Throw Eggs At SCOTUS

I was writing this whole other thing, but you know what? Fuck it. I'm infuriated. Enraged. Engorged with burning hatred. 

And as an American woman living in Taiwan, I feel both uniquely lucky and uniquely helpless. 

When the Supreme Court Republicans of the United States (SCROTUS) decided that I, as an American citizen with a uterus, do not have a constitutional right to basic humanity and bodily autonomy by eviscerating Roe v. Wade, my first thought was that my greatest desire on earth is to visit the United States, buy a dozen eggs, leave them out in the hot sun for a day or two, and then chuck them at the people who think it's okay for me to be treated like an incubator rather than a fucking human being.

I am not sure those herpes sores on the taint of America understand that they deserve to get hit with eggs, but I assure you they do. 

I'm generally not a fan of the sort of violence that grievously harms people (though some people, I won't cry for). But protest violence -- non-lethal projectiles such as eggs? -- that's fair game. Apparently doing this can result in a charge of vandalism, which I don't have a problem with. I'm not the sort to aim for the face, and anyhow, rotten egg seems like it'd be a tough smell to get out of judge's robes. The only bigger stench is the foetid pit where their souls should be. It's hard to top that, but rotten eggs are a good start. 

To put it another way, I'm not going to put a lightbulb on a chair where Clarence Thomas is about to sit. I'm not about that. But if, say, he happened to sit on a lightbulb and get glass shards in his asshole, I wouldn't exactly feel bad about it. 

Both fortunately and unfortunately, however, I'm not in the United States. As an American, I do care about the fact that the country of my birth is going straight down the shitter, however. I care about all of the American women who might, depending on what state they live in and how much money they have, be treated as more chattel than human. I remember being young and broke in America; it's not easy to travel to another state for a medical procedure if you don't have any money. I never felt that particular hardship, but I could barely afford to see a doctor locally. The pain of being broke with an unwanted pregnancy, far from a facility to get the care you need, is surely horrific. 

I've done the math, however, and having just come back from the USA, I don't really have the resources to fly back immediately to go protest. This adds a good pour of gasoline to what is already an inferno of incandescent rage. There is so little I can do besides donate to appropriate organizations. Will there be a protest in Taipei? Probably. If there isn't, maybe I'll organize one. (Frankly the only reason I'm not doing so right now is that I'm not sure what good it would do. It'd get in the local news and maybe I'd earn a few pats on the back, but that's not very meaningful.) 

It just feels so...helpless. And hopeless. 

And yet, I keep wondering if I have a right to such despondency. I live in Taiwan where abortion access isn't perfect, but at least it exists. Though proposed changes to the law don't seem to be going anywhere, the trend is toward making it more accessible, not less.

I don't live in any state where I might lose my basic rights, because I don't live in any state at all. I care about the women in the US who are facing a terrifying future, but the fact is, I'm not one of them. I'm not there. Do I have the right to feel helpless and hopeless when ultimately I still have the privilege of abortion access, which so many other American women suddenly lost yesterday?

The whole issue has now pushed me to confront the ways I'm still tied to the United States -- my  family, my passport, my home culture (as much as it might disgust me) -- and the fact that I can't really choose not to be. I've spent time in the US for family reasons before, and as long as I have close blood ties there, I might have to again. Even if I were about to renounce my citizenship, which I'm not, I can't just not be from the place I am from. 

But I can promise you I have thought about it. 

If there were any chance of my moving back there, ever, that has now evaporated. I already wasn't planning to, but now I actively refuse to consider it. Perhaps it's where I'm from, and perhaps I'm a citizen. But Taiwan is my home. If I ever have to leave Taiwan -- say, if China successfully invades and kicks me out -- I certainly won't return to the USA. 

But I will probably visit, and I still think we should throw some fucking eggs at fucking SCOTUS.

I’m also not interested in any talk about bipartisanship on Taiwan right now. It’s not that I don’t think it matters; rather, now is not the fucking time. If you were unaware that advocating for Taiwan as an American is disproportionately hard on Americans with specific anatomy, I hope now you are. I don’t care if Republicans also support Taiwan. I want nothing to do with them. I don’t care if you (the reader) and I agree on Taiwan issues, if you are anti-abortion. As of now, if you are anti-abortion, we are enemies. Period. 

Oh yeah, and if you voted for the guy who packed the court with these fuckhags, not only do I advise you not to read Lao Ren Cha -- it's not for you, and I don't want it to be for you -- but if I know you in person we are no longer on speaking terms. Even if I don't know you, we are enemies. I don't want to hear about "unity or "not judging others" or "finding common ground". I quite literally do not care. You didn't respect my humanity enough to not vote for that shitstained hemorrhoid, so I owe you nothing. Not kindness, not civility, not a single fucking word.

My deepest apologies to the People's Republic of China and their 5,000 years of culture

Update:

I may make fun of the Chinese government, and it is certainly well-deserved, but I am really very sorry to hear about the bus fire that killed at least 26 in Taiwan including 24 Chinese. It's important to remember that as much as we may make fun of public discourse or terrible leaders, that it is never okay to make light of real, individual human lives. I really am saddened by this, and extend condolences to the families affected. 

In solidarity with the artists and entertainers who have been forced recently to apologize to the People's Republic of China for being so, so wrong and unforgivably arrogant as to have views that differ from those that the Chinese government and its phalanx of paid Internet trolls, I would like to express my most sincere and heartfelt apologies to the People's Republic of China and their eminently competent, reasonable leaders. This includes the Chinese people of Chinese Taipei, Chinese South China Sea and the Chinese Moon which has been Chinese since antiquity.

Photo created by me, originally posted here (you can go ahead and like it if you want, but don't feel obligated)

I have many things to apologize for. For example, I am deeply sorry that I live in a society that treats women better than your society does, and one in which laws regarding women's rights are superior. For example:

I must also apologize for the embarrassing situation in which, on a daily basis, I breathe cleaner air than 1.7 billion Chinese people. A big nose foreigner such as myself has no right to breathe healthier air than the great and superior Chinese race of China, a country where everyone is exactly the same race (Chinese) with no deviations.

I apologize that I only speak one dialect of the Chinese language, and have only basic proficiency in another. I understand that there are many dialects to this one singular language and it is my weaker, less intelligent, nearly ape-like foreign monster brain that has made it impossible for me to also comprehend the entirety of the Chinese language, including Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuanese, Uighur, Tibetan, Miao and Dong. If I were Chinese with a superior intellect I would be able to instantly understand all of these languages as they are closely related, mutually intelligible and in fact inseparable under the rubric of "the Chinese language". I am a lazy and incompetent student as I have only learned the Mandarin aspect of the Chinese language, and I deeply regret that my scholarship is lacking.

I am deeply remorseful for living in a free society in which I can express my views freely in written and spoken form, criticize political leaders, participate in protests if I so choose and generally enjoy the protections of basic human rights and the rule of law. I am very sorry, furthermore, that I prefer living such a materialistic Western running dog lifestyle to...not doing that.

I am very sorry that, while that gaggle of pre-intermediate buttclowns in the Communist Party of China talks of China's progress in gender equality, that marital rape is illegal in Taiwan but is not considered 'rape' in China. My most heartfelt apologies for finding this utterly barbaric and unacceptable.

I am also sorry that I have not sufficiently supported Chinese efforts to reclaim its ancestral territory in Canada, the North Pole, the Solar System and the Andromeda Galaxy. I understand that these are sacred and inalienable parts of China since antiquity and reflect with perfect accuracy the historical borders of China during its earliest dynasties before the Big Bang.

I realize that my Western capitalist dissolute ways and immoral, irrational viewpoints are unacceptable to the fragile, sensitive hearts of the People's Republic of China - hearts which beat as one with national pride and glory - and I would like to express my most considerate and long-meditated-upon contrition for immorally and irrationally daring to criticize the united wishes of over one billion superior Chinese with my illogical, China-hating ways. I fully accept that I can never understand China's 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000000,00,000,0,0,0,,,,000000,0 years of culture nor can anyone who was not born of the superior Chinese race, which is Han Chinese, but also everyone else in China, although they are inferior to the Han as well as superior to everyone else because they are inalienably Chinese.

Finally, I would like to apologize for the fact that 習近平的菊花茶 is so bitter, but Chinese must drink it every day.

* * *

On a serious note, I had started a post in which I wrote about how China's motivations for aggressiveness in the South China Sea didn't worry me, and the actual apologies issues by many Taiwanese pop stars didn't either (the smartest comment regarding that was made by Lin Fei-fan recently, whose post you can read here - the gist as my crappy Chinese understands it is that we shouldn't blame individual artists who feel forced for economic reasons or by their agencies and promoters to apologize for having done nothing wrong, but rather to change the way we support the arts in Taiwan so that such artists can find a local base and local support, in terms of popularity and financing).

What worries me is that China is frighteningly successful at slowly building - training, even - a sense of blind nationalist fervor. An entire army, one billion or so strong (or close enough to seem like it), of trolls both self-aware and not-, of useful idiots and of economic intimidation that is scarily good at humiliating and subjugating anyone and everyone they wish to. This, I was (and am) afraid is a far more terrifying prospect than missiles and soldiers. Those are not only unlikely to be deployed in the near term, but easily make China look like the aggressor internationally. Far more horrifying is this sort of thing, where you can't quite pin it definitively on the Chinese government doucheparrots, but you know they're involved in it somehow. You can't quite get the egg to stick to their face as they humiliate your stars internationally and make you look weak. It might not bring nations to their knees but it is fantastically undercutting and detrimental to national morale.

It is especially frightening in a world where Taiwan rarely makes international news for anything other than business, or if it does it's relegated to a side note in a story that uses China as its lede. How can you fight back when nobody is listening to you?

I feel slightly differently now. With this simple contest, which has made global headlines in multiple languages (well, at least Chinese and English) and shown the world that Taiwanese can and will fight back and they will do so with two of the most potent weapons known to public discourse - satire and sarcasm - well, that gives me some hope. Far from being 'childish' or 'meaningless', there is a reason why humor is so strictly policed by authoritarian regimes. In political rhetoric, it is approaching a nuclear option. This entire contest is a brilliant show of social media savvy - if you grab international headlines, you are pretty damn savvy - as well as the sharp level of satire and sarcasm that Taiwanese regularly employ.

Missiles and soldiers? Scary. But the death of intelligent discourse? Way scarier. As long as you keep talking about things, as long as you keep exchanging ideas and progressing in understanding of issues through rhetoric and discussion, as long as you don't stop fighting and don't shut your mouth, a light is left on somewhere even in the darkest times. When that light is quashed by a billion angry trolls so you can't hear other free-minded people above the static and din, you've got far bigger problems than you might think.

Side note: if you are one of those idiot Westerners who think 'Asians don't understand sarcasm', you are simply wrong and this proves you wrong. You may now go back to drinking beer in your dank expat cave and generally ceasing to comment on things you don't understand because you don't have local friends. BYE).

If Taiwan can keep this up - fighting attempted humiliation with biting wit - they'll have half a chance in the media battle for the attention of the world. And China will be exactly what it deserves: well and truly fucked.

Update #2: I'm moving the text from here to a new post as it will likely get lost amid all of my sincere apologies to the fragile hearts and minds of the leaders of the People's Republic of China and their Internet troll army.

In Defense of the 90-minute lunchtime nap and the convenience store sleepers

Greetings from Kaohsiung! I taught a workshop down here today and, seeing as that meant my HSR tickets were free, I've decided to spend the weekend (Brendan will be joining me soon). I'll be doing something similar in Tainan next week.

Anyway, I have a quick little thing to say, a dispatch from the field I guess you could call it.

When I walked in to the office with my co-teacher, it was just at the end of the 90-minute lunch break (12-1:30) which, as many of you know, is a pretty normal thing in Taiwan. Generally you have a half-hour or one-hour lunch, and then lights are turned down in the office and people often rest or even take naps for the rest of the time (I suppose if you wanted to go out to a restaurant you could also do that).

I used to, if not laugh at this, at least smile. My baseline assumption was that people often don't get enough sleep in Taiwan due to crazy working hours and impossible school expectations, therefore they have to nap in the middle of the day. I viewed it as a symptom of a problem.

A lot of expats do this - and I'm not pretending I'm better than they are, because I did it too in this case. They see something different from their own culture and immediately think of ways that it's worse than how things are done where they came from. Perhaps only later, after an initial period of rejection (even mildly so), do many come around to, if not a better way of doing things, a way that works considering how things work in this other country.

And you know what? It is true, working hours in this country are crazy - when you consider yourself as getting home 'early' at 7 or 8pm, that's crazy. And education expectations ARE nuts - children should not be studying at buxibans after school 5 days a week and on Saturday until 10pm or later, and still have homework to do on top of that. It is likely that this does have something to do with the 'lunchtime nap' culture at so many Taiwanese offices.

I have to say, though, that despite all of the above being a real problem, I've come around to the nap time idea. I have a non-traditional work schedule myself, but I sometimes come home from a lunchtime class, carve out a half an hour or an hour to nap, drink a cup of coffee and then continue with my work day.

First of all, napping is not necessarily something people do just because they are under-rested - even when I got a full night's sleep, sometimes after a busy morning and knowing I have a busy evening coming up, I do want more than a one-hour break before I have to be up at bat again for the rest of the day. Sometimes, that extra half hour isn't necessarily needed to sleep per se, but because a 90-minute break is more restorative than a one-hour break. I feel like I really got to give my mind enough time to rest, and I imagine locals feel the same. I don't always sleep - sometimes I veg out on the couch or just order a pot of tea and sit in an armchair in a cafe. I might read a book or pet my cats. I try my best not to surf the Internet, because that's not restful (it is pleasantly distracting, though).

Even if you work a more normal day - let's say you can leave at 6 - I do feel like a longer, 90-minute break is likely to make you more productive in the afternoon, just because you feel like you got a real rest. I know when I have my afternoons free, I feel more effective in my evening classes than when I don't (and I don't always).

Secondly, you've probably noticed this isn't just an office thing. Laborers and workers lay out on the floor in shops under construction or in the shade on sidewalks. I once - and I am not joking - saw one sleeping half in a manhole, with his upper half on the sidewalk, near the Youth Park. People crowd 7-11s and Family Marts to sleep at the tables. Drivers park their taxis or trucks and lean back for naps. I've joked that every coffee shop has to have at least one businessman sleeping at a table with a half-finished cup of coffee for feng shui purposes, rather like the fish tanks you often see near the doors of businesses. He should be oriented to the West or facing the cash register to bring maximum profit to the business.

I have come to kind of admire folks who can just lay out like this, snooze away on a sidewalk or at a convenience store and not give two craps about how they look, whether they are snoring or drooling, who sees them or what sort of germs might be currently invading the skin on their faces. I aspire to have such a "give zero fucks" attitude. I mean, I'm getting there, I already give very few fucks indeed, but they give ZERO, if not a negative number of fucks, and that is really the best goal in life. Before I leave Taiwan I WILL take a nap on a shady sidewalk just to show I've made it, and I am a better person for it.

Of course, it also makes sense given the climate here. Half the country is tropical year-round. In the summer it's straight up tropical in the entire country. In the winter the weather is absolutely depressing in Taipei - all dark clouds and rain and humid chilliness without central heating. I can understand the need for something like a siesta to either restore oneself in the face of yet another day of black clouds and cold rain, or to be still and cool during the hottest part of the day.

So, I acknowledge there are some issues with overwork, both in employment and in school, in Taiwan. I have to say, though, that I've come around to the 90-minute lunches and after-lunch naps. That change not only in how I see these naps but also the fact that I now engage in them when I get a chance has been a good reminder not to look first at why the way a different culture does something is ultimately worse than the way mine (or yours) does, but first to look for how and why it works in a local context. That doesn't mean every practice is ultimately better or just different - my personal pet peeve, scooters that speed on the right past buses that are stopped and letting passengers on and off, which is a risk to the lives of the passengers as well as the scooter driver, for instance, is unequivocally worse - but it's worth considering positively first.