Santa Monica. The fortune-telling machine in the movie "Big" by Tom Hanks .
I have been to Los Angeles when I was a kid, but all I could remember was Universal Studios and that fake King Kong. I also remembered the Hollywood keychain that said “Made in Taiwan” on its back. This time, I’ve decided to see what people usually don’t go to LA for. The dessert.
Before I went to LA, I know nothing much about it other than what the main stream knows. However, I’ve always been captivated by the desert landscape of California that I see in movies. This isn’t what people remember California to be. When I got there, I realized that pretty much the lower half of California is desert turned into farmlands and cities with human’s power. Amazing.
However, what surprised me was, when I asked my friends in LA about the desert… “Desert? Where’s that?” It seems no one I know has ever questioned what’s beyond those mountains that separate LA from the world that’s on its east side. Overtime I am bored, I just go onto Google map and start exploring places that I don’t know about. When I looked to LA’s east, there Death Valley, there’s Edward Airforce Base, and there’s Joshua Tree. I then click on the “Satellite” button and zoom in as much as I can to see what’s there and get a kick out of it. It seems that people in LA just live in the LA that is presented to them and never question what’s beyond their knowledge. This gave me even more motivation to venture the east.
On the way to Joshua Tree, accompanied by LA’s horrible traffic, something was on the horizon. No, not just one thing, but a bunch. No, not just a bunch… there’s a whole forest of them. What are they? They stood tall. They seem to act individually but work as a group quietly. It felt weird as we drove towards them. It was as though they were looking at us trying to hypnotize and suck our souls away. They were so gigantic standing in the middle of the bare sandy landscape but so fitting at the same time. Windmills. There was a whole plantation of them stretched miles and miles. It was perfectly situated in a somewhat valley-like landscape that faces the Pacific Ocean. All of them worked hard, non-stop and quietly. This is the perfect representation of California, extracting something from nothing, turning the bare desert into one of the most desirable states in the US, one of the most unique.
It was a shame that by the time we got to Joshua Tree, the sun was setting and soon it was dark. I didn’t get to see the park in the day, but the stars presented another opportunity, an opportunity that I planned for. It was time to bust out the secret weapon. The Tripod! Yes, how can I give up on the precious opportunity to capture this beautiful starry desert night? It was simply amazing, except that I was inexperienced with the area, the situation. Looking back at the photos, I would have made some changes if I can do it again. Nevertheless, Joshua Tree has left an imprint in my memory, a memory that I want to relive.
So what’s there back in LA? I didn’t get to explore much in terms of the hot tourist spots, but I finally get a taste of what it is like living in LA from a Taiwanese’s perspective. Most of my friends in LA live in areas where there’s a high concentration of Taiwanese, like Temple City and Roland Heights. Me in particular stayed in Temple City with my friend. They call this area “Little Taipei”. It is a town where everywhere store was pretty much Chinese owned with Chinese signs. It was a Town where you can get by without speaking English, but Taiwanese or Mandarin. It is not American, but again, in America. Of the three days I stayed in my friend’s house, the TV never played a single American station. It was Taiwanese all the way. For three days, I was disconnected with America. I might as well camp out in the desert. So again, this raises the same question as I’ve asked before. Why be in the States when all you are going to expose yourself to in what you are already familiar with? How can we afford to live in this world without interacting with what’s around us? How can we even call ourselves a society? My Taiwanese friend who just graduated from college finds it hard to connect with his co-workers because he isn’t at all familiar with what they talk about. Well, my friend don’t have a TV, don’t visit American news websites, don’t hang out with local friends in local context(bar, restaurant etc). It is obviously that something is missing here. Just like in the case with European societies having a hard time living with immigrants who refuse to integrate, the US cannot have true variety without each of the variety understanding each other.
LA is huge. It’s quite a hull driving from one side to the other. There were those cities on the mountain side, then there are those on the coastal side. This leads to the next stage of my trip, which is to drive up north on the famous Pacific Coast Highway.
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