Since I've been such a terrible e-mailer, I thought it couldn't be much worse to send a form letter. But it came out to about five pages, and I wondered who'd want that in their inbox, so I guess you can check it out if you want to. If you desperately want the Word file, let me know. Here goes:
Apologies for starting at the very beginning to anyone who’s heard it all before, but the beginning is the flight I guess. 14 and a half hours is quite a long one, especially without having had much sleep the two weeks prior. Who’d have thought I could have accumulated that much stuff in four years in a house? Obviously my mother, but she saw the state of my room when I was growing up. Anyway, I can report that China Airlines is not nearly as bad as everyone had feared it would be, but they don’t let you choose your seat until you check in, so it’s like trans-Pacific Southwest Airlines—not the greatest idea. But they did give me all the hot noodle pots I wanted, which was a lot, though they looked at me very strangely, as if white folks would never like the processed seafood blobs in them. I thought it would be wise to get a jump on getting used to the food.
Indeed, it was wise. With such delicacies as squid on a stick and chicken heart filling up the market stalls both day and night, processed seafood blobs seem quite delicious by comparison. The food is something I cannot dwell on at length, being quite a tender subject. Many of you know that none of the meals I have eaten in the last four years were prepared in my house—or by me, moreover—so finding nothing particularly edible for sale here has been quite a shock to the system. McDonald’s has hitherto been something of a curse word, but now often seems salvific. Rare is the week we can’t be found there twice. At least their menu is slightly different than in the States, a couple of their burgers have rice buns, for instance. They’re actually quite good. The one food thing I cannot fail to mention is stinky tofu. There is a street here in town which is known by and to all non-Taiwanese (even many of the locals, actually) as “Stinky Tofu Alley”. Many of the stalls there serve stinky tofu soup, which they cook in great vats and which smells as if every old sock in the world were dumped in its filthiest bathroom and then left to rot. Actually, that description is quite generous. I don’t know how they make it, and I’m told it’s not actually that bad, but sometimes the smell will hit you and it’s so bad that Chinese water torture would seem less cruel.
So enough, what else? I should say that even stinky tofu would be a relief from the filthy air that we have to breathe. I’m quite sure my lungs will look like I’ve smoked for three years by the time I get back. Which is not to say we don’t take precautions against the airborne particulates, but there’s only so much a couple of pieces of fabric fashioned into a surgical mask will block out. But they do look awfully dashing. Hopefully I’ll be able to enclose pictures of my latest SARS mask, as we call them. They tend to be worn mainly when out riding around on one’s motorized steed, which everyone here seems to be doing, all the time, and at top speed. I like the red lights the best. Everyone pays fastidious attention to the other set of lights and about as soon as it turns amber the fifty or so scooters and motorbikes around you take off in a manner that can best be likened to the starting grid of the Manx TT. It’s quite spectacular, if not for the sight then for the total disregard to fuel economy.
Of course, after the start gate comes the traffic, particularly in town, and since there are no actual rules in Taiwan (there are, actually, but they are referred to as “suggestions”), weaving in and out of traffic provides a tremendous amount of fun, and a very healthy dose of adrenaline for the week. I bought a 150cc Yamaha motorbike a few weeks ago, and since I’d only ridden one once before, I pretty much got to teach myself how to ride in all this chaos. I think it’s been quite beneficial though, I was paying so much attention to what I was doing with the gears and such that having to watch out for traffic signs would have been an unnecessary burden. And now it’s pretty much come down to a game of avoiding all objects that move or could move. Or that stop right in front of you suddenly in the middle of the road. Not that these things ever happen, Mother. Anyway all is well, and all is fun too, about the fastest I’ve had the iron steed going so far is 70 mph, but I have at least 25 more cc than all the scooters on the road so I can take them off the line and beat them on the straightaway too, if need be. In any case, it sure beats taking the bus to church.
Church, like much else out of the ordinary around here, happens in Taichung (say Tie-jhong). Taichung is the third largest city in Taiwan and is about three-eighths of the way down the western side of the island. We live at the school where we teach, which is in the city of Feng Yuan (say Fong Yuen), about 8 miles north of Taichung. I believe there are about a million people in Taichung, and I have no idea how many in Feng Yuan, though I understand that it is home to many retired 30-something businessmen, whose children provide a reason for my labors here. There are many English schools in town, and as such many teachers, ostensibly of English. Many of these appear to be South African, which I understand is due to the weakness of the Rand these days (who said an economics degree would be useless?), though most are probably American and Canadian.
There are also a lot of Chinese English teachers, which certainly, at least in my mind, helps to perpetuate the common problems of syntax and grammar that our students have. Most of the teachers here are quickly perfecting the art of “Chinglish”, if not in spoken form at least enough to be able to understand it. Allow me to illustrate with a direct quote or two, usually heard on a daily basis: “teacher, you do not have tell we”, referring to homework they didn’t do, or “teacher, you see”, when trying to get you to look at something. Actually, the constant appeals to “teacher” has vindicated my beginning plan to have the students call me Professor Ball. Thought by my colleagues to be purely a display of ego at first, it has forced the kids in my class to think about what they’re saying before they automatically say the same words, and has saved me from the insanity that those formerly derisive colleagues are now experiencing.
Of course, we are learning some of the Chinese too. The government reckons that to be literate in Chinese one must know 3,000 characters; a list of the particular 3,000 they are talking about can be readily found online, in case you’re interested (though you will usually have to download programs to read their fonts). A couple of decent pages about Chinese in general are:
http://www.mandarintools.com/ and
www.zein.se/patrick/mainenf.html (One or both of these have links to the list of 3,000). Needless to say, learning 3,000 Chinese characters is a little beyond the scope of my time here, but once again the government comes to the rescue. At some point in time they came up with a phonetic system which consists of 37 sounds, which are the only sounds in Chinese. This system is called bo-po-mo-fo, which is essentially representative of the sounds made by the first four phonetic symbols (very roughly). Each Chinese character is composed of two phonetic symbols, and the children’s books are written with the character just to the left of the bo-po-mo-fos (go ahead and say bo-po-mo-fo a few times, it’s fun). So this is the way I have gone about studying Chinese, just like the kids do it. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent yet, but just wait until July.
It’s quite a confusing language to grasp by hearing it, since they have so many homophones, or words that sound exactly the same but mean completely different things, like through and threw, for example. They have hundreds of these, primarily because Chinese was never meant to be a spoken language, or so I’m told. Its strength lies in its written aspect, and it is apparently quite powerful at expressing concepts, but the people frequently have to explain what they mean, or you will see people finger-writing the character on the palm of their hand so the other person can visualize which character they mean. Some of their words are also homophonic with some of ours, and as you might expect, this can generate humorous results. For instance, a visitor to Taiwan will become increasingly aware that the locals keep calling each other “nigga”. One’s delicate Western sensibilities might suffer injury at this, were one not quickly to learn that the locals are actually saying “nay ge”, which means “that one”, and which is used pretty much as a place-holder or attention-getter, like “er” or “um”. What complicates things is that “jay ge”, which comes out sounding like “jigga”, is thrown about almost as often, and since “yo” means “to have”, it is not at all uncommon to hear people crying “yo nigga” or “yo jigga”. There do not seem to be many Afro-Americans in Taiwan.
Maybe they don’t like the food. But don’t let me get started on that again. How about the school, colleagues, students, etc. Okay: I am the only male teacher at the school, and my colleagues number 14, 13 of whom live here at the school. Somehow I left the hospital thinking that working long night shifts with many wonderful female nurses would have left me well prepared to live with 13 women; I don’t think that anymore. I like to say the nurses tried the best they could, but they really didn’t, and that’s a very good thing. If I ever thought we had drama at the hospital, I’ve entered a whole new ballpark of drama here. I won’t go into details, but my theory on it is that because all the soap operas are in Chinese, there’s a deep psychological need to get understandable drama from somewhere. Let me know if you have any better ideas. At least I get my own room. TV is worth a mention; it’s often really funny. We get a lot of movie channels, and all the movies are in English, with subtitles, but they also have these cool pseudo-religious puppet shows in which all the long-haired characters repeatedly kill each other in extremely violent ways; this is apparently supposed to teach profound Confucian principles. Or something. It’s a little hard to make sense of, just like the soap operas around here. My thanks to the hospital crew, I look forward to being back where I know what’s going on.
The school itself is four stories of pure concrete, with a flat concrete roof (for a better view of the smog) and tile everywhere they couldn’t get concrete. But we have fire drills anyway. It’s a pretty new building—about five years old, I think—and quite nice and well-equipped. The students are generally quite good, though I was told when I arrived, in no uncertain terms, that I would be getting some of the “problem classes”. According to my understanding of Taiwanese logic, they assumed that since I was the man, I’d be the natural disciplinarian. I’ve been happy to oblige in most instances, though sometimes the kids are too funny to really hold their feet too close to the fire. Most of them get a big kick out of fighting with me, and it’s often easier to get them to talk when I not trying to “teach”. I have four classes, with kids aged about eight to around 13, for a total of 28 hours a week, not including planning time. Speaking of which, since having learned in my very first week how important it was to have a plan, and a comprehensive one, I have come to a whole new respect for what teachers do, and wonder how many times my teachers wished they could kill me, like I sometimes do with my kids. By and large they are very good though, and I’m lucky to teach in a school where my average class has about 7 kids. It makes for a pretty good learning environment, but even that many kids can be crazy together. The one problem I have is realizing that in six months it will be very difficult to discern much real progress in the students, though occasionally you do see flashes of enlightenment sweeping the classroom, and it can be quite rewarding.
As far as the country itself, you may be aware that it was dubbed by its colonizers, the Portuguese, as Ilha Formosa, the beautiful island. (Incidentally, that the Portuguese were the colonizers and so first to romanize the language is the reason it reads, in the roman alphabet, so much differently than it sounds, and may be another reason why there are certain sounds that are consistently misspoken. Many things here, like street signs, store signs and product labels are in English, or at least the Pinyin, or Portuguese, romanization of English.) the island does have its very beautiful points, like a very lush green mountain range running the length of the island’s east side. Once you get away from the smog, or above it anyway, it’s very nice. I haven’t really been to the beach yet, but this last weekend I did see the harbor at Kaohsiung (say Gao-Shung), which is the city with Taiwan’s second-largest population and Asia’s largest port. It’s apparently the third or fourth largest port in the world. Kaohsiung was really just another big city, but we did go up to “Monkey Mountain”, where there really were lots of monkeys just hanging around, or at least scavenging for food.
The largest city, and the “national capital”, is Taipei (say Tai-Bay), and it is home to most of the touristy stuff, especially monuments. One is a huge building in honor of Dr Sun Yat-Sen, the founder of the Kuo Min Tang (say Gwo), the party that fled the mainland in the 40s when the communists took over. This is the reason Taipei is the “national capital”, because the actual capital of the Chinese province of Taiwan is some small town in the middle of nowhere. So as long as the dispute over Taiwan’s actual status continues, Taipei will continue to be the capital of the Republic of China, while the People’s Republic will consider it the “provisional capital of the province of Taiwan”. The other main monument is the massive square built up to Chiang Kai-Shek, the more familiar leader of the KMT to Westerners. Good old Mr Chiang is on everything here, especially the money, but I have read that Dr Sun is enjoying quite a renaissance of reputation back in the PRC, as the more moderate politicians are trying to distance the founding of their modern state from the radical Chairman Mao.
So much for the history lesson. Taipei has some nice parts, and those touristy things are often worth seeing, but I have not yet made a full investigation of the new jewel in Taiwan’s crown, the Taipei 101 building, currently the world’s tallest. So named for having 101 stories, I understand it to be 508 meters tall, and it is apparently designed to look like a stick of bamboo, with the nodes and all. It is quite attractive, as far as really, really tall buildings go, and they light it up quite tastefully at night. The elevators, which with a top speed of 1010 meters per minute are the world’s fastest, and can get you to the 93rd floor in a mere 39 seconds, have yet to open, but do on the 4th of March. I hope to ride them, but I understand that it costs about 300 New Taiwan Dollars, or NT$. The exchange rate is around NT$31 to the US$1, so it’s only 10 bucks, but 10 bucks goes a long way over here. I could eat quite handsomely (if I were so inclined) for 10 bucks. Do you see how food becomes a preoccupation?
The best thing we did over Chinese New Year, which was the second week of February, was up in Taipei. It may have been the best thing we did so far. Some of us stood on a bus going up the twistiest mountain road ever, then took the smallest, ricketiest train ever further up that mountain, then took a (sadly nondescript) gondola across to an adjacent mountain, and found what appeared to be the Taiwanese version of EuroDisney—at the very top of this remote mountain. It was so weird, and for some reason I was feeling quite put out about the whole thing, “why would anyone ever do this?” I wondered out loud, more than once. It was raining, like it is now, and has been here for a few weeks, on and off, and it really was strange, but we took a wander around, and found the best thing ever. Right by the condos up there (condos?), there were a bunch of military assault-course style exercise contraptions, like rip-lines and rope nets. It was wet and getting dark when we started to play, but play we did, and it was fun. We only found the first 10 of the exercises, but later found there were 16 more, bigger and badder than the ones we had found. We got really wet and really filthy, but it was the best time ever, and when we go back, which we will, I actually kind of hope it rains again.
Chinese New Year was actually kind of strange, almost a let-down. We wandered around the town here in Feng Yuan to see what people were up to, and basically it amounted to them standing out in front of their homes with some incense burning. Some of them had little fires, and all had a small table with two bunches of flowers (always two), more joss sticks (burning), and some food items, always including pineapple. Apparently the ghosts of their dead ancestors will come and eat the spirit part of the food so laid out, before the people eat the physical part. The ancestors also get to make use of the “spirit money”—small yellow papers that people are burning in their little fire drums. That money is supposed to keep the spirits in the style they’re accustomed to through the whole year, so people burn a lot. As if the air wasn’t bad enough, during Chinese New Year you can almost feel yourself on your way to meet those spirits. It was all very strange because it didn’t seem like anyone was that excited about it, even the kids. They were all up, but there was no real sense of anticipation. Keep in mind that this is the closest thing to Christmas in the calendar here. We did see some madness though, going down to the main temple in town, which is of uncertain denomination. Most folks tend to believe a mixture of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian beliefs, all sprinkled with just enough Western thought to make things really confusing, so it becomes a sort of strange folk religion. The doors to the temple were closed at midnight, which was the first time I’d ever seen any temple doors closed, but the huge forecourt was packed with people, all burning ridiculous amounts of incense. Right at midnight, a guy on a PA system started counting—up, not down—and then the doors were flung open and there was this unbelievable rush of people through them. We later learned that there is some prize or blessing that awaits the first to plant their incense in the large incense lavers. It was quite a sight, and the pictures might have turned out if it weren’t for that much smoke being generated in an enclosed space.
Well, I’m sure there’s a lot more that I could be saying, but hopefully this gives a pretty good overview of how things are. Hopefully it will get me a little forgiveness for being such a bad (or nonexistent) e-mailer since I’ve been here. Please let me know how you’re doing and if there’s anything I should be writing about, either by sending me an e-mail, or by leaving a comment. Thanks.
