A Thin Comfort

Taiwan's eternal light

When I'm extremely stressed, I engage in a practice that is likely very common: curling up on my bed and covering myself completely in a blanket. Phone nearby but not within perfect reach, lights off. In the US, that blanket would probably be a thick afghan or quilt. In Taiwan it's usually some thin linen drape. It doesn't matter; I just need to be covered. I don't even take away the throw pillows on the bed. Yes, I'm the sort of person who keeps throw pillows on her bed. 

I've found myself curling up this way more often in the past few months, as I've dealt with a fair bout of career anxiety. It's not just that I'd be making a lot more money if I lived in a number of other countries, but that I'd likely get to take my work in the direction I truly want it to go. 

Since 2011, I've been more or less consistently enrolled in some sort of teacher training program. First CELTA, then Delta, then a Master's program, plus a few short courses here and there. That first CELTA course changed the direction of my life; I didn't just go from someone who was teaching English "as a job" to someone who wanted to lead classrooms of adults as a career. I also became a full-throated convert to the power of good teacher training. 

Obviously, I wanted to be a better teacher myself. As good as I could possibly be -- which, as it turns out, is not perfect. I mess up too. But I also wanted to help other teachers develop their skills. I felt I could make a bigger impact on the world, or at least the education world, by doing so. I haven't loved every teacher training course I've led, but the direction, in general, has always felt right. 

And yet I've realized over the past year or so that there are limitations to this career path in Taiwan. There simply are not enough teacher training opportunities. Those that exist often get outsourced to international firms based in places like the UK. This is a direct result of people who have the power to decide whether to take a training contract choosing not to take one, and the organization needing the training looking elsewhere. 

This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to avoid by taking the freelance route. I struggle a lot with the idea that decisions might be out of my hands. I can work with a team but I am not a natural follower. I wanted quite specifically to be in charge of what classes I take and when I'm free to take them. I never want to be told by anything other than my bank account that I can't take this or that trip.

Instead, I've found that I'm too far removed from those decision-makers to be heard, and it probably wouldn't matter if I was heard. After all, it's not as if they aren't aware that teacher training in Taiwan should be sourced as locally as possible, to people who know the local context. 

Please don't misunderstand: I'm grateful for every teacher training opportunity that comes my way. I find most of them meaningful, impactful, intellectually challenging to plan and execute and personally satisfying. As with a great deal of impactful work, whether it improves the world in some tiny way has become more important to me than whether or not I enjoyed leading it. And yet, I do generally enjoy them.

Friends have recommended I start my own local training business. I don't want to do that -- first, I'd be in direct competition with people who've been in the field longer, whom I like, respect and have perhaps even acted as mentors. Second, I want to be a teacher, not a business owner. Running a business is its own job and skill set; a job I don't want to do, and a skill set I lack and am not terribly interested in acquiring. Reading books about Taiwan or studying two unrelated languages at the same time -- one of them through Mandarin -- are more attractive than learning to balance books or engage in marketing. 

In other words, as a teacher (or teacher trainer) I have the time and energy to learn Armenian and Taiwanese. As a business owner, I'd spend that time figuring out how to make and keep my business profitable. No thanks! 

It is a thin comfort that I know I'm usually very good at my job, and I learn from whatever mistakes I make. It's not enough of a comfort, though, when I think about what I could be doing if I weren't committed to Taiwan.

I have found other career outlets that satisfy me. This is another thin comfort. I've been doing a lot of work in language learning content development and online materials design recently. It scratches the same itch of being meaningful, impactful (one hopes -- it's not live yet) and intellectually challenging. In my own training I found that leading other teachers and creating materials were two strengths. I've also been doing a lot more paid writing, some of which you'll hear about soon. 

These frustrations and their associated comforts have caused me to consider moving in a new direction, out of the classroom and into full time materials development. I haven't found the right job in Taiwan, and most jobs abroad are no longer fully remote, but it's an idea on the horizon if I can't make a full career of teacher training -- and it looks increasingly like I can't.

I had a choice: Taiwan or my career, and I chose Taiwan. Potentially leaving the classroom for something different feels like leaving a religion, but here we are. It bothers me quite a bit that my complaint isn't about pay exactly, or finding a specific full-time job, but about being able to explore a career direction at all. 

This leads me to my final thin comfort, which I alluded to in my last post about staying in Taiwan. It may seem tangential to this post, but in my mind, it isn't. To take that kind of personal and professional hit, there must be a damn good reason. It can't all be night markets and 711! 

As I explored in that last post, despite its problems, Taiwan's fundamentals are solid -- democracy, a push for equality and open-mindedness, crucial services like public transit and national health insurance. Society moves generally in the right direction, and that makes it worthwhile to stay. 

What I realized from writing that post, however, isn't just that Taiwan has a lot of great things going for it. It's that what Taiwan gets right are also benefits that Taiwanese citizens enjoy. They matter because they're not just good for me -- they impact everyone positively. 

So many of those "best countries for expats" type articles talk about superficial benefits that really only apply to white foreigners. You know, how much an expat can make relative to the cost of living, what great homes they can rent or buy on the cheap, job and life opportunities that locals mostly cannot access.

I hear the same from the occasional older foreigner in Taiwan, waxing nostalgic about the "good old days" when Taiwan was "exciting" or opportunities where "everywhere". Usually, they're talking about the late 1980s or perhaps early 1990s. 

Okay, but a lot of my Taiwanese friends were children or young teenagers then, and were still being told by their parents not to even have, let alone express, an opinion lest they end up in prison or worse. A student once told me he was warned by his family not to say too much or even speak Taiwanese outside the family, or a "white truck would come in the night." Yikes. 

Who gives a shit about excitement or opportunities for foreigners when that's the local situation?

Of course, many Taiwanese look back with maudlin candor on the Chiang Ching-kuo era. Taipei elected a whole mayor based on it, and that's bullshit. Such an opinion does not cancel out what my local friends have said they experienced.

That's what Taiwan offers -- a better society than the one it had. For everyone, not just expats. Would my life as a white American be "better" in these ways in most of Southeast Asia? Yes, absolutely. But it would be a superficial improvement; it would make only my life better. 

In Taiwan, perhaps I cannot always feel the impact of things like "democracy" and "same-sex marriage" directly on my own life. After all, I could probably have the career I want in, say, Vietnam -- but Vietnam is not a democracy and does not have marriage equality. I might make more as a corporate rat racer in the US, but much of the US no longer recognizes my bodily autonomy and in some states, it's straight-up illegal for some of my friends to exist. 

In fact, if I hear Westerners talking about a country that's great to live in because you can make so much money, or it's a lot of fun for them or they can score more women than they could back home, it's a good sign that I shouldn't live there -- I'm not interested in a fever dream for white people.

If long-term foreigners are talking about the problems they and the country face and how life isn't always perfect for them, then it likely means their lives are at least a bit more like those of locals. It will never fully be the same, but it means the advantages that country offers are probably accessible beyond expat enclaves.

The benefits Taiwan offers are good for society, and it's better for everyone if everyone benefits. Even if I can't vote, it's better for me, for society and for those I care about that my Taiwanese friends can. My opinion might not matter, but again, it's better for everyone that my Taiwanese friends can protest and not disappear.

That's not to say Taiwan is perfect, but again, the fundamentals are good. 

Is that worth what I consider a major career sacrifice thanks to one of Taiwan's many imperfections? Is that blanket sufficient to comfort one in times of distress? 

It has to be. It has to be.

You don't adopt Taiwan, Taiwan adopts you: a book review of Formosa Moon

I used to believe that I’d adopted Taiwan, but the truth is, Taiwan adopted me, taking me in when I was in my early twenties and giving me a series of increasingly interesting reasons to stick around....Six months ago, I brought the love of my life to Taiwan. The idea was ostensibly to convince her to love Taiwan much in the way that I did. In this I believe I’ve met with some success.

- Joshua Samuel Brown, Formosa Moon 
(by Joshua Samuel Brown and Stephanie Huffman, ThingsAsian Press, 2018 - buy it here - and if you're in Taipei, there's a launch party this weekend)


I've heard people say that the best travel writing to read is about places you've never been: places foreign and "exotic" (how I hate that word) that you know next to nothing about, but come to understand in some small way through a guided journey by the author. If I'd ever quite bought into that, Formosa Moon cured me of it, reminding me that there is an earthier satisfaction in reading other peoples' experiences in places you know well.

Although none of the places mentioned in Formosa Moon were new to me (well, some of the hotels and restaurants mentioned were, such as the Dive Cube hotel), there's a certain beauty in reading about a place you're so familiar with that you can smell the air, see the details of the parks and unkempt sidewalks, picture the mountains, know intimately what kind of trees are growing all around and what it's like to live your life in a series of tiled buildings.

A section of the book takes place at Sun Moon Lake. Been there, didn't love it. Another one describes National Chengchi University. My sister studied there for a year. The Dome of Light? I was there two weeks ago. Tainan? I go every time I get the chance. Jiaoxi? Several visits, soaked in the public hot spring too. Huwei? I'm one of the few foreigners who went to Yunlin for fun over a Dragon Boat weekend just to see what it was like.

But there's something deeper about Formosa Moon that I just get. I think pretty much everyone who's made a life here - that is to say, many if not most of my closest friends at this point - understand as well. Taiwan is like a cat: you don't adopt a cat. A cat adopts you.

You might come here thinking you're going to just "go abroad for a few years" and do that privileged First World thing by teaching English to fund your time in Asia (you're probably not an actual English teacher). You might stay for 1, 2, 3 years: most of the cram school crowd seems to turn over in roughly those increments. Some of you won't get it: the traffic - there are traffic laws, I swear - the pollution, the ugly buildings (you will almost certainly live in one of these), the humidity, the long or weird working hours and greatly reduced career options, the crowds will all collude to gently push you out. Or maybe none of them will, and you'll enjoy your time here just fine, but when the clock is up it's up, and you were always going to return to the place you know is home anyway. Taiwan didn't adopt you. That's OK.

Some of you will fall in love here, or find your groove, or take an interest in Taiwan's unique history, or build a community. Or it'll be the damp hills, the palm trees, the local aunties, the 7-11s, the traditional markets. Or you'll watch a major social movement unfold up close and realize Taiwan is a place and a cause worth fighting for. Something about life here will speak to something inside you, and you'll stay. You probably didn't consciously choose to. You were adopted.

In this way, I found it appropriate that Formosa Moon heavily featured cats, though they popped up in the narrative for no particular reason, and certainly not in any planned thematic way. It just did. From the cats of Houtong (another place I know well, and have started hikes from) to the painted cats (among other fantastic creatures) of Rainbow Grandpa to Joshua's friend's cats which provided a cozy sense of home to Stephanie - the other writer of the book - I found the unexpected feline leitmotif to fit. Taiwan not only adopts you like a cat (or it doesn't), but it can be as cool, beguiling or mercurial as a cat, or as winsome and homey as one too. You know your cat loves you, but you're never quite sure how much.

Or, to put it another way:


Taiwan is kind, to its native born, adopted children, and short-term guests alike. But Taiwan doesn’t change its tempo for you. Instead, you must change your tempo to adapt to Taiwan. And this will make all the difference.


Of course, you get to wax lyrical about all of this because you chose to come for reasons other than making a basic living. Supporting yourself may have had something to do with it, but you could have done that where you'd come from. You're aware that exponentially larger numbers of foreign residents in Taiwan had no such privilege. (You are aware of that, yes?)

All this is not to say that only those who know Taiwan should read Formosa Moon. I'll certainly recommend - if not outright purchase as gifts - copies of the book for loved ones back home who perhaps don't get it, most of whom because they've never visited. It describes the country well, and even the pictures (which are very "homey", not glossy professional shots, which I see as a plus) show in accurate detail what life in Taiwan is like.

As the book itself points out, cities like Kyoto (or Shanghai or Singapore or these days, Seoul) beckon to the Western traveler who is planning their first trip to Asia. Most travelers don't think of "Asia" and immediately think "Taipei". So they don't come, and therefore, they don't know. Formosa Moon, I hope, might tempt some of them into finally visiting to see for themselves why I've chosen to stay for most of my adult life.

And not only that, I'll recommend it for its unique perspective. Every other piece of Taiwan-focused travel writing on my bookshelf is by a white guy. I haven't cracked them all yet, but will. I'm sure they'll be fantastic; people whose opinions I trust have told me so. But, so much travel writing is done by white guys hitting the trail alone, and other narrative voices enrich the genre. I don't think I've seen a travelogue written by two partners in a relationship before, each with views that play off or add depth to the other.

As someone who also moved to Taiwan and then six months later convinced the love of my life to move here too, that appeals to me - as a woman and a person in a committed relationship. Ours took a slightly different route: he didn't know he was the love of my life when he moved here (I kind of did, but didn't tell him so right off), and our relationship evolved here, not in the US. I didn't "love Taiwan" when he moved here: my first six months here weren't that great, to be honest. I am sure I have had success, however, in convincing him to love this country as much as I do. We show it in different ways, but I know.

More poignantly, Formosa Moon captures what it's like to be both in a relationship with a person, and with a country. We never had to face the challenge of Brendan liking Taiwan; he did immediately, on his first visit here. I wasn't sure then how much I liked Taiwan: I didn't decide to make the commitment until three years later. That was when I'd been planning to decide if I'd stay or go; it also happened to be the year we got married. I suppose our somewhat weirdly polyamorous love grew together.

Of course there's a bittersweetness to every love story. You know how they say that in a relationship, someone always loves more, and the other less? And the one who loves less has all the power?

Although I know I can never truly be "a local" (forget not looking the part: it's just not my native culture), I want to stay and advocate for Taiwan, and gain legal rights - not just privileges accorded me out of courtesy as a permanent resident, which can be revoked. I don't expect a perfect life here. It would be nice, however, if in my relationship with Taiwan I didn't always feel like I was the one who loved more. I like to think that by opening myself up to Taiwan, that Taiwan has opened to me a little. I'll never know how much, though.

I'll end, then, on a particular salient quote from co-Stephanie Huffman:


Taiwan and I were certainly friends but had we really progressed to a love state? I didn’t know even know how Taiwan felt about me and I certainly wanted some indication of her feelings before I made any commitments.



Yup. Except I did that thing that relationship advice columnists say never to do: I made the commitment without knowing quite how she felt about me.

Still here though. You see, I was adopted. 

Greatest Hits from Brendan and Jenna Get Together: Live in Tainan 2007

So, thanks to work obligations, we found ourselves back in Tainan for the third time this year.

What I found sentimental about that, moreoso than over the summer, was that Brendan and I are nearing our 10th anniversary as a couple. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we got together in Tainan, and our very first picture together as a bona fide couple (rather than two very frustrated best friends who clearly liked each other) was taken at the Confucius Temple there.

That was on March 1st (or thereabouts) 2007, and as it is highly unlikely we'll be in Tainan on March 1st 2017 - though you never know, we could be sent back for work - this is about as close as we are likely to get to return to the city where we got together close to a major anniversary date.

So, of course we went back to the Confucius Temple and took the same picture again (above). I won't comment on how we've changed and how we haven't, I will note that ten years on, six of them as a married couple, we still have that undefinable spark. It may be a more comfortable warmth rather than, say, what happened last time which I am pretty sure entailed making out in the Confucius Temple - Confucius was surely not pleased - but it's there. Like the perfect teaming of a chaos and an order muppet. (I'm the Swedish Chef, if you must know). 



So, I don't have much about Tainan to say in this post - you can read that in my posts from earlier this year (one is linked above, here's the other). What I do feel like talking about is how we went back and did a lot of the same things we did ten years ago - without really thinking about it. A few things have changed: we didn't know about the life-changing food combination that is ice cream served in half a melon available at Taicheng Fruit Store (泰成水果店) nor about Narrow Door Cafe (窄門咖啡) and I am fairly sure our favorite bar, Taikoo (太古), was not open yet.

But coffee at Chihkan Towers just for the atmosphere? Confucius Temple? God of Hell Temple? Famous glutinous meat dumplings? Running into a temple parade? All the greatest hits from 2007 got played, and it was in fact very sentimental and lovely to re-live it like that, as Old Married People rather than Young Love. It's like dancing to the song you first danced to, if we danced, which we don't really.

Perhaps I was also feeling sentimental because it's the holidays - my mom loved the holidays and also passed away around this time of year (actually almost two years ago exactly). I have been thinking, as I put together an album of her photos, how much she also liked old man's tea (老人茶 or laorencha - the title of this blog, though that's not the reason), and how sad I am that we never got to drink it together in Taiwan. So, I think a lot about family, relationships and life at this time of year.

My mom in the early 1980s - I would have likely been a baby when this was taken.

Anyway, enjoy some photos. This first one is one of the common areas in our hotel this time, called Goin Old House Bed and Breakfast (and also bar, on the first floor). The rooms are simple, clean and a little old-timey/traditional, with very modern bathrooms, which I appreciate. And it's extremely central.



Track 1 on Greatest Hits from Brendan and Jenna Get Together: Live in Tainan 2007, coffee at Chihkan Tower:





Track 2: Temple Parade (this happened in Anping in 2007 but at the God of War temple this time):










Track 3: Let's eat some meatballs (肉圓 - the famous ones by the God of War Temple):





Track 4: Wandering the Backstreets














Track 5: The God of Hell Temple (東嶽殿), but the murals weren't as visible this time:



Track 6: Backstreets, Refrain




Bonus Tracks: Narrow Door Cafe:




Bonus Track 2: Taicheng Fruit Store:



Bonus Track 3: Taikoo Bar

Taipei - City of the Future, and the Great Walls of China

I found this article on China's urban planning mess courtesy of Alexander Synaptic's Facebook page, and felt that there was some relevance to Taiwan in here that I felt like writing about.

So while I have a couple of women's issues and hiking posts on the back burner, I'll tackle this first.

One reason I love living in Taipei (Taipei specifically, although the rest of Taiwan is not bad in this regard either) is that they have largely avoided the urban planning mistakes of much of the USA, which China is now falling prey to. It's the same reason why, when I was a resident of the country of my citizenship, I enjoyed living in Arlington, Virginia.

It's also a reason why I am not that interested in living in the major urban centers of China.

Basically, I have seen with my own eyes how Beijing was transformed, in a generation, from a city of interconnected, pedestrian-and-bike friendly hutongs connected by roads with bike lanes and dotted with historical sites and squares into a smoggy hellscape of massive ring roads, six-lane highways (downtown, even!) with unpleasant sidewalks if they existed at all and no more bike lanes. The old hutongs were either torn town for glass-and-steel monstrosities that soared into the gray-brown smog above, leaving little space for street-level development, or turned into ersatz up-market "hutongs" dotted with tourist shops replacing the erstwhile real deal.

Why would I want to live in that?

As one of my former coworkers put it, in Taipei, as ugly as some of the architecture is (and I don't think it's all ugly - only some of it - but there is charm to be found if you look closely), as you walk down the street there's a lot to see. Old stores jostling for space with new ones. Chefs from Hong Kong style restaurants smoking outside, backed by with ducks hanging behind glass. Red lanterns and carts full of barbecue, tempura, tofu, dumplings, buns, onion pancakes and more. Basically, you can walk down most streets and they practically shove the food in your face. But walk down a street in Beijing and you're likely to have four lanes of exhaust-spewing cars on one side, and on the other...a wall. Maybe they thought the one great wall was so damn great they needed to fill the whole city with them. Or maybe some horrible glass box - no shops, no lanterns, no food, not much street life at all really.

Why would I want to live in that?

And as this happens, more and more people are fleeing to the suburbs. Can you blame them? With a city center so uninviting to life-after-work, surrounded by not-so-great walls, it makes sense to flee.

But that's just what happened in the USA, and I don't want to live in the vast majority of places in the USA either, so why would I want to live in that?

Every time I go back to the USA, I end up being picked up at the airport. There's no other convenient way to do it. There are buses (and you have to make connections) but no Airport Express trains. It takes forever to get between cities because either you have to "beat the traffic" or take the (usually delayed) train. No bullet trains (the Acela emphatically does not count). Visiting either set of parents, we can't go anywhere without driving, and one has to drive to the nearest urban center. That's fine, if you're in the country - you have to do that in Taiwan, too - but once in that urban center, you also have to drive! There is no worse driving than that of a multi-lane open highway that empties out into a series of shopping centers interconnected in the most mind-bending ways.

Not a thought to building more public transit - there are buses, but you wouldn't want to rely on them. There aren't any subways or trams. The only subway system worth a damn is in New York, and that one is in desperate need of upgrades and maybe a nice bath. In DC, we'd head down to the Metro and find we had to wait 14 minutes - this in the early evening on a weekday, when it's fairly busy - for a train to go three stops, but the trip wasn't walkable. 14 minutes! To catch a train to go three stops! That's only like a 5 minute trip! In Taipei if you have to wait 6 minutes (which only happens at night or on the Xinyi Line, which I hope they fix soon) you're groaning. I couldn't possibly have been a freelancer in DC the way I am in Taipei - I'd need to own a car I couldn't have afforded. There would be no other way to get between my various jobs in any decent amount of time. Everything was so spread out.

It's a reason why I can't attend grad school in the USA: not only can I not afford it (I would seriously never be able to pay off that loan), but a lot of schools are in areas where you need a car to get around.

I can't stand American urban planning in America - it's one reason why I left (also: healthcare, and fear for my safety in a country of people packing heat where the streets are not always safe for women. Guns make me feel less safe, not safer) - so obviously I wouldn't want to deal with it in China.

Taipei, on the other hand, is like the city of the future.

In DC, when I arrived in 1998, they had been talking about the "silver line" to the airport for years already. This was when Taipei's metro was first getting started (that's the year the yellow line opened). In that time, the silver line hadn't even begun construction (no ground was broken while I was in college, nor did it begin when I lived there again from 2004-2006) whereas Taipei's metro grew from an infant into a fiercely competent adult.

To recap: Taipei built an entire metro system in the time it took for DC to argue about the silver line for years, and not do jack about it. Taipei's metro is still growing, whereas the silver line, after they finally broke ground, is only about halfway complete. You still can't ride it out to the airport. It took DC to build half a Metro line in the time it took Taipei to build, basically, an entire metro system.

(This is, incidentally, why I would consider living in Kaohsiung but I hate Taichung).

Living in a city where a new metro line opens every few years and changes the face of public transit for the better (I can now take the MRT to Taipei 101 directly!) feels like a city in progress. A city that's growing. Living in a city where I felt constricted in where I could go and how fast I could get there, if at all, felt like living in a city that was slowly crumbling. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.

Taipei residents understand the importance of an interesting, multi-use, well-connected, safe urban core that is good for something other than financial centers in horrible glass boxes surrounded by houses and shopping complexes you have to drive to. There's a reason why, despite the pushiness of various real estate developers, that nobody really wants to live in Linkou despite all the new, cheap apartments being built out there. It's the choice you make if you want to buy, not rent, but can't afford Taipei. It's not like the USA where people chose to live far from the city in boring little subdivisions where sidewalks weren't even guaranteed to exist.

I like that people here understand the life-enhancing importance of convenience, and how sometimes it's worth it to trade space for that convenience. Between having a yard and needing a car to drive to Buy 'N Large, or being able to walk less than a minute to the nearest supermarket and convenience store and restaurant and massage parlor and hardware store, I'll take the latter, and for the most part Taipei residents agree with me. In terms of urban planning, I've found My People.

Although we could have better sidewalks, urban thoroughfares netted together with quiet lanes, many planted with trees, parks dotting the landscape, street-level commerce of all types, a comprehensive public transit system and the ease of the new bike sharing program (which has been a stunning success, although we could sure use more real bike lanes with bike lane rules enforced), Taipei residents just get it. This was the urban planning of the past - the type of planning that makes towns like downtown Bangor, ME and New Paltz, NY so pleasant to walk around - and it is the urban planning of the future.

Why wouldn't I want to live here?

Another note on Taipei as City of the Future: I've become so accustomed to convenience here that the idea that I'd have to spend more than five minutes to get any given basic thing I needed has become alien to me. The idea that I'd have to hop in a car to do anything other than go hiking (and in Taipei you don't even have to do that - you can take the bus to most good hikes, and the MRT to some, too) is just ludicrous to me. I now feel that if I can't get breakfast in one minute, that city sucks. I liked Shanghai alright (wouldn't live there, though), but I had to walk 7 minutes just to find a Cafe 85 to get some coffee and baked goods for breakfast. No other options. This on Nanjing Road. That city sucks. It doesn't get a second chance. One minute to breakfast, or you're out.

I'm so used to being able to go to 7-11 for everything: buying books I've ordered, picking up a spare pair of socks, lunch, coffee (and pretty good coffee at that, at least as far as convenience stores go), copies, printing, bill paying, rental contracts, high speed rail tickets, concert tickets and more - and having two of those within sight of my building - it's like The Future, but the future is here.

No great walls. No faceless glass boxes. No six-lane highways downtown. No open-access highways to South Maple Falls Shopping Center far from your home, where it takes 30 minutes to drive to the store, get what you need and come home. None of that.

Even traffic isn't that bad: I mean, it's bad, but it's not like...it's not like 66 in the DC area where you are basically parked at rush hour. You can hop in a cab at rush hour and still get to where you need to go in the city without banging your head on the back of the seat in frustration. You can catch a bus at 6pm and buses are frequent enough that you might even get a seat, and you'll get home in a reasonable amount of time. And you live near where you work - Taipei residents understand the importance of a short commute. A commute of over 30 minutes is basically a human rights violation to most of us.

And yes, we have to give up a little space, but there's something to be said for owning less stuff and inhabiting less space - good for the environment too. Surprisingly, dense urban cores that lack massive sprawl are also more environmentally friendly than over-manicured suburbs and snaking, gridlocked highways - and being home soon after you finish work. And for thinking "I want...whatever" and being able to walk or bike to whatever it is you want.

Is that guest bedroom and extra half bath really worth the hour-long commute and the 20 minute drive along the worst kind of road to the nearest supermarket? Not to me. I've found my people, and we are the future.

So, do I have a Taiwan State of Mind, or am I the weirdo here?

This seems to be making it big across the blogz and Facebook.

I'll admit, I liked it. Especially the first half. It was cute, well-done, fun, didn't take itself too seriously, and didn't shy away from political truths.

"You should know I bleed green, but I ain't that D-double-P though...Chinese Taipei? Fuck that, you got it all wrong. Taiwan Independence, yo, I'm from Taichung!"

Down with it!

But they lost me at the second half, which was basically a verse and a chorus all about Taiwanese women. 

I'm down with appreciating Taiwanese women. Nothing wrong with liking them. Nothing wrong with including them in a song. But did it have to be half the song? Half a verse would have been better. And of that, all of it was about their appearance (long legs, "city of skin", fake eyelashes). The parts that weren't were about them shopping and using smartphones out in public (I liked the part about the betelnut girls - they're such a part of the culture here that I don't have it in me to get a stick up my butt about them). Seems to me there's more to Taiwanese women than their appearance.

And anyway, what about Taiwanese men? I appreciate them in an "I'm married, so even though they can be good looking I'm not interested" way (I blog about 'em a lot because they don't seem to get enough positive press). You couldn't have half a verse about them?

And finally, they couldn't find anything else to say about Taiwan that could have taken up a bit more song space, so you had to devote half the song to Taiwanese women, their looks and their phones?

I guess, as a woman whose Taiwanese female friends are mostly very smart, independent, fun women whose whole selves total far more than their looks, and who didn't come here for the women (I'm straight), devoting half the song to dating Taiwanese girls (and how good Taiwanese girls look) just lost me. I don't relate. The first half of the verse was fun, but by the end I felt it was a bit objectifying. And I do feel at times the (mostly male) expat community tends to objectify Taiwanese women. Not everyone does this, and certainly not every expat man with a Taiwanese girlfriend or wife does it (I'd never imply that), but it happens enough that this made me a bit uncomfortable.

In some ways I guess my Taiwan experience hasn't mirrored the typical bullet list - if you asked me to write a song about it, first I'd laugh at you, but once I stopped laughing it would include little shout outs to festivals, more about food, Hakka culture, men's Japanese hairdos, weird-ass t-shirts, aboriginal culture and hanging out in mountain towns like Lishan with old people. This is a country in which some people get possessed by deities and beat themselves with spiked clubs, and they couldn't find anything else to rap about for the second half of the song?

It's not totally related to the topic, but close enough that I'll say it here: I do feel like a bit of an outlier in the "international" scene in Taiwan (I don't just mean expats, plenty of locals are in it too, for a variety of reasons). It does feel like it's kind of city-centric and party-centric - hopping between the major west coast points and occasionally visiting the touristy rural areas, without venturing far into the non-touristy ones. Where the main events in life are Ladies' Night, Friday nights out, partying in Kending in the summer, a couple of well-known bars, dating Taiwanese women, restaurants and clubs aaaand...that's about it. It's all "yeah, tonight it's On Tap, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Girlfriend wants to go to Barcode, maybe before that we can grab some tai-pis at 7-11...naw bro, next week I'm in Taichung, you know how it is, then it's Kending, that'll be awesome, my girlfriend's calling, talk to you later bro". In the interest of not sounding like a total loser, I won't dwell on how "I'm not anti-party! I go out too!" and stick with "...that's fun to a point, but it doesn't do it for me as a lifestyle". And the video, while fun and well-done, did sort of portray Taiwan through "international culture" rather than local eyes.

So maybe that's why I was all in toward the first half of the video and toward the second half my  usual feeling of not fitting in with that culture came back.

Dunno. Maybe I'm just boring.

They Push And They Pull

From here: http://dapili.pixnet.net/album/photo/163886469

This post is about something that's been on my mind these past few days - how hard it is to accurately depict your feelings on expat life in Taiwan in a conversation. I feel like either I end up sounding too negative, or too positive, when really I'm moderate-trending-toward-positive.

Two conversations:

In the first one, I was the only foreign woman on a boat carrying approximately 100 people. Otherwise all the men were foreigners, and all the women were Taiwanese. I don't know how many "ABCs" - or to be more nuanced about it, Westerners of Asian heritage - there were. There was at least one. It turned out later that I was one of two foreign women. I noticed that and commented on it, and although I didn't mean for it to come out particularly negative - negative in terms of the skewed ratios of the expat population, certainly, but not negative in terms of life in Taiwan - it probably did. I probably came across as more bitter than I actually am (which is not very). In another, I was not the only foreign woman there - there were several women, ABC and foreign, and several men of different backgrounds. I was attempting to say how happy I was to see that, that so often it's "Asian women and Western - usually white - men", but again, I probably came off more bitter about it than I actually am.

In the other, I was chatting with a colleague who hates it here. I'm not sure why he's stayed for so long, - the only positive thing I've ever heard him say about Taiwan is a compliment on Taipei's public transportation network (which, let's be honest, is awesome. Poor Taichung. You just don't even know). This coworker is a funny guy and a generally nice person and I don't dislike him. However, whenever he gets on his Taiwan Hate Spree, I feel like I'm put in the position of pointing out all the good things about this country. If he points out the hideous bathroom-tile buildings, I point out the lovely brick Japanese baroque architecture ("but they tore all that down!" "Not all of it, and they're now finally trying to preserve what's left"). If he points out that every taxi driver tries to screw him, I point out that that almost never happens to me, so perhaps he's seeing malice where none is intended (I don't point out that if you can show you speak solid Chinese, beyond knowing your destination, that people are far less likely to try and pull that crap on you). If he points out that "this would never happen in Canada", I point out that his country is far from perfect (although I'll admit it has some strong advantages over the USA) and certainly crazy and annoying stuff happens in Canada, too. All in all, I probably come off as far more starry-eyed about Taiwan than I actually am. I quite possibly sound like someone who thinks this country is perfect.

And...neither are true! I will admit I feel the positives of Taiwan outweigh the negatives by a pretty significant amount. If they didn't, I wouldn't have stayed. Goodness knows I left DC and China after 3 years (not counting college) and 1 year, respectively. They both had their good points, but their negatives outweighed them.

I just feel that, especially in shorter conversations or conversations where you don't know people well, that the natural wending of the discussion will lead many people to come off as too positive, sounding like we think Taiwan is absolutely perfect! In! Every! Way!!, or too negative, in that it! sucks! giant! snakeballs!

If everyone around you is talking about how great Taiwan is and you join in, the one guy who is miserable will assume you're all just brainwashed or full of over-optimism. If everyone around you is having a bit of a whinge (hey, it happens, even for those of us who love it here) and you add your own bad experiences, the one person who loves it here will assume you're all just narrowminded, possibly racist, definitely embittered cultural imperialists.

And yet, if everyone around you is talking about how great Taiwan is and you feel compelled to point out that it's not perfect, everyone else may assume you're, well, narrowminded and bitter (I don't think that happened in my example above, but I've definitely seen it happen - the person who points out a fault is jumped on for being "too negative" when they aren't feeling negative at all, just pointing out one little issue). If everyone is whinging about Taiwan and you feel it's gone a bit 太over啦 (overboard), and start pointing out the positives - as I do with my coworker who will not stop complaining - they may assume you have a head full of stardust (that coworker probably thinks just this about me).

It also happens online - someone who sees one post of yours in a thread either praising or complaining about Taiwan quite possibly assumes that's the sum total, or at least an accurate portrayal, of your entire opinion, and gets a very wrong idea about you.

And, of course, it's also influenced by your mood that day - you may come off as miserable in your life in general if you meet another expat when you happen to be having a bad day or week, or you may come off as Happy Fairy Expat because you happened to have a great day or week. It seems, in the expat world, there isn't much accounting for how you may feel more generally. Either you love or hate it here, and that decision will be made for you by bystanders based on the exact circumstances of that moment, and only those circumstances. I feel people really are more forgiving in their home countries, where most people are culturally integrated. There is more room back home for "she's just having a bad day" or "he's happy with his life, but if you talk to him longer you'll realize he's aware of the negative aspects of his own country, too".

I guess this is because so many expat conversations, especially among people who don't know each other, tend to start out with talking about our lives in Taiwan and what we like or don't like, and snap judgments are made. Not too many conversations in America, unless you're at a Tea Party BBQ I suppose, focus on our lives in America and what we do/don't like about them.

There's no easy answer to this, I just felt like writing about it.

In the end I hope I come off as too positive more often than I do too negative. Frankly, I'd rather have a head full of stardust about where I live. It is where I live after all. May as well try and like it, even on the bad days.

Our Night in the Batcave

I know, I know, I've become an unreliable blogger. Eventually that will end - I hope it'll be soon. For now...sorry!

But I am working on a longer blog post featuring thoughts from other women in Taiwan; I've just been lazy about adding quotes and hitting "Publish".

For now, please enjoy these wonderful photos from our night in Kaohsiung's famous "Batman Room" in the Eden Exoticism Hotel.

Some info:

Eden Hotel
(some English info)
#1685 Yucheng Rd., Gushan Dist. Kaohsiung
高雄市鼓山區裕誠路1685號 - about 1.5 km from MRT Aozhidi near the north end of Kaohsiung (NT150 or so from HSR Zuoying Station, depending on traffic and time of day, 24-hour restaurants nearby and they have room service)
(07)974-0888 - ask for the "Batman Room" (#315), or 蝙蝠俠的房間




Ignore the prices listed - we got this place from 8pm-10am with free (mediocre, but edible) breakfast for NT$3600, or about USD$120, and I called the night before. This is a straight-up love hotel, with decorated suites in a variety of, eh, tastes...some more tasteful than others. Don't even ask me about the wall decal of the anthropomorphic, curvaceous tiger lady in the Jungle Room. It's better that you see for yourself, or that you just don't know.

You can watch TV on the LCD screen set into the cut-out bat here (there's another TV behind glass mounted near the jacuzzi). Good selection of free hot and cold drinks. All channels, including some you didn't want to know existed.



Batman is everywhere in this room - on mirrors, as cut-outs, on posters, behind the bed, as curtain-like decorations, on the ceiling. It's really something.

It was great, because I didn't tell Brendan I was booking this room - which I heard about from a link a friend posted on Facebook. I just booked it and let him see for himself.

"Clearly you booked a love motel," he said as he walked in (he arrived in Kaohsiung long after I did as I was down there in the morning for business). There is a discreet parking spot with garage door for every room, you see, and that just screams "love motel".

...and then he walked in, and his face went from

:-)

to

O_O

to

OoO

to

 (((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o)))

...it was really amazing to see.



What I loved were the details. Somebody clearly put a lot of thought into this room - from the bat cut-outs to the etched-glass bats to the bat toys and decoration to the die-cut bats adorning the desk and front of the bed (and that lovely velveteen Batman headboard) to the drop-ceiling and wall mood-lit Batman scenes. And it was comfortable and clean.



...there was even a replica Batmobile...well...it was made of plywood with one velveteen bench seat, but still. I am sure someone has gotten busy in there. Brendan made sure to sit in there and move his hands like he was driving and go "vroom vroom!" just for the hell of it. This is why I married him.




...by the way, the chair next to the Batmobile? Yeah. They say that's a massage chair. It isn't. Brendan still sat there checking his e-mail.



Some of the decorations, um, I'm not sure "Batman" would necessarily put them in his Batcave.





Especially the ones over the jacuzzi, behind the TV.



...and as you may note, the jacuzzi is open, so only share this room with friends if you are really tight, like "it's OK to see each other naked" tight. The toilet is also open. It's in another room but there's no door, only a metal bead "curtain" that obscures nothing. I guess some people are into that sort of thing?

One of my friends said "I should book this room and let my kids stay there. They'd love it!"

"You may want to hide the toiletries."



"It's OK, their reading isn't the best!"

(The condoms are "Love Cats" brand from Malaysia. I think they're trying to imply something like two happy kittens with a cartoon heart or whatever, but all I can picture are two randy cats in an alley screeching at 2am. No thanks).

Also, Batman is quite the fan of silk flowers:





...just, trust me on the chair.

As I waited for Brendan to arrive, I took a fantastic jacuzzi bath in the really swank bath area, and watched Iron Man (the first one) on the glass-encased TV. I had grabbed a beer from 7-11 so I was all set to go. Iron Man has some funny moments, so at one point I guffawed - and choked on my beer. Obviously I was fine, but it got me thinking: what would the news media say if a foreigner (say, me) were found dead in a jacuzzi from choking on beer in a Batman-themed love hotel room?

Worst way to go...or best way to go??



Brendan: "I am sure the Taipei Times would report most of the details."

Jenna: "Apple Daily would draw a cartoon showing the scene of the accident."

Brendan: "I think we both know it's inevitable that you're going to end up in the gossip section of a newspaper that routinely prints cartoons of the previous day's horrific murder on the front page."

Sri Lanka: Kandy-land Adventure

I apologize for not posting for two weeks - I took on a crazypants teaching schedule, trying to save money before I make a change in August, and haven't had much time for blogging. I also worked my way through The Forty Days of Musa Dagh after reading a few other things on my list (Hiking Through History and The Oracle of Stamboul), and that took up a lot of my time.

What's more, I've been thinking more seriously of making jewelry to actually sell - although I haven't started yet, just planning what to make and what I'll need - if I decide to do it at all - is taking up time.

And sadly, blogging fell by the wayside.



I believe this is my last batch of Sri Lanka photos (I have to check and see if the Galle photos ever made it up, and later on I'll throw up a few Colombo shots), and I don't have too much to say beyond basic travelogue stuff. But I should note a few things about similarities between Sri Lanka and Taiwan.

I mean, there are the obvious things, like how they're both islands off a major landmass that is also one country, and both independent (although Taiwan is only de facto, Sri Lanka is de jure). They both have monkeys. They are both often overlooked in favor of their larger and more powerful neighbors.



But there's more.

Both have an ethnic minority of another race that has influence over the culture (Tamils in Sri Lanka, aborigines and Hakka here - some will argue that Hakka is not an ethnic minority. OK, you could say that, but they are a cultural and linguistic one).

They both are relatively small players in the world economy (Sri Lanka moreso than Taiwan) next to a major player, but both have higher per capita GDP statistics than their "big, rich" neighbor. Both are more prosperous when you consider individual standard of living than their neighbor. Both are easier to deal with as destinations than traveling in their neighbor (I love India, but Sri Lanka was an easier place to visit).



They both have some unfortunate politics worth discussing. I was not pleased that the LTTE lost the civil war - I was rooting for them to at least win concessions, autonomy or some sort of enforced legislation of equal treatment and opportunity. This is in part because I lived in Tamil Nadu in India and so have something of a connection to Tamil culture although I am not Tamil myself, and in part because they fought back against true discrimination. They didn't deserve to lose, and they're not doing much better now than they were when the war began.

And of course, Taiwan has to deal with all that China bullshit.



They both have monkeys!

But seriously, they both have cultural traditions that involve tiny shrines everywhere. Along the road in Sri Lanka, much like in Taiwan (but not China, in my observation), there are small Buddhist shrines (and a few Hindu ones too), that you can stop and pray at, or are there just to keep farms, fields or property safe and in god's grace. In Taiwan, of course, you'll see Earth God (土地公) shrines everywhere, and a few others (Matsu is popular) scattered around, too.



Their cultures are both too often considered the same or "close enough" to their larger, more well-known neighbors.



They are both influenced strongly not only by their Big Strong Neighbor, but also by other nearby islands - as is the case with island nations in proximity to other ones. Taiwan is deeply influenced by Japan by both proximity, cultural affinity (including post-WWII when Taiwan was one of the only - the only? - Asian nation to not despise or resent Japan) and colonization. Sri Lanka has flavors of Indonesia in its art, traditions, architecture and cooking - you see woodcarving that's more reminiscent of Bali, "tiki" style thatch roofs more commonly seen in Sumatra and Java, food that reminds me of Padang cuisine almost as much as it does Indian curry, greater use of coconut and an affinity for "sambol", which is basically spicy Indonesian sambal with coconut.

Even their art has lines - look at the legs of the carved dancer below - that remind me of Indonesian Hindu/Buddhist art more than Indian.

Some of their dances seem more Indonesian than Indian, but I am hardly an expert in Sri Lankan dance tradition.



Anyway, these photos were taken in Kandy, Sri Lanka's cultural capital (think of it as the Tainan of Sri Lanka, Galle as the Lugang of Sri Lanka, the southern beaches as the Kending of Sri Lanka, Ella/Nuwara Eliya as the Alishan of Sri Lanka...they could all almost be sister cities/sister destinations).

 

The afternoon we arrived, after a nauseating bus trip, we waited out a rainstorm (common in Kandy in the afternoon) and headed to the Temple of the Tooth (above), where it's said that they keep a tooth of the Buddha. I'm not sure if it's real - it's been absconded with, taken to India and brought back enough times that it could well be a fake - but the temple is lovely.



We went to a fun, but basic, tea museum the next day, taking a rickshaw up the mountain and walking down to enjoy the weather and scenery. And we saw this:





...and passed a Durga shrine. Durga, the embodiment of feminine creative energy and the Optimus Prime/Power Rangers Giant Robot of Hindu gods, carries weapons in her 18 arms and rides a tiger or lion. She killed the demon Mahisha when no other god could. Of course she is my favorite.





Jaya jaya hai, Mahishasura Mardhini!

We hired a rickshaw to take us to the three most well-known temples outside of Kandy (not a lot of public transit), which were all enjoyable, if firmly on the tourist circuit:























...and we saw a super touristy dance show, which was fun, but not as authentic as, say, a Taiwanese temple parade (I'd love to see such dances in an authentic setting, but all the cameras going off kind of ruined it. I'm not against taking photos - I take them, too - but it was downright rude, how people would stand in the audience or hold their cameras up high so those behind them not only couldn't see, but also could watch you take your terrible photos...because most tourists aren't good photographers).







Here's one of the shrines I mentioned:



And the beach we started out from, at Negombo (it was a less stressful option than staying in Colombo). Seems quiet - actually, it was stuffed with tourists.