The Wen Meng Municipal Brothel (文萌公娼館) and a Datong photo walk

So this past Sunday, despite the crap weather, we decided to get some exercise and hang out in a part of Taipei I love, but don't get to return to often: Datong/Dadaocheng. I have a 2-volume book kicking around called Historical Sights in Taipei that I often use to determine landmarks by which I plan my urban roving, and Brendan and I came across an entry I was quite curious about: the Wen Meng House (文萌樓) at #139 Guisui Street (歸綏街), just west of Ningxia Road (Guisui is a little bit north of Minsheng). It's closest to MRT Shuanglian, and you can get there by walking through a fairly atmospheric old warren of streets if you stay off the main roads - though in this 'hood, even the main roads have crumbling colonial architecture.

The Wen Meng House was apparently opened as a municipal brothel in the 1950s - back when sex work was legal in Taiwan. It was closed in the late 1990s when sex work became criminalized, but the women of COSWAS (a sex worker association) are fighting to keep it open as a historical site and small museum. You can read more about it here.

That article was from 2012, and writing from 2016, I can say the building is still around and still marked as a historical brothel, so it seems no final decision has been reached on the fate of the property. It is, however, locked and nobody is around to let visitors in. There is an active shrine/temple next door but I didn't want to ask, though in this country I'm not so sure a temple would be morally opposed to sex work. They do have sexy temple dancers, after all.



As a sex-positive person and pro-historical preservation urban dweller, I obviously side with the women trying to preserve the site. This is an important part of their history, and is one of the things that makes an urban place more human - by remembering how things were in years gone by as well as acknowledging that sex work, well, exists. It has always existed and will always exist.

Though obviously I acknowledge the rampant exploitation in the sex work industry, and am well aware that a huge percentage of prostitutes are exploited or enslaved, I'm not in theory opposed to legal sex work provided by unexploited escorts of any gender, and legalizing it would make it easier to find and punish traffickers. 



The bandanas tied to the door say "pardon sex work", and I assume the photos below are of the press conferences and political activities of the sex worker association as they fight to preserve the property. Godspeed!

I do view this as a women's issue, and an issue of women's rights. Not only should sex work not be stigmatized or penalized (though traffickers certainly should be), but women should be free to do what they want with their bodies - we all should, in fact! If that means selling sex for money and that's what they want to do, let them do it, regulate it, tax it, protect the workers who choose to engage in it, and otherwise, stay out of the bedrooms of others.

And I do think this is possible in Taiwan - first of all, it's less controversial than the "comfort women museum" (which despite controversy I actually support - women's stories too often get shunted to the side, especially if they are doing something others find 'unsavory' such as sex work - puppets get their own museum but not women who were legitimately forced into sex slavery?) And secondly, as I've explored in the past, Taiwan is not the sheer bastion of conservatism that many believe it to be. Commercial sex work was legal until 1997 after all.

And by all means, let the women have their historic site!







Historical Sights in Taipei, by the way, has a hilariously awkward English rundown of the site:

The indoor compartment or layout of this well-preserved house also reflects the spacial needs and functions of the early-time sex business with the particular atmosphere of a public whorehouse still emanating.

Great, except I wouldn't know what the atmosphere of a public whorehouse is? And if you look over to the Chinese, it gives you the Chinese word for, specifically, a public whorehouse (公娼館)...did not know that was a word in Chinese. Nice.

Anyway, just wandering up from Shuanglian along Wanquan (完全街) Street and assorted lanes yields all sorts of interesting sights of a slightly crumbly, gritty neighborhood:





And some tiny alleys lead to interesting things indeed, including antique stone tools in private courtyards (photo taken with permission of owners but not their angry little dog):





...and cool syncretic temples that feel kinda Dao and also kinda Buddhist:





...and I thought I was the only Taipei resident to have a Chen Chu spring scroll (I have one from the year of the horse, with Chen riding a bicycle, which those who know what it would mean for Chen to be depicted riding a horse - perhaps with stirrups - might find as a missed opportunity, albeit purposely so). Chen Chu is the well-liked mayor of Kaohsiung, not Taipei!



By the way, I don't have one for year of the monkey. If any Kaohsiung resident has one lying about that they want to send to me...

I also liked this lovely hand-painted sign:



Sunflower sympathies run deep in Datong - Mr. Hong here was just one of several campaign posters and banners we saw evoking the symbols of the 2014 student movement that occupied the legislature for over two weeks. The actual student activists are not necessarily comfortable with this association or possible appropriation of their name by DPP candidates (I have no idea how close Mr. Hong here is to the student movement). 



...and Datong wouldn't be Datong without its weird little asides:



There are legit other sights too, if you want to walk around the neighborhood. Further north along Chongqing you'll come to this old facade, with an ugly building behind it. The facade itself seems to hold a Starbucks, which I gotta say is a pretty cool Starbucks...for a Starbucks:



...and a turn onto Ganzhou Street will lead you to a Presbyterian church built in the early 20th century, with an ugly-as-actual-sin newer church attached behind it like a tumor that has grown larger than its host. The address is #40 甘州街.



And you'll pass the requisite temples and shrines, of course. This area is also quite near a well-known Earth God temple you may want to stop at. 



If you want to head westward, to the very end of Taipei, walk back to Guisui Street (a bit to the south of Ganzhou) and take it all the way to Lane 303, which is quite literally the last tiny little lane before Huanhe Road, the seawall, and the river delineating the city limits. Turn right and you'll reach the Koo family mansion at #9 Lane 303 Guisui Street, which is now a kindergarten. This was built back when Danshui River trade was much bigger than it is, and the ground floor was used for commerce. The Koo family resided upstairs. This, and the Chen residence further south (on Guide Street between Xining and Huanhe, south of Minsheng) are the only two surviving mansions along the river that I know of, and they don't even border the river anymore. The hideous Huanhe Road does. 





Along the way, the walk is a veritable choose-your-own-adventure of crumbling architecture. Dihua Street of course holds many of the best-preserved examples, but quite a bit exists along Guisui, Guide, Ganzhou, Anxi, Xining, Minsheng, Yanping, Chongqing, and other roads. Just take a wander, See what's out there.






The theater of the lovely little puppetry museum on Xining Road just south of Minsheng: 



...a falling-apart building on either Minle or Anxi Street:



A lane off of Anxi Street:



The old Chen mansion, on Guide Street (#73貴德街）. The backside visible along Xining over the wall, in a mess of overgrown shrubbery and trees, is creepy in a haunted-house sort of way. You could probably keep a hermit in there.









An old house along the park where Anxi and Minle meet above, and a crumbling edifice on Anxi below.

This whole area, especially the park to the east of Dihua Street where these roads meet, is starting to show the early signs of gentrification, with cafes and bookstores beginning to pop up. 



Gentrification, to my mind, is kind of okay as long as local residents benefit (though usually they don't), though I have to say it's a bit of a shock to see my old walking grounds, where I was the only non-neighborhood local around, just me and some old folks and kids, now being full of walkers and tourists on a Sunday afternoon. I'm OK with economic development and all, it's just...weird. At least it means these old architectural treasures are more likely to be preserved. If they draw crowds they're not as likely to be razed by developers. As long as they don't turn into some crappy uniform "Old Street" selling the same shoddy souvenirs as Daxi and Sanxia...





We ended the day by being tourists ourselves, stopping at 217 Manor (in a block of old gray shophouses on Dihua Street north of Minsheng) for coffee to perk up and then a beer to wind down.



Independence indeed!

And then walked down to Nanjing Road to catch transportation home, stopping along the way in my favorite Chinese medicine pharmacy to play with one of their many pets (they also have another cat, an overweight dog and a surly gray parrot).

An East Rift Valley and Taimali Adventure

I'm going to apologize in advance for the vagueness of this post - I took this trip over a year ago but, due to the vagaries of life (having to return to the US yet again for my dad's surgery, finishing the Delta etc.) I just didn't get around to dealing with the photos, which means I didn't post anything about it. When I finally did have time to do a photo-heavy post I opted for Kinmen, because it was so unlike the rest of Taiwan.

I'm ready to fix that now, but this trip happened so long ago that I'm now a bit fuzzy on the details. So, I can't actually direct anyone to the places I visited - good travelers experienced in Taiwan should have no problem, though! That said, this post is just not up to the level of quality detail I try to bring to my travel posts, and I'm sorry about that.

So, here goes:

About a year ago we took the train to Taidong, rented a car, and wandered the southern East Rift Valley before taking a scenic road over the mountains to the East Coast, driving down to Taimali before returning to Taidong, dropping off the car and taking the Puyuma Express home. We had four days in total, two of which involved train trips, one full sightseeing day which was merely okay (it poured on and off) and one which was amazing.

On the train down I couldn't help but note the tendency to put factories in some of the most scenic spots:



We got to Taidong, went to the night market (at least Brendan and I did, our friend Joseph stayed at the hotel), woke up in Taidong, rented a car from CarPlus and were on our way. Or, at least we were in fits and starts thanks to wildlife blocking the road:



I believe, but cannot be sure, we took the 197 from Taidong up over the mountains to the southernmost edge of the East Rift Valley - we missed the turn-off for the bridge to Luye (鹿野) and ended up on a stretch that was more like a forest trail than a road - completely unpaved and grassy in spots. Storm clouds loomed overhead. It was pretty scenic though.



We passed a few Indigeous villages and came down a steep set of switchbacks to another bridge, which I drove across screaming with my hair in my face thanks to the open window, and headed south back to Luye. The main thing to do in Luye is to go to the Luye Gaotai (Luye Pavilion, or 翱翔飛行傘鹿野高台) where in theory parasailing and hot air ballooning are possible, tea is grown, and the scenery is supposed to be nice. You can also sled down a grassy slope, which looked kind of fun. Given the weather, we didn't see any sort of air-based sports. The scenery was nice, but honestly I was a bit underwhelmed. Also, we couldn't find a decent meal in the whole town and got some underwhelming noodles.



We then drove up to Guanshan (關山)  where we checked into our next hotel - a homestay, really, well out of town and off the highway. You'd need a car to get there. I can't find it on Google Maps and I can't remember the name, so you'll just have to trust me that there is a pretty good homestay in Guanshan if you have your own transport (it would also be easy work for cyclists).

In Guanshan it rained on and off - the most interesting thing I noted was how you could see far down the valley and across to the mountains on the other side, so you could see the storm cells moving about like mobile fire sprinklers. The advantage of this, other than being lovely and scenic, was that you could tell when you were about to get soaked.

Guanshan has a bicycle trail for tourists that is quite popular, so we walked around that - the on-and-off rain made cycling unappealing, and from our homestay we weren't near the place to rent them - and saw some more local, uh, wildlife.



Rain making its way down the mountains near our homestay.



The train passing through the valley as it rains on the mountain ridges.



I imagine this is what it's like living in a flat area, such as the Midwest, and watching rainstorms come in - something you can't do where I'm from, with hills blocking the view.



Just before we ourselves got soaked, we spotted this interesting-looking building out in the fields. We determined it was a Hakka restaurant, and our homestay owner said it was pretty good. The rain made us not really want to go back out once we returned to the homestay and changed into dry clothes, but it's not like you can get pizza delivery in Guanshan, so we got in the car and drove out here for dinner. It caters to larger groups but overall it was quite good.



Whereas this is just terrifying:



GOOD LORD JESUS:



...apparently this is some sort of thing owned by the Guanshan Farmers' Association - kids come here on field trips to learn about rice farming, I suppose.

We ran back to our homestay as the rain really set in. This guy, however, continued working.



Fortunately the next morning brought perfect weather and azure skies. We got to see our homestay's garden and pet peacocks before checking out:





We then drove up to Chishang (池上), which is something of a tourist destination. I liked the old cluster of houses downtown, which we walked through very peacefully, and the views on the drive.







I was less impressed with Chishang's main tourist draw, the "Mr. Brown Highway" (which to me just sounds like a euphemism for a butthole, but hey). Apparently it was made famous in Mr. Brown coffee commercials, and then if you cycle down it enough you get to the "Takeshi Kaneshiro Tree" (金城武樹), because Takeshi apparently made a famous movie where he waits at that tree. The tree was knocked down in a typhoon but apparently has been re-planted. Because it's famous.

We, however, were not that impressed - it was pretty, yes, but the views just driving around were prettier, and it was clogged with tourists and annoying family bikes. So...we got a cup of coffee - interestingly, there was a Lavazza Cafe but not a Mr. Brown which is just a missed advertising opportunity - and went on our way.



We got lunch further down the road in a no-name town (in fact I'm sure it did have a name, but I can't remember it nor be sure what that name is on a map) where we happened across a shop that makes those god-and-other-celestial-being statues for temple parades.



HELLO!

Then we took a turn up the mountains on Dongfu Road (東富路), which I think (?) is Highway #23? that led over the mountains and through paradise (including a place known as "Little Tianxiang" - 小天祥 - after its supposed resemblance to the famous Tianxiang in Taroko Gorge). Unable to stop at Little Tianxiang (there aren't many places to pull over), we stopped at this rickety little pavilion to enjoy the view:



This time, I was more impressed. We passed mountain ridges, betel nut palms, rocky gorges and green valleys, taking a break at an area along the way known for its troupe of monkeys that can usually be found hanging out by the side of the road. These monkeys are so famous that tour buses actually stop for them. 



We wisely locked the doors to our rental car.

Dongfu Road comes down from the mountains and hits the coast at Donghe, which is something of a foreigner-populated surfer town. We continued south and took our next break in Jinzun (金樽), where there is a coffeeshop conveniently called Jinzun Coffee (金樽咖啡) with a stunning view of the beach.

I mean, look at that.



We walked down the cliff - there is a trail and stairs - to the actual beach - and it was nearly deserted (but not great for swimming). 





We then made our way down to the foreigner enclave of Dulan, where we didn't go to the beach as it was getting late, but we did stop at the Dulan Sugar Factory (a little post-industrial spot now filled with cute shops) to pick up some beer for later from an expat who brews it before having a cold drink and some dessert at a little cafe run by a Frenchman.





At this point the sun was truly setting, so we continued on past Taidong to the tiny Indigenous town of Taimali.

I didn't know what I wanted to do in Taimali, but I'd passed through on the train years ago and thought it'd looked just peaceful and lovely and scenic. We ended up at an unexpectedly great homestay, which from some Internet sleuthing to jog my memory I believe was this place - 濾池畔民宿. Afraid we were going to have to drink our Dulan beer in some dank little love-hotel like room with absolutely no charm or even proper lighting, we were delighted to get a large, breezy room with a strangely fantastic bathroom and massive balcony, with light and chairs.

So we showered, cracked open the beers, listened to music and talked until it was time for bed.

The next day, after a surprisingly good breakfast (toast and fresh fruit and French press coffee!) we drove through Taimali - not a lot to do but we got some good shaved ice, drove down to the beach, walked around a bit, found an old temple and chatted with a 94-year-old Mainlander who came with the KMT diaspora, married an Indigenous woman and settled here.






Downtown Taimali isn't exactly hopping:



Then we drove up into the hills behind the town looking for lunch. Joseph had read in a local guidebook that there was a well-known Indigenous restaurant up here. On the way we passed an adorable little church:



And some murals.



The restaurant was called "Good Place" (好地方) which I love for its simplicity. And it really was good - it's the sort of place where you don't get a menu, they just bring you enough food for your party. What's sad is that I can't remember exactly what we ate - although I know I avoided the dish full of bitter gourd - but that it was damn good. I'd recommend it, if you can find it. Perhaps not for dinner when the karaoke starts up though.





Nearby are more Indigenous villages, some in government-built housing. We didn't linger, though I did stop to admire some particularly inspired artwork.



With some time to kill we drove up further into the mountains for some great views before the roads got too narrow and we had to turn back.



Our train left that evening for Taidong but we still had time to kill - so we drove a bit north of the city to a place called "Little Yehliu" (among a few other stops). I was really less than impressed:



I mean it was fine and all but regular Yehliu is way cooler.

So, we turned around and headed back to the train station, dropped off the car and hopped on the Puyuma.

All in all I'd say it was a great trip!

Not Just Any Woman

I normally don't post unrelated pictures on blog posts, but I like this one from a Sanchong sidewalk enough, but have no context for it, that I'm putting it here anyway. Enjoy!

Well, I was going to do a travel post about a trip I took, like, a year ago to the East Rift Valley, and another about a hike I took to the sulphur spring at Dayoukeng, but my cat tipped a glass of lemon seltzer into my laptop (after chewing up my Apple headphones and puking on the floor) and for the time being it - and all of the pictures on it - are out of commission and the cat is still somehow mysteriously alive.

Seems the laptop will be fine, but I can't pick it up until tomorrow.

So, you get more of my insane political ranting instead. Lucky you!

In recent weeks I've compared Hung Hsiu-chu to Donald Trump when talking with friends. Both say crazy batshit things that alienate key demographics and even their party's base in some respects. Neither seems to be particularly intelligent enough to lead. Neither has the requisite experience to do a good job in a major leadership role. Neither seems to have very well-thought out plans and policies (Hung's platforms are possibly more detailed than Trump's but she's so freakin' nuts that it's hard to tell, honestly). Both harness hatred and rivalry (Trump against foreigners and 'the liberal elite' and Hung against protesters, activists anyone who isn't pro-China) to inflame a group of far-right ideologues.

But I'm not quite sure this comparison is the best one to be making in light of Hung's election to the KMT chairmanship, about which all I can say is "have fun KMT, I am happy to watch you continue to destroy yourself". In fact, I feel like it's now more relevant to compare Hung to Hillary Clinton.

Wait, wait, back that truck up, you're probably thinking. Clinton may be a neoliberal establishment stooge who voted for the Iraq War and the bailout and who supported a controversial and horrifying bankruptcy bill as senator that she'd opposed as First Lady because she needed the Big Business vote, but her social platforms are liberal - at least they are now - and she looks to many people like a centrist!

But I don't mean that they are similar in terms of ideology. They're similar in what their rise says about the female electorate. It's very easy to say that because women don't necessarily support candidates like Hung or Clinton, that they don't care if a candidate is female or not. It's so easy to say that in fact, a lot of people say it.

That's not the case, however - at least not for me and not in my observation and from talking to women I know (if you hadn't figured out by now that I am neither a political scientist nor social researcher, well, now you know). We actually do care about female candidates and actively want more female candidates to vote for. I don't agree that "it doesn't have to be this year" in the US - I would love for it to be this year! I just wish we had a better female candidate.

We don't feel this is sexist - just as many people define racism as prejudice + power: if you have the power to escape systemic racism, or have enough privilege that it doesn't affect your entire life, it is impossible for someone to be racist against you, even as they may be prejudiced, one can define sexism the same way. You can be prejudiced against a man, but not sexist against one unless that man is one of the few who live entirely within a matriarchal, female-dominated society, because men have historically had more power and privilege than women. It is not sexist to want more representation of historically under-represented groups. At least, that's how current theory goes, and I tend to agree but don't want to get too bogged down in semantics. Wanting more female political leaders and supporting women who attempt to break into those roles is not sexist. Some may disagree, but this is what I've observed not just in my own views but among other women I know.

It's just that we want female candidates who actually reflect our values - being what most people would call "on the far left", but which I feel either is or should be the center, I don't have a lot of friends who feel that establishment or far-right female candidates do so.

And not because Clinton is straight, white and rich - if a good female candidate is straight, white and rich (and not, say, a minority, LGBT person, or from a poor background), I'll still vote for her. I don't quite support Clinton because she votes against my values. She votes for things I don't like. She is a little too realpolitik. That's it. It has nothing to do with her not being 'different' enough.

Feminism isn't dead, and it hasn't morphed entirely into this "we don't care about gender, we're beyond that, it's no longer important to support a woman just because she's a woman" Third (Fourth?)-Wavery. Actually I - a Sanders supporter - do want to support a woman in part because she's a woman. I actually do want solidarity with other women. I just want it to be a woman who also resonates with me as an all-around candidate. That's not the same as not caring if a candidate is female or not.

It's true that being a woman isn't enough to win female votes, but that just doesn't equate to not caring at all if a candidate is female. Hung is so far-right that being female didn't even enter into the equation when considering her as a supportable candidate (which I didn't for more than half a second). My consideration of Clinton, however, did include her gender. I want female candidates, because I want more representation. Just because in the end I chose not to support her does not mean I don't care if a candidate is female.

The same can be said in Taiwan. Just because women don't tend to support Hung doesn't mean women don't care about having a female candidate. They just want a better candidate, and many want one who is also female. And sure, you could say that the KMT has taken a step forward in progressivism by having a visible female leader for once - quite literally for once, this is the first time ever for a very patriarchal, regressive party - but this would be a much more viable argument if the KMT had elected a female leader who was also, say, a Taiwan-local-KMT centrist. They didn't.

Just as the Democrats are taking a step forward by supporting a female candidate, but they could have really turned heads and struck a blow for progressivism by supporting, say, Elizabeth Warren instead - or, knowing she isn't interested in the job, someone like her.

So, please, establishment, as much as you don't want to, as much as you hold out, as much as you'd like to pretend we "don't care", we do. Give us female candidates. Their gender does matter.

Just give us better ones. Please.

Identity, DIsmissiveness, and the Status Quo (with update)

Update: Michael Turton has a reaction to my reaction of his reaction to Cole's post, but I think there's been a misunderstanding of what I mean:

I'm not saying Cole and Goren are saying SQSs don't exist. I'm saying that SQSs are something of a cohesive group, even if they are not organized and as of yet have no 'name' or label. And that they are, in fact, a force for Beijing to contend with (as Cole suggests) because China has this idea that they will roll over and accept unification when, in fact, that is (mostly) not the case. They're, if anything, a bigger difficulty for China as their numbers are far greater than straight-up independence supporters.

I also disagree, but didn't say it clearly before, that I don't see a discussion or labeling of them an attempt by some Nationalist svengali to 'divide' the independence movement. This identifying as an SQS, even without a name, and differentiating oneself from independence supporters is coming from the people themselves, not by some shadowy external force. There are differences, and while deep down they generally want the same thing - Taiwanese independence - they themselves are the ones who purposely do not identify with the pro-independence groups (mostly as a reaction to the overly-nativist talk of yore, which I am happy to see both the DPP and NPP disavowing). I was quite interested to read these past few days two competing accounts of the notion of "huadu" - one from J. Michael Cole positing that it's a strong secondary force in Taiwanese politics that Beijing will have to contend with, and another by Michael Turton and Ben Goren that it's not a thing - that it's a somewhat dismissive label concocted by more strongly pro-independence sources to describe a "weak-willed" sort of person who believes in maintaining the status quo as the only form of independence feasible for Taiwan right now.

Being a non-scholar, I'm sure nobody is particularly interested in what I have to say, but I'll say it anyway: seems to me they're both right.

Where Turton and Goren are correct is in noting that "huadu" is not an organized force. It is not a self-created label by a group of people who are organized in any way. It is not a form of self-identification, but rather has recently been used to describe a diverse range of beliefs that can be a way of "being Taiwanese" but is not a predictor of how a person will vote, necessarily. They're also right in that "huadu" supporters don't necessarily tend to side with the KMT or PFP - or if they do there's no data to support it at present as polls asking about identification don't provide enough to offer such insights. I also agree that using "huadu" as a label to describe pro-status-quo supporters isn't quite appropriate, aside from the label's derisive history, many don't identify as Chinese and quite a few would be happy to live in a hypothetical Republic of Taiwan, not necessarily an independent Republic of China, were such an opportunity to become feasible.

Where, however, it seems to me - again in my totally non-scientific observation - that they are wrong is in dismissing it as existing at all simply because it is not an organized or semi-organized political force or a self-identifying label. They may not be as cohesive as the staunchly pro-independence or Chinese nationalist types, but there is an element of cohesion to them. And just because "huadu" doesn't describe them well, or isn't an appropriate term to use for them, doesn't mean they don't exist.

This group DOES exist. It's not that organized because it encompasses a very wide range of people with diverse beliefs, but it's real and it's powerful. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a strong majority of Taiwanese fall into this group. Furthermore, while I generally identify with the more strongly pro-democracy Third Force - the Sunflowers, the New Power Party, the TSU if they'd jettison all the nativist talk etc. - one thing that turns me off to some rhetoric from that faction is the dismissiveness with which many of them treat pro-status-quo supporters. I may be strongly pro-independence, but I can't deny the pragmatism of the status-quo supporters, which I'll call SQSs simply because they don't have a name and I don't want to have to type as much.

The reason I say SQSs are real is that I hear very similar refrains so often among my friends (well, some of my friends - most tend to be more ardently pro-independence), acquaintances and students that follow this line of thinking. "Independence isn't realistic right now. Of course I'd like an independent Taiwan, but if it means war, where we are now is acceptable. Taiwan is already independent! We're not Chinese and we won't become Chinese, so we've already won! Of course I don't want to be annexed by China but I'll do anything to avoid war."

I don't see how one can deny that such a belief exists when it is just so common. And when the refrains are so similar, I don't see how I could agree that there isn't some element of cohesion, some similar thought process, binding SQSs together. Perhaps they all watch the same news broadcasts and read the same articles and thinkpieces, but even if that's where they get their talking points (and don't judge - we all do to a degree), that also constitutes a form of cohesion.

While I agree that SQSs are not necessarily KMT supporters - or at least we have no good way of knowing whether they are or not - I have to say the majority I've met (and again they are also a majority of the people I've met) do tend to have voted for the KMT until very recently. They, in my observation, tend to be light blue, identify with the local Taiwan KMT, and often are 'native Taiwanese' (I find this term problematic, but...) who vote blue because they're Hakka or aboriginal, not Hoklo, or they are Hoklo but their parents were teachers, police officers or other types of civil servant and therefore feel the KMT has treated them well and earned their support. They're aware that the KMT hasn't treated everyone well, but don't dwell on it (even if perhaps they should). Or, they just know the local KMT representative personally and therefore vote for him or her. They are often light blue because they're the children and grandchildren of the KMT diaspora, believe the DPP has been to nativist and anti-them in its rhetoric (and perhaps in the past this was true), but don't identify as Chinese no matter what Grandpa says.

The vast majority seem to have voted for Ma, perhaps even twice, but either didn't vote or switched to Tsai in the latest election. Quite a few voted for Ke Wen-zhe in Taipei, or didn't vote. They would have supported a candidate like Ding Shou-zhong in the Taipei mayoral election, but were never given the chance. A small number aren't anti-KMT per se, but voted for Chen hoping for the impossible, were disappointed, and have since switched back to the KMT. Many identify as 'non-political' or 'non-partisan' and simply choose who they feel is the best candidate.

What they do have in common, regardless of who they support, seems to be - again in my observation - that they identify as Taiwanese. Turton and Goren are right about that. Many fell away from their light-blue KMT support because of the Ma administration's attempts to Sinicize and ROC-ify (that's some smooth writin') Taiwan.

Though that is not always true - I've met exactly three who say they identify as Chinese, but can't accept unification right now, and are waiting for the Chinese government to reform. Interestingly, the international media and quite a few 'China scholars' hold the entirely false belief that this group makes up the majority of Taiwanese SQSs. They don't. They exist, but they're not terribly common anymore. One of these three thinks Taiwan and China should eventually unify and doesn't understand Taiwanese identity at all. Oddly, he's young - this is not a common opinion among Taiwanese youth. One believes in the ROC and is accepting of unification if it's good for business. One says she 'doesn't want to give up' her right to the cultural history of China. She sees herself as the cultural product of Confucius and Lao Tzu, the Chinese classics, Chinese arts and imperial history. She feels that identifying as Taiwanese means giving up what she sees as her cultural heritage. While I don't entirely agree, I can understand her sentiment and anyway, as someone who isn't Taiwanese, my opinion on that doesn't matter much.

These folks may exist - and I hope my three real-life examples reveal an undercurrent of identity in Taiwan rather than simply being three anecdotes - but for the vast majority of SQSs, scratching the surface just a bit will reveal a pro-independence supporter (Cole is right about this). And Turton and Goren are not wrong that being an SQS can be a way of being Taiwanese. It can even be a way of rationalizing voting for the KMT while identifying as Taiwanese!

They haven't organized yet, and they don't self-identify necessarily, but that doesn't mean they won't or they couldn't. I could absolutely envision a political force, called something like the Status Quo Party - or as that's not particularly inspiring, perhaps the Cross-Strait Peace Party - starting up and capturing a surprising number of votes from those who are currently disgusted with the KMT, can't quite forgive the DPP for its former Hoklo nativism, and think the student activists (New Power and the Sunflowers) go a bit too far or push a bit too hard for their tastes. It would probably include a number of Taiwanese-identifying non-Hoklo people (I could see such a party having a great deal of Hakka support), light-blue-Taiwan-KMT voters who can't bring themselves to vote for the KMT any longer, a few children-and-grandchildren-of-waishengren/KMT diaspora who perhaps started out identifying as Chinese but as new generations are born are shifting their views, a few  we voted for Chen Shui-bian because we thought he could deliver the impossible but he was a disappointment" non-partisans, quite a few businesspeople who are horrified by the KMT but think the status quo is good for business. Perhaps a few of the weaker New Power Party supporters who will show up for street protests but thought occupations of government buildings went a bit too far, too, although that group tends to be ideologically cohesive enough that I'm not confident of this.

And with this belief so prevalent and common among so many groups who otherwise identify differently - whether they're Hakka, aborigine, Chinese nationalists disgusted with the KMT, Hoklo Taiwan-KMT light blues who are even more disgusted with the KMT, A-bian "we wanted change but all we got was corruption" burnouts, nativist-rhetoric-hating grandchildren of the diaspora, businesspeople who just want the best deal, or Taiwanese-identifying pragmatists - I'd go so far as to say it's dangerous to pretend they are "not a thing". If anything, they are the thing, it's the one glue that holds together a very large majority of Taiwanese, and the group that consistently wins elections. I think it's been proven you can't win a presidential election on pro-unification or pro-independence-ASAP rhetoric alone. You have to follow the SQS crowd, at least for now (I still hold out for one-day President Freddy Lim or President Lin Fei-fan). SQSs are the kingmakers. Tsai Ying-wen grasped this, and she won. It would be wise not to ignore them.

One of the good ones

Over the past few months we've gotten on the cultural bandwagon and started watching Mad Men.

So, as we make our way through earlier seasons, we've come to the final few episodes of Season 5. (No spoilers, I promise). In one of those episodes, Don tries to convince Joan not to do something. There's a lot of meta-commentary here about ingrained misogyny and the objectification of women and how Don doesn't want to be a party to that (although in so many other ways he already is), but the point I want to get to is where Joan says to Don, "you're one of the good ones".

Christina Hendricks delivers the line perfectly - it's part sympathetic, intoning, "I know you're not going to be one of the ones who intentionally screws me over, that you will do your best to be decent to me", and part disappointment, implying, "I know you don't want to be one of those guys, but one of the reasons I made my choice is that I know, despite others' protestations, that I have no real support, no real assurance that my career is safe, no real back-up giving me the full and protected right to say no. Nobody really has my back, no matter how much they say they do, or want to. And you might not want to be one of those guys, but you're here right now because you didn't try hard enough to put a stop to it. You didn't create the situation, you spoke out against it, but you didn't throw the full weight of your support behind your dissent. I still got screwed. They let it happen through inaction, you let it happen because you didn't realize that huffing and puffing about it wasn't enough."

Basically, she was saying 'your support isn't full-throated enough to be helpful, so it doesn't matter that your heart is in the right place.'

And, although I didn't want to, after watching that scene my mind wandered back to conversations I've had not only in Taiwan but in the USA (although I will take a Taiwan perspective in this, just because this blog is about Taiwan).

Take one person I know, for example. Let's call him A.  A's a good guy. He works hard, he's highly educated and smart as hell, and has close family ties and a fundamental belief in the importance of self-sufficiency (although not to the point that he blames poor or unemployed people for their situations). His family is important to him; he loves his wife and kids. He isn't controlling; he doesn't make decisions that impact his wife without her input. Everything they have in life, she's had an equal part in choosing, more or less.

A is one of the good ones.

I'm not sure, culturally speaking, however, that it is enough.

He was recently telling me about a situation in which his mother wanted to adopt some child-rearing technique, and for his wife to follow suit, but his wife had other ideas and wanted to raise the child a different way. I'm not specifying what the two views are because it doesn't matter. A mentioned this to me, and I asked what his position was and what he was going to do about it.

"Nothing," he said. "That's for the two women to work out. I'm staying out of it."
"Who do you think is right?"
"My wife, probably."
"But you don't support her?"
"I can't argue with my mother like that."
"So you're not supporting your wife, you're letting her fend for herself in dealing with your mom, over your own son, even when you agree with her, because you can't bring yourself to tell your mother she's wrong?"
"Well..."

Which is of course exactly what he was doing. He and his wife agreed on a child-rearing strategy which his mother was pushing them to change, and he was letting his wife do all of the heavy lifting in dealing with her.

Because we are friends and I can be honest with A, I asked him how his wife felt about the lack of support she was receiving from him. He gave something of a non-answer, indicating that he didn't seem to know, or he felt deep down that his avoiding conflict with his mother was more important than how his wife felt about the whole thing.

I pointed out that while I wasn't going to tell him how to run his life or how he conducted his marriage, that he had asked me once why I thought it was so rare that foreign women and Taiwanese men seem to end up together (I had mentioned at one point before that that of the marriages I knew of, almost all had ended in divorce).

"This is why," I said. "Well not this exactly, but that attitude is why. Our cultures are different and that's all fine, I try not to judge, there're usually upsides and downsides to both. But, as an American woman, I expect my husband to have my back. I expect him to support me. You know I don't have kids, and my mother-in-law is awesome - I don't think we'd ever have such a disagreement. But if we did, I would take it as a given that my husband would support me, even if it meant standing up to his family. In fact, it would be a dealbreaker. I expect my spouse to put me first, as I put him first. Not to decide that his parents' feelings are more important than mine, or more important than supporting me. I am completely serious when I say that sort of attitude would land us in counseling."

"Oh. But what if he disagreed with you and agreed with his mother?"

"I'd still expect support - we'd have that discussion behind closed doors and then, after a resolution had been reached, approach his family as as united front. No matter what, we come first. And that's just it - I could see a Western woman finding that attitude of 'you come first unless my family disagrees, in which case their feelings come first and you come second if you rate at all' to be totally unacceptable. I know I would. I hope you don't take this as me judging you or telling you what to do - I'm giving you a clear example of where these intercultural problems arise."

"...oh."

Let me reiterate. A is one of the good ones. He works his ass off to support his family and would do anything for them. He doesn't have any crazy notions that women belong in the home or make childrearing their primary responsibility (his wife does stay home, but I believe him when he says this was her choice), should earn less than men, should be submissive or take a secondary role. He places a lot of value on women being educated and smart. He does not try to excuse sexual harassment or assault or domestic violence as many men do. He is in no way a bad person.

And yet here he is not having his wife's back - he certainly never intended consciously to let her deal with his contrarian mother, and he probably thinks he does support her - in fact, in many other ways, he surely does. He probably thinks that being a breadwinner for his family, being devoted to his kids and being generally kind to his wife while filial to his parents is enough. I doubt it had occurred to him that it is not in fact enough, and refusing to back his wife in a disagreement with his mother is one of many ways in which he is letting emotional labor fall on his wife, and in which he is reinforcing gender roles and norms that hurt both men and women.

He did nothing wrong in his actions, but his inaction has consequences I'm not sure he has seen. I have no idea if my brutally honest viewpoint made an impact on him - we didn't talk about it again, and anyway it's his life and really for his wife to speak up if she feels unsupported.

His way of being 'one of the good ones' - someone whose conduct in most ways is unimpeachable, which makes it that much harder to criticize something that shouldn't be as important as it is, but who nevertheless doesn't act or give sufficient support at critical moments - allows sexist norms in society to continue. It allows mothers-in-law in Taiwan to, even if they don't use it, retain the privilege of treating daughters-in-law badly (I certainly don't mean to imply that all Taiwanese mothers in law do this). It allows the burden of dealing with problematic family and making childrearing decisions to fall, as always, on the wife while the husband makes himself absent. It leaves women with little choice, just as Joan felt she didn't have adequate support to make a different choice.

I'd also like to tell a story about my friend, B. B, like A, does not believe women ought to earn less than men. As it should, such a viewpoint strikes B as completely absurd. He'd laugh in agreement at a joke like "mo' penis, mo' money" (a joke that, knowing me, I have probably made). B is totally supportive of women being successful financially and career-wise.

That said, B has admitted he'd feel uncomfortable if his wife earned more than him. He doesn't know why. I'm not sure he could come up with a good reason even if he had time to think about it. Some horrible inculcation of social norms when he was growing up in a Taiwan - although this could well have been the USA or almost any other country - left him with an inexplicable, subconscious expectation that while women could earn lots of money, and while it was perfectly fine for some other woman to earn more than her husband, that his own wife should not earn more than him. Sort of like the women-and-salary version of the "I think it's fine if people are gay but NOT MY SON" nonsense so many people believe.

B is one of the good ones - once again he's devoted to family, loving to his wife and kids, generous, kind, mature, smart, hardworking and honest. He in no way intends to oppress women or imply they should curtail their career goals so as to always be one rung below men. He would never think of himself as supporting, consciously or not, a system that keeps women down.

And yet, here he is expecting that he should be the primary breadwinner and his wife should earn less than he does. Because...why exactly? No reason. Makes him feel like less of a man? I don't know - I don't think he'd say that (if he did, being my friend I'd probably say 'what, you'd be afraid your wife's penis was bigger than yours?' Because I like to joke about penises. They are inherently hilarious-looking.) Since when is being a great man tied to making more money than a woman, and what does it say about any man who, consciously or not, thinks it is?

So, being me and B being my friend with whom I can be brutally honest, I point out that it may seem like a personal attitude, but there is a saying in feminism that 'the personal is the political' - an aggregate of people's personal views, all lumped together like so many drops of water in a tidal wave, turns into something greater than any one person's personal views. At least that's how I interpret it, and I'm not really the biggest Dworkin fan. That if he feels that way but he's the only one, that says something about him but doesn't really impact society. However, if a lot of men, even most men, feel the way he does, that's actually a huge problem. It does keep women down - it basically forces them to assess to what degree they want a successful career and to what degree they want to find a life partner. It forces them worry, in a way that a man doesn't, that if they reach a certain level of financial success that it will be harder to find a life partner. A  student of mine - a female doctor - has already pointed out that male doctors have no trouble getting married and often marry nurses at the hospitals where they work, but female doctors, if they are not married to another doctor or married before they begin the profession, often remain single. Basically, by feeling this way you are pushing women to consider whether to curb their ambitions if they are high-flown enough to drive away men like him...and there are a LOT of men like him.

And I asked, "how would you feel if you found out your wife had curtailed her own career because she knew that out-earning you would make you uncomfortable? How would you feel if, when you were single, you'd fallen in love with a woman who then became nervous that you'd feel 'threatened' by her earning potential? Knowing that you never have to worry in this way?"

He admitted, unlike A, that this was deeply unfair. Has he examined his own beliefs? Knowing him, probably.

I pointed out again that this would be another dealbreaker for me, though perhaps not for every Western woman - I've met plenty of Western women who still ascribe to the idea that men need to feel like 'men' by being 'providers', which of course just allows men to continue living unexamined lives and doing subtle things to keep women from gaining true equality. I don't really care if my husband earns more than me - we've both earned more at one point or another - but I DO care what his attitude is about that. I would marry a man who made more than me, but not a man who thought he had a divine right to do so. I would not stay with a man who'd make it an issue if I earned more than him.

But the point remains - B is one of the good ones, yet through inaction, unquestioned assumptions and prejudices, unexamined privilege and lack of support still did not support women's equality quite as much as he thought he did.

I see this so often in Taiwan...and globally, but I am writing from Taiwan so this is from a Taiwan perspective. And until we can properly pin down, address and eradicate this issue, until we can bring ourselves to call out the anti-equality, anti-woman sentiments of otherwise good men, as subtle and hard to root out as they may be, and push them to be more supportive and to back up their otherwise feminist rhetoric of equality and respect with action and change, even just of the self, we're not going to have the sort of progress for women that Taiwan and many other countries need.

We need to wake up a lot of people and get them to stop being 'one of the good ones' and start being straight-up GOOD.

How Tsai Ying-wen shaped my assessment of Hillary Clinton

I'm female, in my 30s, and a Bernie Sanders supporter. I'm very near the cut-off age between older women who support Clinton and younger women who gravitate to Sanders, but being child-free and generally supportive of youth movements (perhaps I'm still young at heart myself), I stood on that fence and took a willing dive to the Sanders side. After all, the youth tends to be eventually proven right.

The why isn't important to this post, but I'll tell you anyway, in a few long paragraphs: because every other developed country in the world takes its tax revenue and plows most of it back into benefits of its citizens. As such, citizens of most developed countries have a highly mature sense of the public good, and how they benefit from being part of that society, as well as the advantages of paying taxes to enjoy those benefits. Every other developed country has managed to make university-level education affordable - even Taiwan, where public universities average about USD$1000/semester. Every other developed country has managed to make health care accessible and affordable to all. Almost every other developed country has a modern and maintained system of public transportation. No other country spends what we do on defense, and no other country pours so much money down the drain for lackluster performance in key development indices.

I want what most other developed countries have figured out how to deliver. I remember being young and broke and not going to the doctor because I couldn't afford to, even though I had health insurance through my low-paid office job. I remember weeks of carrots, lentils and rice because I couldn't afford other food if I wanted bus fare to pay for my two-hour commute each way to work. I remember being mired in student debt despite going to college on a scholarship, and debt was the only way to make college, which is a necessity if you want to really succeed in a career, happen. I still have the debt but it's somewhat less now. I remember wanting to seek out a better-paid job but, in a tight job market, not finding one, ad then being told it was my "choice" to accept subpar wages.

And, well, I just don't want the next generation of Americans to inherit that sort of life - the life I left America to escape because the opportunities just weren't there. It wasn't hell, it wasn't even that bad - I was lucky in a lot of ways. But I paid very high taxes compared to what I pay in Taiwan...for what? For a war in Iraq that could have paid for affordable college tuition for all for a few generations? For unnecessary corporate subsidies and low capital gains tax for the rich? For a deeply inefficient and often broken transit system? For what? Why would I want a new generation of Americans to grow up under that system? Where college tuition has grown exponentially while wages haven't, where if you're exploited at work you're told its your own fault even though you can't afford to leave, where you're told you have a "choice" when really, you're hamstrung by just needing to afford to live? Where you're told affordable college tuition is "impossible" and yet every other developed country has successfully done it and we've paid out far more than affordable, or even free, tuition would cost on a war we emphatically did not need? No. That is the America I willingly left. I'm not going to vote for the establishment I disliked enough to wave goodbye to it.

And yet, I'm told that if I don't support the deeply establishment Hillary Clinton, that I'm letting women everywhere down.

I'm told that I am okay with women having power but don't like to see them in the act of asking for more power.

I'm told that I would support her as the frontrunner despite her flaws if she were a man.

To be fair, there is some truth to both of the articles linked above. She is treated differently by the establishment and the electorate simply because she has both a vagina and an opinion. She is criticized for asking for power that male politicians of her level of achievement are routinely, and unquestioningly, given. She is treated as 'less than' than lower-caliber male politicians simply because the patriarchy would 'rather have a beer' with other men. This all deserves consideration when deciding who to vote for.

And yet, Clinton can be a problematic candidate and that can be true regardless of her gender. She can have connections to Wall Street and the media that we don't like, but it is also true that the electorate would treat her differently if she were a man. Clinton can be someone whose previous record appalls me and others, and yet still suffer from being criticized merely for asking for more power. She can be one of the best at the political game, a true overachiever, the epitome of the saying that "women have to do twice as well to be given half as much", and yet still make me uncomfortable with her status-quo message.

Basically, she can be the victim of sexism and misogyny - and this can be worthy of discussion and acknowledgement - and still be someone I don't want to vote for based on the sum of her record and career.

I feel comfortable in my assessment of Clinton and my reasons for deciding, in the end, to support Sanders over her in part because of president-elect Tsai Ying-wen.

Very few American voters have had the chance to know enough about a non-Clinton female presidential candidate to support her, or care enough to have a somewhat detailed opinion on the matter - this usually comes from actually living in the country where said president may be elected. I have, however, and in the last election in Taiwan I backed Tsai (in spirit at least - I can't vote in Taiwan). Obviously I didn't consciously question whether she was fit to be president based on her gender, but seeing as I ultimately chose to support her, I can't say I subconsciously did so either.

You might even say I gave her a slight advantage in my brainspace because she's female and I do want to see more diversity in politics both nationally and globally. I don't think this is 'reverse sexism' - there's an element of power and representation that need to be present for something to be sexist (this is  pretty well accepted as a definition of racism by those who have a nuanced knowledge of racial issues, too). When the establishment is male, refusing to back a woman because of her gender is sexist. Deciding to back a woman because she's female, though, is a blow for pushing for a seat at the table for a group that has typically not had one. It would be the same if the power structure was entirely female and I chose to back a man because I felt we needed more diverse representation in that regard.

Anyway, I'd admit to a pro-female gender bias, but I'd also admit that if a candidate I liked more who happened to be male had come along, I would have supported him instead. How do I know? Well, I chose Sanders over Clinton despite Clinton's advantage of being female. In my heart, though I know my head would tell me it's risky, I would support a Freddy Lim-like candidate for president before a Tsai Ying-wen-like candidate. I may have a pro-female bias but in the end I will gravitate toward the best person for the job.

Sanders, although he is a man, has a better record on supporting women's rights and issues important to women (like LGBT equality and civil rights) than Clinton. Tsai...well, we'll see about how she does in office, but there is no politician, male or female, who has a better shot at doing good for women in Taiwan than her (though again I'd give my support to a Freddy Lim-like candidate).

Tsai, despite being a bit centrist for this old leftie's tastes, was the best person for the job.  I supported her mostly for that reason, and in part, yes, because I felt it would be good for Taiwan to have a female president. Taiwan may be one of the most progressive countries in Asia, with better women's equality than the rest of Asia, but that's a pretty damn low bar and there is certainly room to improve. A female president is not a cure-all, but it's a step.

Tsai is also something of the anti-Clinton. Clinton may not be "likable" (an criticism lobbed at women far more than at men) but she does exude strength and panache, and despite a few stumbles generally gives good, polished speeches. She's an extrovert and a ball-buster (from me that's a compliment) who looks like she'd be very good at steely eye contact. She's more of a power broker than a wonk, though I don't doubt her policy chops.

Tsai, on the other hand, is frightfully competent, but exudes a dorky, scholarly wonkishness that is endearing and popular in Taiwan but would be a hindrance in the US political machine. She looks and acts like a wine-drinking cat lady academic (which she admittedly is, and I like that). Her speeches are not particularly polished - it's been said she almost has an 'anti-charisma' when she speaks - and her gaze is not steely.

I like them both, but as a bit of a dork myself, who also has a bias in favor of scholar-leaders as it seems Taiwan does, I do gravitate a bit more toward the Tsai personality (though admittedly I have something of the Clinton Lion Roar within myself too). If anything I wish more male politicians fit that mold.

I also like that Tsai is a self-made woman in politics - I realize she came from money however - and I'm not a big fan of political dynasties such as the Clintons'.

So when I hear this "well maybe people are threatened by Clinton asking for power even though she is quite competent once she has it" or "you'd be more forgiving of her shortcomings and support her more strongly if she were a man, but because she's a woman she has to be twice as good to get half as much" or "with her experience and background, were she a man she'd be the clear frontrunner", I think, well, I just supported a woman for president. A woman who won the race. I was happy about that and at no point felt uncomfortable watching her ask for, and get, more power. At no point did I expect her to be twice as good as her opponent - although arguably she was. And if I can so clearly support a good female candidate in Taiwan, it's nuts to imply that I (or, more accurately, Sanders-supporting women like me) don't support Hillary because I have not examined my own internal sexism.

How living in Taiwan has helped my career

The other day I was talking to a friend who'd relocated from Taipei to Hong Kong (a journalist). He called Taipei a "professional backwater" and for a lot of industries, I can see where he's coming from. I don't think it's right or fair - I mean the city is about the size of Chicago and is the capital of one of the most prosperous and modern-industry-heavy countries in Asia - but he's got a point that successful professionals in Taipei are underpaid, the best tend to leave for Shanghai, Beijing, Japan or the West, and that a lot of times you just have to move because, I dunno, your crappy joke rich-people-are-trolling-us newspaper has decided to close down its Taipei office because now I guess it's OK to report on Taiwan from a totally different country - China. (I'm looking at you, Wall Street Journal, though that's not where my friend worked). I do think this is in part due to bad domestic policy - this is what allowing wage stagnation to continue has wrought - and in part due to purposeful and strategic marginalization by China that the crappy joke rich-people-are-screwing-us Ma administration has let grow unchecked.

But, with a few posts in recent months that included criticisms of Taiwan as a difficult place to build a career as a foreigner, I felt that perhaps a post about how Taiwan has actually benefited my career was in order. This will mostly be useful for English teachers, of which I am one: one of the few jobs it is fairly easy for a non-Taiwanese to come here and do.

Most obviously, Taiwan gave me the chance to actually try my hand at teaching longer term and as a possible career goal. That's not something that's so easy to do in the USA or, I gather, most western countries. I am in the USA right now for a family visit (for once there's no bad news) and I reflected during my recent trip to Hong Kong, where I spoke to this friend, and this morning in my dad's house, on what my life would be like if I hadn't chosen Taipei to spend the last decade.

If I'd moved on from Taiwan to another country to teach, I can't say for sure what it'd be like but I'm not at all sure I'd have the same level of professional development (CPD) that I have gained from living in Taiwan, simply due to time and funding. More on that below. Most countries underpay English teachers, and those that don't often require long hours, are very expensive, or just don't have the technological infrastructure to do well in online classes if they don't have in-country CPD.

If I'd stayed in the USA...oh god. I know many people prefer the stability of a salaried office job, but anyone who's met me knows that sort of work just doesn't suit me. I get restless if I'm in one place too long, or have to spend very long hours there. I get bored with routine more easily than many. I don't like being expected to clock in and out at certain hours when that's just not how my best work gets done. I have a strong personality that doesn't quite fit with most office politics, where 'normal' is the new beige. It sounds very self-centered and entitled and "kids these days" although I'm in my 30s, but better that I know this about myself and act on it than put myself and others through the torture of my trying to work such a job, yes? I find most office work meaningless on a personal level, even as I acknowledge that some of it must be done and others do find meaning in it.  So, with my remarkable lack of talent at doing office work I don't find meaningful, and my penchant for saying what I think regardless of the social consequences, and my intractable inability to act 'beige', I probably wouldn't have gotten promoted very quickly and would probably still be wondering why I'm on the bottom rungs at a company that's given me a job that I could do far better at, but lack the motivation to try. I wouldn't even be able to afford training for something different, so I'd feel stuck. I'd still be taking the bus 2 hours to work and back each day and struggling to pay rent on the fringes of a major city, working a 2nd job to have any savings at all, watching my 20s melt into my 30s with little change.

Doesn't that sound lovely?

Taiwan, in short, gave me the chance to do something else. I can't imagine I would have been able to afford the path to becoming an English teacher in the USA.

Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly knows that I'm a big proponent of teacher training. I really don't buy the argument that all you need is the right personality or talent and some classroom practice - if anything it's condescending to teachers who have worked hard to perfect their craft to imply that any reasonably extroverted upstart who isn't a total dullard could just sort of figure it all out in a few months through magic or something. But, what I haven't perhaps made clear is that I'm also a fan of experience, and getting someone fresh off the plane into a job where they can see for themselves if they like it and are suited to it as a career before committing to an expensive degree program is something I support.  After all I got my start that way. I'd only insist that such opportunities come with somewhat standardized, respectable on the job training and continuing with the job would require getting (school-funded) qualification such as CELTA after a year or two.

But you can't do that in the USA - you might be able to volunteer or get a job at an unaccredited school/institute, but you won't be able to get a real job paying a living wage teaching English in the USA unless you commit to perhaps more money than you want to spend getting certified to do something you've never even tried. Most such jobs seem to require a Master's or teaching license. I can see how promising new talent may decide to just take office jobs rather than commit to that.

So, thank you Taiwan, for making it possible for me to discover a career that suits me in a way my home country could not.

You could say that a lot of countries provide this - you can teach English anywhere. Yes, almost anywhere, but Taiwan has the advantages of being more livable than say, China (or the Middle East for women with strong feminist beliefs), with better wages than most of South America, all of Europe, Turkey and most of Southeast Asia (I hear wages in Vietnam are pretty good but are awful and exploitative in Thailand). It's not as expensive as Japan or Europe - perhaps only in Korea can you save more as jobs there tend to provide perks such as flight reimbursement and free accommodation.

So, in Taiwan you can live fairly well and potentially save enough to pay for CPD - which schools should be paying for or helping to fund but generally don't.  That's actually pretty rare in this profession! I'm not sure if I lived in a more expensive country if I'd have been able to afford Delta at all, or if I'd had to commit to one full-time job. You may have to go abroad for CPD in Taiwan - more about that and other issues below - but at least for me, Taiwan has given me the flexibility and funds I need to get it done.

Taiwan also allowed me to become a permanent resident fairly easily - not something a lot of countries necessarily do. This allowed me to sort of 'create a job' for myself in which I work part-time in corporate training, part-time in the IELTS world, and part-time for my private clients. This is not something I could have done as easily (and legally) in, say, China where permanent residency is hard to come by, or Korea where you need a job offer and work visa to even come in, and so that job - paying for your flight and accommodation and all - is more likely to expect you to work for only them. Even in Taiwan without permanent residency schools that sponsor your work visa can and do ask you to be available for them at set hours - you lose a lot of flexibility, but the fact that I was able to get PR fairly painlessly is a big plus in favor of Taiwan. That sort of freedom has really helped my career because I've had more chances, through being free to work whenever and for whomever I like, to not only get a Delta in my spare time (something that may have been torturous at a full-time job) but also to expand into other ELT specialisms. I don't know that I'd have had the chance to do both specialized private teaching, corporate training and IELTS in a more traditional job setup, and it has been very good for me professionally.

Notably, I could not have done this in the USA either, in part because there's just less demand for English teachers (and what demand there is seems to mostly be in public schools, and I don't teach kids) but also because that sort of freelance work requires a fair amount of bouncing around the city. I do not like to drive. Other than possibly New York - and maybe not even there due to long transit times - I couldn't do the sort of all-around-town commuting that I do on a reasonable schedule without a car. It's a life goal for me to never have to own a car, so this is a big deal.

That's not to say that Taipei is a totally professional place for English teaching, or that it's necessarily the best place to start a career. Certainly about 99% of the cram school industry, where most untrained "Engrish teechers" work, is also a crappy joke, Taiwan has no important professional conferences in ELT, whether academic or professional, and even real employers don't always treat you as a professional. I've been lucky in this regard but even friends of mine who've worked at actual universities complain about treated like grunt workers. There are no good training or qualification programs in Taiwan - you have to go online or go abroad. Most jobs don't care if you're qualified or not. Those in ELT research who actually want to participate in the academic side of the field rarely publish from Taiwan, and professional development is almost never paid for or even encouraged (again I'm lucky in that for me it is encouraged, but I can't help but notice it hasn't been paid for, and that's one other reason why I freelance rather than committing to one employer. No employer has a package quite good enough to get me full-time). The idea of working at a university and having a research budget as well as funding to travel to international conferences, as my friend in the same field in Japan does, seems to simply not exist in Taiwan. So, there's room to improve. A lot of room.

But it would be unfair to slam Taiwan totally. We have a very small community of ELT professionals - I probably know the majority of Delta holders in the country - but I've found a great deal of support in that community. I met my Delta tutor randomly through an online forum post. Other professionals have allowed me to observe classes, accepted me into training programs and given me advice on my way up. Those who 'get it' really get it, and there are few enough of us that perhaps it does mean we support each other more.

And on a more personal note, I grew into my own in Taiwan. I am not the same person who got on a flight from Dulles to Taipei 10 years ago - now I know how to work hard, I know how to deliver results at work (even if I am a bit temperamental or have high expectations at times), I know what I want and I feel like I have an actual career. I discovered that career through working in Taiwan, and I'm not entirely sure the conditions would have been right for it to have happened in another country. I couldn't stay in China, I love Japan but have serious reservations about what it would be like to live there, Korea is not as laid-back, and other countries don't pay particularly well. I've had the chance to try out different types of teaching and had work opportunities I likely wouldn't have had elsewhere. I recently had the opportunity to work in a professional capacity with a public figure I happen to personally admire and respect, on a topic I am very passionate about, and I enjoyed it greatly. I never would have had that chance if I'd just stayed in the USA and worked some crappy joke office job or slogged through work at a cram school in Japan. I wouldn't even be the same person - the professional English teacher who is passionate about her field - who would have had such an opportunity.

So, while my friend has a point about Taipei as a "professional backwater", I just can't entirely sign on to that perspective. Taiwan made me the English teacher and person I am. I  have come to love Taiwan as a second home, and care about it as a nation. I had none of those things in 2006 and while I suppose I could have the same feeling about any country I'd chosen to spend these years in, I chose Taiwan, so Taiwan means something to me.