Thomas Friedman on why Taiwan is his "favorite country"

Thomas Friedman on why Taiwan is his favorite country, via my father-in-law.

I have something to do now, but later this afternoon I'll check back in with my thoughts. I agree in some ways, disagree fairly strongly in others - Taiwan is more than a barren rock covered in factories, Thomas!

Suggestions Wanted: Out of Taipei, No Car, Rainy Weekend

So, lovely Taiwan expat community - I urgently seek your suggestions. By "urgently" I mean "like, tomorrow". 

My in-laws are in town this week, and we have avoided making weekend plans until now because of the unpredictable weather. We're happy we did, because it looks like our original hope of going to the east coast is going to be so marred by rain that it won't be worth it. I want to get out of Taipei - haven't left since we got back from Turkey - but the in-laws would be fine staying in town as this trip is fairly short and they're more interested in seeing us than in some spectacular sightseeing trip.


We're now trying to figure out what to do. Some ideas, with questions:

• two day trips, one to Daxi/Fuxing and the other to Jiufen/Jinguashi (no question here, except, anywhere really worth eating in Jiufen/Jinguashi? I have trouble finding good food out that way. My mother in law does not eat seafood or fish. AT ALL. That's why Donggang is out). They've never been to an old street and "having coffee and looking at the reservoir sounds lovely".
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• HSR to Kaohsiung and charter a taxi to go out to Maolin Scenic Area and up to Wutai. Feasible? Can we plan this on short notice? How're the butterflies doing? Once there is it even possible to arrange for transport help from whatever hotel we'd stay at (can take care of that tomorrow), or would we be looking at one very long day trip from Kaohsiung or Pingdong? Renting a car is not an option: none of us have international driver's licenses and even if we did, none of us feel confident on Taiwanese roads. No scooters - neither of us has driven one and with our parents on the back is not the time to learn! 

• Sun Moon Lake. Blech. I don't really want to go there, but this weekend is a working weekend for much of Taiwan so maybe it wouldn't be so bad? Then again hordes of Chinese tourists not diluted by domestic visitors almost sounds worse...

• Taroko is out because heavy rain is predicted for much of the east coast this weekend

• They've already been to Tainan, so we don't see the point in going back with them or going to Lugang. They went to Yehliu today. They've been to Taiwan once before and have seen all the must-sees in Taipei.

• Beipu? I enjoyed it at least, years ago. But we couldn't do Shitoushan - my mother-in-law is not up for hiking. This is also why we ditched Alishan and Little Liuqiu as ideas.

• Other suggestions...?

My Ears are Burning: A Taiwan Coffeeshop Rant

I have a whole slew of shorter posts I want to write, but I  think right now I am just going to have a short rant about something totally inconsequential, yet dear to my heart.

That topic is "coffeeshop music in Taiwan".

Last year, over Chinese New Year in Kaohsiung, we were watching TV with our friend's family and an advertisement for a set of CDs came on - the set was a collection of the "best" Western music -"if you want all the best songs, from The Carpenters to Richard Marx, don't miss this amazing CD set!" the narrator intoned in Mandarin. In the background, Yesterday Once More, something by Celine Dion, Love is a Battlefield (which I associate more with the Philippines than Taiwan), I've Been to Paradise But I've Never Been to Me and other soft rock hits from the 60s through the 80s played in the background. I don't know all of the artists but I assume they all have names like The J.C. Edwards Experience or Muttles McDougalson Sings The Blues and they've all released albums with mustard-and-brown covers featuring men with bouffants and way too much chest hair, and possibly a belted sweater.

from here

And of course there's Hotel California, which, whenever it comes on someone always says "Oh that's my favorite love song!"

But that's not the worst of it - although that's pretty bad.

I mean, I don't want to come off as some music snob. I like a lot of different stuff and I'm not anti-popular artist. I don't like to say "you've probably never heard of them". I like rap (Talib Kweli!), I like rock (The Dandy Warhols! The New Pornographers!), I like folk (vintage Ani DiFranco! Neko Case! Joni Mitchell if you wanna go old school), I like classic rock (Led Zep!), I even like "goth metal" (Lacuna Coil!) in small doses and lots of world music, on top of "everyone likes them except that one guy who thinks he's so cool" bands along the lines of Radiohead and Jay-Z. I admit to liking Cake even though they're so over. I like a lot of music I expect people to have heard of, like Esthero and Tabla Beat Science, and am surprised when they haven't. I don't like much contemporary music in Asia - not a big fan of Mando-Pop or Canto-pop or J-Pop or Korean pop. I do like a lot of classical music, Western opera and Taiwanese opera (but not Beijing opera, mostly), Indian music both classical and contemporary and world music, too.

The music in coffeeshops in Taipei rankles even my relatively modest tastes in music. Forget the '70s stuff -  some of it was innovative at the time, some derivative, some pure schlock. I'm talking the stuff that actually makes you want to rip your ears off and run, screaming and bleeding, into the street.

Here's a run-down:

-  A harp instrumental cover of I Am The Walrus, with no lyrics. What is the point of that? The same exists in piano form. WHY?

- The Entertainer, slowed down to ballad tempo and played softly and lyrically on a harp. WTF

- An R&B version of A Charlie Brown Christmas, notable for being played sometime in mid-July

- Ballad. Covers. Of. Radiohead. I really have no idea. Who thought that Wolf at the Door, Idiotheque, Paranoid Android and Everything in its Right Place would make good soft rock ballads? I mean this is seriously the worst thing to happen to music since hip hop artists figured out that "in the club" could be rhymed with "sippin' bub".

- Songs by Journey - fun as they are as a pure guilty pleasure to sing to if they're playing in a bar and you've had a few - played on and I seriously kid you not, a glass harmonica. I really wish I were joking but I am not.

- The Sonny and Cher Techno Remix, and again I wish I was making that up.

- Rap music that really has no place in a family-friendly environment. I mean it's funny enough when you're shopping in Old Chen's Bedding Emporium (which is a tiny store in a crowded lane flanked by a store that sells random stuff and a 7-11) and hear Slap That (All On The Floor) blasting, and you wonder if Old Chen really has any idea what the song is about, and funnier still when you're in a taxi chatting with your student (mild-mannered nerdy engineering type) and hear lyrics along the lines of "I'm gonna hit the club wit' it, and sip some bub wit' it and and later imma hit the limo wit' it and stick my **** in it..." and I can't go on, because I started laughing so hard that I couldn't understand the lyrics anymore. But when that starts up in a coffeeshop? Really, I don't need to know who you're going to stick your what into and where it will happen and after which events it will take place as I sip my siphon Yirgacheffe.

- Something I need to add as of today: entire CDs of synthesized dog barks and cat meows belting out famous tunes. You can buy cats meowing Christmas songs (great for your coffeeshop's ambience, especially if you play them in March), dogs barking show tunes, a mixed mammal choir doing their toe-tapping, bacon-begging renditions of Karen Carpenter songs...maybe you can even buy Eminem's Greatest Hits Barked By Synthesized Dogs! If you can name an artist, song or type of music, you can probably find it in Taiwan being barked or meowed.

I'd like to say "to each his own" but...I wouldn't wish this music even on someone who actually liked it!

It leaves me to wonder not who buys these CDs (clearly coffeeshop owners do) but who makes them. Why? Why create that and send it out into the wild to make our world just a little bit worse?

And I also wonder - do the baristas care that they have to listen to this all day? Do they get nightmares? I would.

Do the owners actually think that this is good music? Would they listen to it at home? Or do they not care for it personally but think it's what we want to hear?

Basically, what I want to know is - why?

No Apology, No Way

Not too long ago, my sister told me about an incident at work in which both she and a Taiwanese coworker had independently made mistakes on similar projects (test-writing, I believe). When told that she'd messed up, my sister apologized and said she'd get right on fixing the error. She noted that her coworker did not - she said "Oh, uh, OK" and fixed it. I, too, thought it was odd to not apologize for a minor error that is clearly your fault,  but let it go. Then, at my job, I asked for a certain worksheet I'd created for them years ago to be prepared for my use for an upcoming seminar. In the intervening time they'd "lost" the digital file somehow, so I had to re-create the worksheet. They didn't actually tell me that they didn't have it until the night before, which put pressure on me (despite my asking many times for confirmation). Instead of "we're sorry" or "we apologize", I got a "I have checked with ______ and we do not have the worksheet you requested". I replied and said I was disappointed and felt their actions were unprofessional, and noted that when dealing with foreigners, it smoothes office relations quite a bit to own up to your mistakes and apologize. I'm blunt like that. I got no reply.

It got me thinking: is this a thing? I think it is, but I only have two anecdotes to back me up. In the US if you say you're sorry for some internal office screw-up and then present a solution and work to make it right, people will generally drop it, if not forget about it altogether. As though those two words are like memory erasers: "oh she screwed up...but she owned it, she apologized and we all make mistakes. So let's forget about it." In Taiwan, maybe apologizing causes you to lose too much face? Or admitting that yes, you made a mistake will cause people to remember and criticize you rather than forget? That if you mess up, the tacit social agreement is that you won't admit it and others won't draw attention to it? That it's not the smoother-over of interpersonal interactions the way it is back home?

Which would be fine if everyone lived by that rule, but we don't. In offices where you have to deal with foreigners, either in-house or from abroad, you need to know these things, because the average foreigner won't understand that cultural difference and will feel miffed and annoyed at the lack of apology or even recognition and ownership of the mistake. Not owning it will cause that person to remember it, not forget about it. They might not say anything, but the feeling is there and it does jeopardize relations.

It makes me wonder if I should be teaching this in my business etiquette class...

Linferiority Complex

I was chatting with a student about this article, in which an Asian-American writer, while thrilled with the sudden superstardom of Jeremy Lin, was simultaneously worried that Lin's ascent would make his life harder. Why? Because Lin actually embodies many of the stereotypes associated with Asians and Asian-Americans (and Asian-wherever-elses). You know, smart, humble, hard-working, loves his mom, a team player - the writer even argues that the fact that he loves Jesus, too, fits with the stereotype. He laments that this could cause a redoubling of such beliefs about those of Asian heritage - especially Asian men - and admits openly to wondering secretly if there will ever be a "cool" Asian-American role model , you know, a stereotype-flaunter who, as one friend put it, "snorts cocaine off a Kardashian's ass". (Sorry moms).

(Not that I think that's cool.  But it does flaunt stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American men).

So, the student thought about it - I didn't use the Kardashian sentence, by the way - and finally said "but that's OK!"

"Why?"

"Because it's good to be hard-working, smart and humble. Why not?"

"Well, those are good things, but they're also stereotypes of Asians in the US."

"Maybe, but they are good stereotypes. So that's good! I hope everyone thinks Asians are hard-working smart and humble. I hope we can all be."

...err. I'm chalking this one up to culture differences. I know many Taiwanese people who would completely understand the modern American aversion to stereotypes, and those who are aware of such stereotypes enough to know not only that such profiling can be a problem, but why. I can kind of see how many others in Taiwan (and the rest of Asia), would genuinely not see anything wrong with everyone thinking they are all smart, hard-working humble folks who love their parents, because that's what they want people to think of them. It's just such a fundamentally different way of relating to these stereotypes from, well, from pretty much every Asian-American I know. There seems to be a fundamental difference in understanding of whether and how a "good" stereotype can still be "bad".

On Rice: My Deep Dark Secret

Here is where I admit my dark secret.

I love inviting my Taiwanese friends over and cooking a dinner that involves serving rice.

All the food goes out on the table, including one pot on a cooling rack, with potholders on the top and bottom, wrapped in a clean dishcloth.

When they ask where the rice cooker is, I whip off the dishcloth to reveal a typical cooking pot with cooked rice inside, that I made on the stove.

Whaaaaat? They always say. That's how you cook rice? You don't have a rice cooker? I've never seen that before!

"I cook rice like your great grandma did," I said. "The way my mom taught me."

"But...nobody does that. You can just get a rice cooker!"

I can...but it's too much fun to shock the pants off my friends. I mentioned this to someone and her reply was "Wow. Usually I think 'foreigners are not too strange' but when I hear that you cook rice this way, I think 'no, that really is very strange'!"

On "Going Native"

A highly fluent student of mine used this phrase, not necessarily something I'd teach, to describe me after I mentioned in one class that I am an avid user of 白花油，萬金油 and various other aromatic, camphored oils, that one room of my apartment is decorated with Hakka flower fabric, that I go to temple parades regularly and actually try to keep track of where and when they will take place, and that I regularly brew lao ren cha at home. 

I thought about it, and realized that no, he was not quite correct. "Going native" implies that you're acting and thinking more or less like everyone around you instead of knowingly sticking out and staying somewhat separate.  But how many Taiwanese people do you know who use White Flower Oil, decorate their apartment with Asian textiles (not just the Hakka fabric - I've collected textiles from around the world - mostly Asia though - for years), make tea that way and actually follow those temple parades as a hobby? Some might do many of those things, but at the very least, I don't know many people who would decorate that way: it may look Asian, but deep down, it's super-duper-foreign-tastic to do that. Well, not the oils. Using them is totally common.

I joked that if I wanted to "go native" for real, my apartment would have white walls and a tile floor, bare walls save for one red-and-gold calendar with a fat Buddha on it, a round table with metal legs and some chairs, one of those wicker stools that's lacquered heavily, to the point where it's orange-yellow, a blue or black vinyl couch with lace doilies on the back, a flat screen TV attached to one wall, and a yellow wood over-lacquered side table topped with thick plastic that's a bit old and discolored, topped with one of those purple orchid plants (fake would be OK). I'm joking, but...you know. Not really joking.

Or, if I had money, I'd decorate it in a Hola Casa (ever been in that store? Furniture sets for the jet set) purely Western, white-leather-and-dark-wood style, not a trace of anything "Asian" anywhere.

And I'd pay little attention to temple parades, but a lot of attention to TV, although watching a lot of TV is hardly relegated to Taiwan.

And I wouldn't drink traditionally brewed tea, I'd drink lattes (I drink those, too, for what it's worth).

And, in the end, the very things that might cause one to believe that a foreigner has "gone native" are in fact the things that have caused me to stick out.

Or, as one friend put it, "Even if I didn't know you, if I saw this apartment I would say 'foreigners live here'."

Me: "Why?"

"Because it's too Chinese!"