Not much of interest happened this past week. I passed some time reading two Sherlock Holmes novels. I read A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four. As far as I know, A Study in Scarlet was the first story that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes. I found it interesting partially because I could contrast it with the first episode of the TV show “Sherlock.” Both the book and the TV show had to introduce Dr. Watson and Sherlock and then have them meet and move into 221B Baker Street. I had just watched the episode of the TV show, so I was able to pick out the ways in which it followed the book and the ways in which it differed.

I also noticed how difficult the language was in the novel. I tend to think of the Sherlock Holmes stories and books as simple pieces of writing – stories that I might recommend to a person learning English. However, when you slow down and look at the language – the sentence structure in particular – you realize it isn’t that simple at all. Nearly every sentence has a twist in it that would make it very difficult if not incomprehensible for a learner of English. The vocabulary is also challenging. In fact, I started to read slowly mainly because I set myself the challenge of understanding every single word that I read. I do this from time to time when I read a book, and it is always a surprise. I find that most books contain a lot of words that, when challenged, I couldn’t define in any precise way. I don’t need to understand the word fully in order to read the book. I understand what it means in context and I can just move ahead. Yet, if someone listed all those words and said that I had to construct dictionary entries for each of those words, I probably couldn’t do it.

Some of these words, such as “minatory”, I didn’t understand at all. I don’t think I’d ever come across it before. I understood from the context that it was something bad and perhaps evil, but I really didn’t know what it meant. Others, such as “dun”, fall into a different category. I knew that “dun” was a color. And I knew that it was a drab color. However, when I thought about it, I realized that I didn’t really know what color it was. Blackish? Brownish? Greyish? Something else?

Then there were a host of other words, such as “slatternly”, which I feel that I understand and could use in my own writing. However, there is a twist even to these words. There are many words in English that mean roughly the same thing. So why did the author choose this exact word? When I looked up these words in a dictionary, I found that they did indeed have the base meaning I suspected they had, but then they had a unique angle or twist – an added element that made it distinct from all the other words that mean roughly the same thing.

I’ve gone through this vocabulary exercise with books from time to time throughout my life. Usually, it is with books from the eighteenth century. Each time, I am astonished at how long is the list of unknown words I produce. Sometimes I do it with a modern book. The most recent was The Road. I found this book in a hotel when I was on holiday in the Philippines. I’d read it before, but I sat down to read it again, and I started to make a note of all the words that I didn’t fully understand. Again, the list got very long. I wonder, with modern books, whether the author used these words in a natural way or went out of his way to insert them. What I mean is, are these words part of the author’s everyday vocabulary? If so, how did they get in there? In my case, I could write a thousand pages in a letter, a journal or blog entry, and I would never use a word that wasn’t in common usage, and that everyone didn’t know. It’s just the way my brain works. I could go back with a dictionary and insert uncommon and literary words, but what would be the point? I would never use a word like “dun” when “dull grayish-brown” would do. Perhaps authors naturally expand their vocabulary through their work. In my case, all of my work has been connected in some way with teaching English as a second language and the pressure there is to use the simplest words you can and to use straightforward sentence structure. (See? I could have said “syntax” but I chose the simpler “sentence structure”.) In fact, my work in ESL has been very interesting from that point of view. I can easily turn on the perspective of an English learner, and then I see English in an entirely new light. That’s why a book like A Study in Scarlet can suddenly seem so different to me. I see the complexities in the language because I am looking at it from the point of view of a student of English. It has helped me appreciate the English language.

Whenever I’ve made these lists of unfamiliar words, I have the intention of eventually learning them all and adding them to my vocabulary. That doesn’t seem to happen, though. I bet if I go back right now and reread The Road, all those words I looked up in a dictionary will be just as unfamiliar to me a second time around. The same thing happens with general historical, scientific, and political knowledge. I often think how amazing it would be if I remembered everything I had ever learned. I’ve learned a lot in my life. I’ve read a lot and learned a lot. However, little of it actually sticks. I retain vague ideas of the things I once knew, but that’s all. I learn a lot and then I forget a lot. I wonder if the intelligent people of this world actually remember everything they learn and read. That must be incredible if true. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even think in terms of remembering things. I recently read a very interesting book about the Belgian colonization of the Congo, and I did it because I found it interesting in the present moment. But I no longer have any illusion that one year from now, I’ll remember anything that I read. When I was young and growing up, I had this illusion that I was learning things that would become a permanent part of me. I went out of my way to read the classics of literature and philosophy and history and science thinking that I was adding to my store of knowledge. I wasn’t though. If I want to access any knowledge of John Locke, Peter the Great, Copernicus, or anyone else you care to name, I’d have to go back and read the books again. I knew a lot about these people and many others at one time – the short time right after I read the books by them and about them. I don’t remember anything now.

I suppose in its way this is an argument for specialization. The only way for me to really remember anything is to constantly refresh my memory and to continue to make the connections between all the things that I’ve read. To do that, I’d have had to choose a field of knowledge and build a life and career around it. Then, perhaps, you remember the things you read and learn. The same goes for language, of course. At one time or another, I invested a lot of time in learning French and Spanish. I can speak neither language now. To speak them, I’d have to go right back to the beginning and learn them all over again. Which begs the question again of whether learning them in the first place was a waste of time. I tend to think that it was. Perhaps some people have brains that retain the things they learn. For them, it makes sense to study and learn everything. It would be like adding data to a database or an encyclopedia. Everything that is learned is added to the store of information and is there forever to be accessed. In my case, it’s more like writing what I learn onto a sheet of paper and then feeding that paper into a shredder a week or two later. I know what I’ve learned in the brief time between writing it down and feeding the paper into the shredder. Not much value there. The point to take from this is perhaps that for certain people it is important to make choices carefully, to invest their time in things that they know they have a practical use for and that they have actual plans to use. I, for example, went so far as to organize an entire university semester of independent study courses so I could spend those months in Guatemala studying Spanish in an intense immersion program in the town of Antigua. Even that wasn’t enough for me, and I moved into a small village with a family so that I could immerse myself even further. That’s all well and good, and I had a great adventure, but in the end, I never used the Spanish I learned. If one is going to invest that much time, money, and effort into learning something, then it’s a good idea to have a plan for that knowledge. If not, all that effort would be better spent learning something else – something that will be of use and benefit.

 

This past week, I also spent some time looking into the possibility of doing some traveling in China after I leave Taiwan. Why China? Well, why not? In a way, China scares me. It’s just too big. There is too much of China. However, I wouldn’t try to go everywhere. I would enter China by ferry at the coastal town of Xiamen and then cycle north as far as time allows and then perhaps turn back south and exit China into either Laos or Vietnam.

The two things I looked into were the possibility of getting a visa for China and the possibility of getting to China by ferry. If I had to fly to China, I probably wouldn’t do it. If I was going to go to all the trouble of packing up my bicycle (I’ll be travelling by bicycle) and putting it on an airplane, I’d likely fly somewhere else. One of the appeals of starting my travels in China is this possibility of going there by boat. This is a relatively recent thing. I’ve heard the ferry connections between Taiwan and China referred to as part of the three mini-links. As far as I know there are two ferry routes – one between Matzu and China and then another between Kinmen and China.

As far as I know, these mini-links only recently became available to foreigners. My first definite knowledge about them came quite recently when a friend met someone else who claimed to have come to Taiwan from China by ferry. Then a couple, Eric and Amaya, who are cycling around the world caught a ferry from the Chinese city of Xiamen to the Taiwanese island of Kinmen. From there, they caught another ferry to Taiwan, which docked at Taichung Port. I’d tried to get information about this ferry for them, but I couldn’t find out anything. Even the official Taiwanese tourism offices claimed there were no such ferries. It was only when this couple actually got on this phantom ferry that I got any definite knowledge. Then they took this same ferry from Taiwan back to China. That got my spidey-sense tingling as I pondered the possibility of following in their tire tracks. The advantage – and for me this is a HUGE advantage – is that leaving Taiwan that way means I won’t have to dismantle my bike, box it up, and fight my way through various airports. I’d be able to simply carry my bike down to the street from my apartment, ride to the port, and then roll my bike onto the ferry. I love that kind of thing. Of course, it isn’t the end of the world to box up a bike and fly with it. Lots of people do it, and I’ve done it myself a few times. However, it’s a giant pain, and the simplicity of taking a ferry is very appealing.

I sent an email to Amaya to ask her for more details this ferry. She and Eric had already completed their ride through China and were in Vietnam, where they had ready access to the Internet, so they were able to reply right away. After a couple of emails of questions, I got onto the scent of this ferry.

I had thought there were various ferries – at least two anyway – one leaving from Keeling and others leaving from Taichung or Kaohsiung. I wasn’t sure which one Amaya and Eric had taken. I learned that they had both landed and left from Taichung Port, which is on the coast a few kilometers from Taichung City. Coming from China, they had done it in two stages, I believe. The first stage was from the Chinese city of Xiamen and involved a short ferry ride to Kinmen. Kinmen is part of Taiwan, and they went through customs and immigration there. Then they got another ferry, which took them to Taichung Port.

When they left from Taiwan, their ferry left from Taichung Port and went directly to Xiamen without stopping at Kinmen. The ferry was the Cosco Star, and I tracked down their website. There was an email address there, and I wrote to them asking how I can make reservations on this ferry and buy tickets. They in turn gave me the email address for their agent in the port city of Keelung. It turns out that the ferry Cosco Star leaves from both Keelung and Taichung. It is the same ferry. Sometimes it departs from Keelung and sometimes it departs from Taichung. That’s good news for me because Keelung is a short distance from Taipei and it would be a lot easier to get there than to get to Taichung.

I sent an email to the agent in Keelung and waited for a reply. I was expecting at some point to learn that I had to go to this or that travel agent to purchase a ticket. I was surprised, pleased, and a little puzzled when I got a very personal and informal email back from the agent. I still don’t know exactly how one buys a ticket on this ferry, but he basically said I should call him on his cell phone.

I loved that. It’s like a throwback to a hundred years ago and it illustrates why boat travel is so much better than air travel. Air travel is so impersonal. Can you imagine contacting an airline about buying a ticket and being given the cell phone number of the pilot? It’s like that. I feel a bit like I’ve been thrown back to the time of Sherlock Holmes when ships were how one travelled around the world, and you arranged passage by meeting the captain in some murky bar at the harbor. I have not called the agent yet. If I take this ferry, it won’t be until March or April or even later, so there is no hurry. And it appears that the Cosco Star will be down for maintenance unitl March 7th and won’t be running again until March 8th.

The other good news – not as interesting, but good news nonetheless – is that it isn’t that difficult to get a tourist visa for China. There is no Chinese consulate or embassy in Taiwan (for obvious reasons), so one has to get the visa somewhere else. I contacted a travel agent and found out that it is a relatively simple matter to have one’s passport sent to Hong Kong to apply for a visa. Tourist visas for China are also of a suitably long duration – either 90 days or 180 days. I didn’t see any reason in the fine print why I wouldn’t qualify for a 180-day double-entry visa. It seemed to be a matter of just paying a slightly higher fee. The great news is that the visa fee is roughly half as much for those with a Taiwanese ARC – which I have. Your ARC has to be valid for at least 3 more months when you submit your application, and that applies to me as well. Therefore, the practicalities of going to China seem not insurmountable.

The timing is also pretty good. I find I often have the urge to go someplace at exactly that time when the weather is the worst. In this case, March/April seems to be a pretty good time to go to China. My main interest is in the northwestern provinces – the high mountains – and it is very cold there in the winter. Spring and summer are good times to be there, and this is generally a bad time to be almost anywhere else. Many places in Asia and around the world are either too hot or rainy in the summer.

 

Tags: China, Keelung, Taiwan, tourist visa, visa