An American Werewolf in Taichung

An Untimely End

2007-08-09T23:21:00.000+08:00

There is an episode of South Park that features a colony of gnomes with a very simple business plan:

1. Steal underpants.
2. ...
3. Profit.

I came to Taiwan with the notion that I would stay until I learned Chinese. I realize now that this is a very vague goal, having no solid structure or even a second step (like the gnomes), and also interminable because language can never be perfected. My reasons for learning the language were also based on equally rocky reasoning. I figured that if I learned Chinese, getting a job in the international relations field would be a cinch, because China is where the action is and is probably going to be.

Of course, things change, and my time abroad has taught me that I don't want to spend the rest of my life abroad. As much as I abhor most of my fellow countrymen's idea of politics and culture, I like the States and have found that in all actuality I want to live there. I've found out what 'home' means for the first time (I grew up moving around quite a bit), and I want desperately to go there and revel in it for a long while.

I have come to a turning point in my employment with Hess, I am given the choice of either quitting immediately or staying on and pretending nothing has gone terribly wrong in the past week. I am also presented with the opportunity to get a new job in Taipei and start over. I honestly would like to live in Taipei and stay, but it's just that. I wouldn't be truly happy, except in moments, because I am being drawn back home. I spend a lot of time thinking about my return, and more and more my time here feels like waiting for that day. And I can't live that way, even if it is to spend time with people of your caliber.

So with a very heavy (and still very divided) heart, I am announcing my intention to leave Taiwan. I will leave within the next two weeks, since that is all the time my visa will allow once Hess puts in the cancellation on Monday.

Many of you I will see this weekend in Taipei. Probably not long after you read this. To others, I will be traveling a bit in the country before I leave. I will see you then, for one last hurrah.

To those of you at home: I will see you very soon, after a brief foray into 'elsewhere.'

2007-08-09T04:23:00.000+08:00

I hadn't heard of this story before, but someone brought it to my attention.

This is sick, and it's not how we as an "open" society treat the citizens of other open societies. People who screw up a visa application and nothing more.

Even if they are journalists.

Taiwan Driver's Ed

2007-07-28T02:18:00.000+08:00

Some time ago, my landlord and I were talking on our way out of the apartment building, and as we were in the scooter parking area he asked me if I liked driving a scooter.

"I love it," I responded. It can be a lot of fun, but sometimes it's a little scary.

He kidded a bit about the craziness of the traffic, and then he warned me. "The police are looking," he said. "I know when foreigners get here they obey the law, but sometimes after some time they are like... real Taiwanese driving."

I have become one of those foreigners. I drive like any other Taiwanese person. A red light means there will likely be traffic going crosswise, but if there isn't, the way is clear. Speed is relative. One can go down the left side of the road if it's only for a short way to get to a particular alley. U-turns can be made anywhere, and on a scooter, against a red light.

In the States, motorcycles are treated, as the rules go, like cars, but here they are separate. But there are many of the same laws, and some rules are stricter. But enforcement is incredibly lax, and no one seems to care.

Or so I thought.

Earlier this evening, I was going down Mei Tsun Rd looking for a particular noodle shop that had been pointed out to me before. I realized I had gone too far, and I found myself at a red light. So I did the usual thing for a U-Turn, which was to check for anyone making a turn into the opposing lane, and seeing that the way was clear, I pulled out just past the crosswalk, veered left, gunned it across the median, and pulled left again, and was on my way in the opposite direction.

Down the block I looked in my rearview and noticed a man on a different scooter following very closely. Then a little light and siren came on.

I pulled over, the cop pulled behind me and sidled up to where I had parked. He said something to me in Mandarin.

It's OK, he doesn't speak English. Just play dumb, I thought. I shrugged a bit and looked at him like I hadn't the foggiest.

"Do you know that you cannot do this turn?" he repeated, this time in very crisp, cram school English.

F---.

He gave me a ticket after a stern lecture on traffic safety in somewhat broken English and went on his way.

Lesson learned. Always check the intersection for cops.

The U.S. Department of Defense® : A New Brand?

2007-07-18T22:00:00.000+08:00

Recently, the Rand Corporation (America's biggest collection of evil geniuses bent on world domina--uh... "policy-oriented think tank") published this monograph detailing how a number of practices from the civilian advertising world could be integrated into the U.S.'s current counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, not just to improve the military's image but also its actual success.

It's really not a terrible idea. Nike, Coca-Cola and the like have been winning the hearts and minds of people the world over for generations. Advertisers know their stuff.

So the concept of "branding" could make its way into security operations. It's not to say that the groundworks for such a thing haven't already been placed, but the concept of actually focusing on image generation rather than reactionary attempts to mitigate negative perceptions hasn't actually made its way into counterinsurgency doctrine or practice (handing out water doesn't count).

Screw you, Friedman and Co., even if you are right.

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

2007-06-05T22:22:00.000+08:00

The cross-Strait political situation is headed in a very unpleasant direction.

Taipei has been playing the line between Washington and Beijing. It continues to waffle about with the arms package the US offered in 2001, no decision has been made in the Legislative Yuan. By doing so, Taipei has made its opinion clear: "Weapons? We don't need no stinkin' weapons!" Taipei knows the US is still committed to defend Taiwan. While some people read the Taiwan Relations Act and see that no where is it written that Washington has to come to Taiwan's aid, it has been said by policymakers and by senior State Department officials multiple times, and that's where it counts.

Taipei also realizes that China wants to keep improving relations with the US, and vice versa. So it feels safe in spending the $18 billion elsewhere and thinking about cutting the defense budget. (If this doesn't set off alarms in Washington, I don't know what will.) If that wasn't enough, Taiwan is trying to change its name officially to just Taiwan (ie. another move towards formal independence), and it recently pissed and moaned at the WHO when its application for admission to the organization under the name "Taiwan" was rejected. Premier Su Tseng-chang went so far as to accuse KMT party members of "kowtowing" to Beijing when they attended a forum on cross-Strait trade on the mainland.President Chen rejected Beijing's offer to bring the Olympic torch through Taiwan on its route. Now he visited the U.S., digitally, despite protests and warnings from both Beijing and Washington.

Taiwan is growing bold under the American wing. I dread the possibilities after the Olympics. Under Beijing's "peaceful rise" policy, there is something disturbing brewing. Defense spending has risen dramatically, much higher than it says, and Beijing's reach extends far past the force needed to defend itself against its neighbors. It moves all of its most recent and technologically advanced forces to the regions directly opposite the Straits. And the anti satellite missile test earlier this year casts serious doubt on the US's ability to defend Taiwan.

What happens is up to China, as it has been, but Taipei is egging Beijing on, and I think it's an issue of domestic politics. Chen wants to publicly ruffle the PRC's feathers to galvanize support for the DPP. Playing with fire for a larger share of political power. Beijing wouldn't dare do anything with the Olympics coming up, but what about afterward, while American forces are still tied up in the Middle East and South Asia? In the event of a "preemptive" anti-satellite strike by the PLA, without adequate satellite coverage, the 7th Fleet and any forces the Japanese, ROK, or Australia committed wouldn't be able to take on the massive military array that is sitting across the strait.

I wonder what is going on in Beijing. I think for the moment, it has bigger fish to fry than Taipei. But what are those fish? Where are all those troops and updated equipment going to go?

The situation is rapidly changing in East Asia. Japan is moving to repeal Article 9 of its constitution; the article that bans use of force as a means to resolve international disputes, while at the same time its defense spending rises consistently (Japan has the world's fifth largest navy). The U.S. is shifting its strategic defense focus away from Japan and Korea and toward Australia, installing submarine bases, missile-detection sites, and troop garrisons in the north of the continent... but yet Australia's trade focus is moving away from the U.S. and Japan toward China. Taiwan is becoming more rabid in its independence gambit.

The question is: what will China do?

2007-06-05T05:19:00.000+08:00

I'm teaching one of my classes Michael Jackson's "Thriller" as a song and dance for Performance Day.

My God it will be awesome.

2007-06-01T22:25:00.000+08:00

I really don't think 2008-2009 is going to be a good year for Taiwan.

We'll see how the elections go.

State of Unreadiness

2007-05-20T18:13:00.000+08:00

Early in the morning, just after dawn on Thursday, I woke up to this:

I could hear the gravelly warble of single engine jet craft flying low overhead.

Oh God, I thought. It's happening.

I put on a pair of pants, grabbed my typhoon/PLA attack "go bag," and walked out my door.

I realized I had no idea what to do. But one thing's for certain, I wasn't going to sit in my top floor apartment while missiles are smashing into the city.

I went down to the front desk, where the two night guys were sitting, still watching TV, with the radio going. I looked at them and motioned overhead.

They said something and shrugged a bit. The beckoned me to go back into the building, but I went out the door to scope out what was happening.

The streets were largely empty. There were police vans in the intersection, cops with M16s and combat gear had set up barricades. One of them saw me and yelled something at me, but I couldn't hear him over the sirens and the sound of the aircraft. He started waving me back in the direction I had come. I thought of the 0.45 in my bag. I decided it wasn't the time to argue with the men with assault rifles just yet.

I went back into my building and looked pleadingly at the front desk guys. One of them speaks a little English, so I asked, "what happens?" He said, "it's OK. Test."

A drill. It turns out it was part of a larger military simulation of an attack.

Later, at work, I asked about it and what the procedure is. All I got from the staff were a lot of shrugs, "I don't know"s, and "just stay home, I guess."

And so it goes. There isn't really any preparedness here. At school, we're not trained to use the fire escape pulleys to get out the window in case of fire, or even the fire extinguishers in the hall. We don't have earthquake drills, or even any plan of what to do in case the PLA does decide to show up guns blazing in the middle of a class. It has become a serious concern of mine after Thursday morning's incident.

Where is the Taiwanese Red Cross? I think it exists. Maybe they need a visit.

Racism in Taiwan

2007-05-10T22:34:00.000+08:00

So, being in the market to buy a scooter, I responded to an ad on TEALIT for a really cheap 125cc Kymco bike like the one I'm renting. We agreed to meet in the morning. I waited where we had agreed to meet, and a few minutes later, lo and behold, I see an obvious foreigner coming down the street on a blue Heroism 125. Something struck me as odd about her, and I realized fully what it was that had just been a strange sensation moments before.

She's black.

I know that doesn't sound that out of place, but you have to understand I have not seen a single black person since leaving the States.

Truth be told, there just aren't that many black people in Asia. And apparently, the hiring practices of most English schools generally discriminate against people of any color other than white (though at least Hess will hire NSTs of the Asian persuasion).

As has been explained to me before, by a Taiwanese person, Taiwanese people are often afraid of black people.

Because usually the only experience they get with people of any color other than yellow is in movies from Hollywood. A fact which has opened my eyes to just how bad the problem is in our movie industry. They idolize the tall, blond white people and are scared of the dark-skinned people they see mostly in violent or criminal roles.

The first tube of toothpaste I bought in Taiwan, from the OK convenience store in front of the hostel in Taipei, seemed humorous to me. Innocuously so, I thought. The man on the front sort of reminded me of Fred Astaire. There is some English on it. It's called "Darlie" toothpaste.

As it turns out, it isn't so harmless. The Chinese on the tube, hēi rén, translates directly to "black man."

And that's not the least of it.

It used to be called "Darkie" toothpaste, not but a few years ago, and the image on the tube was much different.

Even now, Taiwan is the world's biggest producer of racist kitsch for both export and consumption at home.

So I didn't think it was at all funny today, during break, when an eight-year-old student of mine grabbed a black marker and pretended to color my face and said, "Ha ha! Teacher black!"

Better Late than Never

2007-04-30T23:46:00.000+08:00

"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."
- Kahlil Gibran

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.

Anyway. This weekend, I went to Tainan for my friend's birthday. It was a pretty awesome time. Tainan's a funky little city, but a lot of Taiwan feels the same. So far, my experience has been that Taiwanese cities and towns come in three flavors: Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Everywhere Else. You can see pictures, mostly from the club we went to, here, here, here, here, and here, courtesy of my Californian friend Esther (pictured with me).

Taipei has stepped up its little game of playing the line between the US and the PRC. There's more on that coming, I just need to think about it a bit. No obviously increased risk of escalations, given that the Olympics are coming up, and I'm pretty sure Beijing thinks it has more to gain economically by letting Taiwan alone. But I'm not sure how long it'll put up with Taipei repeatedly and publicly spitting in its face, and Taiwan's economy is weakening. At this point, what I think Washington needs to do is find alternate solutions that meet the same needs Taiwan does and allow Beijing to have the island. Beijing could say it was restoring law and order to a rogue territory, and Washington could, given forewarning by Beijing, lead up to the invasion by rejecting its earlier commitment to defend Taiwan given Taipei's reluctance to even try to defend itself. (I refer to the fact that an $18 billion weapons deal offered by the US in 2001 is still tabled in the Legislative Yuan, and lawmakers are talking about decreasing defense spending.)

I've been reading and writing a bit about Cambodia, which has a really interesting history that actually starts before 1972, and soon I will post that to put you all to sleep.

The New Yellow Peril

2007-04-20T22:59:00.000+08:00

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.

Il Juche

2007-04-15T16:40:00.000+08:00

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 of Seoul, the only light in the whole DPRK is a tiny spot representing the center of Pyongyang.

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.

And so North Korea is in the news again and again. It refuses to cooperate despite pressure from the US, Japan, Russia, and China.

What interests me is how China will handle this. China is the only player with the leverage to make the DPRK comply. Beijing has shown less and less patience recently, but just this weekend came to Pyongyang's defense, requesting more time for the North Korean response to a recent deal to shut down a plutonium manufacturing reactor.

Makes you wonder. But now I'm starting to ramble.

Next time: Cambodia, and my growing obsessive fascination with going there.

Bad Blood

2007-04-13T23:30:00.000+08:00

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?

- from "The Mosquito" by William Cullen Bryant

I've been prosecuting my own little "War on Terror" in my apartment. I perform search and destroy missions. I target the enemy's breeding grounds. I've employed conventional, chemical, and radiological (a bug zapper) weapons. I even have a mosquito trap that I've dubbed 'Gitmo.'

The little buggers cloud the skies at night, sometimes in such numbers that I'm pretty sure if they worked together they could easily carry away a stray cat. They don't often fly up to my 11th floor apartment en masse, but they still manage to climb this high in sufficient numbers to be annoying. If I didn't fight them, my walls and ceiling would be coated in their wiry little bodies. I am used to the presence of mosquitoes from living in areas where they lived, but not these species. The species here are Aedes aegypti (also found in Florida), Aedes triseriatus (HUGE buggers), Aedes albopictus, and Aedes japonicus.

It's not the itchy bites that I mind so much. No doubt they're annoying. It's the possibility of coming down with dengue fever.

Southeast Asia's rife with the stuff. And frankly, I'd rather not bother with contracting it. Sure, the health care here is great, but there's something about a week of high fever, joint and bone pain, rashes, and diarrhea on which I'm not terribly keen. Anything that has been nicknamed the "bonecrusher disease" isn't going to be easily treated with pseudoephedrine and a nap.

Add to that happy thought the strains of dengue hemorrhagic fever, and you've got something I just plain want to avoid altogether.

And so I spend a small portion of my time each day dumping out things that have collected water around the area (sometimes I wonder if someone is intentionally collecting moisture for something), cleaning out the trap, and hunting the few rogue mosquitoes in my apartment that have dodged the various devices I've set up.

It's annoying and it takes away the serenity of those initial few minutes in the door after a long day of teaching, but it's better than bleeding out of my tear ducts.

Look out Ladies... He's Legal

2007-04-11T23:31:00.000+08:00

This little card means I am a legal resident of Taiwan. I can now officially own a scooter, officially acquire a scooter license, officially have a Taiwanese bank account, officially have a Taiwanese phone number, and officially work for my employer.

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.

To wit: it is illegal to park your scooter on the sidewalk.

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.

There is No Cure for Birth and Death Save to Enjoy the Interval

2007-04-08T21:30:00.000+08:00

The train lurched in the middle of its deceleration into Chiayi station, a dull thud shaking the hull, and for a moment I assumed we had hit a vehicle or a particularly large animal. Then the lights flickered off. People in the cabin started to come to the realization that the air-conditioning stopped working.

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.

***

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
- Lord Byron

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.

Just Like Jesus, I will Rise from the Grave to Party

2007-04-03T22:59:00.000+08:00

So there's a holiday coming up, known as Tomb Sweeping Day in English, qīng míng jié in Chinese (literally "Clear and Bright Festival," which is a celebration of the beauty of springtime and a time to clean up the family gravesite. This year it's falling on the same weekend as Easter. So no work on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (not that I have class on Saturdays anyway).

I'm going south to Kaohsiung to meet up with some friends and enjoy the beach and perhaps Monkey Mountain.

And how am I going to get there? No trains, buses, or airplanes for the likes of me. I'll be riding down on my trusty steed. I'll scoot down to Tainan first to meet up with my Canadian friend Cathy, then to Kaohsiung City.

It's only 171 kilometers. As long as I keep going south, I'll get there.

There will be many pictures, of course.

A Conversation with the General

2007-04-01T18:35:00.000+08:00

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.

Look at your Nationalists, now, Chiang. Barely enough sway to keep your name on a sign on a street corner.

You're being removed. Supplanted by "Democracy" monuments. They've pulled down half of your statues in Taipei.

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

Most of your people don't even think this is China anymore. They call it 'Taiwan.' They even want to change the name officially. It's as though they've completely forgotten about the war. The raids. The buildups. The threats. They don't even think the Communists are a danger, Chiang. It's only been ten years since the "exercises" stopped. But they've already forgotten.

Look at your army. A drunken gaggle of conscripts spending two weekends a month learning to fly American planes, drive American tanks, shoot American rifles. Now all that stands between the Communists and control of your island is the American 7th fleet.

A group of kids kicked a ball around the field under Chiang's feet. Their parents lazed on the nearby benches, eating, chattering on cell phones. A few students threw a frisbee around.

Your people don't love you anymore.

Your Party is shouted down in the Legislative Yuan, drowned out by the complacent whining of a people grown fat and lazy on American protection. 'Law' means little in your streets. Your cities are run by gangsters and corrupt corporations. Your government passes laws that go unheard and unenforced.

You wanted to be remembered always. Do you recall what you said? "If when I die, I am still a dictator, I will certainly go down into the oblivion of all dictators. If, on the other hand, I succeed in establishing a truly stable foundation for a democratic government, I will live forever in every home in China."

The kids bounced their ball against the statue and laughed.

A Lesson in Forethought

2007-03-28T22:05:00.000+08:00

Let me start by introducing you all to 'KK.' 'KK' is the phonetic transcription method that most, if not all, schools in Taiwan teach. It's used to transcribe the pronunciation of "North American" English words. 'KK' stands for 'Kenyon and Knott', after the two men who devised the system in 1944.

To quote the senior Native Speaking Teacher at my branch, "it's a load of bollocks." And boy howdy, is it ever. I'll get into more of that later. 'KK' uses symbols to represent certain sounds, some of which have little or no differentiation and often don't apply the same way as they are written.

Today, I taught (my favorite) class a few new KK symbols. I was teaching some 'short o' sounds and some 'u' sounds, along with some consonants. They went as follows, color-coded as either vowel or consonant (also you will get to see what I'm talking about):

[a] 'o' as in 'octopus';
[Ɔ] 'o' as in 'orange' (they want us to teach 'ahr INJ', which is certainly not the way I pronounce it, and I'm "North American." It's 'OHR ənj', damnit!)
[Λ] 'u' as in 'umbrella'
[U] 'oo' or 'u' as in 'cook' or 'pull'
[f] 'f' as in 'farm'
[v] 'v' as in 'van'
[k] 'k' or 'c' as in 'Karen' or 'computer'
[t] 't' as in 'Major Tom'

I had these symbols arranged on the board in a sort of pyramid fashion. As part of a drill, I would point to a consonant sound, a vowel sound and another consonant sound, and the students would say them as I pointed. So, for instance, [v][Ɔ][t], would make 'vot.'

I was just sort of going through sounds randomly... [k][U][f] (koof), [t][a][v] (tov), [f][Λ][k] (fu... OH CRAP!) Some of the students were looking at each other (these kids are 11 or 12, they know some English profanity). I glanced at my Chinese Teacher at the back of the class, who hadn't really looked up from going through some homework (whew!). I quickly pointed out some more sounds, wrapped up by having them sound out the symbols as I erased them (paying careful attention to the order in which I did), and then the bell rang for break.

The other day in a different, younger class I was teaching phonics. That day it was 'th' and 'sh.' I had written something like this on the white board:

th------------------------a--------------------------k
---------------------------e--------------------------t
i---------------------------i--------------------------p
sh------------------------o------------------------- b
u

I was doing a similar drill to the one I was just referring to. As you can tell, two of those combinations are "bad English" (a hint: sh ? t). I very nearly pointed to both of them in the midst of the exercise.

And of course, there have been a number of instances of drawings gone awry. You have to consider that one cannot spend a great deal of time sketching something out on the board... it all has to be done with lightning speed. I was teaching 'What is this? This is a _____.' to a class of six-year-olds. One of the drawings was of a rocket, and I don't think you have to imagine very hard where that could go wrong. "What is this?" "This is a _____ ... ... ..." The CT was several shades of red.

Now the little kids don't usually 'get' it, but I do drawings with my older kids, too... I taught some thirteen-year-olds the difference between 'biplane' and 'jet.' That got a lot of laughs. Getting them to laugh is good, and it's my goal, but my CT in that class disapproves. She's pretty stern and strict. She told me that the students think she is "the Hitler."

Of course, there are some funny things one can get from the kids in their homework. This one wasn't from one of my kids, but another NST's kid was using a dictionary, apparently, and came up with the sentence, "The man copulates the cat." We're still not sure what the student meant, because in the picture he was writing sentences about, there was no one anywhere near the cat.

So I have learned a bit about thinking before doing, instead of just thinking before saying.

Now in Multiple Media!

2007-03-24T14:22:00.000+08:00

So I figured out how to record videos with my camera. And I can upload them to Teh Intarnets via YouTube.

Here's the first test run. More stuff from my balcony this "morning" (a slightly "under the weather" noon). The microphone on the camera is more directional than I expected, so the sound's a little weak. It doesn't really capture the noise of the city very well. And I lack proper video editing tools, so it's, well, unedited.

But the sky's really that color... brownish, blueish gray. You can see the haze of humidity/smog in the near distance.

So now this blog is fully prepped. Expect great things in the future.

And the Lord Said, "Let There Be Photos."

2007-03-22T00:22:00.000+08:00

So I finally got myself a camera. I've taken a few photos off my balcony to test it out (albeit at night). I'm not sure how I'm going to do pictures with this blog. For some things, I'll definitely have to embed the pictures in the post, but for a lot of other things I will just link to a Flickr photostream. For this one, I'm just going to throw the pictures in the post.

Anyway, my new camera takes some decent photographs, but unfortunately the ISO is only automatic, so the night photos came out a little on the noisy side. I haven't yet figured out where the menu is for the different scene assists (ie. "night scene").

(click on the thumbs for a bigger pic)

Eating Taiwan, Part One of Many

2007-03-19T23:15:00.000+08:00

Let me introduce you to a friend of mine. Bao. Or bāozi, to be more precise. Baozi is a steamed bun (usually made primarily with rice flour) that is filled with something, usually meat. Almost like a dumpling, but baozi is bread-like in its consistency.

I first encountered my friend in the freezer at Safeway back in Oregon. There was only one kind, cha siu bao (the kind with BBQ pork inside). Then it was in an episode of Firefly, "Our Mrs. Reynolds" (the girl, "Saffron," makes it for Mal).

Now, I can find it everywhere. People sell it from carts on the street. There's always a steam case full of it in 7-11s, Family Marts, and OK convenience stores. And it comes in many varieties. Some are meat. Some have vegetables. Some have both. Some have some kind of sweet yellow thing that comes in cable-like bundles.

For breakfast, I thought I'd try the kind was a slightly different shade than what I'd had before (hey, it's a steamed bun, I can't tell what it is from looking at it, and the lady who was running the cart only spoke one word of English). This one had soup in it.

How one gets soup to stay inside a steamed bun is beyond me. I honestly wanted to give the cart lady a medal. And it was pretty good, despite the fact that I got soup on my jacket.

My adventures, culinarily-speaking, never cease. I've made a meal of pig tripe and liver. I've tried "stinky tofu" (I'll tell you something... it stinks. You can smell it cooking yards away. It stinks like a mixture of feet and ass, and it tastes the same). I've had breakfast sushi, which was made with dried meat flakes and egg. I've had grilled squid on a stick, which is exactly what it sounds like. And, at last, I got my hands on some congee (rice porridge), which I'd been curious about for a while. It's a lot like gruel. Come to think of it, that's exactly what it is.

My more "routine" meals are actually not very exciting, and are usually some kind of meat and vegetables (often boiled) with rice and a little kimchi.

And don't get me started on the Taiwanese interpretation of the sandwich. Cake is not bread. A ham sandwich should not be made with lemon cake. (That will teach me to eat from one of the multitudes of bakeries that dot the streets... I think they only make pastries and sweet bread).

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes

2007-03-13T21:22:00.000+08:00

So I've discovered that I really like little kids. A lot of people do, sure. But I haven't really had much opportunity in the past to interact with them, and now I am with them quite often and they are wonderful.

Sometimes they get bored with stuff like flashcards (I think tonight I will fall asleep saying "Thiiiis iiiiis myyyyy nose. Theeeey aaaare myyyy ears. Theeeey aaaare myyyy legs. Thiiiiis iiiiis myyyy bodyyy.........") but they love playing games. Especially games involving the Sticky Ball (a ball made of colored suction cups they can throw on the whiteboard). And I love playing games with them. During break today I chased my Kid's Club 3 class (six- and seven-year-olds) around pretending to be a monster and I would pick them up and spin them around, until they all dragged me down. And I like that they think it's the funniest thing they've ever seen when I run around with my shoes on my hands.

I think it's the complete disappearance of Ego one can achieve when surrounded by kids. There are no vulnerabilities when you are Teacher. And it is really nice to be adored. I graded some quizzes, and one of the students drew Teacher Brewster on the back, as Batman with flaming swords (how did he know? I haven't worn my Batman t-shirt in class yet). Pure awesome.

My Junior High students I could live without. Their class is about getting them to speak English. It's not that they don't speak any English (some of their English is quite good), it's that they won't do it, and some of them don't care about competition or rewards. With them, I feel I have to bring down the hammer and I can be a rigid, strict sonuvabitch. The problem with that is I have to raise the bar on discipline, and there's a low ceiling.

Anyway. I'm getting an ADSL connection installed on Friday, so I will actually be able to check my email regularly and whatnot. I have a phone number here now, and an address. I don't think I will post it here. Not that some crazy English-speaking Taiwanese person is going to find it and stalk me, but just out of principle.

Now I must drive home. Every time I start going on that scooter, I hear the theme music from Paperboy.

What Did We Learn?

2007-03-09T12:10:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I taught my first class. It was a group of kids who had been through at least nine months of the curriculum, which is, I found out, not that much at all. Their ages ranged from 9 years old to 13. The first hour went poorly... I was pitching way over their heads, and it wasn't clear to me that I didn't need to, no... shouldn't test for understanding, but only that they could repeat. But that's okay, I have three months with those kids. They liked the games I came up with, though. So that worked out well, and I think they actually learned the sentence patterns that way.

Today I will be teaching two upper level classes. That'll be nice.

But that's not the meat of what I wanted to post about. When I got to Taichung, everyone strongly recommended that I get a scooter. So I rented one from a really shady guy who also wanted me to buy a computer, rent an apartment he was letting, and meet his daughter.

For those of you unfamiliar with what I mean, think of a Vespa. It's basically a chair on a bicycle with a motor. You sit on it with your feet parallel to the ground. Now, something I wasn't aware of, is scooters come in different sizes, complemented by smaller and larger engine displacements. The smallest is a 50cc displacement, all the way up to 150cc. Not a lot, when you consider that some motorcycle displacements are 500cc+. Anyway, I rented a 125cc scooter. Nice and big, a two-seater, and it can get moving from a stop really quickly, which is terribly important to be able to do, since you have to get in front of cars as soon as possible.

Traffic here operates on different principles. Sure, if an intersection has a traffic light, red means stop and green means go. But when traffic is light, these are optional. Some intersections don't have stop lights or signs. Those, you approach carefully and honk as you go through, while weaving through the deadlocked cars and attempting not to approach anyone head on. Scooters drive on the far right hand side of the road, which involves a lot of passing on the left and dodging taxis, trucks, other scooters, grandmas, and various detritus. Sure, there are lanes, but those are optional as well.

You really have to see it to believe it. My first time on a scooter (riding on the back of my Head Chinese Teacher's scooter), I was fairly certain that my final hour was at hand. Add to that, I was only wearing a "pot" helmet my HCT had given me. Now I have a full face motorcycle helmet, and I'm pretty good at getting around. That is, until it comes to navigation.

I have a map of Taichung, but it's all in Mandarin. That's a problem. Some of the Chinese staff were kind enough to draw a basic map of the area around my branch and where I live in romanized letters. This is great, except it's a roll of the dice if the street signs a particular road (or even a particular intersection on a major thruway) have a romanized spelling at the bottom. Add to that that some are Pinyin romanization, some Wade-Giles, and some are just made up.

So last night I got lost on my way home. Very lost. So lost that I was outside Taichung.

As I was driving around on an access road near a freeway, hitting 60-70 kph (about 40mph... the scooter's top speed is about 80mph, but no way would I try that out), I looked to my right and saw nothing but rice paddies. I could see a city skyline through the haze to my left whenever I whizzed by an underpass, but I couldn't find any way to get there. So I ended up going through a small town in one of the counties, and I finally gave up and turned around when I got to an aboriginal village. I couldn't see anything interesting, since it was dark, and by that point it was very late. So I managed to finally find another major causeway with a sign that pointed in the general direction of the city and I recognized the second character as "chung" or "jong" (depending on how you spell it)... so I guessed it was Taichung. I got back to the city, and I found the art museum via signs, and found my way back to my apartment from there.

All in all, I spent about four hours on the scooter last night. And the gas I used for all that distance ran me roughly US$0.50. Scooters are great.

So I learned something valuable last night. Don't get lost. It sucks.

Day Fourteen

2007-03-05T18:39:00.000+08:00

I have been incredibly busy over the last two weeks. Extremely long days of training followed by long nights of socializing with the other trainees. But now I am in Taichung, I arrived here after a two-and-a-half hour bus ride from Taipei this morning. Let me tell you, the Taiwanese know how to travel. The bus was a double decker, luggage in the bottom and people up top. And the seats were La-Z-Boy chairs with motorized backs and leg rests. With a personal TV. Granted, I spent most of the ride sleeping and looking out at my first glimpse of Taiwan outside the "big city."

Today I looked at apartments, and it looks like I might live in a studio for roughly half what I was paying in the States. I don't know, I'm going later to look at a three-bedroom place with two occupants looking for a third.

Right now, though, I'm sitting in the teacher's office at my school. The kids are great, they're very shy but if you wave and say hello they brighten and wave back.

I teach my first class on Thursday, until then I will observe a few classes.

I'll post more later when I'm moved in. In the past month, I've slept in four different beds in two different cities 6000 miles apart, and tonight I will be sleeping in a different bed in a different city, which still won't be my own.

Day One

2007-02-22T12:06:00.000+08:00

"At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards."

- Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

Six years ago, I would hardly have imagined myself on a plane to Taipei. East Asia wasn't even in my range of perspective, much less a destination for living. But I have always wanted to travel, from a very early age I felt a wanderlust that over the years has taken many forms.

My aims are part of a larger oscillation between two poles of existence, between Realist international security management and humanitarian impulses; in a very simplistic sense between cold pragmatism and idealism. In angrier, adolescent times I fancied being a mercenary-for-hire or international hit man. Then a diplomat in the Foreign Service. Then an officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Then as a former Peace Corps volunteer working for some NGO in Africa. Then an international salaryman. Then an analyst with the CIA or DIA... essentially covering a fairly broad range of professions, but they all fall into the same mold. I am a wanderer by nature. I've chosen East Asia because, as the saying goes, that's where the action is. Or will be very soon.

***

I arrived into Taoyun airport in Taipei closer to midnight than I would have liked, nearly an hour late. Taiwan Customs was even breezier than Germany. Luckily, the driver that the school had arranged for me had waited.

I walked out into Taiwanese air for the first time amid the din of a busy airport pickup lane. The air smelled of exhaust, an odor that as I found later, permeates the whole city. The driver and I took off in his van onto the freeway, and I got my first glimpse of what expats had been talking about: Taiwanese traffic. Cars weaved into and out of lanes as though they were driving around a track, honking madly and nearly hitting every other car. I would later discover that pedestrian traffic is exactly the same.

I arrived at the hostel where I'm staying after check-in hours, but the guy who runs the place had stayed up to make sure I got there okay (the guy's reputation as a very kind man preceded him, and it's why I booked a room there). After putting my bags in my bed closet, I ventured down to the OK corner store to get something to drink. I found my first real communication challenge, when I realized that I had no idea how much the soy milk I put on the counter cost, and the guy behind the counter didn't speak English, and there was no register screen facing me. So I gave him an NT$100 bill, and he gave me NT$82 back. So a bottle of soy milk was NT$18, or roughly US$0.50. Not bad for convenience store prices.

The next day, my first full day in Taiwan, I'd find out just how cheap food is here. I ate a very nice lunch, a rice bowl with some various meat and vegetables, a side plate of edamame, and a glass of tea for NT$85, or about US$2 and some change.

I wandered around Taipei on foot all day, just watching. In the middle of the day, I met a Swedish guy (originally from Chile), who is here studying at the university. I found the Residence of the President, a few parks, and the Taipei National Museum.

***

Unfortunately, my hour at this cyber cafe computer is about up. While it's only US$1 an hour, I have to check out of my hostel and into the accommodations provided by the school. I'll post again in a few days.

mounting excitement is difficult to handle when faced with excessive free time

2007-02-07T09:17:00.000+08:00

Well, I lied, I'm posting again before I leave.

I just received word that I have been assigned to a school in downtown Taichung. Pretty good news, it was my second choice (my first was Kaohsiung, third being Taipei). Taichung is Taiwan's third-largest city, at a population of about 1.1 million (roughly the population of San Antonio, Texas). For reference, as of 2000 Boston had a population of about 600,000, Portland had 520,000, Tampa had 300,000, and N.Y.C. had about 8 million. (note that none of these figures include the cities' surrounding "metro" areas.) The city is quite dense, too, with 6,200 people per square kilometer (Tampa and Boston measure about 1,000 people per square kilometer, Portland measures at 1,500.) These figures are to indicate that my new home will be the most metropolitan area I have lived as of yet.

Taichung is located on the west coast of the island, just about smack dab in the middle latitudinally, as you can see on the overly colorful map to the right (it's the city in the blue county). The good news is that it's protected from typhoons by the mountains to the east and the hills to the north, and it has milder weather than most of the rest of the island. Also it's within easy reach of Taipei, without actually having to live there, and it's a quick bus ride to national parks and Sun Moon Lake. The bad news is it's more polluted than the southern area, and it's target #2 for the PLA.

The city is home to one of the country's oldest foreign communities, which is always excellent. No lack of Western bars and restaurants for when the inevitable homesickness hits. Actually, Taichung reputedly has more cafes, restaurants, and bars per person than anywhere else in Taiwan. That will be excellent for when the staff at a particular place gets tired of my mad signing, hand-waving, and notebook pictionary while trying to order the chicken and noodle soup.

Housing is also much cheaper than Taipei or Kaohsiung, and more English-friendly to boot. The real downside to life in Taichung as opposed to Kaohsiung is that the public transit system isn't as well developed. There's only a bus (no subway or light rail), and the bus system in some parts of town is unreliable to the point of being useless. Looks like I might have to get a scooter sooner rather than later. Because if traffic and the driving situation is even close to what's reported, there's no way I'm riding a bicycle in the city; I love having all my limbs too much for that.

Soon I will be in Taiwan and wondering where all the English signage went.

Kulturschlag

2007-02-05T05:47:00.000+08:00

It's just a matter of a few weeks now before I'm in Taipei. I'm arriving a few days before my training starts, and I plan on wandering around the city, smiling at everyone as they stare at the big white guy and learning very quickly how to dumb play the phrase, "how many of these crazy bills do you want for some of that food?" Because let's face it, I'm not going to remember, "Nî hăo. Wŏ yào yí fèn zhá jiàng miàn. Yí gòng duō shăo qián?" Hell, I can't even pronounce most of that. (a note on pronunciation: in Mandarin, the tone of each syllable can change the literal meaning of the word. Not like in English, where the tone can indicate contextual meaning... the difference in tone can indicate the difference between "cat" and "to file one's taxes." I'm looking through my Mandarin phrasebook and I foresee a good deal of miscommunication. "I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched. My hovercraft is full of eels!")

In any case, here's some notes on Chinese/Taiwanese culture. Since I have yet to actually see or experience any of these things, this is all second-hand from various texts I've encountered over the years:

***

The Taiwanese, the Western expat community claims, have better preserved traditional Chinese culture than the mainland. Mainland China has embraced a global culture very quickly and without reservation, and Mao did a pretty good job of wiping out a lot of traditions, social norms, and history by executing intellectuals, burning art, suppressing religions, forcing urbanization on a massive scale, and accidentally starving millions of peasants to death. Perhaps he may have been too future-oriented.

The KMT, on the other hand, latched onto Chinese culture with a death grip, because tradition and "the old days" were part of the ROC's legitimating claim. The KMT put a lot of money into cultural preservation, and had actually brought with them a sizable portion of the Chinese collection of artifacts and art from past dynasties.

But where to begin? I'm no anthropologist, though my academic training borrowed quite a bit from the discipline, so my definition of what actually constitutes culture is a little basic and textbook-y.

I'm going to start with religion and philosophy. I lump the two together because it's very difficult to talk about one and not the other. Even in the West they were inextricably linked (and in some cases, the same thing) until that whole "Reformation/Scientific Revolution/Enlightenment" fiasco. The religions that exist in China are a mix of Chinese folk religion (a set of localized polytheistic beliefs, geomancy, and ancestor worship) and Taoism. Confucianism is a more rational/intellectual pursuit, and Buddhism... well, Buddhism's hard to define. When I say 'mix', I mean it. None of these sets are mutually exclusive, and many Chinese ascribe to multiple beliefs. Islam exists in quantity on the mainland, but not so much in Taiwan. Christianity is present but the numbers are unknown due to serious government oppression (there's a lot of interesting background on this... a lot of Chinese equate Christianity with the English/American domination/opium trade.)

Chinese religion is difficult to relate to from a Western/Judeo-Christian perspective. There's generally a conception of an afterlife, a "Heaven" that is an omnipotent force, which is worshipped with a variety of shrines and rituals. Taoism is difficult to explain, and to be honest I don't quite understand it, having never read the Tao Te Ching. I did, however, read the Tao of Pooh, which is actually a pretty excellent way of explaining the basics to us Western folk through the musings of a familiar bear. Taoism is both a religion and a philosophy (Taojiao and Taojia), focusing on "the Way," which is, as far as I understand it, achieving a balance between all things (light and dark, good and evil... the yin and yang). Honestly that's as far as I've gotten.

Buddhism is a can of worms I don't even want to touch. It's not of Chinese origin, and it appears to be mostly an adaptation of Buddhist principles and practice to traditional folk religions (though this is not a major change; Buddhism is a Hindu heresy, mind you).

So now I've gotten off track, or rather I've spent too much time on religion. Not to worry, the rest of this entry is a rushed, cursory treatment!

For now, I'm going to ignore art, until I've had some time to experience it and read more about its history. Needless to say, on anything but the most basic, reductionist level, art in Asia is very different from that of the West, conceptually-speaking.

Modern clothing in China, like most of the rest of the world, is Western. Brand names are important, like DKNY, Gucci, etc. Also popular are the weird t-shirts with random English, like one sees in Japan (pictured to the right).

Traditional clothing, though, varies by region, and in Taiwan it carries influences from the Japanese. I'll have more on that when I actually go to Taiwan, eh?

Actually, come to think of it, things like art and cuisine and day-to-day life and whatnot would be best left to experiential reports, rather than this pseudoacademic nonsense.

***

I think that's as far as I'm going to go with this "introduction to Taiwan" business. Though it has, at the very least, offered a diversion from packing and paperwork and all the nonsense involved with moving across the globe.

The next entry will likely be after my arrival in Taipei.

Au Sujet du Historie et de la Nature de la République de la Chine

2007-02-02T11:44:00.000+08:00

Part the second of the introduction to Taiwan. It might be drier than gefilte fish, but it certainly tastes better:

***

The prehistory of Taiwan is generally considered to be anything before the 17th Century, CE. Previous to the formal entrance of the Han Chinese under the Qing Dynasty, tribes of peoples now referred to as Taiwanese aborigines inhabited the island. While there were quite a few tribes, there were two main divisions in their societal makeup, between the plains tribes and the mountain tribes. The plains peoples lived in defensively-structured villages (proximal construction and high bamboo walls) and farmed, while the mountain peoples were of the infamous "headhunter" stripe, with all the accompanying raiding parties, head shrinking, and jungle war paint that the term conjures.

Now, the Han Chinese started to really settle in the middle of the 1600s--additionally the Dutch maintained a colony in the southern end of the island--and of course with settlement of land already inhabited by indigenous peoples came conflict. With conflict came war. One doesn't have to be an historian to guess who won.

And so the Han came to rule Taiwan, and spent the better part of the next two centuries "acculturating" the aborigines to Han customs. However, the Han didn't bother with assimilating the mountain tribes; that assignment was left to the Japanese.

Conquest by the Japanese Empire needs no explanation. They came in the late 19th Century with organization and equipment unseen in those parts, and took Taiwan part and parcel with the rest of the South Pacific. The Chinese on the island were treated as second class worker bee citizens, and the Japanese Empire plundered the island for its resources and exported Taiwanese women as "comfort women" for the Imperial Army. But the "acculturation" of the aborigines was even more brutal, and mostly consisted of a policy of "speak and act like you're Japanese or we'll kill your family. Also, you can only live on these particular plots of land." (eerily familiar, yes?)

For some reason the Japanese Empire dissipated in 1945, and control over Taiwan was given to the newly-created Republic of China (representing all of China, led by the big cheese himself, Chiang Kai Shek). Fifty years in a flash: Communist revolution, Mao, Chiang and the KMT do their "screw this, we're making our own country" bit, the Cold War, "two Chinas" then "one China," ... democracy formally proclaimed in 2000 with the election of the ROC's first elected president, Chen Shui-bian.

I was, of course, glossing over a tad bit of information. Taiwan developed economically at a fantastic rate in the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a premier economic power in the East. Democratization was not a sudden leap, but came as a process started by Chiang's son in the late 1980s, and truly took root with the formation of a second political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

As it stands now, Taiwan is an economic power in Asia only behind the true giants, Japan, China, and India. The vast majority of the Taiwanese, ethnically speaking, are Han--what we Westerners parochially refer to as "Chinese"--but in the eyes of the Taiwanese that group is subdivided into "Taiwanese"--those descended from the original Han settlers--and "mainlanders"--anyone who came to Taiwan after the Japanese occupation. The aborigines make up about two percent of the population. The aborigines suffer from a situation much like the indigenous peoples on my own home continent; under- or unfunded schools, rampant social and substance-related problems, and disproportionately high unemployment.

Politically, the Taiwanese are currently divided into two main groups: those who favor unification with the mainland, and those who don't--a situation with many similarities to the climate in South Korea. People in favor of unification generally fall into the "peaceful rapprochement with Beijing and slow absorption into the PRC" slot, but there are still some "we own the whole damn mainland and Mongolia, too, why not" types around. The other side of the fence favors a wholly independent ROC, complete with UN membership and invitations to embassy parties. These are the types who are generally the most pro-America, since most of their guns, tanks, planes, and ships are printed with "made in the USA." They are also the most threatening to Beijing, and perhaps to the United States, but as the saying goes, only time will tell.

***

Stay tuned for a whirlwind tour of Chinese culture.

Ground Zero

2007-01-30T14:09:00.000+08:00

Ah, to start a weblog. The eternal question is always, 'where to begin?'

Let's start traditionally, with an explanation of what this blog is going to be about. As the title suggests, I live in Taiwan. Or rather, I will live in Taiwan very soon. In about three weeks. This blog will be a catalogue of sorts; a collection of stories--funny and not so funny--and commentary on life as an expatriate American boy teaching English six thousand miles from home.

Since I'm not in Taiwan yet, let's have ourselves a little geography lesson. Following this lesson will be a few historical notes and some cultural information. There will be a short quiz afterward, and yes, penmanship counts.

***

To your left you will see a crude map. Taiwan, or more properly the Republic of China, is that teensy highlighted island there, dwarfed by the People's Republic of China on the mainland. It's 13,887 square miles (for reference: that's about 1/4 the size of Florida, and about twice the size of Massachusetts), and exists as a continuation of the island series that starts with Japan and continues south through the Philippines. Which means it's on a major fault.

The climate is subtropical, with temperatures reaching the mid to high 90s (Fahrenheit) during the summers and dipping to the 60s in the winter months. Rainfall is not severe, but the island is subject to typhoons (ie. Pacific hurricanes/tropical storms) in the summer.

Now, it's important to note that the Republic of China (ROC) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are not the same country, but they aren't exactly separate. You see, the island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa) has been controlled by a number of other countries (The Netherlands, for instance). As of the outbreak of World War II it was under the control of the Japanese Empire--as part of Japan's larger "let's rape the continent" plan--but the dissolution of said empire in 1945 left a power void, and Taiwan and its surrounding smaller islands were claimed by the Chinese government. Swing up four years, Mao cuts the legs out from under the Chinese government (led by Chiang Kai Shek and his Kuomintang party (pronounced goo-oh MIN dong). Chiang and the KMT gang flee to Taiwan, and set up a provisional government there. Mao neglects to pursue him, for reasons that escape me now.

So then there were "two Chinas." Which became a major Cold War diplomatic issue for much of the duration of the East v. West ideological throwdown. The US backed Chiang Kai Shek for nearly thirty years, keeping him and his dictatorial government in the United Nations and keeping the People's Republic out. The US additionally supplied the KMT with weapons, training, serious funds, and may have backed guerrilla raids on the mainland.

The US eventually realized the reality of the situation: that the KMT really was no longer the governing body on the mainland. However, the PRC wouldn't allow the international recognition of Taiwan as its own country. The US, faced with the fact that the Communist Party was in China to stay, relented and switched recognition in a process that started with Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1971, and ended with formal recognition in 1979--along with Beijing's entrance into the UN and Taipei's departure. (Note that the rest of the world had recognized Beijing decades before.)

The situation then was much as it is now. Taiwan is claimed by Beijing as part of the PRC, but it is autonomous. The ROC still exists as a government, it's now a democracy, but it does not have de jure independence from Beijing. There are only twenty-four countries with official diplomatic relations (to include preeminent states such as Kiribati, Panama, and Burkina Faso). On top of that, there is a standing threat from Beijing that if the ROC ever formally declares its independence, or resists reunification indefinitely, the People's Liberation Army will essentially level the island. The US is diplomatically pledged to a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue and any transgression by the PLA will be met with American force, and the US continues to sell arms to the ROC despite its conciliatory attitude toward Beijing's "peaceful rise" strategic stance. It would seem a little hypocritical, if not for an agreement between Washington and Beijing in 1982 that essentially follows the axiom "business is business." It is still the biggest stumbling block in US-PRC relations, and the "Taiwan question" will become tremendously important in the coming years.

The relationship between Taipei and Beijing--and between ROC citizens and those of the mainland--is more complex, and, as the saying goes, that's a story for another time.

***

Stay tuned for a--hopefully--brief internal history of Taiwan and some notes about its culture.