Mythbusting Dual Nationality

When I first moved to Taiwan, dual nationality for long-term foreigners was not even on the radar. At the time, I wasn't too concerned: I didn't think I'd come to care this much about the country, did not imagine I'd stay for more than a few years, and if I did, figured that permanent residency would be sufficient.

Now, it's a concerted movement, and we've even had some victories (sort of).

With this sort of movement, there will always be detractors. The best we can do is defeat their arguments and see that they remain a minority without derailing us. I don't really understand them: it feels like opposing for the sake of opposing, often not really understanding what it is exactly that they are against (this also seems true for a lot of arguments made by conservatives). Immigrants against immigrants for no good reason at all.

In any case, there are a few things that I've heard from members of this camp, and I'd like to gather them all here so that I don't have to keep repeating myself when I see these things come up again and again.


We can't just let anyone fresh off the plane get citizenship!

Nobody is suggesting this - it's a massive straw man. Pretty much every advocate of dual nationality agrees that there must be restrictions on it. A general consensus seems to be 5 years for the APRC is fair (though the "no break in your visa" rule is a bit archaic when plenty of vindictive bosses will ensure you do have a break - how about no period of illegal stay in Taiwan or an easier process for changing jobs that doesn't allow a boss to screw over a foreigner this way?), and another 5 years for citizenship. I would even accept a detailed application process. Quite literally nobody thinks that you should be allowed to just walk off a plane and be granted this.

Even with children who were born here to non-citizen parents, as birthright citizenship is not likely to happen, the obvious solution is to give them permanent residency when one parent gains it, and then the same waiting period for citizenship we all have to go through.


If we hand out citizenship like candy, Taiwan will be swamped! 

Not really. Permanent residency (the APRC) is available to all professional workers in Taiwan now, but very few of them apply - there maybe a few thousand in the entire country who have it. This is because most do intend to only be in Taiwan temporarily, and either leave of their own volition or are transferred out by their companies long before the 5 years' residency necessary to obtain an APRC. Or, they stay but are on a JFRV (essentially a marriage visa), which confers similar-but-different rights.

It is likely that, with so few APRC holders, even fewer would seek citizenship.

Secondly, most people who would seek citizenship are already here. I don't anticipate a huge influx of people. Things would stay more or less the same, except one group of people who has made Taiwan their home will have more equal rights and have that relationship to Taiwan made official. That's all.

Thirdly, Taiwan is an aging country which isn't replacing its own population. I don't think the country can grow safely grow much denser, but in terms of simply maintaining a youthful and productive population, immigration is a pretty clear answer. Immigration would actually benefit Taiwan in this way more than people realize.


Sure, maybe not many Westerners will apply, but we'll be swamped...by Southeast Asians!

So? Do you think that's a problem simply based on where they come from - like there is a problem with them simply because of their origin? If so, that's racist (no really, that's like a classic definition of racism).

Secondly, I doubt it. Most SE Asians who stay do so because they married locally, and as such have a visa regardless. Something like one in every five children born in Taiwan today has a foreign parent. The connection is real and already exists. Those who want to stay but don't marry are also a fairly small percentage of those who come here to work - most, rather like Westerners, intend to eventually return to the country of their birth after earning money in Taiwan for a few years. I just don't think this will be the problem people imagine.

Thirdly, Southeast Asian laborers working in Taiwan have few rights and little recourse when they encounter problems (which range from being abused by their captors employers, not being paid for work they do (that is, slavery), rape, extortion and more. I can't imagine a scenario where it's a bad idea to give them more rights and better treatment.

Finally, and yes I do think this is unfair, remember that foreign laborers in Taiwan, as opposed to "foreign professionals", do not have the same path to an APRC. Westerners - most professionals are Western, most laborers SE Asian - already have an advantage. That's not right, and I would like to see a change, but the argument above is false simply because this is the way things currently are.


An APRC is sufficient if you want to stay in Taiwan.

No, it isn't. Not when you get old.

A lot of people think we just want the right to vote. In fact, while that matters to me, it's toward the bottom of the list of reasons why I want dual nationality. At the top of the list are all the things I will need to arrange if I am going to live out my days here.

We cannot get a mortgage here - it's not illegal, it's that banks won't lend to non-citizens - but with the amount of money we are able to save at Taiwanese pay rates, we won't be able to pay rent well into our old age. At some point, probably within the next ten years, we will need to buy a place to live. Even if we could rent forever, Taiwanese landlords don't like to rent to the elderly. It's just not a good plan for the future, even though neither of us is very big on home ownership for its own sake (it doesn't seem to be a particularly good investment if that's all you're buying it for, but it does make sense if you are trying to arrange things so that you have a paid-off place to live someday).

I'm not even sure how we would be able to keep our National Health Insurance after retirement, though I am told it is possible.

At some point I am intending to go after a more academic job. These jobs tend to come with pensions, but APRC holders are not eligible for them (I believe they get a lump sum payment which is less than the pension typically pays out).

And finally, although I hope never to need it, if it ever came down to one of us being incapacitated and needing a home health aid, there are subsidies available through the government for citizens that are not available to non-citizens.

All of these things are important if we are going to live here in our old age, and none are possible on an APRC alone. Without citizenship, I've run the numbers and it is not possible for us to stay in Taiwan forever. We are not spendthrifts, and we are not lazy. This is just how the numbers roll out for two normal, non-wealthy people.

It is, truly, a dealbreaker.


You're just selfish, thinking about what you are entitled to. Me, I'm so wonderful, I just want to contribute to this country without demanding entitlements in return like a selfish person, with your selfish demand for "rights". 

It's not selfish to want equal rights and to build a normal life in the place you call home. That quite literally doesn't make any sense. It's natural and normal to want rights, and to be able to live as an equal where you are, if you have been there long enough to put down roots.

In fact, I don't even understand the relationship drawn here. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Wanting equal and reciprocal rights when we've already made Taiwan our home (we didn't just land here and demand them - nobody did, at least nobody sane) is not incompatible with wanting to contribute to Taiwan. It's not like once you want rights, you suddenly don't care about the country anymore, and saying you don't "need" these rights doesn't suddenly make you a selfless martyr for the country.

Besides, I am sure these self-professed angels will be first in line for a new passport if we successfully gain these rights for all. I doubt, then, that they will look back and realize they let us do all the work while they sat around casting aspersions, and they are now benefiting from our activism.


But it's hard for Taiwanese to immigrate to your country. Why do you think you are more deserving?

I won't deny that it is difficult for a Taiwanese person to immigrate to the US and obtain citizenship, especially in today's political climate. However, a path does exist for them which does not exist for me because of Taiwan's laws, not the laws of my birthplace. Besides, it's simple reciprocity: Taiwanese are allowed to have dual nationality, so there is no reason to withhold it from naturalized citizens. Few, if any, other countries have such a stunning lack of reciprocity, mostly stemming from ethnocentric and racially prejudiced ROC laws written in the 1920s.

And yes, I think I'm just as deserving as any current Taiwanese citizen who lives here, works here, participates in society and contributes to Taiwan in whatever way I can. We shouldn't have to give up everything so the church can pay our bills while we work in a rural village to both do good things and also win converts to that same church in order to qualify.


If you really want to be Taiwanese, then renounce your original nationality. Simple! 

No, it's not simple.

Let's set aside the fact that naturalized citizens face a threat that Taiwanese don't, which is that if at any point Taiwan is annexed by China, we will be immediately stateless. I'm setting that aside because, while Taiwanese won't be "stateless", they would become Chinese citizens and that is only marginally better (and quite unacceptable to most Taiwanese), and also because I think it's unlikely.

Instead, let's look pragmatically at what many of us face: in my case, I have a single dad near retirement age to worry about. Taiwanese quite eloquently point out that they don't give up their Taiwanese nationality because they have aging family members in Taiwan they might have to return to look after. Well, it's exactly the same for me. I might have to return to the US someday, temporarily, to be there for my dad. I can't do so as a tourist, if they let me in at all (the US is not that welcoming to renounced citizens) - the length of time I might need to be there is indeterminate, and I'm not rich; I'd need to work. We can't afford to pay someone else to take care of him, either, should it come to that.

I have no real loyalty to the USA, but giving up my American citizenship means quite literally abandoning my father. Generally speaking, Taiwanese are too "filial" to do something like that. Frankly, so am I.

That's not even getting into the injustice of a double standard for born vs. naturalized citizens - someone born here doesn't have to make that choice, so neither should I.


You're a foreigner - why SHOULD you have the right to vote? I wouldn't want a bunch of foreigners trying to change Taiwan once they get political power. 

I highly doubt that a few thousand - and I doubt there would be many more than that - foreign citizens would have any real impact. I'm not even sure we'd vote in a bloc. But even if we did have more power through political representation, so what? So people who call Taiwan home have a say in how that home is governed? Oh no, call the Atrocity Police, what these foreigners are doing by being responsible civic participants in the place where they live is so heinous and unthinkable! Oooh noooo!

And anyway, what exactly makes us foreigners? Two things - the first is that we usually look different and have a different culture (which doesn't mean we can't assimilate and live within Taiwanese culture). The second is that we are not citizens.

So, if we become citizens, by law we won't be foreigners. Most of us can and do live within Taiwanese cultural norms, although mishaps do happen. The only difference, then, will be that we look different. None of us is trying to play at yellow face or pretend we are Asian when we're not, so I don't really see why that matters. We want to participate in a society whose values we share and whose future we care about, that's all.

Are you really saying we don't deserve citizenship based on our race? Do you really think Taiwan is so homogenous when so many Taiwanese children have a foreign parent, and so many waves of colonists have come to its shores? Do you really think ethnic homogeneity is even a reasonable argument?


But what about China? They'll send tons of people over, and many of them might work to destabilize Taiwan. 

I would like to wave this away, but I have to agree it's a very real threat. Although I am loathe to say that there should be restrictions on who has a path to dual nationality based on national origin, in China's case the threat is very real. It's a core threat, in fact, to the very existence of Taiwan. It is justified, then, to not extend this right to Chinese citizens at this time for very real security concerns.


This is just what YOU want, with your WESTERN attitudes about immigration, but Taiwan isn't ready for this and you can't force them, you cultural imperialist!

Taiwan has been a place of immigration for centuries and still is. The majority of Taiwanese have ancestry that did not originate in Taiwan. This is nothing different, and even Taiwanese are realizing that an argument for Taiwanese nationality based on race is not a strong one.

I have never met a Taiwanese person who thinks I don't ever deserve Taiwanese nationality no matter how long I stay. I've met some who assume I don't want it, or I don't consider this home, or I will leave someday, but none who think I shouldn't want it, shouldn't consider this home, or must leave someday.

In fact, the main issue I encounter among locals is that they don't realize we face this restriction. The majority of people I talk to believe that, after a certain number of years, we can become citizens and the only reason we don't is that we don't want to. They are often shocked to find out that that's not the case. Often, they ask why our country won't allow it, and are again shocked to learn that the problem is their own government. All - every single person I've ever talked to about this, and I talk about it a lot if you hadn't noticed - every single one and I'm not exaggerating - has then come out in support of changing the laws and expressed a desire to welcome 'New Taiwanese' to their country. Every single one has said that they believe the criteria to be Taiwanese should be based on living in Taiwan, caring about Taiwan and identifying with Taiwan. Nobody has ever, ever made it about race or Western ideas or any of that.

This is perhaps because this facet of liberalism isn't inherently "Western". It's human. Nobody from "The West" came over and told Taiwanese to think this way. They just do, because they are human beings who have built the most liberal society in Asia.

It's only other foreigners who do so. I am sure there are Taiwanese who also feel this way, but it says a lot for how common that belief is that I have never met one.

Think about that, next time you try to speak for an entire country and get it wrong.


Whatever. You want dual nationality but you wouldn't fight for Taiwan!

You've got that relationship backward.

Right now, while I want to say I'd stand up for Taiwan if it were ever threatened, I have to ask: why would I stand up for a country that won't stand up for me? Why would I risk my life for a country whose government explicitly wants me to remain an outsider?

I'm not even sure they'd let me fight if I tried.

My notion of what responsibilities I have to Taiwan would change drastically if I felt the government accepted me here as a true immigrant, as a new kind of Taiwanese. That's a country I would stand up for.

Of course, there are a lot of other issues to consider here: I'm not a fighter in the traditional sense, I'd probably create more problems than I'd help solve in an actual war-time situation, being someone who looks foreign and isn't really trained, experienced in or even good at hand-to-hand combat (not that I've ever tried - I've never gotten into a physical altercation in my adult life). So if I did stay and fight, how much would that be a White Savior thing that just creates more problems, and how much would I really be of use? The army certainly wouldn't recruit me considering my poor eyesight, age and general academic doughiness.

All that aside, there are things one can do in the event of war that don't involve front-line fighting. Given citizenship, I would do everything in my power to help in any way that I could effectively do so. I suspect many foreign residents here feel the same way.

Teaching English in Taiwan: some ethical issues

I'm sitting here in my dorm near the graduate campus of the University of Exeter, listening to birdsong and trees rustling in the wind out my open window. It's July but I'm wearing my new Exeter hoodie, because England apparently does not have any season which can be properly called 'warm'. This is quite different from Taiwan where I'd be wearing as little as possible and still sweating, possibly even with the air conditioning on, and outside my door would be a cacophony of human sounds that would be welcoming in the way that they ward off isolation.

We've just had a seminar exploring two topics: varying perceptions towards native and non-native speaker teachers first, followed by CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning, in which a subject course is taught in a foreign language, with the primary goal of subject learning with the hoped-for added benefit of improvement in foreign language proficiency).

A common theme developed in my mind as the discussions of both of these issues rolled on.

When one thinks of teaching English from an ethical standpoint, if they think about it at all, the two most common issues they tend to come up with are some form of "linguistic imperialism" - the idea that by teaching English we are somehow 'ruining' or forcing 'Westernization' on a local culture - and racism in hiring practices as well as pay. I'll explore these first, although I have to admit that the issues I discuss later are the ones I find meatier, or simply of greater interest.

These are of interest to me, and I'll explore them below. However, they feel a bit warmed-over, and I'm more keen to talk about the issues I explore later on. Not because these two aren't important, but because they feel so done.

That said, I'd like to say a few things about each before moving on.

There's little merit to the first opinion - while teaching a language does require some transmission of cultural knowledge (regardless of what some governments may mandate), simply being an access point to one of the cultures of the English-speaking world is not itself enough to destroy a culture any more so than Americans learning a foreign language, or living alongside speakers of languages other than English, are doing harm to American culture, regardless of what some less thoughtful people might believe. If anything, we are a resource for the non-privileged to learn the language of the comparatively well-off English speaking world, and therefore offer them the possibility of entry into it. You can't create equality by denying the less privileged access to the cultural touchstones of the more privileged.

The second, however, does make a fair point. I'm a white native English speaking American. The privilege inherent in this is striking when I hear about how my Black friends who teach in Taiwan are treated, not to mention the lower pay and sub-par working conditions offered to Taiwanese teachers. My classmate is Taiwanese and going for the exact same degree I am, and yet you can be sure that I will probably end up earning more over the course of my career. This is absolutely not fair. I am not 'better' because I'm a 'native speaker', that's ridiculous.

The ethical question is, of course, is it acceptable for me to continue teaching in a context where I know I have at least some of the opportunities I do because of my race and native language, rather than my actual teaching ability? Is doing so a form of perpetuating the system? Would it even be possible to find a teaching context where this is not the case? Is it too much to ask of me to give up a job I am committed to and find meaning in, in a country I love, because I am a part of a flawed system? Would doing so fix anything?

The answers to the above, to me, are:

No, it is not really acceptable (yet I do it anyway).
Yes, it is a form of perpetuating the system.
However, no, it is likely not possible for me to find a better context - almost every ELT context has these flaws. Those that don't are not generally available to Americans (e.g. in Europe) or would not pay enough for me to cover my basic expenses, including student loans (e.g. in the US, given that I want to work with adults and don't yet have a Master's).
And finally, no, I don't think it would make a difference if I left, nor do I think it is fair to expect me to do so.

The best I can do is fight day-to-day for a better industry, although that strikes me as unsatisfactory. I'd love to see local teacher pay be on par with foreign teacher pay (with them getting a raise, not us getting a pay cut). I'd like to strike the law limiting who can be hired as a foreign teacher based, ludicrously, on passport. I'm not sure that advocacy will have much effect at all, though. It doesn't seem to have so far.

I wish I had a better answer. This has been the go-to answer for the Defensive White English Teacher for decades, and it doesn't seem to have done much good.

There is so much more to explore, though.

As I mentioned above, I don't think much of the idea of cultural imperialism through language teaching. However, there is a sort of domestic cultural and economic imperialism at play in Taiwan (and elsewhere in the world, surely) that makes my skin crawl.

Taiwan has been a place where, over the centuries, various colonial regimes and invading forces have tried to assert their dominance over the island, and their primacy in the cultural hierarchy, through the enforcement of foreign-language medium education in schools. Most notably, the Japanese did it by making the education system in Taiwan Japanese-medium, and the ROC did it later by forcing all students to learn in Mandarin, to the point where today many foreigners and some Taiwanese do not realize that, although it can be debated what the historical 'native languages' of Taiwan are, Mandarin is certainly not one.

Now, it seems that English is one of the tools used to bolster dominance in Taiwan's social hierarchy. The 'cultural imperialism' isn't coming from us whiteys this time, it's coming from Taiwanese who have a privileged socioeconomic position in their own culture. It raises their profile, and the profiles of the adult children they've raised, to speak English well and have connections to the Western world. While not essential for political or business success (I'm fairly sure Chen Shui-bian doesn't speak much English at all), it certainly helps (every other elected president in Taiwanese democratic history has been educated, to some extent, in the West).

It costs money to raise children who have this cultural cachet of speaking English well, unless you have a particularly bright child. Cram schools - the good kind - are pricey. Local bilingual education is even more expensive. International schools are yet more expensive, and not open to those who don't have a path to foreign citizenship. Studying abroad is the most expensive route possible, and in some cases not available if you aren't able to put in the money to get your princeling to a certain level of English ability first.

The rich keep control, to some small extent, because they can afford to learn English well. It affords more respect, more connections and more opportunities.

These are the people whose princelings find themselves in our classes much of the time, although I appreciate that buxibans that offer more affordable classes to families that don't have such means do exist. As adults, they find themselves in my classes, either bankrolled for expensive IELTS preparation or successful businesspeople who have access to a high-quality teacher who charges accordingly.

It's easy to stereotype these children of privilege as the same KMT diaspora 'Chinese elite' who seem to hoover up all the money, privilege and power in Taiwan in every other way. Many of them are - do you think Sean Lien got to Columbia on his own merits? Or that Hau Lung-pin would have earned a PhD from UMass-Amherst on talent alone? Maybe, but I doubt it. Many, however, are not. It's a problem pervading all segments of wealthy Taiwanese society.

The problem, then, is not that I'm here teaching English. It's that I'm earning good-enough money teaching it, and you don't come by good-enough money without being expensive by local standards. Therefore, those who can afford my services are already privileged, and I'm helping to broaden and extend that privilege as they widen the gulf between what they have access to and what others of more modest means do.

It is, in effect, a domestic sort of cultural imperialism, which is not at all one unique to Taiwan. I'm not afraid of the Big Bad West here, I'm afraid of wealthy locals who do the same thing to their fellow countrymen!

I'm not sure what to do about this, either. I've considered volunteering, and likely will once the burden of tuition fees is lifted. That's really the problem - people talk about missionaries in Taiwan as though they are so generous and giving, sacrificing their own gain to help others. There is surely some truth in that, for some missionaries. But the other truth remains: most people have bills to pay, and it's not possible to offer one's services for free if one has bills to pay as well, and does not have a large religious organization making sure that issue is taken care of.

I don't charge so much because I'm greedy, I don't think. I do it because I have family to consider in the US as well as US-based bills to pay.

I'd work for less so that more could afford access, and often do give steep discounts to real friends who need help (I'll even work for free if I believe it will make a real difference, in fact, I prefer offering help as a favor rather than charging a nominal fee). However, again, I can't really pay my own bills if I do that as a part of my regular work. I offer it in my freelance capacity because I generally know the situation and the person, but if I did so as a teacher employed by a school, I would most likely end up being taken advantage of as the school continued to charge high rates and simply keeping the difference. In fact, this is exactly what my former employer did in a few circumstances.

Frankly, if accepting less were a feature of my regular work, I wouldn't be here at Exeter bettering myself professionally so I can offer ever-better teaching to my learners. Period.

I'd like to get to a point where I have the resources - as in, I can afford to do something like this - to try and bring high-quality English teaching to those who could benefit from it but can not generally afford it. That's a long way from here, though. That's something the Exeter graduate does, not generally something the tuition-paying Exeter student does.

Another issue is whether it is ethical to work in a system where so little attention is paid to qualifications. By agreeing to work in a system where you don't need any basic qualification to teach - where, in fact, teaching English is looked down upon because it is simply assumed that it is a job anyone can do, which requires little or no training (yes, the link is relevant because in his book Cole does exactly that) - am I not conferring some level of legitimacy on that system?

This is a conundrum for my context, at least, where I mostly work freelance but do take classes with a few places that are technically 'cram schools' (in the legal sense as it relates to their business registration, though they do not embody many of the negative connotations of the term). It takes a level of qualification far lower than my own to work in either school, although I will say both offer high-quality English classes. Some 'schools', if you can call them that, require even less.

Despite being generally good, neither school offers paid lunar new year leave (despite this being a legal requirement) or paid annual, sick or typhoon leave. Both treat teachers well, though there is no greater contractual job security than in any other cram school. Neither has many career-furthering opportunities for those who want to teach (as opposed to being an account or business manager). Neither offers nor sponsors training. One offers a small bonus (and I am grateful for it), but neither offers the 1-to-2 months' salary bonuses on offer from more traditional employers.

I do like the two employers who provide me with group classes. I recommend them as both employers to teacher friends and as schools to local friends who might be prospective students. I want to make clear that I have no bone to pick with either, and the downsides are tempered with a lot of advantages: all the (unpaid) leave I want without complaint, and higher-than-average pay. However, by continuing to work at these places, I do wonder if I'm legitimizing the downsides.

The issue can be expanded, however. If I worked at a school that didn't require at least a basic minimum of training such as a CELTA, I'd wonder if I'd be legitimizing the lack of qualifications necessary to "teach". If I worked at a public school or university, I wonder if I'd be legitimizing the sub-par working conditions that many institutions take as a norm, such as useless reams of administrative work, high student-teacher ratios (up to 65 students in a conversation class in some places!), over-reliance on testing, a poorly-constructed curriculum and generally lower pay.

I want to end by circling back to one of the issues I explored above: racism in hiring practices here. I've covered issues of pay, treatment and opportunities, but another issue I find disconcerting is how many people - locals and foreigners alike - try to justify native speakerism. I've written about this before (linked above already but here it is again) but now feel I have something more to say on the topic.

It is impossible to ignore - and I'll write more about this later when I really sit down and write about the experience of doing a Master's as a part-time student, splitting my time between Exeter and Taipei - the fact that I have learned so much from my professors and classmates here at Exeter. Most of my classmates are not native English speakers, and many professors are similar. I've been hanging out mostly with female classmates because we happen to get along so well, and out of 7 women, only two of us are native speakers. My Delta local tutor is not considered a native speaker by many. Although as a native speaker who has sought to upgrade her qualifications, I cannot say that native speaker teachers generally are less motivated to attain a level of professionalism in their work as such a generalization would exclude me, it is quite clear that generally speaking that level of qualification, and the important conversations that go along with it, seems to be populated by the non-native English speaking teachers.

I can surely imagine leaving my soft academic cocoon for the sharp idiocy of Facebook commentary, finding myself on one of the many groups for English teachers in Taiwan, and feeling my face fall as all of the nuanced points and brilliant ideas of my Exeter cohort are not reflected in the general Taiwan English teacher commentariat. It hasn't happened yet, but that's mostly because I've abandoned many such groups in dismay, not because the screamery isn't there.

What I mean is, it seems as though the general sentiment of the foreign English teacher population - although I do realize this is by no means a stereotype I can apply to all of them - is that native speakers are best (perhaps because they themselves are native speakers and they are scared of losing their privilege?), this is because that's what 'clients' want, qualifications aren't necessary because most employers in Taiwan - the not-great ones - don't care about them and won't pay more for them and being a better teacher isn't a good enough reason to pursue them (and yet pay is low because unqualified teachers don't deserve more), and many other beliefs I will charitably call 'ignorant'. At times it feels as though trying to address some of these beliefs - e.g. "it's fine to discriminate by only hiring women for certain jobs" or "non-native speakers are never as good at English and therefore deserve to earn less!" - with any level of nuance is an exercise in futility.

I do wonder if continuing to work in an industry where - at least in Asia - that 'ignorant' attitude prevails to some extent legitimizes it. Again, however, I'm not sure where else an American can get a job that pays sufficiently well where the industry has not only more professional working environments, but also more professional teachers with more nuanced and thoughtful attitudes.

Basically, although I find great meaning and pleasure in my work as a teacher and have a great love of Taiwan, I have serious qualms with working in the educational field here, not only in terms of employment but also in terms of the problematic attitudes other privileged teachers hold, while talented and thoughtful educators are held back.

And yet, basic economics would dictate that the way to push for something better is to not accept something sub-par. If good, qualified professional educators would not work in Taiwan, the industry as a whole would have to improve in order to attract them. Yet here I am, agreeing to work for what is on offer now, although I find it lacking. I don't mean in terms of pay - I'm talking about general working conditions and attitudes in the industry that lead to socioeconomic inequality, poor treatment of non-white and non-native-speaker teachers, a lack of adherence even to the benefits accorded us by law, and the overall attitude toward teaching not only of those on the outside looking in, but also of other teachers here.

How can we force things to improve if we accept what's on offer now, as unsatisfactory as it is? And yet, what else can we do if this is the work we want to do, and Taiwan is where we want to be, and it wouldn't be much better anywhere else?

I don't know.

The other day I was thinking about how one trains a teacher to be successful in a flawed context. Much teacher training focuses on training the teacher but assuming a generally good context, or at least one with flaws that can be overcome with yet more training. I was thinking about it in a Saudi Arabian or, to some extent, Chinese context where certain discussions or topics might be forbidden, and where many institutions unrealistically expect qualified teachers to teach English with no controversial cultural content. The assumption is that you can read up on cross-cultural communication and overcome these issues, but I'm not entirely sure that's true; I doubt that any amount of training can fix such a problem when the issue is not with the teacher.

This is why I work neither Saudi Arabia nor China.

However, it's also true in Taiwan. The system is perhaps less flawed, but I wonder what kind of training would help me to more efficiently navigate the ethical issues I do face here. Is the Taiwanese educational system, from public schools to universities to buxibans, so flawed that it presents an ethical issue to even work in it?

I used to think, putting on my well-worn Defensive White English Teacher hat, that the answer was no. At least, I thought, I would eventually end up at a university where things might be better. I'm coming to realize there isn't necessarily any improvement even as one 'moves up'.

Now, I'm not so sure. I don't intend to leave Taiwan simply because I love the country, even though I don't have much praise for its TEFL opportunities. However, I can't ignore the real ethical questions that working in such a problematic system has raised.

Triple Threat Female Expats

The Cool Trailing Spouse

Last week, we ended the traipsing-about part of our massive summer adventure, rolling up at our friends' flat in Greater London for five days in the city. We started in Athens at the end of May, wound our way across Armenia and Georgia wandering in ancient churches, enjoying gorgeous vistas and drinking succulent wine, looking up at the monumental stone edifices of Yerevan and hustling up and down the steep hills of Tbilisi old city under carved wooden balconies. Then we hopped a Tbilisi-London flight to start the British leg of our trip.

My friends are what you might call traditional expatriates, though they are not traditional people in any pejorative sense. They're both arty types, young fun liberals, far more similar to me than to the businessmen and trailing wives of Tienmu who send their children to international schools. Who can even consider affording international schools.

We had a lovely time with lovely people, both them and my in-laws, at times comparing aspects of the expat experience. This is a life not at all new to me and Brendan, but still two-years new to them. I remember well that even two years in, my life still had that new expat smell and it was interesting to trade proverbial notes.

I couldn't help but notice, though, that despite being more like us in personality, values, predilections and life goals, that their expat situation was far more like those of the Tienmu international school crowd than ours. They could afford a decent-size flat near a tube station, something two teachers most likely could never do, even with salaries adjusted to reflect the British economy. They could afford for one of them to be the 'trailing spouse' (and as always seems to happen, the trailing spouse was the wife). They could afford this and to raise a child (to be fair, in the UK one needn't worry so much about where to send a child to school).

We both knew the new expat smell, but their model was far more luxurious. It had upgrades.

I wouldn't say I was jealous - I chose my circumstances. I don't mean to criticize either: this is the opportunity life handed them and it was fair to take it as-is. If anything, it served as a lesson to be avoid drawing such thick lines between 'Us' and 'Them'. People in Their situation may very well be people like Us who just found themselves there.

That said, I do find distinctions that are worth a quick exploration. A lot of people assume 'expat' means excellent relocation package (something my friends got and I didn't, because I moved without a clear job offer - and even had I had one, nobody was going to pay my relocation costs let alone cover them generously). They often assume it means serviced flats, possibly domestic help including a driver, very high pay, being able to send their children to international schools and attending events, clubs and associations designed for networking with other expats (and almost never locals - though that is likely more common in Asia than, say, the UK). They often assume it means a trailing spouse, usually the wife, and nobody ever seems to question why it always seems to be the wife supporting her husband's career, or why more women don't get these sorts of offers to move abroad from generous employers.

That's all fine - other than pointing out the gender gap in who gets the plum offer and who is the trailing spouse, it's not a criticism. However, it seems to be the predominant view Westerners have of expat life, which is why articles like this fistful of garbage are spawned. The writer of that thing only has a point if the only kind of expat is the well-paid kind who has a serviced flat and a driver, and the only kind of immigrant is the poor kind. If this is true, what am I? A well-off immigrant or a poor expat? What about those of us for whom neither term fits?

It means that all of the advice you see is geared toward a demographic of foreigners abroad I've never been in. It's all coffee mornings and no 'how to make it work as an independent woman abroad'.


Mercy in a new place

It was interesting, then, to read Janice Y.K. Lee's The Expatriates while on this trip. Yes, it deals with exactly the demographic of well-paid expats and their stay-at-home spouses that I just spent two and a half paragraphs saying I wasn't in, but it was a worthwhile read (and I recommend it) for two key reasons: one of the protagonists is more like me than the well-to-do women who make up the rest of the book, who are also portrayed very sympathetically.

Mercy, a young Korean-American Columbia graduate, moved to Hong Kong on her own, without a job in hand. She more or less makes it work, until it doesn't any more. I don't have her bad luck, but the feeling of moving to a new place with a small savings account and a suitcase and making one's way without a corporate helping hand - and working a job to make it all happen - that's my expat experience. I gather that is the experience a lot of us have, but few people seem to write about it. Its depiction of the Korean community in Hong Kong further reminds one that those who live abroad cannot be packaged up into tidy communities of (white) expats and (everyone else) immigrants. And, of course, the character of Olivia serves as a reminder that even the wealthiest expat cannot compete with a successful and well-connected local.

Swashbuckling tales of adventure and derring-do of handsome men aside, the focus on expat women, not men, in The Expatriates further reminds us that lives of women abroad are often just as interesting as those of men, if not more so.

However, it was also a reminder that, as much as we ought not to create divisions between us as expats, some cannot be ignored. I may do better than a typical cram school teacher, but I'm still an English teacher and have, despite my professional status in the field, resigned myself to forever introducing my work as "an English teacher...but a real one." That, as much as I might make more money and have a better lifestyle than the sort of fresh young blood I was in 2006 - no crappy rooftop apartments for me - I will never, as a teacher, be on the same financial level as the Tianmu set. Brendan and I will always have to do things ourselves, we won't have a company connection setting anything up for us, likely ever. I'm 36 and still a liberal artsy-fartsy night owl type, more like the fresh young blood than the greying businessmen; this is not likely to change either. Every piece of advice is geared toward them; none seems aimed at me. Most of them won't stay long. Most will never learn Chinese or integrate locally. There simply are not that many overlaps in the issues we face.

And I might not be a trailing spouse like so many expat women, but the majority of long-termers I've come to know here, who were birthed into expat life as I was, are male.

My first real arrival in Taiwan took place late at night. I dropped my bags in my cruddy-but-temporary Gongguan perch, collapsed into sleep, and woke up the next day to explore the city. I had a vague offer of a teaching job, a few thousand dollars and a backpack. I navigated work, language, finances, socializing, paperwork and visas and adjustment to a new country and culture on my own. I don't think it takes away from the experiences of more well-heeled foreigners to admit that I'm proud of this. I'm proud that I did it on my own, and that I was never a trailing spouse (I am also confident enough in myself now that, if a fantastic opportunity arose for Brendan, after all these years I finally wouldn't balk at the idea of being one for a temporary period).

Like Mercy, I had no help, and like my brand-new idol and also crush, Janet Montgomery McGovern, I had financial concerns. I had to generate an income to make it all work. I was a woman doing what most people associate with young men doing. Like them both, I'm not the typical 'Go East, Young Man', well, man. 


English-wallah

On our last day in Tbilisi, I turned the final page of my last book for the 'intensive travel' portion of my trip: Justine Hardy's Scoop-Wallah: Life on a Delhi Daily. Although I hadn't planned it this way, my reading tour across the Caucasus was also a reading detour from books about Taiwan or books about teaching, linguistics and education into a short list of books about women living abroad.

Hardy's story also resonated with me, not only because I used to live in India, but because she too chose to return to Asia, sought out work, found it and made things happen for herself. She, like Janet McGovern, had the sort of adventure most people associate with men. She, like both me and McGovern, had to make money to stay afloat. And she, like us, had no employer helping her. She, like us, was perhaps an expat who lived like an immigrant, or maybe an immigrant who knew she couldn't stay forever. I do wonder, however, what kind of visa she was on as it was clear that her employer wasn't helping her with it, but it is extremely hard to get a visa to work legally as a foreigner in India. You certainly aren't allowed to be offered a job in India and then transfer a tourist visa to a working one (I know, because I looked into it).

Hardy describes a hardcore hustling to make her daily bread, to make a name, to make life possible in a foreign land, that I can identify with. What I peddle is different, but we're both working the same street. She has McGovern's mettle, translated to the present day and proves yet again that the stories of women abroad are not limited to managing the help, choosing between Taipei American School and Taipei European School and going to coffee mornings. That we hustle too, that we have stories too, and we all make it work.

That Hardy might have been writing soft features, but under that she's a professional journalist who simply loves India and plies her trade well. That I may be 'teaching English', but I'm also a professional educator who is days away from starting Master's in the subject at a prestigious university.

That we don't always have help. That arguably the most interesting expat in twentieth-century Taiwan was not Indiana Jones, but his mother, and she too was an English teacher.

That even the trailing spouses, who may have never thought they'd be 'trailing'.

With that in mind, during a quiet moment on the outskirts of London, I wrote a short inscription in Scoop-Wallah and, when nobody was looking, popped it into a corner of my friends' book collection. Not the husband's, although I've known him longer and we are closer, but the wife's. He might be the expat with the cushy job, but she has a story too, and under it all we may have different situations but we're not all that different.

Updated post: why are there so few expat women in Asia?

With the publication of an article on Western women dating Asian men that included a large contribution from my friend Jocelyn Eikenburg came a very good point from another friend: one reason why there are fewer Western Woman-Asian man couples is that there are fewer Western women in Asia.

Why is that, I asked to no one in particular.

I returned to my original post from years ago about why there are so few expat women in Asia (I could just as easily said 'Western women' - what working-class foreign women, mostly from China and Southeast Asia,  in countries like Taiwan face is an entirely different topic that I will cover once I feel qualified to do so).

I felt that the piece could use some updating, so I've updated it to add a few more thoughts and clarify or expand some of the original points.

I am not at all sure that everyone will like what I have to say, but since when has that mattered to me?

What would really improve the piece would be more firsthand experiences from a variety of women on why they chose to stay or leave - in fact, after I finish off a few other blogging projects I'm working on as well as get through the first in-person component of my Master's program, I intend to seek those voices out. For now, your comments are welcome.

The bulk of the changes - though not every change - to the original article are as follows:

As for the reasons why [dating prospects aren't great for Western women in Asia], it's hard for me to say, and I'll have to stick to heterosexual couples for now. Someone more qualified than me can write about gay dating in Asia.

My college crush moved to Taiwan, we started dating, and now we're married. I don't really have firsthand experience with this issue to share. It seems to me, though, that the issue is not what most people assume: that Western women don't want to date Asian men, so they stay single. Only a small minority of Western women I've met in Asia feel that way - most are quite open to it, or have dated (or married) Asian men. However, I do think it's likely harder. The culture barrier to dating doesn't work in our favor, as Asian men are often less likely to be clear about their feelings and ask for concrete dates, or don't show interest in the ways we've come to expect. It's easier to be a very clear Western man asking a local woman out than it is for a Western woman to figure out if an Asian man likes her.

Of course, I'm the sort of woman who once asked men out. It doesn't shock me - I think more women should do it! Again, however, that's a contentious topic in the West, though I'm not sure why. In Asia it's even more rare and is more likely to put men off. Take that even further, and it means there are fewer local men who possess the feminist chops many Western women deem a dealbreaker: I wouldn't date a man who would be put off by my asking him out.

After that, the culture barrier vis-a-vis traditional families also tends not to work in Western women's favor. If you are dating the son of Asian parents, while it's not certain that they'll expect him to run his family the way they tell him to, live nearby or use your shared financial resources to support his parents, it is certainly more likely than in the West. The expectations of male and female roles in marriage are also more likely to be traditional (though, again, this is far from universal: feminist Asian men do exist. I count some among my friends). Some Western women might see this as a difficult adjustment. Others, like me, view it as a dealbreaker.

This is not meant to be a blanket statement on the state of Western woman-Asian man dating in Asia, of course. Differing stories and successful and happy couples abound. It's just an issue worth considering. However, if the obstacles to that sort of partnership are greater, fewer women are likely to meet, date, marry and set up a home with a local man. This means fewer have that particular pull to stay (though, again, there are many success stories).

And, of course, there aren't that many Western men to date and the ones that are here might - see below - be oddly hostile to Western women. 

Does it really keep Western women away from life abroad, though, or is the correlation entirely spurious?

A little of both. For women who want to travel, the dating issue (which has no easy answer) is not likely to keep them away, though it may cause them to choose shorter-term trips: a one-year stint as a student or one year abroad teaching instead of staying long-term, for example.

* * * 

It is tiring to work for a sexist boss, have to address sexist beliefs even among friends, go out and meet people only to find that you are again being judged through the lens of gender, asked yet again about marriage and family, having children, having your appearance commented on and treated as the most important part of who you are. Always wondering if you are being paid less, and if so, because you happen to have a vagina. Always wondering if you are offered the fluffier classes (e.g. "Baking in English!") and work teaching children rather than the more challenging work (e.g. "Presenting in English") because you are female. Always questioning why, exactly, most of your colleagues are male, especially if you teach corporate English, IELTS or other adult classes.

Sexism is also a problem in the West - the hate and vitriol I see from some American men is astounding - but coming up against older-school forms of it in Asia is tiring. 

* * * 

I want to add a few more points here to expand this piece. I focused mainly on expats like me above: women who came here on their own as students or independently in search of work. However, there is a whole class of expat that I don't interact with much - nothing personal, we just inhabit different worlds - the corporate expat here on a fancy package. In Taiwan this means the ones who have luxury apartments rented for them, drivers and live-in help, who send their children to international schools we couldn't hope to afford. That sort of money would be nice, though I'm not sure I'd like the life very much. In any case, corporate sexism is a huge issue, and as a result most of the employees being offered these stellar packages are male. They might bring their wives, but they are the ones drawing the salaries. When women are offered something like this, they may find they're in a tiny minority and that when they arrive, the non-Western corporate world is even more hostile and sexist than what they left behind. Professional Taiwanese women have more advantages than almost all of their counterparts in the rest of Asia, but corporate sexism here is no better, and likely worse, than what you'll find in the West.

And, finally, I'm going to add something that may anger a few people, but here we go. It is my personal opinion from observation that women tend to be less tolerant of mediocrity. What I mean by that is, those of us who don't come as students or well-paid, cosseted expatriates often start out teaching English. Few of us are qualified, and we are given a title ("teacher") that we don't exactly deserve. I don't exempt myself from this: I was once this sort of so-called "teacher". Most "English teachers" in Taiwan know this (though some don't seem to have figured it out). Some, like me, decide the work is meaningful and fulfilling and eventually become professional educators. Most don't. Some leave after awhile, others decide that teaching without any real qualification is good enough and stay. Guess which group I have noticed is more likely to not be content being an unqualified "teacher"? If you guessed women, then you get where I'm going. And guess which group I've noticed is more likely to decide that what they're doing is fine?

I have a crush on Indiana Jones's mom

My first sighting of Taiwan was years before I actually moved here.

I was 19 years old, on my way to a study abroad program in India, and our plane from Los Angeles had a brief scheduled stop at Taoyuan Airport. As we cruised in, I saw rugged green mountain peaks jutting out from swirling white clouds and mist.

It was lovely, like coming across slabs of rough green and white quartz while hiking, but more vivid. Yet it was my first glimpse of Asia and second time to travel to another continent; it intrigued me.

Even Taoyuan Airport was of more interest then than it is now: a glass wall installation of Chinese calligraphy, a few shops, a new smell - my first whiff of the many scents of Asia which, while all different, are all entirely unlike those of North America. Perhaps now I find all this somewhat unimpressive - after all, who is impressed by Taoyuan International Airport? - but at the time I was taken.

One of my fellow India-bound students commented: oh, hey, we're in the Republic of China, cool! 

Cool!

I knew that the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China were different entities, but I did not fully grasp all I did not know. I did, I admit, think of Taiwan as the place where Chinese culture had been "saved and preserved". Worry not, I grew out of that absurd notion. I thought to myself that, although this time we would not leave the airport, I would very much like to explore the Republic of China someday. The thought was, to quote my nascent inamorata, inchoate. But it was there.

I didn't go immediately - we stopped in Kuala Lumpur and explored the city for the day, went on to Chennai, then Mahabalipuram, then Madurai, India, where my entire worldview was turned on its head. I returned to the US and finished my degree, fighting what I thought might have been a touch of depression but was actually a compound case of senioritis and the travel bug. I went to China - the People's Republic of China, the other one - traveled around Southeast Asia, returned to India, then the US, then worked a stultifying office job for a few years.

And then, it was time. The opportunity was there in that I finally had the freedom and savings to explore this Republic of China, and I was fast realizing that what I thought was a temporary, curable travel bug was actually a chronic illness whose only cure was to leave and basically not come back.

Only then did I realize I wasn't going to the Republic of China at all; I was moving to Taiwan, or perhaps Formosa. But this was no China. 

I am now an English teacher by profession, but I like to think (pretend?) that I am also much more than that.  

* * *

Why am I telling you this? 

Because almost exactly 100 years ago, the object of my affection boarded a boat in Manila bound for Nagasaki, passed Taiwan and noted how beautiful the cliffs plunging into the sea appeared:

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....

My desire to learn at first-hand something of the aborigines of Formosa remained, therefore, more or less an inchoate inclination on my part, and I turned my attention to other things. Then, curiously enough, as coincidences always seem curious when they affect themselves, a few months later...came an offer from a Japanese official to go to Formosa as a teacher of English in the Japanese Government School in Taihoku [ed: present-day Taipei], the capital of the island. 

Girl, I already want you.

You floated by, I floated over, but we both had the same thought - there is a reason why they call this the Beautiful Island, and I would like to explore it. We both set that thought aside for years, and then, for both of us, the right circumstances presented themselves. 

You even came as an English teacher, but you were so much more than that. 

Let this be a lesson to those who would disparage all English teachers as losers, wash-ups, backpackers and weirdos: the single most awesome foreign woman to ever alight in Taiwan and write the classic but oft-forgotten Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa, merely because she was inclined to do so and found the place beautiful as she passed by once, was also an English teacher.

You were not wealthy (in fact, it appears you often published for general interest of of necessity, which may have affected your reputation enough to keep you from publishing in more scholarly circles). You were absolutely a wanderer, absolutely fearless, and absolutely unapologetic. 

Brendan pointed out that you were the mother of William Montgomery McGovern, the possible inspiration for Indiana Jones. Although he did what a lot of adventurous male scholars were able to do at that time, whereas you bucked all sorts of expectations of women, let alone female scholars, and wrote a classic book on Taiwan, he has a Wikipedia bio, but you do not (guuuurl, I am gonna fix that for you, because you are my person.) 

I am not concerned with your son, nor am I concerned with Indiana Jones. It's easy to have a crush on Indiana Jones. I have a crush on his mother who, by dint of what she did despite the sexist time and society in which she was born, was so much more of a bad-ass. 

I can only lament that we were born a century apart. And that I like men, but that hardly matters: I'll make an exception for you, my star-cross'd love. If you weren't dead, that is. 

I am not going to recount the entire book for those of you reading this. It is available online, on Amazon, and can occasionally be found in Taipei (try The Taiwan Store). You will learn quite a bit about the indigenous people of Formosa: for a time, it is likely that nobody in the world knew more about them than Janet B. Montgomery McGovern. I especially enjoyed the marriage customs wherein a lovelorn "swain" (and yes, I adore the old-timey English usages) would play a small mouth harp or create a twenty-bundle monument of firewood for a woman's cooking pot in order to win her hand - and that she still had absolute right of acceptance or refusal.

Brendan and I decided to get married by basically saying to each other:
"We should get married, yeah?"
"Sure, that sounds cool."

So, this was nice. 

But why am I so enamored with Janet McGovern?

She came to Taiwan as a single woman in a time when that was fairly rare - and when it was done, it was usually by missionaries. I love that she had no interest in being a missionary. She never seems to have become fluent in any one Formosan language, but picked up some of many different, rare tongues: more than wealthier expats with more resources today often manage to do for just one language, which is far more well-known, with more learning resources created for it, yet isn't even the native tongue of this country. 

She trusted head-hunters that full-grown men, both foreign and local, were terrified of, and was in turn offered trust, kindness and hospitality. She had such a no-nonsense, take-neither-shit-nor-prisoners writing style (I like to think I also have that style, updated for a new century?) that you could see, emanating off the page like waves of hot steam, that she was also a take-neither-shit-nor-prisoners woman. She totally DGAF before it was cool for women to NGAF. 

Homegirl even said this to a Japanese official, in 1917: 

I explained that obviously I was not a Japanese, also that I was not at all certain that I was a lady, and that if the distinction between coolie-woman and lady lay in the fact that one walked and the other did not, I much preferred being classed in the former category. 

...Suddenly the light of a great idea seemed to dawn upon him. "Ah," he exclaimed exultantly..."but they will say you are immoral, and Christian ladies do not like to be thought immoral."
This struck me as being amusing - for several reasons.
"Yes," I said, "and who is likely to think me immoral?"
"Oh, everybody," he answered impressively. "And they will publish it in the papers - all the Japanese papers in the city, and in the island," he emphasized, "that you are immoral."

...."I am afraid I must continue to go on my wicked way without the protection of your companionship," I said; "and if 'they' - whoever 'they'  may be - annoy you with questions as to the object of my excursions into the mountains....tell them 'Yes' to anything they ask about me," I said, "if that will set their minds at rest."

GIRL. 

All I can say is this: Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa is an interesting book for its time-capsule like quality of describing Taiwan as it was in 1917, and is interesting for what one learns about the indigenous of Formosa, from a qualified anthropologist, although I would imagine much of the information is out-of-date.

But, I am a woman who once saw the beauty of Taiwan in passing and was inspired by that alone to make it my home, who DGAF or at least tries not to. I have some private but very few public role models of highly competent, fierce women  of knowledge and training - remember, I am trained at the graduate level in Education, though I do not claim the same level of ferocity that Ms. McGovern clearly possessed - who have called Taiwan home among a sea of Western men, some exceptional but most mediocre. I loved this book, then, for reasons entirely separate from its ethnographic riches.

I also love it because I'm not alone. Janet B. Montgomery McGovern walked this path a century ago, and although she ended up at a different destination, so many of her landmarks are familiar to me even now. I have a deep sense of sympathy, although the experience does not mirror mine, of being the woman who should have run the whole show and had movies made starring characters inspired by her, only for that prize to go to her son.

My inamorata is not perfect. She consistently refers to non-aboriginal cultures as "more civilized", although she points out later in the book that the indigenous people she visited themselves viewed other cultures who don't keep promises as 'savages' and themselves as the farthest thing from. I won't excuse this by pointing out that it was a common line of thinking a hundred years ago. I will simply apologize as I like to think she would apologize now, were she still alive. Formosa may still be "little-known", almost as much now as then, but things have changed.

McGovern herself seems to grasp this toward the end, where she questions whether the "civilized" world would be better off, or how different it would be, if they followed the moral and social mores of the people she routinely refers to as "savages", and opines that, at least, it might not be worse: you might lose your head, but your community would provide for you, and everyone would say what they meant and keep their word. She also considers the idea of a matrilocal, matri-potestal "gynocracy" and what an evolution within such a system might have meant for Europe - in this part, you can see a glimmer of first-wave feminism shining through, and I love it.

Perhaps she goes too far in the other direction, making indigenous communities out to be more perfect - more "simple" in their "primitive" ways - than I think any society can actually be, but at least she considers it, which is more than I suspect many of her white male contemporaries were ever able to wrap their minds around.

And I have to admit, as I have said above, I have a bit of a crush on her, and this is my paean - no, my love letter. 

Who gets an 'Ideal Mother' award?

A door goddess on the Five Concbines' Temple in Tainan.
I like to think that women are seen as good for more than just sex, good looks and motherhood. 

Mother's Day was yesterday, but I am only getting around to writing this now. I don't do a lot on Mother's Day - although I have a grandmother and mother-in-law, it's still hard to do more than maybe offer a quiet tribute of some kind to my own mother, who passed away in 2014.

Anyway, I don't I'm not meaning to make any deep social commentary here, I just wanted to point out a common practice in Taiwan that I've never heard of being done where I'm from.

Perhaps you've heard of the "Ideal Mother Awards" (or "Exemplary Mother Awards", or however you'd translate it).

Basically, every Mother's Day, local communities, including my own, vote on which mothers in their communities are "Exemplary Mothers". There's a little ceremony and an award of some kind, often but not always presented by the neighborhood chief (里長). I can't imagine it's much. You might have your name published in the community newsletter if there is one. I only know about the one in my area because of that newsletter - I tried to read it once for Chinese practice, found it horribly boring, and haven't tried again.

According to the excellent Women's Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan,  this is a 'custom' (a government-created tradition) dating back from the days of Soong Mei-ling  -Chiang Kai-shek's wife -  and has deep ties to state-sponsored women's groups in the ROC on Taiwan. (Autonomous, non-state-sponsored women's groups were not permitted, which is not surprising.) It's directly related to these organizations, and Madame Soong's 'leadership' in women's issues, and their/her vision of what ideal Taiwanese (well, Chinese from her point of view) womanhood should be. You won't be shocked to learn that it involved traditional gender roles, hard work as a homemaker, helpmeet and supporter of the (male) ROC troops in what was perceived to be an ongoing war effort. Basically, calling themselves advocates for women while pushing sexist, traditional gender norms. 

I'm not sure who decides who is an "Exemplary Mother", to be honest, although I know there are a lot more community organizations than I am aware of as a foreigner, even as one who speaks Chinese and gets along more-or-less well with her neighbors (except, ahem, in 2014. You know why). I'd kind of forgotten about it as I no longer read my (again, horribly boring) community newsletter. I was only reminded of the practice again when a student told me that her mother-in-law would receive such an award.

Great! I thought. Here's a chance to ask a few questions about this particular...uh, tradition? Is it even one? 

Ugh, my student seemed to think. It's such a silly old-fashioned thing. I hope nobody ever foists one of those awards on ME. 

I have to admit, I had conceived of the "Exemplary Mother" awards as a sort of patriarchal pat-on-the-back, a carrot of reinforcement of outdated gender norms. Convincing women to think of their "place" as mothers and wives in the family so the whole Confucian train can keep rollin'. Though this is not limited to Asia, in Asia it's often associated with Confucianism, however, we are not innocent in the West, where I suppose it's just associated with being misogynist. Same difference?

And I write that even as someone who strongly dislikes the tendency of foreigners writing about Asia to revert straight to "Confucian!!!" to explain everything, even when that thing can be explained by saying "this is a thing that sucks." But maybe it can be used accurately in this particular case?

Back when I read that article in my community newsletter, I recall at least one-third to one-half of all of the "exemplary mothers" having dual surnames (e.g. Chen Zhuang Mei-ling or what have you), signifying that the mothers in question had taken their husbands' surnames in addition to their own: a practice that is considered by most to be very traditional and old-fashioned, and something of a social signal showing that you, too, are something of a traditionalist.

So, I imagined this whole shebang as a way to reward housewives, perhaps conservative ones, perhaps ones in very traditional family structures who not only upheld those structures, but believed in them and maybe even felt everyone else should too. I certainly imagined them picking mothers who defined themselves by their family, deferred to their husbands, and embodied a certain middle-to-upper-middle-class ROC - can we call it waisheng? - aesthetic, whether they were actually from that community or not (I've long felt that the aesthetic is the thing that seems to count. Whether or not you are actually descended from the KMT diaspora doesn't always make a difference when it comes to this kind of patriarchal elitism. You just have to act like them.)

However, I was pleasantly surprised. A quick rundown of the questions I asked and the answers I got:

So these awards - what do you have to do to get one?

Well, you have to have at least a few kids. Maybe three is enough - a lot of kids anyway, probably more than two. And you have to have sacrificed a lot for your family.

What do you mean by 'sacrificed a lot'? 

Like, spend a lot of time raising your kids, and they should be successful, good students or high-level workers if they are older. Always cooking nutritious food, that sort of thing. And usually you are not rich, I guess they think it's easy to raise kids if you are rich.

So, housewives?

No, sometimes the mothers have careers. You don't have to be a housewife to get this award.

Do they have to be particularly traditional?

No, I mean, I guess if you're divorced you won't get the award. But you don't have to be very traditional. Like I said, you could work or have a career too. Actually if you just do everything you are told you probably won't get it. You have to be a leader in the family.

Anything else? 

You should take care of other family members, like your husband's parents. If you take care of kids and the older generation, that's really good. And you should have a...'harmonious family'.

What about your own parents? 

I don't know, but I think if you take care of your own parents and raise kids, that's actually okay. It doesn't have to be so traditional.

So, are there "Exemplary Father" awards? 

Yes! We have those on Father's Day. But honestly, people don't pay as much attention to them. And you also have to sacrifice a lot for your family to get that.

Sacrifice how?

Like do a lot for them, raise your children well, and have a lot of kids, spend time with them, and the kids should be model citizens too. Just like with the mothers.

So it's not about earning money for the family. 

No! Anyone can do that. An 'Exemplary Father' has to do more than that.

It seems like the main thing here is rewarding people who have a lot of kids. 

Yup. Well you know our population is low, people are not having a lot of kids these days. So maybe the government wants to encourage that by rewarding the parents who do that even though they are not rich, and who raise their kids well.

Other than being good students or successful adults, what does it mean to be a 'model citizen'? 

Well, like a good person. Maybe you do something for the community.

So it's about more than obeying your parents, or growing up to earn a lot of money? 

Yeah.

What do you think it means to have a 'harmonious family'?

Like, you get along, the neighbors don't think of you as fighting all the time, maybe you seem happy as a family. Not divorced. But also, not arguing all the time.

Do you need to have a son?
Not as far as I know, no. But I guess most people who win this award have at least one son, because they always have many kids.

* * *

Anyway, this is one person's answers, and narrators can be unreliable. I don't know how true her statements are regarding the entire practice. Perhaps in her neighborhood they are more progressive, but you never know, perhaps they are less so, or perhaps her views of what it takes to be an "Exemplary Mother" are not as in line with the committee members' ideas as she thinks they are. There's no way to know (well, there is a way to know, but I'm not an academic with a research budget, so there's no way for me to know).

There are things I could nitpick, though many could be nitpicked in any country: the idea that one needs to have many kids to be an "Exemplary Mother" (or father), the idea that fathers get less attention paid to their awards (though fathers being thought of as less involved with family is an issue hardly unique to Taiwan). I wonder to what extent female obeisance is required to maintain a 'harmonious family', and what behavior at home might be known about but ignored by neighbors. I wonder to what extent wives and mothers might not speak out lest their neighbors think of them as less than 'exemplary' (again, not a problem unique to Taiwan).

The award also only seems to be open to same-sex couples, as we don't yet have marriage equality in Taiwan, and the idea that one can't be an "Exemplary Mother" if one is divorced. It reinforces gender norms and gender identity, and provides a frighteningly pre-fab idea about what 'sacrifice' and 'harmony' mean. I also wonder how often it really happens that a woman who receives such an award really does have a high-powered career on par with her husband's. Perhaps it is possible, but is it common?

I could also nitpick what this means for the kids. Sure, what my student said above is all well and good. It sounds wonderful on paper, but what does it really mean? Does it mean pushing kids to study all day for pointless tests, so they get good grades and thus are "good students"? How narrow is the definition for "model citizens"? I mean, that last one sounds like something Ma Ying-jiu would have been called as a kid, and something Hung Hsiu-chu would blather on about now, and I wouldn't call either of them model citizens. Do they really not define 'successful' as 'high-status and earning a lot of money' or is that just something one says because it sounds like the right sort of sound bite? And is the fact that the winners generally have sons really because they tend to have more than two kids in general, or because sons really are considered more important by the committee that hands these awards out?

I don't know, and I can't know, but I have to admit the whole thing is a lot better than I'd imagined it to be.

On sacrifice, history and what we are 'owed'

I've received a fair amount of feedback, most of it positive, regarding the case I made recently for allowing dual nationality to all foreigners. But, there are a few points I'd like to clarify here, which I think merit further discussion.

On selfishness and sacrifice

The first is this idea that, impossible or not, to decline to renounce one's original citizenship is somehow inherently selfish - to want the best of both, or to be unwilling to make any sacrifices.

I understand this as an instinctive first reaction - it's one of those "makes sense on its face" arguments - but with even a bit of dissection falls apart.

First, I reject on its face the notion that a person should have to make massive sacrifices to be a part of the society of the country they call home. That's not the argument I want to make, but I want to put that core idea out there. Some people take this further, and try to justify giving missionaries dual nationality on the basis of their "sacrifices" for the good of the communities they live in, but that the rest of us don't because we live more comfortable lives.

First, let's be clear: missionaries are not selfless. The good works they do - and they do some good things, I admit, and I don't think they're bad people - are done with their own goals in mind: converting members of the community to their faith, which is a benefit to the churches that often fund their missions. I still think they deserve a path to citizenship despite fundamentally disagreeing with the notion of evangelizing, because I think anyone who has decided to make Taiwan their permanent home and contributes to it in some way deserves that path. However, this argument is then extended and ends up somewhere around "you have a nice apartment and a job and therefore you don't deserve citizenship", which I quite literally do not understand as a logical conclusion. Do we really judge who gets to be a member of society based on whether they have wood floors or not? "You live well so you don't deserve political representation"? Really?

I get it, I really do - the idea is that we already have good lives, so we shouldn't want more. However, wanting political representation and to live a normal life as a member of society is not the same at all as having a couch that is not from IKEA (though honestly, if we hadn't inherited the couch we do have from the former tenant, our couch would absolutely be an IKEA model). The logical conclusion of this is that you should not agitate politically if you are comfortable economically, but economics and politics are separate things. I don't want more money - I want to be a member of society.

That said, I really don't want to make it my main argument - I want to point out the ridiculousness of it and move on.

Here's the thing about assuming that renouncing one's original citizenship is a 'sacrifice' and to not want to do so is 'selfish'.

To take the only path to citizenship currently available to me, I would have to quite literally renounce my core values. As much as I complain about the US and insist on my own self-sufficiency and freedom, fundamentally I believe in caring for one's family when they need it. I have already written about why I must retain American citizenship if the need to care for my father arises, and won't repeat myself.

I will, however, point out that the selfish act here would be to abandon my family for my own desires vis-a-vis my life in Taiwan. It is, if anything, a sacrifice that I do not pursue this route, because family, should they need me, trumps what I want in this regard. I would also point out that this means that asking me to renounce American citizenship is tantamount to asking me to put my desires over the needs of said family, and to essentially change who I am as a person - to be willing to be the sort of cold-hearted individual who would choose her immediate satisfaction over possible future family caretaking.

I mean it - I will give Taiwan what they want in any other regard. They want money? I'll pay it. They want me to get my PhD and become a professor, even though I'm happier (and I think a more effective teacher and contributor to the field) outside the academic bureaucracy and would normally stop at a Master's? I'll do it. Mandate that 36-year-old women must also do military service? I'll do it. Pound of flesh? That can be arranged. Start a charity and work at it as my main cause? Already considering it, though kind of hard to do if I'm going to go the academic route until I'm finished shuttling back and forth between Taiwan and the UK for my degree(s).

But I will not abandon my family.

For a culture that places so much emphasis on being filial, you would think the Taiwanese government would understand this.

All that aside, I fundamentally find the idea that wanting to be closer to - rather than maintaining and enforced distance from - the society of the country one calls home is inherently selfish in some way. That wanting to participate civically is selfish - I thought civic duty was meant to be an act of giving? I truly don't understand the logic here, that it is somehow a problem or indicative of bad character that I'd want these things.


On history

I also got a very interesting comment on my assertion that "Taiwanese history is not my history". The point that was made was that if we expect the descendants of the 1945-1949 KMT diaspora, as well as those who took part in it who are still alive, to consider their history to be intertwined with "Taiwanese" history rather than Chinese history, how can we decline to do the same?

However, I'm not saying I won't do the same. I gladly will.

In fact, the ten years of Taiwanese history that have occurred while I've lived here are my history - I live here too. If we stay permanently and do get citizenship, when I am old I will look back on my life and perhaps then think of myself as Taiwanese, and Taiwanese history being my history.

What I meant by that comment was, the agonies and successes of Taiwanese history that happened to the ancestors of the Taiwanese alive today did not happen to my ancestors. I don't want to appropriate or seem like I am appropriating that legacy. The sum of history and cultural legacy that made me who I am, compared to that of my Taiwanese friends, is different, and I feel it's OK to admit that while still hoping to assimilate more. The idea is to avoid "you owe me your history, culture and legacy!" and instead aim for "I would like to be a part of your society if you'll have me, and as I do want it badly, I would like to make a case for that."


On being "owed" something

There is a popular meme going around that shows a blank piece of paper with a title along the lines of "a comprehensive list of everything you are entitled to and the world owes you".

It's cute, and I get the instinctive reaction to agree. However, I actually don't fully believe that - if you live in the forest as hermit who doesn't pay taxes or contribute to a society in any way, the world owes you nothing, that's true. But if you are expected to pay taxes, obey laws, support yourself, contribute to the economy and civic life of a society, in fact, I do believe that society owes you something in return. This is the basic argument for why societies that can do so owe their citizens a social safety net, and I happen to agree with it. Like dedication to family, it is a core value.

That, again, is not the argument I want to make however. I just want to point out that that line of thinking is inherently flawed.

What I want to say is this: I didn't come to Taiwan already knowing citizenship was almost impossible to obtain, and thinking I'd just complain about it whenever I decided I happened to want it. It was a much more organic process. I came here thinking I'd stay for two or three years, but Taiwan, being like Hotel California (as someone once put it to me), has made it so I can check out any time I like, but it seems I can never (don't want to) leave. Only then did I decide to advocate for the chance to participate more fully - after I'd already been here for a decade, contributed in the same way citizens who were born here have done, and tried to be a net benefit to this country rather than a drain on it. I was already here contributing when my thoughts on this topic became defined, not standing on the outside banging on the door.

Do I think, for all of this, that I am "owed" citizenship? Well, no, not in the sense that every country gets to decide for itself what foreigners can and cannot have. I think I've earned it, but I don't think I'm 'owed' it, at least not in the world we live in.

Taiwan, however, is a country that has increasingly insisted it is based on shared cultural values rather than ethnocentric nationalism. They themselves insist that one does not need to be from a particular ethnicity, culture or group to be 'Taiwanese'. Their history museum in Tainan even has a plaque saying so!

If they truly believe this, and this is the kind of country they want to build, it is hypocritical to then make it difficult for those who lack blood ties to Taiwan who are not the lords and ladies of the 1% (or missionaries) to be a part of that society. If they really believe it, they need to stop setting up impossible barriers (and, as I've explained, the need to renounce is an impossible barrier for many of us) and allowing double standards for naturalized vs. born citizens. If they want to keep up that rhetoric, they do owe the people they're talking about a shot at actually being 'Taiwanese'. Forcing us to be perpetual outsiders who can't even have a mortgage or vote for the leaders whose governance affects us is the opposite of this sentiment. It's having your cake and eating it too.


On radical social change

I've also heard the argument that changing the law so completely cannot be done quickly because Taiwan progresses slowly, and to do otherwise would constitute 'radical social change' that would somehow cause problems for society.

This is wrong.

Just as marriage equality is not 'radical social change' but rather a logical expansion of human rights and recognizing what, for many couples, is already true, allowing immigrants in Taiwan to naturalize as dual citizens is not radical. We're already here and already contributing - not much will change as a result. All it is doing is expanding the scope of the rights of people who live in Taiwan, and acknowledging what is already true about our lives here.

Most Taiwanese, when made aware of the double standards that currently exist, voice support for creating a more possible and reasonable path to citizenship for foreign residents. They too are done with ethnocentrism, whether it's Hoklo or Han chauvinism. It is not scandalous or radical to then make the necessary political changes reflecting this.

I don't believe a change like this would result in an influx of people hoping to get citizenship - at least not among white collar workers (I don't believe in dividing who can have dual nationality and who can't based on social class, I'm just pointing out a reality.) Most would come, and eventually leave. Those who stay long enough - seems like it would have to be about ten years to get an APRC and then citizenship - would have demonstrated enough of a commitment to Taiwan to merit naturalization. Most importantly, they'd already be here. It would be a mere formalization of the status they already possess.