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.”
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