I am currently in Seoul for a linguistics conference, and have a few observations.
1. Seoul's architecture is no prettier that Taipei's, but there are many fewer ramshackle structures, old buildings that should be torn down or could fall down at any moment. I think that part of the reason for this may be the colder climate - the high today was supposed to be 3C. Those old buildings that they have in Taiwan couldn't be used in a place where the temperature gets so low.
2. The city is cleaner. But my former student says that the trade off for this is that the cost of living is much higher than in Taipei. When I told him how inexpensively one can eat in Taiwan, he said is sounds like a kind of paradise. He doesn't care too much about the flimsy buildings and dirt, if he can eat out good food every night. Different cultures accept different tradeoffs.
3. The Seoul National University campus is extremely modern and set in a beautiful setting surrounded by mountains. It's kind of like north Taipei, with the Yangmingshan above you. But of course, the mountains here are in winter mode, covered with brown grass and leafless trees, while in Taiwan they are as green as ever.
4. My talk went well, I got interesting comments which basically accepted what I wanted to say, and afterwards I had a few people ask me to autograph my book "What is Meaning?" (used in their intro semantics course) and to take pictures with them. I felt very flattered. One of them was a buddhist nun, who must be taking linguistics as part of her English language study. It was very funny to be taking a picture with a nun, students holding their copies of a semantics book up for the camera to see and making that Asian "peace" sign with their two fingers. (The nun didn't do that, but her classmates did.)
5. After the talk, there was a dinner put on by the conference. It was an amazing buffet - there were probably 150 people there, and we had abundant food to eat, including sashimi, crab, oysters, Korean bbq, tempura, salads of all sorts. There was also free wine and booze. Where did they get funding for such a spread? You could never have such an event at a linguistics conference in the US (or Taiwan, I think). I was told that finding money for conferences is not so hard, and that the funders expect that one should host in fine fashion, so that tells you the reason why any chance to attend a conference in Korea should be taken up.
More fun in Seoul tomorrow, and back to Taiwan on Sunday.
Paul
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3 comments:
So great to hear about your Korean experience, Paul! We miss you back at home! Did you resist the urge to speak Chinese to the Koreans? It must be weird to see Asian faces but have zero communicative ability after two hours of flight.
Speaking of conference hospitality, I would think Taiwan is similar to Korea. In comparison, US academic conferences are definitely more frugal and simpler. I wonder if it has anything to do with society's attitude towards those in academics. I can say that teachers and professors are much more revered in Asia.
Hello! Am I interfering with your family talks her? ^_* I just read this one and thought: "wow, a book! How come Wenying never told me about that!" Then I came to the last line and saw Paul's signature.
Anyway, congratulations to the great talk in Korea, and a safe journey home! And, where can I get a book of yours? I know it's probably an academic one but the title sounds very interesting to me. My thesis was vaguely related to this title, and even though (very fortunately) I finished my master, I'm still generally interested in this field. Would love to read your book!
Wenying, write to me~~ ^_^
Kathy! So great to hear from you and know you're reading from Beijing. I'll write to you. Paul's book is being sold on Amazon. I haven't read it in detail but all his examples are names of family members so that's been fun to browse through :) BTW, love your book and reread it from time to time!
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