we are all tiny humans

I want to say something about the tragic subway attack in the greater Taipei area yesterday, but...while I have a lot of thoughts and feelings, there isn't much to say. I stayed home last night - feeling tired + having an in-home class + torrential rains = just not going to bother going out - and watched my Facebook feed explode with the news. It felt like Taipei was a city besieged yesterday, between the typhoon-like rains (at least it'll fill up our reservoirs?), the earthquake in the morning, and the absolutely-unheard-of-how-could-this-happen stabbing last night. At that point, I didn't want to go out.

It's not that I felt unsafe: I didn't. It was just a feeling of listlessness, and like a child, craving familiarity and certainty when unexpected terrors come out.

First thought: this doesn't happen. Except it did. Taipei is one of the safest cities in Asia. The murder rate is remarkably low, and of the murders that do occur, the vast majority are between people who have a quarrel with each other: random murder, strangers-on-strangers, is virtually unheard of. I use the present tense because I refuse to believe that this is the start of any sort of trend. No. This is the exception that proves the rule.

And I know this. Taiwan is safe. This is the exception that proves the rule. But I couldn't help but feel stressed last night, and listless again today. I did not feel unsafe, I just felt upset.

Why? In the USA I can't imagine I'd be so upset about this sort of thing happening (of course, I would be upset, but not quite in the same way). I hate to say it, but I almost expect it from the USA, or at least, it happens so often that when it inevitably happens again - "where now? Elementary school? Movie theater? Post office? Government building? Okay" - I just feel like...'Murica. It could be because I live in Taipei, so this hits closer to home - that could've been me and all - but even when I lived in the USA I felt that all us tiny humans waiting for our tiny lives to be snuffed out in a chaotic universe of order and entropy faced that danger daily. For eight years in Taiwan, I never felt like I faced any. I felt like more than a tiny human: I felt like a human who wouldn't be naive for being shocked, rather than inured to, violence.

But when you live in a country where this just doesn't happen - I mean it, even though it happened, it just doesn't happen - when it happens, it shocks the bejesus out of you. You get used to a better life, a life where you are not always fearing for your safety, so when random violence happens, it hits deep.

I do not want inurement to violence to be a shibboleth that separates us 'MURICANS from Taiwanese, but it seems that, to some extent, it is.

And I don't think I'm the only one. When I did go out today (and took the MRT - there is no reason to be scared) it felt like a pallor had fallen on the whole city. Everyone looked upset, frustrated, wary or just plain tired. Like they wanted to occupy something, but occupying things wasn't producing any more results than not occupying things because nobody important ever listens. Nobody listens to the tiny humans peeping and cricketing. Like they wanted to reassure themselves that their country is safe (and it is!).

I'm angry at that kid. We're all angry at that kid. He wanted to "do something big" - well fuck him. He took the easy way. He didn't learn, or strive, or work, or apply himself, to do this. He just took life, made four families miss their loved ones for no good reason, for his own tiny goals, played a god I don't believe in, because that was easier than making something of himself. We all want to "do something big". I want to "do something big". If you want to "do something big" you work for it. You learn for it. You strive for it. Killing four people and injuring dozens more isn't "something big" - it is something very black and small. He did something small. Any idiot - any loser - can take out a knife and start slashing. He is a tiny human with a tiny heart and no morality whatsoever.

At the same time, I feel sad for that kid. Empathy, even.  We can only speculate on why he did this, but I can't seem to stop speculating (I know....) He wanted to feel "big", and I suppose playing god is a way to trick yourself into that. That meant he probably felt tiny. A college kid, looking at a 22k future, wondering how on earth he could do something big in a world that seemed so determined to keep him tiny through power structures built in order to keep powerful people happy while everyone else begs for that 22k and is told to feel happy they get even that. He may have felt hopelessness, he may have felt anger. Perhaps entitlement. Perhaps he felt that he had to be the second or third biggest asshole in Taiwan for a year (Ma Ying-jiu and his puppeteer might qualify for assholes #1 and 2) in order to make any mark at all.

Well, we all feel that way. Some of us are afraid to admit that we might see some of ourselves in him, whatever his motives:

If this murderer was from a single-parent family, we close the case and we start to review the mechanisms of single-parent family counseling - ethics groups might come out and say "love is loyalty for life, oppose divorce!" People will believe that children from Taiwanese single-parent families are more likely to become problem children and commit these crimes.

Similarly, if he were a homeless murderer, or he was gay, or he only had a junior high school education or was from a lower-income family, if the murderer came from the east (ed: I don't understand this part), the murderer has depression or chews betel nuts or had ADD/ADHD, we can all close the case because it's easy to attribute the causes to these reasons. Followed by a variety of experts to discuss how we can come out with "counseling", "change", "care" of these people. Then the media, pundits, and education continues to fuel these "social problems". The stigma would continue to replicate indefinitely.

We are accustomed to stories in film, on TV and in comics, instilling a duality into our thinking: that there are good guys and bad guys in the world. Those who do bad things must be the bad guys, and they must be bad for a reason, he is not the same as me, so he is a bad person. So everyone becomes a detective, changes the reasoning of experts and thinks they can read minds. We cannot understand, but also refuse to accept that these things can be done by our hands, from our side - from people like us.

So you will not see someone saying, "because the murderer is from a heterosexual family, is an adult dependent on his parents, so..." Noone would say , "because the killer is in Taipei, so ... ", " because the murderer was a man, so ...", " because the murderer has a Facebook account, so ... ". Obviously these conditions are true, but you will not note them as factors - that would be stupid. But why label other stigma (single-parent families, homosexuality, depression, mental illness) even if they exist, unless we want to say that everything is an influence?

We are constantly looking at those people with distinctive labels, just because we are afraid that we are the same as them, we are afraid to face the fact that we received the same education and grew up and were educated in similar environments. Our fear is that there are not only good people and bad in the world.

Yup.

That's yet another reason why this has affected me so much - because there is not, and possibly should not be, a "reason" or a "label" to put on him that we can then stigmatize or use as a rallying point to further our own pet causes or prejudices. That he's a kid, just a kid, and he's not as unlike the rest of us as we want to believe.

That this is the game of thrones (after a fashion), and winter is coming, and there are far more in-between people than good or bad, and we are among those in-between people. That people just like us can go on a stabbing spree in the MRT because he felt he couldn't be "big" in any other way, that someone not so different from us did do this.

That we are all specks of dust caught between order and entropy, that there is no grand plan for us. That we are all dust motes on a pale blue dot, dust motes on a dust mote, and we all want to do something big...but we can't, because something that small can't do something terribly big.

Even within our own little pale blue petri dish, where what one speck of dust does can affect the whole, where we can, in our own little enclosed environment, do something "big", deep down we know this:

We all have 22k futures.

Most of us are not built into the power structure, and if you are, you were born into it. I was born more into it than others because of my passport, my education and the color of my skin. It's designed to be hard to change, even as we are told, ad nauseam, that with a little bootstrappin', we can change it. That if we want to, we can really do something big. Take that 22k, hon, and like it! Work hard, give us more, chase that carrot on a stick, that robot rabbit on a racetrack, and trust us. You can do it!

But we can't.

We are all tiny humans.

Silver Stream Cave and Waterfall (銀河洞越嶺步道)

This short hike (more like hellishly steep, but short, stair climb in nature) is quite well known, covered in Taipei Escapes, Taipei Day Trips, and blogged by David on Formosa. I hadn't done it before, though, so I thought I'd add a few photos. It begins in Xindian (or Maokong if you are so inclined), snakes up (or down) a stair-trail through the mountains and takes in a slender silver waterfall backed by a cave, into which a retro little temple has been built.



It will also get its own entry under "easy day hikes in Taipei for lazy people" (updated!) as you can easily begin this hike around or even after lunch time and arrive in Maokong with a comfortable amount of daylight remaining. Its fairly unchallenging nature - unless you hate stairs (and I do) - proximity and short duration are perfect for those who want to do something but didn't get up until 10am.



I like this hike because it connects two disparate parts of the greater Taipei area: Maokong/Muzha and Xindian. You go up the long, ridge-like Maokong mountain, stop at a waterfall and temple on the way, pass a short trail to the summit (you can head up there if you like - but there's no view) and then come down to the road across the street from Maokong's cable car station. Straight up and straight down.



There are buses and such you can take to get there; you can take any bus headed along Beiyi Road (Highway 9 or 北宜公路) towards Pinglin and get off at Yinhe Road (銀河路), hiking up from there.  However, it's only about NT155 to take a taxi from MRT Xindian to the trail entrance (tell any driver you want to go to 銀河洞越嶺步道 on Yinhe Road), so why not just do that?

Or you can go the other way - take the gondola to the top of Maokong, and directly across the street start hiking up the hill past the temple under renovation, turning behind a house (should be marked), past an old stone house, and up some more on a concrete path until you hit the woods again. Past the summit and then down, down, down to the waterfall and Xindian, and catch a bus on Beiyi Road back to the MRT. This way involves less uphill hiking and few, if any, uphill stairs.




But we went the hard way, and ended up in Maokong at a great time for tea and snacks, hanging out until sunset and dinnertime. We went to my favorite teahouse on Maokong, 山中茶 － I like their fried sweet potato and their lemon diced chicken (檸檬雞丁).



This trail is very much discovered - solo hikers (it's very safe) and large groups, often with dogs, meander along it, stopping for lunch near the temple. The temple itself was built sometime after the KMT landed in Taiwan, and tiles painted with a story in Chinese marking this fact, plus the obvious non-fact that "everyone in Taiwan celebrated Retrocession Day" (uh, NO THEY DIDN'T) and a list of temple donors.



 You can walk behind the waterfall up a path just beyond the cave - the path continues, but it's better to take the path up to the right of the temple for a quicker ascent to Maokong.

Keep Her on the Pole

I'm sure some of you have heard of the just-common-enough-to-be-noticeable practice of hiring dancing girls or strippers (or both) at certain functions in Taiwan: notably weddings, funerals (yes, funerals) and temple festivals.



Well, I came across some at the Baosheng Cultural Festival this weekend, and it got me thinking about an old topic that I thought I'd written about but actually haven't: is Taiwan as "conservative", or at least as sexually conservative, as people think?









There's no clear answer to this but I would put my bets on "no". Not just because of the "pole dancers for the gods" driving around Taipei on the back of retrofitted Jeeps, but for a number of reasons.

My New Life in Asia covered this awhile ago, and his post is worth reading. However, I feel it only covers one aspect of Taiwan's (lack of) sexual conservatism, at least compared to the rest of Asia. Which is good - keeping focus and all - but there's more to explore.

He focused mostly on women leveraging their sex appeal for financial gain, and businesses and marketing doing the same. And there's certainly truth to that: between booth babes, beer girls, betel nut beauties and the blatant hiring favoritism of attractive women over unattractive ones or, in some industries, over men (even attractive men), there's definitely less taboo centered around leveraging female sex appeal in Taiwan - to the point that it sometimes makes my feminist skin crawl.

And the pole dancing girls definitely fit that aspect of Taiwan's relative progressiveness, so I'll talk about them first.

I can't explain the "weddings and funerals" thing when it comes to hired dancing girls - and it doesn't happen all that often at either - but it's common enough at temple festivals that a few of my friends have come across it so far. Once at the Baosheng Cultural Festival, once at God Pig in Hsinchu - and I did see my share of scantily clad "baton girls" with marching bands at the Matsu pilgrimage kick-off.




But why? To quote one of my students: "they do that to show respect to the god. That god probably wants people to have more and more babies and this...helps. And the god should enjoy it too."

And certainly nobody seemed to disapprove - men and boys watching obviously enjoyed the show, but notably, they were doing so right in front of their mothers, wives, grandmothers, daughters and sisters, who also didn't seem to mind (some were even cheering - even grandmas). The dancing took place in front of temples and nobody thought this was declasse or inappropriate (although certainly among Taiwanese who don't commonly watch temple parades for fun, you'll find folks who do think it's declasse). The women certainly didn't think they were doing anything wrong or shameful.

That's significant - there's truth to the idea that whether you approve of it or not, the female body and its appeal does move product. Sex sells.



Until the human race evolves beyond finding sexualized marketing appealing, it's going to happen (just like any number of social ills: abortion, divorce, premarital sex etc.. There's no sense railing against it, because it's going to happen. You have to build your fight for a better world around accepting that fact). The pragmatism of just accepting that rather than wringing hands and clutching pearls, while bracing at times, can also be refreshing.

But there really is more to Taiwan's progressivism than that. So, here are a few reasons why I don't think Taiwan is as sexually conservative as people think, and is definitely not as sexually conservative as most of East Asia.

1.) Love motels -







In the USA they're seen as gross, seedy places where all sorts of nastiness goes down. And certainly Taiwan must have a few grody love motels. But ask most locals and they'll say there's nothing wrong with pay-by-the-hour "rest" establishments, that they're a social necessity in a country where people often live with parents until they marry, and often afterwards as well, or share smaller spaces with multiple generations. Maybe it's a boyfriend and girlfriend looking for somewhere to go when they both live with their parents, or a married couple who needs to get away from Grandma and the Kids, or a truck driver and a prostitute, an extramarital affair or just some kids looking to party. Who knows, who cares, it's nobody else's business and people respect that. And I love it - no moralizing, no soapboxes, no bible-thumping, just not your business, stay out of it, sex is a thing people have.

Thanks to my Christian Guilt (I was not raised Catholic but the guilt thing is very real), the first time Brendan and I (unwittingly) stayed at a love motel, I was a bit embarrassed walking outside (we'd realized it was a love motel after we checked in). It felt like I was on a reality show, looking around shifty-eyed: Who's Judging Me Now? Once I realized nobody was, it made me wonder why this wasn't how things were everywhere else in the world.

And they're openly advertised as such, in ways that could ostensibly point to both male and female desires: Secret Love Motel (advertised with huge LED signs off the main road - nothing too secret about it, ey?), Eden Exotica (home of the Batman Room!), I Need Motel etc. and pictures of hearts or, in one establishment's case in Yonghe, a man and woman making out. The woman sure seems to be into it. The fact that the signs can get that racy at all means that there's just not much of a big deal surrounding them. I could see such a place in the USA being picketed by angry evangelicals.

2 - Prostitution exists (DUH) but it's less acceptable to be a john...not because sex is wrong, but because "decent guys" do it for love.

I feel like in a lot of other countries (*cough* China *cough*), it's still a social "thing" that a man can both be a "decent guy" in the eyes of society, and be someone who visits prostitutes and playboys it up, even when he is in a relationship (assuming it's not an open relationship). It's like, the fact that that guy blatantly cheats on his partner is utterly irrelevant to whether he's a good guy - perhaps because more people think that all men do it, so there's nothing wrong with it and it's women's job to accept and forgive.

Setting aside whether it's OK to visit prostitutes (I err on the side of "no" just because of all the exploitation of women that goes on in that industry, including, if not especially, in Asia, but I'm not against a woman choosing to enter sex work if she chooses to), I feel like while Taiwan has its share of prostitutes (I wouldn't, as My New Life In Asia calls it, say "Taipei is a city of lust" though - it's about as lustful as any other city or even group of humans who live together in a society, no more and no less), that if a man wants to be seen as a "decent guy", a 君子, in society, that man can't (openly, at least) sleep around when he's in a relationship or married.

Note: I'm not including men who sleep around or visit prostitutes when single in this analysis, because that's a different discussion.

I know, I know. Some of you are going to say "doesn't that mean Taiwan is more sexually conservative, not less?" No. To me, that's a sign of progressivism, not conservatism because it includes a feminist perspective into ideas about sex. Openly breaking your romantic promises if you're a man (but not a woman!) is actually a symptom of a sexually repressive society, not an open one. A society in which sex shouldn't be enjoyed by women, and is entirely the privilege of men. That's not openness, it's the opposite! In an open society, that sort of behavior tends to decline because people are more likely to form happy, healthy relationships in which both partners are satisfied.

Oh yeah, and male escorts exist too.

3 - There's been an uptick in using male sex appeal in advertisements and media -

DONE.

OMG Takeshi.

I have heard that apparently 3G service slowed down significantly at Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT when this ad took up an entire wall, and that it was mostly due to women taking pictures of it and sending it to their friends or posting it on social media. That could be apocryphal, but I really hope it isn't. Because OMG Takeshi.

4 - Sex jokes are surprisingly acceptable, especially at weddings but even in other situations -
No really, you wanna hear about the time my friends got married and their friends stuck a banana between his legs and made her eat it? I don't really wanna talk about that time, but I can't imagine most people from a "conservative" country thinking it's OK to pull those stunts in front of someone's grandparents.

What's more, I've found that if I have had a student or group of students for a long time, and they make mistakes that sound hilariously dirty ("I asked her if she could do my English tutor", "I gave my wife a Wang Steak for Mother's Day", "My presentation is in three man parts", "Be careful or he'll knock you up" (they meant "knock you out"), "I like to take out my member to play on Friday night" (he meant he liked to go out with his team members), "My salary is too low, I think. My other friends have big packages but I have a small package", "We will have an oral contest next week to see who does the best oral" etc., I can usually just tell them why they can't say that, and it's wonderfully funny.



Plus you can buy these t-shirts and much, much more in terms of horrible things on clothing.

5 - Sex ed advertisements and pamphlets are much more "open" here than in the USA -




Some of you "enlightened topless Europeans" may disagree, but in the USA it's quite rare to see too many sex ed public service announcements, and how much of it you get in school differs by state. I know Taiwanese schools aren't great at this, but they seem to do a better job of it than any other country in Asia (correct me if I'm wrong), and I've definitely seen pamphlets like the above (nevermind the English - a workman must sharpen his tools if he is to do his work well indeed!) and TV ads on the MRT station TVs that show two cartoon lovers going to a motel, then the cartoon motel starts shaking, and there's an admonishment to wear protection.

Of course, there is a flip side to this - plenty of women don't seem to know how their anatomy even works ("if I wear a tampon, won't I lose my virginity? If I wear a tampon, won't I be unable to pee?") or think that sleeping in the same bed with a man carries a risk of pregnancy. This could definitely be improved.

6 - A majority of Taiwanese are either not opposed to, or actively support, marriage equality, family planning and reproductive freedom -

You don't really hear any objections to the use of contraception (except perhaps by in-laws who want grandchildren yesterday to carry on the Chen family name, because it's in danger of dying out or something), I've not really heard many people ever speak out against the legality of abortion (which is only covered by health insurance if done for certain reasons, but is legal) - at least, the dialogue never gets as vehement and sexist and downright hateful and shameful (on the part of certain conservatives) as it does in the USA, and recent surveys indicate widespread, even majority support for marriage equality.

I've never heard of a "conservative" society being mostly in favor of granting marriage rights to all.

Oh yeah, and support, at least in artistic form, for transgender people exists, too!

7 - There's been an uptick in PDA -

A lot of people writing about Taiwan write about how PDA just isn't done here, it's kind of rude to do that in public, whatever-whatever. I have to wonder what part of Taiwan they're in. Perhaps that's true in rural areas, but I see all sorts of PDA in Taipei - butt-touching on escalators, kissing, hugging, all that stuff. And then a few extreme examples that have attained national prominence, too, like this one, which produced some amazing viral meme material (known locally as "kuso", from a Japanese word), much of which you can find here, including the image above. Or the time a couple made the news for riding a scooter together, the woman sitting astride her boyfriend as he drove (clothes on) - can't find the link for that, but it happened.

8 - For every "using a hot girl to sell product" advertisement, there's another one either implying that their product will give you a big dong, or that guys with big dongs use that product -

I've been trying without success to find the link for some of these products - I don't exactly need them, seeing as I haven't got the organ in question, so hunting in English would be difficult enough. Can't find it at all hunting in Chinese.

But every time I take a taxi with a little TV in the back, there's this commercial where a guy in a blue shiny suit dances around happily until he goes to his girlfriend's house, and it's obvious what they're going to do. Then you see a cartoon blue bird wave at you before growing huge muscles - the product is basically some sort of male enhancement ("blue bird" is local slang for that particular appendage).

And let's not forget how readily available Chinese medicinal remedies are for men who need a little help.

9 - The Kaohsiung Sex cafe exists, yes, and even outside of it I have seen more depictions of sex organs (and underwear just dancing in the breeze, or worn outside by old guys) in Taiwan in 8 years than I saw in 24 years in the USA -



Just not sure I believe many people in a "conservative" country would hang their underwear to dry on an old placard carved with Chinese Nationalist slogans. For women's unmentionables, scroll through here. 

10 - The slang. Oh, the slang.

Taiwanese swearing, when not referencing shit ("shit face", "shock you into shitting green", "Eat shit!"), references sex acts and sex organs far more than you'd think the language, even the dirty language, of a "conservative" country does. There's a slang term for "like throwing a sausage down a hallway" (the Taiwanese translates as "a stick of bamboo in the well"), the two worst insults out there are stinky (man parts) and stinky (woman parts), and an effective way to say that one is angry is to say "My dick is full of fire!", and of course the usual slew of slurs directed at one's mother, but that's true in every culture. I just don't see a "conservative" culture translating "I'm SO ANGRY" as "my dick is full of fire", I'm sorry.

11 - Well, as I said above, pole dancing for the gods. Not only is it totally normal, but the crowds in the street cheering on the pole dancers weren't just men of all ages, but women too. 

12 - Magazines in 7-11 and Zhu Geliang movies - 

Seriously, any kid or grandma can see this at the checkout at 7-11 (sometimes they put it in the magazine rack in back, sometimes they don't, or what's at the register is far racier). 

Brendan disagrees with me about Zhu Geliang, whom I have most recently seen on an advertisement on the side of a bus for his new movie while a woman, ostensibly measuring him for inseam length, is actually measuring his man bits. In another movie, someone kicks him in said man bits and the shot cuts to two eggs cracking over a frying pan.

from here

I say that's a sign that Taiwan is not that conservative. Brendan says "well, it's really no racier than old Benny Hill movies. You know, sex jokes for our grandparents." But for me, the fact that softcore pornographic magazines are not only sold in 7-11, but are right there on the checkout counter where every child and grandma can see them, boobs out and everything, seals the deal. Every country has porn, but "conservative" ones don't put it right at the cash register.

Oh, and one of those magazines is called "Sexy Nuts", which I think is hilarious.

13 - Reproductive health and contraception are all easy to come by, and for women, everything but contraception is free (contraception should be free, but that's another post) - 

"Conservative" countries don't provide free pap smears to women after age 30, nor do they make it extremely easy to buy condoms and birth control pills with no shame attached, no stealing about, no red faces.

* * *

Of course there's more work to be done. Abortion shouldn't only be covered for certain reasons, we need better education towards gender equality, contraception of all types should be available for all at an affordable price for all (see the comments of that post for more on that topic), sex ed in schools needs to be more comprehensive, and there are still folks out there who have old-fashioned ideas about what families should look like, who can be gay ("I don't care if some stranger is gay, but NOT MY SON!" is a common sentiment, but then that's true in the USA too), and how "pure" a woman should be before marriage (again, that's also common in the USA where slut-shaming is surprisingly common).

But overall, I would not say that I find Taiwan to be terribly conservative. I would not say I find it to have rigid, old-school morals. I'd say, if anything, it's the most progressive country in Asia vis-a-vis these issues and in some areas, can compete with the USA when it comes to open-mindedness.



After all conservative societies don't have very many protesters who make signs like this, and have their message get so popular that someone makes a series of stickers based on it to pass out to the public. Which happened. I have one.

Two Ideas, One Humanity

I've been discussing two separate issues with various people in the past few days which, on the surface, seem unrelated. The first is the difference between judging a person as sexist vs. judging a place to have issues with sexism: "has marriage to a Chinese man changed your feminist views?" (short answer from the blogger: no), and the second: more Chinese tourists are visiting Taiwan as the popularity of Hong Kong fades (and the Taiwanese are not that happy about it). 

In the first, the main takeaway is that while there are issues with women's rights in China (and everywhere - the US is certainly not off the hook. Taiwan may have more issues with sexism than the USA but in Taiwan I don't think twice about walking anywhere, at any time, alone. In the USA I do), that the author's Chinese husband is himself a feminist and his family basically agrees with the idea of respect for both genders. My thoughts - it is, as ever, important to judge individuals based on who they are, not to measure them against a stereotype, even if (and this is important), there is truth to that stereotype. And there is truth - I doubt few rational people would argue that there are issues with sexism and women's rights in China, and those issues are more severe than many other countries. In China I heard such wonderful nuggets of anti-wisdom as "it's fine if a woman is clever but if she's more clever than her boyfriend or husband, he will lose face, so she should pretend to let him be smarter." (I feel like adding a Game of Thrones style "it is known" to the end of that line of bullshit), or "it's fine if a woman has a job, but if she earns more than her husband, that is bad for him and the marriage", or "a man never beats a good wife, so if a wife gets hit, it's her fault" (I REALLY heard that), or "it's the nature of men to play around, it's the job of women to forgive them".

It can really wear a person down. Goodness knows it's worn me down. At times it can feel like a barrage, a sexist tidal wave, an inescapable minefield in which, as you cross, you are also being shelled and mortared. And yet, despite that, it's important to judge people as individuals. It's difficult to keep in mind - and I will admit sometimes I've slipped - but everyone, from any culture, deserves the respect to their humanity of being judged independently of that.

And yet, I will make no concessions to "culture" or assume that those who have these sexist ideas - and there are many - think that way because of "culture". I feel, strongly, that gender equality vs. sexism is not a question of "culture", it's a universal issue, and any given culture is capable of not incorporating sexism while retaining its core. Western countries used to be a lot more sexist than they are now (and they still are, let's not forget), but some things did change, and yet we are still American or Canadian or Australian or whatever. Taiwan has made greater strides in gender equality than China (with some exceptions), and yet Taiwanese culture is still Taiwanese. You could even say that that difference is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Taiwanese culture. India also has deep issues with sexism, and yet an Indian feminist is no less in tune with Indian culture than some sexist douche lord who beats his wife because his "culture" says it's his "right as a husband" to do so. If sexism is tied to culture at all, it's a shallow tie, and something that can be excised without upending the entire culture.

So, I just reject that whole "it's a culture thing" line of reasoning. If anything, I feel that disrespects people's humanity. It's a fancy way of saying "poor things, they don't know any better". Nope, nope, nope. Grown-ass adult humans are capable of rationality, and gender equality is about rationality, not culture. I prefer to respect someone's humanity by believing they are capable of the rational thought that maybe it is bad to hit one's wife.

With the second issue, the debate centered around Chinese tourists coming to Taiwan in tour groups that litter, don't stop people from smoking indoors (seen it myself), create massive noise pollution, spit on the street, occasionally muss up bathrooms or 'do the needful' in public areas (I saw a tour group member pee against the outside wall of Eslite Dunhua a few months ago) and commandeer space (have you tried visiting Alishan, Sun Moon Lake, Taipei 101 or the National Palace Museum recently? Those places are basically ruined for locals or any other visitor who is not in a massive Chinese tour group).

One side of the debate initially made sense - it's not right to reduce Chinese to dirty, loud, littering walking wallets. They deserve more humanity than that. And that is very true. And it's also true that where they come from, it is fairly normal to, say, pee against a wall, litter with impunity, smoke indoors, spit anywhere you like and observe a very Darwinian model of public space (survival of the fittest - the largest group gets the space and puny individuals must always give way). I won't even deny that those are issues in China, because having spent a year in China, I know that they are. Some understanding of that can go a long way towards bridging resentment between the two sides, just as it would help a lot if Hong Kongers realized that the Chinese were buying all of their milk powder because they, like any other human being, want milk powder known to be safe for their babies. And of course one should be forgiving if a foreigner doesn't always know the local etiquette and makes a gaffe.

But that's where my agreement ends - after that it devolved into "where they come from it's normal to let your kids poop in the street, so they don't know that in Taiwan it's not done", or "if you lived through the outrage, oppression and poverty that they did, you might act the same way. If you hadn't been exposed to the outside world much you may not realize that in other places it's not okay to litter or spit."

Which, I'm sorry, but no. I won't get into how the tragedy that is 20th, and now 21st, century Chinese history has shaped local customs and etiquette in China, because it doesn't matter to me what they do - it's their country after all. But outrage, oppression and poverty are not reasons to ignore the etiquette of a country you are visiting. It is best if a host is generous and forgiving, but it's on the guest to be as polite as possible, to attempt to understand local norms and, accepting that they'll screw up sometimes, attempt to follow them. It's on them to educate themselves in how to act if they visit Taiwan, and on them to respect Taiwan's civil society (civil as in 'civics', not as in 'more civilized'). I can understand why the Taiwanese are upset - the change is observable. I no longer recommend the National Palace Museum to visiting friends because it's overrun with tour groups who force everyone else to wait 15 minutes or more to see one exhibit. Taipei 101 used to be a fine destination for light shopping and a coffee, now it's a nightmare. Sun Moon Lake is notably less pleasant than it could be, and forget a quiet sunrise on Alishan. There is more litter, there are more bathroom issues (standing on Western toilets, pooping all around the toilet etc), there is more spitting, and there is more smoking where it should not be happening, noise pollution and blocking of thoroughfares (although blocking thoroughfares is also a problem in Taiwan generally), and previously nice shopping areas are being overrun with stores catering to Chinese tour groups that no local wants to shop at. And as I see it, it's up to the Chinese visitors to know that these things are not okay. It's not the responsibility of the Taiwanese to smile and take it, as they're always expected to do.

Any visitor from any country, if they have the money and ambition to travel, has it on their shoulders to do their best in terms of local etiquette and not assume that things work the same way in this new country as they do in their own. Chinese tour groups are not exempt from this.

And that, to me, respects their humanity more than "well they don't know, in their country it's normal". Of course it is not right to deride individuals - they are not "dirty", "irrational", "walking wallets" etc. - rather than certain behaviors and larger group dynamics that are causing problems (I consider the noise pollution and the space blocking to be group dynamic rather than individual issues, and I daresay they need to be addressed no matter what nationality the group tour is from). But it's also not right to say "they don't know any better!" - come on. They're grown-ass men and women. They are quite capable of knowing very obvious things like "don't litter while abroad" and "if there is a 'no smoking' sign, don't smoke. Better yet, check and see if smoking is legal in certain areas and if it's not, don't smoke in those areas".

I also don't think 'kids pooping in the street' and 'spitting and littering' are 'cultural'. It's not disrespecting someone's culture to say that these things cause issues with public health. When - not if, but when - kids' street poop, spitting and littering stop being common in China, China will still be China and Chinese culture will still be Chinese culture.

Like with sexism, this is an issue for rationality, not culture. And if you really want to respect someone's humanity, respect that they are smart and rational enough to either know these things, or learn them quickly.

"Review" if you can call it that: How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit?

Of course I'm bringing up the book again because, hey, my story's in it. So obviously I'm going to do that.

And I always intended to write a review, although of course you know the review will be positive. So think of it more as "nice things I want to say about this anthology my story is in".

So, here are some nice things.

When I received my advance copy of the anthology, of course I began reading it immediately (OK, honestly, I flipped right to my own story, "Gods Rushing In", and read that first, then I went back to the beginning to read the others. I think more people do that than would admit it).

And I have a lot of great things to say for the collection overall:

First, that it includes a range of voices and experiences. One issue I have with writing by and for women is that, probably unwittingly, a lot of it tends to cover the same ground: romance, marriage, children, family, "finding yourself", "happiness", maybe travel (if it involves romance, marriage or "finding yourself"), and works directed at female expats - as not very many works are actually by female expats - tend to focus on the same kind of expat: do they think we're all just trailing spouses, going to coffee mornings and planning Christmas bazaars, while our husbands work? (Not that there is anything wrong with being a trailing spouse who goes to coffee mornings, not at all - just that that's what people, even people who market to female expats, seem to think we all are.) That was probably the one critical flaw of one of the few other books I've reviewed on this blog. How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? avoids this nicely, and includes experiences of all sorts of women on all sorts of adventures: older, younger, married, single, settled expat, wanderer, hippie, careerist, trailing spouse, equal breadwinner.

Second, that that range of voices is also diverse. One thing I actually don't like about travel writing (or expat or backpacker communities in general) is this feeling that a lot of travelers unwittingly view the world as the playground of white people. I don't think anyone does this intentionally, but somehow the feeling is still there. Including diverse women's voices helps the anthology easily avoid that fate.

Finally, I appreciated that the pieces chosen all carefully avoided the "I came to Exotic, Mystical Asia to find myself" cliche. That's perfect - because that tired trope plays far too well into the idea too many people subconsciously have that the world is their proving grounds, the colorful backdrop full of ethnics and tribals all set up nicely to make travelers look cool, enlightened and worldly. For myself, although I wrote about a colorful Taiwanese festival, I took great pains not to make it all "I had this mystical experience", because I didn't. And honestly, Asia for me is a lot less of the "dignified man in a white Chinese cotton suit doing tai chi looking out over a gorgeous view studded with mountains and bamboo" (cue gong music) and a lot more of, say, Hsinchu Science Park. It's not mystical, it's a continent where several billion people live. I stay because I enjoy language immersion, the food's amazing, the city is convenient (After living in Taipei I feel that if you have to walk for more than one minute to get breakfast, your city sucks). And, okay, I like the festivals, but not because I feel like I need something "exotic" to "find myself", but just because I like them. Compare a folk Daoist temple parade to, say, some Veteran's Day Parade in East Surburbia, and I'm sorry but the folk Daoist parade wins.

As for the pieces I liked best, well, I liked all of them, but a few stood out. The Weight of Beauty, because it absolutely hits the mark when one looks at the intersection of beauty ideals and cultural ideals. (Although when Dorcas expressed surprise that the company would send a sexy sales rep, thinking she would be a man, I did smile...of course they did. Using female sex appeal to sell things is even more notorious in Asia than the West, and we're certainly not innocent of it in the West.) Bread and Knives, because it so beautifully uses a small experience, a moment in time, to capture so many uneasy feelings about both expat life and new parenthood. Finding Yuanfen on a Chinese Bus because it was well-written and perfectly descriptive, and conjures a type of expat a lot of people don't imagine exists: a fierce young solitary woman who has, and is not embarrassed by, a sex drive. Huangshan Honeymoon for taking a situation that most expat women and people in an intercultural marriage would balk at, and turning it into something beautiful, that made perfect sense (my only quibble is that good old Dad-in-law doesn't get off scot-free - not for thinking all foreign women are easy, although that's no good, but for thinking that it is wrong to be "easy". Some people are inclined to a libertine lifestyle and it's not OK to judge them - not me, really, Old Married Jenna is surprisingly stodgy. That said, it's not like my opinion has any impact on the Laobas of the world...so okay). The Truth About Crickets because it was both balanced and jarring, jejune in its storytelling just as something told from a child's perspective should be, with a well-constructed narrative. Waiting for Inspiration because it captures every fear I've ever had about what it would be like to be a "trailing spouse", and Charting Koenji because it perfectly captured the blend of loneliness and curiosity that mark my first few months in any new place.

...and more, I actually have like five more that I want to mention, but at that point I may as well just say something nice about every single work, so suffice it to say that even the ones not mentioned here were fantastic to read, and not mentioning them doesn't mean I didn't enjoy them just as much, for different reasons.

And obviously "Gods Rushing In" was fantastic, amazing, life-changing...the feel-good short personal narrative of the year! Hehe.

So, this is to say that you should buy the book and read it. :)

Game Day: Board Game Cafes in Taipei

8f 聚會空間

電話：(02)2711-6061

地址：南京東路三段258號八樓


I don't know what's up with the strange formatting of the information above. So...sorry about that. The photos aren't great quality either because they're low light iPhone photos. I don't know how people get such great quality photos on their phones; my iPhone photos look like crap and are notably lower in quality to my camera shots.

We had heard that the weather was looking to be pretty bad today (Sunday), when talking with a friend about hanging out. So, we decided to do something none of us had really tried before, which was to go to one of Taipei's many board game cafes. You can find a list of them here, although a few of them appear to be stores rather than cafes where you can play board games. There's also the famous Witch House near NTU (in a lane off Xinsheng South Road), where I've been for live music but I hadn't really checked out their games.

Honestly speaking, I never was much of a board gamer, although I do enjoy them: they're expensive and we never really had a lot around the house, and my friends weren't super into them, so I didn't get into them, either. While I knew Taipei was chock full of these places - and they're reasonably popular in the West, too (and I'm sure many game stores also have spaces where you can play, just as craft stores may have spots where people gather to knit or bead or quilt or what-have-you) - I hadn't really bothered trying to go to one. I guess I assumed they were full of hardcore earnest nerdy types - I mean, I'm a nerdy type myself, but nerdier than me - and you'd be expected to walk in, pick a game you knew well, and play that game like a pro. When I went to Witch House, I did look at their games, realized I didn't know how to play any of them, and copped out.



But I was wrong. A lot of these places are set up like real cafes, you can pick a game, and the staff will tell you how to play it (in Chinese) if you don't already know. And, duh, they come with instructions. Explaining game rules to me in English is generally a lost cause, you can imagine how helpful explaining them in Chinese is - although I speak Chinese. But I'm pretty good at picking up the idea of a game once I've played a round or two, so I figured with patient friends who were fine with my floundering for a bit I'd pick up any game just fine.

And a lot of them aren't set up for serious game nerds per se, but rather for people who want to play or try out a new game, but don't want to buy their own. Those things can get expensive!

So, at the suggestion of our friend Joseph, and feeling curious about the board game cafe scene in Taipei - I'm curious about every cafe scene everywhere! - we decided to give it a go.

We went to 8f Gathering Space (8f聚會空間) after a recommendation from our resident 

gamer friend, Hui (just in case you're picturing a guy, assuming all gamers are male, Hui is 

a woman). Or rather, a recommendation from her boyfriend Orson, who also joined us, 

but seeing as Hui's two main career experiences are in museum work/art history and 

gaming, she's also more than qualified.




Here's how it works, at least at 8f Gathering Space: you can make a reservation - in fact, I recommend you do as there aren't many tables. For an NT$250 per person fee, you can play away the afternoon. You show up, order tea (included in the fee), pick a game, and if you need the staff to help you they do. Then you play. It's best to go with a group of four, but we played with five and Brendan and I just acted as a single team.

There is food available, but it's basic chicken-and-rice stuff, and there is at least one private room with Japanese style floor seating. There's a nice view of Brother Hotel and MRT Nanjing East Road (the entrance is right next to the Family Mart across the street from the MRT).

I believe you can bring in snacks, either way, a good plan would be to eat lunch first, head over to drink tea and game all day, then when you're ready to go, go out for dinner (if you go to 8f, I recommend Kunming Islamic Food, just one alley down, maybe a 2 minute walk away). If you can't tear yourself away from the game, you can eat there.



We played Suburbia (it's like The Sims, in board game form), and then a few rounds of DiXit as we waited for our friend to show up so we could all go out to dinner.

DiXit involves taking six cards, and when it's your turn picking a card and giving a phrase to describe it, without showing it. The phrase should be cryptic enough that not everyone can guess (if everyone guesses you get no points) but easy enough that a few people guess (you don't get points if nobody guesses, either). Others pick cards from their selection that they think best fit the phrase, and everyone guesses which card was the original.

This was the selection we got for Taiwanese Clown President Ma Ying-jiu (馬英九):



(Sorry the focus is so bad)

We have a very fey king, a woman-cage trapping fish inside, a marionette on a throne, an sullen little boy being carried past soldiers, and a silly-looking scarecrow surrounded by sunflowers. (The original card was the boy in the cart).

Anyway, 8f is just one of many choices in Taipei, especially if you're already a board game aficionado and don't need the games explained to you (I'm not sure they will explain them at a busier establishment that doubles as a bar and live music venue like Witch House).

It's really opened up another avenue of "stuff to do on a rainy day in Taipei", and there certainly are enough rainy days in Taipei to make that an important list to fill.

Fuck! What we need is more women who swear.

What we need in Taiwan is more women who swear.

I don't mean that literally. I don't actually mean that more women in Taiwan should go around spouting colorful obscenities (although that would be quite enjoyable - I'd fit in more for sure!). I mean it more like this:

Culturally speaking, actions, preferences and attitudes feel to me to be more gender-specific in Taiwan. Obviously this doesn't mean every individual follows a prescribed set of rigid gender norms, just that this seems to be at work on a general level. One of these gender-segregated activities is swearing - a few things people have said to me regarding women swearing in Taiwanese culture:

"Oh, I don't know so many of those words. Those are words for men."
"Jenna! You are a lady! Where did you learn words like that?"
"Women in Taiwan don't swear much. Well, maybe they will say bad words around their close friends but they won't really do that in public."
On the final day of the occupation of the Legislative Yuan, after most of the students had left, one of the speakers in the 'free speech zone' inside the front gate was a woman who said "Okay, I'm going to say something. About President Ma. Even though I am a young woman, I'm still going to say it. I want to say - Ma Ying-jiu, fuck your mother!"
"When I was in junior high school my female classmates would say something like, 'oh, I'm going to say this word, haha' and then they might say something like 'stinky vagina' and it was very funny because they were girls. But then by high school they stopped saying that. I don't think any girls I met said those things in high school or college."
"What does that mean?" Me: "You don't know that word? It's a pretty standard Taiwanese swear word." "No, I really don't. I think my husband will know. He's a man, that's a word men say."
"Really, you never swear?" "No! I'm a woman!"

I realize that what these folks said above hardly counts as 'data' about how often women swear in Taiwanese society. My point is more that I hear repeatedly that swearing is the purview of men, and 'ladies' don't do that. Whether or not it's strictly true (and it probably isn't as rigid as the above quotes make it seem), it is obviously a common social attitude or I wouldn't hear it so often.

The reasons for this gender-stereotyping attitude are pretty obvious: because it's gender stereotyping, and it fits pretty well with what most people around the world associate with 'male' (raucous, bad language, rough around the edges, burly, undomesticated, a bit of attitude, protective, a hunter, gregarious, aggressive) and 'female' (gentle, sweet, pretty, undemanding, nurturing, domestic, child-oriented, quiet, giving, refined)...

...which, by the way, before anyone accuses me of gender stereotyping myself, if you read this blog at all you know that I don't actually think any of that is true! Plenty of women are raucous, aggressive, gregarious and have a bit of attitude. I would say I'm one of those women. And plenty of men are gentle, nurturing, quiet, giving...I'd say Brendan is one of those men. Expected gender roles are bullshit - the paragraph above is more what people think about men vs. women when they have absorbed the idea of expected gender roles, not what's actually true. I doubt many would argue, whether it's true or not (and it's not), that many if not most people *think* this is how things are.

And that's just as true in Taiwan as anywhere, and I would say more so than the West.

So what we need is more women who swear - that is, more women in Taiwan who defy expected gender roles. Or at least, when faced with a divide between their personality & nature and what society expects of "ladies", will choose their natural selves over maintaining a more socially desired appearance and personality.

Swearing is just one example of this - it could be anything.

There are two things at this point that I need to clarify, lest I give the wrong impression.

First, I don't mean this in the "white lady says Taiwanese women should do X" way that it might be construed. This is something I'd like to see happen in basically every country including the USA. I'm only focusing on Taiwan because I live here, so expected gender roles here affects me personally. But every country and culture - or at least almost all of them - have gendered expectations of behavior that don't conform to individual personalities. Even if these expectations do somewhat match general trends to some extent (and I'm not sure they do, or if they do, that behavior was more more likely impressed on them by culture, rather than tendencies they were born with), it does a disservice to individuals who fall outside of the lines or don't fit the expected parameters to have a society that openly expects specific behaviors from specific genders. There is really no good reason for expecting everyone to conform to meaningless standards rather than judging each person as an individual.

Second, I don't mean to imply that Taiwanese women as a whole don't already stay true to themselves. I'd say that many do. I am sure that many of the women on the MRT with fake eyelashes, unstable shoes and done-up hair do all of that because they want to, and that women act however they act because they want to. And often next to a woman dressed up that way, I'll see another woman in a comfortable sweatshirt and jeans, hair in a ponytail, no makeup.

My criticism isn't aimed at particular women and how they act, because that's their choice. It's aimed instead at the social standards that dictate that some ways that women act are better than others - I'm not taking aim at women who don't swear so much as the social stricture that 'ladies shouldn't swear' or 'ladies should do X but should not do Y'.

I am sure for all my feel-good huggy-buggy talk above, that there is also subset of women who dress up more than they'd like to, or swear less than they'd like to, or speak out less than they'd like to, or pretend to be gentler/sweeter than they really are (a subset, not the whole) because they know that society 'prefers' these things in women. That they play up the X because "ladies should do X" and downplay the Y because 'ladies should not do Y'.

I am sure of that, because plenty of female friends have told me so. Or they have said that when they do step outside of those boundaries of expectation that they feel judged for it. A few have explicitly said that they feel judged for it more in Taiwan than when they've spent time in the West. Certainly, I feel that I can get away with more gender non-conformity in Taiwan as a Westerner and that if I were Taiwanese (born here or an American of Taiwanese ethnic heritage) I might get judged more harshly for it than I'd like. I already get obasans telling me about weight loss ('ladies should be slender!'), I can only imagine that it'd be more severe if I were not a foreigner, or didn't 'look like' a foreigner. I can imagine it because friends have told me it would definitely happen. I've already had a boss who tried to hint several times that I should wear makeup and heels (I wear neither - I like real skin and feet that don't ache and have the ability to perform the full range of human ambulation, thanks) - I can imagine how it would feel to not wear makeup to work and have the entire office judge me for it. I can imagine it because a friend of mine has had it happen to her.

I've already let out a swear (I do that a lot; I promise I don't have Tourette's, I just like to use the full range of language at my disposal, in all shades and colors) and heard 'Jenna! Where did you learn that? You are a LADY!', so I can imagine what the reaction would be if I were a Taiwanese woman and said the same thing. I can imagine it, because friends have said that such a thing would not be well-received.

And yes, to be very honest, I do - I really really do - feel more at liberty to challenge these gender-based expectations in the USA, to go for the gender non-conformity to a level where I feel comfortable in appearance, actions and personality. And local friends in Taiwan have said the same.

If we could stop doing that - stop pushing gender roles on people, stop expecting and start, I dunno, swearing - I bet we'd see a much wider spectrum of self-expression and gender non-conformity in both genders.

I mean, Jesus H. Fuckpopes, I'm sure it can be done, right?