Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts

Monday, September 4, 2023

Renunciation


Squid in the air, still tied to something 


“Do you have a plan if things go sideways in Taiwan?” 

One of my oldest friends asks us this as he zips us to the BART station from his home in central Oakland. A pair of committed northeasterners settled permanently in Taipei, we’re properly visiting the West Coast for the first time as part of a trip for my brother-in-law’s wedding. 


It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this, and it will be far from the last. Most people assume we’ll leave if things get sketchy; this friend knows me well enough to know that’s not necessarily the case, and thus asks a more open-ended question. 


It’s hard to put this into words, though. I stumble around an insufficient lexicon, muttering about planning to stay — I’m not much of a fighter but I guess I could grow sweet potatoes — and reassuring him that if we were ever forced to leave, really truly forced, we have options. They're not very good options, but it remains that we have them.

It doesn’t need to be said that many in Taiwan would not. 


I slide sideways into a summary of my thought process over the past few years: you know how there are foreigners willing to fight for Ukraine? Well, Taiwan is my home, I’m willing to fight for it. Besides, if I don’t stand up for what’s right in the place I call home, can I claim to stand for anything at all? Certainly I can’t seriously talk about democracy and human rights if I won’t fight for them where I actually live. 


And yet, do I owe my life to a country that won’t give me a passport? That feels weird, too. 


There’s no end to this spirograph of questions, it just whips you around into some complicated, unending holding pattern. 


He’d asked earlier if we were citizens yet. I said no, we’re permanent residents (“like a green card, though we get privileges, not rights exactly, we can’t vote and its very hard to get approved for a mortgage or even a line of credit”). 


It’s not bad, I clarified. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. But it still feels off — a Chinese-American whose grandparents were ROC citizens who never set foot in Taiwan and have only a tenuous relationship to Taiwanese history and none to Taiwanese culture is considered a dual national by default. We’ve invested most of our adult lives in Taiwan and are considered more foreign than that. I know, I know, not every country has birthright citizenship. I wouldn’t call it unfair exactly, except you know what? It feels unfair. 


“I actually have considered renouncing,” I say over coffee by Lake Merritt. “We don’t plan to move back, and even if we did, with my diabetes I don’t see how we could. I could not possibly afford my medication without a corporate-type job and I am deeply unsuited to exactly that.” 


The truth is, I can’t renounce. Brendan theoretically could; he was lucky enough to have been born in Canada and has that sweet sweet dual birthright citizenship. 


The reasons are simple: I’m too filial. What if my Dad needs help? My in-laws? Being allowed to visit for set periods but not work would be insufficient. I won’t give up my ability to potentially care for aging relatives; something you’d think the Taiwanese government would understand (but apparently doesn’t). 


What’s more, if China invaded and actually won, renouncers like us — well, me — would have no citizenship at all. I can’t think of much that would be as bad or worse than being a citizen of the PRC, but being stateless is quite undesirable. Even if I wanted to be a PRC citizen (I absolutely don’t), it’s doubtful I’d be allowed to do so. 


I did not say: this confluence of events has altered the course of my life in ways I could not have easily predicted. 

It's difficult to fully explain, so I avoid the discussion with anyone who seems to have overly binary thinking. 


I hadn’t known when I moved to Taiwan that I would want to stay. It certainly had not occurred to me that I’d care enough to consider fighting if China did ever start a war. But more than that, the slender exceptions that have opened for dual nationality have done nothing but throw into sharp focus how weird the whole situation is. 


Sat squarely in the middle of my thought process is this strait gait and narrow path, and how I might get on it. As an educator with an advanced degree who primarily works with Taiwanese teachers and their professional development, you’d think I’d qualify. I don’t. 


Educators not only have to be associate professors and prove some specific contribution to Taiwan, but also get their university to do the required paperwork to recommend them. Some succeed; I’ve heard stories of others who don’t simply because their university doesn’t care to support them. 


For awhile, I thought I’d just get my PhD and pursue that path. Getting accepted to a program wouldn’t be particularly hard — the director of my MEd program all but assured me I’d have a seat if I applied — but funding would be. 


Soon after, I had the opportunity to travel around Taiwan and talk to many university lecturers, professors and second language acquisition specialists. Almost all of them bore ill news: the only people doing anything remotely like what I do at the university level who also have tenure-track positions are actually professors of Linguistics or English Literature. If you have a background specifically in Education — not to mention Applied Foreign Languages — the best you’re likely to do is an annual contract, if not adjunct work. I met two exceptions; they prove the rule.


Forget that neither of those paths offer enough in terms of benefits and remuneration for the work required, or for me to give up my freelance career in which I never have to confront my deep-seated issues with authority. 


Neither of them are sufficient to qualify for dual nationality, so what exactly would be the point of doing a PhD if I want to stay in Taiwan? It wouldn’t get me the job I need to attain dual nationality, which under the current law I will never qualify for. It isn’t necessary for what I do now. I don't really want the jobs it could get me.

So why do it, putting in all that blood, sweat, toil, tears — not to mention money I don’t really have and don’t think I should have to spend? (To me, any PhD worth doing is a PhD someone else pays for.) 


I can’t think of a reason, so I haven’t applied. I likely never will. 


Who knew that deciding on Taiwan as our home would have repercussions not just regarding work and citizenship, but education? 


None of these issues has an endpoint. None of the questions has answers. It’s not quite tragic enough to merit sustained media coverage, not quite common enough to be a society-wide problem. It affects me and a small group of otherwise-privileged, mostly Western immigrants in Taiwan. It’s easy to be dismissive — you’d never have to fight, you’ll never be Taiwanese, you’re just here for your own benefit — and I won’t even say that these are entirely untrue. I wouldn’t have to fight, if I didn’t want to. I’ll never be culturally Taiwanese. As much as I want my being in Taiwan to be something good for Taiwan, living here does benefit me as well. It’s a tad specious to pretend none of it matters because a white lady like me will be alright no matter what, but it’s also not quite wrong. 

Yet wondering whether I’ll ever have access to something people with even less exposure to Taiwanese culture are entitled to, realizing that I can’t imagine a world where I ran away from Taiwan at the moment of her greatest crisis, and knowing that it will still never be enough no matter how impossible renunciation is for me? 

To stay in Taiwan, I've renounced quite a bit. Perhaps nothing tragic; can I really whine about career paths I did not take when I'm more or less happy in the one I've chosen? Who cares that I'll never be an academic simply because a reasonable version of that job, for me, does not exist here? I am salty about renouncing my chances for ever being a full citizen of the country I live in, though I'm not sure I have a right to be. Even though I couldn't really live in the US again, I did choose this. 


Whatever, y'know? All I can do is renounce the whole damn debate. I don't really care about anyone's silly opinion on whether or not I will or should fight in any potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It doesn't matter how I should feel, or what makes me one of the "good" immigrants, or whether I'm happy or grateful enough. I feel how I feel, I made the choices I made, I am where I am, and I don't have any answers beyond that.

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

The online teaching cloister

I moved to Taipei to enjoy the city, not to be stuck in my apartment all day



A few weeks ago, I began my first face-to-face foundational TESOL training course since COVID hit Taiwan. We'd gone online at some point and were struggling to resume in-person learning. 

It had truly been so long that in the fog of the late pandemic I no longer remember when it happened, only that trying to teach that course online presented a host of problems. I couldn't really demonstrate various in-person interaction patterns, for instance. Nor could we discuss classroom management components such as boardwork and layout in an impactful way. A practicum (demo) is a vital component of this course, but it's harder for inexperienced teachers to lead interactive demos online. Everything takes longer online, too, and it was a challenge to cover the course requirements. 

When we finally opened a face-to-face course, on day three someone tested positive for COVID. Within a week, about half the class was infected, and I was teaching face-to-face with four students and a computer running an online meeting with the other three. I then tested positive, and it was back online for all of us.

My heart sank when I realized how it would go: back to my home office, back behind a screen. Yes, it's an incredible privilege to have a spare room for a home office at all, but it is draining to be stuck in there for days on end, without many chances to go out while Brendan left everyday for in-person work.

Gently put, it's a cloister. More critically, it's a prison.

While I've transitioned back somewhat to in-person teaching and teacher training, enough of it remains online that my latest stint at home prompted me to reflect anew on teaching and teacher training as a profession now that someone like me is just as likely to be working at a screen as in a room with their students or trainees.

To be blunt, I don't like teaching or teacher training online. At all. I've become accustomed to it, and of course I can do it. And yet, while some say online teaching brings people together -- it's possible to take classes you never dreamed possible if teachers and students can meet remotely -- I feel as though the screen divides me from the learners. It causes a rupture, a block. 

Everything takes longer, everything requires more planning. It's more difficult to develop rapport, especially when I have to put my foot down about cameras being left on if at all possible. Some never do, and there are situations where I can't (or shouldn't) force the issue. Imagine having students whose faces you've never seen, whom you'd never recognize on the street. I didn't become a teacher to interact with black squares all day, and I find it very hard to develop rapport this way.

Even with cameras on, I find it difficult to build the same connections with learners and trainees. To "make eye contact" I have to look at the camera, not the face on the screen. It's the same for the learner. I can toggle between these and create a simulacrum of actual, in-person, we-see-each-other eye contact, but it's not actually the same. The effect is ineffable, but definitely there, and entirely negative. 

One-on-one classes aren't so bad, as you only have to do this back-and-forth with one face. The effect is deeply felt in groups, however, especially if one of us is presenting.

I had an office job in the US all those years ago; lots of screen time, very little face-to-face contact. I hated it, and became a teacher because this is exactly what I don't want. It's kind of like attending meetings all day (something which can be tiring if you're working remotely), and you are the coordinator and host of every single meeting. I'm good at this in person. Online? Honestly, not so much -- because I don't want to be at a computer, period.

Pre-pandemic, my various jobs required me to jet all over Taipei and beyond for work. I explored parts of the city I'd rarely or never set foot in otherwise. 

Again, I realize this is a privilege. I understand that most people take the same route to the same office every day if they’re not working remotely, so “going in” isn’t particularly desirable. I get bored easily with routine, which is why I chose a career path through which I’d frequently find myself in different places. It got me out of the house, and I was able to see different parts of the city. My schedule changed often enough that there was always something at least a little new in this; it never got monotonous and I didn’t resent the extra time it took. I like to be on the move. 


You know what I don’t like? Being stuck at home most of the day, unable to leave my neighborhood or even my apartment, sometimes for entire days. If I have a training course in the morning, then an afternoon and evening class, the furthest I’m likely to go that day is the nearby 7-11. If I’m really lucky I might get to go to the ‘everything store’ down the street! 


I hate this. Plenty of people like working from home as it frees them from tiring commutes and allows them to be comfortable in their work setup. That’s great for them. It’s not for me. Mental health walks are uninspiring; I’m not good at walking with no destination. I’ve found myself making up reasons to go outside, which usually involve coffee or shopping, but they rarely take me anywhere new. No new cafes, little local restaurants or novel bus routes. No “hey there’s an Indian restaurant near Sanmin Road!” 


There is nothing worse for an extrovert than being at home all day, usually alone as Brendan still teaches face-to-face, and not feeling the rapport bump from work, either.

I have had more in-person opportunities recently, having started a new part-time gig that I'm enjoying quite a bit and pays very well. It's partly face-to-face, and that helps -- but they also underscore that being mostly online is a problem.


In fact, let's talk a bit about boredom and big career questions.

It’s easy to say I’m transitioning from teaching to more teacher training because it pays much better (to be clear, it does), but I’m also motivated by the level of challenge. It seems as though it should be easy to coast at the sort of work I’ve been doing forever, but I tend to get distracted and stuck if I do the same thing for too long. I know stagnation affects my performance, so it’s time to reach. This means more work overall, but that's the fundamental truth of what it means to seek challenge.


If all of this sounds vague, it’s because I don’t want to give too many specifics about work for all the obvious reasons. Besides, I genuinely like the people I work with. Most of them run their businesses well, or at least well enough that I don’t walk. I don’t want to hop on my blog to gossip about good people. 


Yet internally, I’ve been fighting…something. Distractedness? Demotivation? The delicate balance of work with my sub-optimal health? It could be any or all of these, and 

one of the leading causes is the pivot to online teaching.

Of course it's not the only reason. Working in Taiwan can be tough in certain ways: raises are rare, there’s no such thing as a paid holiday, it’s a battle just to get employers to do basic things like contribute to labor insurance and pension. In general I do not feel that teaching in Taiwan pays enough at the higher levels of ability and experience; I stay in Taiwan because I love Taiwan, but the honest truth is I could make more money in just about any other Asian country. 


Teacher training is a lot fairer in terms of compensation, and I won't lie: that's another reason why I gravitate towards it.


Every day I fight the notion that I’m good at my job simply because I’m a white native speaker. I think I am indeed good at my job, but that’s not the reason! 


None of those are the core of it, though. I’m used to the lack of benefits, and beyond wanting to be comfortable I’m not particularly motivated by money. (I'm only somewhat money-driven.) I didn't start to feel this distractedness until work mostly went online. Period, end of story, that's it: everything else is manageable but remote teaching is not what I want, and never will be. 

What's worse, because I don't actually want to be teaching online, I'm not as good at it. I'm less careful; teacher talking time shoots up; interactions don't vary as much as would be optimal; I'm less innovative. I'm less motivated online, full stop.

Online teacher training is even harder to pull off, but at least the level of challenge keeps it interesting.


Just to clarify, I’ve been forthright about this at work. Nobody reading this who knows me in real life would be surprised to hear it. It doesn’t really change the current situation, though — how could it? 


There are benefits to being online, however, that almost negate this (almost). Collaborative documents, chat boxes, interactive whiteboards: all things made possible by an online interface. It would be harder to schedule my own Taiwanese lessons if we met face-to-face, and I will probably start Armenian lessons online in the near future -- something that would have been impossible not that long ago. Trainees who can't attend my sessions in person are able to log in for the online ones; they get a benefit they wouldn't have been able to access in the Before Times.


That said, all this new technology never runs quite as smoothly as it should to be considered a true advantage. There’s always that one learner who can’t figure out how to access the materials on Google Docs (or can’t access it at all if they’re in China or have some sort of work-related block to that function). Zoom’s interactive whiteboard is clumsy and annoying. My noise-canceling computer is fantastic when my cleaner is vacuuming, but not great when we need to use audio recordings, as they don’t tend to play clearly. Getting everyone to mute themselves to listen on their own takes — you guessed it! — more time


Teaching online doesn’t even come with the only real benefit of remote work, which is freedom to travel and do your work elsewhere for awhile. I can’t go to a cafe — it’s a class! I suppose I could head south or east, but I can’t, say, fly to Europe or the US and work from there unless I want to keep some very weird hours. I’ve tried (ask me about 6am classes at my sister's old apartment in Hoboken someday) and it never really works out. 

It's caused me to ask some Big Career Questions. I love teacher training and don't want to give that up, but if I took on less teaching work and picked up, say, an editing or materials development job, at least I could go to a cafe for a change of scenery instead of spending the entire day in my little office cloister. I won't turn down online teacher training because I enjoy it too much, but I have considered refusing online language teaching to do this. I haven't pulled the plug on that yet, but we'll see. 


There’s no clear solution here; this is just my life now. If I had a different sort of job where I was desperate to escape the fluorescent horror and greige cubicle walls of an office, I’d probably welcome remote work. I became a teacher in part to avoid that! One of the reasons I’ve sought out more work is for those face-to-face hours; it will make the online portions of my job more bearable. At least I’ll have more chances to go somewhere! 

Sunday, January 29, 2023

It's OK to not love China

DSC01742

     Flame me if you want, but I will never add an "I love China, but" to any of my opinions


I have to get something off my chest. A dark confession, the opposite of what I feel is expected of me. You see, as much as I feel expected to say otherwise, I don't love China. 

When favorably discussing Taiwanese independence, sovereignty or identity, or saying anything negative about the CCP, it seems as though so many people feel the need to insert a little "I love China, but..." or "I deeply love the people and culture of China, however..." Sometimes this is a single sentence header; sometimes it stretches out to cover an entire paragraph detailing some positive experience or perspective on China as a country, to emphasize the differentiation of the nation and people from the government. 

Here are just a few random examples from a quick search:







That's all fine, if you truly "love China" no one should stop you from saying so, but I don't love China. 

I certainly understand this, however. I've even engaged in it. One doesn't want to imply dislike or hatred of a group of people, or aim derision at an entire nation in all its complexities. Of course, engaging in "Screw China!" rhetoric is fundamentally racist, when China is a vast, complex nation full of everyday people who don't deserve to be lumped in with their genocidal government. 

Nobody actively insists this is a necessary addition to what one really wants to say, but I see it so often and feel compelled to include it. The consequence is often being labeled a "China-hater" (China as in the country, not the government) or worse, of perpetuating anti-Asian hate. Of course, tankies, aggressive Han supremacist trolls and CCP shills (both paid and unpaid) will accuse pro-Taiwan advocates and CCP critics of all of this anyway, but it feels like a necessary preliminary step to defend oneself.

But here's the thing. 

I truly don't love China. 

I've felt unspoken pressure to preface pro-Taiwan advocacy or criticism of the brutal, genocidal, authoritarian CCP with exhortations that are simply not sincere. And there's a strong likelihood that I'll attract criticism for simply being honest about this. 

Let's be clear: I don't hate China, either. I certainly don't hate Chinese citizens.  It's ridiculous to hate a whole nation -- no place, especially not one so large, complex and diverse in cultures, languages and history, could possibly deserve an opinion so simplistic and dismissive.

As someone who has lived in China and returned several times since, I simply have no specific affection for the country. Although I can never know what it's like to be Chinese or be a PRC citizen, I've experienced some version of life in China, and not in the big east coast cities (I've visited those, but my actual life there was in Guizhou). That experience resulted in mixed feelings.

Chinese histories -- the many histories of the regions now considered China -- are fascinating. The many cultures of China are, too. I've fallen out of love with the Mandarin language, but am enthusiastic about learning Taiwanese. Clearly Sinitic languages are of great interest to me. There are plenty of astounding things to see in China. I've seen them and been astounded. To touch on more everyday matters, the food is great (usually -- it's not always prepared well, as in any country) and the people are generally pretty nice. Daily life, at least for an expat, was fairly safe when I lived there.

But you know what else I experienced in China? Horrendous misogyny, aimed not at me but at Chinese women I knew. Their stories aren't really mine to tell, but I am pretty sure this attitude isn't anecdotal

I may have felt safe enough on the streets, .but I didn't feel the same way expressing any kind of opinion. That included fairly anodyne ones like "I think Taiwanese should get to decide if they want to be part of the PRC", which isn't even close to the pro-independence diehard that I am today. In contrast to Taiwan where one can freely discuss 228 or the White Terror, I never mentioned Tiananmen Square, because I knew I couldn't. Mail sometimes arrived pre-opened. People occasionally told me controversial opinions, such as "I was at Tiananmen Square so I know how fucked up things are", "We're not allowed to fully practice Uyghur culture, they are our oppressors" and "I'd like to protest the government but they'd just kill us." 

I kept those confessions to myself while in China -- what other choice was there?

That's not even getting into how sick the pollution made me, multiple times, nor the trouble of accessing actual international news. 

There were so many reasons why I chose to leave at the end of my year in China, but stuck around in Taiwan. My first six months in Taiwan were rough, but I felt a budding affection for the country which only grew. In China, that feeling never came.

In fact, the part of China I liked most was East Turkestan (known to some as Xinjiang), where people don't like the CCP, aren't Chinese and don't seem to really want to be part of China. I feel nothing but grief for what has happened there since my visit so many years ago. 

I've lived in four countries in my life -- the United States, China, India and Taiwan. I feel affection for India despite its flaws, and actually do love Taiwan. I chose to settle here, after all. My feelings about the US are more positive than about China, but I wouldn't say I "love" it. I can't say why China was my least favorite place to live, or why it didn't capture my affection in the same way as other places I've intentionally moved to. India is hardly perfect, and Taiwan has its negatives. But China just didn't do it for me.

Life there wasn't all all awful. There was good and bad, and those bad experiences above were balanced somewhat by positive ones. I made friends, began learning Mandarin, ate some amazing food, saw some stupendous scenic, cultural and historic sites. Very few experiences are all bad. And that's how I feel about China: good and bad.  

Honestly, regardless of what I think about any given government, I feel fairly neutral towards most countries. At best, I've enjoyed traveling in them and learning about them, but I wouldn't describe my emotions towards them as "love". I went to Sri Lanka and enjoyed it immensely, but that's about it. I went to Myanmar and had many positive experiences, but I wouldn't say I felt "love". Our honeymoon was a bus trip from Panama to Guatemala. It was amazing, and each country fascinating in its own way. But do I "love" Nicaragua? I wouldn't say so. I do care about people, but feel no clear need to love a country absent some specific yet ineffable catalyst.

Countries are countries -- they all have their good and bad points, some have more good than bad, and most have intractable problems but also things to like. People are also just people: most are good, many are nice, a few are rotten. That's true anywhere in the world you go. Even general safety is linked not to how "good" people are, but more to economic factors. 

So why, exactly, should I "love" China? What does it matter that I lived there? What does it matter that I live in Taiwan now? And what does it matter that I'm pro-Taiwan? I still don't have to "love" China in order to criticize it, and I'm sick of feeling tacit pressure to say I do. 

It feels like pre-emptive self-defense, as though one needs to justify supporting for Taiwan, Tibet or East Turkestan. As though one needs  a caveat in order to oppose the Uyghur genocide, or criticize the CCP. But I neither want nor need to prove myself, to add an insincere caveat, to speak the truth about other countries like Taiwan, and other cultures like Tibetan and Uyghur.

The case for Taiwan, among others, is just and right all on its own. It's time to stop falling over ourselves to proclaim "love" for China just because CCP shills will twist support for these causes into "anti-Asian hate" or "you're racist against Chinese people!" when that's simply not the case. 

I do hate the CCP: they certainly have no business running a country given all they've done to harm China (and then claim credit when they stop or reverse just some of the harm they themselves inflicted). They should be shunted out of existence. Xi Jinping should face charges before an international court for crimes against humanity and spend the rest of his life not as the dictator of the world's most populous country, but alone in a deep dark hole. I cannot describe the degree to which I loathe that government. 

But there are many governments I don't care for. Many run countries I like quite a bit, or feel neutrally toward! I appreciate Indian democracy but acknowledge the flaws of the Indian government (certainly I'm no fan of the BJP). The US government has some obvious problems. Taiwan has an admirable democracy but the government sometimes makes me feel like bashing my head against a wall. At least they're democracies, though. The CCP -- brutal, non-democratic but ultimately not the only factor in my feelings about China -- is an entirely different thing. 

But you know what? Whatever. I don't love China. I don't love China! It feels so freeing to just be honest about that. Living there had its upsides and drawbacks, but in the end the drawbacks outweigh the upsides, and I have no regrets about choosing never to return. I do miss things like 酸辣米皮 -- Guizhou-style hot and sour flat noodles. It's a shame I will probably never again see places I actually did love, such as East Turkestan, the Miao areas around Kaili, and Hong Kong. But I don't think China is a safe destination for public supporters of Taiwan. Oh well. 

I support Taiwan and Taiwanese independence. Taiwan is a country. Taiwan has a unique history and culture, and most Taiwanese do not identify as Chinese. China has no business claiming Taiwan and is absolutely in the wrong for threatening a bloody, violent war. Period. They are the provocateurs -- the only provocateurs. Not Taiwan, not the United States. 

That same government will tell you that this stance is akin to hating China as a country, which is essentially the same as anti-Asian racism. That is a lie, and I reject it. 

The CCP should fall, though nobody but the people of China can make that happen. I want only good things for Chinese citizens, but don't know how to support them. I wish I did. 

All of that is true, and also, I don't love China. 

Friday, January 27, 2023

The Fissure

                       taroko


When I first moved to Taiwan, I didn't have a lot of free time. Like most buxibans, my first workplace expected six-day work weeks. A coworker rightly described this sort of job as "not really being teachers, it's the education industry equivalent of working at The Gap." He wasn't wrong.

The only real upside was public holidays: on those preposterous work/school "make up days", we didn't have Saturday classes. Feeling a bit trapped in Taipei -- you can't really do much when you work six days a week -- I decided to use one of these to check out Taroko Gorge. 

I did this with the wisdom and forethought of a turnip. I used none of my intelligence in applying my experiences in China to my expectations for Taiwan. Namely, that one can turn up close to a destination and pay someone a small amount of money to just take you there. So, instead of getting off the train at Hualien and taking the bus through the gorge like any other young person on a budget, I hopped off at Xincheng because it's geographically much closer to Taroko. 

I found no transport and walked -- walked! -- the several kilometers to the park entrance. I even walked most of the Shakadang Trail. Realizing my mistake, I then grabbed the bus to Hualien and got a bed in a hostel, having seen almost none of the actual gorge. I did get a very nice view of Asia Cement's, um, cement garden. Local children laughed at me. I deserved it. 

Years later, I told students what I’d done. They laughed at me too. I still deserved it. 

“Never do this!” I said. 

“We never would,” one of them shot back. 

On my next trip, we hired a taxi. I wanted to go to the Qingshui cliffs in addition to Taroko, but he wouldn't take us. My Mandarin wasn't good enough yet to really communicate much. It rained, and I had a headache. On the third trip, I rented a car with friends and for whatever reason we ended up driving over the North Cross-Island Highway first (don't ask). It was gorgeous, but we were too tired the next day to truly appreciate the beauty of our actual destination. We picked out a random local hotel with terrible beds and thin walls; someone was having a great time spanking their boyfriend in the next room. Good for them, but not fun for us.

We drove back, in the rain, over the cliffs but it was getting late and we didn't really get to appreciate those, either. 

Years later, despite all that bad luck, I wanted to take my in-laws. They'd been to Taiwan a few times but never really gotten to see the country's natural beauty. So we bought tickets -- to Hualien this time -- on the Puyuma Express and I hired a private driver through KKDay who promised to include the cliffs. I asked local friends for a hotel recommendation, and booked Just Sleep. We had a marvelous time, and I was able to manage the family trip in Mandarin with no issue. I was able to replicate this travel itinerary with my sister years later. This time, our KKDay-booked driver was named Bread. Not Brad (I asked). He wanted the universe to fill his life with bread, he explained. 

This little walk through time is metaphorically related to what I want to say, but I'll let you decide on exactly how.

But here is where it begins: while my sister and I gazed up at those impossibly steep marble walls, I reflected on all the criticism I’ve heard recently about Taiwan.

The traffic is horrible. Raising a family in Taiwan’s drudgery-heavy work culture is so impossible that many people either aren’t doing it, or have moved abroad. Salaries are too low. The banking system has long been the subject of mockery. There is no real path to citizenship for most of us permanent folks

Friends complain (quite rightly) that “make-up days” for extra days off are ridiculous; Taiwanese people already have some of the longest working hours in the world — just give them the day off! Even my sister, who used to live here, said that she left initially because she felt she’d “outgrown” Taipei. What she seems to have meant was that there were no useful career opportunities, and that meant it was time to go.

Worst of all, I remember watching coverage of abuses against migrant workers in Qatar preceding the World Cup and couldn't help but think, the system we're all pointing fingers at there doesn't sound much different from what goes on in Taiwan. It's a glaring issue, and the main systematic problem that makes it impossible to say that Taiwan is a wholly wonderful country.

I considered all of the upcoming critical posts that I haven’t written yet. They’re pretty diverse — one discusses the new and absolutely hellish system for sending packages abroad. Another is more personal, about health issues I’ve been facing that are somewhat related to my reduced blogging output. 

Is Taiwan really that bad? I thought. Is it so horrible that people are pushing to get out, and nothing works as it should?

It’s difficult to accept this, even when the various criticisms are either correct, or debatable but not wrong per se. Traffic problems really don’t compare well to, say, Japan. The banking system is indeed archaic; I’m unlikely to ever be a homeowner because I’m seen as more of a flight risk than some rich Taiwanese asshole who actually would flee the country to avoid debt. Like I could do that! I’ll probably never be a citizen and am not satisfied with “change is slow” explanations. Salaries are low. Work culture is unacceptable. People do leave. Career opportunities are not particularly robust. Even as a teacher — the easiest career path for an English L1 user — I could make more in many other countries in Asia. I stay in Taiwan because I want to be in Taiwan. 

But then I look up again at all that beauty and have a hard time accepting that it really is that bad. Of course, I’m not Taiwanese and I’ll never know what it’s like to live here as a local. The closest I’ll ever get is an approximation as a person with a middle-class income (and no local support beyond the friends I’ve made). 

Despite issues surrounding citizenship and securing the basics of a normal middle class life — like, say, a mortgage — it’s hard to argue that Taiwan has been bad. I can’t imagine I ever would have become a teacher, let alone a teacher trainer, in the US. In Taiwan I’ve built a career I’m happy with, enjoyed a wonderful marriage, made good friends both local and foreign, and had the opportunity to travel extensively. 

Of course, as a foreigner, I can never say that’s the whole story. There’s surely some selection bias, but local friends and students have also expressed a love for Taiwan that’s impervious to criticism. Life is more affordable here than Singapore or Japan, they say. Some have lived in China for a stint, or spent extensive time there for business. It sucks, they say. Taiwan is so much better. No one harasses you for being Taiwanese or not wanting to be part of China. They ask how Americans cope with our garbage “health care system”. 

“We mostly don’t,” I say. “Basically either you’re lucky or you die too soon.”

They ask how we cope with Gun Culture. 

“We mostly don’t,” I repeat. “If you’re white you’re probably fine. Otherwise every day, every traffic stop, every public festival, is a gamble.” 

“Yikes,” they reply. They’re right. 

Compared to China’s authoritarianism, Japan’s sexism, Singapore’s cost of living, and America’s various dangers, unruly traffic just…doesn’t seem that bad? The banking system is annoying but not life-destroying. I don’t know what to say about low pay and horrendous work culture. But it’s not like other countries are problem-free. Most say they have no real desire to leave Taiwan. It’s not perfect but it’s a pretty good place to live, they insist. They don’t think it’s puzzling that I’d leave the US and decide to live here. 

That said, it’s not as though the criticisms are incorrect. Every last one makes a salient point. 

And yet, despite all this plus my own personal criticisms, I just can’t bring myself to spend all day slamming Taiwan. I visit other countries, including the country of my birth, and in most ways, Taiwan compares favorably. Occasionally I land in other cities that, in another life, I might have considered home. Istanbul was glorious (but as an Armenian, I’m just not sure how I’d feel about it long-term). I’m writing this from Mexico City. I could live here, but ultimately I know I won’t leave Taiwan. 

Why? Seriously, why, despite all the valid criticism? Well, I often get asked why I came to Taiwan, and I can’t answer that. I was curious, and not planning to live there forever. That changed, and I can answer why I chose to stay. 

My ideal home would have a few key points in its favor: it has to be a democracy with basic human rights enshrined in law (I understand that no country on earth makes these rights perfectly accessible). I tried living in a country that lacked this -- China -- and it turned out to be untenable.  Taiwan isn’t perfect in this regard (no country in the world is), but it's on a trajectory of progress.

I also want to feel comfortable as a woman. All countries struggle with endemic sexism, but compared to the rest of Asia, Taiwan offers pretty solid women's equality.

Health care is important too; I left the US in part because I didn't want to wake up one day and find out The Machine decided I was too poor and deserved to die.

I want to live in what might typically be called an advanced or developed country (I don’t think a politically correct way of expressing this exists). Maybe I’m a bit of a princess, but I do want to live somewhere where things generally work. 

And, of course, I want to live in a country that is at least making progress toward liberal ideals. I don't think any country has actually gotten there yet, but again, compared to the rest of Asia, Taiwan is doing alright.

Taiwan checks all those boxes. It’s not perfect, but it’s not the screaming shithole many portray it to be. And over the years, as my local competencies have improved, and my understanding of Taiwan increased, I feel far more affection for the country than dislike. That’s true even when I have sincere criticisms. 

Back in the early 20th century, my problematic fave described her first view of Taiwan: 

Formosa, that little-known island in the typhoon-infested South China Sea, so well called by its early Portuguese discoverers - as its name implies - "the beautiful". Indeed, it was the beauty of Formosa that first attracted me....I shall never forget the first glimpse that I caught of the island as I passed it...there it lay, in the light of the tropical sunrise, glowing and shimmering like a great emerald, with an apparent vividness of green that I had never seen before, even in the tropics. During the greater part of the day it remained in sight, apparently floating slowly past - an emerald on a turquoise bed…


Most likely, she was off the coast not far from the gorge I was standing in when I began to think about all of this. After all, is there a more beautiful sight of the Taiwanese coast than the Qingshui cliffs?

It’s preposterous to dismiss valid criticisms of a country because, hey, there are some beautiful views! At the same time, it’s exactly those views that can make one feel ever so small compared to the ebb and flow of history.

Considering the ways Taiwan rose from inheriting mostly disadvantages, told one authoritarian government to get bent, is now refusing to bend to another, and still managed to (more or less) get rich with (again, more or less) low wealth inequality, it's hard to declare that it's really so awful. 

I want to except human rights abuses against migrant workers here, as there is simply no excusing that. Everything else is as terrible as it is valid, but I have a hard time thinking of a country that doesn't have problems that are equally horrifying, or worse. Like any other country, Taiwan isn't perfect or terrible; it's messy and complicated and difficult to put into words. 

Of course I'd say all this: I chose Taiwan, and choose it every day I wake up in Taipei. I wasn't born here, and a big chunk of my life is steeped in white privilege. Theoretically, I could leave.

But then my local friends run businesses, cultivate interests, fall in love, get married and have children here. Plenty of people I know have left for a time to study or work, but I rarely meet people who want to build a whole new permanent life abroad. They seem more proud of Taiwan's success than they are interested in bashing it.

That doesn't mean there's no need to address the problems that do exist, just that Taiwan simply isn't an intractable garbage heap. 

In other words, maybe Taiwan isn't always great, but it isn't all bad, either. 


Thursday, November 3, 2022

Pill popping nation? Yes, but also Overworked Nation

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I've been taking time off blogging for a bit, because there's just too much going on in my life and I don't have energy to deal with it all and keep a blog. What's more, most of what I have to say is a big fat downer guaranteed to not help me win friends or influence anyone, so I'm waiting until I can say it more neutrally. 

Then I read Pill Popping Nation in the Taipei Times this morning, and felt like popping in -- pun very much intended -- with a quick reaction.

Even here, it's going to take me awhile to get to the point. Please bear with me; I'm writing this on the fly when I don't really have the time.

I'm a chronic insomniac, and have been for as long as I can remember. Some of my childhood memories include staring at red-blaring numbers (remember those clunky fake-wood alarm clocks from the '80s?) as they ticked past midnight on a school night, feeling my cat hop onto my bed as Mom's snores in the next room grew deeper, falling half asleep until I dreamed up black snakes under my pillow and jolted me awake, or lying there as the same six bars of some song I didn't even like played over and over in my head. 

Once, I wandered into the kitchen for some water and found Dad awake as well, typing away. I think we were still using real typewriters back then. Turns out staying up late to write runs in the family. 

I struggled through adolescence and early adulthood. I rarely excelled at office jobs because flextime wasn't popular in the early 2000s, and the usual 9am start time was deeply incompatible with my rebellious brain chemicals. The anxiety diagnosis came in my late 30s as I was wrapping up graduate school, the ADD diagnosis on its heels. It made sense; my solid academic work was churned out despite my study habits, not because of them.

Sleeping pills worked, and they were available in Taiwan. They were prescribed by a highly-recommended psychiatrist who did take the time to talk to me, so it didn't feel like I was reaching for an easy answer. Then pandemic travel eased slightly and I visited the US in May. Turns out my Dad and I are not the only ones in the family with these issues, and I was introduced to the magic of edibles and CBD tea.

Nothing has ever worked so well as those plant-based solutions. I was anxiety-free for a month. I took no pills. I slept like a child who'd snuck a few too many sips of her parents' drinks. I even wondered if it was New York City easing all my issues. But no -- the solution was herbal all along. And no, I do not mean Chinese medicine (which I've tried to no avail.)

What does any of this have to do with Han Cheung's excellent article?

Well, I know a thing or two about being up all night, most nights, to the point that it affects your concentration and work. I know about hanging out on the couch waiting for the Lendormin to kick in, because if I try to lie in bed all I'll get is a repetitive and unwanted brain concert, six bars for each song.

Frankly, I was surprised to learn that one in five Taiwanese people share the same issues. That number does indeed seem high.

Because I take sleeping pills, I know that the fundamental point of the piece is correct: Taiwan's National Health Insurance is fantastic -- I pay next to nothing for my tiny white solutions -- but it doesn't promote holistic care. My anxiety and insomnia are probably baked in, but if I wanted to figure out what else was going on, if anything, I'd probably have to take two weeks off to see a long list of doctors to have a look at everything from my heart to my ****. There would be no general practitioner guiding me or facilitating any of it.

Not that I'm complaining -- at least it would be affordable. In the US, I'd probably just suffer and get fired a lot because I can't sleep the way a 9-5 job demands, and probably still wouldn't be able to afford adequate medical care. Now, people actually think I'm good at work!

But there's more to the story of a nation of insomniacs than "you need holistic care, not pills". 

You know what this country is? Wonderful, but also overworked. Managers tend not to be particularly flexible; 9am is 9am even if they know you were working on that project until midnight, because they assigned it.

I've had accountants fall asleep in their English class because they were working 9am-2am for months straight. I know people who've gotten emails at three in the morning, and woken up to someone angry that they hadn't responded yet. Kids go to school at 7am and return from after-school school at 10pm. On the weekends they have expensive weekend school. How could one not expect those kids to grow up with severe sleep issues?

Regular business hours appear to be 9-8, or 8-10, or 7-11, or simply It Never Stops. Calling a meeting at 6pm, or handing someone an urgent assignment on Friday night (due Monday!) is so mundane that I can't even give you a specific example. They all glom together like a big goopy ball of exhaustion. 

I don't think office workers take 1pm naps because of some cultural thing. Although daytime naps can mess up a sleep cycle, I think they're common in Taiwan because everyone is overworked all the time. The napping starts in school because the kids are overworked, too.

You'd think exhaustion would help one sleep better, but it does the opposite. 

As for me, well, I'm freelance. I bring it on myself. I'm not tormented by bad managers. I like my work and I like money, so I say yes to everything and work out the scheduling later. But I can't deny what I see in everyone else: they signed up for a regular job and a salary, not to be tormented by garbage management after years of being tormented by taskmaster teachers handing out pointless busywork. 

Truly, I love Taiwan. And yes, holistic treatment matters in reducing dependency on sleeping pills. 

But the solution isn't "acupuncture", "relaxation methods" or "traditional Chinese medicine". 

Those things might help, though I'm not an enthusiastic supporter of TCM

The solution is two simple things that Taiwan is not even close to prepared to do:

The first is a comprehensive overhaul of work culture in Taiwan. Most managers probably know that they are terrible (maybe this is why they have trouble sleeping, too!) Society needs to come together to pressure them to be less so.

The second is to legalize medical marijuana, especially edibles (because smoking is bad for you, period.) At the very least, CBD needs to be made more available. It's a healthier, non-addictive alternative to Xanax and Ambien, which seem to be what most people take. In other words, the most effective herbal remedies are specifically the ones that aren't legal in Taiwan, but should be.

There's no acupuncture or breathing technique strong enough to fix the problem until we address not just the internal factors causing Taiwan's insomnia issue, but the external ones as well.

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

In Taiwan and Hong Kong, subversion is contextual

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I read an interesting piece in Hong Kong Free Press today, about Hong Kong residents mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The pull quote did indeed pull:

A business executive who gave her surname So admitted that Elizabeth II’s death had made her nostalgic and that she felt “less of a connection” with China’s Communist Party leaders in Beijing. “I only realised how good it was after I lost it,” she said, referring to the city since its handover.

An 80-year-old retiree, who gave his surname Poon, was holding a bunch of red lilies and spoke bluntly. “In the past we had human rights, equality before the law, and protections in many aspects,” he said.

“But now, I would not comment on the present, I dare not.”


This sort of thing catches my eye, because in my echo chamber, it's socially acceptable to mock, criticize and deride the royal family and feel nothing -- except perhaps pleasure -- at the death of a queen. I don't particularly disagree: I'm no monarchist and I do not believe some people are naturally born to higher stations than others. 

What would likely be less well-received is expressing sadness, condolences or fondness for a dead monarch and her family. I haven't expressed anything like this because I'm neither sad nor fond, but it feels like subversion to consider saying anything like it around my own friends. I know I sound like a "conservatism is the real subversion!" right-wing shock jock here, but bear with me. 

Of course, I'm aware that there are other social circles and echo chambers where the opposite is true, and there are people who suffered under British imperialism, and who don't appreciate being tone-policed for their lack of solemnity or grief.

I know in my gut, however, that there is a whole range of possible feeling about some events that don't boil down neatly to "White Supremacy and Exploitation" or "God Bless the Noble Queen".

How do I know this? 

Because I live in Taiwan, where people sometimes express nostalgia for the Japanese colonial era, even though it was exactly what the name implies: colonial. Taiwanese as second-class citizens, no human rights to speak of, cultural brainwashing disguised as "education", freedom of speech allowed to a degree or banned depending on whether the central government was feeling benevolent that year. 

One only feels "nostalgic" for an era like that if the era that came after it was even worse. 

You can see it in Hong Kong now: who would mourn the end of a foreign colonial power on your land, which did not grant Hong Kong anything like democracy? Who would have complex feelings about the death of that foreign colonizer's queen? 

Anyone who realizes that the current era is worse, it turns out. Which is to say many, if not most, Hong Kongers. Beyond news about absurd prosecutions under the National Security Law, you can see it in the demographics: just about anyone who can leave is doing so, or trying.

To the rest of the world, this might look like colonizer bootlicking. In fact, more than once I've seen it called that: Hong Kongers who miss the old British system and imply they do not care for their new, more local masters are called all sorts of names. Taiwanese who point out that the Japanese era looks pleasant in comparison to the KMT brutality that followed are similarly called brainwashed, colonizer-loving, kissing their own chains.

I assure you the opposite is true. Just because a new colonial master is more local (say, the CCP or KMT) does not make them better. In fact, they're likely to be worse, as few around the world want to call this colonialism what it is, when the colonizers and colonized "look the same". The international community mostly looking the other way -- "hooray, they're decolonized now, China will definitely be better for Hong Kong because they're all Chinese, so good luck"? This opens up whole new horizons for brutality! 

The same thing happens when either Taiwan or Hong Kong express more hope in countries like the United States, or want more connections with the international community (including the US and UK) than China. Don't they know these countries are the Great Satans, the Imperializers Supreme, the Bad Guys? Hong Kongers and Taiwanese are mocked for turning to the 'evil' West rather than embracing Chinese regional hegemony. 

Yes, it's leftists who do the most mocking. And when you tune out all the obviously paid trolls, a rather large proportion of them are Westerners (some white, some not) mocking Asians for being realistic about the horrors of CCP rule. 

In the end, this produces a set of opinions that look like bootlicking to your average Western leftist (or even progressive or naive liberal), but are actually subversive, hewing to the principles of the non-tankie left -- freedom, justice, human rights -- if not their most common modes of expression.

Indeed, I have friends who are not white and not monarchists, yet currently have complicated feelings about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, likely for exactly these reasons.

I think it's better to recognize and understand that, rather than dismiss any sort of sentimentality, say, the British monarchy, as an exercise in White supremacy or Medieval notions of nobles and subjects. It runs at times a little too close to Western liberals and leftists once again telling some Asians how to feel. 

"If you're anti-imperialist, you should oppose this" isn't wrong, per se; it is actually how I feel about the monarchy and a great deal of US and UK foreign policy. To someone in Hong Kong or Taiwan, however, it might sound rather like how the CCP wants them to feel. It's not the same as "you are obligated to hate those foreigners and their colonial structures in order to prove you are a true Chinese and embrace our colonial structures instead!" But on the surface, it's not far off. Refusing to buy into it at all is, in that sense, a form of subversion.

Taiwanese who express an interest in Japanese culture aren't brainwashed colonial subjects. It's part of Taiwanese history, and frankly a somewhat brighter part than the KMT's White Terror, if only in comparison. Hong Kongers who express nostalgia for the British colonial years aren't Western bootlickers. Neither is right-wing, "CIA", a "color revolution", "imperialist" or "colonizer-loving" for wanting the same access to human rights and democratic norms that Westerners, including the leftists who mock them, enjoy. That's true however imperfectly they are applied or accessed in the West.

Here, too, I understand the impulse of those Western leftists. I was raised in a liberal home (90s liberal, so still pretty problematic by today's standards), went to college and only really saw "colonialism and exploitation" through models of what we had done to the rest of the world. Imperialism was something white people did, colonizers were always "foreign" and you could tell because they looked different. "Decolonization" looked a lot like handing Hong Kong "back" to China or the US getting its nose out of Asian affairs. I had only a vague concept of the CCP's evils (I was young during Tiananmen Square, but I remember), and no concept of Taiwanese pro-democracy activism.

I had absolutely no context for someone saying "mourning the past is not a crime" as a way of pointing out that in their supposedly "decolonized" current society, mourning the past is absolutely a crime -- and shouldn't be.

In other words, Queen Elizabeth II is just one tableau onto which people, including Hong Kongers, expressing our own perspectives and emotions, but the result is a kind of funhouse mirror because that canvas is not remotely blank. It's not even flat. Whatever is expressed is about the queen, but also not about her at all. 

To us, the monarchy looks like a big fat cog in a system of class-based oppression. It's hard to wrap one's head around it taking on another quite opposite meaning in a different context: a yearning for freedom, or at least the simulacrum of it that was lost.

It would have been easy to fall into that same "America always bad, China must be better" trap, because I lacked context. There is a pre-2006 me who simply had no frame of reference for this particular type of subversion: for mourning a dead queen not because you love being a subject, but because the current government is so much worse. For looking further afield because your regional neighbor is a huge asshole who wants to subjugate and slaughter you. For nostalgia as resistance against a narrative pushed on society by more recent colonizers. 

Now, that context is clear. I hope you see it too.

Monday, July 4, 2022

The Light Generation

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Here are the things that swirl around my house and my head: it's the middle of the night, and I've taken the upper amount of anxiety and sleeping medication indicated by my doctor. My body is asking for more if it's to sleep, which I cannot give. Ambient light from outside provides just enough to navigate by, but no more than that.

Laptop in my lap, because I touched the black mound on my coffee table and it answered me with an annoyed prrrt. He's not supposed to be on the coffee table. Oh well. 

I am still angry to my core; I didn't know I had an aquifer of rage so voluminous. It's not that I was unaware that horrific injustices worse than the loss of Roe v. Wade happen around the world frequently; of course I knew that people in the US and beyond have been fighting them for longer than I've been alive. I thought, especially for Taiwan, that I had been regularly tapping into that cold, clear fury. I, too, am surprised it runs deeper. I suppose this is the difference between being an ally and being a person directly affected. (Even though I'm safe as a Taiwan resident, I'm still a US citizen with a uterus that is probably capable of bearing children.) 

This is affecting not just my sleep, but my work and life. It's a vise of anger during all hours, productive and not, that the infuriating debate over which human rights I get to have, and which I don't because I was born with complicated innards -- as decided mostly by people with different, simpler innards -- has even more real consequences.

It clarifies a lot, realizing that the people out there who thought they had an honest argument for why you are more of an egg sack than a human actually won something. But then the whole room fills with smoke.

While trying to manage my ire from Taiwan -- where I'm not of much help, but have been hunting for and donating to various sources -- I've been confronted with a more troubling self-truth. So many of the dark thoughts I know I should be managing, as I did during my first anxiety outbreak in 2020, aren't going away. What's worse, that's very clearly because I do not want them to. I won't detail every violent event I've imagined celebrating (most of them circle back to Molotovs; it's actually rather boring and repetitive -- Molotov this, Molotov that, you know, the usual). 

It is hard to focus beyond this shrieking wall of inchoate rage, to try and envision a world I don't want to burn to the ground. Yes, a single court ruling taking away my basic humanity in the country of my citizenship turned a boring center-left normie lib into a flaming anarchist.

But I don't want to talk about that. Too much, anyway.

Instead I'll focus on a deeper intransigence -- family. 

Friends and social media connections are easier to deal with -- if one supports the hijacking of a uterus for any reason, in ways we don't even violate corpses, then it's blammo for you. Get out of my life; we are not on speaking terms.

Family, though?

I love them very much. Many of them, I know, understand the importance not just of a woman's right to privacy and choice. Many understand that even if you support your loved ones, if you vote for people who will hurt them -- officials who have made it their life's work to do just that -- your support is shallow and hypocritical. 

Others, however, are less clear. People who have always been good to me, but drop hints that they voted for Trump, don't think I deserve full humanity as a woman, people who love me because we're related but genuinely wish that someday I will understand that God is real, and he prefers that women have subhuman status, not equal rights. 

Of course, I will never understand that because it is not true. 

I do not know who believes what exactly, because I'm afraid to ask. I have made it clear that I do not wish to be on speaking terms with anyone who thinks it is acceptable, should the circumstance arise, to force me to give birth to a child I do not want. But I'd prefer not to directly tell family members I care about that I cannot speak to them -- not until the federal law changes, or their opinions do. It would be fairly easy from Taiwan; I don't visit the US much anyway, and these are all extended family. It's hard to pull that plug, though. I both comfort and torture myself with the realization that they probably know exactly how I feel. 

There is nothing in the modern world that offers respite, let alone answers. The drugs don't make me worse, but they certainly don't work, either. So, of course, I turned to a book I cannot read. 

Last month, my immediate family and I spent a week cleaning out a packed storage unit. Inside were a stack of my great grandfather's books, mostly in Armenian. I asked an Armenian genealogy group to help translate the titles, and most turned out to be somewhat bland ecclesiastical reference materials. A plain brown tome simply called "Sermons" by a man surnamed Papazian. "The Radiance of the Bible" had a straightforward image of a Bible surrounded by light rays on the cover. These stirred no feeling, and I set them aside. A few I kept, even though I don't read or speak Armenian: most were cultural histories, one had stunning illustrations. 

The only religious title I kept was The Light Generation. It's a history of the Armenian Evangelical Movement, bound in dark leather decorated with swooping floral patterns. 

I wasn't attracted to it just for the cover: I'd already started playing with the words. The Light Generation. The Generation of Light. The Lightweight Generation, floating away like spent dandelion puffs as the diaspora spreads. A Generation of Lightweights, unable to fight as their descendants would for what is right, instead clinging to batty old conservatism. Or maybe we're the lighter generation; after all, they survived a genocide. 

The Generation of Light -- the light we make. Things are dark now, but we can generate light. Our generation can bring it forth. Or theirs did: maybe they were the Light Generation -- the light needed for their times, not ours -- and we have the Sisyphean task of finding our own light.

I can't read a single word of this book, much as I never had the chance to meet the man who owned it, and was too young to appreciate growing up with his widow, my great-grandmother. It's on my bookshelf all the same.

In the past year, I've been working through some heavy mental stuff by finding connections to past and family through amateur genealogical research. It would be a lie to say I haven't begun to write about it as well, but I'm unprepared to discuss the type and extent of that writing just yet. 

I can say this: people from the past are so much easier to work with. Most likely, I disagreed with almost all of them on social issues, perhaps even more strongly than I'd disagree with my conservative relatives now. 

But they are gone, and they did things I will never do. Surviving a genocide, watching your father led off to die, engaging in vigilante justice against criminals in your village, leading a church, raising three children, emigrating as refugees to the United States, rebuilding a family separated for months by arbitrary quota systems. Bringing their lives and images back into a living person's memory means I can accept that they (likely) believed things I wound find abhorrent, but I don't have to have a conversation with them, and considering their historical legacies in their own right is worthwhile regardless. It's a route back to family when I am not sure what extended family I can actually talk to right now. 

Certainly my mind could use the generation of some light. Rather like the dark living room, made moodier from the cool blue screen of a computer that should not be open, I don't know where to go from here. I've donated to all the resources, rage-posted for days straight. I don't know that any of it generates a speck of light. Maybe I'm a lightweight. I feel like I generate nothing; my generation has nothing.

Another book on my shelf (A Latter Day Odyssey by M.M. Koeroghlian) describes the ecumenical questions that beset the Armenian Evangelical Church in Athens, during the time that my great-grandfather worked there. The seminary and church community was plagued by dissent for a time, between conservative "mainline" types who believed in "simple" faith. That is, dogmatic faith in which a religious teaching is true because it was revealed to be true through miracles and scripture by in some way by an interventionist God. Believe in that God and his "miracles" and your path is correct. Do not ask questions.

These mainliners were worried that the School of Religion was teaching more "modernist" scripture: deist views eschewing 'revealed truth' and associated miracles, pointing instead to an innate knowledge of right and wrong in everyone, through which an understanding of God could be found through reason and observation of the natural world. Not religious strictures handed down by an angry God who blesses and smites, but moral guidance woven into the natural way of things.

Theoretically, according to this philosophy, even non-Christians could be good people worthy of Heaven if they understood and followed these natural laws. (I suppose these pastors felt it would be better, however, if the non-Christians converted.) 

Despite my own atheism, given what I know of my great-grandfather's personality, I have every reason to believe he was more of a modernist, not someone who put much stock in miracles or dogmatism.

As an atheist, I don't really believe in any of this, but there is some room in my thoughts for natural law and ethics. Of the schools of Christian theory, this is one of the least offensive. For what it was at the time, I can say it generated light.

Of course then, the question is: which ethics are natural? Would these enlightened Christian modernists of the early 20th century now accept that women's bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right, to be protected at any cost? 

I doubt it. 

But they probably would have believed that, even if a woman terminating a pregnancy ought to feel sorry for her "sin", that God would not smite or strike her or anyone over it. No cataclysms. No disasters. Just a choice she made, for which only God could judge her.

I don't believe this either, as it is quite plainly not ethically wrong to terminate a pregnancy. It is ethically wrong to deny a woman her humanity, even for a moment. There is no special case that changes this natural logic.

They likely wouldn't have agreed with me. But t
heir light generation has passed, and mine is alive. If they believed an appeal to reason and natural law would return sufficiently consistent ethics across vast swaths of generational and cultural shift, they were mistaken.

This story is a difficult one. The road to the past is complicated, and in parts I have to fill in what I think happened. It's not so simple as saying I'm mentally sinking, but seeking solace in the stories of the past. I don't agree with everything those from the past would say. I'm not yet uplifted. I do not float.

But maybe the modernists of the past would be able to grasp that cultural norms do, indeed, change over time. That if nature reveals truths to us through reason, that our interpretation of that reason would certainly change as our society does. That what was seen as  "good" or "right" in the past may not be now. And perhaps that the god (and the good) they believe in simply would not want women to suffer and die. 

I don't know what The Light Generation says about any given generation in the history of Armenian Protestantism. Even if I were religious, I can't read or speak Armenian, so I doubt I'll ever read it. I don't even know if the title, in its original language, allows for such wordplay: Armenian is an Indo-European language, but it sits on a lonely branch. I do not know if generation can have two meanings in it, just as I don't know if those who once read it would think I'm improperly using their stories, or updating them for a new era.

But I have decided that every generation has the opportunity to be the Light Generation. Generating light isn't hard; some moral questions are complex, but some are quite clear. 

In this case, uphold women's unquestioned equal access to human rights at all times -- in fact, anyone's equal access regardless of their reproductive organs -- with no exceptions.

Maybe it's just a thread to hold onto -- long-dead ancestors who can't talk back, when I'm not sure who I can speak with alive. I can't even say it will be a useful road to get my own mind out of the dark pit of unmitigated fury, to a place of light generation. Perhaps it will. 

Or perhaps not.