All you've got is a butt in a chair...

Somebody please shout this from the rooftops of Taipei and Hsinchu (and the rest of the country) make every insane boss and manager in Taiwan read it. Twice if necessary.

Please.

Because if you think Americans are overworked (and they are), come have a look at Taiwan.

I am completely serious - if you teach adults, make 'em read it. If you're in corporate training and working with high-level people, make them read this. If your students are knowledge workers, make them read this.

I can't change the work culture of Taiwan by myself, but I can be the change I want to see in the world, live by example*,  and when the opportunity arises, promote thinking and discussion - and hopefully change - on attitudes like this when talking to others.


*example:

Me: **teaching class until 9:45pm, on break**
Office girl: **Hi, Jenna, [Company X] wants to see some changes to its midterm report. They want more info, and where it said 'improvements', they didn't mean 'what the students can improve on', they meant 'how the students have improved'."
Me: "OK, I'll do that as soon as I get the chance."
Office girl: "Can you do it after class tonight, please." (it was not a question)
Me: "No."
Office girl, clearly dumbfounded: "...no?"
Me: "No."
Office girl: "Why not?"
Me: "Because I'll get home at 10pm if I'm lucky. I will then rest, because I need and deserve rest. I'm not going to do more work in that time, so late at night."
Office girl: "Oh. But [boss] wants it tonight."
Me: "Well that's too bad, isn't it?"
Office girl: "Uhhh..."

What Men Want

Just a quick entry, because it's been a busy couple of days, but I came across a comment on an article in Jezebel and thought I'd share.

Why? Because in the Expat Echo Chamber in Taiwan, and often back home, one hears a lot of "What women want" and "what men want", and I think this deflates it beautifully:

This is the sort of thing that always goes through my mind when I hear the phrase, "what women want."

Yes, of course, you're a genius. You've found out what all women want. The straights, the lesbians, the pansexuals, the mothers, the women struggling to pay the rent, the Latina in a wheelchair, the Serbian-American woman who is cramming for her engineering final, the queer mixed-race geologist who plans to cook pasta tonight, the woman in a burqa who's just tired of all those assholes who won't get over her clothing and keeps reminding herself she needs to get around to changing the oil in her car, the Filipina who gets home from her job tutoring elementary school kids to toast to her mother, who died X# of years ago today. Yes, all these women, and all the women yet unmentioned, at every intersection of every walk of life ALL want the EXACT same thing, and YOU figured it out. Congratulations!!! 

(from the comment section)

It's particularly important to remember that this also applies to men. So the next time some dude in real life or on the Internet goes all "We men in Asia only date Asian women because MEN WANT [insert stereotype of Asian women here]", I am going to laugh at him. I mean, I already would have laughed at him inwardly, but from now on I might laugh at him openly. Right in his face. He'd deserve it, after all (even though he is entitled to his views, just as I'm entitled to laugh at those views).

Because, you know, clearly that guy who thinks all men - especially all foreign men in Asia - want the same kinds of things, is clearly right. The young guy passionately studying Chinese, the gay English teacher, the older married businessman with kids, the missionary who loves stinky tofu, the couple who moved here together, the Taiwanese guy married to a foreign woman (oh, wait, I forgot, the kinds of foreign men who talk this kind of crap don't acknowledge Taiwanese men as being actually men, or actually existing, sorry, my bad), the guy teaching at a cram school when what he really wants is to break into the music scene, the guy from who can't go home because he has nothing to go home to, the ABC who came back to discover his Hoklo roots, the quiet young man who was bullied in school and has a passion for traditionally brewed tea, the handsome, somewhat quiet, giving, intelligent and generous guy from Maine who married his best friend (yeah I know that one)...they all want exactly the same thing, and that's [insert stereotype about Asian women here].

Yeah.

Right.

Thomas Friedman Thinks Taiwan is "a barren rock"...

"I always tell my friends in Taiwan: “You’re the luckiest people in the world. How did you get so lucky? You have no oil, no iron ore, no forests..." Say WHAT?!

I posted earlier today with a link to Thomas Friedman's piece on "Taiwan" - of course, it wasn't about Taiwan at all, which I'll address in a minute - and now that I'm done with that thing I had to do today, I'm free to write about it.

I'm not an economist, so I'll just be a 揚聲蟲 (that first character might be wrong, I'm trying to recall the phrase from something someone told me and I did not write down. If I am wrong, please correct me. I can learn from that). I'll echo Michael Turton's assessment that Taiwan's human capital is a great resource that has been used to great benefit and effect, which is about the only thing the article got right (well, it is also correct that Taiwan has few "deposits" - gas, oil or otherwise - and what it did have has long since been dug out by the Japanese during the colonial period).

Turton is absolutely right that Friedman is absolutely wrong - and downright insulting (well, those words are mine) - in characterizing Taiwan as a "barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off": Taiwan has agricultural potential, an abundance of water (although most of it seems to wash out to sea: I always laugh when I see one of those "Water Shortage - Please Conserve Water" signs above a sink as I'm washing my hands while it's pouring outside) and plenty more to recommend it. I do wonder who these "friends in Taiwan" of Friedman's are, and if they're happy to hear that he thinks they're so lucky to live on a "barren rock" with "no natural resources to live off". 


I want to add before I get into the crux of what I want to say that I take issue with both Turton and Friedman's posts regarding education in Taiwan. Yes, students score well. Yes, the populace is highly educated, yes, Turton's right that a lot of that has to do with the private cram school system.


But...I don't have much respect and in fact hold much contempt for both the Taiwanese public school system and the cram school system.


In the former, yes,  they train students very well in math and science and in taking tests well, and in learning under pressure. They  still don't train in critical thinking or creativity and generally speaking, arts, history, social studies and language education in Taiwanese schools is severely lacking, if not pathetic or even non-existent (one of my students claims there is no such thing as "social studies" - something I had to take for all of junior and high school in the New York State system). Students learn to read and to some extent write English, but not to speak it and rarely do they come out of it with any language other than English. French, German, Spanish and other language "majors" from universities rarely graduate at a level of fluency in their language "major" that I'd find acceptable. I've met people with degrees in French whose French is worse than the best French I ever spoke (much of which I've forgotten), and I didn't major in it. And I studied abroad in India, not a French-speaking country. I find the buxiban system sad - some schools teach well, some teach poorly, all overcharge, work the kids too hard when what they need is time to play, and most English cram schools exploit foreign teachers and pay them very little while milking the parents. The only positive thing I can say about it is that yes, those kids do come out of English cram school speaking better English than most Americans could hope to speak Chinese - because there is, as yet, no Chinese cram school system in the USA. I can't speak for cram schools in other subjects.


I do feel that the teachers in these systems (English schools aside) are too focused on outdated and teacher-centered methodologies and do not teach Taiwanese students to engage critically or creatively with topics or knowledge. Some end up doing so anyway, but many become worker drones who are very good at taking tests, being quiet, saying Yes Sir and doing what they're told. While I do find the average Taiwanese person to be more worldly than the average American, that is not because of the education system. Those poor kids are overworked, under-rested and have no time to figure out who they are or how to be creative or thoughtful. Those who naturally are those things will still be, but they are not traits that are prized.

So why all this praise for Taiwanese schools?

As one Taiwanese friend with a teenage daughter put it to me, "you got to go to school in America and then live in Taiwan and get paid more because you are a foreigner. You are truly lucky." So, I'm lucky because I didn't go through the "study 28 hours a day? What do you mean there aren't 28 hours in a day - study that long anyway! NO FREE TIME FOR YOU!" Taiwanese system, and we're sitting here praising it?


No, thanks.


That was a longer aside than I intended, so...

What a barren rock! With no forests! And no resources to live off!

I am sure others will do a fine job of engaging with Friedman's piece in economic terms, so I'll engage with it in social and cultural terms. Before I do, however, I want to share some quotes from my husband to put my own criticisms into perspective.

"Friedman," says Brendan, my ever-brilliant husband who really should be a professor of something, "has an astounding knack for taking taxi cabs with drivers who have strong opinions and are particularly well-spoken that he can reference in his column to give his words blue-collar credibility. I do not believe these drivers are entirely fictional, but I do believe that he borrows heavily on his own experience and weaves it into the things he hears and references in his writing."

I felt bad when I heard that, because I reference a lot of what I hear in Taiwan and talk about with Taiwanese people - but then, I  do try to quote directly and then speak from my experience rather than weaving so much into the narrative of another person, and I do have an extensive network of local friends, students and acquaintances so I don't feel I'm going down the "this half-made-up taxi driver who is totally blue collar said this thing that I want to talk about because I'm so smart" route. Though maybe I am. I'm sure I'd get more nasty comments if I were, though.

He also pointed out, quite astutely, that "Friedman's specialty, if he can be said to have one, is the Middle East although he seems to have interests in every region of the world. Nothing in his career or writing, past or present, has gave any indication that Taiwan is his favorite country. He was using it as an example to make a point about economics, not because it is actually his favorite country." He could have led with any country that is resource poor but doing well because it's rich in well-honed human capital - it didn't have to be Taiwan.

I agree - I'm not even sure Friedman has been to Taiwan, and if he has, he certainly didn't explore it in any depth. From his description, if he's been here at all, he might have seen Taipei and possibly some of the uglier parts of the west coast plain. I'm thinking that industrial bit in Taoyuan County, the one out past Guanyin where the main TECO plant is.

Finally, "you do realize, Jenna, that by 'Taiwan has no forests' he was actually saying 'Taiwan does not export lumber', right? He did not mean 'forests' in terms of 'has lots of trees'."

Right. But that still kind of bothers and even slightly offends me. I can't believe that anyone who has seen enough of Taiwan to call it their "favorite" country would use the adjective "barren" to describe it.

Poor, barren Taiwan. These must be Fake Plastic Trees because Taiwan has no forests.

I mean, I am sure that my in-laws, who visited very recently, did not think of Taiwan as a "barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea". I'm sure they saw it for what it was: a somewhat polluted country that is nevertheless beautiful and brimming with culture, life, agriculture, good food and friendly people.

Taiwan is one of the best countries in Asia in terms of national parks, protected areas and forest recreation areas for protecting its forests - oh yeah, it doesn't have forests - even though there are environmental issues that need to be addressed otherwise (the forests in the mountains are reasonably well protected, but I am concerned about environmental degradation in the plains) - how could anyone who claims Taiwan is their "favorite country" have not seen this?

Yes, I realize that different people like different things and a bookish economist with blue-collar-cred delusions might genuinely pick a "favorite country" based on economic indicators, not on the cultural framework and natural beauty of the country itself, but another part of me says - how sad is that?

It offends me as someone who genuinely, truly would say that Taiwan is her favorite country. I mean, I have some affection (more like tough love and "I love my difficult child but at times don't like her very much") for the country of my birth and I also love India and have an abiding affection for Bangladesh and an ancestral-ties sort of love for Armenia and Hatay (in Turkey), but if asked for just one country to name as my favorite I think I would pick Taiwan. I have stayed for over five years, after all. I don't particularly like some pompous teller of stories who thinks in commodities and not people, who trades in globalization and not beauty, coming in and saying "Taiwan is my favorite country" for the purposes of making a point in his widely read column, when many other countries could have filled that space. After all, he didn't give any heartfelt reasons for loving Taiwan. Does "very interesting economic paradigm" = love? I don't think so.

So, my advice is, go take a hike, Thomas. I mean that seriously. Not being sarcastic. Fly your statistics-spouting ass to Taiwan and take a hike. I'll be your guide.

I'll take you hiking around Lishan, I'll take you to Hehuan Mountain and I'll take you to Yilan. Maybe I'll hire a guide to haul your butt up Jade Mountain (which I haven't done yet, am supposed to climb in two weeks but probably won't be able to as Paiyun Lodge appears to be closed). We'll hike up to the Japanese temple ruins above Jinguashi and maybe do the easy walk around Bitou cape. I'll definitely take you to Yuemeikeng:

...and then you tell me if Taiwan is a "barren rock" with "no forests".

Because Taiwan is my favorite country too, but I don't love it because it's a good economic example of resourcefulness and well-honed human capital. In fact, Friedman glosses over how many mind-numbing hours those well-educated folks have to work in Taiwan to earn a living. I'm not sure I'd paint such a rosy picture if I were him, because the Taiwanese workforce is a soul-killing thing, no matter how "innovative" it might look to Friedman.  While I am happy to praise the high education and resourcefulness of the Taiwanese people generally, are we really praising a system in which "work yourself to death" is not the joke it is in America, but an idiom that describes a real problem?

I love it because:

- Well, the people. I've written before about friendship in Taiwan but underneath all that, I do find it easier to make genuine friends and true connections with locals than I did in China or than my friends report about Japan. Etiquette differs from back home and I do get annoyed on occasion, but more generally I find people friendly, easy to talk to, and easier to befriend than I believe I'd find elsewhere in Asia. I also find them to mostly be hospitable and kind (although there are jerks around the world) and more progressive than the rest of East Asia.

- The food. I know a lot of foreigners aren't impressed (both Michael Turton and Ralph Jennings have said as much) but I love it. The seafood, the deep fried snacks, the stinky tofu, the pickled bamboo, the preserved tofu, the mountain pig. You haven't lived until you've eaten your fill at Raohe or Miaokou Night Markets, Donggang Harbor or Auntie Xie's on Bo'ai Road or at one of the aboriginal restaurants in the mountains. My in-laws, after a week of eating the best Taipei has to offer (in my eyes - no Ding Tai Fung), praised the simple home-style Taiwanese meal at Auntie Xie's the most. Cold chicken in a sour oily sauce, a steamed red fish, some peppered pork and fried-potato like niu bang, taro congee and a few other simple but delicious dishes seemed to be one of the highlights of their culinary experience.

- The scenery. NO FORESTS MY BIG WHITE ASS. I love hiking and I love that generally I don't need to drive to get to many fantastic hikes.

- The convenience. The other day, I was thinking of going out for Sam Adams. I thought, "The 7-11 across the lane has it, oh, but that means I'd have to cross the street. I could also go to the Wellcome or the other 7-11 and not have to cross the street." Then I realized how freaking ridiculous I sounded. Also, National Health Insurance.

- The relatively clean environment - sure, there's pollution, but I've lived in India and China, so shut up.

...and other reasons, but I think I've made my point.

This is one thing that was missing from Friedman's piece, and sadly, also missing from Turton's analysis (though I don't want to criticize too much, otherwise I agree) - no actual, visceral caring for Taiwan. Nothing about the charms of the country that make it a place worth living and a country worth loving. Nothing to make you believe there's any real emotion or attachment there.

While I understand on some level that Thomas Friedman doesn't actually care about Taiwan all that much, I do hope someday he'll shut his blowhole, put down his textbooks, turn away from the charts and graphs, stop pretending he's a blue collar Everyman and come to Taiwan to see why it's worthy of being his favorite country for real.

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".
• 
  

• 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...