Double Triple Culture Shock

I've written before about reverse culture shock, something Kath at [insert suitably snappy title here] has described as feeling like "something has grown and it no longer fits like it used to, like a favourite t-shirt you used to wear all the time that accidentally got shrunk in the wash".

I could swear I wrote another post on the topic more recently, where I talked about how going home felt like watching all sorts of once familiar things that I once interacted with, but seeing them through a pane of glass, or Bubble Boy. You're there, you can see, hear and talk to people, but you're somehow separate.

I can't find that post now, but if I do I'll link back to it.

Well, since I've been back in Taiwan from our extended stay in Turkey, I can say that something along the lines of a double reverse culture shock has started to sink in. I'm sure it'll dissipate soon enough; it also only seems to have affected me to the point of me, myself noticing it. Nobody else seems to have.

It doesn't seem like this feeling is terribly common - seems it would be rather rare for someone to move abroad to one country, go through the usual culture shock, and then leave to spend long enough time in another, third country that they'd come back to their second country and culture shock about it all over again, from an entirely different angle. In this way, I'm probably writing about this more for myself and  the perspective that chronicling and describing this brings, but who knows, maybe someone out there in Internetland feels the same way and will stumble across this post.

I also kind of felt that this was strange about my experience in Turkey. I didn't feel  culture shock regarding Turkish ways of life vs. American; I felt it regarding Turkish ways of life vs. Taiwanese.

So of course when I then returned to the USA for a visit I had no fundamental frame of reference for anything at all, and was very confused indeed!

It would be great to be able to articulate exactly why I feel this way, but I can't really. What I can do is give some examples.

 First, I feel that same odd "looking at everything through the skin of a soap bubble" feeling I often get in the US, where I can see just fine, and interact and all that, but there's some barrier there that wasn't there before. I feel I've been relating to my friends differently, but I can't describe exactly how. My values have changed a bit, from being fine with living in a crummy apartment with crummy things but traveling fantastically, to being willing to scale back the travel a little bit and compromise on a nicer apartment and nicer things. I've also become more productive and in some ways, I think more cheerful, even when I'm in one of my fairly common cynical, curmudgeonly, critical moods. The  strict, unending and rapidly-approaching deadlines of our course were such that I've now trained myself - hopefully permanently - to be better with deadlines. I've proven that I can do so, if they're truly important. That's why I always had my class prep done on time but rarely had my reports done on time in the past.

Weather in Taipei is more miserable than I remember it; this is probably due to a month of sunny Turkish skies raising my expectations. Things that either didn't bother me or only nominally annoyed me before - people walking too slowly, especially if they're hogging the sidewalk or dawdling just inside MRT train doors (so nobody can get on quickly behind them! Argh!) or just outside turnstiles or doorways. The habit of pretending to understand something said in English when really, that person doesn't understand. The habit of not just asking when you don't understand - which Turkish students had no problem doing. The tendency to over-adhere to process over usefulness, feeling that keeping with a strict process is enough to feel like one is accomplishing something. I don't see this all the time in Taiwan, but just enough - especially at work - to annoy me. Listening to one's boss as though his or her words are the words of God.  Over-devotion to work: when someone in Turkey says "I have to leave class for a meeting, after that I'll have to go back to the office to finish up a few things", you can assume that once he's done with the meeting he's probably just going to cut out of there and head home if he can. In Taiwan, you can assume that he really is going to go to the meeting then do some work afterwards. Which is fine, doesn't affect me, but it's not how I roll.

I'm not nearly as interested in nightlife, and I don't think that's a function of age. Istanbul reeked of stuff to do at night. Entire neighborhoods were given over to nightlife. The tackiest, but arguably most "lose yourself in the crowd and have fun" of them all was Taksim, walking distance from our apartment. It was as big or bigger than the Xinyi Shopping District and packed bottom floor to top, building-against-building with bars, clubs, restaurants, live music, cafes, lounges, shops and pubs. You quite literally had all the choice in the world, from hippie lounging on beanbags outside among curls of incense with raki and hookahs to hip, red-lit booty-short-tacular dance clubs to fancy dinner at a bistro to coffee with friends in a bookshop. Taipei has most of that, but it's spread out and sometimes hard to find and no one neighborhood has enough of it to have a nightlife vibe.  As a result, I just haven't been going out much: one late night, total, since I've been back (late for me means "out past 2am").

This really isn't hitting the heart of it, though, which shows you that I don't really know where the heart of it is. Taipei is the same; I'm different. I went to Turkey with Brendan, so it feels like we're both just different enough after the trip that we've maintained the same dynamic. I feel different around everyone else, though.

It could be because going to my ancestral homeland of Musa Dagh was an inwardly emotional experience for me, even if it was a relatively quiet trip and quiet day. The full impact of the trip I'd made, the first in my family to do so since the Armenians were killed or forced out of Turkey, has been hitting me in stages. It may well have made me both more sanguine and more maudlin, possibly a bit more phlegmatic than before. I'm more irritated by things I'd previously gotten used to in Taiwan, but my temper flares over it less.

The new apartment could also have something to do with it - I've written before about how it's impacted my life and even my habits and personality a bit. I don't know though; our return from Turkey and our move happened so close together that in terms of emotion, the entirety of November and December is one big, murky pool.

In sum, I just don't know.

Something's shifted. Something's different. I'm definitely feeling that ineffable separation from my surroundings that I get when I culture shock. I can't articulate why in any clear way. I can't even clearly tell if anyone else has noticed the change. All I can say is that it's there and I'm hoping I figure it out or work through it soon.

Of Balls

Sure, it only costs NT$250, but for that price it's a pretty decent wine.

While finishing off a bottle of inexpensive but good wine with Brendan last night, I got to thinking about all the usual stuff: you know, how great married life has been for the past year and a half, how lucky we really are to have such a strong relationship, and my doesn't this apartment look awesome, I could actually stay in most nights and not feel bored and hmm, if Tsai wins the election, will she be the sort of women's rights advocate in office that could really benefit Taiwanese women? and I should really read Shantaram, it's been on the shelf for a year and it's too bad that I love my career, really get on with my students, and yet am not happy with my company and it'll be a few months yet before I can make a change.


And then this: it's been five years. I'm applying for permanent residency after Chinese New Year. Would I have stayed this long if I'd been single.


No, probably not. 


Why is that?


Of course, I covered this in Why Are There So Few Expat Women in Asia?, but it kind of got buried deep in the (admittedly long) post, and wasn't very personal. This post is my attempt to personalize that a bit.

I'd said there that a lot of expat women leave after a few years if they're single, because it's just plain harder to date (whereas in some regards it's easier for expat men), even if you like the local guys - which, for the record, I would if I were single.  Married or enrelationshipped women - yes, I made that word up - seem more likely to stick around in the foreign country they've chosen - especially in Asia. It's been my experience in Taiwan that the long-term expat women I know here are all married or in relationships.  In Turkey I noticed that it was quite a different tale: plenty of expat women stuck around, and more than a few married Turkish men, not unlike a lot of the expat men in east Asia.

Clearly, when the dating market opens up to reveal more opportunities, the women tend to stay just as long as the men. I'd like to think that a choice to move abroad or move home is one made individually, for reasons other than romantic prospects but rather for reasons ranging from desire to see the world, to learn a new language, to engage in another culture, for other academic pursuits or because you genuinely enjoy English teaching and the best opportunities for that happen to be in non-English speaking countries.

And it's true that I moved abroad without worrying about romantic prospects, and I happened to get lucky (heh heh). I wasn't here to date - I was here to see more of the world and learn Chinese. I didn't even know yet that I wanted to be a career teacher/trainer/whatever it is that I do because on any given day my job description feels different.

Yet these noble ideas - that one should make these choices without thought to dating - just isn't the case, and it wouldn't have been for me, either.

If Brendan hadn't existed, or we'd never met, or our relationship never worked out, here's what would have likely happened:

Brendan moved to Taiwan about halfway through my first year in Taiwan. I was not planning to leave at the end of that year; at the time my plans were to stay for 2-3 years depending, see if teaching was a good career fit (I'd started to love my evening teaching job back in the USA and hate my corporate desk job, which clued me into the idea that I would do better in a career such as teaching) and then either move home or move to another country.  I knew before Brendan came that I would not stay at Kojen past my initial contract, so I would have still changed jobs. I might not have ended up at the company I did - although who knows? They were looking at just about the right time.

I probably would have stayed in my tiny, slightly crummy room in an otherwise nice apartment in Liuzhangli for awhile longer, until I got a new job and could afford a small studio or at least a better room in a shared apartment.

I probably would have dated a couple of guys, be they expat or local. Those relationships, as most tend to do, probably would not have worked out. Although I'm sociable, I'm not exactly an "every weekend at a different social hangout" girl, so there probably wouldn't have been more than one or two. I think that estimate is accurate because that's about half the number of guys I typically dated in a few years in the DC area.

My social circle wouldn't have been appreciably different, except it would lack some people, including one whom I consider to be a very good friend, because those friends came through opportunities brought about by Brendan.

So I probably would have a social life that involved seeing friends for one outing a weekend, occasionally going out on a weekend night if invited (I love making plans for meals or outings for friends, I make drink plans far less often and mostly go when invited). I would otherwise work, take pictures, go hiking occasionally, hang out at cafes and then come home and be alone. My expat male friends, few as they are, would be dating local women at either a far greater frequency or intensity than any dating opportunities I would have had.

Not too unlike my single life in DC, except I had more dating opportunities and, within my own cultural context, it was easier to make friends. I saw those friends more, because in the USA we seem to place a greater emphasis on time spent with friends vs. at home, with family or working than in Taiwan, where people seem to see friends less.

I would have looked at the expat scene in Taipei - nightlife that I'm mostly not interested in (with some exceptions! Going out occasionally is fun), maybe a few clubs I could have joined, but generally just as I see it now: something I dip my toe into and can enjoy, but never really felt I fit into (although I feel a bit more fitting-inny now that I am friends with a small group of younger married women like myself who also defy the young-guys-here-teaching-at-Hess-for-a-year and the older-family-types-with-kids-at-the-American-school, and I know a few student types - I tend to get on well with the grad school crowd). I would have concluded that, in part, I felt a bit out of it with the expat crowd. Not unwelcome, but a bit like "young single foreign women who aren't particularly pretty have a tougher time socially here than back home".

I'd have looked at local life in Taipei and probably dipped my toes into that more, as well, but likewise still not felt like I fit in: turns out people don't invite you out much when you don't fit into a circle of coworkers, classmates or family.

Then I would have looked back at my social life in DC, and then my dating life. I might not have chosen to move back to DC in particular, but I might have concluded that as a single woman, if I wanted a better shot at having good relationships and having one of those turn permanent, and if I wanted lots of friends to have good times with both in the interim and beyond, that my chances of that were far better back home, or in another country.

Perhaps I would have done the CELTA as I did in Istanbul, had the great fun that I did, made friends on the course, and decided that for a good social life, Istanbul would have been a great bet. And I might well have stayed, despite the fact that it would have left me a bit emotionally torn. Or I might have picked another Mediterranean country.

All through this I'd be a bit angry at myself, thinking what, are you not the nomad and adventurer you thought you were?  Are you really going to go home now because poor widdle Jenna doesn't have enough widdle fwiends and nobody wants to be her boyfwiend? Awww. I thought you were made of stronger stuff, and I thought you knew that traveling the world would come with its share of loneliness. Are you just another Typical Girl, who needs people around her instead of fortifying herself? Are you weak? Do you not have the balls you thought you did?


(I admit I have a mortal fear of being seen as weak. That's a good post for another time, if I ever feel like revealing that much about myself).

And of course the final few sentences of the above are ridiculous, and in their own way, sexist, but it's only honest of me to say I would have thought them.

And I would have felt conflicted and angry and a bit sad, but I probably would have also felt lonely and  lacking social and dating opportunities - even though they exist in Taipei, I would have found them, as a single foreign woman, insufficient - but in the end I probably would have moved on in my predicted 2-3 years.  The fact that I didn't, that I instead married and nested a bit and started to feel a bit settled (and happy about that, which I never thought would happen) and like Taipei was home. But a big part of that is that I do have a family here. I have a husband - and a cat and (for the time being) a sister. I might have never felt that way if the whole marriage thing hadn't happened, or if I had not at least found myself in a serious relationship.

I'll leave it at this: in 2003 I celebrated my birthday in Pakse, Laos. I was in my early twenties and in Laos by myself (not long before I'd seen off Brendan in Beijing, from where he returned to Korea). I spent my birthday alone,  hiking up the crumbled, rocky ruins of a temple carved into a bluff outside of town. It was humid and buggy and I'm sure I looked like hell. I'm also sure as hell that I didn't care. I got to the top and sat at the edge of the bluff, the craggy black building blocks of the temple tumbled down below me, mostly in a scraggy pile, but a few were strewn further out into the verdant landscape.

Nobody had yet sent me birthday wishes in e-mail and this was long before Facebook. My only birthday wish before the time difference made it my birthday on the East Coast was from myself. I was young and I didn't mind being alone. I looked out over the tops of palm trees to lush rice fields dotted with beasts of burden and I thought to myself: this is great - how often can one say that one climbed a ruined temple in Laos on their birthday?


But several years later when I hit Taipei,  this was what my "birthday alone" was like. It was not good. It was not adventurous. It was not ballsy. It was just sad.  I still wanted - and still want - to travel the world and have adventures, but what I realized was that I didn't necessarily want to do it alone.
                             

Hailongtun

Stairs up Jingling Mountain on a foggy day, our goal forever elusive 

The weather today has inspired me to write about Hailongtun.

In 2002 and 2003 I lived in Zunyi, a small town (which meant that it had less than a million people) in Guizhou, southern central China.

While it got colder there than it does in Taipei – it even snowed twice - the weather, especially in winter, was generally about the same: overcast and dreary for days on end, cold, drizzly.  Although I lived on the refurbished “old street” (which was the newest part of town in terms of building age), the smoke from hundreds of coal stoves would fudge up the air as much as Taipei 101’s fireworks did last night. Leaving the New Old Street, other than the mountain park and the river and one memorable temple, the city became a mostly indistinct blur of white tiled, blue-glass windowed concrete monstrosities stretching down wide roads for miles.  Puncturing this was the train station, some thoroughly horrific public bathrooms, one so-so park, a “night market” that was put to shame by even the most humble Taiwanese night market, and a casino with a giant plastic Sphinx out front, topped off with a generous helping of neon. It wasn’t a classy enough place to warrant LEDs.

The giant medicine gourd in
Dragon Phoenix Park

 I found some escape in the mountainside park, which did have a network of fairly respectable hiking trails, and a giant cement medicine gourd, venturing pretty far out of town in that direction on several occasions – even in winter. Soon, I started to venture further into the countryside, renting a bike towards the end of the New Old Street  and riding out past Gaoqiao (the way I consistently mispronounced that neighborhood made it sound like “gaochao” or “orgasm”) and towards the rice fields to the west of town. Out past there was a park and pagoda where I’d stop to rest, looking at the 8 demigods’ symbols painted above (a medicine gourd, a flute…some other things) before riding back and returning the bike.

 With more than half a year gone by in Zunyi, I was starting to feel like I’d never figure the place out before I left. Not just Zunyi, but China, which I was starting to feel was a more exciting place in Western fantasy than in reality: the name “China”  conjures up temples, pagodas, a rich musical tradition, delicious food,  richly brocaded fabric, or at least some sort  of modern equivalent to these things (seeing as I knew that people generally did not live in pagoda’d and pavilion’d houses anymore, and not everyone sat around all day painting calligraphy or playing the zither). At least you expect scenery, historic sites that look vaguely authentic, food you can trust, maybe a lantern or two, and some adventure.

You’ll get the adventure – if  “ did this bus just drive up a flight of stairs FOR REAL?” is your idea of it (it is for me!) – and the food generally was fantastic, at least when it wasn’t bitter gourd, some other weird roots or things, or mostly bone, fat and sinew…but the food supply was (and is) so untrustworthy that eating was a risk unto itself. I survived…with three fewer teeth than I had going in.

I did learn how to cook some amazing dishes and I was introduced to the life-changing, or at least digestion-changing, concept of 花椒, or flower pepper, though.

But the historic sites are mostly gone or covered in bathroom tile, everything else is basically a concrete box (also covered in bathroom tile) and few really care about any of the traditional, well, anything. There was scenery, but views of it were so gummed up by pollution that even that was a let-down.

And yes, I was starting to wonder what on earth could possibly keep me in China. Wouldn’t I be better off returning to India or exploring some other part of the globe? One not covered in tile? What was I doing in China and was Zunyi a place I could really settle into for longer than my one year contract?

Ruminating on this and marinating in coal smoke, the other two foreigners and I decided to try and find Hailongtun: the ruins of a 13^th century fortress with a bloody history about 30km outside of town. It was the site of a battle between Ming dynasty forces and a ruling clan in what is now Guizhou and part of Sichuan – it was build by the regional ruling clan, which by the end of the 16^th century was in direct conflict with the Ming court. A bloody battle took place and thousands, if not tens of thousands, were massacred here. The head of the ruling Yang family killed himself along with two concubines. as he was outsmarted by the Ming soldiers.

We also knew that we were in for quite a climb if we attempted to get here, but then doing anything in China felt like quite a climb, if not physically, then mentally. I handled this feeling well in India, but for some reason getting into the groove of it was not working out in China. Where in India my memories  are sunny, colorful, occasionally mud-colored but always warm, when it comes to China my thoughts turn a cold, dingy gray, not unlike the side of a cement wall in winter.

Other than Fragrant Mountain Temple (香山寺) and the buildings in my neighborhood considered historic sites for their significance during the Long March (you could see the roof of the building where Mao Zedong was elected to the Communist Party Central Committee from my window), there wasn’t much of historical significance in Zunyi. I guess having even what it did was a feat: the town was mostly spared destruction of its culture and relics because of that  significance in Communist history. I thought seeing something of genuine historical significance would reaffirm my faith that my year was worth it, that I’d be amazed by something. That maybe I would be brought a little bit closer to the country I was living in by our shared values regarding the importance of history (Cultural Revolution notwithstanding, and leaving most of that history not standing).

It didn’t seem like it would be that hard - it was mentioned in a book published in English, which was a rare thing in itself, to find good tourism information on Guizhou in English. There even seemed to be a bus that would take us close by, followed by a short hike.

The first time Jenny and I tried to go was just before Chinese New Year – we stopped in a random town where the bus route ended, maybe 17 kilometers outside Zunyi. We asked around for “Hailongtun” in piss-poor Chinese, and were led up a street to a hiking trail. We were told it was a 5-hour walk each way. It was already 3pm. We turned back, after snapping some photos of New Year fireworks for sale.  As we were waiting for a bus, a guy with a van stopped and asked us where we were headed. I tried to say that we had wanted to go to Hailongtun. I don’t think he quite understood: he arranged for us to take a bus which we thought was heading back to Zunyi. Instead, the driver said, he’d take us to Hailongtun.

Great!

Oh, but from where he would drop us off it was a two-hour hike each way. We tried protesting but it wasn’t working. Finally we just let him drop us off, praying that wherever we ended up there, would be another bus back to Zunyi. He let us off in some other random town with one place to stay, one liquor store, a few street stands and a village atmosphere, and bid us a nice hike. It was already getting a little dark out.

We did catch a bus back to Zunyi, with the promise to try again in a few weeks. This time we brought Julian, whose Chinese was considerably better than ours but who, like me, wasn’t as fast a hiker as Jenny. We took the bus back to the second village and started out again. Villagers said that in fact it was a four hour hike, and to start from Jingling Mountain, “just over that way”.

Pagodas and farms on the way to Jingling Mountain

OK, misinformation was nothing new for me after life in China and India, so we rolled with the ever-changing time estimates of how long it would actually take to get there, and starting points that seemed to float around with no fixed center, as though the goal didn’t even exist. We grabbed some water and food and headed down the dirt road to the Jingling Mountain trailhead, passing rice fields and a few rustic pagodas on small hills.

Then the stairs began, and with them, fog.

“I hope this clears by afternoon,” Julian said dryly, knowing as well as we did that fog in the mountains of northern Guizhou, once settled in, basically never clears.  We trudged up stairs – miles and miles of stairs, not unlike hiking in Taiwan – into ever thicker fog and a bit of drizzle.

“Maybe it’ll look better in the fog, you know, more mysterious and otherworldly,” said Jenny hopefully. Ever the optimist.

More stairs. We passed a temple, and then another. Nobody had told us that Jingling Mountain was dotted all the way to the top with increasingly beautiful temples, many of them untouched by the scourge of white tile. Most appeared to be Dao/Chinese folk religion in affiliation rather than Buddhist, but it is sometimes hard to tell. We stopped at a few to admire the architecture, idols and incense and chat with the shrine-keepers, who walked up these miles of stairs every morning  and down them every evening.

 The stairs led on, sometimes sharp-edged concrete, sometimes rough-hewn stone, sometimes packed dirt, but they didn’t let up. At one point it felt like we were ascending to heaven. We passed a small turn-off with a shack down the way and asked again there if we were going the right way “no, no, don’t go this way, keep going up the mountain,” the woman told us.

Incense burner (photo by Julian) in one of the temples on Jingling Mountain

Well, alright then. I just hoped that we wouldn’t hit the top of Jinglingshan only to discover that we had to descend the whole thing and ascend the next mountain, and then go back and descend, ascend and descend again. We’d started early but there wasn’t enough time in the day for that.

About three quarters of the way up, Jenny got sick of our slow butts and decided to hike at her own pace. “I’ll meet you there,” she said.  It was true that she was reasonably fit while Julian and I sputtered up the stairs like the duo in Absolutely Fabulous.

We really didn’t have a choice, although I was filled with dread, because rather like my gut feeling that I would never really settle into China, I had an instinctive knowledge that we had approximately .00001% of a chance of making it to Hailongtun that day. So if not there, where would we meet her? Julian could speak Chinese, I could get by in Chinese, but Jenny couldn’t, although she could quite literally run circles around us athletically. She might make it to Hailongtun but would she make it back? We two probably wouldn’t make it to Hailongtun but we could get home just by asking nicely.

Julian and I trudged upward, hitting one final temple and being told that Jinglingshan’s summit was only about 10 minutes up some more stairs.

The temple had a dragon fountain into which you could throw tokens – one renminbi for five, or something like that. If the token landed on the dragon sculpture and not in the bowl, you could make a wish.

I bought the tokens and added something to the game – completely made-up, but I felt like a lot of rules of life and even courtesy in China were basically made-up, slapped together ad-hoc or sometimes not even as necessary but for the explicit purpose of being inconvenient, so it wouldn’t really matter if I made up my own fortune telling superstition it wouldn’t matter to anyone, man or god. I  asked a question each time a coin was thrown, and if it hit the dragon, a heads-up would mean “yes” and a tails-up would mean “no” (the heads were Mao Zedong and the tails were some kind of flower, the tokens were cheap aluminum).               

Two of my coins hit the dragon. I’m not using that as a narrative device – it actually happened. Ask Julian. I made two wishes and asked two questions.

It was now mid-afternoon, and the fog hadn’t let up. But we knew that it wouldn’t. We also knew that we had very little time to actually get there, because we absolutely needed to start heading back.

We decided to go for it. I don’t believe that a stone dragon in a fountain on a temple as a magical fortune-telling device, but I knew, I just knew, what was going to happen.

We walked the ten minutes – for once someone was accurate in their assessment of how long it would take – and hit the summit.

Without fog, the view would have been spectacular. You could feel it in the air. We were surrounded immediately by open space and further on by other mountains and valleys. It would have been stunning. Life-altering, even. Maybe enough to make me reconsider my fairly lackluster opinion of China.

There was fog, though. All-encompassing, all-engulfing white out. You couldn’t see past the stone fence surrounding the platform on the summit, not even down the mountain slope beyond. Nothing. I shouted into it. There was an echo, but that also told me nothing. I called Jenny’s name. Nothing. I screamed it. Nothing.

Of course, the trail ended there. There was no descent. There was only back the way we’d come. Dead end, no Hailongtun, not even a trail we could have taken if we’d had more time. I can’t help but see that as metaphorical.

We turned back, stopped partway down at the turn-off and asked again.

“Of course that is the way to Hailongtun”, the woman said.
“Why didn’t you tell us before? Why did you tell us not to go?”

“Because it’s another three hours’ walk from here. You’d never have made it.  If you go the other way at least you can go to the peak of this mountain.”

“Did another foreigner go that way?”
“Yes, but she came back awhile ago.”
“Did she make it to Hailongtun?”
“I don’t know, she couldn’t speak Chinese. Probably not. Are you hungry?”
“YES!”

She fed us some rice, tofu, cauliflower and carrot cooked in basic Sichuan seasoning. I wolfed, Julian, who doesn’t care for Sichuanese flavors, barely ate. We offered to pay her, but she’d have none of it, even after we offered three times.

This was one thing I liked about China – this and the bus that drove up a flight of stairs. Sometimes, when you least expected it, people were kind. Even people who led you down the wrong trail earlier.

We walked back to town and caught a bus back to Zunyi, fog-dampened and exhausted.  We warmed up a bit and then went to Jenny’s apartment, where she was also huddled in front of a space heater and not concerned about us. “I figured you’d make it back.”

“Did you make it to Hailongtun?”
“Nope. You?”
“No.”

“Oh well…next time?”

“Next time.”

Except I knew, without really knowing, that there wasn’t going to be a next time, not for Hailongtun and not for China. I knew that I wasn’t going to renew my contract, and that I wasn’t going to stay in China. I did not yet know that I’d end up in Taiwan, or that I’d find both the settled happiness and adventure here that I couldn’t find in China. I did not yet know that I was going to marry my best friend, or that despite having a few ugly facades and terrible winter weather that Taiwan would suit me  remarkably well. Not because it is easier – although it is – but because something about life here, the more laid-back attitudes, the fraternity and hospitality, the fact that it’s full of (often) pollution-free scenery and history unencumbered by concrete and tile, sits better with me.

I didn’t know a lot, but I did know, somewhere deep in some internal organ in my gut, that my failure to find Hailongtun represented my failure to feel at home in China, or to be able to say anything more complimentary than “it was an interesting and adventurous experience. You could say it changed my life. It certainly ruined my teeth and my respiratory system.” I will say that while, like not reaching Hailongtun, I never did feel at home in China, that rather like finding all the lovely temples dotting Jingling Mountain, I did have a lot of adventures along the way.

I guess that’s all you can ask of a year abroad, so I don’t feel gypped. My year in Taiwan opened me up to the possibility of Taiwan, and for that I am grateful. I have found many Hailongtuns here.

So as for my questions to the dragon fountain on the highest temple of Jingling Mountain.

For the first question, I asked “Will we ever make it to Hailongtun?”

For the second, “Will I ever see China as more than a brief adventure, a pit stop, a place to explore but not feel at home in?”

No.

And no.

I won’t tell you what I wished for on top of that, but both my questions and my wishes came true.

So I'm Quiet...But I Want To Talk

Not long ago I was chatting with a student - we were sharing a taxi to the HSR, as he was returning to Tucheng while I returned to Taipei. He asked me what I thought of Taiwanese people, if I had any Taiwanese friends, what it was like to have a social life as a foreigner in Taiwan - all in all a more interesting conversation than the usual "you married yet? How long have you been in Taiwan? Can you eat our food?" taxi banter.

I told him basically what I said in the linked post above, albeit more succinctly. Basically that my Taiwanese friends were great, that generally we have friendships not unlike those in the West, but with two key differences that I have come to accept (because I have to - if I didn't I wouldn't have any local friends):

1.) Americans hang out with their friends far more often. It would be highly unusual to not see a friend for months on end unless they lived far away.  It would be a sign that the friendship was dying. In our free time our first thought, at least those of us who are extroverts, is what we can do socially. In Taiwan people seem to spend time with friends far less often, take the initiative to invite friends out less often (they do it, just not with the same frequency) They don't worry about not seeing friends for awhile, and don't really think of social options first when faced with free time.  Whereas doing something with friends would be my default weekend plan, staying home and resting is often the default in Taiwan.

and

2.) While there are introverts back home and extroverts in Taiwan who buck the trend (I count many of these among my friends), very generally speaking people are more outgoing in the USA. If you invite them to a party or group event, they'll take the initiative to talk to people they don't know - the default would be to socialize, not to be quiet until someone talked to you. When I host a party back home I don't have to play hostess too much - people will get on without my help. Here I feel like, for many of my local friends, I have to introduce them around and get things flowing far more.  People talk less and often reveal far less about themselves.

When I said that exactly - "people reach out less, they reveal less about themselves, they talk less" - my student nodded vigorously and added that when he was young, his parents and teachers actively taught him not to talk too much. He was taught that not only was being quiet and listening to others a virtue and talking too much a sign of arrogance, but that revealing too much or giving too many opinions was a bad idea, because "if the wrong person heard your idea, you could get in trouble in the past". Along the lines of the cryptic "a truck would come to your house" comment another student once made.

He added that it might seem to foreigners that many Taiwanese people are quieter, have less to say, have fewer opinions (unless you're an old lady or a taxi driver), or are generally happy to just be quiet - but that it's not really true, at least with many of them. "In fact we have a lot of ideas and opinions. Actually, sometimes I want to say something, but I don't. It's not easy to forget my teachers and my family telling me to be quiet. They told me it's dangerous to say too much, and that people - especially children - need to be quiet. So I am quiet. But I want to talk."

Basically he was saying that a lot of people in Taiwan are not naturally introverted or quiet - they are that way because it was drummed into them that they should be that way.

Which...hmm. First, it begs the question - if this is true and it's not an ingrained cultural trait but rather something that's drilled into children from a young age, due to traditional beliefs, political threat or more likely a vitriolic combination of both - is it even possible for an entire culture to force itself to be quiet? Is it possible to mold introverts from people who would otherwise be outgoing? I have my doubts: I'm a natural extrovert and I don't think any amount of childhood training could have repressed that. I was always a bit too talkative in class and teacher reprimands and even notes home never really curbed that tendency. Not to mention that there are enough openly outgoing people in Taiwan for me to wonder - if they never got rid of their talkative streak, how can anyone say that this kind of conditioning works?

It also makes me wonder - if this is something drilled into children the way American kids were forced to practice penmanship to perfection in my grandmother's generation, does its status as a cultural belief deeply held enough to be forced upon children with such vigor not count it by default as a cultural trait - especially considering that humility as a virtue really is a cultural trait here?

And finally, if this was exacerbated by the political climate of the 20th century - mainly the KMT and the White Terror but let's face it, the Japanese weren't angels either - I have to wonder if things were different for those who lived their lives before any of that. If I found a 110-year-old woman out in the countryside - not inconceivable, seeing as old folks in Taiwan seem to make it to 250 without much problem (just kidding...sort of. I am pretty sure some of my neighbors in Jingmei were born during the late Ming Dynasty) - would she have different notions?

Just something to wonder about. I really don't know, I found my student's comments interesting is all. "They told me it's dangerous to talk too much...so I am quiet. But I want to talk" - it makes one think doesn't it?

Goodwill Hunting

Since we've been packing and cleaning out for our imminent move, something that I've known for awhile has recently recaptured my attention - something obvious to everyone but I'd only really thought to blog about it now. It's that donating or selling secondhand goods is difficult to near-impossible, but that there's a much higher level of recycling.

Back home when I prepared for a move, almost everything I no longer wished to keep would get thrown into a huge bag, or possibly multiple bags, and dropped off at Goodwill.

Now, most of what I don't want that I can't give to friends is given to recyclers. That's almost too bad, because plenty of it is still useable. I never imagined that so much could be broken down for recycling until I started to clean out an apartment crammed with 4 years' worth of two people's stuff. Old Fang downstairs will take everything from old umbrellas to ancient pots and pans to worn-out shoes to broken microwaves. This is stuff that would likely just end up in the trash back home, if it wasn't good enough for Goodwill.

In fact, Americans talk a lot about the importance of recycling, but they either need to start sortin' or shut up: it's extremely difficult to recycle in the USA. There are no random folks roaming the back lanes ready to snatch an old wok out of your hands to sell for scrap metal, a lot of places make you bring in your recycling yourself instead of picking it up and what you bring in is fairly restricted compared to what Old Fang will take (which is just about anything). Americans don't recycle enough because no matter how much we talk about it, it's just not made easy for us to do. It's not a good default option. You can say "well then people need to be more dedicated", but, well, go try real life for awhile. Come back and tell me what you think then. It just doesn't work that way.

So, back to secondhand items. I was no stranger to shopping at Goodwill myself - like many Westerners, I have no qualms about picking up perfectly good secondhand items if I have a use for them. I got my flour sifter there (since redonated, but I wish I still had it). At our wedding we served different types of tea: the bowls that held the tea mostly came from there. I used to have mismatched mid-century plateware and glassware all courtesy of Goodwill, and one can never forget my crystal beer stein (which I still have, although I'm not sure where it is) that says "Happy Birthday, Uncle Frank" which came from there, too.

I'd shop there now if a credible alternative existed in Taiwan. There are some secondhand stores, but they're either "vintage/antique", books, jewelry or clothing based. There's nothing I know of like Goodwill where I can go buy weird, mismatched juice glasses or plates. I've never been one for matchy-matchy kitchen items and I prefer both the Earth-friendliness of secondhand items as well as their oft-quirky nature.

A friend and I were musing about why there's nothing like Goodwill in Taiwan, even though a few places to buy secondhand handbags, clothing, jewelry and vintage items do exist.

His idea is the most obvious one, which means it's probably the right one: that there just isn't a culture of pride in getting more use out of an item that wasn't yours to begin with. Taiwan - well, Asia generally - is more recently developed* and so there's a greater emphasis on ~*~shiny~*~ things. One shows that one's wealthy by buying new things, not by thrifting old ones. You can also show that you're wealthy by buying expensive, even priceless antiques, but not by buying secondhand plates. There's no subgroup of people who assume that others won't judge them - or will judge them positively - for having money, but also being fine with secondhand items. There's only a tiny subgroup of "poor little rich kids": you know, back home, the children of middle and upper middle class families who have highbrow tastes and the socioeconomic street cred to back it up, but who make $25,000 a year as baristas, organic food shop and vintage store clerks and entry-level nonprofit workers and who have no problem whatsoever with furnishing their apartments from Goodwill. (I would know, I spent time in that group of people). Simply put, if you're doing well in Asia, your stuff has to be new. You only take mundane secondhand items if you don't have money.

It's disappointing, though, that it's hard to even locate charities that take secondhand items. We managed to find a home for a lot of our stuff through a friend, who knows women who've left abusive marriages and who need help furnishing their apartments as they put their lives back together, and who took more of it to help a charity that works with the mentally disabled, but we haven't found any others (I plan to look into Tzu Chi though).

I also have to wonder if the Taiwanese aversion to secondhand goods has to do with superstition - remember, this is a country where many people believe that if you leave your laundry hanging outside at night during ghost month that ghosts might wear it, and that will be bad luck for you. Where the position of your house can bring you such bad luck that you might have to hang up a curved ba gua mirror to deflect it. Where it's common to see a fortune teller, especially when it's time to name your children. It would not surprise me to learn that some people - not everyone, certainly - believe that bad luck or bad associations can come attached to secondhand "daily use" items (I should point out that "antiques" tend not to be "daily use" items).

And, of course, there's the fact that stuff is cheaper here. I bought a lot of my home items at Goodwill because, while I could afford to shop in modest quantities for new items at stores like Bed, Bath and Beyond (there was no easily-reached Target or Walmart near me, and I try to avoid Walmart anyway), I felt that the stuff was just overpriced. I could afford to spend $10 on a set of four coasters, but why would I want to? In Taiwan this really isn't an issue - home goods and consumer items are much more affordable.

All of this points to "alright, Jenna, just recycle that stuff" ("that stuff" includes a hula hoop - don't ask - a panda that rides a bicycle, a plastic pitcher, two plastic plates, several plastic cups/glasses and more) - but the Goodwill donatin' American in me hates to see a perfectly good pitcher or toy get chucked in the trash, when someone could use it.



*yes, I realize that a good argument could be made for China and India having "developed" thousands of years before the West did, and long before modern European/Western history took flight, they were at different times the center of world civilization. That's not what I mean and you know it - we're talking about modern industrial and post-industrial development.

Asiaworld. Asia...world.

We move in 3 weeks to a much splashier apartment in a more central location. Today I had no class - which didn't bother me too much because I have worked enough this month to earn a nice chunk o' change - so I schlepped up to Asiaworld Mall to peruse IKEA and Nitori to price items we might like to buy for the new place. I didn't buy much; it makes more sense to do that after the move, but I did buy a floor cushion from Nitori that I believe will soon be discontinued and some Glogg (it's that time of year!) from IKEA. Otherwise I spent my time wandering about and noting down prices of various items we may choose to buy.

After my wander, I stopped in the Asiaworld B1 restroom, and a memory came rushing back. Many of you know that recently, Asiaworld underwent a massive renovation and now no longer looks like the slightly ratty, dinged-at-the-edges department store from the '80s ('90s?) that it is. Now it's flash: maybe not as flashy as the new Tianmu Sogo, but plenty flash. The bathrooms used to be one step above MRT bathrooms - not that those are bad, but that in other department stores the bathrooms are all swanky with makeup areas and mirrors with vanity lights and cushioned pink chairs. Now, Asiaworld's ladies' room matches that aesthetic.

But not so long ago, it was just a restroom, and a kind of forgotten one at that. Way back in the day I was shopping at IKEA - I do that a lot, I'm totally addicted to home decor - and I went to use it.

There was an attendant. She doesn't appear to be there anymore, but I haven't forgotten her. She was 70 years old if she was a day, and looked like she'd had a tough life. I said 你好 and smiled, and thought that was it. While washing my hands she started talking to me. I couldn't place her accent, because she was clearly learning disabled or had some sort of disorder or intellectual challenge, and her speech was a bit slurred and lisped, but not in a way that reminded me of a stroke victim. More in the way of someone who's had a lifelong disability.

She told me, unprovoked and unasked, about how her family came to Taiwan around 1949, or rather half of them did. I couldn't understand her well enough to tell if she said she was from Jiangsu or Gansu, but either way she (the eldest daughter), her brother and her father came over while, for reasons that she didn't make clear, her mother and younger sister stayed behind, ostensibly to follow later.

"But they killed them, they just killed them!" she said. "Dead! I never saw them again! Or my uncles or aunts. Dead!"

She talked about how a lot of people who came over were able to get back on their feet and establish themselves and their families (those with closer ties to the KMT or who had government/military favor, mostly) and how they're mostly rich now, but not everyone was so lucky. I already knew this: I have a student whose father came over in '49 who worked as a bus driver. They didn't have much. His children are successful through hard work, not favor or socioeconomic inertia.

"We had nothing, and I couldn't go to school. I had to stay home. They thought I was stupid. And they killed my mother and sister," she repeated. "Dead!"

I have no idea why she told me all this, and more. Maybe, being a foreigner who indicated she could speak Chinese (although "你好" is hardly an indicator of that, plenty of locals think it means you're fluent), she felt she could unload on me, but not others. Plenty of foreign women, many of whom must speak Chinese or at least seem like they can, also must pass through that bathroom, though - after all, it's right next to IKEA. I have no idea if she told her life story to all of them, or singled me out. Or maybe she just told everyone and got fired for annoying the patrons (that would be sad - I was affected by her story but not annoyed). Old Fang - my ancient Hakka neighbor who was given away as a child because her family didn't want another girl - did the same thing, but foreigners are more rare my side of Jingmei. I stick out.

Or maybe it's just that she was old, and old people, like the bathroom attendant and Old Fang, like to tell their life stories.

Either way, it did affect me deeply, but I didn't tell anyone about it. What would I say? What would be the point? I filed the story away but never quite forgot it. I always remember her when I go to IKEA. I haven't seen her in years.

Taiwan has changed a lot since then. In another part of the city, glass and steel glitter above wide, clean streets. Department stores are full of wealthy and upper middle class Taiwanese shopping for Georg Jensen business card holders, Patek Philippe watches, Coach bags and Anna Sui accessories. Starbucks and high-end cafes and bars litter the city. It's not uncommon to get cut off, as a pedestrian, by a Mercedes or BMW. You can see the change right there in Asiaworld, where she used to work (maybe she still does and I've been missing her shift, who knows). Gone is the dingy basement bathroom and the old lady attendant, and here come the young xiaojie in short skirts, pink gloves and little hats shouting "WELCOME!" at you in shrill Chinese, imitating department store girls in Japan.

I can see the change even in the five years I've been here, and I arrived well after Taiwan had undergone its most aesthetically powerful changes.

It's easy to forget, as you wander ever more modern streets, that the pain in this country still runs deep, and a lot of the people you meet have suffered hardships you can't - you really can't - imagine (and I say this as someone whose family mostly escaped the Armenian genocide. I can't imagine that, either. Not with my comparatively privileged life). The wounds, in places and at times, are still raw. The younger generations have mostly forgotten or have reconciled, but memories linger. Like an earthquake fault line, it runs deep, and it's not going to go away soon. A hundred years, maybe, and maybe not even then. And the pain runs deep on all sides - not just the Hoklo, not just the Hakka or aborigines, not just the waishengren, who didn't all escape from Taiwan's not-too-distant past unscathed, either. Their kids shop at SOGO, but they remember. It's part of why I am so interested in the stories of the elderly in Taiwan, just as I know my own family stories from relatives who have since passed, and a few who are fortunately still with us.

It's also a powerful reminder that life is not fair and people, for better or worse, don't alway get their just desserts.

So.

I left Asiaworld at about 4:30. The sun highlighted slate and peach clouds hanging over Taipei Arena. The warm colors that filtered through made even Nanjing E. Road look attractive, and let me tell you, that's an accomplishment. The air was warmish, the wind cool. I was wearing soft old jeans, a green jersey-knit top and super-soft shawl given to me by my mother-in-law. I clutched the cushion from Nitori to my chest as I walked to the bus stop in this weather - not quite winter, but Thanksgiving is coming - it all felt so soft. The soft heather clouds, the luminous late afternoon sun, the shawl, the cushion, a bit of cool breeze, also soft. I got on the bus. I felt conflicted. I feel so comfortable in Taiwan. Soft, even. I feel safe. I feel secure.

And yet, I remember the bathroom attendant.

Of Workers

Just something I thought I'd share from this:

Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Part 1
Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Part 2
Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Part 3

A really great interview underscoring what a truly intelligent man Bill Clinton is. I didn't quite understand his charisma in the '90s when I was a teenager, but now I get it, especially now that my job is public-speaking oriented.

One thing I wanted to note, though.

At one point in the interview, Stewart says something along the lines of* "they have a factory in China with 400,000 people who work in conditions that no American should have to endure...why would we want to bring those jobs back?"

I just have to ask - in conditions that no American should have to endure?

Do you see where I'm going with this? Are we the Special People who shouldn't have to deal with that kind of work, but it's OK for everyone else to break their backs and ruin their physical and emotional health to make us plastic gewgaws?

How about in conditions that no person should have to endure - and that includes the Chinese, and the Chinese government (and every other government that has not tried or tried hard enough to put a stop to it) should be ashamed of themselves for letting it continue?

And maybe we'll just have to pay more for our gewgaws if it means some workers in China have better lives?



*I realize "he said something along the lines of" is not exactly a phrase imbued with great journalistic integrity, but I'm not a journalist. So sue me.

Glue Dots

While we were in the USA, we bought the materials necessary to make our wedding album in Taiwan. We knew that similar materials would be hard to find and likely more expensive here, even though photo printing is fantastically cheaper.

It's true, too: just try finding a nice, classy photo album that doesn't have pictures of cartoon dogs and cats and stars and babies and dodgy English ("Forever My Always Friend!") and fluffy clouds made with the spray-paint effect of a mid-90s version of MS Paint. Try finding an album that doesn't force you to fit in exact rows of regulation-size 4x6 photos in little slots with no room for sizing, spacing, tableau creation, artistic scrapbook-like additions (I'm not into scrapbooking per se and can't stand the little theme stickers, but the papers are nice and some elements of it work nicely in dedicated photo albums) or any sort of classy presentation. Muji sells a few versions but they're all very plain. A few souvenir shops sell pretty Chinese-style decorated ones, but inside it's all 4x6 photo slots, not blank paper.

And just try finding acid-free photo glue, glue tape or glue dots. They exist, but are frighteningly hard to come by. It seems that in Taiwan you either buy a cheap album covered in puppies and kittens and stick your photos in there, or you get pro photos made and the photographer prints up a book for you - standard for weddings and pictures of daughters in princess costumes and occasionally over-indulged Maltese dogs. Although DIY was a big thing in Taiwan several years ago, these days people just don't make their own fancy photo albums and they certainly don't DIY their wedding albums (we ran into the same issues DIYing our wedding invitations. Apparently nobody does that) - so the materials are hard to come by.

What's my point?

Well, we go into a photo store - you know, similar to one of the Konica ones with the blue sign - which prints photos, sells camera batteries, frames and photo albums with puppies and kittens on them, and a few with roses ("The love is our special bonding") and ask about acid-free glue to make a photo album.

After getting over the initial shock of the idea that two people would make their own wedding album, they said that they did not, in fact, carry such glue.

The thing I noted was that one of the women immediately got on the phone and called not one, but three - three - other stores to find a shop that sold such glue for us. First she was sure that there was a place in Shinkong Mitsukoshi that stocked it (no). Then that there was one "around Taipei Main" (yeah, just try walking around Taipei Main asking random people "Do you know where that store is that sells acid-free glue?") and finally she found it at 誠品.

Now, in the USA it wouldn't work this way. You'd drive to Michael's in your gas guzzler, wander the football-field sized cornucopia of DIY goodies (including whatever you need to make a cornucopia), find your acid-free glue dots in the scrapbooking section, and pay for them. You might not even talk to the cashier. Then you'd hop back in your car, possibly get lunch at Panera, and drive home.

In short: zero social interaction.


In Taiwan, this stuff is harder to find, you're never sure which store or even which kind of store carries what (ask me someday about finding leaf skeletons), and half the time it's just luck or knowing someone who knows where to get it.

But then you walk into a place like this one, in some random lane off Roosevelt Road, and the clerk really helps you, and you chat with her, and she tells you how she'd like to make photo albums too but the materials are so expensive, and you pet someone's dog, and she makes a few phone calls, and the next time you come in she recognizes you and asks you if you found the glue you needed.

This is one reason why I love living in Taiwan.

It's easy to get in the car and go to Michael's, but it's infinitely more rewarding to actually talk to people. Forget real glue dots for photos - these small interactions are figurative, social glue dots that form community.

I realize you can do this in many parts of the USA, but my experience has been that it's just not that common anymore, especially with the rise of suburbs and the patterns of interaction they create between people (ie, no interaction). What I find interesting is that my experience is the opposite of what you hear many Americans saying: you always hear about friendliness and everyone knowing everyone in small towns, and the meanness of big, scary anonymous cities. My small town was OK - not too friendly, not too unfriendly. I couldn't go to the pharmacy on Main Street and have the guy behind the counter know me by sight or name. You can go out and be warmly greeted, but not because people actually know you, and rarely because they remember you. Whereas in cities where I've lived, sure, if you leave your neighborhood you're anonymous but if you are doing anything - shopping, drinking coffee, taking a walk, waiting at a bus stop - people from your neighborhood know you, recognize you and greet you. I think this has everything to do with the fact that in those neighborhoods people got in their cars (if they even had cars) a lot less.

But I digress. I haven't felt the same warmth in the USA as I do in Taiwan, and I don't necessarily think it's just because I'm a foreigner (all those old townies and obasans who sit outside gossiping in their social circles, deeply embedded in their neighborhood community, are not foreigners). I don't think the owner of a store in the USA would be likely to call three other stores to help me find what I needed because she didn't sell it (maybe in some places they would - it just hasn't been my experience). I'm not at all sure that same owner would remember me the next time I came in (although that, in Taiwan, might well have a lot to do with my being a foreigner, especially living in a neighborhood with so few of them around).

Now, I'll end on a sad note. We're moving soon (in a month, in fact). We're not leaving Taiwan, just moving from Wenshan to Da'an, to a gorgeous refurbished apartment that we fell in love with on first viewing (wood floors! a dryer! a water filter! a bathtub! stucco walls! a tatami-floored tea alcove!). I've felt really great about changing apartments but also sad about leaving my little Jingmei enclave and saying goodbye to all the vendors, old folks, shop owners and various loiterers I greet daily. Sad about leaving my favorite night market and knowing the vendors who I buy dinner from. Sad about not occasionally waking up to the sounds of the chickens squawking from the chicken vendor one lane over.

Near my apartment is another residential building of roughly the same era (when everything that was built was ugly), with an awning and old chairs by the entrance. I used to sit outside and gossip with the old ladies who gathered there. The nexus - the glue dot - of this octogenarian (and older) clique was Old Wu, who lived on the 2nd floor and had a decrepit old dog named Mao Mao. He was killed when a scooter hit him a few years ago (I was very attached to Mao Mao and I did shed a few tears). Even if the other old ladies were out napping or taking care of grandchildren or wandering around, I would often sit outside with her, and pet Mao Mao when he was alive, and shoot the breeze. Even when that breeze was the first hint of a typhoon blowing in.

Her health was deteriorating before we left for Turkey. I noticed that the glue was coming a bit loose: the old ladies no longer met under the awning, what with Old Wu in the hospital and not there to hold court. They moved to the temple goods store (you know, gold paper lotus offerings, incense etc.) next to Ah-Xiong's shop. I joined them there a few times, but there aren't enough chairs and it's too close to the chickens, which, frankly, stink.

I knew that Old Wu didn't have long, but I didn't think I'd never see her again. I guess I figured, those ladies are pretty tough, and most of them are surprisingly ancient. Old Taiwanese ladies never die, right?

Well, she succumbed to her poor health and passed away while we were in Turkey. I only found out when we got back, and suddenly those empty old chairs were a lot sadder, now that I knew their unsat-in condition was no longer temporary. I cried a fair bit on the way back up to my apartment and was extra winded when I got to the top from doing so (another reason to move: six floor walkup in this place. No more).

Old Wu was my glue dot in Jingmei. She and her group, whose ages totaled must have topped 500, made me feel welcome, like I was part of a community. I didn't feel like a foreigner, a novelty or something strange or different. They'd seen a lot in their lives (a lot - anyone that age in Asia has) and a young foreign girl was really nothing chart-topping. They just accepted me as another part of their life experience (and also told me all about my husband's arm hair and how many kids we should have, but that's another story).

I don't believe in signs. I really don't - but if I did, a case could be made that the end of an era has come and it's time to leave Jingmei - not because Old Wu passed on (I'm not so self-centered as to believe that the universe killed an old lady just to tell me to move!) but because my old lady gossip circle is no more, and because it's just different now. I feel released, pulled off a page, and it's time to find a new glue dot and adhere somewhere else for awhile...even if that somewhere else is technically just up the road.

The Many Faces of Face

I have a very complicated relationship with face.

As an expat in Asia, I have to deal with it almost daily - from those little social niceties that allow people to preserve their status, pride or dignity all the way to outright lying, doing anything to avoid admitting fault and back again to roundabout, indirect turns of phrase that ultimately mean nothing but preserve a semblance of social harmony.

Two events have caused me to think about face in more depth and pointedly explore how I feel about it and my relationship to it. After all, I have a sense of face, too - made all the stronger from having lived in countries where it is a strong component of national culture.

The first was this incident in Sanliurfa (a historic city in southeast Turkey). Yes, face exists in Turkey as it does in Taiwan, although within its own cultural paradigm. You can read the actual story through that link.

The second is something I'll speak about more vaguely, as it's currently unfolding: events at work. Basically, a series of screw-ups, poorly timed decisions, manufactured problems and outright incompetence have caused both of us to be dissatisfied. He's quitting now - I have a few things to finish up before I throw in the towel but rest assured I won't be there much longer, either (and before anyone leaves a comment to warn me that I shouldn't say so openly online, don't worry. I've stopped caring. I could figure things out if my workplace got ahold of this post. This is a bridge I don't mind torching - to quote some song lyrics, we don't need no water, let the mother****er burn). Their actions have generally not caused me to lose face - and when I do mess up (and I do, everyone does) I own up to it and apologize. I expect my basic dignity to remain intact and demand respect, but I won't use face for that other twisted purpose of covering up my shortcomings or refusing to acknowledge fault. They have, however, caused my husband to lose, if not face, then dignity, and he is absolutely right to reclaim that and leave. They've also got a bad - but very East Asian - habit of doing anything and everything to maintain their own face, even if it's to the detriment of someone else's.

What I've realized from this is that there are two types of face: the "it doesn't affect anyone else to preserve my dignity" face, which includes "social harmony" face, and the other, more insidious "this is a zero-sum game" face in which saving your own skin requires skinning someone else alive.

The first one doesn't bother me as much as it used to, depending on the situation. Culturally speaking, I'm predisposed to being direct, saying something is wrong when it is, and holding people accountable. Where I come from - New York, which I find to be a region of plainspoken people - the frankness of what someone says isn't meant to be taken personally, and isn't expected to do so. You messed up, say you're sorry, do your best to fix it, and OK. We can all move on. Nobody's going to harp on it forever, because you owned it. When I first moved to Asia, I was of the mindset of: well, you screwed up. Don't try to pussyfoot around it, and don't try to glaze over it with elliptical speech. Just apologize and do your best to make amends, and we can move on. I respected people who rose to this standard much more, and I generally don't hold grudges (with a few exceptions, but even those are passive grudges rather than active ones. I don't have the energy to actively hate someone for long periods of time). The mistake is no biggie - we all make them - but the vague, glassy speech of someone trying to save face (mistakes were made...happenstances were happened...you know...it's very difficult to...things...stuff...oh, ah...) is something I find deeply irritating. I didn't really respect it, and still don't.

What has changed is that now I understand it. I'm used to it, and I've been known to play the game to allow someone else to save a bit of face. I've even been known to do this at work by smiling and nodding through sheer idiocy, because it behooves me to allow the person to save face for now.

Other times, I really can't condone it: what happened in Sanliurfa was this kind of face-saving: oh no, they weren't trying to cheat you, it was a language misunderstanding. Oh no, they thought it was a tip. No, of course they didn't try to cheat you, it's just a culture gap - with the expectation that the other person will just play along. As Brendan noted in his post, the money wasn't important. Five lira really is nothing to us in the vast reaches of time. It was that we weren't interested in saving the face of someone who just tried to cheat us.

But the social harmony aspect of saving face is something I'm fine with, most of the time. You know, a newbie on the job screws up royally, and everyone glosses over it because she's new, trying hard, and she'll get better (and usually, she does). I have no problem with that. If it means not responding to every idiotic thing a person says, no matter how crazy right wing (or left wing) or conspiracy theorist it is, because you have to deal with that person in the future and it's best for you if you just let those things go...well, OK.

Of course, if there's a massive underlying problem, like, I don't know, an office that consistently makes huge mistakes, manufactures problems and acts to solve them with all the efficacy of a car whose wheels are spinning in the mud - and everyone's trying to pretend that it's all fine and everyone is doing an outstanding job and we should all clap politely - then no.

Then there's face as a zero-sum game. The kind where there are two people or groups involved, and one of them is either fully or nominally at fault, but desperate to do anything possible to save face even at the expense of the other. This is what started to happen in Sanliurfa before we walked away: what started as a stupid game to save the faces of two guys trying to cheat us turned into a zero-sum catfight. When we refused to smile and nod politely at the idea that this was just a language misunderstanding it turned into "don't be rude!". By not playing along, the only choice left to the cafe owners and the English speaking customer who came over to help us was to save their face by trying to take away ours by accusing Brendan of being "rude". Those of you who know Brendan know that basically the last thing he could ever be called is "rude"!

It's happened at work, as well - but I won't go into too much detail.

I don't feel that it's the norm in foreigner-Taiwanese interactions that it'll always be a "my face over yours, foreigner!" situation, although it does happen. I do feel that this is exactly what happened in Sanliurfa - the English-speaking customer, being Turkish, was more interested in saving the face of the also-Turkish cafe owners than in admitting the truth, right up to the point of causing (or attempting to cause) us foreigners to lose face as a preferable outcome to shaming the cafe owners.

I have felt at work that, while it was very rare (I can only think of one instance) in which they tried to make me lose face personally, that at times I felt that my face, as a foreigner, was not as important as the face of a local. I remember a time before we left for Turkey that my company made the same mistake three times in one month, a mistake that caused me to look like a bit of a dunderhead in front of clients. I told them so, even using the phrase "these mistakes have caused me to lose face in front of clients", and felt that the reaction was more than a bit apathetic, as in yeah, we'll try not to screw up again, but we don't really care if you personally look bad in front of clients because of mistakes we made. We care more if the company looks bad.


That's work, though, and I do not feel that these examples can stretch to encompass all Taiwanese people. It does happen, but I'm not going to point my finger at the entire society (something I feel happens far too often on expat blogs around the world).

So, in the end, it's a complex topic. Sometimes I play the game - and I admit to having my own sense of face - sometimes I won't even pick up the dice. Sometimes I understand it, rarely do I respect it. Sometimes I just can't condone it. Sometimes it has a relevant place in social interaction and sometimes it's a big ol' shield of lies and elliptical speech meant to preserve some idiot's fragile sense of status, even when he doesn't deserve it.