(Here from Li&Glenn’s Marriage announcement for November)
Li had lots of ideas for the weekend, and the three of us started with brunch at Tamed Fox. We saw not only a good portion of foreigners there, but Li also pointed out the number of children (plus a heavily pregnant woman) and said that Taiwan, along with South Korea, has the lowest birth rate.
Having children is a complicated matter, and the easiest solution is it just happens and to get along with it. But when you ponder all the questions: “When? How parenting? And why at all?”, it’s hard to come up with a solution. And for women in particular, the time for this decision is now being shortened by both sides: Although everyone is getting older, living healthier lives, and staying young much longer, for them the biological clock keeps ticking. And on the other hand, the years before 30 or 35 are flying by, and fewer and fewer people are willing to give up their gradually acquired independence and unstructured lives again soon in favour of the lively madness and uncertainty of parenthood.
For me, this is nothing new, just progress. But anyone who knows me: I only have to drop the term climate change (…disaster, catastrophe, whatever). No fun is awaiting new generations, and every additional person not only suffers with the others, but contributes to the suffering.
This creates entirely new and far more serious decision-making bases. Or, to put it even more clearly: you can no longer make a sensible decision, because it IS already decided. “We,” the upper half of the world’s population, have decided once and for all.
At lunchtime, friends came to visit. Bernie had studied at the same forest university as Li and even works in the same field. He came with Josh, who is from Seattle and learned Chinese there. Now, in Taipei, he’s an English teacher, and I’m not the only one impressed by his Chinese. And Yu Chen, who also studied with Li and Bernie, is now a geography teacher.
Time flew by, and at 5:00, Glen played another round of basketball tournaments. The other three went home, and Li and I met two other good friends of hers, Ice and Yi Lun, and went to a concert of “Jade”. (“Formed in 2018, Taiwanese duo JADE is known for its polished indie rock tracks with big choruses, catchy hooks, and great production.“) For me, the first thing to mention was the audience. Of course, every genre of music brings its own audience, and so also in Taiwan you will find metalheads, mosh pits, and roaring, but here still it was such a quiet, measured crowd, and not a single moment did anyone touch me; everyone kept their distance.
The music was an interesting mix for me, and the visual elements were more than I’d ever seen before. They may not always have been closely aligned with the music, but they were still art in their own right.
Everything is well organized and tidy; you know where you’re allowed to stand, where you’re not allowed to eat, etc. And in the subway station, you can finally get rid of the trash that you can carry around for hours in Taipei without finding a trash can.
But: Even so, there’s less trash on the streets than in most places I know (perhaps Switzerland can keep up?)
