I'm currently with Brendan, visiting my in-laws outside Bangor, Maine. Today we walked - I can't rightly say we hiked - several miles of scenic forest trails and an elevated "bog boardwalk".
I grew up in upstate New York, not quite England but culturally not that dissimilar. I am quite obviously very familiar with the concept of changing leaves in autumn. I grew up with Autumns in which the leaves turned every amazing shade of red, orange, yellow, gold, lime, burgundy and brown. I never thought of them as anything special, or anything worth running out with a camera to capture on film - they were just a part of everyday life.
Taiwan does not have leaves that change in autumn, although I guess some parts of the country, up in the mountains, might have it to an extent (I once saw a color-changed tree on Yangmingshan, woohoo!). I haven't been home when the leaves change in years: we usually come home in late summer or late winter and miss it. It's therefore been something like half a decade since I've seen leaves changing color.
Far from being jaded about it, it was like I was a kid, or a tourist from a tropical country - the excitement over the beauty of seeing such vibrant colors in nature, splashed on trees and mottled with bright hues out to the horizon was something I hadn't experienced since early childhood. Like the beauty of the Hudson Valley, it just gets lost on you if you're exposed to it for too long.
I find that interesting - something I hadn't even been able to take for granted because I didn't notice it long enough to dismiss it, like the beauty of autumn leaves, became something new, exciting and to an extent sentimental simply because I hadn't seen it in so long. Now I can appreciate it. In 2006 I didn't even notice, let alone care.
By the way, there are black bears in the woods where we were hiking. Chances of seeing one are basically nil, but I did comment that if we did encounter one and get mauled, the local headlines would read "Former Maine Resident and his Non-Maine Wife Killed in Vicious Bear Attack".
Earlier in our visit we went to downtown Bangor. I've said before that while I don't wish to live in a small town or a cold climate, that I happen to like Bangor and if I changed my mind about both of the above, it would be a lovely place to live (for now I'm content for it to be a lovely place to visit). Not so for my own hometown, which was flooded during Hurricane Irene, to which I snarkily replied that I wish the whole thing had washed away.
I like Bangor for its pre-war architecture (lovin' that understated Art Nouveau type on the McGuire Building) and revived downtown, and compare both it and nearby Orono quite favorably to Highland, NY (where I grew up). Downtown Bangor has a few shops - some hippie-dippy, some cute, some fashionable - a neat bookstore, an awesome antique shop, more than its fair share of pubs and drinking establishments, a Japanese restaurant, two South Asian restaurants and a Thai place, among other things. There's not enough to keep me occupied long-term but there is quite enough for a longer visit.
Basically, I'm not down on all small towns. Just the one I grew up in! (I was one of the few liberals in a town of conservatives, a non-Catholic in a town full of Catholics - or for that matter a secular person in a religious town - and a Polish-Armenian who hated soccer in a town full of athletic Italians).
Over the course of our friendship and relationship, I've exposed Brendan to my cultural heritage, mostly by culinary means. I am still sorely disappointed that he doesn't like olives, even the expensive kind (which are cheap in Turkey). I've made sure he's tried lahmacun, tabbouleh, good kielbasa, fish cookies, hummus, various olives, done the whole "forage for a plate of cheese, bread, olives and other tasty things for a meal", introduced him to ketchup on eggs (a family staple - he didn't take to it) and recently made him latkes with sour cream and applesauce, which may not be my culture (I'm not Jewish), but it is something that reminds me of growing up in New York - even if it was the state, not the city.
So it was finally time for Brendan to introduce me to the food of his cultural heritage...
So we drove out...
...stopped at a convenience store...
...and bought...
...
...whoopie pies.
At one point before we bought them, I saw them for sale and asked Brendan about them. Another guy at the counter said "you're not from Maine, are you?"
No, no I'm not.
I also made sure we went here:
Which may be a Canadian thing, but there is one in Maine and Brendan was born in Canada so there ya go.
So our course is finally (finally!) done and I'll have more time for blogging from now on. I have a lot to say about Turkey but I might wait a few days until we're in Maine and have some time to relax to write up my thoughts on our time there. I still feel more attached to Taipei, but a month in Istanbul with an honest-to-goodness apartment, social life (everyone on our course got along extremely well - the chemistry was just phenomenal and we went out for lunches and every weekend), routine, dinners at home and neighbors who recognized us...well, that made me feel like a part of me has experienced Istanbul expat life, too.
I really adored it - Istanbul is an awesome city. Gorgeous and varied architecture, from Byzantine churches to grand mosques to 18th and 19th century European grandeur to touches of Oriental Express Art Nouveau to pre-war rowhouses to modern concoctions. Phenomenal food is everywhere, as well as fantastic shopping. Hills which are hell to climb but afford dazzling views. Friendly people, lots of street cats that are clean and well-fed (but not owned by anybody). All that is topped off with a nightlife that puts both DC and Taipei to shame - it's on par with New York but in some ways better - there is an entire neighborhood (Beyoglu around Istiklal Caddesi) on the Golden Horn that goes nuclear at sundown, with seemingly infinite choices for bars, dancing, cafes and food. Not even New York has something like that (although some places light up more than others). Let's just say that we partook generously of it - which is a lot more fun when there are ten of you and everyone needs to blow off some stress. I would totally stay - even live - in Istanbul again.
Now we're "home" - or at least on our way. Yesterday afternoon we landed at JFK and met my parents, spending the night before heading back to the airport (where we are now) to visit B's parents in Maine.
Being home, even for just an overnight - we return to my parents' next week - has made me think about who I am in Taipei, who I was in Istanbul and who I am in the USA. The Jenna who ate her mom's eggs, bacon and blueberry muffins this morning and helped putter around the kitchen she knows so well, who cuddled the two cats and took a lovely post-flight bath in the huge upstairs bathtub is basically an adult - and much more mature - version of the Jenna who last lived in that house in high school. The Jenna who lives in Taipei sometimes feels like a woman who experienced entirely different formative years than she did. You wouldn't have expected that Jenna to have grown up in a small town, and she's really nothing like the dorktacular girl that went to high school in that same town.
The first Jenna is the one who was always a little eccentric but is ticking all the right boxes as she grows older. It's the one who had a big, local, family wedding to a beloved-by-parents guy. It's the one who knows how to build a hearth fire and which apples are the best to pick, who knows a lot about LL Bean winter gear and is no stranger to chasing deer off the lawn. It's the one that would have probably made a really good school teacher or office worker and wouldn't have traveled that much outside Western Europe, and would probably own a house and car now.
The second one is more than a little eccentric without actually being insane. She's the one who had a big but non-traditional wedding in a crazy fuchsia dress to an awesome, adventuresome guy who also travels the world. It's the one who knows her way around an urban jungle and can tell you where to find the best siphon coffee bar, who knows how to bargain in a foreign bazaar and is no stranger to the realities of city life or how things (generally) work in foreign countries. It's the one who will never work in a public school (teachers deserve more support and higher salaries than what they earn in that system - and I deserve better, as well) and couldn't stand office life. It's the one who regularly gives her parents heart palpitations with her travel choices...and may never own a house or car (although an urban or semi-urban townhouse someday is not out of the question).
The first one is familiar with the way the light hits the Hudson River in the morning and lives near New York City without actually visiting it often. The second can tell you what it smells like as you bike along the trail from Jingmei to Zheng-da and stops in New York whenever she can. The first speaks French. The second forgot most of her French and speaks Chinese.
It's hard to explain, and harder still to draw a clear line, but it's there - Taipei Jenna isn't quite the same as Hometown Jenna. Neither were the same as DC Jenna - that one dated a few inappropriate guys, had a lot of friends but not a raging social life, worked in a cubicle and had a lot of growing up to do, and went out on the weekends to nightspots she didn't even like all that much. And of course there was Guizhou Jenna and India Jenna, and more recently, Istanbul Jenna.
They're all different women, and that's not just the result of growth and the passing of time. Their different facets come out not just as I grow, but as I live in different places. When I come home, the old me comes out a little more (ever heard the old story about how when you're around your parents, you revert to a lot of your childhood behaviors and ways of dealing with them despite the fact that you're all adults?), and the me who lives in Taipei recedes a bit.
Everyone is influenced by where they are and the places where they live or visit - not even necessarily for a long time. A week in Bangladesh could very well blow the mind of a lot of people I know (it certainly blew mine). I do think that expat life magnifies and deepens that. When you live in another country, especially one with a wildly different set of cultural norms, you absorb more of that place and change as a result. I have felt for years that my study abroad time in India is what knocked the Hometown Jenna's pinball down a wildly different course. She's the reason why Guizhou Jenna and Taipei Jenna got the chance to exist. Taipei Jenna made Istanbul Jenna possible. This is hardly a Nobel-worthy insight, but it's one I'm writing about now because my visit home made me more aware of it.
I quite liked Istanbul Jenna, though. She was a hard worker with a lot of friends who knew how to party. I hope she sticks around for a bit in Taipei!
I've mentioned before that my mom's side of the family is Armenian from Musa Dagh, Turkey and that this is one of the reasons why we chose Turkey as our next travel destination: to seek out my homeland (or rather, one of my homelands - I'm also Polish, Swiss and generic British/Irish). Of all my many threads of ancestry, my Armenian heritage has always been the most vibrant and the biggest part of my life - I do believe that's because that side of the family came to the USA the most recently, and also because that branch of the family has been the most tenacious in terms of keeping heritage and memories alive. That tends to happen when your family lives through a genocide. When one's great grandfather (in my case, Mehran Renjilian) was a freedom fighter (the Turks would say "terrorist" but they're wrong) in the Armenian resistance...later turned minister. When one's family arrives in the USA after being forced to leave not one, but two countries - the second being Greece as the Nazis closed in.
So, after many years of regaling friends with homecooked Indian food, various appetizers and organizing outings to restaurants, I decided that on the eve of the trip that will mark my generation's first return to Musa Dagh, that I will cook some of the best-loved and most familiar dishes of my childhood.
The party will be in two weeks. I can make some of these dishes in my sleep, quite literally: I've had dreams where I have made hummus from scratch and upon waking up realized that even in my dream I followed exactly the right recipe. I have to admit, though, that there are others that I've eaten plenty of but never attempted to make (such as "fish cookies" which are flavored not with fish but with honey, and derive their name from the herringbone pattern cut across the top), and still others that I've attempted once before, failed at miserably, and never tried again...such as lahmacun.
The last time I made lahmacun, or tried to, I was too scared to attempt the dough, being terrified of trying something that included yeast. Instead I put the tasty topping on soft pita. The pita burned. I took the smoking mess of charred bread and raw meat laid out in a glass casserole out of the oven and plopped it on the counter, where the glass instantly shattered.
You can imagine my trepidation at deciding to not only attempt lahmacun again, but to do so with my tiny electric oven and with real dough made with actual yeast (I'm a great baker of cakes, muffins and such but not so experienced with bread products).
So this weekend was the test run.
My beloved husband helps out in the kitchen as I prepare the lahmacun dough.
I mostly followed this recipe, with a few changes to reflect the flavors I remember from childhood. I would never use ground beef - only lamb will do. Beef is a cop-out. I also added extra garlic, black pepper and allspice to the recipe. The "Armenian spice" I grew up with is made of cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, black pepper and allspice and that's the combination I created and added.
Ground allspice in my tiny marble mortar&pestle.
Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who, while not exactly a kitchen god in his own right, is very good at helping out in the kitchen - chopping, grinding, peeling, mixing, stirring - whatever I may need when my two hands and one brain just aren't enough.
Lahmacun is not just flavored with dry spices and lamb - it also includes the pungent flavors of onion, parsley, mint, tomato, lemon and garlic (and, of course, salt).
Mint and lemon - yum!
My mom once wrote a short story of her experiences making lahmacun, lamenting that Nana - her grandmother - could always turn out perfect dough circles but hers were eternally lumpy and lopsided.
I have to say that I take after my mother, but it doesn't matter: I care about taste, not looks.
Sorry, Nana. I hope as you look down on me from heaven (despite my not being religious) I hope you will forgive my horrifically uneven dough rounds).
Creating this dish in Taipei was - and will be, when I make it again in two weeks - a collision of memories. My life in Taipei with our assortment of friends here, our decrepit apartment that we'll soon be moving out of for better digs, our insane cat, Chinese class, evenings enjoying Belgian beer at various Da'an cafes or going out for some of the best food I've ever had from around China and the world... and commingled with childhood holidays where we'd serve typical American food - turkey or ham, gratin potatoes, green beans, tossed salad, apple pie - alongside hummus, Armenian string cheese, cheoreg (my mom wrote that recipe!), babaghanoush, pilaf, fish cookies, olives and lahmacun. We'd eat scrambled eggs with string cheese, bacon and cheoreg the next morning sitting around Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen table in their suburban house that is so typically American that I once saw their living room in a TV commercial (except it wasn't theirs - it just happened to be the same pre-fab living room). Running around the backyard with my cousins, all much younger than myself and helping Grandma make deviled eggs - it took years for her to realize that I was, in fact, capable of cooking much more than that.
Those flavors - mahlab (a spice made from the ground pits of a certain cherry), tahini, aromatic lamb, tangy lemon, earthy cumin, pungent mint and parsley, fiery cayenne - are the sensory receptacles of my childhood and going back from there, of my heritage. Despite sweating in a kitchen in Taiwan over a plastic table covered in parchment paper, whereas my great grandmother would have done this first on a rough kitchen counter in rural Turkey and later in Athens, and later still in Troy, New York, I did feel a connection to the feisty woman who passed away when I was 9 and who never did quite become fluent in English. It was also meaningful to me to share this first batch of lahmacun - the food of my childhood - with my ever-amazing husband:
...who, you know, certainly appreciates good food. We ate it as I always have, topped with fresh vegetables (onion, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, all will do) and a squeeze of lemon.
And it means a lot to me to be able to share this food with my friends in Taipei in just a few short weeks, before we say goodbye until October.
Oh yes, and I made a cucumber yoghurt mint salad, too!
Note: Yes, this post is intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Or tongue-in-chicken-rectum. Or whatever. I bang on about not generalizing, not stereotyping etc. and sometimes it's fun to let off a little steam. That's all it is.
Anyway.
As much as I try to practice what I preach in terms of taking Taiwanese culture as it comes and not forming any silly stereotypes based on it, or viewing it through the lens of stereotypes one might have heard about Taiwan (or Asia) back home, I have to say.
Sometimes, just sometimes - and bear with me here - Asia manages to live up to a stereotype in all sorts of hilarious ways. Don't judge me too hard for saying that. America does the same thing:
Australian friend: Damn...Americans and their guns! What a violent country! (or something like that) Me: That's not true! You don't know...most Americans don't have guns. They're not as common as you think. It's a sad stereotype that Americans are gun-totin' crazies. Same Australian friend staying at my family's home: Where should I put my bag? Me: Upstairs, by the guns*.
*hunting guns, like skeet shooting rifles. We're not talking sawed-offs and semiautomatics here. My dad hunts pheasant and shoots skeet.
So...a few things I've noticed that play right into American stereotypes of Asia:
1.) Weird Ass Drinks
From to asparagus juice to tomato-sour plum "fruit juice" to those terrifying health drinks (one says "Chicken Extract" on the bottle), to this lovely concoction:
YUM!
I have to say that the old '90s website Crazy Asian Drinks was really ahead of its time. It is absolutely true that they drink some weird stuff over here. Of course, weird to me. Not weird to them. To them its perfectly normal. I'm sure I drink something that many Taiwanese people would think is weird, too.
2.) Old Ladies Who Are All Up In Yo' Bidness
Don't let her fool you. She is going to ask you your age, if you're married, if not why not and if so whether you have kids, if not she'll want to know why not and she'll top it off with a question about your salary and an observation that you are too fat, have a zit or need to do something about your nose.
Then she's going to tell all the other old ladies in your neighborhood.
Yes, she is.
3.) Weird Ass Foods
Literally, sometimes. I mean we've all heard the horror stories of cod sperm sushi and, I dunno, cat meatballs and monkey brains and rat-on-a-stick and fried roaches. Some of that stuff is real (cod sperm sushi, rat-on-a-stick, fried roaches - I can vouch personally for the last one but I did not eat them) and some of it is probably the stuff of urban legend.
But let's talk about butt.
It would not be out of the ordinary at all in Korea to go out to a bar with your Korean students or colleagues, order a bunch of beers and watch as a bowl of snacks that the Koreans ordered appear on the table.
You innocently ask "what is that?"
Your new friend replies: "chicken anuses."
And you just got served. You got served a delicious bowl of anus, to be exact.
Recently I had a discussion with a friend about foods I do and don't eat as a relatively adventurous foreigner (not too adventurous - I draw the line at duck tongues and I tried to eat blood but just don't like it).
Friend: You know what is really good?
Me: What?
Him: Chicken...you know...雞皮鼓
Me: Chicken ass? Really?
Him: So you really call it chicken ass?
Me: Or chicken butt. Still. Why?!
Him: Because it's a super match with beer!
Me: No, my friend, Sichuanese food is a super match with beer. Chicken ass...you do realize that it is in fact the ass of a chicken?
Him: Yes.
Me: Like, with the anus?
Him: Yes.
Me: And so you know what chickens do with that?
Him: Yes.
Me: And what comes out of it?
Him: Ues!
Me: And you still like it?
Him: Yes!
Me: OK...
Point is, it's actually quite a true notion that a lot of what gets eaten in Asia would make many a Westerner's stomach turn. That doesn't mean the stuff is objectively weird (OK, honestly I do think eating chicken anuses, on a bowl or on a stick or whatever...that is weird to me. But it's not weird to my friend. It's not objectively weird as much as I wish it were).
Yes, you can go to one of those 'stuff on sticks' vendors and be all "and this is uterus, and this is pancreas, and this is blood cake, and this is rectum, and this is..." - and that's kind of beautiful, in a way.
3.) Blatant Copyright Infringement and Trademark Theft
I'm no fan of Donald Trump (the Golden Helmeted Noise Warrior) but somehow I doubt he gave his name to this organization:
And yes, I once saw but did not have the money to buy a North Farce jacket in Beijing (I was a starving backpacker) and I used to own a Datong fake iPod Nano (at least it wasn't called an iPod Nanoo or something).
4.) Whatever this photo says about ethnicity and privilege:
Actually I just wanted to post this photo because it's adorable. I don't have that much of a reason otherwise. The look on the kid's face is priceless.
But...it has caused a few quizzical looks as students have asked about my weekend and I've shown them this photo. I've shown it to a few people and made jokes - sometimes gentle, like "oh yeah, they adopted a foreign baby" to something more sarcastic like "every year thousands of underprivileged American children are adopted by loving Asian parents who give them the chances in life that they never would have had in their home country" for people who will get it and laugh.
The truth: these are friends of mine, the kid is the child of other friends of mine and they thought it would be a fun picture.
But, you know, it's kind of true - we do sort of build up these tropes and life stories, or have them built up for us, and in the West it can be hard to admit that sometimes - sometimes (NOT ALWAYS, I want to make that clear) these trajectories have more to do with ethnicity and race than we'd like to believe. You don't see Asian parents with a cute blue-eyed adopted baby - you see white parents with a cute Asian adopted baby.
Yes, you do see white woman/Asian guy couples (I have a friend in one such marriage) but it's so much more common to see the Asian woman and the white guy (which, you know, it's not a bad thing unless you dive into the creepy end of that pool. I'll acknowledge the creepy end but don't want to leave out the two-people-in-love-who-cares-what-race-they-are side, as well).
We do have the foreign English teachers who make more than the Taiwanese teachers who speak flawless English. We do have foreigners who speak excellent Chinese who might well have to battle prejudice for jobs teaching and translating Chinese simply due to their race. We have that taxi driver I blogged about who said that I should be a "boss" because I'm "American", and we have the factory dormitory vs. the W Hotel when it comes to business trips.
We get non-Asians like me who speak pretty good Chinese, and plenty of locals who assume we don't speak it (but to be fair there are plenty who happily accept that many of us do), and Asian-Americans who locals expect to speak Chinese like a native based solely on how they look.
I'm not sure where it puts us, but it does tell me this: if you believe before you come to Asia that it's a place where you will often get pigeonholed because of your race...well, you're kind of right.
I didn't mean to end that on such a serious note.
5.) Weird costumes and cartoons as marketing ploys:
This guy is promoting "cherry" sports drink which I swear to goodness tastes like tomatoes. I actually thought it was tomato sports drink until someone got me to read the Chinese. "Cherry" or not, I'm sorry, this stuff tastes like tomatoes. Also, guy in a giant drink outfit dancing at a major intersection in Taipei. Yeeeeaaaah.
And this guy - I think he's supposed to be a bacteria or virus of some kind, but he's asking if you've prepared your New Year's gifts well enough yet. So really, I have no idea what the deal is with him.
I haven’t heard this recently…but I have heard it. Heck, someone left it as a comment on this blog once. I’ve also heard it said about or to expats in China, Korea, Japan, India and plenty of other countries.
It used to offend me – who is this person to place limits on what I do or don’t understand? Why does this person think that my range and ability to understand a place is limited in ways they can arbitrarily set, despite the fact that they barely know me? What makes them think I’ll never really get it? Do they think that I’m that dull, that thick, that unadaptable?
Now, though, I have to say, it doesn’t really bug me so much. In fact, I think there’s some truth to it (but not that it’s 100% true). I believe this for several reasons:
1.) Think of first-generation immigrants to your own country – in my case, the USA. It’s a fairly well established trope: the immigrant parents who live their lives in the USA but never really quite ‘get’ America, and their American kids who still have ties to the Old Country but who do get the country they were born in – the country they are therefore from – and who often cringe at their parents’ hijinks. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about: it’s the basis for most of Russell Peter’s jokes, approximately 90% of all “immigrant to a new land” and “child of immigrants to a new land” literature (think Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan, Khalid Hosseini and so many others) and plenty of movies (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Joy Luck Club, The Namesake).
We tend to be fairly forgiving of those immigrants – the occasional brain deficient yokel who shouts “learn English!” notwithstanding. We understand that it is hard to get all the subconscious, learned-from-childhood, ingrained-in-culture cues if you didn’t grow up in that culture and your intuition comes from an entirely different set of social rules. So why do we get all defensive when it’s laid bare that we, also as foreigners (some of us travelers, some of us expats, some of us immigrants) in a foreign land, irrefutably face the same issues? That we are not and cannot be any more culturally fluent than those who settle in our home countries?
Of course there are different levels and adaptations regarding cultural fluency – some people who move to a new place do adapt at astonishing speeds and to a great depth and some never stop splashing in the shallow end. I would say even those swimming at the other end of the pool still aren’t totally culturally fluent – just more so than others.
2.) To the person who says “you will never understand Taiwan” (or China, or Japan, or wherever), well, that phrase likely means something different to them than what it means to you. You might hear it as “you will never understand anything about Taiwan”, but honestly, I think it’s meant more as “you will never understand every little thing about Taiwan”. There’s a great gulf of difference in those two phrases.
Sure, occasionally you get some vindictive idiot who does mean to imply that as much as you learn you’ll always be a stupid outsider, but I find that most people around the world are good, and most don’t mean it that way at all, even if it comes across as rude. I used to hear “you’ll never understand _______________” (fill in at your leisure, I’ve been to a lot of countries) and hear an implication that I do not and cannot understand anything about that country. That is not necessarily what the speaker intended – you can understand a lot, you can understand a surprising amount, you can understand in some depth, without understanding everything. As much of an Old China Hand or Old Taiwan Hand or whatever that you are, there will still probably be social cues you miss, culture gaps you can’t bridge, and cultural tics you will always find unfathomable. That doesn’t mean you don’t understand anything, just that you don’t understand totally. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not the culture you grew up in, so how could you grasp it on the same level as someone who did grow up in it?
3.) You don’t have to listen to people who imply that because you aren’t Taiwanese (or whatever) and so you can’t intuitively grasp the nuances of Taiwanese (or whichever) culture and therefore shouldn’t make any observations regarding it – that basically you have no right to speak. This is 100% wrong. It may be true that you are not totally culturally fluent, but that does not mean you have no right to make observations, give opinions or offer advice based on what you do know. As I said above, you might know quite a lot, and if you’re running your mouth, I would hope you know enough at least to support what you’re saying (I hope…so many people don’t, but I have faith in my readers that you’re not like that)! You don’t need to have been raised in a culture since childhood to
4.) Heck, sometimes I don’t understand my own culture. Or if I have a culture. I don’t mean this as “America has no culture” – it does. It’s just that America is a big place with a lot of different regions, groups and cultures and while there are threads connecting them, I would not say that someone from, say, New Orleans and someone from New York have the “same culture” because they’re “American”. Similarities exist, sure, but you can’t ignore the differences. The same is true in China and in India – both huge countries, neither of which can honestly say that every part of their territory and the people in it falls under an identical cultural rubric (I mean, the Chinese government and many Chinese people try to say that but they’re wrong).
So firstly, as a foreigner I might come to understand fairly deeply the culture of the region I’m living in, but that’s no guarantee if I live in a fairly large nation that I’ll understand the nuances of another region’s culture. I lived in Guizhou for a year – does that make me an expert on Tibet or Xinjiang? Hell no. It doesn’t even make me an expert on Guizhou, Yunnan or Sichuan, although I have far more street cred in those areas. I studied in Madurai, India. I know a lot about Tamil culture. I don’t claim to be an expert, but what I really cannot do is claim that this makes me somehow knowledgeable about Punjabi, Bengali or Gujarati culture. It doesn’t (although I have been to Bengal and Punjab, but only briefly).
Secondly, really, I don’t understand every little thing about American culture (who does?) - and it’s my homeland. I really don’t get why Americans are so often happy to drive gas guzzling cars everywhere and yet complain about the price of gas and long commutes. DUHHHH. I don’t get why people are so opposed to decent public transportation. I don’t get the widespread – yet fortunately fading – fear of homosexuality. I really don’t get the puritanical ideas that Americans have about drugs like marijuana and alcohol (disclosure: I was allowed to drink at home well before I turned 21. At 13 I was permitted wine and beer and by the end of high school my parents felt they could trust me). I do not understand why the right to own a firearm is so damned important to some people. I don’t understand a lot of political beliefs (don’t even get me started on health care reform and the idiots who think the system we have now actually works). I do not understand big box stores. I do not understand McDonald’s. I do not understand a lot of American cultural tics regarding personal space, topics deemed interesting and appropriate for conversation or…well, or many other things. I don’t understand why tipping is still a ‘done thing’ (although I do tip, and generously).
If there are things, people, groups, ideas and cultural issues I don’t understand in my own country, how can I claim to understand all the variety and complexity of views, thoughts and actions in another?
In the end I think that in some ways, it’s a strength. There’s an old Chinese idiom floating around that I can’t find now, but it goes something like: the chess game is clearer to the observers than the players. I have heard it used to describe romance, where two people who feel like everything is unclear are blindly feeling their way through whereas everyone around them knows what the deal is, but it works here too. I’m not saying that Taiwanese culture is clearer to me as an observer than it is to a player, but I do have a different viewpoint, and surely some things that are unclear to a local would be quite clear to me. In fact, it’s happened when I’ve observed some social phenomenon and a friend or student has responded: I never thought about that before, but yes! That’s true!
So, you know, those people are right…sort of. I will never understand Taiwan – or at least, I will never fully understand it. I will never understand it in the way that someone who was born here understands it. That’s OK. As long as nobody tries to say that I don’t understand it at all, I am OK with the idea that I do not and cannot understand it in totality.
Lurking within the psyches of Western expats in Asia is the dark figure of the local who has absolutely no clue how to deal with the fact that there are foreigners living in their country. Most often this takes the form of a local who is absolutely determined not to understand anything a foreigner says, even if the foreigner does an excellent job speaking the local's native language. Rather like the running gag in the movieAnchorman, where Will Ferrell's character can't understand Hispanic people speaking English, because he 'doesn't speak Spanish'.
I don't deny that such people exist, although I do suspect they are rather less common in real life than they are in expats' imaginations.
Here is my plea:
Let those people be batty, illogical individuals. Don't smear their individuality all over the culture they came from. Don't use some variation on 'Oh well. People in this country haven't had much contact with foreigners.' Everybody has a right to have foibles.
I like this – not only because my husband wrote it (BOOYAH!) but because it indirectly makes a point that’s been on my mind recently. It’s been on my mind because it’s been lobbed at me recently, both as an expat and as a woman: generalizing vs. stereotyping.
It’s not really important how it has affected me recently, as those events were merely the catalyst for my thinking about the issue, but suffice it to say I’d heard enough of comments along the lines of “Well that’s because women are/do X”, and on another front, a student who made a comment about foreigners that, while it might be true of many foreigners, was certainly not true of all of them. A well-meaning (Asian, if it matters) Facebook friend made a comment about how Asian women accept second-class status and don’t stand up for themselves, which I countered with something along the lines of it’s true that many women don’t and that it’s a problem especially in Asia, but I know plenty of Taiwanese women who kick ass and demand what they’re worth.
I firmly believe that generalizing has a time, a place and a use: making a broad observational statement about a noticed trend is nothing to be ashamed of or avoid, as long as it’s consciously done as such and not used to implicate individuals. Using anecdotes and snippets of conversations with people you know fairly well – something I do frequently on this blog – to make points about Taiwan as a whole – is a useful tool as well.
One thing that makes this more palatable is to acknowledge or clarify that the statement being made may be true on a general level but cannot be applied to individuals, or that the anecdotal evidence is just that: your observations based on experiences that don’t begin to constitute “data”. Words like “many” or “on a general level” or “I’ve noticed” or “my experience has been that…” or “often” help, as well.
The point is that I hear this constantly in expat circles in Taiwan – and in other countries – regarding locals (and from locals regarding foreigners, to be fair) and it really pisses me off.
I’ve heard statements along the lines of “but the Taiwanese don’t care about X” or “The Taiwanese don’t understand their own language” or “The Taiwanese don’t want to be friends with foreigners” or “The Taiwanese are shy” or The Taiwanese X or they Y or they Z.
I get the feeling that some of these beliefs are picked up while socializing with other expats – they hear enough opinions from enough expats (and at the risk of stereotyping I’m going to say that many times those expats are limited to people their own age, male, with Taiwanese girlfriends and not a lot of variation) that they start to believe them despite having no similar direct experience, and from taking a few isolated incidents and using them to project a massive – and often wrong – generalization-turned-stereotype on the Taiwanese themselves.
One such example was a recent letter in the Taipei Times. Kevin Larson – who clearly stewed angrily for several years over a minor incident in which a Taiwanese woman who treated him rudely – took an anecdote about one rude woman:
A few moments later, I ran out of my own supply so I went back to the young boy and asked him if he could give me a small handful of the feed for my son. The boy’s mother saw this and was quick to admonish me, hysterical body language and all.
She yelled at me, saying: “Go buy your own.” However, when I tried to explain that it was I who bought the feed — expecting an apology — she only grabbed her child by the arm and, in a huff, took him away. She had lost face and did not know how to deal with it.
…and turned it into a truth he believes about all Taiwanese people:
Criticism, and mine was merely a factual observation, turned her plain ugly. However, do not blame the Taiwanese, blame the Taiwanese education system….
How, exactly, did he go from “this woman was so rude” to “blame the Taiwanese educational system”?
He went from “this woman was rude” to “this woman lost face” to “this woman is Taiwanese” to “Taiwanese become rude when they lose face”.
Which I have found not to be true, by the way: I’ve noticed that in Taiwanese culture the tendency is to become reticent, even silent, and beat a hasty retreat or become quite distant when face is lost, after a slapdash effort to preserve some sense of harmony on the surface even when all parties involved know there’s roiling waters beneath.
I have an anecdote that makes my point: I was given insufficient, confusing and incorrect information at work, I screwed up a work-related thing as a result, I lost my temper over it, this caused the boss to lose face, but in the end we pretended to ‘see where the other was coming from’ and shook hands, knowing that the other was still angry and neither of us did in fact see the other’s point at all. I hesitate to flesh that story out, though, because it might seem contrary to my point that such an anecdote cannot be inflated to include All Taiwanese and Their Sense of Face. My boss is just my boss, and yes, I do believe that his actions were indicative of a broader trend or cultural norm, but that still doesn't make my boss any less of an individual and his actions do not speak for all Taiwanese.
I will say one thing in Larson’s defense: it’s true that he used several good modifiers in the beginning – “seems to me” and “many Taiwanese” among them. Only later on does he take one crazy woman and extrapolate her actions to cover All Taiwanese.
When, really, my husband is right. Doing this takes away individuality. It creates a tendency to refuse to see people from other cultures as individual people who are capable of being rude just because they are rude, not because All Taiwanese are rude, or crazy just because they’re crazy, not because All Taiwanese are crazy. It takes away their right, as independent entities, to be kind, caring, insane, temperamental, sexist, wrong, stupid, shy, hardworking, lazy, illogical, straight-laced, inexperienced, promiscuous or any of the myriad of adjectives one might use in a drunken rant about All [X People].
It’s no more OK than “my ex-wife was a bitch so all women are bitches” – err, no, maybe it was just your ex-wife. Or “all New Yorkers are rude because this guy was rude to me” – maybe that guy was just a douche. People are individuals, and they are not any less individuals just because they belong to a cultural or ethnic group different from your own.
Which, as I’ve said, I do this to some degree and I have thought about the limits of how much or whether it’s acceptable: I frequently tell stories and give anecdotes about my social encounters in Taiwan here, and I often do spin thoughts and ideas about Taiwanese culture from them, like cotton candy around a paper tube. I do have to remind myself occasionally not to fall into the trap of “my friend is this way, so all Taiwanese are this way” and that between the slender filaments of my observations is a heck of a lot of air and quite a lot of potential stickiness.
I have to keep in mind the difference between an interesting anecdote and a story that indicates a trend, and be careful to note that neither can be used too bluntly. To stop doing so completely would take away a tool I value in cultural observation, plus, hey, I like to tell stories.
Related but from another angle, there’s generalizing about an entire people and then applying it to individuals (which happens a lot to women – “all women love shopping so you must love shopping!” style) – something else I see in the expat community here. I mostly see it regarding Taiwanese women – Taiwanese girls are sweeter or more accommodating than Western ones so expat so-and-so is going to go off and find himself a Taiwanese girlfriend because presumably she’ll be that way, too. Ugh. Or that Taiwanese bosses are manipulative, dishonest and money-grubbing so I’m going to go into this job assuming that my boss is that way. Or Taiwanese are shy so I am going to assume that this person is shy (and if you think all Taiwanese are shy, come meet my friends Lilian, Sasha or Cathy someday).
Catherine of Shu Fliesnot long ago said it best: in the comments of this post she noted that she “prefer[s] to avoid making statements that begin with "the Taiwanese are" because it veers too close to crossing the line from cultural analysis to cultural stereotyping for [her] comfort.”
And that’s the crux of it right there. I hope both expats and locals stop doing this regarding each other. It hinders individual friendships and real exchange. Maybe that's too much to ask for, though.
Disclaimer: it can’t be repeated enough times – so I’m sorry to beat you about the eyes with it – but I’m painting in very broad strokes in this post and trying, while acknowledging individuality and exceptions – to explore noticed trends. If you read something that you have not observed or don’t agree with, please do leave your own musings in the comments (but keep it polite), and keep in mind that just because others’ observations may be different doesn’t mean anyone’s are invalid.
I was talking to a student today about giving suggestions, recommendations and advice in English, and one question came up:
What would you recommend to a friend, colleague or subordinate who feels unmotivated?
We were taking turns, and it was my turn to respond, so I jokingly said “How about quitting your job?”
I know. Ha ha ha.
But really…we got to talking about motivation, passion and purpose in Taiwan. I mentioned that I always ask students how their weekends were and what they did, and I am fond of questions inquiring about hobbies, interests and life goals.
I said that I would tell that person to take some time to deeply self-reflect, to look at their current situation and try to pinpoint what it is that is sapping their motivation, and either to change it or to make a more drastic change. What’s more, I’d encourage them to take some time to ponder what it was they really wanted in life, and where they would like to be in five, ten or twenty years: not necessarily to plan and insist on that outcome, but to ponder what they might like.
And yet, when I ask a question like “So…what do you want?”, “What’s your goal?”, “What are you really interested in?” and “What would you do if you could do anything you wanted?”, I so often get shrugged shoulders, maybe a “dunno”.
My student had the same thought. She said (paraphrased, not an exact quote), “I think many Taiwanese would not be able to do that. Or if you ask them what could make them feel more motivated at work, they don’t know, because it’s just office work. It’s not special.”
To be fair, I see this in the USA, too, and no matter what country you’re in, knowing what you want and not doing it – at least not yet – is far less terrifying than feeling dispirited but having no idea what you want or what would motivate you, and staring at yet another work week in a job you don’t care about, or yet another weekend in which you sleep and watch TV and have no strong desire to pursue any other activity…especially if somewhere inside you feel as though you would like to have something to be passionate about…but just don’t.
I have to say, though, I get so many more of these “dunno” responses in Taiwan, and hear or see so many wistful comments along the lines of “I don’t know what I want” or “I don’t have any hobbies” or “I don’t know what I would do” or just…kind of…a shrug.
Or take a friend of mine for example – he said recently that in college, life was so free, the possibilities were endless, but that since he’s been working he feels as though life has been pre-ordained and he can’t choose another path.
“What do you like to do on the weekend?”
"I don't know - I like to sleep and watch TV."
I also see it a lot when I ask my students about their weekends, as I always do. I do have students who regularly answer with interesting stories of how they spent their free time, but I also get a lot of “I slept and I watched TV”, or “I don’t know…actually it wasn’t special so I forgot what I did on the weekend” or worse “I did some work, because I didn’t know what to do.”
I’m sure if you asked a group of Americans about their weekend you’d get a smattering of these ho-hum responses, but I also feel that generally speaking you’d get a higher percentage of interesting stories, or at least stories that speak to having done something with their free time.
I absolutely do not believe this is cultural, and I do not believe that it has to do with any lack of spark, creativity or imagination. I resoundly reject that line of reasoning.
I do, however, believe that it is the dejected offspring of a societal creation: the overworked kid – as well as the overworked kid’s sad morphing into an overworked adult.
There has been a lot of discussion on the different childhoods of American kids and Asian kids (for the sake of this post we’ll say “Taiwanese” although it applies to much of Asia, especially east Asia) – it’s fairly well understood that we American kids had more time to play, to fritter away time, to do nothing immediately useful. Americans will say that this along with different educational methodology is what helps American kids grow critical thinking skills and creativity. Asian parents will say that their system is what makes their kids so great at math, science and music and it breeds hardworking children who will succeed.
They’re both right, but really, I think the issue goes deeper.
When I was young, you bet I spent my free time having fun – I built blanket forts, tore up my mom’s garden, drew pictures, wrote stories, made crafts, took photos, read books, played games, played sports, took walks, hit things with sticks, tried my hand at cooking. I was expected to take part in some activities – learning an instrument, joining a soccer team or some such – but I as a child had a massive amount of control over what activities I did and while I was pushed to make an effort in anything I said I wanted to try, at the end of it the final decision about whether I liked something and would become good at it was mine.
My Taiwanese friends often tell me that as children, they didn’t have such choices – long hours at school, then cram school classes or tutoring, then homework. On the weekend they might be shipped off to still more classes, English school or music lessons or various other activities that they themselves have little control over. I’m not saying that Taiwanese kids have no free time – they do have time to play, just not as much as I did
I also had more control over my grades – sure, I was expected to do my homework and make an effort in school, but the extent to which I did that was, in the end, mine. If I wanted to do a half-assed job at school, get mediocre grades, have it affect my college choices (mostly regarding scholarships – one can get a perfectly good education at a university that will accept you with middling grades, but I had needed, and won, a scholarship to go to a school not under the State University of New York system)…well, the person who would pay the eventual consequences for that was me, and so I was expected to take responsibility for it from a surprisingly early age.
As a result, I had, all around, far more free time and self-direction than many Taiwanese kids I see, and more than many of my friends in Taiwan had as children. I do think my upbringing was similar enough to many American childrens’ that I can safely use it as an example, and I do feel the people I’ve talked to in Taiwan have had childhoods close enough to the norm to safely use them as examples, too.
I'll take the extreme example of one nephew of a former student. He would get up at 6 or 7 every morning for school, spend the day there and then go to cram school until 10pm. Then he'd ride the MRT home until 11pm, eat a quick, cold dinner and do his homework until midnight or later. Then he'd wake up and do it all again the next day. On the weekend, he'd catch up on extra homework and studying. When I used to teach in Wugu until 9:30pm twice a week, I'd be dropped off at Taipei Main at about ten and vie for a spot on the escalator and train with the hundreds of cram school students bustling home at that late hour, many with circles under their eyes. I can't say I've met many Taiwanese children with hobbies other than enforced music or sports lessons in fields the children themselves did not choose (although I can name two very bright exceptions in the girls I have "English Fun Time" with most Saturdays after lunch, who do have free time to play, imagine, dream or pursue hobbies).
“What are you good at? Why do you think you are good at it? Is it useful to have this talent?”
"I don't know. I never tried anything like art or any hobbies. I guess I like basketball."
So what did I get from all that free time? Many (not all!) Taiwanese parents might say “Nothing!”, but what it did give me was a strong sense of self, a lot of time to cultivate an imagination and a lot of different testing ground to try out new hobbies and explore developing talents. My parents gamely – but within reason – paid for lessons for any activity I showed an interest in pursuing, which is how I managed from the age of 6 onwards to take classes in ballet, clarinet, tumbling and gymnastics. I had to finish the class, but if I didn’t like it and showed no special talent, I was not pushed to continue. I tried out soccer and eventually picked up the trumpet. My mom was happy to take me to Franklin’s, a crafting store chain similar to Michael’s but smaller that dotted the region, to buy me markers, pastels, sketch pads, calligraphy markers (the cheap kind), beads, yarn, embroidery thread or anything else I wanted to try out. I was given old scraps of fabric and bits and bobs of old jewelry and other goodies by my Grandma G., and encouraged to play with them: I made doll clothes, twisted together old jewelry into warped new designs and created paper confections iced with tremendous amounts of children’s glue and dripping with marker ink. I was allowed seeds and pots to try growing my own plants and occasionally given a disposable camera to futz around with. I wrote terrible children’s poetry and stories not much better than this and lovingly collected the marker-strewn sheets of scrap paper into a “book”. I was allowed to experiment with cooking under supervision. Back when I was made to be religious (my parents were big on church attendance) I taught Sunday school and realized I was good at managing and teaching a group.
It might seem as though no lasting good can be gained from dumping glitter on things and killing innocent plants that had the unfortunate fate of being “grown” by me, but really, I learned a lot from this pseudo-bohemian childhood.
I learned that while I can grow plants, I don’t have a natural green thumb. I learned that I am very good at music, pretty good at writing (you may not think so, dear reader, but I generally post first drafts of my writing on this blog – I don’t edit), possess some talent in art and crafting, enjoy photography and solitary outdoor sports such as hiking and biking, but not team sports. I learned that I am not very good at activities such as ballet and gymnastics, which require a build and natural athleticism and grace that I do not possess. I learned that I’m great at language and history/social studies, but can do well in math only if I work hard (which I never wanted to do, because I never enjoyed it). I’m pretty good at design – I did design my own wedding dress – but not that great at sewing. I learned that I love reading and hate soccer.
“What do you do for fun?”
"Sleeping! Ha ha ha."
This self-knowledge eventually fermented itself into interests and talents, and then abilities – because I stuck with the things I enjoyed and was good at, such as music, art and language. I cultivated a passion for good food and travel. Any one of them could have become a career – from musician (something I once seriously contemplated) to chef to artist to writer.
Of course, were I to become any of those things now, well, I couldn’t just up and do them: you have to choose your path and I didn’t choose one that included professional level training in any of those fields. I would need to get that training if I decided to pursue any of these hobbies on a professional level.
In college it was the same – I had free reign to choose a major and because I was given the time to figure out what I liked and had an aptitude for, I could choose something that suited me (and had the added bonus of being my own choice, which is its own reward).
“What was your favorite subject in school? Why did you like it?” “What was your major in university? Why did you choose it? Did you like it?”
"I don't have any opinion about that. I studied math and science hard because my parents told me. I didn't choose my major. My test scores told me my major."
My Taiwanese friends? Not so free to choose – their parents told them what subject to study most diligently, and their test scores determined what schools they could attend as well as what majors they could choose. Within that narrow range provided by test scores, parents will often push their children to choose one major over another. Education or accounting? Become an accountant. Medicine or engineering? Become a doctor (or engineer – they’re equally popular). History or language? Choose history. Math or biology? Math. The young adults themselves don’t get much of a say.
Perhaps in the past this was OK – having your path chosen for you has some benefits (no fear of being indecisive and no worry that you’ve chosen the wrong path out of many, because there never were many and you never did choose). It can lead to an inner confidence and bearing in knowing that you occupy your expected and correct place in your family and society, and that how you live your life is not entirely your own business or choosing. I can see how, while a bit clichéd, that could well have been the reason why a culture of “no free time, no childhood, no self-direction, no frivolous hobbies” has survived as long as it has. There’s nothing wrong with it, as long as it produces happy people. What I see it producing now, though, after industrialization and Westernization have shaken the foundations of the old system, are a lot of rudderless, tired people.
The life path I’ve chosen as a result, while not perfect, has been my own. This knowledge – that whatever I do is my own doing – has led to the deeper knowledge that whatever I haven’t done is also my own not-doing, and while some of it is “could-have-done”, it doesn’t matter: I have control of my future, at least as much as any person does, and it’s not as hard as one thinks to turn “could have done” into “can still do” and “will do”. Time to play, to dream, to imagine and to learn your own abilities and from those choose your own path can also bestow a deeper confidence that your path can go (almost) wherever you want it to, as well as giving you ideas that bubble up from deep inside on where it is you might like to go. Or as one idiom goes: the path is made by walking.
I’m not saying that all Americans are supremely confident and self-aware – as Elizabeth Gilbert wisely noted in Committed, for many all that freedom, all those choices and all those paths can be anxiety-inducing and downright paralyzing, over fear of not being able to choose every path, or of choosing the wrong path. I also don’t mean that all Taiwanese are downtrodden and lack passion and self-awareness – they don’t, and I can name dozens of exceptions among my own circle of acquaintances (see disclaimer).
And then those college kids graduate into jobs where they earn too little money for too many hours, slaving for the entirety of daylight under fluorescent tubes, and are too tired on the weekend, if they have a full weekend at all, to consider pursuing anything else. If they do take time to think about it, they don’t have a solid foundation of childhood experience and trial-and-error hobbies to give them direction on what they might consider doing or might enjoy.
“What is your life goal? Where do you see yourself in ten years?”
"I don't know. Maybe making more money."
So, when I saw my friend’s Facebook comment about feeling as though possibilities were endless as a student but now he felt that his path was pre-ordained and nothing he could do would change it, it punched me in the heart just a little bit – because when I ask the questions used as headers in this post and get answers similar to the ones I’ve highlighted over and over again, well, isn’t it a sign that a lot of people feel this way? Is it a sign that it’s a problematic trend in Taiwan? The first generation of Taiwanese born into safety and prosperity, who have generally not known poverty, illiteracy or oppression, and who have been force-fed an education and told what their abilities and future careers must be, who were never given much free time or chances to try out their own aptitudes or self-reflect…has this become the fallout? A nuclear winter of feeling like their paths are not made by walking, but are made for them to walk, of not knowing what they really want because they never had time to find out?
Granted, I don’t know if the friend who made the comment had a childhood in Taiwan like the one I outlined. I’m using that comment as a springboard to explore a host of issues and trends I’ve noticed, not to pinpoint one specific person.
When someone asks me, though, where I see myself in ten years, I can tell them. If someone asks me to think about how my current life situation motivates me or not, or what I really want in life, I can answer.
I see myself holding a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics, speaking fluent Chinese and doing some tutoring or even training in that on the side, and continuing in the same realm of English teaching/corporate training, or possibly working at a university. I see myself writing a book, but will only do so if I ever feel sufficiently inspired regarding the subject matter. I see myself continuing to travel, improving my photography and cooking skills, and maybe someday buying a small townhouse or rowhouse in a funky urban area with Brendan, or staying in Taiwan. I see a lot of things that could happen and have the confidence that if life takes a different turn, that my path is still made by walking, and Brendan and I will be able to wind our own way through whatever happens.
I just don't get a lot of Taiwanese students who can answer that question, and almost none who can answer it with much conviction beyond wanting to retire after making more money (again, there are exceptions - students who want to travel, learn about art or become stellar photographers come to mind).
So when I answered that comment, I said something along the lines of – when I was in college, I didn’t know what I want and I kept looking for signs or for the world to tell me. But no stars shone, no omens came. Nobody was ever going to help me. It was up to me to make the most of life and expand my horizons. I know you believe in fate more than I do, though.”
(It sounds a bit overwrought in English, but this is translated from Chinese).
I want nothing more than to see more people in the world with that confidence – and while I hate to imply the superiority of Western culture (or any culture, in any regard) – I do think that giving children and young adults more free time and more self-direction can build a stronger self-confidence and inner motivation than what I often see in Taiwan. I do not believe that a test score can determine an appropriate major anywhere nearly as well as the person who will study that major. I do believe that choosing for yourself is its own reward and bestows its own decisiveness and confidence, and more people should be encouraged to do it. I’d like to see more people in Taiwan – and East Asia, and the world – with a stronger knowledge of what they enjoy and what motivates them, and to know that their paths, too, are made by walking.
Riffing a bit on my post about friendship in Taiwan over a week ago...I was chatting with a local acquaintance about the phrase "外國朋友" (or 外國人朋友) - literally "foreign friend".
"It should be pretty good," he said. "In the past, Taiwan didn't have many foreigners, so if a Taiwanese person had a foreign friend, it was some kind of honor."
"An honor? To have a friend who is not from Taiwan? Any friend? Of any age, from any country?"
"Yes. So they are trying to be very nice when they call you 'foreign friend', it's like a friend but higher."
"Hmm. But it seems to me that to say 'foreign friend' makes it clear that that friend is different or set apart."
"Yes! It's true!"
"So to me that sounds like 'these people are my friends, and this foreigner is my foreign friend, like I'm not really a friend the way anyone else is."
"Yes. But it's an honor to that person."
"That local person or that foreigner?"
"That local person, and maybe the foreigner too."
"I guess...an honor, OK, but I don't really want to feel 'different' or 'higher' or have any special honor for being a foreigner. People are just people, you know? 人就是人. 'Higher' doesn't mean 'closer', in fact it feels like there is some distance."
"Yes, probably there is. Maybe that could be a language or culture issue."
"I guess. I know it is hard, and there are a lot of language and culture barriers. But still, I would rather be just a friend. Like people are just people. Have the chance to be closer, not higher. Not some special foreign friend. Anyway it's clear I'm a foreigner, there's no need to actually say so. Nobody will ever mistake me for Taiwanese."
"That is true!"
...
Fortunately, none of my friends say this in my presence (I have no idea, if they mention me at all, if they refer to me as a foreign friend when I'm not around, though). I have heard it, though, and heard myself referred to by others as someone's "foreign friend". I don't worry too much about that because I don't really know the people in question, so that's different from a real, actual friend. I try not to say "Taiwanese friend" unless there is some specific reason why I need to mention that they are Taiwanese (to explain something about an anecdote or joke, for example) or, as in my last post on friendship, I'm actively trying to dissect friendship norms with locals compared to those I have with other expats.
It makes me wonder, though. How much am I a friend and how much am I a foreign friend, and will that ever change? Should it? Is it even a big deal? Is there a bit of distance and maybe a bit of bragging inherent in the phrase foreign friend or am I overanalyzing it as I do everything?
We live here. No fake Greek statues, parking space with a Cefiro or colored marble in sight.
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about real estate, rent prices and location (yes, it was actually an interesting conversation). As is common in Taiwan, he asked me how much our rent was, and since I don’t mind sharing, I told him. It’s no secret that our apartment is dirt cheap, and honestly looks the part – though I think we’ve painted, decorated and maintained it very well, so it is more reminiscent of a funky pseudo-industrial bohemian hideout (think “Rent”) than a true downmarket ghetto pad.
We live a one-minute walk from the MRT, though, and a two-minute walk from a large night market, so you can’t beat that.
Oddly, though, I found myself quickly adding “…we prefer to spend our money traveling!” as though I somehow had to defend myself and my cheap apartment.
I wasn’t lying – every year we take at least one vacation that is usually six weeks long. This year we’re taking an eight-week vacation but nothing else (in previous years we’ve done quick getaways to Hong Kong or the Philippines in addition to our longer travels). I don’t know many – scratch that, I don’t know any – Taiwanese people who do that, although I do hope they exist.
It is absolutely true that rent and mortgage rates are correlated to salary much as it is in the rest of the world, and people will judge how much you make based on how much you spent on your living quarters. Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to be as true in China and Korea, where people who make more will seek out nicer accommodation, but generally speaking will prioritize more visible markers of prosperity such as a luxury car or the new It Bag.
As an expat who inhabits a murky realm between younger travelers who usually come to teach in cram schools or study (heck, that was me not so long ago) and older ones who have either stayed on or who have come on a company package, I feel as though I don’t fit into either group – and my social circle starkly reflects this.
I do feel that when trying to “place” me and draw up a set of semi-assumed likelihoods about my life, most people I come into contact with place me in the latter group – closer to the older, business-oriented expats (probably precisely because that’s the locally correlated group of people I teach here, so that’s who I have the most contact with). I’m not sure how true it is, but it does seem to be how I am mentally categorized by new acquaintances.
As such, I feel there is an expectation that our lifestyle also fit that mold. Nobody expects us to have an office car and driver (do any expats in Taiwan actually have that anymore?) or even to own an apartment – although I am constantly asked “do you rent or own?” and when I say “rent”, I’m asked if I ever plan to buy real estate in Taiwan (probably not). I’m talking more about the lifestyle accoutrements you’d normally find among white collar professionals. I have, however, seen surprise on people’s faces when I admit how low our rent is (“we prefer to spend our money traveling!”), or that neither of us owns a smartphone or an iPad, or that we not only don’t have a car, but neither of us owns a scooter and I often ride my bike to work when not taking the bus or MRT. I encountered surprise when I admitted we don’t have a dryer (“but you can get one for just NT$10,000!”) and that our hot water is still from an old-style heater hooked up to a gas tank, as is our stove. Most of our friends live similar lifestyles – that’s usually the way, isn’t it – but most of my acquaintances, especially through work, do have all of the things listed above, and probably have newer, nicer apartments, too. Think of it this way:
Me: “I love your scarf! Where did you get it?”
Student: “Thanks! I got it at SOGO. I like yours, too. Where did you get it?”
Me: “Erm, the night market.”
Student: “Oh. Well, it’s nice.”
My students, typically, do not prioritize their finances as we do (not that I ask – that’d be rude even though I am asked all the time) and it does come as a shock that we don’t drive and we don’t live in anything like those curlicue-gated and marble-bedecked new apartment buildings dotting Taipei, or that we get our gas the old fashioned way.
Honestly, if you were to see our apartment and lifestyle you’d think we make a lot less money than we do (more akin to a cram school teacher), and while only one former student has ever been in our apartment (three if you include some former students from my year at Kojen, but I haven’t worked there in half a decade so I don’t really count that), I do wonder how often the things I do say about our life cause acquaintances to extrapolate what our salary likely is – and by doing that and leaving out all the travel, they’d probably come up with a number that’d be shameful in the corporate world for anyone above the level of a secretary.
I don’t doubt that this happens, actually, considering the nosiness about others’ affairs here. I’m not ashamed of the differences in expectation and reality (although I have been thinking recently about whether/how to either make our place nicer or move), but it does make me wonder.I do like to think that people have better things to do with their time, but I can’t deny experiencing this kind of nosiness among neighbors and being asked frequently how much we pay in rent. I do wonder what is expected as an answer as an expat whose acquaintances are mostly upper middle class Taiwanese. I wonder what they extrapolate from that. I wonder what they think when I don’t meet that criteria.
I do have to say that while most of the reasons why we diverge from lifestyle expectations revolve around spending priorities (“we prefer to spend our money on travel!”), part of it is also taste. There are more expensive, nicer apartments available but when you get into the “accommodation to reflect a high income” you start to dive into marble, faux gilt, crystal chandelier, hideous upholstery, faux “Greek” statuary and wrought-iron The wrought-iron is OK. The rest – no. As one friend put it, a lot of what is considered “high class” in Taiwan is sadly reminiscent of this: Opulence. I Has It!
There are other options, of course, but I did feel it was important to note this undercurrent in “taste” in Taiwan and how insidious it is – and how, like owning a Cefiro or shopping at Bellavita (or even Shinkong Mitsukoshi), I am simply not interested (although, I admit it, I have been known to buy things at Shinkong Mitsukoshi. Rarely. But it happens).
I do like to think that if I am judged for that, that I am judged well, and I do tend to get along very well with students generally. I have a very high opinion of them as a whole. If I were judged harshly, it would genuinely bother me if I were to find out.
