The Path Is Made By Walking

Indeed it is. So walk it.

Disclaimer: it can’t be repeated enough times – so I’m sorry to beat you about the eyes with it – but I’m painting in very broad strokes in this post and trying, while acknowledging individuality and exceptions – to explore noticed trends. If you read something that you have not observed or don’t agree with, please do leave your own musings in the comments (but keep it polite), and keep in mind that just because others’ observations may be different doesn’t mean anyone’s are invalid.

I was talking to a student today about giving suggestions, recommendations and advice in English, and one question came up:

What would you recommend to a friend, colleague or subordinate who feels unmotivated?

We were taking turns, and it was my turn to respond, so I jokingly said “How about quitting your job?”

I know. Ha ha ha.

But really…we got to talking about motivation, passion and purpose in Taiwan. I mentioned that I always ask students how their weekends were and what they did, and I am fond of questions inquiring about hobbies, interests and life goals.

I said that I would tell that person to take some time to deeply self-reflect, to look at their current situation and try to pinpoint what it is that is sapping their motivation, and either to change it or to make a more drastic change. What’s more, I’d encourage them to take some time to ponder what it was they really wanted in life, and where they would like to be in five, ten or twenty years: not necessarily to plan and insist on that outcome, but to ponder what they might like.

And yet, when I ask a question like “So…what do you want?”, “What’s your goal?”, “What are you really interested in?” and “What would you do if you could do anything you wanted?”, I so often get shrugged shoulders, maybe a “dunno”.

My student had the same thought. She said (paraphrased, not an exact quote), “I think many Taiwanese would not be able to do that. Or if you ask them what could make them feel more motivated at work, they don’t know, because it’s just office work. It’s not special.”

To be fair, I see this in the USA, too, and no matter what country you’re in, knowing what you want and not doing it – at least not yet – is far less terrifying than feeling dispirited but having no idea what you want or what would motivate you, and staring at yet another work week in a job you don’t care about, or yet another weekend in which you sleep and watch TV and have no strong desire to pursue any other activity…especially if somewhere inside you feel as though you would like to have something to be passionate about…but just don’t.

I have to say, though, I get so many more of these “dunno” responses in Taiwan, and hear or see so many wistful comments along the lines of “I don’t know what I want” or “I don’t have any hobbies” or “I don’t know what I would do” or just…kind of…a shrug.

Or take a friend of mine for example – he said recently that in college, life was so free, the possibilities were endless, but that since he’s been working he feels as though life has been pre-ordained and he can’t choose another path.

“What do you like to do on the weekend?”

"I don't know - I like to sleep and watch TV."

I also see it a lot when I ask my students about their weekends, as I always do. I do have students who regularly answer with interesting stories of how they spent their free time, but I also get a lot of “I slept and I watched TV”, or “I don’t know…actually it wasn’t special so I forgot what I did on the weekend” or worse “I did some work, because I didn’t know what to do.”

I’m sure if you asked a group of Americans about their weekend you’d get a smattering of these ho-hum responses, but I also feel that generally speaking you’d get a higher percentage of interesting stories, or at least stories that speak to having done something with their free time.

I absolutely do not believe this is cultural, and I do not believe that it has to do with any lack of spark, creativity or imagination. I resoundly reject that line of reasoning.

I do, however, believe that it is the dejected offspring of a societal creation: the overworked kid – as well as the overworked kid’s sad morphing into an overworked adult.

There has been a lot of discussion on the different childhoods of American kids and Asian kids (for the sake of this post we’ll say “Taiwanese” although it applies to much of Asia, especially east Asia) – it’s fairly well understood that we American kids had more time to play, to fritter away time, to do nothing immediately useful. Americans will say that this along with different educational methodology is what helps American kids grow critical thinking skills and creativity. Asian parents will say that their system is what makes their kids so great at math, science and music and it breeds hardworking children who will succeed.

They’re both right, but really, I think the issue goes deeper.

When I was young, you bet I spent my free time having fun – I built blanket forts, tore up my mom’s garden, drew pictures, wrote stories, made crafts, took photos, read books, played games, played sports, took walks, hit things with sticks, tried my hand at cooking. I was expected to take part in some activities – learning an instrument, joining a soccer team or some such – but I as a child had a massive amount of control over what activities I did and while I was pushed to make an effort in anything I said I wanted to try, at the end of it the final decision about whether I liked something and would become good at it was mine.

My Taiwanese friends often tell me that as children, they didn’t have such choices – long hours at school, then cram school classes or tutoring, then homework. On the weekend they might be shipped off to still more classes, English school or music lessons or various other activities that they themselves have little control over. I’m not saying that Taiwanese kids have no free time – they do have time to play, just not as much as I did

I also had more control over my grades – sure, I was expected to do my homework and make an effort in school, but the extent to which I did that was, in the end, mine. If I wanted to do a half-assed job at school, get mediocre grades, have it affect my college choices (mostly regarding scholarships – one can get a perfectly good education at a university that will accept you with middling grades, but I had needed, and won, a scholarship to go to a school not under the State University of New York system)…well, the person who would pay the eventual consequences for that was me, and so I was expected to take responsibility for it from a surprisingly early age.

As a result, I had, all around, far more free time and self-direction than many Taiwanese kids I see, and more than many of my friends in Taiwan had as children. I do think my upbringing was similar enough to many American childrens’ that I can safely use it as an example, and I do feel the people I’ve talked to in Taiwan have had childhoods close enough to the norm to safely use them as examples, too.

I'll take the extreme example of one nephew of a former student. He would get up at 6 or 7 every morning for school, spend the day there and then go to cram school until 10pm. Then he'd ride the MRT home until 11pm, eat a quick, cold dinner and do his homework until midnight or later. Then he'd wake up and do it all again the next day. On the weekend, he'd catch up on extra homework and studying. When I used to teach in Wugu until 9:30pm twice a week, I'd be dropped off at Taipei Main at about ten and vie for a spot on the escalator and train with the hundreds of cram school students bustling home at that late hour, many with circles under their eyes. I can't say I've met many Taiwanese children with hobbies other than enforced music or sports lessons in fields the children themselves did not choose (although I can name two very bright exceptions in the girls I have "English Fun Time" with most Saturdays after lunch, who do have free time to play, imagine, dream or pursue hobbies).

“What are you good at? Why do you think you are good at it? Is it useful to have this talent?”

"I don't know. I never tried anything like art or any hobbies. I guess I like basketball."

So what did I get from all that free time? Many (not all!) Taiwanese parents might say “Nothing!”, but what it did give me was a strong sense of self, a lot of time to cultivate an imagination and a lot of different testing ground to try out new hobbies and explore developing talents.  My parents gamely – but within reason – paid for lessons for any activity I showed an interest in pursuing, which is how I managed from the age of 6 onwards to take classes in ballet, clarinet, tumbling and gymnastics. I had to finish the class, but if I didn’t like it and showed no special talent, I was not pushed to continue. I tried out soccer and eventually picked up the trumpet. My mom was happy to take me to Franklin’s, a crafting store chain similar to Michael’s but smaller that dotted the region, to buy me markers, pastels, sketch pads, calligraphy markers (the cheap kind), beads, yarn, embroidery thread or anything else I wanted to try out. I was given old scraps of fabric and bits and bobs of old jewelry and other goodies by my Grandma G., and encouraged to play with them: I made doll clothes, twisted together old jewelry into warped new designs and created paper confections iced with tremendous amounts of children’s glue and dripping with marker ink. I was allowed seeds and pots to try growing my own plants and occasionally given a disposable camera to futz around with. I wrote terrible children’s poetry and stories not much better than this and lovingly collected the marker-strewn sheets of scrap paper into a “book”. I was allowed to experiment with cooking under supervision. Back when I was made to be religious (my parents were big on church attendance) I taught Sunday school and realized I was good at managing and teaching a group.

It might seem as though no lasting good can be gained from dumping glitter on things and killing innocent plants that had the unfortunate fate of being “grown” by me, but really, I learned a lot from this pseudo-bohemian childhood.

I learned that while I can grow plants, I don’t have a natural green thumb. I learned that I am very good at music, pretty good at writing (you may not think so, dear reader, but I generally post first drafts of my writing on this blog – I don’t edit), possess some talent in art and crafting, enjoy photography and solitary outdoor sports such as hiking and biking, but not team sports. I learned that I am not very good at activities such as ballet and gymnastics, which require a build and natural athleticism and grace that I do not possess. I learned that I’m great at language and history/social studies, but can do well in math only if I work hard (which I never wanted to do, because I never enjoyed it). I’m pretty good at design – I did design my own wedding dress – but not that great at sewing. I learned that I love reading and hate soccer.

“What do you do for fun?”

"Sleeping! Ha ha ha."

This self-knowledge eventually fermented itself into interests and talents, and then abilities – because I stuck with the things I enjoyed and was good at, such as music, art and language. I cultivated a passion for good food and travel. Any one of them could have become a career – from musician (something I once seriously contemplated) to chef to artist to writer.

Of course, were I to become any of those things now, well, I couldn’t just up and do them: you have to choose your path and I didn’t choose one that included professional level training in any of those fields. I would need to get that training if I decided to pursue any of these hobbies on a professional level.

In college it was the same – I had free reign to choose a major and because I was given the time to figure out what I liked and had an aptitude for, I could choose something that suited me (and had the added bonus of being my own choice, which is its own reward).

“What was your favorite subject in school? Why did you like it?” “What was your major in university? Why did you choose it? Did you like it?”

"I don't have any opinion about that. I studied math and science hard because my parents told me. I didn't choose my major. My test scores told me my major."

My Taiwanese friends? Not so free to choose – their parents told them what subject to study most diligently, and their test scores determined what schools they could attend as well as what majors they could choose. Within that narrow range provided by test scores, parents will often push their children to choose one major over another. Education or accounting? Become an accountant. Medicine or engineering? Become a doctor (or engineer – they’re equally popular). History or language? Choose history. Math or biology? Math. The young adults themselves don’t get much of a say.

Perhaps in the past this was OK – having your path chosen for you has some benefits (no fear of being indecisive and no worry that you’ve chosen the wrong path out of many, because there never were many and you never did choose). It can lead to an inner confidence and bearing in knowing that you occupy your expected and correct place in your family and society, and that how you live your life is not entirely your own business or choosing. I can see how, while a bit clichéd, that could well have been the reason why a culture of “no free time, no childhood, no self-direction, no frivolous hobbies” has survived as long as it has. There’s nothing wrong with it, as long as it produces happy people. What I see it producing now, though, after industrialization and Westernization have shaken the foundations of the old system, are a lot of rudderless, tired people.

The life path I’ve chosen as a result, while not perfect, has been my own. This knowledge – that whatever I do is my own doing – has led to the deeper knowledge that whatever I haven’t done is also my own not-doing, and while some of it is “could-have-done”, it doesn’t matter: I have control of my future, at least as much as any person does, and it’s not as hard as one thinks to turn “could have done” into “can still do” and “will do”.  Time to play, to dream, to imagine and to learn your own abilities and from those choose your own path can also bestow a deeper confidence that your path can go (almost) wherever you want it to, as well as giving you ideas that bubble up from deep inside on where it is you might like to go. Or as one idiom goes: the path is made by walking.

I’m not saying that all Americans are supremely confident and self-aware – as Elizabeth Gilbert wisely noted in Committed, for many all that freedom, all those choices and all those paths can be anxiety-inducing and downright paralyzing, over fear of not being able to choose every path, or of choosing the wrong path. I also don’t mean that all Taiwanese are downtrodden and lack passion and self-awareness – they don’t, and I can name dozens of exceptions among my own circle of acquaintances (see disclaimer).

And then those college kids graduate into jobs where they earn too little money for too many hours, slaving for the entirety of daylight under fluorescent tubes, and are too tired on the weekend, if they have a full weekend at all, to consider pursuing anything else. If they do take time to think about it, they don’t have a solid foundation of childhood experience and trial-and-error hobbies to give them direction on what they might consider doing or might enjoy.

“What is your life goal? Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

"I don't know. Maybe making more money."

So, when I saw my friend’s Facebook comment about feeling as though possibilities were endless as a student but now he felt that his path was pre-ordained and nothing he could do would change it, it punched me in the heart just a little bit – because when I ask the questions used as headers in this post and get answers similar to the ones I’ve highlighted over and over again, well, isn’t it a sign that a lot of people feel this way? Is it a sign that it’s a problematic trend in Taiwan? The first generation of Taiwanese born into safety and prosperity, who have generally not known poverty, illiteracy or oppression, and who have been force-fed an education and told what their abilities and future careers must be, who were never given much free time or chances to try out their own aptitudes or self-reflect…has this become the fallout?  A nuclear winter of feeling like their paths are not made by walking, but are made for them to walk, of not knowing what they really want because they never had time to find out?

Granted, I don’t know if the friend who made the comment had a childhood in Taiwan like the one I outlined. I’m using that comment as a springboard to explore a host of issues and trends I’ve noticed, not to pinpoint one specific person.

When someone asks me, though, where I see myself in ten years, I can tell them. If someone asks me to think about how my current life situation motivates me or not, or what I really want in life, I can answer.

I see myself holding a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics, speaking fluent Chinese and doing some tutoring or even training in that on the side, and continuing in the same realm of English teaching/corporate training, or possibly working at a university. I see myself writing a book, but will only do so if I ever feel sufficiently inspired regarding the subject matter. I see myself continuing to travel, improving my photography and cooking skills, and maybe someday buying a small townhouse or rowhouse in a funky urban area with Brendan, or staying in Taiwan. I see a lot of things that could happen and have the confidence that if life takes a different turn, that my path is still made by walking, and Brendan and I will be able to wind our own way through whatever happens.

I just don't get a lot of Taiwanese students who can answer that question, and almost none who can answer it with much conviction beyond wanting to retire after making more money (again, there are exceptions - students who want to travel, learn about art or become stellar photographers come to mind).

So when I answered that comment, I said something along the lines of – when I was in college, I didn’t know what I want and I kept looking for signs or for the world to tell me. But no stars shone, no omens came. Nobody was ever going to help me. It was up to me to make the most of life and expand my horizons. I know you believe in fate more than I do, though.”

(It sounds a bit overwrought in English, but this is translated from Chinese).

I want nothing more than to see more people in the world with that confidence – and while I hate to imply the superiority of Western culture (or any culture, in any regard) – I do think that giving children and young adults more free time and more self-direction can build a stronger self-confidence and inner motivation than what I often see in Taiwan. I do not believe that a test score can determine an appropriate major anywhere nearly as well as the person who will study that major. I do believe that choosing for yourself is its own reward and bestows its own decisiveness and confidence, and more people should be encouraged to do it. I’d like to see more people in Taiwan – and East Asia, and the world – with a stronger knowledge of what they enjoy and what motivates them, and to know that their paths, too, are made by walking.

Three Good Restaurants in Southern Taipei

Little Thailand Restaurant - 泰國小館

台北市汀州路糝段號
#219 Dingzhou Street Sec 3, Taipei
(02)2367-0739

This has to be the best Thai restaurant in Gongguan, right up there with Yangon Burmese restaurant (which is basically Thai, but "technically" Burmese). It looks like a small Southeast Asian supermarket on the outside, chock full of snacks for sale, but once you go in it's clearly a restaurant that happens to also sell packaged snacks and other items from SE Asia.

The food is really quite good - very much the same in flavor as I enjoyed during my brief excursion to Thailand years ago (I keep telling myself I'll go back, but there are so many other places to see, too!) - and they don't pull punches on the spice! The pork with green beans and papaya salad were fiery, and the other dishes were at a respectable spice level. They have the usual selection of beer, are always bustling, the walls are covered with pictures and textiles from Thailand, and I love the cheap day-market plastic clock with the picture of the King of Thailand and his many dogs ("he loves dogs and raises rescued strays," the owner told us. "Our King is so good") on the clock face.

We didn't get dessert, but they seemed to have a wider selection than is usually available.

Oh, and do get the shrimp pancake (月亮蝦餅) - it's the best I've had outside of SE Asia.


Weitzuman
台北市文山區景興路118號
#118 Jingxing Road, Wenshan, Taipei City (MRT Jingmei)

Taipei Times reviewed it before I had a chance to - although I may have mentioned it before - but we live very close to this place - maybe a ten minute walk, if that - and I have long been a devotee. It's a dirty-walled, Taiwanese-talkin', good-sake-servin' izakaya in a decidedly unpretentious neighborhood (ie, our neighborhood) with some really spectacular Japanese food and Japanese-style sunken tables.  I still have dreams about the yakitori (although the ones from Dako, above, provide good competition) and I love that this place just plain does good food, it doesn't try to be all hip, and for Japanese food it's quite affordable.

The Taipei Times said it better than I could, so I'll leave it there, but this place gets my stamp of approval!

Not Too Smart, Not Too Dumb

Update: my husband wrote another fascinating perspective (of course I think it's fascinating, I'm his wife) on his own blog that is definitely worth reading. Plus he said my Chinese was good several times, so, uh, thanks honey!

I came across this post on Laowiseass about locals asking you about your ability to speak Chinese.

Rather than leave a long, ranty comment I thought I’d post it here as a rebuttal.

Maybe, despite by blackened, cynical heart, I do have a redeeming beam of optimistic light shining through after all, but I like to think the best of people. The Taiwanese people, moreover, have given me so many reasons to think the best of them.

I absolutely do not get the feeling that, when asked about my Chinese, even at length, or complimented on it after a simple “ni hao”, the reaction of locals is one of either (a) being incredulous because foreigners are supposed to be to dumb to learn Chinese or (b) thinking Chinese is so deeply complex that a non-native speaker can’t possibly learn it.

I’m sorry, I don’t buy it – it’s a cliché I’ve heard before and I’m just not on board.

Rather, while it is true that most established long-termers do speak Chinese and often speak it well, the foreigners that many Taiwanese come into contact with, if they talk much to foreigners at all, are the transients – here for a year to teach English or take two semesters at Shi-da, and gone…or they’re expats of the “businessperson” variety, sent by their companies, who may stay for a few years but rarely learn much Chinese. Looking at my Taiwanese friends’ Facebook lists confirms this. For many, I am their only foreign friend. For others, they seem to be friends with one or two foreign colleagues who have visited and maybe a language exchange partner but that’s it (others have lots of foreign friends – it does vary somewhat). So while I am not denying that the established expats generally can speak decent Chinese, that doesn’t mean that the average local comes across them rather than, say, a cram school teacher or the resident expat in their office with whom they must speak English (as I do work in various offices, most of my Taipei acquaintances are white-collar office workers).

I also feel that the questions about my Chinese are more of a friendly variety – a conversation topic from someone who may be nervous and wondering what to talk to a foreigner about. Or a compliment, because other foreigners that person has met really couldn’t speak Chinese. Or just because they’re flattered that I have taken the time to learn their language.

Which is another point – for we Taiwan long-termers, this whole “learning Chinese” thing is normal, but it’s really only been in our generation (and even then not to any great extent) that we foreigners have taken a large-scale interest in studying Chinese at any level. Of course there have always been foreigners who have learned Chinese, but in my parents’ generation you generally studied European languages unless you were intending to move somewhere for work or become a linguist or anthropologist. Now it’s not that uncommon to have a non-Chinese or Taiwanese person who can teach a Chinese class or translate, but just a generation ago it would have been exceedingly rare. In the USA we don’t comment on how well foreigners speak English because (a) culturally it’s quite rude to do, but also (b) because it’s very common to meet foreigners who speak good English. It doesn’t necessarily hold true the other way – immigrants to the USA have been learning English for generations. It’s only been recently that there has been an uptick in foreigners coming to Taiwan and learning Chinese. You can’t hold them to the same etiquette rules or cultural background, because it is simply not the same.

So when I get a “you speak such good Chinese!” I take it as a “thank you for taking the time to learn our language and be interested in our culture, seeing as usually we’re the ones expected to take the time to learn English and understand the West”. I don’t take it as “Chinese is so hard / foreigners are so stupid”.

If anything, people I talk to will say that while writing Chinese is a bitch and a half (it is), learning to speak and understand it with its pared-down grammar and compact phrasing is, as they see it, probably easier for us than it is for them to learn English.

I’ve heard more “oh, no, English is what’s hard!” than “Chinese is so hard! How did you learn it?”

I have also not felt any assumption-laden comments implying that even if I studied Chinese at a university for four years, the second I graduate it’s expected that I’ll forget it all – if anything, living in Taiwan I encounter the expectation that once I show I can speak Chinese, that it is expected that if I can do so and have been here for five years that I had better speak it well, unless I’m lazy or don’t care.

Besides, how many of us learned a language in college that we have since forgotten? Taking classes in the USA or wherever you are from in a language, even for years, is not the same as actually living your life in and around that language. I studied French for seven years, spoke it very well upon graduation from college, and now can barely stammer out a sentence (although when I ran into some French travelers in India, much of it came back in twenty minutes of chatting). I think Chinese, which I have barely studied formally and mostly learned on my own, is much more drilled into my head because I learned it in an immersion environment. If I had gone to a French-speaking country upon graduation the situation would be different. It would not surprise me to learn that someone who had studied a language in college was not able to speak it even five years later. College classes are not an optimal environment.

So please, let’s dispense with tired clichés about how Chinese speakers view their language or view foreigners. It does nobody any favors and only widens the cultural divide.

"Honey, I'm going to China for business"

The American perspective:


So you've just been told you're going to Shanghai on business. If you're pretty new in the business travel game, you're kind of excited, if not, you know that you'll have a comfortable trip regardless. You'll fly business class and be picked up at the airport. You'll probably be put up in a decent hotel - a Sheraton, Hyatt or Marriott at the least, something much fancier depending on your position and the importance of the trip. You'll attend a few meetings, possibly even held in your posh hotel, have a few business-related meals in good restaurants and have all that great food reimbursed by the company. You'll probably have a day or two to go sightseeing, or be able to extend your trip by two or three days with personal leave (paid by you) if you're interested in a mini-vacation. You'll have time to walk the Bund and do some shopping, hit up a swank bar or two, and you'll fly back, again in business class. You'll bring back enamel chopsticks for your kids who will be excited to hear about Mom or Dad's trip to China. You'll meet new people, do some networking, maybe have to deal with a cultural gaffe or two that will make a good story later. People will ask you about your life and work back home and share stories of their own trips or time spent working in the USA.

The Taiwanese perspective:


You've just been told you're going to Shanghai on business. You'll fly economy class and maybe get picked up - it depends. You have to write "Chinese" on your immigration form - if you write "Taiwan" or "Republic of China" you'll be denied entry. You'll head out past Shanghai to Kunshan, where you'll stay in a factory dormitory/guesthouse. There's nothing to do - Kunshan is an industrial zone. You'll be handling factory issues all day, attending meetings, and racing around like a madman or madwoman. No time for shopping and you won't be anywhere near anything interesting in Shanghai itself. You're so tired out after ten- to fourteen-hour days in the factory that if there is a day off - and there rarely is, because you often have to handle work issues through the weekend - you have the energy to flip on the TV in your room and sleep, and nothing more. You'll get asked about Taiwan all the time, with the added implication that don't you agree it's a part of China? Everybody knows that. Nobody will want to hear any other opinion on the matter and to say as much could get you into a fight, so you have to deflect those questions rather than stand up for your country. The factory workers, if they meet you, probably dislike you for being their Taiwanese boss. You get no more sleep or free time than you would in Taiwan. When you fly back nobody asks you about your trip - they all know that a "business trip to China" doesn't mean high-rise hotel bars and networking at business dinners in Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing. It means a week in a factory dorm in Kunshan, Tianjin, Shenyang or Dongguan. You fly there and back on your own time, not company time. You eat crappy food. You go to work the next day, not even a few hours to recuperate. Back to the meetings, back to the fluorescent lights.



Of course, it's not always like this - I am sure there are American businesspeople who endure awful trips to China with back-to-back meetings and hostile negotiations, and I have students who go to China and have a posh time of it in downtown Shanghai, Hong Kong or Beijing.

I'm just talking generally about what I've noticed, comparing the majority of my students' trips to China and those I know in the USA who regularly travel there on business.

I thought of this after a taxi driver told me yesterday, "so you are American? Why are you going to this office building? Are you a boss?" "No. I do corporate training - business English, business skills." "But you are American. I think Americans are the boss and the Taiwanese are workers. So you should be the boss."

This comment really bothered me, I must say. I don't necessarily think the driver approved of the situation, but it was uncomfortably accurate (although in a way that was more true even ten years ago and is slowly starting to fade) and painfully self-deprecating and neo-colonialist.

And I can't help but wonder when there'll be some great shift in the world economy that makes it so the dividing line between business class and the W Hotel and a factory guesthouse in Dongguan isn't so sharply divided along racial lines.

Reason #22 to Love Taiwan

Every Wednesday morning, at least for now, I teach a class out in Tucheng Industrial Park. That means getting up earlier than I would normally prefer to, but it's fine because I enjoy the class itself.

In the lobby of the building where I teach, there's a small setup by a tea company (they also have other products but seem to specialize in tea). They're the ones who produce the famous Fushoushan Evergreen tea served at Presidential banquets, and they have an office on the 2nd floor. There is often, but not always, a man staffing the area, which includes shelves of tea for sale and other tea products. In front is a table with an electric heater and traditional tea-making implements with a draining board.

When my class finishes at 10:30am, if the guy is there he invites me to sit and drink for awhile, and will tell me about what he's brewing, but without the annoying pressure of a sales pitch. He knows from our chats that I already have a lot of tea at home and much of it is from his company; I'm hopelessly addicted to the super-expensive Fushoushan tea. The front desk and security guys often come over and chat as well, and teach me a little Taiwanese and have some tea with us, which the guy replenishes in their large steel mugs. Today, he brewed a ridiculously caffeinated red-colored "old tea", not unlike Pu-erh, but definitely not Pu-erh itself. It had a slightly sour taste, similar to Oriental Beauty, but from aging, not from insect saliva (if you've ever wondered where the unique flavor of Oriental Beauty comes from, it's the saliva of the insects that eat the tea leaves unless one of my students is REALLY yanking my chain).

And that's what I love about Taiwan - that in the lobby of a ho-hum office building in a ho-hum industrial park in ho-hum Tucheng, there's a guy who brews traditional tea to showcase his company products, and I can sit there drinking it like I'm at Wistaria House, chatting with him, chatting with the guards and having an all-around good time drinking fabulous, high-quality tea.

Try doing that in some bland office building in Scranton, PA.

外國朋友

Riffing a bit on my post about friendship in Taiwan over a week ago...I was chatting with a local acquaintance about the phrase "外國朋友" (or 外國人朋友) - literally "foreign friend".

"It should be pretty good," he said. "In the past, Taiwan didn't have many foreigners, so if a Taiwanese person had a foreign friend, it was some kind of honor."

"An honor? To have a friend who is not from Taiwan? Any friend? Of any age, from any country?"

"Yes. So they are trying to be very nice when they call you 'foreign friend', it's like a friend but higher."

"Hmm. But it seems to me that to say 'foreign friend' makes it clear that that friend is different or set apart."

"Yes! It's true!"

"So to me that sounds like 'these people are my friends, and this foreigner is my foreign friend, like I'm not really a friend the way anyone else is."

"Yes. But it's an honor to that person."

"That local person or that foreigner?"

"That local person, and maybe the foreigner too."

"I guess...an honor, OK, but I don't really want to feel 'different' or 'higher' or have any special honor for being a foreigner. People are just people, you know? 人就是人. 'Higher' doesn't mean 'closer', in fact it feels like there is some distance."

"Yes, probably there is. Maybe that could be a language or culture issue."

"I guess. I know it is hard, and there are a lot of language and culture barriers. But still, I would rather be just a friend. Like people are just people. Have the chance to be closer, not higher. Not some special foreign friend. Anyway it's clear I'm a foreigner, there's no need to actually say so. Nobody will ever mistake me for Taiwanese."

"That is true!"

...

Fortunately, none of my friends say this in my presence (I have no idea, if they mention me at all, if they refer to me as a foreign friend when I'm not around, though). I have heard it, though, and heard myself referred to by others as someone's "foreign friend". I don't worry too much about that because I don't really know the people in question, so that's different from a real, actual friend. I try not to say "Taiwanese friend" unless there is some specific reason why I need to mention that they are Taiwanese (to explain something about an anecdote or joke, for example) or, as in my last post on friendship, I'm actively trying to dissect friendship norms with locals compared to those I have with other expats.

It makes me wonder, though. How much am I a friend and how much am I a foreign friend, and will that ever change? Should it? Is it even a big deal? Is there a bit of distance and maybe a bit of bragging inherent in the phrase foreign friend or am I overanalyzing it as I do everything?

Dunno. You tell me.

The Oldest House in Xindian

"Xindian's first street, those who will tear down this culture are about to become historical criminals" (or something to that effect)

We went with our friend J this past weekend to seek out an old house/shrine in Xindian, near Dapinglin. J had learned that not only did the house still exist, but that it was slated for destruction despite being a fairly important historical relic - the first house built by the first people to settle Xindian in what used to be the only part of Xindian, which is now a forgotten lane off Minsheng Road.

You can reach this area by taking Minsheng Road (which starts near Dapinglin and is not far from the river separating Xindian from Taipei, very near our house in fact) to Lane 86, which is found after driving through a patch of farmland that nobody would really expect in this part of urbanized northern Taiwan, turning in and walking to the temple at the end past some old broke-down houses (which are older than they look I might add). Just before the temple to the left is a gateway with the name of the shrine on it. Go through there and walk down to the end - you can reach the inside by going in through the open door with the room full of junk (a local assured us this was OK to do) or see the outside by heading to the right and going around.

The house was built by the Liu family, the first to settle in Xindian, and they are apparently fighting to keep it (although from the look of the place they don't have the money for proper upkeep).

Meanwhile, the government along with the MRT company is planning to focibly buy up this and all the other land around it to build an MRT depot near the green and soon-to-be-dug yellow lines. Why they can't just build the depot 100 meters to the left is beyond me.

The temple, despite having plants growing out the roof (below), has a few parts (such as the above) where it looks like some restoration work has been done.

The pillars look recently restored, as well.

The lions and door gods are brightly painted.

As the sun set, we wandered back to the more settled area and ran into Mr. Wei, an ebullient, talkative man in his fifties who was polishing eggs (we guess by the sheer number of eggs that he is in the egg business), playing with his granddaughter and keeping an eye on his 90-year old half deaf father in law, Mr. Chen.

We learned from Mr. Wei that he and some other folks on the street, who are mostly Chens, are also opposing the forced tear-down and relocation, but they're more concerned with compensation than history. Basically, "you can take the house and property but give me a fair amount of money". (Although he used much more elliptical speech: "they prepared the bento box, but they won't give it to me unless I demand it" and "they know that if you are eating food and have some candy, a child will cry like my granddaughter. Give her a candy and she'll be happy. All I want is a candy" and "If I buy a scooter and you want to take it from me, and I paid ten thousand kuai for it, but now it's worth four thousand, well, even if you give me four thousand that's OK because I am not selfish and I don't want to cheat anyone. But don't offer me a hundred kuai!").

Basically, they feel that the compensation offered - nay, pushed on them - by the government is insufficient for what the property is worth and what it will cost to relocate.

There's more to it of course - most people in that neighborhood are old-school Hoklo and are deep green (Mr. Wei used to vote KMT, then realized he hated the KMT, and began voting DPP but is disillusioned by Chen Shui-bian's actions: "he promised soda for everyone, but only he got soda and we got water!") and the government of Xinbei city is, of course, KMT. I can't help but wonder if they want to break up a chunk of opposition party voters. That's speculation, of course, but not outside the realm of possibility.

As we talked, Mr. Wei told us that when his father-in-law, Old Chen, was four years old (so 86 years ago) a huge flood washed away much of the area, and the only thing not underwater was the roof of the Liu shrine. His father hid him up there and he survived - "he says you could see all the way to Gongguan and it was just water. Jingmei was underwater. This whole area was underwater."

As he told us the story, I looked at old Chen and realized for the first time that he wasn't wearing pants.

He went inside and came out, still in his wife beater and skivvies, and proceeded to stand in the doorway and look at us as he put on his pants. Ah, to be a 90-year-old man who can take off and put on pants wherever you like...

"Does he speak Chinese?" we asked.
"No, you have to speak Taiwanese to him," Mr. Wei answered.

"Have you eaten rice?" (jia-ba-buei?) we asked, and he just stared ahead.

"He's kind of deaf, you need to shout."
"HAVE YOU EATEN RICE?!"

Old Chen looked at us like we were the strangest things he'd ever seen - three foreigners speaking Taiwanese to him - smiled, and said something (I think it was "I've eaten" - jia ba - but I'm not sure). He then went inside to watch TV.

Mr. Wei gave us a tour of his own house, a rambling jumble of corridors built a hundred years ago of brick and wood shipped from Xiamen, with the old roof beams still intact, and lots of metal and old shingles where necessary - we went all the way out to the old pigsty, now a storage area, and the lemon and mango trees beyond that.

"It's a hundred years old or more," he said, "and they can tear it down I guess, but they have to pay me fairly."