Rainy Sunday Morning Oatmeal Eating, Even in Taipei...

You'll notice Samuel Read of Linkou is eating out of a dog bowl. Yes, we did purchase dog bowls at IKEA... they were cheaper aight?

Water Parks, Respect, That Kind of Thing

I spent the last two weekends at a water park. The first time I tagged along with some of Kiah’s Taiwanese friends and on this past Sunday I went with Kiah’s best foreigner friends and Max to celebrate her 24th Birthday. The second time we met Samuel Read of Linkou and his teacher friends at the park. I enjoyed myself both days and don’t regret spending time reverting back to childhood rather than fumbling through museum brochures of awkward English in translation or oo-ing and ah-ing one of the famous temples in Taipei. I plan to do these things, of course, but the beauty of actually living somewhere (rather than vacationing) is that you have the liberty of listening to yourself and finding out what it is you truly want to do with a given day rather than obliging the tourist books. I’d like to add, however, that I would happily adopt such a sense of obligation if anyone were to visit me (let’s be honest – sometimes that’s the only way to bite the bullet).

The park is quite far from the center of the city. Both times we took the MRT up north to one of the final stops on the red line and hopped on a bus for another thirty minutes to the park. While this trip isn’t the most comfortable (particularly if you’ve had a few too many drinks the night before) it only costs about $1.50 USD and the park itself costs around 550NT (about $15) so all in all it’s a pretty cheap day. We brought beer from outside the park without a problem and even the food inside is pretty affordable (albeit as nauseating as any American park food). Crazy, right? No one was frisked, scammed, scolded… nada.

In fact, since being here I’ve both knowingly and unknowingly broken laws and social codes, but only once have I been yelled at or spoken to in anything but a level speaking voice. This occurred outside my house at a busy intersection. I safely crossed one street, with the help of the person directing traffic, but I had more difficulty crossing the next street. Without a traffic light or cross-walk, I was that crazy squirrel crossing the road – you know the one that rushes out into the street and decides against it, for it, against it, for it – while the driver reacts with a foot to the pedal. His neck snaps around while he curses the small-brained animal’s stupidity and wonders why the hell he cares about the damn thing anyway. To recap – Sophie = small-brained animal, Taiwanese drivers = cursors of small-brained animals. Except that they don’t curse. This is no New York or Rome - Taiwanese people don’t even roll their eyes. Foreigners tell me that Taiwanese people are emotional (of course), but that “shame” culture (as opposed to “guilt” culture) so effectively commands their public “face” this emotion surfaces in passive aggression and other harnessed kinds of behavior. I’m wary of such behavior, but I’m also pretty sure that my unfamiliarity with Taiwanese culture and language makes it pretty near impossible for me to pick up on these subtle expressions of anger or dislike. In fact, from my position in this particular cultural context ignorance is a kind of convenience. (But I suppose people find ignorance a convenience in other cultural contexts too, when it upholds their own comfortable positionality.) The director of traffic, however (most likely out of concern for my safety), started screaming at me in Chinese, waving his hand in the air and grabbing at his hair as though something horrible were happening. In other words, he behaved like someone from home who has had it with crazy squirrels.


An angry director of traffic is nothing out of the ordinary, right? In a city of millions of people, you’re bound to get yelled at, called after, or cursed… right? Nope. I’m beginning to wonder how I will cope differently with these situations when I return to the States. Some call New York City de-sensitizing. If that’s true, Taipei is most definitely sensitizing. I will add here that the director of traffic usually working at that intersection in the morning always gives me a big smile and hello. She stops traffic that inconveniences me as soon as she catches sight of me, and sometimes I don’t even have to stop at the cross-walk. I feel a little like a rockstar (having just left my air-conditioned apartment I’m always least smelly and disheveled at this time of the day) and a lot like a jerk witnessing Xiamen’s daily halt for the foreign white girl and being that foreign white girl. The question is --what can/should I do about it? I know that guilt, the option I seem to milk in this blog, doesn’t get me anywhere. At the same time, I have so little understanding of all the implications of this particular scene I don’t know where else to begin and I desperately want to begin somewhere…

It is interesting to think about how someone moving to the States with equally little knowledge of American culture or the English language as I have of Taiwanese culture and the Chinese language might be differently received by most American people… Everyday in Taipei people treat me kindly and fairly. I feel safe and respected here. Some people I meet ask my forgiveness for not speaking my language… How is my experience coming to Taiwan to work different from the experience of so many people who move to the U.S. to fulfill some “need” (I’m told I fulfill a “need” for Native English speakers in the job market in Taiwan) in the U.S. job market? As someone with an economically profitable skill to share (proficiency in English) I get a well-paying job and I’m able to live quite comfortably in Taipei working as a teacher for roughly 30 hours a week. When people with less economically profitable skills move to the U.S to fulfill some “need” in the job market, they’re probably working a shit job for twice (if not three times) as many hours a week, for shit pay. I understand that this is “the way the world works” and I’m familiar with (and critical of) the nuances of the arguments that support neoclassical economics. I’ve certainly benefited from the “way the world works” and I’m riding out the wave sitting here “blogging” and trying to write a book in all the spare time I have, so I understand that this voice rings with hypocrisy. Still though... let’s recap: a person without work comes to the U.S. out of necessity, takes a shit job (many of which U.S. citizens themselves won’t do) for shit hours for shit pay. And then, on top of all that, a person gets treated like shit. Whatever a person’s complicated relationship to capitalism is, nothing justifies the disrespect so many people experience for speaking the language they grew up speaking, practicing their cultural traditions, remaining wary of assimilation and those who champion nationalism over humanism (not to mention SO much more). This is a comparison riddled with all kinds of unexplored complexities, but still, it infuriates and saddens me. And one more thing – Taiwan provides me (a non-citizen) health care, not to mention the rest of the people living, loving, working, staying healthy and getting sick on this island.

I grew up thinking the world was my oyster. I listened to Joni Mitchel songs about “bought me a ticket, hopped on a plane to Spain, went to a party down a red dirt road.” Just across 86 in New York, NY “there was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges too. And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses. Oh, won’t you stay, we’ll put on the day and talk in present tenses…” Growing up I hoped I would turn into a well-rounded and well-traveled pearl. A present tense kind of girl. So here I am living in Taipei, and I like to think it means I internalized a little bit of Joni’s bravery mixed with those endearing flashes of vulnerability (I certainly adopted the aesthetic of her Chelsea morning). I’ve picked up other things too, though, that deprive a pearl’s life of some Joni Mitchel romance -- the world’s small if you can afford a plane ticket and boarders are more or less easy to cross depending on where your passport’s from. And when it’s all said and done the truth is that Joni and I are a couple of lucky women. And if you’ve got a beer or two in your belly and one in your hand and you’re floating down a lazy river with new friends on an inner-tube looking up through palm trees at a sky full of cotton and a temple with a red roof tucked into a blue mountain, say it out loud again and again – “I am one lucky young woman.”

David Stone

The littlest boy in the Giraffe Class has the biggest name. The story goes that school administrators informed D.S.'s parents that there was already a David in the class, but they were adamant -- it had to be David. I'm not sure if the characters in his Chinese name translate to "stone" but one of them has an open and rounded sort of rectangle in it and that's how I distinguish his booklets and worksheets from the other David's. Also, his fine-motor skills are atrocious and he has a bad habit of rolling up his paperback books while I'm talking or while he's supposed to be improving his fine-motor skills by writing in them. Basically, the grossest book, written assignment, or piece of artwork always belongs to David Stone. Today he drew several dashes and a single circle inside a box. The assignment was to draw a cow and write, COW inside the box. "Teacher Sophie, I drew THREE cows," he interrupted, chuckling maliciously. He has a weepy eye and a perpetual tear dangling from the corner of it. Is it mean to say he has a gleam in his eye?

So, it's kind of amusing to hear about a four-year-old Taiwanese kid with the English name David Stone but even more hilarious are the names Donut, Frentzen, the brother and sister Seven and Eleven. A boy showed up to my co-worker’s class with the name Team. She named a kid Oscar the other day, which is only strange because it feels so significant to name a person. WeeWee's absence from school these past few weeks concerns my friend Teacher Max, of course, but as a result he has avoided saying aloud, with a straight face, - "Is WeeWee here?" To announce their attendance, and to practice speaking in full sentences, the KOJEN School asks students to stand and say, in WeeWee's case - "I am WeeWee. I am here. I am a girl." Whereas in the States we often call a penis a wee-wee, in Taiwan they sometimes call children WeeWee and a penis a "little bird." I know this because David Stone grabbed my hand after using the bathroom the other day and when I asked him if he washed his hands he replied, "No, but I didn't even touch my little bird."

David Stone wears bright yellow sneakers and T-shirts with little pieces of rice stuck to them. Sometimes he wears socks picturing Thomas (the engine that could...) but they fall down his skinny little legs and collect at his ankles. He often pulls them up to show people "Thomasss..." which he says a bit like a radio announcer, as though Thomas were super cool. He's less chatty about his Minnie Mouse sleeping bag.

Though he brags about toys and socks, David Stone is the least competitive kid in the class. While most kids fight for the front of the line, David Stone dances in the back of the classroom waiting for the middle to fill-up, occasionally hitting himself in the head with his own out-of-control arms. During “game time” he drops to the floor and spins around on his belly or sneaks away to the bathroom. His best friend, Doris, is in another classroom now and he misses her. In the bathroom they catch-up.

David Stone is frequently in the bathroom, not only to avoid games but also because he poops his body weight daily. In the classroom, if I ask for a volunteer and David Stone raises his hand he probably has no intention of offering an answer. He probably just wants to go poop. I don't understand why the people at KOJEN ask the children to say, "Teacher, I'm busy," to inform us that they have to go poop or to clarify that they are indeed pooping (just in case there's some confusion about why they're making squishy faces on the toilet). It is cute, though, to hear them say this.

It is less cute to hear them say (or scream, more likely) - "Teacher! I'm not busy any more!" I've found that sometimes I'm just too busy to watch a little boy poop, in which case I return to my charge and leave the door to the classroom open while I read a story to fourteen other children, keeping one ear open for that strange declaration. If I happen to miss it, a kid from another classroom is likely come rushing into mine, out of breath as if carrying extremely important news - "David Stone needs you to wipe his bum bum!" in which case, I put the book down and get to business in the bathroom with a moist wipe.

One class project involved a self-portrait and an answer to the question, "Why are you special?" David Stone wouldn't give his teacher an answer to the question but he did ask to go to the bathroom. This request inspired me to ask a question I knew would elicit an answer, "David Stone, how many times a day do you poop?" Response? - "Five times." And so, on the display wall beneath the most ridiculous self-portrait, in the least legible handwriting, David Stone writes "I am special because I poop five times a day."

Tomorrow David Stone will bring me a chocolate cookie. He says this most days.

Sam Read in Taiwan

Nesting

It's hard to top something as smart as Max's recent (and only) post, but I'm inspired by the challenge.

Nah, really I'm inspired by the blog of an insightful fellow classmate with "time on her hands" (which, for the class of 2009, is code for unemployed), nudges from my family, my good friend Anna Stockwell's picturesque and tasty little posts, and a blog called "Hungry Girl in Taipei." The kind author of this blog bops around the city reviewing food in English, categorizing by type of food, and taking pictures of the dishes and menus. I'm excited to eat all kinds of food in this big skinny city, but I'm skeptical. Could "Mexican" really mean Mexican? So far many things I've had to eat taste faintly of "tea eggs." Tea eggs are hard boiled eggs that float and brown in bubbling cauldrons of tea and spices in Seven-Elevens (I should explain that there are about as many Seven-Elevens here as there are Starbucks in Manhattan). Sometimes these eggs appear whole in your noodle soups or covertly in your chicken sandwiches from Burger King. There are many other tastes of Taiwan that I enjoy more than this tea-egg taste. Still though, I'd rather find these delicious tastes in dumplings than burritos. Tonight it's a banana and Skippy peanut-butter. I eat as many bananas here as I did in the States, and that's pretty much the only thing Max and I are sure to have in stock in our little kitchen. That and coffee. Max and Kiah have gone off on a scooter ride to a night market for some "real" food, but they underappreciate the power of peanut butter if you ask me.

These little things - peanut butter, coffee, non-florescent lighting - help us to make a home here. We moved into our apartment about a week ago and since then every time Max and I return here after work, or play, or whatever else, we feel so safe and good. I hung up pictures in the sliding glass doors of the book shelves and wrapped up our mattress in a tapestry until we finally found sheets just two days ago. There is a writing desk in our apartment, wood floors and cabinets, a single burner in the closet-sized kitchen - the home of our massive tea kettle, a sliding glass window that separates the bedroom from the living room, and a big window overlooking a wide highway and Xin-Tien River and Chung-Cheng Park. I'm so grateful I get to see a ribbon of blue and a stripe of green through the window. We also have roof-top access. When Sam came to visit last week we took cheap and delicious Japanese beer up to the rooftop and oggled the city lights. Tiapei 101, the second tallest building in the world, stands like a skinny wedding cake in the distance. My plan is to write up top. We have a fold-up table and chairs. Plants would be nice, too.

We moved into a pretty empty place last Tuesday and on Thursday we made a big trip to IKEA to fill it as best we could. We bought a giant monster poster to go with the couch that looks like a spaceship, a lantern floor lamp, a desk lamp with a yellow shade, and lots of pillows, among other things. We looked like fools walking out of IKEA, dripping with bags and awkwardly balancing boxes. Of course, it was pouring rain outside. Somehow we fit all of our crap into a cab and managed to say the name of our street correctly for the cab driver. I was sort of looking forward to the trip home. Sitting on top of and among our new home things, I looked out the windows at the cars and buildings.

"Toyota. IBM." said the cab driver.

Max, who sat up front, said, "Apple. Apple computer," and I think we both knew then that it would be a long ride.

Rather than keeping his eyes on the road, the cab driver decided to teach us the Chinese words for "light on/ light off." He turned the overhead light on and off repeatedly, reciting these words. Max amused him until the traffic light turned green and the honking began. The rest of the twenty minute cab drive went this way - "Starbucks. You know?" "Toshiba?" And my favorite phrase of the day - "Oh my gah! Oh my gah! So many cars! You see? So many cars!" And as he moved carelessly between lanes and liberally interpreted traffic lights I wanted to say, "YES! Do you?" One street near our home is full of flashing half-circle lights above doorways that mark beetle-nut stands. These lights appear all over the city. At one point on Tong-Zhan he came to a complete stop - "Look! So beautiful! The lights! Look!" And Max and I put our foreheads to the windows as he requested, expecting to see something out of the ordinary when we peered up, but he just wanted us to look at one of those little neon beetle-nut signs.

"So beautiful. Taipei so beautiful."

The bad news is that I've felt a little bit off these past few days, finally overwhelmed by the hugeness and unfamiliarity of this place. There is way more good news than bad though. I have a dependable source of hugs, even if I can't find bed sheets. With the help of Max and IKEA... and bananas and peanut butter and the promise of writing and a little Tracy Chapman, a little apartment on Xiamen Loo becomes a home. I can breathe easy when I close the door and turn on the little yellow light on my writing desk. And as far as I can tell so far, that cab driver's right - "Taipei so beautiful," and I can see the lights through the apartment window.

Time for a post from Max!

I like it here.