Being over here for business does have some benefits as the hotel that we stay in provides a bit of an oasis from the every day cultural differences. The Evergreen Hotel is brand new and is very upscale. It offers four restaurants, three of which have western food items on the menu, and a comfortable lobby bar. The rooms are spacious and the television has four English movie channels and CNN. The staff is incredibly friendly and helpful and everyone speaks a considerable amount of English. Whenever you have questions, need advice, or just want to take a taxi somewhere, the staff is beyond courteous in their efforts to help and “take care” of you.

The most interesting part of staying in the Evergreen is the staff also takes the time to learn your name. Upon my original check-in, they took a picture of me. The next morning when I entered the lobby, the staff called me by name, “Mr. Moretz.” There was a period in my life when I taught nursery school and was then referred to as “Mr. Moretz.” That was the only time in my life that people called me mister. I was uncomfortable with it then (I was only 22) and am still slightly uncomfortable with it. I am now 32 and losing my hair, so I suppose that technically I am a mister, but I don’t feel like one. When people say “Mr. Moretz,” I turn around to look for my dad.

The other day, Sam the doorman, was making small talk with me when he tried to pronounce my last name. He said “Mister,” in perfect English, but struggled with the pronunciation of “Moretz.”

I said “you can just call me Dave.”

“Dave?” he looked at me questioningly.

“Yes, Dave is fine. You don’t have to call me Mr. Moretz.”

“Ok Mr. Dave. Have a good day.”

“No Sam, you don’t have to call me Mister, just Dave.” This obviously confused him.

“Dave Moretz?” he asked, apparently not quite knowing what I meant.

“Yes, Dave Moretz.”

“Ok, Mr. Moretz, have a good day.” I gave up.

“Thank you Sam, you have a good day too.”

When you leave the hotel, you immediately realize how well the staff at the Evergreen really speaks English compared to the rest of the country. This becomes apparent when you go to a restaurant without a Mandarin speaking host. The other night, Suzanne, Tara (another person from my company that joined us in Taiwan) and I ventured out for dinner. We found a cute little tea house that looked like it might have interesting and good food. When we got to the restaurant, the hostess cheerfully led us to a booth in the back of the restaurant. She handed us the menus and walked away. Immediately we knew this was going to be an adventure. The menu was all in Mandarin.

A few minutes later, our waitress came and said something to us in Mandarin, most likely “are you ready to order?” We all looked at each other and then asked the waitress if they had a menu in English. She just looked at us and then walked away. A few minutes later, another waitress came up to our table and again said something in Mandarin, presumably “are you ready to order?” Suzanne, Tara and I, once again looked at each other and started to laugh. This must have scared the waitress as she had the universal look of fear on her face and then walked away.

In the other room, we could overhear several of the waitresses talking. Then, one by one, a waitress would walk across the other side of the room and sort of stare at us. We would stare back and occasionally smile and wave. Finally two more waitresses came to our table and said “Tea?”

Simultaneously, we all said “yes, tea” and nodded our heads like a bunch of bobblehead dolls. The waitress then pointed at the menu. Suzanne was sitting closest to the waitress, but also had with her a book titled “Teach yourself Mandarin in ten minutes a day,” so she acted as our leader. She opened her book and started pointing to various food items that were listed in her book. Unfortunately, the words were all the phonetic spellings and were not the Mandarin character versions. This got us nowhere.

Since Suzanne is also the more proficient linguist of the bunch, she then started pronunciating the words chicken, pork, beef, and rice in Mandarin. Apparently her pronunciation was a bit wrong as the two waitresses just looked at each other. Seeing that Suzanne needed help, Tara and I then chimed in with our own pronunciation of these words. We all spoke at once and tried every variation of these words that our mouths could concoct. What started out as fear in the faces of the waitresses, quickly changed to horror. I don’t know what we were saying, but I’m sure it was probably something like “We want elephant bones and chipmunk eggs.” The waitress then started pointing at the menu. Having no other choice, we randomly picked three different items from the menu and hoped for the best. The waitresses smiled, turned, and left.

When our food finally came, so did a huge sense of relief. The food didn’t smell bad and looked somewhat familiar. We had some sort of soup, some kind of rice, and some type of noodles. We shared each dish and played “guess what meat this is.” It actually tasted pretty good.

The one questionable dish however, was the rice. Tara started eating it first, as I had the rice on my plate as well, and noticed little minnows buried amongst the rice. She held one up with her chopsticks, not to eat it, but more to warn us. I looked at it and said “hmmm, it doesn’t have a head. Usually they have heads.” I then looked at my plate and noticed headless minnows as well. I then started poking through my rice, pushing the minnows to the side and came across the mother lode. Apparently, the minnows started out with heads, but through the cooking and serving process got decapitated. When I dug through my rice, I came across their burial ground. I had a pile of minnow heads in front of me. Fortunately I had already eaten the other dishes and was satisfactorily full. I laid down my chopsticks and asked the waitress for the bill.

After relaying this story to one of Tara’s friends, she got an email back with helpful advice. She suggested drawing pictures. For example, if you want chicken, draw a picture of a chicken and put a big X across the feet and head. Very good advice indeed.