody recognized the name Hai Ou except for its meaning (seagull) but my parents shed some more light on this.
The community we lived in was very small indeed. And, the locals called it Hai Ou but to most everyone else it was either Hsia Liao or Dajuang. Mom even said one of her English students over there confessed to her in a hushed voice that the name of the town basically meant "Little Pig Houses."
The big seagull statue in town was part of an earlier attempt by the government at economic development. They saw the area as a potential tourist destination: "Seagull Beach." I do remember just north of town the little picnic area and public beach. That's where I once saw a guy taking a smoke break, sitting on his motorcycle and I asked if he could teach me to smoke.
Everyone smoked in Taiwan. My parents even smoked there. So, I was just trying to fit in.
The guy laughed at me first when I approached him, asking for a smoking lesson. He was amused, I'm sure, not only by a 5-year-old boy asking for a cigarette but a blonde, American 5-year-old boy asking for a smoking lesson in perfect Taiwanese.
I remember what he told me to do but only in English:
"Just inhale."
I inhaled about four times, coughed a whole bunch and he lauged at me some more. He took the cigarette back and concluded the lesson. I really didn't get what was so great about smoking after that.
When I told Michael, one of the members of the Formosan Church, about where, specifically the village was and the "Seagull Beach" plan he showed me just how far the area has come. Behold, just north of the little pig houses, the decadance of DaPeng Bay.
I attended the Evangelical Formosan Church of the Twin Cities Sunday and met a lot of "fellow" Taiwanese. We had a good time remeniscing about Taiwan and eventually the conversation between myself and a couple folks around my age turned to the cartoons we watched as kids.
My friends here talk sometimes about shows like Land of the Lost but I'm usually lost on the subject. There's a whole era of American culture I simply wasn't around for, basically the whole of the Carter Administration. Land of the Lost's first season started in '74 and went off the air in '77, I believe. So, before going to Taiwan I was too young to watch that kind of show anyway. I believe my American friends know it from syndication through the end of the '70s and early '80s, so I was either in Taiwan or on the reservation where our choice of TV stations was quite limited.
So, it was quite the release to join with others in remembering cartoons about a boy and his white dolphin or big robots and their adventures. We also shared our collective love for the little box lunches you'd get on the train from Gaoshung to Taibei that were not much more than rice, a piece of meat and a brown, hard-boiled tea egg. A lot of the folks there were actually from Ping Tung Province where Hai Ou is located. Of course, nobody recognized the name Hai Ou except for its meaning (seagull) but my parents shed some more light on this.
The community we lived in was very small indeed. And, the locals called it Hai Ou but to most everyone else it was either Hsia Liao or Dajuang. Mom even said one of her English students over there confessed to her in a hushed voice that the name of the town basically meant "Little Pig Houses."
The big seagull statue in town was part of an earlier attempt by the government at economic development. They saw the area as a potential tourist destination: "Seagull Beach." I do remember just north of town the little picnic area and public beach. That's where I once saw a guy taking a smoke break, sitting on his motorcycle and I asked if he could teach me to smoke.
Everyone smoked in Taiwan. My parents even smoked there. So, I was just trying to fit in.
The guy laughed at me first when I approached him, asking for a smoking lesson. He was amused, I'm sure, not only by a 5-year-old boy asking for a cigarette but a blonde, American 5-year-old boy asking for a smoking lesson in perfect Taiwanese.
I remember what he told me to do but only in English:
"Just inhale."
I inhaled about four times, coughed a whole bunch and he lauged at me some more. He took the cigarette back and concluded the lesson. I really didn't get what was so great about smoking after that.
When I told Michael, one of the members of the Formosan Church, about where, specifically the village was and the "Seagull Beach" plan he showed me just how far the area has come. Behold, just north of the little pig houses, the decadance of DaPeng Bay.
posted by Chris Druckenmiller at 7:05 AM
2 Comments:
Just wanted to say that when you were in Taiwan, your parents set up a "modern" message system: sending tapes back and forth. On one your mom asked you to tell us (in English)what you had been doing. You said, haltingly, "I can't say it". For Christmas, I sent you a book of nursery rhymes so you would hear stories in English. Do you remember it? Grandma
I'm looking right at it! "The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature." Inside you've written "To Christopher from Grandma & Grandpa Gallup. Christmas 1978."
I would have never thought to look for that inscription before! I knew I'd had this book for a long time, but wow!
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