*** UPDATED*** Changes around "the 'hood" (***NOW WITH PHOTOS***)

Leave a place for a few weeks and it’s interesting what you notice when you come back.  We came back to a whole raft of new businesses in the area.  For example, right across the street from our building is a new tattoo parlor, and around the corner in a spot that at one time had been a "small eats" (小吃) restaurant / food court (some time ago - it has been a vacant storefront since we have lived in Kaohsiung) is a Japanese garden shop.

  Tattoo shop

Garden Shop

A little farther away but still pretty close is an even more remarkable development: a new shopping area featuring one establishment that was very common where we were most recently visiting - Seoul - Dunkin Donuts.  I know, I know, stay away from the Western stuff, eat the local food!  But sometimes a donut really hits the spot, and Dunkin's donuts are quite good, much better than their already-present competitor, Mister Donut (to the best of my knowledge, this new Dunkin Donuts location is the first one in these parts).  And the coffee is good, too!  Right around the corner from the new donut shop is a new Baskin Robbins franchise and next to it (and practically right next to a pre-existing McDonald's restaurant) is a new Burger King location.  It's a veritable cornucopia of Western fast food, right in our neighborhood!  Sorry, probably shouldn't be getting so worked up about it all.  We haven't had a chance to try any of these new places out just yet, but I was thinking that I might swing by the tattoo parlor one of these days to get some work done...j/k!

Dunkin Donuts - from the bus window

Baskin Robbins (L) and Burger King (R)

GJS

P.S. I haven't had a chance to snap any pics of these places yet, but I hope to do so soon, and after that I will update this post so you can see them, OK? Mission accomplished!

Chinese character recognition at the Knox County Fair

Remember a while back I talked about having some non-sequential posts coming? It's time!

Let's turn back the clock about a month, to the 2009 Knox County Fair. This year's event took place from Aug 12 - 16, and we actually modified when we left Nebraska to come to Taiwan so that we could attend. It was a lot of fun, and I will write more about the fun everyone had another day, but today I want to start off with a look at something that shocked me - the prevalence of Chinese character tattoos on attendees of the fair.

Call me old-fashioned, but Knox County, Nebraska is not a place I expect to see this:

Since I hadn't done much in terms of Chinese in a good couple of weeks at that point, it took me a few moments to decode it, but here are the characters: 友人, yǒurén, meaning "friend." OK, I can understand this tattoo on this person, makes sense to me.

Then I saw this guy:

The first two pictures are of the left side of the back of his neck; the third photo is of the right side. The left character is 恶, è, meaning vicious or terrible, and the right one is 鬼, guǐ, which means ghost. Put them together and we have 恶鬼, èguǐ, or "vicious ghost." OK, this one also makes sense, some characters to put forth a fearsome or menacing message from a man. Interesting how we have a welcoming, happy message of "friend" from the woman and the opposite, "vicious ghost" from the man.

I was at the fair only a fraction of the time it was going on, and I saw two people with visible Chinese character tattoos. This says nothing about the people whose body markings are not visible in regular clothing. We can see from this small sample that a) tattoos are becoming more and more commonplace, and 2) people in Knox County, Neb. like the Chinese language.

Finally, this guy doesn't have any visible tattoos, in Chinese or anything else, but he is about the least-motivated looking person I have seen in a long time! OK, monitoring the bouncy house may not be the most exciting job on the midway, but come on!

"Get me out of Knox County!"

GJS