help. i can't read.

i am an abc (american born chinese).  or more accurately, i am a tba (taiwanese born american).  as previously mentioned, i speak chinese pretty well, and growing up, i visited taiwan numerous times with my mother to visit our extended family.  you would think that because of this, i'd be pretty taiwan savvy.  this is just not true.  i probably know less about getting around in taiwan than any other country i have visited (and there are a lot) because i had to research and plan my own itineraries on those vacations.  


here, i have mostly been led around the country blindly by local relatives, and never really had to do much in the way of figuring out ... anything.  and truth be told, in the first say, five visits or so, i almost never went anywhere outside the walls of various relatives homes.  my strongest childhood memories of taiwan were sitting in front of a fan and watching chinese mtv and vh1.  


a few days after my move here, i found myself familiarizing myself with local buses and running errands on my own. i live in a rather inconvenient place outside of taipei, so going out takes a bit of an effort.    being the middle of the day, i randomly stopped at a restaurant for lunch.   


before i continue with the story, i should point out that the thing about being an abc with above average mandarin skills is, i can sometimes pass as a local.  the problem arises when i'm actually expected to read something... anything...like say, a menu, especially since i am not living in the heart of taipei, where foreigners are more common.  this is exactly opposite of my experience when i lived in finland, where i was clearly a foreigner wherever i went, and most people who saw me immediately spoke to me in english. even when i didn't want them to. 


so you can imagine the surprise when the hostess greeted me, offered me a menu and a place to sit, and in return i looked at her somewhat blankly, and said,  "i'm sorry. i can't read a lot of chinese, can you please explain the menu?"  you can further imagine her (most probable) masked frustration as she patiently explained to me section by section what my options were.   


but her kind efforts led me to order the following: 

fried cheese... cake

pork stir-fried udon

my cousin, bear, finds my bold declarations of being illiterate hilarious.   she finds it even more hilarious that i never bother to explain the strong incongruence between my speaking and reading ability.   but really, why is it important for them to know that? 

love,  fif