Kicked to the Curb: Moving House in Taipei When You Don't Want To

One ordinary Monday night, I came home from work, turned the key, opened the door and thought the same thing I think every night: I'm happy to be home. I love my home. My husband and I are so lucky to be able to live here! I may just be renting, but wow. What real estate heaven is this? Downtown Taipei! A tatami tea nook! An elevator in a city full of walk-ups! We were allowed to paint our walls! Natural light! Friendly neighbors - great for practicing Chinese! Three bedrooms - we had an office and a guest room! When I walked in the door I'd sometimes let out an audible "aaah" - this is home.

In all my previous apartments - even the nicer ones - I'd never quite felt that way. In those places I'd always known I'd be moving on, and I hadn't had the money to decorate the way I really wanted to (think rural Taiwan meets vintage Japan meets cool minimalist Turkish Mediterranean meets colorful India). With this apartment, I could afford to do what I wanted - my tastes are not expensive, but they are specific.

The next day I came home, turned the key, opened the door and my heart sank.

I had gotten a phone call from our landlady - a Buddhist nun who lives in a monastery in southern Taiwan - earlier that evening. A pit had formed in my stomach as she told me that we would have to find a new place to live. Her sister wanted to move into our place. I didn't ask for details because I already understood: apartments in Taiwan may be in one person's name, but they're often not really considered to be owned by that person alone. They're family-owned in spirit, and who lives there is often a family decision. That apartment was as much her sister's as hers. I wanted to yell and cry - let her know that I felt like she'd just sucker-punched me. But one does not yell and cry at a nun who hasn't done anything wrong. I couldn't make my problem her problem. I couldn't even be angry with her - her voice cracked, too, when she told me. She said she was so sorry, and she wanted us to find an apartment we'd really be happy with so we could take two, three months if necessary.

But it didn't make me feel better.

I had to get back to work, but I managed to croak out the bad news to Brendan and somehow face down the last hour and a half before I could go home. He looked like he was going to cry; this was really something, he rarely displays emotions as openly as I do.

My heart cracked. A knot formed in my gut. My eyes smarted and my head swam. I describe it in physical terms because that's how bad it hit me: it physically hurt.

So I looked around at our custom blue ombre curtains, our aqua blue wall, our high-quality faux-wood floor (restaurant grade, very durable), our antique milk glass pendant lamp that perfectly fit the tatami-floored nook it was hanging in. Some children were still playing, at that late hour, in the little courtyard that our window overlooked. Oh yes - no traffic noise. And I thought - I'm going to have to give all of this up. I don't want to! No! I refuse! I'd planned to spend several years, or more, in this apartment! I...I won't! I...have to. It's not my decision.

I'd given up fantastic apartments before - the one with the full view from my bedroom picture window over the Potomac River and National Mall in Washington, DC. The sweet little townhouse with wood floors and generous kitchen. But I'd chosen to give them up - I wasn't pushed. I'd regretted leaving them behind but I was moving on to other things - to other countries. This was different.

Then, as we began the search for a new place - still ongoing - I started beating myself up over my feelings. There were refugees fleeing their homes in other parts of the world with the clothes on their back and not much else, in the direst of circumstances. Through history people have been taken from their homes against their will, to be kicked out of the country, beaten and interrogated, imprisoned or killed. Millions, if not billions, of people around the world live in sub-par conditions, many in slums that would turn your stomach. What a First World Problem! I have no right to be feeling this way! I got a slice of real estate heaven and now I was being made to trade it in for what would probably be a not-so-tasty slice of real estate mediocrity. Boo fuckin' hoo. Wah wah wah, poor little white girl can't keep her dream apartment because she doesn't own it. I felt like crud and I didn't even have sympathy for myself.

Some folks told me to be optimistic - maybe we'd find a place that was even better, minimizing the flaws of the old place. Not likely - it had so few flaws. Maybe we'd find a place with other great features that would make up for the features we might have to compromise on. Hah - except I'm not willing to compromise on features like natural light and floors that aren't hideous, not to mention not freezing in the winter and having the apartment be hotter than the outside in summer (a major problem with one apartment we'd had). I was told point blank that I had better "find my gratitude" that I got to live in a great place at all, even if I had to move on.

None of that advice was bad, but it didn't work.

Considering the situations of those far less fortunate than myself did put things into perspective and was a reminder not to get too dramatic about the whole thing, but it didn't spackle over the hole in my gut. I still felt like crap. "Find your gratitude", while it came from the right body of advice, sounded more condescending than helpful. "You'll find something as good or better" - but I don't want an unknown quantity of 'as good or better', I want what I already have.

For the next two days I walked around with my stomach in a knot and my head a ball of fuzz. Occasionally - over reminders even tangentially related to how much I loved my apartment - an incorporeal spear would fly out of the ether and run me through, right in the belly. I would get into a taxi and think of how easy it was to catch a cab right outside my front door - schwam! I'd see sunlight through a window and think of how great the natural light is in our living room - stab! I'd look at a teal blue pen and think of the brilliant color we were able to paint one livingroom wall - fwoosh!

So I started really thinking about it - why did I feel this way? Over an apartment? Why was I so crushed over what was the very definition of a First World Problem? Why couldn't I "find my gratitude" or at least be optimistic about things? Why did I want to be so dramatic when the situation really didn't call for it?

Then it hit me like another knife in the gut: this is exactly how I've felt during bad breakups. This lint-brained, disemboweled, harpooned-by-the-universe, even-the-sunshine-makes-me-sad feeling is identical in every way to heartbreak. I was going through a breakup: I'd been dumped by my apartment! In the world of real estate, my true love! I'd been hoping for a proposal (I was working out a strategy for saving up the necessary deposit to buy the place - the equivalent of looking at wedding magazines before you're engaged!) and instead I got told 'it's over'. I was mooning over an apartment the way I might moon over an ex with whom I hadn't wanted things to end!

At least when you break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, you have the option of being single for awhile as you heal, not looking for anyone else as you get over those "I don't want anyone else, not even anyone better, I want him/her!" feelings. You can become open to a relationship on your own time. This felt like being dumped, and then pushed into a new relationship you weren't ready for, while you were still thinking "but I don't want anyone else!" We looked at other places but none excited us - even ones that would have been fine before we found our dream apartment were not satisfactory after we'd been to paradise. "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"? No, we'd have been much better off if we'd never fallen in love with that apartment, never found a place that we could truly turn into a 'home' without owning it.

Over the next few days details emerged: we offered to pay more rent (sometimes landlords in Taiwan, rather than raising your rent, will ask you to move out on false pretenses so they can charge more to another renter - I don't get the logic of this at all, as much as I try to be culturally openminded) but that had not been her intention. Her sister visited us and explained things - nearly in tears herself. She was losing her own home, which she'd owned and lived in for decades, through what I feel was no fault of her own. I won't tell her story here - those details belong to her narrative and aren't for me to blast all over the Internet - but the reason for her sudden need to live in what I thought of as our apartment (it wasn't ours, but I thought of it that way) became clear. She said not to worry about the painted walls - she wouldn't make us return them to their original white, and reiterated that we could have all the time we needed - six months, ten, whatever, more than the original two or three - to find a place we were really happy with. We offered to find her a place and pay the rent deducted from our own as the sister would lose that income stream anyway, but she didn't want to deal with a landlord (something she had never done before in her life). What could we say? Her anxiety about landlords was odd - at least she could speak to them in her native language, I had to do so in a language I'd learned with little formal instruction! - but it was her right. This was a very generous offer and quite fair.

I'm only now starting to feel better - just realizing that what I was going through was a breakup, a hellacious "this is nobody's fault, I still love you but we have to end it" dumping, helped me get a grip on things. It led me to these ideas, which lifted me out of the gutter more effectively than the advice I'd been given.

1.) It's okay to feel this way. It seems silly, but breakup heartache seems unjustified to those not going through it, too. You have a right to feel this way. Just feel it for awhile. Like with a breakup, it'll help.

2.) Everybody bounces back from breakups. It takes time, but you do eventually feel better, even if in the beginning all you can do is remind yourself that at some unknown point in the future you will be okay. You will bounce back from this. Just let it happen.

3.) It's okay to not want to "find your gratitude" or be optimistic when you don't really feel that way. You can have a different mindset: looking for diamonds in the turd sandwich may help some, but it's also perfectly acceptable to be a pessimist and call a turd sandwich a turd sandwich because it is one. You do not need to announce that it is actually a very stinky diamond mine. If it helps you more to say "My, this appears to be a big pile of bullshit" when a big pile of bullshit lands on your head, then go with it. Worked for me!

4.) Just remember - the sister who is moving in has lost basically everything. You have not. It's the more personal version of "remember that so many people have it a lot worse than you do", and fulfills a similar purpose. You don't have to automatically feel better upon considering the issues facing others (it really is OK to feel your honest feelings about your own situation while at the same time being aware of how your situation compares to that of others), but it can put your own issues into perspective.

5.) Don't regret making your rented space your "home". It's probably "easier" to not home-ify your rental, so if you ever have to leave you can do so without too much heartache, but you live here and now, and not at some probably-undefinable point in the future when you own your own place and can home-ify it as much as you want. Don't spend these years living in a house that's not a home. 'Tis better to have loved and lost...yadda yadda yadda.

6.) Remember your priorities: of all the bad things that could have happened in life - including the dangers that might befall my husband, my cat, my parents, sister and in-laws, my closest friends, my life abroad, my freelance career, a health crisis, an accident or worse, this is really the least "bad" thing of all the bad things. I have my husband and my kitty: together we three will be okay. If I had to choose another thing that is important to me to sacrifice so I could keep my apartment, I can't imagine what I'd choose. I'd probably say "okay, evil god, then go ahead and take the apartment".

We still haven't found a new place yet - although we trawl the online rental listings daily - and have the luxury of time. I still don't feel fully better, and I'm still not sure I have fully accepted the situation: my head has accepted that my home (effectively my "ex") won't be available for a "getting back together", but my heart still has this vacuum-like sucking feeling at the center. But, like moving on from an ex, I know eventually it will be okay.

MY BIG RANT

Everybody should go read this right now:

It's titled "Mearsheimer, Taiwan and the Future" but I think the provisional title of "Taiwan's problem isn't China, it's America's foreign policy commentariat" is more accurate.

I have a lot to say on this - not only because I agree with Michael but because my degree is in International Affairs with a focus on Asian Studies (fat lot of good that did me), so I'm used to hearing this sophomoric garbage. I spent four years immersed in it. Spent four years in the George Washington University Elliott School of Talking About Foreign Affairs Only Insofar As They Can Be Manipulated to The US's Advantage. Probably came out a little stinky myself. Four years in DC around these people was enough to put me off a career in the foreign service forever (plus I don't think I could be sent on a tour of service and be able to "support" American foreign policy in that country - almost doesn't matter which country)!

It lays out exactly what I - and many others - think of a lot of the "educated" views on "foreign affairs" that I hear spewed about Taiwan. Even people I've met who otherwise seem intelligent and well-studied pull this crap: not long ago, after meeting someone once, my main reaction was "don't dislike him, seems like an okay guy, but in terms of foreign affairs he's wrong about everything".

What's worse is that they apply the same logic to a lot of crap that goes on in Taiwan and China - they adopt KMT word-puke about how they're a "reformed" party (who still works to inhibit press freedom, curtail the will of the people, hoard wealth and work to get their sons elected), or how 228 and the White Terror are best "forgiven and forgotten" because they are "not relevant" to politics today (yeah, tell that to the families who still don't know for sure what happened to their relatives who disappeared, and the memories of the deceased found in mass graves still being discovered), or how the KMT has "changed" so it doesn't matter that they do not fully acknowledge their part in the genocide.

They apply it to the failure of ECFA: "Ma Ying-jiu played his hand the best he could, although it's not perfect it's been better for Taiwan than if it had not been implemented" - horseshit! China has such a boner for Taiwan's skilled labor force and high-tech R&D/industrial capacity that they'd have struck a much better deal if the Ma administration had bothered to fight for one - the deal that came out was an obvious plan for economic integration, not the best interests of the majority of middle-income Taiwanese. It's so clearly a two-pronged plan to enrich the wealthy and keep the stock market up (so supporters can say "it worked! Look at the stock market! That's proof!" while ignoring the stagnation across the rest of Taiwan) and to pull down Taiwan's economy such that the people will be pushed closer to believing that the only way out is further integration that I can't believe how few people see it.

They apply it to "the Taiwanese people support keeping the status quo, not independence" - technically true but also kind of horseshit: they support the status quo because they have to, not because they want to, and it is ridiculous and misleading to imply that they'd choose their current ambiguous political status vis-a-vis China if they could determine the future of Taiwan without threat or fear from China.

They apply it to history - actually believing that "the Asian view of what it means to be a nation" matters (no, what the Taiwanese want for their country matters, and they don't, just going by the data, generally support your 'Asian view of being a nation' crap), or "Taiwan was a part of China in antiquity" (no, it wasn't - do I really need to get into this?), or "the Taiwanese still view themselves as Chinese" (only sort of - and I still view myself as "Armenian, British, Swiss and Polish", so I should draw and quarter myself and have the four pieces of me sent to those countries? Yeah, no) or "Taiwan was ceded to China/the KMT when the Japanese left" (patently not true and provably so).

They apply it to domestic politics: "more and more Taiwanese are adopting ROC (meaning KMT, really) symbols as their own (which implies that the KMT, currently in power, has the moral authority to speak for the people). Yep, no, not when the government's approval rating is so low - 9.2% last I checked - that people who still support them are actually called "9-point-2-ers" in Chinese!

While sometimes valid points are made, and sometimes ideas - even if I disagree with them, are intelligently formed or have merit - the vast majority of stuff I hear along these lines is pure, unadulterated, Blue Sky horseshit.

I haven't been able, so far, to articulate my thoughts on this crap commetary as well as Michael's post (he managed to say his piece without once using the term 'horseshit', and I am genetically unable to), which is a shame because I've run into more than a few of those bumbling "the only thing worth putting your money on is realpolitik" foreigners who have adopted Beijing thought-vomit into their own commentary, and then acted like they're impartial, objective observers of the situation.

Turton calls out the "ruddy-faced foreigners" who regurgitate this crap in expat bars - and he's right. There's a reason I don't spend a lot of time talking to these folks - you can't debate with them, you can't argue with them, and yes, I do feel they can be horribly condescending at times to a young-looking woman who disagrees with them (yes, I'm calling sexism, and yes, I'll probably be eviscerated for that, but I don't care) - and a reason why you don't often meet people with more nuanced views in expat bars: those of us who are on the same side as Turton in this debate tend not to go to expat bars! We just can't take the reek of the bullshit! But there are more of us on the "annexation is not inevitable, spouting unfounded 'realpolitik' as a stand-in for actual views is preposterous" side than you think: we just tend to keep to ourselves.

And it kind of horrifies me that while Beijing is decidedly losing the charm offensive, the soft-power push, to win over the Taiwanese people (which honestly is simply not going to happen, now or ever), they seem to be winning the push to brainwash expat and "foreign policy expert" bloviators.

A final note after my little rant - for years I've tried to encourage people to stop using the phrase "reunification" and instead use the more accurate "unification" - "re-" implies something torn asunder that is being repaired, or something being returned to a previous state. That is simply not the case with China and Taiwan. I wonder what would happen if I went whole-hog and encouraged the use of "annexation" over any verb that implies "unity"? Probably a lot of annoyed expats who think they know better would talk down to me. Yet another reason not to circulate too much in those circles.

Next up: more happy pictures of Bagan, Myanmar. Stay tuned.

Rangoon In Photos

Had a lot going on in life lately - went to Myanmar (Burma), found out we have to move because the landlady will be letting her sister live here more or less permanently (I'm devastated and Brendan is upset too, although he doesn't show it as much), lots of post-Chinese-New-Year work.

So, in lieu of actually posting something, here are some photos from Rangoon, with more photos of other parts of Myanmar to follow.




I really enjoyed Yangon (Rangoon) - it's quieter and more manageable than other capital cities in the developing world (I realize it's no longer the capital, but for all intents and purposes it may as well be), and a lot of quiet, faded, somewhat melancholic charm still exists (well, the melancholy has probably been settling over the city over time). In some ways, it's like a smaller, less European version of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. It lacks the decent public transportation of other cities but makes up for it with cheap, mostly honest cab drivers.



And, beyond the temples and Raj-era architecture, it has a few of its own colorful, eccentric gems.





It's got a night life and street food scene not too different from Taipei's: what it lacks in full night markets it makes up for roadside stands selling Burmese, Thai, Indian and Chinese treats and beer gardens, mostly serving noodles, hamburgers and Chinese-style ("Burmese Chinese") food.



Rangoon is also incredibly diverse - it is not uncommon to see a guy who looks thoroughly Chinese chatting, in Burmese, with a guy who is obviously South Indian in ancestry, Burmese both being one of their native languages, while a Bamar guy nods in time with the conversation. In fact, we did see that.





I did not enjoy the gauntlet-like sidewalks or dim, hazy air, but I did enjoy the vibrant street life, roadside tea shops with low stools (well, my back didn't really enjoy the stools), the temples plopped down in traffic circles and the general time-capsule-just-opened eccentricity of the place...although I do realize that urban character, partly a result of being shut off from the rest of the world for so long, comes at a steep price to the people and the economy they live in.







Everywhere you go, you see Buddhas and stupas, Buddhas and stupas. While after awhile they all do start to look the same, if you don't let yourself get too dulled by the Buddhas-and-stupas you'll see that they're all quite different in style and design (well, the Buddhas are. The stupas really all do look about the same). Different sizes, details, clothing, colors, facial expressions, the lot.

Welcome to Junior High

A remarkable bout of note-passing between two idiots

China: "Do U like me? Yes/No"
KMT: "I like u  but lets not rush, im dating the Taiwanese ppl but they don't know I really like u lol "
China: "4get the taiwanese ppl, they r dumb! u cn b mine haha lol  u"
KMT: "haha yeah lol i dont really care abt them anyway lets be 2gether 4ever"

Keeping Women in Tech: a worldwide survey

So I've just come back from a wonderful trip to Burma, and am excited to put pictures up. However, I took over 2,000 pictures and haven't even sorted through half of them yet, so it's going to take a few more days before I can make that post (or possibly, series of posts).

For now...

This interesting article popped up in the Washington Post today, and I thought I'd link it here.

I hear a lot of hooey about how there aren't a lot of women in STEM fields because "women jst aren't interested in it", or "it's not as appealing to women" Bullshit. To wit:

"The study finds that gender bias underpins why these women either don’t think they can get ahead or are choosing to leave their organizations. One-third of U.S. women in what the report calls “lab-coat, hard-hat and geek workplace cultures” feel excluded from social networks at their jobs (that number is 53 percent in India). Meanwhile, 72 percent of women in the United States and 78 percent of women in Brazil perceive bias in their performance evaluations."
It's not about these fields not being appealing to women, it's about women feeling pushed out, unwelcome, and purposely stalled/kept back from achieving their best.

I don't think the study included Taiwan, but combining the countries surveyed (including Taiwan's Big Bad Neighbor, China) which are thankfully not all Western, along with my own knowledge and experience interacting with people in the tech industry in Taiwan, I am confident in asserting that this is a problem in Taiwan, as well. 

I've taught classes in which the only woman in that company I've met has been a secretary or HR representative. I've eaten dinner in big-company fabs and office cafeterias where all you see, all around you, is men (maybe a smattering of women in office clothes that hint at their working in a lay department). I've met women in those industries who speak to being the only woman in an office full of men, or who have graphed their performance evaluations to show that there have been dips - despite their best efforts and corporate promises that maternity leave will not impact your performance evaluation - the same years they've taken maternity leave. I've talked to people who admit to doing things like gossiping about new "hot" (or "cute") female hires and using their employee numbers to refer to them (so they, and their employee photo, will be easy to look up). Those same men have not understood why that's undermining to their female colleagues and women in general. When you're judged more on your appearance than abilities generally - and women demonstrably are - and then your appearance becomes a major conversation point (not your abilities), and you're treated differently from male hires, not because you're better or you stand apart based on your work but because of your face, that's a big fucking problem. It further undermines the credibility of your work and puts your appearance, not your work, first and foremost. But that's not something easily understood, and it's taken time for me to get my point across regarding just how big of a problem it really is. 

It's a huge problem, and I'm sick of it being dismissed with "women just aren't interested in STEM." BULL. SHIT. It's time we a.) recognized that the issue is actually one of systemic, institutionalized sexism and b.) did something about it. In Taiwan and around the world.

Daydreaming

Sunset in Prague

 Just a quick thought, nothing terribly brilliant or world-changing, but I felt like blogging it.

A lot has been written about the benefits of travel - and there are certainly many obvious ones. Travel is not a material object so it won't bog down your life (but it's not especially environmentally friendly); money spent traveling can help local communities if done right; travel never goes out of style or gets 'worn out' the way objects do; it can be a learning experience - learning new languages, about new cultures, or just what foreign food in its original setting tastes like; you can make new friends; you can expand your worldview; you can prod yourself to become a better and more educated, worldly person; it helps people overcome fears, pickiness/snobbiness and prejudices.


Bus stop near Cafe Mondegar in Mumbai


Mountain views in Sri Lanka

That's all great and I agree with it all (although it doesn't work on everyone).

But one benefit of travel that nobody seems to have written about is how much higher quality your daydreams are when you have a mental store of 'awesome places' you can check out to! Whenever the world is getting you down, or you're stuck waiting somewhere, or "mindfulness" is just not working out for you at that moment, you have so many more daydream scenarios available than the average person.


King Boat Festival in Taiwan

Maybe I'm waiting for my number to be called at the doctor's office. Then I'm riding an overcrowded bus to downtown Madurai from the post office, crossing the dried-up riverbed dotted with grazing cattle and the ruins of a temple. Or on a bus on a stretch of road with nothing to see out the window - maybe in one of the more drab, industrial parts of Zhonghe. Then I'm taking a walk up the road and over a small hill from the small Sumatran town of Kersik Tua and seeing the volcano in the distance framed by a group of schoolgirls in long white skirts and white hijab. Maybe I'm walking down a particularly uninteresting section of road - around Wanlong on Roosevelt Road perhaps - and then I'm standing on Galata Bridge with the great mosques on one side and Galata Tower on the other, eating stuffed mussels with Brendan as the sun sets on Istanbul. Maybe I'm waiting a little too long at the supermarket checkout - except I'm not, I'm trying to throw stones into a creek near Lake Karakul so we can cross over the freezing water.


Stuffed mussels in Turkey


The Paris Opera

It's even better when you have old scenarios and situations in your head, things that went down in other places years ago that can offer some fresh new insights or ideas if picked up and examimed - like little multi-facted, light-catching crystal tchotchkes - when you have a bit of free time. What are the implications of my friend and former coworker in China being fired for being "too close to the foreigners"? Why did Amma (my host 'mother' in India) say that it's 'normal for a man to sometimes hit his wife, you just have to accept it' and what experiences in her seemingly comfortable life led her to believe that that's true? What was up with that guy in Sanliurfa who seemed so friendly until we complained that the teahouse had tried to cheat us, and in that moment turned on us?


Karakul Lake in Xinjiang


The lights in Hong Kong (probably Kowloon, not Wan Chai, but...)

Of course everyone has these moments in their pasts that they escape to occasionally when daydreaming, it's just that travel gives you more of them, and quite likely a more diverse array of memories to boot! If I hadn't been to, say, Bangladesh, I couldn't add to my store of potential daydream-meditations the memory of the Bengali government officials I had to register with on my way to Tetulia in the far north, who decided (without my ever implying as much) that I was a "journalist", not a tourist, because what tourist wants to go to Tetulia? And how I got a free "government tour" out of the whole fiasco which was actually pretty cool and fun. Or maybe they knew I wasn't really a journalist (I never said I was, because I wasn't!) but just felt it was their job to courteously show me around their prefecture? Who knows, but without that experience, I'd probably just be daydreaming about, I dunno, eating at some restaurant I usually eat at or how I'd like a coffee or that I should e-mail my mom.


Hiking in Cappadocia


Day trip to Kamakura in Japan

I don't even think this takes away from "mindfulness" (quotation marks = I'm cynical about the whole idea). The point of mindfulness is to stop thinking about the "next thing". There's nothing contradictory in taking time to meditate on past experiences - especially when you want to escape a temporarily boring situation by mentally checking out - as long as you don't get bogged down in overthinking inconsequential problems.


Boating in Palawan, the Philippines


Aswan in Egypt

I imagine all of these travel memories compiled together like a big old notebook scrawled in my own handwriting, with the pages peppered down the sides with a confetti of multicolored stick-tabs. The coding system would be completely foreign to everybody else, but is immediately familiar to me. You know, like an old notebook would be! That yellow tab there is me sitting in Cafe Mondegar in dowtown Bombay crying over a plate of masala scrambled eggs because I was flying out the next day and I didn't want to be (even though I was going to England!). That blue one is the twilight hour in downtown Prague when all of the statues become silhouettes. The hot pink one is first touching down in Hong Kong and wandering, jetlagged, through an unfamiliar Wan Chai looking for my hotel. The orange one is breakfast at Cafe Coca Cola in Panama City. The dun-colored one is wandering the ruins near Aswan, in southern Egypt, in the late afternoon and then drinking karkadei (hibiscus juice) by the Nile. That shiny black one is the shiny black onyx Buddha, the only one in a line of identical gold Buddhas, in Vientiane. That bright green one is Ella in the mountains of Sri Lanka, and the aqua blue one is riding a little motorboat to snorkeling stops on karst islands in El Nido, on the northern tip of Palawan Island in the Philippines. The purple one is hiking the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall of China with Brendan. The sky blue one is every ride I've taken up the terrifying road over Hehuan Mountain, and the black and white striped one is the face of a ba jia jiang on the beach in Donggang.


Cafe Coca Cola in Panama City


Tetulia in Bangladesh

When I'm bored I run my brain-fingers down the side of this mental notebook until I land on a tab I like, flip open the page, and boom! I'm gone.


Isla Ometepe in Nicaragua


Kersik Tua, Sumatra, Indonesia

Doesn't matter where I am - I could be on Ometepe, or hiking in Cappadocia, or wandering the Paris Opera with my parents.


View from Hehuan Mountain in Taiwan

What's important is that I'm gone.



View from a bus window in Madurai, India

Reaction: "Downsides of Living in Taiwan"

Taiwan Explorer (formerly My Kafkaesque Life) has an interesting and more-thoughtful-than-most post on the downsides of living in Taiwan.

My reaction to it is long enough that I think it deserves its own post here, but definitely go read his thoughts first!

1.) You will always be a 'waiguoren'

Yes and no. Yes, in that the vast, vast, vast majority of people you meet will always think of you as "NOT US", or someone different, and there's nothing you can do about that. Taiwan Explorer covered that part well.

But there are inroads you can make. While most local friends you make here will think of you as their "foreign friend" or otherwise think of you as "other" (to the point where they might exclude you from gatherings that there is no reason to exclude you from, or just forget), it is possible to make friends and connections who just treat you like a person and local vs. foreign doesn't come into it. It is definitely possible.

And you will meet people who - if you speak the language(s) and are well-integrated (or are trying to be), will say "eh, you're Taiwanese!" or "you really should have the right to be a citizen and vote here, it's not right, you're as Taiwanese as me". While some are joking or giving empty compliments, I do think some of them mean it.

Frankly, most countries have cultures were outsiders will always be outsiders - I joked once while visiting Brendan in Maine that if we were in a horrible accident the headline would read "Long-time Maine Resident and His Non-Maine Wife in Accident: Real Mainers on the Scene Recount the Tale"! So it's nothing new or surprising.

2.) You will have to live with stereotypes.

Yep. But you can also make friends who see past them. And stereotypes aren't anything new either - certainly I've heard my fair share of them growing up, even in the People's Republic of New York.

Also, I find that inward "island mentality" is only true of some people (and honestly, in the US I often encounter the opposite - being cocooned within a large country makes some people inward and ethnocentric - they're so far away from any other country or group that they start to turn in on themselves. I blame the whole hackneyed bullshit notion of "American exceptionalism" on just this phenomenon). For others I feel that the fact that Taiwan is a small island surrounded by other countries and deeply affected by them has made some people aggressively outward-looking. I've met many extraordinarily worldly people in Taipei, including many of my students. Most people are normal - somewhere in the middle. Like we all are.

Not much to say about #3 - although most people I know do know something about Taiwan - they just know the wrong things - "well I read that Chiang Kai-shek was a good man who saved Chinese culture by bringing it to Taiwan and then did great things for Taiwan like developing it" said one relative. Yeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh noooooooooo. Same for #4 (yep) and #5 (yep - although it is possible to become highly fluent). I do have something to say about #6 but will post it below.

7.) Food

I agree about Taiwanese food. But as for good Western food, I actually think the selection is okay. Not amazing, but okay. I can get good bread (there's a place near us with great baguettes), cheese, I get goat milk delivered, and Taipei is dotted with great coffeeshops. I'm actually quite alright with the Western food situation. Whatever I can't buy I can cook myself, too.

Nothing to say about #8 and #9 - yep.

10.) Population density 

Yeah, but I see it as a positive. I like living this way, near other people, near lots of things. I like that everything is so close together, which is only possible with high population densities. I'd probably feel right at home living long-term in New York City.

I also don't think it's hard to find an affordable, spacious apartment in a quiet neighborhood. We have 30 pings - 3 bedrooms, a generous living room and a Japanese tatami tea room (albeit a very narrow back room and galley kitchen). We have a dryer, a bathtub and "wood" (high quality restaurant-grade plasti-wood) floors! Outside most of our windows is a courtyard/playground/public space. We're on a busy lane but we can't hear much, if any, traffic. Sometimes we hear our neighbors but nothing too annoying. We're right in the middle of downtown Taipei, in Da'an district, and we find our rent to be quite reasonable (maybe NT25,000/month isn't reasonable to some, but for a couple, in Da'an, near the MRT, three bedrooms, we think it's great. Everyone always asks me my rent anyway, it's not a personal question in Taiwan so I may as well spill).

And it's quiet, affordable (for us - I know not everyone considers our rent 'affordable') and central. So, hey, it is possible to do just fine with apartments. I will stay here as long as possible. You will pull me out of real estate heaven only after rigor mortis sets in, and not before.

Adding some of my own: 

11.) Taiwan seems to have multiple personalities vis-a-vis sexism and gender relations

I just don't know what to think. On one hand, a woman was nearly elected president here without much problem at all, or even commentary, regarding her gender. Truly, nobody seemed to care. The most beloved mayor in Taiwan is a woman, and while some people make fun of her hair, nobody disparages her gender the way Americans do Hillary Clinton (or Elizabeth Warren for that matter). In all of Asia, this is probably the best place for women.

It's easier for women in Taiwan to hold good jobs, have great careers and have positions of power. The whole "men don't want a female managing them" doesn't seem to be much of a problem here judging from the number of female directors, CFOs, COOs, partners, senior physicians and department heads I've met. Taiwanese women basically run finance and accounting. An average Taiwanese woman is almost certainly better off in terms of opportunities than an average woman of any other nationality in Asia.

Men in Taiwan seem to be catching up to this whole womens-equality thing faster than their counterparts in China, Japan, Korea or the rest of Asia, and this is one country where I can go wherever I want, whenever I want without fearing sexual assault. I can't say that for America.

On the other hand, there are so many ridiculous notions that I come across regarding women: that we're "more interested in fashion than politics", that we are "less adventurous" (I was really offended when someone I knew gave that as a reason why there were fewer female expats in Asia), that we always, across the board, like pink, that we do most of the housework and child-rearing because we're "good at it", or other sexist practices allowed to continue because it's "culture" (NO, IT'S JUST SEXISM).

Jump-you-in-the-street rape may be unheard of but marital rape is frighteningly common and unreported.

I've definitely come across a lot of lookist-sexism (the idea that a woman's most important feature is her looks, not anything else she might have to offer, and that pretty women are automatically worth more than any other women) and momma-sexism (the idea that of course every woman wants to have a baby, that of course they will be better at raising it because women just are, that it's unnatural to not want to have children) and marriage-sexism (the idea that all women want to get married, that all women act a certain way especially in relationships, and that they are fundamentally different from men in how they act). Also acting-sexism (men can drink and swear, women are ladies who don't drink a lot, or at all, and never swear because that's not ladylike).

There is still an entrenched 'mistress' and 'hostess bar' (and prostitute) culture, which does have tendrils in the business world, making it hard for women to rise to positions of power in some fields. I've met otherwise progressive guys refer to attractive female employees at their company by their employee numbers, like they're livestock (NOT COOL), and there are a lot of sexist beliefs among the older generation.

Add to that the current government's total lack of interest in progressing the cause of gender egalitarianism, the lack of readily available and affordable oral contraceptives to poor women, and the lack of no-fault divorce or solid legal precedent for handling child custody or domestic abuse cases fairly (or divorce petitions for that matter), and things are not entirely rosy.

So I just don't know what to think. America's pretty fucked up too in this way - most places are. And Taiwan's better than most, but still not good enough.

You could spend a day talking to young progressives who have wonderful, egalitarian, mutually respectful relationships and family units and who aren't threatened by women and think things are great. Then you could have to listen to your sexist-as-fuck boss (scratch that - former boss!) blab on about "a man's mind is an ocean and a woman's is a river" or some bullshit and think things are terrible - it's enough to give you whiplash!

Either way, if you're a woman living long-term in Taiwan, you definitely have to face this. It's not so much that it's different from the West (which is far from perfect), it's just that it's expressed along such different parameters. In the USA there were legal protections against a sexist boss, but you had to watch your back on the street. Here, you can walk freely, but your boss is just as free to be a misogynist dick.

12.) You have to get used to people being overly direct in unfamilar ways.

I actually don't agree that Taiwanese culture is generally an "indirect" one (Taiwan Explorer's #6). Communication can be indirect in ways that may be unfamiliar to Westerners - such as showing anger, disagreeing or confronting mistakes (in some ways the cultural difference here might come off as passive-aggressive to some Westerners, and yes, I still struggle with this. I actually have the same problem with West Coast Americans). But in other ways it's actually too direct! "What's wrong with your face?" if you're breaking out, "Why don't you want to have kids? You should have kids!" after you've answered a question honestly (OK, my family does that too and I hate it), "You've gained weight!", "Well even though you don't have a beautiful face you are pretty smart, maybe someone will like you" and so on.

Yeah. You just get used to it.