An American Werewolf in Taichung

I haven't posted in a week and a half. Yes, I'm still alive. I just don't have that much to say. I'm in a bit of a culture shock state, where things have already become normal and thus life is a little boring.

Here's a picture of a "betel nut girl," the existence of which is a post topic unto itself. (Click on it for a bigger picture.) In a society that is usually outwardly conservative, there are these scantily-clad women in little neon aquariums selling cigarettes, beer, pornography, and betel nut, this horrible substance containing caffeine and nicotine analogues.

The Gobi Desert is now knocking at the western gates of Beijing.

Rapid industrialization and poor logging practices in the P.R.C. has enlarged the Gobi Desert and created new desert areas. The Gobi increased in size by 20,000 square miles between 1994 and 1999. Its expansion has slowed since, One-third of the grassland that makes up Inner Mongolia, birthplace of the horse peoples who united under Genghis Khan and conquered most of the known world, is now classified as desert.

And the sandstorms that sweep across northern China every Spring are increasing in intensity, duration, and area covered.

Taiwan now gets a face full of sand each year. And the sand is polluted from traveling over the heavy industrial areas within China to the west. The Korean peninsula is now affected. Before long, Japan will be too.

There is enormous pressure on China from other East Asian countries to both alter its logging practices and to curb environmentally-unfriendly industrial practices. Beijing has taken some steps, but only now is it replanting trees in a vain attempt to reduce the amount of sand that will be present in the city for the 2008 Olympic games.

And it would be unwise to assume that environmental problems in the East don't affect the West.

Today is the birthday of Kim Il-Sung, North Korea's first leader. It's a national holiday in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, so I suppose that means only ten hours of work, fewer whippings, and a one-day moratorium on gassing political prisoners.

The DPRK has been brought back to the liminal surface of the American public consciousness in recent years, due in no small part to the Bush administration's campaign to isolate rogue states which it awkwardly lumped together into an 'Axis of Evil.' I'm not sure what the American public knows about North Korea or what it thinks when given the name, but I can only assume the conjured image is not friendly and anti-American. But I don't think many of us have even a half-decent picture of what the DPRK is.

North Korea has been there, through the years, occasionally surfacing in a brief news flash when word of something terrible happening within its borders managed to leak out. By and large, it has been a world apart, a mysterious black spot in the information field, and what news does manage to come out has not been sunshine and lollipops. The DPRK is one of the few remaining communist single-party governments (the others being the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam), and it is the only remaining communist government that has not reassessed its economic controls and moved toward a free market.

Okay, now a very brief history lesson: After the collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945, the Soviet Union and the US divided the Korean peninsula in two, and imposed their own ideologically suitable governments on their respective sections. This, by and large, led to civil war not but a few years later, in which the US (well... the US-controlled UN), and the newly-created PRC intervened, creating material for an isolated page in high school American History textbooks between 'World War II' and 'Vietnam.' The armistice in 1953 restored the border initially created by the US and USSR, and it has been that way ever since.

North Korea grew economically through the 1960s and 1970s, outpacing the South, but stagnated in the 1980s. North Korea relied extremely heavily on Soviet industrial aid and trade agreements, and I can only assume, from what we know now, that Soviet aid in the 1980s had to be less-than-stellar given the fact that the country was economically imploding. The collapse of the Soviet Union reflected itself in North Korea, when, devoid of the aid it had become dependent on, the economy collapsed and agricultural production all but ceased. The famine that ensued killed anywhere between 600,000 and 2 million people and sent a flood of refugees into China. The world sent food aid, and since then the agricultural situation in the country has stabilized, but the country is still reliant on foreign aid.

So why is this of such interest to the United States? Why bother dogging a little country that can't feed itself? Why is it a threat to the most powerful country in the world?

Juche. Pronounced "joo-cheh," it's the ideology of the North Korean state, first propounded by Kim Il-Sung, that above all stresses two things, the supreme power of the leader (the people are the leader, the leader is the people) and the independence of the people (ie. the state) politically and economically. According to its principles, North Korea should be self-sufficient economically (impossible), able to defend itself against any aggressor, and should have no need for peaceful interaction with other countries.

Kim broke from the USSR ideologically after Stalin's death, calling the Soviets' reforms and denunciation of Stalin's cult of personality "revisionist," and continued building his own dogma. But unfortunately, Kim couldn't break economically from the USSR, and now, the country cannot break from dependence on China, South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

And so we have an inward conflict. How can the North Korean state sustain itself and its juche dogma in light of the fact that it cannot exist without significant aid from the capitalist countries that surround it? The answer so far has been an aggressive military policy, both internal and external. Kim Jong-Il (Il-Sung's son) has instituted an "army first" program, diverting most of the economy into the military at the expense of the people, and using that military to suppress dissidence (there are reports of detention camps with hundreds of thousands of inmates, and the mortality rate in these camps approaches 25%). It continues its unabashed nuclear program despite threats of aid reduction from its benefactors (including the closest country the DPRK has to a friend, China). But these countries cannot conscionably reduce food aid and starve the North Korean people further. And Kim likes to wave this fact under the noses of the countries he despises the most, Japan and the US. Recently, for instance, the DPRK fired test missiles over Japan, proving that it could deliver nonconventional weapons that far.

The country continues to isolate itself from its neighbors and from those trying to help, while become all the more outwardly aggressive and paranoid. It's an escalating situation, and none of the probable ultimate outcomes are peaceful.

He crouched, one palm extended toward his target, the other arm crooked behind his head holding his weapon. He was fixed on his prey, his body poised, his thoughts focused. His quarry didn't move. The two were locked in an ancient dance; both opponents, neither with the advantage, waited for the other's next move.

Minutes passed. His target, bored of the standstill, began to stir. His weapon shot forward with cobra-like swiftness. The coiled t-shirt smacked the wall. His target, the mosquito that had menaced him since the morning, fell to the floor and lay motionless.

"Oh, you see that? You see that?!" he shouted to the other mosquitoes in the area. "It's on now, motherf___ers!"

***

Fair insect! that with threadlike legs spread out
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,
In pitiless ears, full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins should bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need?

This is not to say that I have not been doing these things already.

I think this is a perfect opportunity to discuss the concept of "law" in Taiwan. A few posts back, I mentioned the dearth of "law" on the streets of Taiwan. This is not to say that there is real crime everywhere one goes. Hardly anyone here gets hurt as the result of someone else's intent (anyone who isn't a gangster, anyway). Street crime is almost nonexistent (people confidently carry huge sums of cash on their person, because they are paid in cash and most transactions are handled in it.).

But the other laws, the tiers above the basics (don't kill your neighbors, don't take his stuff, etc), are more like guidelines. Those laws are only applied when they have to be. One cannot legally take a right turn on a red traffic light here, but if the way is clear, people do it. One cannot legally teach English to Taiwanese children under the age of 6, but there are English Kindergartens everywhere. There is a Hess English Kindergarten (as the sign says in both English and Chinese) across from a police station.


People can get on the wrong side of these laws. But you have to do something to piss someone off, or something blatantly stupid. To illustrate: there is a law on the books that a restroom on a given floor of a building of a certain size must have a certain number of stalls, no more, no less. Often, the bathrooms will have more than the number specified. There are building inspections, and the inspector will call the business a few days in advance to say, "hey, there's going to be an inspection on day X. I hope there won't be any problems." So the owners of the building/business in question will hastily erect a fake wall around one of the stalls. The inspector arrives, sees that there are the correct number of stalls (even though s/he knows there is a fake wall, because it's terribly obvious), checks the right box, says, "hao hao hao," and leaves. Then the owner can take the wall down.

If you piss someone off, or you just don't have the right relationships with certain people, you might get more frequent inspections, or even a surprise inspection. If you don't have that fake wall, the inspector gives you a fine.

This leads me into my next topic: guanxi. There isn't a really good way to translate the word into English. There are some things that roughly apply: 'relationships,' 'connections,' 'mutual support,' and 'favors.' Also the axiom, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" applies, with the added stipulation "if you stop scratching my back, I'll stop scratching yours."

Guanxi is a Chinese cultural concept that is the main societal adhesive force, rather than the objective rule of law like in Western European societies. One builds guanxi with his friends, with his bosses, with his employees, with the lady who runs the baoxi cart down the street from where he lives, with the people who run the bureaucracies that govern his living and business arrangements, etc. Everyone with whom he makes regular contact. Guanxi dictates that one does favors for another with the expectation that the other will do favors for him. Not just the hope, not just 'Do Unto Others', with the expectation, because the favors one does are like a balance in your favor, so when you come looking for help, the other person owes you that help. Guanxi also governs the interactions of those with whom you have built guanxi and your friends and family and close connections.

Here's a really good illustration of guanxi (as told to us by one of our trainers). A man frequents a wai dai lunchbox stand every other day. By doing so, he is starting to build guanxi with the guy who runs the cart. Pretty soon, the cart guy starts to give the man extra helpings of sweet potatoes. One day, the man brings a friend. They both get extra helpings. The friend comes back to the stand, alone, the next week. The cart guy gives him extra potatoes.

Later on, the friend approaches the stand, and tells the cart guy that his sweet potatoes suck, and that he's not coming back. The man (the original man) comes back. The cart guy doesn't give him any extra sweet potatoes.

And so Chinese society builds this giant web of guanxi that keeps it moving forward and encourages people not to harm one another.

So there is a culturally built-in reason why Chinese/Taiwanese people are so nice when you first meet them and begin to know them. There's nothing sinister about it, though from a Western perspective it might seem a little odd, a little calculating, I think. It's not quite the same as, say, the Don "taking care of" a problem of yours and then at some point he will come a-knocking asking you to do something for him.

But it's close.

Now, this wouldn't normally be that big a deal, except the fact that most of us were standing toe-to-toe in the narrow aisle without room to do so much as sneeze, and the windows on the train were sealed shut. Add to that I had been standing since leaving Cathy in Tainan (I got kicked out of my seat by its rightful occupant), roughly an hour before, and had been talked at/to by an older, rather smelly betel nut addict whose one good eye looked like that of a dead fish. He had a mouth full of betel nut and the subsequent saliva, since one cannot spit on the train, and he would start to chew a fresh nut every few minutes. I gathered from both listening to the garbled Chinese coming from behind his blood red teeth and getting a rough translation from the giggling younger guy behind me that he was curious because he'd never seen an American before, and I'd made his day happy, apparently. Also his "secretary" (how did this man have a secretary?) had taught him to count to ten in English . Which he did repeatedly, and I could only smile and say "hen hao!" with my thumbs up so many times.

We stopped in Chiayi for about twenty minutes in the sweltering heat (by this point it the temperature in the cabin had risen from 21 degrees Celsius to 30+ and was still rising), while they attempted to restart the air conditioning, an effort that only resulted in periodic slamming sounds coming from somewhere on the train.

Then, after a tense-sounding message from the crew, people started to exit the train. I was positive I was going to be stranded a hundred or so kilometers from Taichung out in B.F. Nowhere Chiayi. But some of the passengers stayed on, so I decided I would as well. But I piled into the space between the cars where all the other latecomer, no-designated-seat-having passengers were now sulking. The Train Powers That Be continued to try to start the air conditioning, only to have it thump to a halt several seconds later. They tried over and over the whole way from Chiayi to Wulien, as if to tease us.

The train pulled into Taichung Station nearly an hour late, and of course, since it had been sunny and humid in Kaohsiung, naturally it would be cold and drizzly less than two hundred clicks away. I walked back to where my scooter was parked however many blocks away at my school, and made the drive home in record speed.


So scooting to Kaohsiung apparently went against all logic, common sense, and medical advice. I took a train instead. It was a blast. Danny, who was a chef or cook of many years or something in the UK, made a fantastic meal for fourteen of us at the palatial three bedroom apartment he shares with Hanlee, another person from our training group from South Africa.

The following day I rented a scooter for 24 hours for US$6 (and boy howdy, it was worth that and no more), and we went to the beach, which involved driving out to the coast and taking a ferry (scooters and all) across to "Seafood Island", which is, as the name suggests, an island filled with seafood shops and restaurants. It was really interesting, looking at the mix of old Chinese-style junks and flashy new speedboats and yachts and freight ships. Our ferry had to cede right of way to a gigantic freighter from Dubai (Kaohsiung is the world's third largest international container port, by the way). I spotted a pair of R.O.C. Navy destroyers (of which the R.O.C. has four. They're Kidd class destroyers sold to Taiwan by the U.S. over the past couple of years after they'd been decommissioned. The four Kidds were originally commissioned for Iran three decades ago, but that didn't pan out).

The beach was surreal. Cameron, who had been my passenger, and I lost the others while scooting through a crowded market street, and ended up parking on the far side of the beach. We saw several weathered bunkers carved into the rocks jutting out into the Strait, and a machine gun pillbox that someone had placed a little Buddha statue in, and atop the natural entrance to the port stood (what I now know is) Chihou Battery. Which, now that I look it up, is a fort originally built in the 17th Century, but later cannon batteries were added, and the fort was pretty much entirely dissembled by the Japanese. Disappointingly, we didn't poke around in the fort.

The volcanic sand on the beach was gunmetal gray, and the water was about the same color with a little green added. The sun shone weakly through the gray haze of pollution, and tremendous ships loomed on the horizon. But the really odd thing was the pleasant heat and breeze. It was like being in an aged black-and white negative of Malibu. Or as Danny put it, "it looks like a shitty day, like going to the beach in England, except it's nice."

We swam for a few hours. The water was pretty much lifeless, and we encountered only a few bits of seaweed, a bunch of rocks, and I got pinched by a very small crab. We couldn't decide if it was the salt or the pollution that was making our eyes burn.

I unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) left my camera at Danny's apartment that day. So no pictures of the beach.

Later on, we met another crowd of our people who had been in Kenting for some sort of music festival, and we ate at a pretty nice, very American restaurant (I was so happy to eat something that wasn't Taiwanese), and some of us went on to enjoy a few hours of KTV with some of the Chinese Teachers.

Today I helped Andre and Anja (a gorgeous South African couple, also from our training group) get to the bus station, and Cathy and I got on a northbound train at about 2:30pm, and I made it home at quarter-til-7.

And now I have to grade homework and plan two lessons. Bye-bye, fun!

A successful long weekend, no doubt. And it was pleasantly long.

I sat in the twilight, under a banyan tree, watching old men play Wei chi (Go) on little wooden tables in the China Medical University park. A man nearby spun hook swords with alarming grace and aptitude. The blades danced around him silently; a slight adjustment in his stance and the blades changed course.

I stared at the statue of Chiang Kai Shek in the middle of the park. I grinned and wondered if I could have imagined this scene three years ago when I was writing my thesis. I started to talk to the statue in my head.

Chiang continued to stare off into the horizon, as though vigilantly watching for Red flags pouring over the top of the mountains.

The kids bounced their ball against the statue and laughed.