Trip to Hualien

One week ago I've been in Hualien (East coast) with Hung-Hsin and his friends. Actually, I was very surprise and glad when he invited me for the trip. His friends apparently wanted to meet and get to know some foreigner, I guess. It was great to spent three days with Chinese people and saw at least the part of East coast here. And everyone were saying that Hualien is a beautiful place. It is :-)


I'm going to write about something different though. Since I was the only foreigner, I had a nice chance to discover more about people here and their relationship. Even though I can't understand Chinese yet, I think I already got some particular observation. For instance, they seems to be without any troubles and playful -- smiling, making jokes and laughing all time (perhaps just my point of view, influenced by cultural difference). Especially girl really like to talk and talk. More surprisingly, I've got impression that actually girls ruled the whole group, guys were much quite and usually following the rest. OK, I forgot to mention there were much more girls then guys :) Anyway, I'm not sure if it was the reason.

There is much less foreigners in Hualien and a lot of local were looking at me. I'm afraid, I almost made one little guy to cry. I felt weird, didn't know what to do and speaking English to him won't probably do anything better so I just turned back :)

This few days with nice people, listening to Chinese, visiting a lot of places (including Taroko National Park), swimming in the mountain stream, admiring the sunrise on the beach, and enjoying perfect food (of course) was really nice. Thanks to you all...

k.