For example, last night I went to an international drum concert. The performance was amazing and a really great experience. The bit that intrigued me however were the two hosts of the concert. There was a man and a woman with a microphone acting as the masters of ceremony for the program. They spoke to the audience in Mandarin and obviously were trying to inform and entertain the audience throughout the program. This wasn’t so unusual. What was strange was the fact that every so often they would speak in English. The weird thing was that their English made no sense. It wasn’t as if they were trying to translate what they were telling the audience so that the Americans in the audience could understand. They would just say really random things like “Tainan City is good and we like Africa.” The audience would then clap.

The Africa part made a little more sense as the concert progressed. About halfway through, there was a half African, half American group that performed. At the end of their segment, the MC started talking in Mandarin to the audience. He then asked one African drummer in English what he thought of Tainan City. The drummer said “Tainan is good.” The MC then started yelling “Tainan is…” and held the microphone to the audience who yelled back “Good!” They did this about five times until everyone was in a joyous frenzy and then the African group left the stage.

Another experience I have come to appreciate as unique is a taxi ride. No taxi driver speaks English, so unless you have a business card that says in Mandarin where you want to go, you won’t go anywhere. The unique experience about taxi rides isn’t trying to get where you want to go. It’s how you get there. I have now been in several taxis that have DVD players. On my way to work the other day, the driver and I watched a Jackie Chan movie. Yes, I said the driver and me. I had a screen in the back seat and he had one on the dashboard. I must admit however, I spent more time watching through the rearview mirror if he was watching the road or the movie than I did the movie. I can confidently say he watched more of the movie than I did. In one taxi, there was a microphone in the backseat. Apparently Taiwanese folks don’t only like to watch movies in their taxis, they like to do karaoke.