User Comments - katiehay

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

I don't know about in mainland, but hardly anyone follows this rule in Taiwan. My potentially future mother-in-law told me that even in her generation, this was only loosely followed. I told her that if she ever tried to keep me from washing my hair for a month, I would just shave my head! That way, I wouldn't have to worry about long, greasy hair! haha that didn't go over too well

Posted on: Foreign Father Loses His Cool

In Taiwan, I had a good Taiwanese friend who was about to get married. In the few weeks before the wedding, she found out that she was pregnant. She had already asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding (as she was marrying a French man, the wedding was going to be a blend of Chinese and French tradition). Anyways, one night at dinner before we were going to go find a bridesmaid dress for me to wear, we were talking about birthdays and she realized that I was a tiger (born in the year of the tiger). According to Chinese traditions, Tiger women should not be allowed anywhere near the newlyweds. They shouldn't even be allowed to come to the traditional wedding because Tigers supposedly will "eat the future babies" of the couple. My friend was shocked that I was a tiger and grew very upset, 很不好意思。The next day, she went to a temple to ask the gods if I could still be her bridesmaid, but it was clear that if I served as her bridesmaid, the health of her future children would be in danger, so she cried and told me that I couldn't be in her wedding anymore.

It was a strange feeling. I had been very excited to take part in her wedding, as I was good friends with both the bride and groom. However, I also had to respect her culture and traditions, so I went to the wedding as just a regular guest, but haven't been their house since the conversation about Tigers. It almost seems as though I'm not allowed to go to their home until they have reached a point where they don't want to have children anymore!

Posted on: Reading Fortunes

http://lazy0105.pixnet.net/blog/post/30278456 this might be interesting to you.... an explanation of 注音符號

Posted on: Reading Fortunes

I have been living in Taiwan for 2+ years--and have never been to the mainland. I started learning Mandarin using Taiwan's "bepemefe" system (注音符號 in Chinese)... It really makes sense once you get used to it. I actually prefer it to pinyin because in my opinion, it is much easier to understand how to pronounce characters correctly... also, in Taiwan, they often use the bepemefe symbols, such as ㄟ "ei" or ㄚ "ah" on the internet to convey emotions instead of using the corresponding characters... it's called bepemefe because those are the first four letters of the phonetic alphabet : ㄅ "b-" ㄆ "p-" ㄇ "m-" ㄈ "f-"... sort of like how in the US, we just say, "the ABC's." Computers in Taiwan have bepemefe keyboards with the phonetic symbols in order, so it is very easy to type. Anyway, to make a long story short, if you are living in Taiwan, I really encourage you to learn bepemefe! It should only take a couple of hours, and it shows to Taiwanese people that you are invested in learning Taiwanese-style Mandarin.

Posted on: Applying for a Work Visa

聽起來很複雜。在台灣辦的話差不多一樣，幸虧我男朋友家人幫我了，要不然真辛苦! 我只有一個不懂得地方:"就業證"和"工作簽證"是不一樣嗎?

Posted on: The Brave Little Tailor (Part 2)

哇!很感動啊!

Posted on: The Price of Marriage

thank you, that's nice to hear... i'll check it out

Posted on: The Price of Marriage

this dialogue follows the stereotype of a bi-racial couple where the man is the foreigner and the woman is chinese. i'm an american (girl) and i have a taiwanese boyfriend... even though there are lots of western-taiwanese couples in taipei, i see very, VERY few where the guy is taiwanese and the girl is a westerner... most taiwanese, when they see my boyfriend and me together, assume that he's american-chinese and they just start speaking english to both of us!