Anatomy of a Sunflower Hit Job

I wasn't going to blog about this, because it should be well-known that the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has gone from being a relatively free publication to one that seems to be little more than a Chinese government mouthpiece, and therefore little in it is worth paying attention to anymore.

However, at the encouragement of friends, and also because ignoring fake news as unworthy of our time to refute is one reason why one of the biggest douchelords of his generation ended up as President (barf) of the Unites States of America. Some things shouldn't be given any oxygen to grow, but others need to be held up to the light so everybody can see exactly how the people who create purposefully preposterous content are aiming to run democratic institutions into the ground to give their own agenda more seeming legitimacy.

Also, I did a few Google searches and this article is quite high up in the results, meaning it's time to tear it down and take it apart.

So, let's take this stinking heap of garbage for a spin, shall we?

FYI, as I already wrote out a lot of this where many of you may have already seen it, I'm going to cut and paste quite a bit.

I can think of at least five things wrong with this piece of garbage article.

First of all, the article states that "four" "former student leaders" took jobs in China. Since we don't know who these people are, they could be any one of the 300-or-so people who occupied the legislature:

Chang claims at least four former student leaders are working on the mainland. One works for a computer game developer in Shenzhen, earning the equivalent of HK$12,390 a month. 

I have a few (unverified - this is harder to source than I thought and even the BBC says the numbers are not available for how many young Taiwanese are going to China for work) numbers for you.

Someone I know pointed out that a little under 300 people occupied the legislature in 2014. Here we have stats saying 60% of young Taiwanese intend to leave Taiwan for work (how many would go to China is unclear), 73% of young Taiwanese saying they would be willing to consider jobs in China (how many would take them is again unclear), and nearly 60% of Taiwanese working abroad are in China, so we have enough data to know that it's common. Many go, more than half are planning to go abroad, more than half of them are likely to end up in China, and a large majority would be willing to at least consider it.

Therefore, if only 4 out of 300 occupiers (that's not even counting the supporters who camped out outside) took jobs in China, that would be well below the national average, not above it. So the real question is, why isn't that the story? Why is "four" painted as this big deal, when it's actually a very tiny number when compared to the general population? Why are so few former Sunflowers going to China to work?

That, right there, is fake news for you. Taking a number that actually shows how rarely former Sunflowers go to work in China, and therefore how possible it is to build a life and be pro-Taiwan without moving across the strait, and making it seem instead as though our former student heroes betrayed their cause. The whole thing is marketed so that the truth looks very different from what it actually is.

Secondly. as some of my friends have noted - and I obviously agree - the piece attempts to paint the Sunflowers as an "anti-China" movement:

So what’s the big deal? Plenty of Taiwanese live and work on the mainland [sic]. The Sunflower protesters, who once occupied Taiwan’s Legislative and Executive Yuan, were opposed to closer economic ties with the mainland [sic]. More specifically, they successfully fought in 2014 against the ratification of a key trade pact negotiated between the then ruling Kuomintang and Beijing.

However, that's not what the Sunflowers were about at all. The point of the protest was not the CSSTA (服貿) bill itself, but the way the bill was undemocratically rammed through the legislature with essentially no oversight, with most people not even knowing what the contents of the bill were (because they were purposely kept in the dark), a culmination of a number of undemocratic moves then-President Ma made in the lead-up to his biggest mistake.

Certainly, however, Alex Lo wants you to believe that this was an "anti-China" protest, because it's fundamental to the Chinese government's agenda that readers believe this, especially readers in China whose rage at students in Taiwan "hating" them would serve the CCP well in their quest to ramp up angry, jingoistic nationalism as a buttress for their power. It is also useful to remind Taiwanese citizens who did not agree with the Sunflowers of all the lies their own domestic pro-KMT news was telling them: they were on about "anti-China" this and "they just hate the KMT" that at the time, and some people believed it (hey, copraphiliacs exist in every culture, guys). It helps China to rekindle all of that anger years later. Keep those fires stoked and all.

I think we can safely say most were not in favor of greater integration with China, economically or otherwise, however, and many likely remain so. Once again, though, that wasn't the point of the protest. People who might well have supported the bill had it been deliberated and passed democratically did participate. Plenty of people who might have voted for the KMT did, too. As did plenty of social conservatives.

This is similar to most of the Hong Kong student leaders probably being in favor of HK sovereignty, but it's possible to be a pro-Hong Kong activist without necessarily advocating Hong Kong independence.

So it is quite possible to have been a Sunflower and yet later take a job in China without being a hypocrite. I wouldn't think it terribly common, and I can imagine why supporters of the movement might feel disappointed, but a deeper understanding of the movement would hopefully lead to a rational denouement in that thought arc.

Again, however, it is Alex Lo's and the Chinese government's agenda for you to believe that it would be hypocritical on its face for a former Sunflower to work in China. If you are going to be angry in all the ways that best serve the CCP agenda, a dose of rage at supposed hypocrisy is an even greater spark to light that fire than simply bringing back the old (false) "anti-China/anti-KMT" trope.

What's more, if a Sunflower supporter were to read this and buy its premise - possible, as not every supporter necessarily fully understood what the movement was about - a sense of being betrayed or a loss of faith in leaders formerly admired can also only help China. Their goal is not only to cause Taiwanese to lose faith in their democratic institutions (making them more susceptible, in their plan, to accepting undemocratic Chinese rule) but also in their "heroes" and role models. It serves China if pro-Taiwan voters and activists feel their strongest voices in the new generation have "betrayed" them and are now not worth listening to.

Thirdly,  there's this:

If Chang Yu-hua is right, several leaders of the so-called Sunflower student movement in Taiwan have now graduated from university and found work on the mainland [sic].

(Also, why "so-called"? That was what it was called. That or the 318 movement). 

One of the island’s [sic - it's an island, yes, but more importantly, it's a country] most influential pundits (really?), Chang said on a TV programme that the former student leaders should apologise for their past actions.

That's one excerpt, but throughout the article it uses the term "leaders" but never names a single person.

Alex Lo, by saying "leaders" without saying who those so-called "leaders" were, makes it sound like Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), among others, are working as, I dunno, game developers in Shenzhen or something. It sounds as though the core Sunflowers, those with the greatest visibility, those who went to court over what happened, have turned tail. It never says that outright but casual readers will immediately connect the words "Sunflower leaders" with the most visible people in the movement. There will be people who will come to believe something the article never says, and when discussing it with their friends, say just that. It's not a big leap to go from "Sunflower leaders working in China" to "hey did you read that article about how Lin Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting are working in China?"

Of course, even cursory research will show that this is not the case. All you have to do is check the public Facebook page of either of these two most visible leaders, to know that neither is working, nor has any intention of working, in China. You don't even need me to tell you what they're up to - check for yourself! It's all right there online! Neither has been particularly secretive about the general outlines of their current activities or near-future plans.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be possible for them to do so, as both are banned from the country (in fact, pretty much every visible "leader" is most likely banned so using that term is incorrect on its face).

Knowing, however, that most people won't look into the facts and it makes a much more powerful fake news story to implant in people's minds that not just any Sunflowers but Sunflower leaders have been brought down to working in China - that gives people something to talk about. The purpose here is not just to make the Sunflowers look bad unjustly, but to make it look like the so-called "change" is happening even among the most ardent participants.

Note that Alex Lo doesn't name the so-called "leaders". Since it's not clear who these people are, it is not at all clear that they were "leaders" at all. The movement had hundreds of active participants, thousands if you count the supporters who camped out outside. Not every one of them is a "leader" but any one of them could have taken a job in China, which again would not be hypocritical. So what?

This is a key facet of fake news - implying heavily, drawing susceptible readers to a certain conclusion, but never actually stating it outright so it can't be fact-checked. We can't check to what extent any of the people Chang was referencing, if they exist at all, "led" the movement because we don't know who they are. Our minds are led to fill in the gaps in all the wrong ways.

My fourth point is related to this:  it's not clear who this Alex Lo person is talking about, stopping at "four" people with scant detail on just one, it is entirely possible the "scoop" is fabricated (even if some former Sunflowers did take jobs in China, that doesn't mean that Chang Yu-hua - the originator of this "news" - knows about it necessarily). In fact, I'd say it's highly likely that it was just made up, with the people involved assuming that someone must have gone to work in China so it probably wasn't "false", even if it was a lie to call it a "scoop" (and it probably was).

That's yet another facet of fake news: making up a news story to further your agenda with plenty of assumed or fabricated facts, figuring that somewhere, somehow, there must be an example of what you are talking about if you are called on it. It's the "but rape culture isn't real because some women lie about being raped" of Taiwan news (yes, it does occasionally happen, on very rare occasions, that a woman has lied about being raped. But the person saying that most likely doesn't know of any cases off the top of their heads, and is just assuming that, if confronted on that factoid, they can find an example quickly enough).

It wouldn't be the first time anti-Taiwan news had made something up out of whole cloth, not said outright that it was true, but implied it in such a way as to cause people to believe it. My favorite example is the person I know who deeply believed that President Tsai had called up a pro-KMT talk show (something-something 酸辣湯, I don't remember the full name because they're a bunch of fucking clowns and I can't be bothered) and told them that once she took office they were no longer allowed to criticize her, and if they did she'd take them off the air. They were even crying and hugging each other saying "this is our last episode!"

This is absolutely ridiculous, and of course it wasn't true, but my acquaintance believed it.

It wasn't even hard to find out it wasn't true - if such a phone call was made, evidence would most likely exist. If it existed, that would have been a huge news story, not only a very damaging one but one that could have cost Tsai her job. Whoever made it up clearly didn't think very deeply about how freedom of speech laws - yes, laws, so a president violating them would be breaking the law - work in Taiwan, or assumed the audience wouldn't. It's not a hard assumption to make: most of that show's viewers are KMT supporters. The KMT is the party that suppressed free speech in Taiwan for nearly half the twentieth century. If you still support it, well, you clearly think doing so was, on some level, acceptable enough that a president could do it without it creating a huge scandal or causing that president to lose legitimacy even among her supporters. After all, the former leaders of their preferred party did it, and they still support that party.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, it's possible to fact-check this stuff but those who publish it assume people won't.

And you know what? I'm sure some former Sunflowers did take jobs in China. In fact, I've had several people say they can confirm that. I'm not sure to what extent these people were "leaders" (because, again, the leaders are mostly or entirely banned from China), but it doesn't matter, as doing what they did was not hypocritical.

In fact, that some Sunflowers did do this says more about problems in Taiwanese corporate culture (low pay, long hours, few perks, overbearing management) than about any virtues of China or any problems in Taiwanese politics.

And finally, by pinning the whole thing on a report by some other guy, SCMP - which is hardly a bastion of press freedom - is basically washing its hands of any culpability or being accused of "fake news". "I'm just reporting on what Chang said!" is the easy excuse. Another key strategy of fake news - write something from an uncredible source that, even if discredited, can be blamed on that source. "I just heard it from _______!" - but of course when _________ and you, and some other guy after you, and some dude who links to that, and another news source that picks up on it, and the Chinese state-run media who likes what you wrote because it serves their agenda, all publish it, it will look like these "facts" are coming from a number of sources when in fact they originated with just one: Chang Yu-hua, who, as one friend of mine put it, "if his words were worth listening to, shit can be eaten".

And then, if anyone bothers to refute it all as I am doing,  you have a bevy of competing sources which makes it look as though the two sides of the so-called "debate" are roughly matched, and therefore both deserve equal consideration, meaning facts don't matter and distortion of those facts is as equally valid as a clear interpretation of them.

That's how it works, and that's China's game - make it seem as though the CCP-approved perspective is, if not the correct one, than one that is on equal footing with other interpretations and deserves the same legitimacy. Because SCMP is owned by Alibaba (a huge company that is a big supporter of the Chinese government), and Alex Lo is a pro-China mouthpiece, they are happily playing along.

(Updated) Stephen Yates said a stupid thing

Update: please read this post. The article this is based on was a gross mistranslation, and did not accurately reflect what Yates said. I hadn't realized a video was available: now that I do know that, the content below is not relevant.

I'll let this post stand as a monument to remind myself and others not to believe things too quickly, and also because - the comments that precipitated the post notwithstanding, I actually would like to make the dual points that 1.) every person who continues to live their life and build their country with Chinese missiles pointed at them is, in fact, risking their life and we'd best not forget that, and 2.) Taiwan is already independent, so discussions on whether it "should be" that way are irrelevant.

These things are true regardless of what Yates or anyone else says, but you deserve to know the truth about the interview. 
I can't say I'm particularly shocked. Not because I think he's a moron, and although I appreciate his support of Taiwan, he is a conservative and he did give a deeply unimpressive speech once that started out as one long nyah-nyah our guy won, when "their guy" is one of the worst people in the world. While it is, or at least once was, possible to vote Republican and still be a reasonable person, I genuinely do think typical American conservative arguments tend to be deficient in both morality and reason. I would say this is a new phenomenon, but it's been going on since Goldwater, so perhaps not.

You may wonder why I care enough about some random thing he said while being quickly interviewed, which is not likely to make it past the Taipei Times. In part it's because this is a sadly common belief, especially in the West (where it is really easy to say because we're done with all the dying and are not the ones risking our lives unless we choose to enter mostly unnecessary wars). I want to puncture it right now. It's also because if this is the garbled muck coming out of the mouth of a friend of Taiwan, we have a problem - a big one. It must be addressed.

Anyway, let's look at the stupid thing he said. (I'm assuming Tom Lee wouldn't just make this up whole-cloth).

"When I asked why the US would not support Taiwanese independence to keep it from being annexed by China, Yates said Taiwan is not ready for independence like the US’ founders, who vowed to defend the US Declaration of Independence with their lives, their assets and their sacred honor.

If Taiwanese were willing to trade their lives, assets and sacred honor for Taiwanese independence, they would win the support of the international community, but the nation is not ready for that."

Yo...no.

First of all, what makes him think the Taiwanese are not willing to trade their lives, should it come to it. This is a country about which it was once said "every three years a rebellion, every five years ar revolt" (or something like that). Do you really think Taiwan has no fighting spirit? They've been fighting a long cold war for over a generation. As a "friend", he should know this.

I would like him to understand as well that the Taiwanese are risking their lives. Simply by existing, building their country, electing a president China doesn't like, and refusing to give up despite being so obviously outgunned, with over a thousand missiles pointed straight at them, every single Taiwanese person who does not flee the shores of their country is showing, on some level, a willingness to risk everything for the freedom of their country.

Please, Mr. Yates, do not underestimate that. It is one of the things I love most about Taiwan.

Secondly, Taiwan is already independent and Stephen Yates of all non-Taiwanese people should know that. What it lacks is recognition of that independence. 

Why would the Taiwanese "trade their lives" for something they already have? 

It's one thing to fight for freedom and be willing to die when you don't have it, and want it. It's another to do that when you already have freedom, and all you are asking for is recognition of same. Nobody should have to trade their life to get other countries to recognize what is already true about their own.
Frankly, it would be a dumb move to do so. This is where I think his conservatism is showing: everything is a battle, and you have to be willing to die for your cause - or at least, it's OK for people who won't suffer to tell those who will that they should. No thought given to the complexities of why that's a bad idea.

There seems to be an assumption here that, were the Taiwanese to plunge headlong into a war simply to be recognized for what it already is, the rest of the world would rally behind them because they are standing up ~*~For Freedom!!!~*~ This is another attitude I would link to conservatism - lots of rah-rah patriotism and 'standing up for your country and the world will stand with you' talk, and it's simply wrong. "Coalition of the Willing" wrong. The only way Taiwan is going to rack up friends is by doing literally the exact opposite of that.

The US has said time and time again that their "position" is a peaceful resolution. A situation in which the Taiwanese would have to "trade their lives" is by definition not a peaceful one.

If what he means instead is that Taiwan should be willing to show that its people are willing to die for their cause, well, that would cause the international media, who already think that problems with China either appear from thin air (they don't - they appear from China) or that they are caused by Taiwan (they aren't - they are caused by China), to pitch a fit about how Taiwan is causing "tensions". It would cause clucks of disapproval from around the world, and you know that. 

He contradicts himself, and then says as much, later on in the same article:

“In my opinion, whether Taiwan becomes independent will not depend on a referendum or an official declaration announcing the founding of a Republic of Taiwan.

“Taiwan is independent because the Taiwanese are their own masters. Taiwanese should not be too pessimistic about their diplomatic situation, because, in addition to diplomatic space, there is also political space, economic space and other kinds of space where it can put its advantages to good use.”

Giving him the benefit of the doubt that he just garbled his words a bit, it's still dumb to say "Taiwan is not ready for independence" when Taiwan is already independent. Of course Taiwan is "ready" for independence, because - repeating myself because it cannot be emphasized enough - it already has it and the country is run, if not perfectly, at least well enough to keep itself going as a first world nation, especially considering its circumstances. 

One can be ready to risk one's life for something without being stupid enough to run into near-certain death. Right now, a war against China is not winnable for Taiwan. If you enter that war, especially as a fighter, you will most likely die or suffer a worse fate. That's not "being ready" because you "are willing to trade your life", that's just stupid.

To put it in television terms, Taiwan is not Robb Stark. It is Sansa Stark, and that's exactly what it needs to be if it has any hope of eventually coming out on top. 

Taiwan, fortunately, is much smarter than that and is playing a longer game in which millions of its citizens don't die in a costly and devastating war, for the best possible chance at a good outcome for an independent Taiwan. Whether or not they will succeed is for the future to answer, but honestly, while I can think of improvements to their strategy, I can't think of a better overall strategy for the country. 

Does he really think that the saber-rattling he seems to be calling for, which would be more likely to lead to a war that Taiwan would lose, is a better idea? Isn't he a diplomat?

Thirdly, he puts the "founders" (the founding fathers - slaveowners and at least one rapist, none of whom thought women deserved a voice in politics) up on a pedestal that most people well-read in history know they don't entirely deserve. A very bright young Armenian woman I met in Alaverdi who asked me what I thought of Thomas Jefferson ("He's a complicated figure. He did some important things but I do not worship him, or anyone") knew that. Yates should too.

Does he also think that, "founding fathers" aside, that all Americans would be willing to risk their lives for their country? Does he think we'd do so even if the war were unwinnable? Are we supposed to go all Les Miserables and die on barricades we have no real hope of defending, were it to come to that? Does he really have such an inflated sense of how "great" America is, or was, compared to the rest of the world? Is he so secure in his own comfortably independent nation that he feels fine telling people halfway around the world whose country faces an overwhelming international threat that he, a person from a country that does not face any such international threat, is OK but they should be willing to die?

Most people wouldn't do that, and I can't blame them. But all people deserve freedom. Yes, all people. Even the ones who play a long game rather than get into unwinnable fights.

So, yes, I am deeply disappointed in this pile of nonsense from a "friend of Taiwan."

Do better, Stephen Yates. I don't like your ideology very much (I mean, I'm a liberal), I could never vote for your party (I guess I'm crazy to like affordable access to health care, including reproductive health care - your party's platforms are a part of why I left the US in the first place and they actively harm my friends). I do not think that your ideology, nor that of any other pro-Taiwan Republican, is compatible with the mostly - but not entirely - liberal and progressive outlook of the new face of pro-Taiwan local activism, and I do think this is going to cause problems. I suspect the lot of you support Taiwan without really understanding what Taiwan is about. Your former boss is quite literally a war criminal and one of the worst people in the world and you seem weirdly okay with that, and your current president is a magnificent douchelord and you seem OK-enough with that too - and I am not OK with your being OK with either of those - but you are, for better or worse, one of the best friends Taiwan has.

I expect better than this from someone Taiwan should be able to call a "friend".

The god of More-Than: on culture and who has it

Hello from Budapest, now, where earlier this evening I made my way to St. Stephen's Basilica ("one of the most beautiful Neoclassical buildings in the world": this intrigued me, even though I'm "all churched out" for this trip). I had fully expected that I'd missed my chance to see the inside today, only to find that I could see a concert there if I wanted. It was kind of expensive, the sort of thing you sign up to do on a package day program that includes a tour of Parliament and a dinner cruise so you'll get a discount on all three.

These concerts are clearly run with tourists in mind - you also pass several offices selling tickets "classical music" concerts (really anything from Baroque to Romantic or even Modern - I've never heard anything pre-Baroque - you aren't going to hear much if anything by, say, Palestrina) as you roam the more guidebook-approved streets of Prague. They are often for people who like the genre well enough but aren't aficionados, so the music chosen is always very familiar. A typical program might include one of the Four Seasons (usually but not always Summer), Pachelbel's Canon in D, perhaps something by Handel, maybe a Bach concerto.

I'm not criticizing that really - anything that gets people listening to more than just the Top 40 is fine by me, even if it is the Classical Top 40. I have my own well-worn favorites, too - Brandenburg Concerto #2, for example, is something I always enjoy hearing. Actually I'm just a Bach fan in general.

So, when I saw that the program for tonight's concert included Bach's Badinerie (for solo flute) and Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (also Bach), my first thought was "of course - those are well-known works". My second thought was "hey, I love those!" Badinerie was the recessional music at our wedding, played by a good friend and talented flutist. And Toccata and Fugue, well, it's great for Eastern Europe, I was excited to hear such a well-known piece played in its natural setting (a huge-ass totally ostentatious church with a big fat pipe organ) and it's just great. It's exacting, requires massive concentration and no small amount of physical exertion. It's precise and focused, richly layered and jubilant, but also kind of angry. It has a bite. Not a cute love-bite, I mean like the kind that make you bleed. It's like an incredibly analytical vampire who is generally good-natured but also has a temper. It can hold forth for quite some time - just when you think it's over it has another whole wallop of music catapulting right at yer head. You use every pipe in that damn organ and you use them perfectly, got that?

In short, if asked to pick a song I weirdly identify with, it'd probably be that one. And not even the famous opening lines everyone knows (the toccata); I like the fugue.

So, even though this is the sort of thing you sign up for on a day package, I bought an overpriced ticket anyway. It's also the sort of thing solo travelers do when they have nowhere in particular to be one evening.

When I walked in, I marveled at the interior of St. Stephen's - it's not to my taste, actually - I prefer more Medieval and Gothic architecture - but it sure is great to look at. All that pink and blue marble (I'm not convinced the blue is real), the gilt-backed paintings, the rococo-esque gold curling about. It's heavy and in-your-face, but I appreciate that it's not trying to hide.

As the concert began, I let my mind wander a bit. I tend to do that - to me, the point of instrumental music is to let it guide and color your thoughts, not to sit and listen carefully to it every moment. I used to play classical music - trumpet - and I was better than you'd expect but not good enough to make a career of it. After all those years of banging out Haydn and Telemann on my trusted Benge X-series (stolen senior year of college - I never seriously played again) I felt like I'd earned the right to daydream to whatever I wanted.

First thought: man, they could have fed a lot of starving people with the money it took to build this confabulation. 

Second thought: true, but perhaps it is also important for human civilizations to have nice things, otherwise what's worth living for if we all walk around in Mao suits eating potatoes all day? You're not really a Communist anyway. 

Third thought: most of the audience seems to be non-Hungarian Europeans. Do Europeans spend their free time traveling around listening to expensive concerts in pretty buildings?

...probably yes, yes they do. 

Fourth thought: is this...culture? 

The musicians were good. Professionals - I couldn't detect note out of place and everything felt properly played, not taken at weird tempos or speeds that didn't feel intended by the composer. The setting was rich and gorgeous. Rich and gorgeous and...missing something.

The best concerts are more than the sum of their parts. The musicians, venue, pieces, instruments, the weather that day, whatever - it all comes together to create something effervescent and intangible, but unmistakably there. Some sort of perfect euphoric More-Than; a heavenliness that makes you hold your breath. The sort of thing a non-atheist would attribute to being uplifted by their god.

This concert was all very good, but that uplifting More-Than (I think More-Than could be a god-like figure - it's abstract enough) felt perhaps even weighted down by all the golden curliques and marble. It was better than serviceable, pleasant even, but...

Fifth thought: that one time in Prague...

...in 2006, I was in Prague for two days. It was March, freezing cold, and the city seemed almost tourist-free. I spent very little money - less than ten dollars - on a ticket to a violin recital at the Rudolfinum - . I had no idea what the program would be and didn't care. I was alone and it seemed like a fun idea.

The violinist...I couldn't tell you now what he played, but it was weird and modern and funky, but also melodious and heartbreaking. It was More-Than. I practically levitated from my seat. The Rudolfinum is very nice, but it's no St. Stephens. But for that concert, the fairly drab room was turned into some cross between the Klementinum, some funky old ziggurats on the Sumerian plain, maybe the inside of a Pharaoh's tomb, a motorcycle rally in New Orleans, and heaven if it were run by cool people.

At one point before the first encore - the mostly-Czech audience loudly demanded, and were obliged with, several - the floppy-haired violinist caught my eye. I was sitting fairly close and I think he smiled. There was a zing - not like a romantic connection or anything like that, just me thinking this person is brilliant. why isn't he famous, how did this ticket not cost me A MILLION DOLLARS and hoping that maybe we had a millisecond connection as two musicians who understood that we both worshipped More-Than. 

That, I thought 11 years later, sitting in the fanciest church in Budapest, that concert was culture. That frothing of musician and music and place and time that says something about that place and its history, even if you're not always sure what. Culture is more than the sum of its parts: it's more than just buildings that look like wedding cakes or this or that book or song or famous person: it's the aggregate outcome of a group of people, however large or small, wittingly or not, building something together out of human necessity, the comings and goings and inclusions of new people and ideas, technological and artistic progress and the plain weight of time. It's a set of beliefs and assumptions - often shared, sometimes not - that inform how a group of people similarly perceive and interact with the world.

When it gives rise to something more than each person within that culture can contribute on their own, you get the beautiful and humble concert I attended in Prague. When it is used to label certain things, especially large, flashy, famous things like the most famous author, building, composer, painting or even food - essentially, getting the chemistry backward by prescribing the outcome - you get something like that concert at St. Stephen's.

In short, if the latter idea what you think culture is, you'll get something serviceable but it won't be anything more than that.

Do you know what else you get? You get a belief system in which "The United States has no culture" because the native culture was all but wiped out, and everything else was just brought in by immigrants and sort of muddled together in parts. Of course that's not true - the US certainly has a culture, and I'm not sure it's a problem that I struggle to define it. You get a belief system in which China no longer has a culture because most of the art and buildings were destroyed and all the intellectuals ran away or died. But of course China has a culture too - it's China right now. It's a bit sparser, a bit drearier from certain angles, and quite different from what it used to be, but what you see of the goings-on of people in China now is their culture - the idea that nearly 2 billion people live in a "cultureless" society is ridiculous. You could even argue that China has many cultures within its borders. In any case, it was always more than all those smashed vases. You may not like that it now includes extreme jingoistic nationalism, ugly concrete monstrosities, wearing facemasks because they are thought to filter pollution and Simplified characters among other, more pleasant things, but just because you don't like it and it's not as pretty as what came before doesn't make it any less a real culture.

This isn't a new thought by any means, and I'm not the first person to have thunk it. 

But again.

My thoughts zigzagged back to Taiwan, where for centuries this or that great power has tried to insist that Taiwan has no culture.

Lien Chan's grandfather - who, rather than sharing Lien's permanently disapproving constipated face, just seems melancholy - once wrote that Taiwan has no history. Different words, same criticism. Today I still hear and read people spouting similar opinions: "Taiwan's culture is just Chinese culture." Or "OK, but it's Chinese culture with some Japanese influence." Or, "But aboriginal culture is almost gone, what does it matter?" Or, "Taiwanese history is so tied up with Chinese history that you can't separate the two."

What these (wrong) people are thinking of when they think of culture are monumental buildings, famous works of art or world-renowned writers and philosophers. Taiwan doesn't have any ancient buildings of that scale, and while there are many talented Taiwanese artists and thinkers none have reached the level of global fame necessary to "count" to such people (Ang Li may be something of an exception, although even he is more famous for Brokeback Mountain these days than for Eat Drink Man Woman). You can look for 'world music' concerts in major cities and generally find offerings of 'traditional Chinese music', 'traditional Japanese music', 'traditional Greek music' and more, but you aren't likely to find any 'traditional Taiwanese music'. 

It's not just these (again, wrong) folks, though. The Dutch disregarded the indigenous culture they found as they built their little colony and began bringing in boatloads of settlers from China. The Qing first considered Taiwan to be "off the map", a place not worth considering, "beyond the pale of civilization" (yet another way of saying "it has no culture"). So, they tried to impose Chinese culture; the Japanese, Japanese culture; the KMT, more Chinese culture but with a decidedly nationalistic twist. 

In an echo of Lien Heng, the (re-)education forced on the Taiwanese by the KMT party state taught Chinese history with Taiwan as a(n insufficiently covered) part of it, as though Taiwan itself had nothing unique at all to offer.

I can see the appeal of it: if you believe culture is all famous things, comparing Taiwan to its big, angry neighbor - which also happens to be the place of origin of everything from Confucius to the 300 Tang Poems to several musical instruments and styles that are recognizable around the world to blue-and-white pottery to four "classic" books - Taiwan would seem to come up short.

But it's wrong. You have to have that It has to be big and famous to be Culture idea in your head in the first place to hold such an opinion. Chiang Kai-shek himself - Grand Master of Treating Taiwan Like China - knew well before his government fell in China that Taiwan was different, something apart. He was well aware that, while populated mostly by what he would consider "Chinese" yet heavily influenced by Japan under colonial rule, it was something altogether different from both. It was prone to rebellion; there was already a movement for autonomy (and he knew that). In his pre-war visit to Taiwan there is no indication that he considered it anything other than a foreign land. All that talk of Taiwan being irrevocably Chinese since antiquity, and the history curriculum forced upon Taiwanese students as a result, was all just bloviating in service of his own selfish ends.

He probably wouldn't have thought about it in terms of a group of people whose beliefs and common history bringing them together to create something more than just people living on an island, but he knew Taiwan was Taiwan - not China, and not Japan. 

You know it too - at least I do. I can't walk down a typical street in Taiwan without knowing, unmistakably, that it is Taiwan. In my everyday life, from watching the workings of the government to enjoying a temple parade to simply how people interact to what people value, it is clear that this is a place altogether unique. The temples may look Chinese, and the people may speak Mandarin (because at one time, they were forced to) and there may not be a unique musical style recognized around the world as distinctly 'Taiwanese' (I know there is Taiwanese opera, but to the layperson it wouldn't sound all that different from the various forms of Chinese opera), nor a soaring work of historical architecture to play it in, nor a particularly distinct clothing style, but it doesn't matter. When you live here, you know that this isn't China and what's more, that it's always been unique, a place apart.

And of course Taiwan has a history. Many volumes have been written about it. They may reference China, but not any more so than any history of any country or region might mention its large, influential neighbors. I've read three books on Taiwanese history this year alone and I still don't feel like I am even a fraction of the way to really knowing Taiwanese history in detail. Can you name another place that has the same history as Taiwan which includes all of the same elements - indigenous, European, Qing, Japanese, KMT, democratization? I can't.

What Taiwan has created on a human level through a unique history, and through the hard work and evolving shared values of the people through that history, is what defines Taiwanese culture. If it didn't have this culture, it wouldn't have the freest press in Asia. It wouldn't, despite its people being told for generations that they are 'Chinese', not 'Taiwanese', have a democratic government wholly different from that of China. It wouldn't have the culture of protest and civil disobedience that feels uniquely non-Western but also not quite the same anywhere else in Asia. It wouldn't have had a succession of groups fighting for autonomy or recognition of autonomy, present since at least the 19th century and still active today, albeit in different forms. Even in design, where China seems to go for ancient+modern=cool and Japan goes for quirky or downright weird, Taiwanese design has an organic, homespun quality that echoes some of the hippie-organic-hipster elements of the West while being different and entirely appropriate to Taiwan.

I see efforts to promote small cultural artifacts as proof of "Taiwanese culture", from bubble tea to the Formosan black bear, and I commend these efforts. However, I'd argue that Taiwan doesn't have anything to prove. It already has culture - the problem is that too many people don't understand what culture is. This may be why Taiwan, when it is thought of at all, is not considered an exciting destination by the tourist set. It takes time to appreciate what Taiwan has to offer. You can't rush it. You can't do a quick circuit of some palaces and cathedrals and maybe a concert and a nice meal and say "that's Taiwan". It doesn't work that way here. You can't microwave it and stick in a tea bag and have that be it, the way you might in Beijing or Bali (though I'd say it's unfair to do that in those places, too). You have to let it brew slowly, letting the leaves open gently. It's more like brewing lao ren cha.

If more people understood that, perhaps more people would understand not only that Taiwan does have its own culture, but how to appreciate it. 

The more I live here, the more I have transcendent little moments that are more than just walking down the street, more than just making tea, more than just living. Maybe I'll be hanging out on Dihua Street and come across a Taiwanese opera performance, or that one time in Jingmei when I was in the night market and someone had paid for a puppet show at the temple. I stood and watched it in a weird reverie for awhile as the night market dinged, shuffled, shouted and rang around me. Or as I sat drinking tea on Maokong watching the sun set somewhere behind Guanyin Mountain, thinking "the Portuguese were right - this really is a beautiful island". Or talking to neighbors or friends and learning something I hadn't known before. Or eating a dish and realizing I'd have trouble finding the same thing outside of Taiwan. So often, things come together and although you can't point to the place, the time, the event or the people as particularly special themselves, together they form something greater.

I can even point to a few Prague-like moments. Certainly the Sunflower Movement (you'll have to read the 2014 sections to get the point of that link), but also the marriage equality rally a few years later, or going to the Nylon Cheng museum on the anniversary of his death. Hell, it even happened while driving over Hehuanshan and once just hanging out at Wistaria House, and not that long ago while watching "God of Carnage" translated to a Taiwanese setting at The Lab Space.

I don't need to seek out some tourist-ready attraction - there's no need for Taiwan to have this or that famous palace, painting or philosopher. The god of More-Than is alive and well in the everyday goings-on that make Taiwan uniquely Taiwan.

In which I ask Westerners in Taiwan to do better when discussing women

Could this imperious-looking man surveying the city below him have any connection to my post? Naaaawww...

I've been busy with grad school and also traveling around Europe at the tail end of my trip, so haven't had time to really blog much beyond a few thoughts that popped into my head as a result of my classes in England. I'm in Czechia now, just hangin' out for a bit. 

In fact, before I begin, please enjoy a small selection of photos of what I've been up to:

Taking a break on the stairs with swollen feet

Three angry figures 

At a bar called...uh, something to do with a tiger

Taken on my final day at Exeter

I took this one selfie. Just one. 

Blue and yellow water street

At a cute cafe 

A church attached to other buildings

Having a drink with a friend in Brno

Now.

One of the things I've missed while away from Taipei was this teapot typhoon. I'm linking to a more recent video commenting on it because this is the one worth watching. The original...ugh.

Some Spanish vlogger - I'm not going to name him because he's well-known, and anyway I don't care about him at all and don't really want to bring him more traffic - posted a video advising Taiwanese women on how to painlessly lose their virginity. In it, he calls Taiwanese women "妹妹" (Little Sister, really a diminutive that some people might find insulting), telling them to "relax" and "breathe deeply" and "not force it", and "not to get expectations up".  A friend of mine called this out as mansplaining, which I agree with, because here's a man who can't know, on a physical level, what a woman's experience is because he will never experience it.

If he were a biologist, anatomist, health education professional, doctor or other expert and he gave advice without calling the recipients literally Little Sister and doing an imitation of them that is simpering and insulting, then maybe nothing would need to be said. He's just some guy, treating women like kittens who need to be comforted at the vet and trying to drive up clicks for his YouTube channel.

I don't vlog and I don't speak Spanish. I have never had a penis nor used said non-existent penis. How would he feel if I gave him advice on how to vlog better (actually I would like to give him this advice), speak Spanish more accurately or directed a video at his demographic giving advice to men on how not to lose their erections when they have intercourse for the first time?

But then, a friend of mine who is way cooler but unfortunately less influential than this guy put up a social media post calling the video what it is, and his friend made the video in the link above. And this guy hit back saying he was being "bullied" and threatening to talk to a lawyer (oh please).

Then it all died down and who cares, right?

Well, I care. I care because the more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. Not about the original video - that's just silly. Something needed to be said about it, that happened, and now I think we'd be doing that guy a favor by saving him the embarrassment of acknowledging he made, published and defended it.

What I mean is that a video like this could seriously be made, with very few people saying anything about it - my friend, his friend and now I are some of the only ones, at least in the expat world (though I doubt anything is being said in the local sinophone world either). And, at the same time, so many foreigners in Taiwan expend so much energy criticizing and complaining about "how sexist Taiwan is", and "how sexist Taiwanese men are". Yet when they themselves or one of their own says or does something sexist, mansplainy or misogynist...not a peep.

I've heard it said or implied more than a few times that, because the local culture is "so sexist", that foreign men are surely better, because...oh I don't know, I usually stop listening around this point but it usually has something to do with a reasoning that these foreign men - usually the speaker is including himself in this too - understand women's equality better because they come from Western contexts where women's rights are more established and understood. Or something.

It's a tempting tale to tell oneself - nobody would deny that Taiwan doesn't still have room for improvement when it comes to women's issues. Not even me, and I think this is by far the best place in Asia to live as a woman and am consistently heartened by the willingness of many people, especially in the younger generation, to embrace values just as progressive as the most progressive voices in the West are championing. But, just as there is room for improvement in the US and other Western countries, the same is true of Taiwan.

However, it does not necessarily follow that, because feminist discourse took a different and perhaps more direct path in the West and on the surface things seem to be more egalitarian there, that men from the West are necessarily more attuned to women's equality. And yet, so many Western men here will use this faulty logic to prop up their own fantasy that they, by virtue of the culture they were raised in, are somehow by nature better co-workers, friends, boyfriends and husbands than Taiwanese men.

When one of those Western men does something distasteful, like make a video for no good reason other than to get clicks telling women about their own bodies, imitating the women in question in a simpering voice and calling them diminutives...

...nothing. Forget a larger conversation about whether Western men are really "better" in this way (I happen to think they're not necessarily), or whether misogyny is a problem in the foreign community (sometimes, yes) there wasn't even a direct criticism by these "enlightened" men of the video itself. But they're so much better and more egalitarian and really respect women more, yeah?

Yeah, right.

When Western men say the sorts of things said in that video and other Western men don't say a word about it - my friend can't be the only foreign guy who saw it, come on - do they really have any high ground for continuing to pretend they are so much better than locals? It goes beyond the video, too. How many of you guys have been out with friends or at a party and heard some other foreigner make a shitty comment about women, and said nothing? How many have heard other foreign men talking about all the ways they treat their Taiwanese dates, girlfriends and wives poorly - and I know this happens, because I've heard it myself and been surprised that others were surprised that I spoke up - and stayed silent?

Is it not deeply hypocritical to ignore misogyny in your own community while you attack its existence in the local one?

Because, after listening to a former coworker go on about how he "only cheated on his girlfriend because two women were offering me a threesome and who could say no to that?" and all sorts of angry and dismissive comments about Taiwanese women ("cutesy", "psycho xiaojie", "shrill", "high-maintenance" etc) and men ("girly/not masculine/effeminate"), comments about "fatties" and more, I can't believe y'all don't hear this stuff among your own. You know perfectly well that you probably have male friends who treat their partners like crap and make sexist comments. I don't keep such company, and even I know people like this (we are not friends, however). I've been around to witness a legitimate complaint about being sexually harassed at a gathering - foreigner organized but locals turn up - turn into a bunch of people saying that making an issue of it was the result of the horrors of "militant feminism", being then asked to consider how the assailant feels (apparently guilty? I dunno, and who cares). If I've seen it, and I don't go to many foreigner events, then I know you have.

Why aren't you calling it out more? Why might some foreigners focus on sexism in Taiwanese society while allowing this kind of talk from other Westerners to pass without comment?

I don't think every Taiwanese man is a superhero or that every foreign man is a jerk, of course. I try to take a more balanced view: around the world there are mostly good people, a lot of people who aren't that good but aren't horrible, a few kinda-jerks-with-some-okay-qualities, and a few rotten grapes at the bottom of the carton. That's true of the local Taiwanese population, that's true of the country of my birth and every other Western nation, and that's true of the foreign community in Taiwan. We have some advantages in the West (marginally less ageism and pressure to marry, marginally less overt sexism at home and work) and some disadvantages (seriously, I can't even walk down the street at night in my home country without feeling and being comparatively less safe than a man whereas in Taiwan it's fine), and some things both cultures struggle with (on neither side of the Pacific have women achieved equal pay). Most likely relationships here and in the West are good or bad in comparatively equal measure, including intercultural ones.

Therefore, most foreign guys here are most likely either good or not-horrible people. Perhaps some well-meaning ones don't speak out when they should, or have over-inflated views of just how great the West is for women, or how terribly they think local women are disadvantaged. However, it doesn't make them bad to the core.

I do believe this - although it is more accurate to call behaviors, rather than people, "good" and "bad", at some point an accumulation of behaviors comes to define your character. For most people that can be reversed, if they want to do something about it. Others, while not inherently rotten, are not very likely to want to do the introspection that is necessary for change.

Most likely, the vlogger in question is a not-horrible person who made one mansplainy video and followed it up with a whiny video targeting my friend. He could do better, but he is not necessarily a bad person. But, to repeat, he could do better and I hope this is the clarion call for him to do so. And we could all do better by calling out this sort of thing when we see it and not putting ourselves on a pedestal about how great we are.

Frankly, coming from a country that just elected a blubbering misogynist clown over a competent - if ultimately neoliberal - woman for reasons that would not have stopped any man in her position from being elected, to a country that elected its first female Nerd in Chief and she got there without any sort of family political dynasty, I find the assumption that the West is so much better hard to swallow.

I can't reach the rotten grapes, but I can ask all of the good and not-horrible men in Taiwan to please have this conversation and please speak out more about misogyny in the foreign community rather than simply complaining about it in Taiwanese society. I can reach you, I hope, and I am asking you to do better. 

In defense of private institute English teaching

Let me make this clear in the beginning: I'm playing devil's advocate here. I have a lot (no really, a lot) of criticisms of the private teaching market, which in Taiwan usually consist of cram schools/buxibans. I wouldn't call working for them a good work situation generally, and if you do so, you lose a lot of the perks of being a teacher. No one-month-salary annual bonuses, no paid summers off, no access to the pension program, few salaried positions available, and very little job security when most of us are on zero-hour contracts. It is possible to get a job as a nobody with no experience, qualification, training or even relevant volunteer experience, and be thrown into work without adequate training.

The work doesn't pay nearly as well as people seem to think it does - better than more traditional teaching in Taiwan (but not necessarily elsewhere) at both public schools and universities, and better than the average twentysomething office worker, but not nearly on par with credentialed mid-career professionals in other fields. Work hours tend to be long and scattered, and you teach a lot because you need to in order to earn enough money. That gives you much less time to put care into planning lessons, let alone doing research, action research, writing, reading, giving or attending workshops or doing all of the other things I associate with a professional teaching career. Everyone encourages their teachers to seek professional development and certification, but nobody is willing to sponsor it.

And, ethically, a lot of the cram schools here, and around the world, treat their teachers like migrant laborers or are just straight-up racist or the worst kind of neoliberal "we can take what we want from you and offer you as little as possible in return" employers.

I can't say I'm "happy" with the way this industry is run nor with what those who work in it get for their efforts.

However, after spending a month among other experienced English teachers from different contexts around the world, I do have a few things I can say in defense of working in a language institute.

One more caveat before I begin: these advantages only seem to accrue to those who have accumulated experience and often credentials, and in Taiwan are often easier to come by if you stay long enough to get permanent residency. They do not necessarily apply to all new teachers.

First of all, it's easier to get uninterrupted vacation time, although that time is almost always unpaid. Many of my classmates had to fly back (I suspect at their own expense) for work-related duties at their schools partway through the program and miss a week of classes - nobody would ever ask me to do that. If I say I need a block of time off, I get it as long as I request it reasonably far enough in advance, with no "but you have to come back for these specific three days to do this specific thing" in the middle of your six weeks off" nonsense. Other than being expected to show up for class, nobody calls me up and says "you must be here for this, this and that" or "you have to do these things". I essentially have no single boss or manager.

It also means I get as much vacation time as I want, which is very useful on a Master's program and was also useful in the aftermath of my mother's illness and passing, and my dad's heart surgery less than a year later. In late 2014 I told my employers and private students that my absence would be indefinite, and that was fine. I had work to return to five months later when my family issues were more stable. When I needed to take off again just a few months later for my dad's surgery, that was fine too. When I finished the Delta, I told them to hold off on all new classes until I was done, and they did. When I decided to do this Master's program, I said I'd need a few months off over the summer and that was fine. I had free reign to choose the dates and arrange things as I pleased. If I had the money and wanted to take a year off to just do whatever, I could, and I'd still have a good chance at having work offered to me when I was ready.

And unlike many teachers, this leave is not limited to school breaks. My mom's situation started getting really serious in late autumn 2014, long before any school break. You can't plan major family upheavals for summer vacation. They happen when they happen.

The fact that this time is unpaid actually works in my favor: when you have paid leave, of course the leave you get is limited. In Taiwan that could be as little as seven days (which I think is cruel, actually), in the US perhaps two weeks, in Europe five weeks. But ultimately, there is a limit. I have no limit, as long as I have the money to finance it.

On the other side, a lot of my classmates have paid leave and don't have to go in - they have months and months of free time with a salary coming in. Some of them are taking off to just hang out in Europe for awhile, which you can do when you're being paid an expat salary in the Middle East but your university is on break (although, again, you don't get to choose when that break is). It would be great to be able to afford that, but I ultimately can't. I could move to the Middle East - there would be work for me and the pay is stupendous - but I put up with the crappy parts of working in Taiwan like the low pay and scattered hours because I want to be in Taiwan.

A second advantage is the lack of administrative hassle. I have no real administrative duties - I don't have to show up for many meetings, I don't have to do reams of paperwork, I don't have to grade heaps of tests (my IELTS classes have tests, but class sizes are kept low so it's not an onerous task). I don't have to sit in on department meetings, nor do I have to spend time doing extra activities like running a drama club or English Corner (which I'd happily do if I were paid for the extra work, but of course we never are, so I won't do them). I may only get paid for the hours I teach - with the expectation that the pay for them covers lesson planning time, though I'm not convinced it does - but I don't have a lot I have to do outside of those hours beyond planning classes.

I also appreciate that, not working in a big institution, I am not pushed into a testing culture I don't support. I don't have to teach to a test - I help prepare some learners for IELTS, but that's not the same thing - and I don't have to teach towards a test that I think has deep validity issues. I don't need to test my private students at all, nor my business students: some form of direct test of the skills we work on (e.g. giving a presentation in a presentation skills class) serves as adequate assessment for final reports. Even my IELTS students' mock tests don't count for anything other than as a way to check their skills against the demands of the test they will ultimately take. It's just not an issue I have to contend with, so I am free to adopt other methods of assessment, and feedback comes not in the form of grades but real feedback in evaluation reports and conferences. It's actually a really lovely advantage to have and a low-stress, high-efficacy way to teach in a more holistic and meaningful way.

Of course, that's my situation - I'm sure at other cram schools there are tests, and the teachers may not care for those tests, trust the results or particularly care to give them.

Although this is not true in all private teaching contexts, I really appreciate that there's no administration breathing down my neck telling me I have to do certain things in class, not all of which I'd be likely to agree are necessary, nor telling me how I must teach. I have a classmate whose administration is insistent that there be no L1 in the classroom, even though current thinking is that limited use of L1 has a place there. This is despite inviting four-star names in the TEFL world to give workshops to teachers there, who reaffirm that L1 can be put to good use in the classroom. It's "not their policy" so teachers are instructed to ignore all of that.

Nobody would dare tell me how I must teach in a similar way. Back when I worked at a chain school in Taiwan they did to some extent, but as I've moved on to take classes at better schools, I am free to implement a teaching style that aligns with my principles as I see fit with nobody looking over my shoulder or breathing down my neck. I even have a good level of freedom over the coursebooks I use, and when they are assigned, total freedom over how I use them.

Another point worth mentioning is that, at least in Taiwan, I do make more money in the private system than I would in the formal education system (unless I were to work at an international school). The gap is not as big as you might imagine, as I don't get any of the perks - annual bonus, paid summers off, a pension program - but the take-home pay for my work is still somewhat higher. People associate cram schools with low pay, but honestly, the public schools and universities, while they offer stable pay, offer less than what I currently earn. The highest figures I've seen outside the international schools are in the NT$70,000/month range, and to be frank, I find that low. And compared to wages in other parts of the world (Japan, Korea, the Middle East) it is quite low indeed. Nobody stays in Taiwan for the great salaries.

And for that better pay, I also seem to always have more free time. I almost certainly teach more in-class hours, but the lack of administrative and other work required of me means that my peers in the formal education system seem to put in longer hours.

Of course, these advantages don't accrue to every teacher in the private language school game, and newer teachers especially are more likely to find themselves in schools that have a set curriculum and way of teaching, with all of the associated tests and administrative duties, and are likely to be trained to teach in that specific way (on the other hand. newer teachers are less likely to have teaching principles formed over a long period of experience and training that they are loathe to set aside).

It is worth noting, though, that not all cram schools are created equal. In Taiwan, not everyone is a third-rate chain school or one-off with a silly name like "Mickey Bear America Funtime English ABC School" or for adults, "Oxbridge Scholar's Engrish Acadamy". The two places I take classes with are both classified for business purposes as "buxibans", but they are run more professionally than one generally , as educational institutions that, while private, are managed by people who actually care about the education they are providing. There really are better places one can work for, it's not all chum.

In short, it's not all bad. People wonder why, after seeking out all of this training and development and being easily qualified to teach in a more formal setting, why I am still teaching for hourly pay. I am not entirely in the cram school system as I take classes where I please and have my own private students, but the structure of what I do isn't all that different.

I do it because of the freedom to teach how I like, the freedom from tests and administrative work, the freedom from limits on my time off, and freedom from a school bureaucracy telling me how to do things.

Perhaps someday I'll move on and work for a university or international school (I can't imagine working with learners younger than high-school age) or more formal educational institution, but if/when I do, along with the advantages (paid summers off! A more 'prestige' job description! Perhaps time to research and publish!), I'll also be acutely aware of what I'm losing.

I just creamed my pants over this article in The Diplomat

No, really, this is excellent:

The Chinese Cult of Cairo

This is what people who have actually studied Taiwanese history have been saying for years. This is a truth that, while fairly well-known by those who know Taiwan, is rarely put in print for easy reference. It is a thing of beauty - clear, precise, accurate.

I quite literally gasped when I read it. I haven't seen something this clearly lay out the 1943-1952 history of the region...well, ever. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough, but honestly, such work is hard to come by.

Even "Accidental State", which covers this period of history ending with Dulles' final agreement with Chiang Kai-shek, gives only one paragraph to this complex string of treaties which seem opaque to many (but actually aren't), and doesn't fully explain them.

It fully explains certain myths, like the idea that Cairo and Potsdam are legally binding (wrong), that the Treaties of San Francisco and Taipei unequivocally give Taiwan to China (wrong), that the ROC has been the sole legitimate government of Taiwan since 1945 (wrong), and that international law/ the UN / the United States / the goddamn Cookie Monster considers Taiwan to be Chinese, or even settled as "the ROC" with no other interpretation needed, that the ROC believed Taiwan to be "returned" to them (false) or that these powers intended for Taiwan to be a part of China (nope), that Taiwan was "returned" to China at all (wrong) or any other manner of stupid claims.

We need more work like this to drown out China's sound and fury which signifies nothing.

For once, I have nothing to add. That should tell you all you need to know.

The Delta vs. Masters Throwdown

I've only been at Exeter for a few weeks and haven't started the assignment writing part of my course yet, so I may come back and edit this at some point in the future. However, I do feel qualified to comment on what it's like doing a modular Cambridge Delta compared to doing a Master's degree in TESOL.

In the introductory section on the first day of my MEd program, I walked into the classroom remembering this completely preposterous exchange on Facebook: the admin of a CELTA-specific group grew inexplicably angry when I ventured that a Delta was likely just as challenging as a Master's, and a Delta holder will have learned just as much as a Master's graduate (although they may have learned some different things, and certainly in different ways).

"A Master's is a one-year or several-year high-level program. A Delta can be completed in 12 weeks. There is no way a Delta can compare to a Master's," the admin insisted.

Although I had not yet started a Master's then, I was basing this suggestion on anecdotes from friends and colleagues who have done both, many if not all of whom feel Delta was actually harder. I was also considering the Ofqual rankings, which award Delta the same level (7) as a Master's. Surely they wouldn't do so for no reason. I was also considering my Delta experience, which consisted of deep and intensive exposure to the academic and practical corpus of research into teaching and learning English, from the fairly unacademic, somewhat beginner 'How to...' series all the way up to dense analyses in Applied Linguistics. Most of our work was self-directed, with the expectation that we would, after Module 1, create thoughtful and worthwhile output rather than a regurgitation of our reading.

For this insolence, I was banned from the group, but whatever. I was mostly amused by the other person's complete certainty that the Delta was the cakewalk and the Master's was the rigorous training program. I am not certain the holder of this deep and anger-inducing opinion held either degree.

That's a part of why I'm writing this - there are a lot of opinions out there, mostly by people who have taken one course or the other (but not both), or who have done neither. I'm not sure I'm better qualified than those people quite yet, but I have some experience and an 'Edit' button for future thoughts, so I figure it's worth having a go. Don't take this as my final opinion on the matter: my thoughts on this are very much a work in progress.

I also want to take some time to discuss which one is the better choice if you want to teach English in Taiwan.

The short version of my opinion is that, in fact, those who compare the Delta unfavorably to a Master's: my original supposition that they are roughly equal in difficulty and content learned seems to be holding up. The Master's program feels easier now, but I suspect that will change. What will certainly remain constant is that the way of transmitting knowledge and its intended application is very different indeed between the two types of program.

The Delta is hard. It took me three years; it's not at all true that "it can be completed in just 12 weeks". First of all, for those who do take that option, that 12 weeks is more intensive than anything you'll encounter on a Master's with the possible exception of the final stretch of thesis writing. Spread out to create a workload more similar to that of a Master's - say, completing the modular courses in quick succession rather than taking one per year as I did - a Delta will take at least a year, and likely more given the breaks between when the modules are offered. If you take Module One in September and finish in December, the next module is likely to be starting in March of the next year, finishing in June. You may have to wait until September again to take the third one, finishing again in September. Your workload will be similar during those times as that of a Master's.

That sounds an awful lot like the amount of time it takes to complete a Master's in the UK (generally one year), and nearing the amount of time it takes to complete one in the US. There is no basis for dismissing Delta on those grounds. In fact, if you contrast that to my current program, it will take me three years (exactly the amount of time it took to do a Delta), with a much more spread-out workload and likely less crying into a pillow overall (though ask me about that again in 2019).

Even if one does take the 12-week course, you are not done in 12 weeks. In that time, you crash-study for the Module 1 exam, which you generally take when the intensive program ends. Your Module 2 is complete. You receive a crash course in how to do Module 3, but you don't actually do it: that is completed after the intensive course ends and can take up to another full semester. Two semesters' worth of work, one of which is highly intensive? Again, that sounds similar to a Master's program.

As for the content, so far it's much the same. If anything, I feel sympathy for my non-Delta-holding classmates who are currently taking Language Awareness. I remember having to learn that, and what I learned is not that different from what's being taught in the core module, although I tended to focus more on pure mechanics (e.g. the actual phonology system of English including use of the phonemic chart, manner of articulation and the like rather than ideas of what phonology is and how one might teach it). The basics of testing, approaches to teaching and issues in teaching  are also much the same, and it seems as though principles of teaching and syllabus design will be similar, as well. The same names - Richards, Nunan, Krashen, Thornbury, Kumaravadivelu, Kachru, Vygotsky, Tomlinson to name a few - pop up in both.

So far, I have found the content in both to be of about equivalent difficulty, although I'm interested to see what writing my Master's assignments will be like. I may well change my mind.

That said, the aim and application of the content is radically different. Delta is practical - any theory you learn (and you do learn quite a bit) is meant to bolster your classroom practice more or less immediately. Master's programs vary, but the Exeter MEd TESOL leans more toward the cerebral end - learning theory because it develops your knowledge base as a teacher. That's a compliment: it's exactly what I wanted after the relentless practicality of Delta. Or, as we discussed on the first day, programs like this are a part of teacher development. They are not teacher training. Teacher training is about making teachers more immediately effective in the classroom, whereas teacher development is about cultivating the knowledge that informs what one teaches in the classroom. I've had teacher training - I did a Delta. Although professional development - like learning a language - is never really over, I don't need another program like that. I needed, and found, a program focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of what I did in that program.

A few examples of what I mean when I say Delta was training, whereas the Master's is development:

On Delta, we did have to do background reading but what really mattered was how we executed our ideas in class, or how well we built a syllabus as a result. For Module Two, the written assignments mattered, but what really made or broke a candidate was their assessed teaching. You could know all the theory in the world and it wouldn't matter if enough of your classes sucked (ahem, were deemed substandard in execution), whereas you could pass the written assignment with an imperfect grounding in theory and still do well if your classes were amazing as rated against the course specifications.

On the Master's, there are no practicums. Nobody is going to assess my teaching - I'll mostly be assessed based on my written work. On one hand that's a shame, as I find observation and feedback to be the most efficient route to improved teaching. On the other, I'm relieved because I've been through it already, and what happens in a one-hour class as per Delta specifications cannot fully capture the depth and breadth of what goes on in a real class over time. In either case, having walked over that bed of coals, it will be good to immerse myself more deeply in theory without necessarily having to stop when I reach a point that a grounding in it is sufficient for me to teach a given one-hour class. It's not a benefit that is as immediately apparent, but over time I do feel it will grow to inform my work in valuable ways.

The assessed lessons were far and away the hardest - yet most practical - part of the Delta. There are ways in which I am sure a Master's will be more challenging, however. The closest you get to writing a thesis on Delta is your Module Three assignment. However, the main paper is capped at 4500 words, with everything else going in appendices. Although my final product easily topped 100 pages, the main paper only took up 17 of them. I can't imagine a passing Master's thesis with that ratio.

I also suspect - and I am usually right about these things - that our assignments will be judged to a very high standard. Once my blissful month in England is over and I hit the books in Taipei, I suspect what seems very interesting but basically easy now will become much harder extremely quickly. The British educational system, especially at the Master's level, places a high value on self-directed reading and output. It only makes sense that the input sessions, then, would be the breeziest part of the course, but are not at all indicative of what will be expected of us once we start producing. I have a suspicion that, academically speaking, much more will be expected of our written work in terms of depth and breadth of research covered as well as ideas birthed from that process than Delta ever expected. The trade-off is that we will not be expected to demonstrate our ability to actually write a lesson plan or teach a class (we do, however, have to demonstrate our ability to create materials, conceptualize a teacher development or training course and critique as well as write a test).

That said, I can't deny that these past two weeks have felt more like a lovely vacation with some interesting TESOL classes, in a way that Delta never did. Delta was pure - and purifying - pain. An intensive Delta (or even CELTA) is several weeks of all-day input with further work on the weekends. You don't get a day off, ever. "Intensive" summer input sessions for a Master's are four, maybe five days a week where only occasionally does one have more than three hours' of class to attend, with some reading that is not onerous. Yesterday we went to the seaside town of Beer. Today we'll go to Powderham Castle and have cream tea. It's so very intensive.

I'm still surprised I never descended into functional alcoholism on Delta, whereas here at Exeter, if I drink too much it will be because of all the pub-crawling students in Britain do, not because the course is particularly stressful. We'll see how I feel about that when I actually start writing, however.

I am learning a lot, though. For example, what I had thought the term 'construct validity' meant turns out to be not at all what it means when considered in depth. We'll be going more deeply into the concepts of validity and reliability than I ever had to on Delta. Delta Module One had one section on issues in ELT, whereas this course offers a whole module on it (and the issues - such as culture clash in the classroom, the native speaker myth and others are pertinent and worthwhile). Delta only touched on materials development in that you had to create or adapt materials, with no background reading on how to do so necessary, whereas I'm now taking an entire module on exactly that.

Another benefit of actually studying TESOL at a university is that I am an educator by profession. Training in how to execute my work better is important, but an educator who doesn't herself seek higher education feels like an oxymoron of sorts. It will also loop back to training in that eventually I am likely to find myself teaching EAP classes to non-native-speaking graduate students. How can I claim to be qualified in teaching a graduate student how to absorb content and then write and present it if I have not done a graduate program myself?

It is also important to repeat something I pointed out in my last post: I have learned more from my classmates, most of whom are non-native speakers, and had more productive discussions with them in two weeks than I have in ten years of interacting with mostly average, often unqualified teachers in Taiwan who were mostly hired on the basis of their being native speakers rather than their having any training (or in some cases ability) in teaching. It's cruel but true. If you only focus on the practical, you begin to treat education as a purely practical channel. It then becomes about market forces - students become clients, teachers are hired based on optics more than ability, and the goal is a happy customer, which is not necessarily an educated customer despite education being the ostensible goal. I've heard more justifications for this practical approach than I care to consider, including defenses a lack of qualifications on the part of both teachers and school owners (not principals, not head educators - owners), with little emphasis on what is actually learned if that is not necessary to create happy clients. I appreciate getting away from all that.

Delta never advocated such an approach, but the idea that learning should only ever be immediately practical (being specifically trained for some kind of job, without actually knowing much beyond that in any deeper way) eventually brings one to that logical conclusion.

I'm happy that I did Delta first, though. If I had done the MEd first, I'd be getting a lot of developmental input with not as much guidance as I'd like on how to actually use it. I might have started to question why I was doing it at all. What I needed when I did Delta was exactly what it provided: practical and efficient training to be better in the classroom. Having that, it's time to dive deeper - something Delta doesn't offer. If I'd never done the MEd, I'd be fighting a nagging feeling of hollowness, that there is so much more to how we teach that I never touched upon because it was not immediately necessary, regardless of whether it might be someday.

I have to say I also appreciate the access to academic journals that I get as a real live student, rather than a sort of in-limbo person in training. Delta was difficult, in part, because I needed academic references but didn't always have access to them. The Distance Delta attempts to remedy that, but ultimately the online library is insufficient.

A final note on Master's programs that is worth mentioning: more than one person I've talked to regarding more than one program has mentioned that many of them are full of a certain cohort. The students are mostly young women and mostly inexperienced - mostly candidates who might struggle doing a Delta, if they are accepted on a module at all. They mostly have to get the basics down of TESOL theory and practice. Yes, they are mostly from China, but that shouldn't be a point against them (I only bring it up because it's a recurring theme in conversations I've had with those familiar with MA TESOL programs in several institutions, including some quite prestigious ones).

This is not at all specific to Exeter - in fact, the person who first mentioned it to me did so in the context of a completely different university - and certainly does not apply to the summer intensive program I am currently doing. That is to say, if that's the common denominator you are teaching to, someone who comes in with a Delta and a wealth of experience might feel that the work is not sufficiently challenging. In fact, the person I talked to told me straight-up that I would be disappointed with the academic rigor such a program and it's a major reason why I applied to this program specifically.

I'll end with a short exploration of which path is right for someone who wants to make their career in Taiwan. I wish I had an easy answer, and could just shout "Master's!" or "Delta!" and have that be it, but as with most worthwhile issues, it's more complicated than that.

If your goal is to simply be an excellent teacher, and you have a good work situation in which teaching well is generously remunerated and which doesn't require a Master's, get a Delta (it should go without saying that I recommend you get a CELTA regardless). The Delta is training, and you will be well-trained. You'll have exactly the amount of theory you need to do your job effectively, but not much more. Get a Delta if you want to go into teacher training as well, if you don't have a teaching license of PGCE - you can train teachers without one, but you are not likely to be a great trainer.

Keep in mind, though, that the Delta is not recognized by the Taiwanese government because they have some who-knows-what-dunce in charge of foreign language education policy. You get Delta to better yourself, and it's a good filter for separating good employers from bad when interviewing (pro tip: a good employer will recognize the value of a Delta and reward you accordingly. A bad one will not know or care what a Delta is and why it matters - if you have a Delta, don't ever take a job with a school that doesn't care about it unless you're desperate).

If, however, your goal is to explore employment opportunities outside of the deeply exploitative cram school industry (although good cram schools do exist - I teach classes through two of them), get the Master's. That is your entree into university teaching, may help you get into international school work and should be sufficient for public school teaching if you have permanent residency or a marriage visa (for everyone else, a teaching license is specifically required). A Master's degree is recognized, and therefore matters more for this type of advancement. If you do, though, I'd recommend getting a CELTA or Trinity TESOL certification as well, simply for the practical component. I know Master's degree holders who have done that and said it was worthwhile, as their graduate programs never actually taught them how to teach in the way that a series of practicums with targeted input sessions can.

If you've had good training, with a solid teacher trainer who took the time to observe you and help you grow as a teacher as you gained experience, get the Master's. Do this especially if you are interested in the theories and ideas that inform your beliefs and priciples as a teacher.

Do not, however, mistake being trained in one school's specific - and potentially not-research based - 'house curriculum style' for actual training. If you have unbiased, outside feedback saying that you are already effective in the classroom - perhaps you have a CELTA or equivalent and did a lot with it, or received good but informal training - get the Master's.

If you think you might leave Taiwan someday, and you want to teach but are worried about how to get a good job doing it in another country, get the Master's, or a teaching license if you want to work with children. It's an unfair but true fact that outside of Europe - if you can get a teaching job there, which as an American is nearly impossible - and possibly the Middle East, the Delta just won't be widely recognized enough to help you.

If that's never happened and you'd be going from "online TEFL certification and being thrown in a classroom without guidance" to "Master's student", get the Delta (or at least get it first).

If you think you'd like to do both, get the Delta first. It will not only give you the practical framework  that helps make sense of the theory in real contexts, but many programs will give you credit for it which will reduce your overall workload and fees on the Master's.

If you need something you can start from Taiwan, and want to start as soon as possible, get the Delta. You might have trouble finding a Module Two tutor, but everything else can be done with minimal problems from Taiwan. That's not true for a Master's. Although some Taiwanese universities do offer graduate programs in TESOL, I am not convinced of the quality or international portability of any of them. It is similarly hard to put together the time and money to do a full-time program abroad and then come back, but options like the program I'm currently at at Exeter are available. 

If you not only want to expand your career horizons but dive into both training-by-fire and deep theory, get both.

After all, nobody except the twin devils of money or time ever said you had to choose.