I'll Not Be Home For Christmas

...in which I admit I'm a total sucker for the holidays. Including the cheesy music and glittery decorations.

I love Taiwan, but it can get a little depressing around here between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the weather is almost uniformly crap and the only places that decorate or really do anything for the holidays are the department stores, Starbucks and IKEA - and the Holiday Inn Shenkeng, as I've recently discovered. I've been known to peruse IKEA just for the holiday music and goods, and go to Starbucks even though I don't particularly like their coffee, just to get an infusion of holiday spirit.

Yes, of course, it's clear that Christmas is not a local holiday and I can't expect it to really be celebrated in Taiwan, but well-decked halls are a part of not only my culture but also my life, since childhood. It's hard to go without them. It's hard to watch the streets go by from a bus window, with overcast skies - no snow, of course - and no decorations in sight. Going out into Taipei City at this time of year is like preparing for a sad little Holiday of One (now Two).

Joseph, Becca and Alex at Thanksgiving

I'm all about the cheesy music, plastic garlands and shiny ornaments and lights hanging from everything in sight. I don't even mind that half the time it's done in an attempt to get you in the spirit to buy more stuff - maybe it's the result of being totally in love with Christmas but having a very secular moral code. To me, Christmas is about family - which includes shopping carefully to find them gifts that will bring them joy* (or spending time making them, which I have also done). It also involves baking cookies with my mom and sister, going out to the fire department's Christmas Tree sale in a shopping center parking lot to pick out a tree, always a real tree, the livingroom redolent of evergreen as the cats sized it up as a climbing post, visiting Grandma and burning wrapping paper in the fireplace, watching the flames catch the dye and change color.

In Taiwan I don't have the chance to do any of this. No real tree, no fireplace, and this year is the first one in which baking cookies is a real option. Sometimes I feel like I drink Toffee Nut Lattes - which I'm not even all that fond of, if I'm going to drink a gussied up holiday beverage I'd go for gingerbread latte or peppermint mocha or good ol' egg nog, but those aren't things you can get in Taipei - just to pretend it's good enough to make up for what I don't have.

And that's just it - most of the time, living abroad is great, but this is the one time of year when it's not quite so great. Christmas in Taipei is not the same as Christmas in a city that actually celebrates, and definitely not the same as going home for Christmas. All of the traditions Brendan and I have adopted for Christmas are great, and I love that we have our own little family unit with our own way of doing things on the holidays, but my childhood always included larger family gatherings on Christmas and Thanksgiving and it's hard not to have that every year. The party is great, but it doesn't quite adequately substitute what the holidays are back home: in part because it's not family, in part because the weather is all wrong, in part because the run-up to the holiday is so devoid of holiday cheer everywhere except in my own apartment and at Starbucks.

There is something really missing in that lack of a feeling of communal celebration. Something about the holidays is made richer by knowing that your friends, neighbors and extended acquaintances are celebrating too. I guess I have an inkling now of how it might feel to celebrate Channukah in a community that isn't very Jewish, or Chinese New Year in a community where you might be the only Chinese (or Taiwanese, or Singaporean) family celebrating. It's true for both Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Of course, we do have some holiday traditions that we've built up in Taipei. It's not a complete wash. We put up a plastic tabletop tree - pretending, again, that it's good enough - and put gifts for each other under it. We stuff stockings because - why not? I play Christmas music on iTunes and buy foods that remind me of the holidays at City Super and IKEA (Glogg!). This year I'll invite people over to bake cookies. Every year we throw a Christmas party on Christmas Day for other expats at loose ends - some years big, some years smaller. I never take pictures because I'm generally enjoying myself too much to remember my camera, and anyway, what happens at the Christmas Party stays at the Christmas Party.

Thanksgiving Beijing Duck with Cathy and Alex

I love that Brendan and I have our own way of celebrating Christmas now that we're a family unit. I love that this year we get to celebrate in our new apartment, which I'm hoping to have painted and decorated by the time the holiday comes around. It's not quite the same, though, as being near family - everything I associate Christmas with includes family gatherings, big or small (more often than not "big").

Which, you know, is how expats have been doing it ever since the dawn of expats. I'm not the first to feel like I'm celebrating alone, to spend the day with friends rather than family. I'm not the first to get a little misty-eyed when I'll Be Home For Christmas plays, not the first to throw a big party in a land far, far away in lieu of a family gathering at home, and definitely not the first to put up a plastic tree and proclaim it "good enough".

On Thanksgiving we get whatever size group we can together, not always on Thanksgiving, though, and go out for Beijing Duck. This is actually great, because duck is clearly the superior bird to tasteless turkey. It may not include Grandma L teetering around with a Manhattan in hand, green bean casserole, pumpkin and cherry pies, uncles passed out on the couch, or cousins arguing over which Thanksgiving special to watch on TV, but it's got a big dinner, a group of friends and a convivial atmosphere.

In all the ways Christmas comes up short in Taipei, Thanksgiving has the potential to be just as good - if not, in some ways, better. This year I think it lived up to that, although everyone was a bit tired (I have bronchitis, too, so there's that). I've written about previous Thanksgivings in Taipei in 2009 and talked briefly about it in 2008. This year we went to Tian Chu (天廚) near MRT Zhongshan. Better service, we got two ducks instead of Song Chu's paltry one (I still call that place 北宋廚 - which utilizes some slightly rude Taiwanese slang), and really good duck.

Next year, for Christmas, I think we're going to try to go home. No idea which family we'll spend the holiday with, but it's high time we had a real American Christmas, with family and shopping malls and tinsel and all that fun stuff.

*before y'all judge me for being all about the shopping and the gift-giving and less about the religion, I just want to say this. Last year my mother was coughing terribly at our wedding. The family ganged up on her to see another doctor. She did, and by Thanksgiving was diagnosed with lung cancer. Serious lung cancer. By Christmas she was starting chemo. I bought her an iPad to watch movies or whatever else she wanted while she recovered from the chemo sessions as a Christmas gift. I couldn't be there in person - we were still recovering financially from the wedding - which was totally worth the cost, I might add. She'd already started losing her hair when we did our annual Christmas Skype session. She got through chemo and despite being given a prognosis of "you've got two years at most", she's made a full recovery since. Complete remission! Her words: "I spent days on the couch after the chemo sessions, especially the later ones. That iPad got me through it. Thank you." So I don't want to hear any "you're so materialistic!" BS in the comments, 'k?

Goodwill Hunting

Since we've been packing and cleaning out for our imminent move, something that I've known for awhile has recently recaptured my attention - something obvious to everyone but I'd only really thought to blog about it now. It's that donating or selling secondhand goods is difficult to near-impossible, but that there's a much higher level of recycling.

Back home when I prepared for a move, almost everything I no longer wished to keep would get thrown into a huge bag, or possibly multiple bags, and dropped off at Goodwill.

Now, most of what I don't want that I can't give to friends is given to recyclers. That's almost too bad, because plenty of it is still useable. I never imagined that so much could be broken down for recycling until I started to clean out an apartment crammed with 4 years' worth of two people's stuff. Old Fang downstairs will take everything from old umbrellas to ancient pots and pans to worn-out shoes to broken microwaves. This is stuff that would likely just end up in the trash back home, if it wasn't good enough for Goodwill.

In fact, Americans talk a lot about the importance of recycling, but they either need to start sortin' or shut up: it's extremely difficult to recycle in the USA. There are no random folks roaming the back lanes ready to snatch an old wok out of your hands to sell for scrap metal, a lot of places make you bring in your recycling yourself instead of picking it up and what you bring in is fairly restricted compared to what Old Fang will take (which is just about anything). Americans don't recycle enough because no matter how much we talk about it, it's just not made easy for us to do. It's not a good default option. You can say "well then people need to be more dedicated", but, well, go try real life for awhile. Come back and tell me what you think then. It just doesn't work that way.

So, back to secondhand items. I was no stranger to shopping at Goodwill myself - like many Westerners, I have no qualms about picking up perfectly good secondhand items if I have a use for them. I got my flour sifter there (since redonated, but I wish I still had it). At our wedding we served different types of tea: the bowls that held the tea mostly came from there. I used to have mismatched mid-century plateware and glassware all courtesy of Goodwill, and one can never forget my crystal beer stein (which I still have, although I'm not sure where it is) that says "Happy Birthday, Uncle Frank" which came from there, too.

I'd shop there now if a credible alternative existed in Taiwan. There are some secondhand stores, but they're either "vintage/antique", books, jewelry or clothing based. There's nothing I know of like Goodwill where I can go buy weird, mismatched juice glasses or plates. I've never been one for matchy-matchy kitchen items and I prefer both the Earth-friendliness of secondhand items as well as their oft-quirky nature.

A friend and I were musing about why there's nothing like Goodwill in Taiwan, even though a few places to buy secondhand handbags, clothing, jewelry and vintage items do exist.

His idea is the most obvious one, which means it's probably the right one: that there just isn't a culture of pride in getting more use out of an item that wasn't yours to begin with. Taiwan - well, Asia generally - is more recently developed* and so there's a greater emphasis on ~*~shiny~*~ things. One shows that one's wealthy by buying new things, not by thrifting old ones. You can also show that you're wealthy by buying expensive, even priceless antiques, but not by buying secondhand plates. There's no subgroup of people who assume that others won't judge them - or will judge them positively - for having money, but also being fine with secondhand items. There's only a tiny subgroup of "poor little rich kids": you know, back home, the children of middle and upper middle class families who have highbrow tastes and the socioeconomic street cred to back it up, but who make $25,000 a year as baristas, organic food shop and vintage store clerks and entry-level nonprofit workers and who have no problem whatsoever with furnishing their apartments from Goodwill. (I would know, I spent time in that group of people). Simply put, if you're doing well in Asia, your stuff has to be new. You only take mundane secondhand items if you don't have money.

It's disappointing, though, that it's hard to even locate charities that take secondhand items. We managed to find a home for a lot of our stuff through a friend, who knows women who've left abusive marriages and who need help furnishing their apartments as they put their lives back together, and who took more of it to help a charity that works with the mentally disabled, but we haven't found any others (I plan to look into Tzu Chi though).

I also have to wonder if the Taiwanese aversion to secondhand goods has to do with superstition - remember, this is a country where many people believe that if you leave your laundry hanging outside at night during ghost month that ghosts might wear it, and that will be bad luck for you. Where the position of your house can bring you such bad luck that you might have to hang up a curved ba gua mirror to deflect it. Where it's common to see a fortune teller, especially when it's time to name your children. It would not surprise me to learn that some people - not everyone, certainly - believe that bad luck or bad associations can come attached to secondhand "daily use" items (I should point out that "antiques" tend not to be "daily use" items).

And, of course, there's the fact that stuff is cheaper here. I bought a lot of my home items at Goodwill because, while I could afford to shop in modest quantities for new items at stores like Bed, Bath and Beyond (there was no easily-reached Target or Walmart near me, and I try to avoid Walmart anyway), I felt that the stuff was just overpriced. I could afford to spend $10 on a set of four coasters, but why would I want to? In Taiwan this really isn't an issue - home goods and consumer items are much more affordable.

All of this points to "alright, Jenna, just recycle that stuff" ("that stuff" includes a hula hoop - don't ask - a panda that rides a bicycle, a plastic pitcher, two plastic plates, several plastic cups/glasses and more) - but the Goodwill donatin' American in me hates to see a perfectly good pitcher or toy get chucked in the trash, when someone could use it.



*yes, I realize that a good argument could be made for China and India having "developed" thousands of years before the West did, and long before modern European/Western history took flight, they were at different times the center of world civilization. That's not what I mean and you know it - we're talking about modern industrial and post-industrial development.

Success and Teaching English

I once read a post on a well-known travel forum from someone who wanted to not just travel but live abroad, and wanted to know how people actually went about doing that. Someone commented that there are many different ways – some go to travel, find an opportunity and stay. Others are able to find jobs on their own due to their skills – often IT professionals, doctors of some sort, teachers or people with various other qualifying jobs. Still others join the foreign service or are sent abroad with their companies. They finished with “for those with talent, there will always be opportunities”.

This was a long time ago – possibly several years – but that memory, combined with my recent trip back to the USA and catching up with friends there, got me thinking about “success” as it exists within the expat life.

Let’s be honest: most young folks from English-speaking countries who go abroad do so by teaching English. It’s pretty much the only language teaching field where one can get a job without a certification or experience, which has (somewhat deservedly) earned it a dodgy reputation as a job type and even dodgier as a career move. Who would move abroad to teach English if they had any other talents or skills? Who would do it as a career other than the sketchiest of guys (and yes, this reputation by and large attaches itself to men. I’m not saying it’s fair, I’m saying it happens)? How could anyone do that and actually be considered successful? With low salaries, few worker rights, few worker perks – how many of you English teachers in Taiwan have ever gotten a paid vacation, an annual bonus, extra pay for overtime work or any of the other perks one would otherwise expect from any other job? – is it a field that anyone who actually desires professional success would ever go into?

On the surface, no. All of my friends back home have gone into more typical “information economy” jobs: office work, professional work, business, graphic design, public health, one lawyer who is having a tough go of it. And yet, I desire professional success, and I went into English teaching. I suppose I could have become a right proper “teacher”, the kind who need Master’s degrees and have unions representing them, but while I love teaching (and am good at it!), I don’t particularly relish or dream of spending my entire working day with children. I like them, but not enough to make them central to my career.

It is true among travellers that “English teaching” has a bad rap – and often for good reason. In many cases it’s the ultimate minimum wage job abroad (in many others, English teachers earn well above local salaries, but rarely do they earn anything approaching traditional expat salaries), akin to immigrating to the USA and working as a takeout delivery guy. In many ways it’s more challenging than that, but let’s be honest, if you don’t need experience or training to do a passable job at something, it’s not that hard a job. And I say this as someone who’s done it. So when talking to people who know a few things about international living and travel, you can almost hear the disdain in their voices: “Oh, you’re an English teacher? Well, I guess that’s one way to do it.” Foreign service officers, journalists, students, expat business owners and company-based expats don’t get the same sneering tone – even if the traveller herself couldn’t hope to land such a job, nor might she want to: I know I wouldn’t want to go abroad only to work long hours in an office doing managerial work, nor would I want to work towards upholding US foreign policy in the foreigner service. I respect people who do it, but it’s not for me.

That tone says: “you chose the easiest possible route to living abroad”. It’s a hard thing to fight back against. Note as well that it generally comes from other expats and travellers, rarely if ever do you hear it on the lips of locals.

Now, I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who has since become a career teacher, or “corporate trainer” if I want to be pretentious about it. There are plenty of young, upwardly mobile types who go abroad, teach for a year or two and then go home to pursue other fabulous careers (or they just start the slow slog into the morass of middle management), just as it’s popular to go abroad and work as an au pair for a few years, do Peace Corps or study abroad. They only prove my point: that ambitious people mostly leave English teaching for other pursuits.

And yet I say all this not to dump on English teachers abroad – heck, it’s my own job, and it’s one I’ve chosen purposefully. I was once a newbie with no experience, too.

I used to work in finance. Granted I was in my early 20s so I wasn’t exactly scaling the corporate heights, but the heights were there to scale and I had the potential to make it happen, but I left that more lucrative field to do this. I’m good at it in a way I was never good at office work, or at least the sort of office work I did in my previous incarnation. Clearly I believe there is merit to it, and while I’m not too worried about the salaries of inexperienced young kids who show up and are shoved in a classroom, I do feel that people who are trained, experienced, know the language in and out and kick ass at teaching English deserve to be compensated fairly. More fairly than many of them are. I can name more than one trained, talented and competent teacher who was willing to work for less than NT$700 an hour. It sounds arrogant but it’s true: I wouldn’t get out of bed for that, and they shouldn’t have either. I won’t say what my bottom line is because I don’t wish to discuss salary, but let’s just say that it’s more than NT$700. Both of them worked for Kojen, both regularly worked 6-day weeks and both felt they were getting a fair deal. They weren’t.

I realize I’ve just made a case for “English teaching” not being a job that offers professional success, but honestly, I do consider myself successful. My husband and I have a pretty comfortable lifestyle, comparable to what reasonably successful early-thirtysomethings in the USA might enjoy. We’ve swung some sweet vacations, and we don’t travel “on a budget” (no hostels, no self-catering with the exception of our month in Istanbul). We’re about to move to a very comfortable and well-appointed apartment that is well within our means. I work with businesspeople and my salary could compete well against theirs – from what I know of average salaries in Taiwan. I teach and earn the respect of CEOs, vice presidents, executives and senior managers and I’ve brought in business on more than one occasion, from companies you’ve heard of. I’m looking at starting a Master’s program next year. I do all this while working a job I genuinely love, that I do well. Note that I love my line of work and the students I work with – my actual company is hot and cold at best. I recently negotiated a very good raise. I took it upon myself to get certified once I decided that this was the right path, and I’ll certainly go on to higher qualifications in the future. What I do now is related to what I did when I was a newbie, but comes with challenges I hadn’t imagined facing, and that I couldn’t have overcome five years ago. Who wouldn’t call that successful?

I don’t mean to imply that I, self-satisfied as I might sound, am the only one to accomplish this. I’m not as far as I’d like to be, and I have plenty of peers who have also gone far in the field.

So here’s where I confess. I do hold prejudices. Well, duh, Jenna, we all do. Yes, yes we do. Here’s one of mine: I do have less respect for the long-termers at the lower end of the market – the ones who showed up with no experience or training (nothing wrong with that  - I was there once too, and I do feel ) and have stuck around for years, if not decades, working for peanuts at a lackluster buxiban for lack of another clear path, and have made no attempt to either find another path or work to become better teachers who demand better treatment and better pay. I confess that some of them rub me the wrong way. I try not to take the few bad eggs and judge the whole lot of ‘em, but I can’t help but wonder: if you’re still working at the ghetto end of the market after however many years, maybe it’s because that’s what you’re worth?

I’m sure I’m going to get dumped on in comments for that, so I’ll admit it now: yes, it’s a prejudice and yes, it’s unfair, even if there’s a kernel of truth in it. People end up where they do thanks to a combination of personality traits, random circumstance and socioeconomic opportunity and yes, I know, if someone ends up at the lower end of career English teaching abroad, it would be better to look at the whole person. But I’d rather be forthright about my prejudices rather than pretending I don’t have them.

I occasionally hear complaints that restrictions for teaching English in various countries have become tighter: now you can’t hope to get much of a job in China without a certification (for awhile the government wouldn’t even give you a visa to work as a teacher without one, I’m not sure if that’s still in effect) and you can’t hope to get much of a decent job in other countries without one. My sister is one of those “no experience, got a job teaching kids” types – but she has talent and she’ll do well no matter where she ultimately ends up – and she’s in Taiwan working for less than I earned when I started. In Turkey, well-paid jobs abound for those with training and experience, but even in Istanbul you can’t hope to make much more than US$12 an hour without those things: even with a CELTA and no experience you might not start out much higher than that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: yes, teaching English can be a low paid dead end job, and it attracts its fair share of dodgy people. That said, it can also be a real occupation and provide true professional paths, if you’ve got the drive and talent to make it happen.

Asiaworld. Asia...world.

We move in 3 weeks to a much splashier apartment in a more central location. Today I had no class - which didn't bother me too much because I have worked enough this month to earn a nice chunk o' change - so I schlepped up to Asiaworld Mall to peruse IKEA and Nitori to price items we might like to buy for the new place. I didn't buy much; it makes more sense to do that after the move, but I did buy a floor cushion from Nitori that I believe will soon be discontinued and some Glogg (it's that time of year!) from IKEA. Otherwise I spent my time wandering about and noting down prices of various items we may choose to buy.

After my wander, I stopped in the Asiaworld B1 restroom, and a memory came rushing back. Many of you know that recently, Asiaworld underwent a massive renovation and now no longer looks like the slightly ratty, dinged-at-the-edges department store from the '80s ('90s?) that it is. Now it's flash: maybe not as flashy as the new Tianmu Sogo, but plenty flash. The bathrooms used to be one step above MRT bathrooms - not that those are bad, but that in other department stores the bathrooms are all swanky with makeup areas and mirrors with vanity lights and cushioned pink chairs. Now, Asiaworld's ladies' room matches that aesthetic.

But not so long ago, it was just a restroom, and a kind of forgotten one at that. Way back in the day I was shopping at IKEA - I do that a lot, I'm totally addicted to home decor - and I went to use it.

There was an attendant. She doesn't appear to be there anymore, but I haven't forgotten her. She was 70 years old if she was a day, and looked like she'd had a tough life. I said 你好 and smiled, and thought that was it. While washing my hands she started talking to me. I couldn't place her accent, because she was clearly learning disabled or had some sort of disorder or intellectual challenge, and her speech was a bit slurred and lisped, but not in a way that reminded me of a stroke victim. More in the way of someone who's had a lifelong disability.

She told me, unprovoked and unasked, about how her family came to Taiwan around 1949, or rather half of them did. I couldn't understand her well enough to tell if she said she was from Jiangsu or Gansu, but either way she (the eldest daughter), her brother and her father came over while, for reasons that she didn't make clear, her mother and younger sister stayed behind, ostensibly to follow later.

"But they killed them, they just killed them!" she said. "Dead! I never saw them again! Or my uncles or aunts. Dead!"

She talked about how a lot of people who came over were able to get back on their feet and establish themselves and their families (those with closer ties to the KMT or who had government/military favor, mostly) and how they're mostly rich now, but not everyone was so lucky. I already knew this: I have a student whose father came over in '49 who worked as a bus driver. They didn't have much. His children are successful through hard work, not favor or socioeconomic inertia.

"We had nothing, and I couldn't go to school. I had to stay home. They thought I was stupid. And they killed my mother and sister," she repeated. "Dead!"

I have no idea why she told me all this, and more. Maybe, being a foreigner who indicated she could speak Chinese (although "你好" is hardly an indicator of that, plenty of locals think it means you're fluent), she felt she could unload on me, but not others. Plenty of foreign women, many of whom must speak Chinese or at least seem like they can, also must pass through that bathroom, though - after all, it's right next to IKEA. I have no idea if she told her life story to all of them, or singled me out. Or maybe she just told everyone and got fired for annoying the patrons (that would be sad - I was affected by her story but not annoyed). Old Fang - my ancient Hakka neighbor who was given away as a child because her family didn't want another girl - did the same thing, but foreigners are more rare my side of Jingmei. I stick out.

Or maybe it's just that she was old, and old people, like the bathroom attendant and Old Fang, like to tell their life stories.

Either way, it did affect me deeply, but I didn't tell anyone about it. What would I say? What would be the point? I filed the story away but never quite forgot it. I always remember her when I go to IKEA. I haven't seen her in years.

Taiwan has changed a lot since then. In another part of the city, glass and steel glitter above wide, clean streets. Department stores are full of wealthy and upper middle class Taiwanese shopping for Georg Jensen business card holders, Patek Philippe watches, Coach bags and Anna Sui accessories. Starbucks and high-end cafes and bars litter the city. It's not uncommon to get cut off, as a pedestrian, by a Mercedes or BMW. You can see the change right there in Asiaworld, where she used to work (maybe she still does and I've been missing her shift, who knows). Gone is the dingy basement bathroom and the old lady attendant, and here come the young xiaojie in short skirts, pink gloves and little hats shouting "WELCOME!" at you in shrill Chinese, imitating department store girls in Japan.

I can see the change even in the five years I've been here, and I arrived well after Taiwan had undergone its most aesthetically powerful changes.

It's easy to forget, as you wander ever more modern streets, that the pain in this country still runs deep, and a lot of the people you meet have suffered hardships you can't - you really can't - imagine (and I say this as someone whose family mostly escaped the Armenian genocide. I can't imagine that, either. Not with my comparatively privileged life). The wounds, in places and at times, are still raw. The younger generations have mostly forgotten or have reconciled, but memories linger. Like an earthquake fault line, it runs deep, and it's not going to go away soon. A hundred years, maybe, and maybe not even then. And the pain runs deep on all sides - not just the Hoklo, not just the Hakka or aborigines, not just the waishengren, who didn't all escape from Taiwan's not-too-distant past unscathed, either. Their kids shop at SOGO, but they remember. It's part of why I am so interested in the stories of the elderly in Taiwan, just as I know my own family stories from relatives who have since passed, and a few who are fortunately still with us.

It's also a powerful reminder that life is not fair and people, for better or worse, don't alway get their just desserts.

So.

I left Asiaworld at about 4:30. The sun highlighted slate and peach clouds hanging over Taipei Arena. The warm colors that filtered through made even Nanjing E. Road look attractive, and let me tell you, that's an accomplishment. The air was warmish, the wind cool. I was wearing soft old jeans, a green jersey-knit top and super-soft shawl given to me by my mother-in-law. I clutched the cushion from Nitori to my chest as I walked to the bus stop in this weather - not quite winter, but Thanksgiving is coming - it all felt so soft. The soft heather clouds, the luminous late afternoon sun, the shawl, the cushion, a bit of cool breeze, also soft. I got on the bus. I felt conflicted. I feel so comfortable in Taiwan. Soft, even. I feel safe. I feel secure.

And yet, I remember the bathroom attendant.

Tsai Ying-wen Campaigns in Wanhua

Yeah, big surprise there, I know.

My friend Joseph, the man behind Taishun Street, shook her hand this week while he was there for the Qingshan Wang temple festival. He's got some pictures and commentary here.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggeringly Bad Satire

So as you've probably all heard if you follow politics in East Asia, Paul Kane has come out saying that his recent piece of stinky tripe was a "Swiftian satire", a piece meant not to be taken seriously but to provoke debate by playing a fierce devil's advocate.

Uh huh.

Thing is, I don't buy it.

We all know the tired cliche of someone who makes a big, stinking gaffe trying to cover his butt by saying "oh, it was just a joke! Can't you guys take a joke? I was MAKING FUN of it by pretending to support it, I didn't mean to be taken seriously!"

I mean, I can understand little comments here and there where one speaks hyperbolically (I've done that), but this was an entire op-ed piece, and if it was a satire, it wasn't a particularly funny one, nor was it particularly obvious. The secret of good satire is that it has to be clear to most people that it is, in fact, a satire, without having to tell them. Even if it sounds serious, even plausible. If this was a satire - and I don't believe it was, I'm in the "he's trying to cover his butt" contingent - it was remarkably ill-conceived and poorly executed.

As Jon Stewart said of an unrelated news item - I believe it was Herman Cain saying he'd build an electrified fence on the US-Mexican border, then saying it was a "joke", that he wasn't serious, and then saying that he wouldn't rule out the idea of a fence: "it's like a teenager hitting on a girl. 'You wanna make out? Hahaha, I was just kidding...unless you wanna make out.'"

I don't think Paul Kane's belated "oops" is really all that much different.

Qingshan Wang 2011

Every year around this time - based on the lunar calendar - 青山宮 (Qingshan Temple) on Guiyang Street holds its annual celebration. Other temples from around the area come to pay homage to Qingshan Wang (The Lord of Green Mountain), and Qingshan Wang himself makes a circuit of the other nearby temples. The festival usually spans three days, with the biggest processional taking place on the night of the final day. It typically ends between 11pm and 1am.

It's a favorite among campaigning politicians as many of Wanhua's residents turn out to see the festivities.

We try to go every year, which has not gone unnoticed. The day before yesterday our friend Joseph was there and managed to shake hands with a campaigning Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文). I'm looking forward to his blog post with pictures on that. Some campaign assistant asked him "is this your first time to this festival?" and some local shot back "no, that guy comes every year". To be fair, Joseph kind of sticks out. The year previously, I was jockeying for a good position from which to see the parade and a guy stood in front of me. I complained and he said "we see you every few months at these temple parades. You always get the chance to take pictures, so I don't feel bad for you!"

This year was my favorite so far - we left at about midnight, and it was still going. The highlight of the night was the delegation from the Tiger Temple (虎爺宮) in Xinzhuang (新莊), which I now feel I must visit. People involved with the temple, male and female, wore tiger-striped jackets and yellow headbands, came in shouting "TIGER GRANDFATHER!" (虎爺), "ho ya" in Taiwanese. Apparently this deified tiger has the ability to control ghosts, demons and other celestial bad boys. They piled up firecrackers to about knee height, positioned the idol's palanquin over them and set off the pile. The palanquin looked quite worse for wear. So did the guys.

There were also techno-dancing "god children" (san tai zi), lion dancers, dragon dancers, idols, Eight Generals and the usual contingent of tall gods and short dancing gods (七爺八爺) who have their own story (they were two real-life generals from history who were such good friends that they were like brothers, so when they were trapped under a bridge during a flood, they stayed and drowned together rather than be separated).

I told the story of Qingshan Wang here, back in 2008, and have more posts on this particular festival here, here, and about Hao Lung-bin's appearance at the festival here.

Updated with photos!

Me an' my HOMEBOYS

Now, we don't want no trouble, OK?

Birth Control and Freedom in Taiwan

A letter of mine has been published in the Taipei Times again, this time on the topic of National Health Insurance's lack of coverage for birth control.

It's copied below as well. Enjoy.

Birth control and freedom

In my five years in Taiwan, I’ve been consistently impressed with the healthcare system here.

That’s why I was surprised to learn, after using the system for so long, that birth control is not covered by the National Health Insurance (NHI) and the birth control options available to women in Taiwan are limited at best. The cheapest options are similar in price to one person’s NHI monthly premium after employer subsidization. This is an insult to women’s rights and choice. It needs to change immediately.

I realize there are two factors at play in the decision not to cover contraceptives: The first is that the Taiwanese government is preoccupied with raising the birthrate and covering birth control appears to contradict that goal. The second is that it’s “elective” and not a necessity for a healthy life (although I could argue that for many women, it is a necessity for a fulfilling life).

I accept neither of these excuses. As for increasing the birthrate, making birth control needlessly expensive is not the way to do it. Middle-class and wealthy women in Taiwan can afford the NT$450 to NT$650 a month that birth control costs, as well as the initial OB/GYN consultation fees, but poorer women cannot. Does the government really want to raise the birthrate only among women who are pregnant only because they can’t afford birth control? How about among women whose husbands force them to have sex and who won’t wear a condom? Are these the households in which we want children to be born?

Shouldn’t the government instead pursue a policy in which babies are born into stable families who planned for them, want them and will love them?

Birth control is more than an “elective” — access to it is a necessary component of women’s freedom and rights. For some women, it’s the only thing standing between them and poverty, as they — married or not — can’t afford to raise a child.

It’s not a complete solution to say: “Make him wear a condom.” Unfortunately, many men in Taiwan refuse to do this, including married men. For many women, especially those in abusive or controlling marriages, taking control of their own form of contraception is the only option — and it’s a pricey one. It is one of the most expensive long-term medications to take, because it is not covered as most long-term medications are.

For some women, birth control is a medical necessity brought on by various health issues, either to maintain chronic conditions or because pregnancy would be dangerous or life-threatening.

This creates an unacceptably sexist bent to Taiwan’s national health policy. With Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the running to be Taiwan’s first female president, Taiwanese women can only hope that she, in fighting for greater women’s rights and equality, will take a hard look at the issue and decide that things need to change. Now.

Jenna Cody

Taipei

The FOB - A Timeless Classic

Just thought I'd pass this along.

Videos like this, while they could be taken one way and seen as offensive, are proof that jokes about culture that make you catch your breath are only funny and reaction-inducing if there's a grain of truth behind it (no matter how small that grain might be). I'll be honest. I know guys who have the Pop Star, and one of my friends used to have the Virgin For Life.

Of course, a video like this is only a.) acceptable and b.) funny if it's done by an actual Asian guy. Sort of like how I can call myself a Polack, but you can't. Unless you're Polish, too (I'm Polish on my dad's side and really look the part). Then you can.

Side story: when I was in high school, I had a bestest-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world (we no longer speak, long story). I was sleeping over - you know, 1950s high school girl style - and we were downstairs laughing and gossiping. Upstairs, my friend's parents were having a conversation about someone they knew. The father said "Oh he's just a crazy Polack!" and the mom said "Shh, honey, Jenna's Polish." They were so scared that they'd offended me or something - what they didn't know was that my head was buried in my pillow because I was trying not to crack up too hard and wake up the neighborhood with my laughter.


Anyway, it is funny, and I make no apologies, and to all my Taiwanese male friends, I'm sorry but it's funny. And please stop with the Pop Star haircuts. Please.

Now this, on the other hand, is actually offensive.

Different dark roast coffees named after different famous black people.

Uhhhhh, no.

Maybe it's because you're an IDIOT, Paul

Wistaria House, Taipei

A typical dark, rainy late autumn day in Taipei today, and we gathered at Wistaria House (the historic teahouse known for early pro-democracy activism and the movie Eat Drink Man Woman) to do what one really ought to do there: drink tea, shoot the breeze, and talk philosophy and politics.

The now-infamous op-ed piece published in the New York Times (for some reason) came up - I find it so abhorrent that I don't even want to link to it directly. But I will, I guess. The prevailing theory among my friends is that Paul Kane's a hack (keep in mind that many of my friends studied International Politics) and that the NYT just likes the controversy it's drumming up. I can't think of any other reason to publish such a steaming turd-pile.

Brendan's take: Paul Kane is clearly the sort of academic who can't handle complexity and discussing politics and current affairs through an appropriately in-depth understanding of the issues. He's the sort - and libertarians do this too, I might add - who reduces very difficult situations to simple models that suit his needs and disregards anything that could upset the simplicity of his ideas (and I use "simple" in the way that a 19th century governess would to describe one of her charges who was especially slow). With ideas based on models rather than reality, his understanding of the deeper issues is about as thorough as a four-year-old's understanding of the mechanics and engineering of trains, from his model train set. He can't afford to take into account things that upset the balance, like how the Taiwanese might feel about this, how it not just might, but would start a cross-strait war, and how political negotiation is rarely as straightforward as "you cancel our debt, we give you Taiwan". At least it hasn't been since Europe gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler. And gee, that sure worked out. That what a people and their government thinks is only important in relation to how much power that country has globally, so the only people whose ideas matter are the US's and China's, and everyone else is like a butterfly flapping its wings in Malaysia, which might cause a storm: something you can't and shouldn't take into account. Basically, these sorts of people - Kane, a lot of people in the State Department and on international affairs advisory committees, the stupider sort of academics, libertarians and most conservative economists - look at the world the way a sociopath would ("sociopath" being my word) - with zero empathy. They're chess pieces, big ones if they're lucky, small ones if they're not, and what matters isn't people but the game: both the political game and the economic one. There's no accounting for actual people, because it's all models...and let's be honest, models don't work.

(Some of the above, like the train set analogy, is mine).

Joseph's take: It's just plain more complex than that! Hacks like Kane treat Taiwan as a troublemaker, a thorn in the side of the USA, but it's not Taiwan that's the problem. Taiwan has issues (human trafficking is a biggie) but generally speaking is probably one of the easiest and least offensive countries to deal with in Asia, if not the world. The problem - the thorn in our side - is China acting like a spoiled little bitch (his words, not mine, but they really need to be emphasized). Taiwan is not a part of a bigger country that wants to be free, or a province looking for independence - it's a de facto independent political entity, and Taiwan is not the problem. China is, and the solution is not to just bend down and **** China's **** (redacted for the sake of my Moms), which is what this move would be. Furthermore, Taiwan really should be the US's easiest bargaining chip (we all hate referring to Taiwan as a "bargaining chip" but let's be honest - in the eyes of the US government, it is). It doesn't have to send troops. It doesn't have to impose sanctions. All it has to do to keep a little bit of strategic one-uppery on China is to throw out a few "we hope for a peaceful resolution" platitudes and sell it some arms from time to time. How is that so hard? It's a huge advantage for the US. Giving it up would be idiotic.

My take: all of the above, and the fact that Kane seems to just assume that this won't have any adverse impact - that because the feelings, thoughts and opinions of the Taiwanese don't matter, that selling Taiwan to China won't incite a cross-strait war. But it will - I know of very few Taiwanese people who want to unify with China. I know more who think it's inevitable, but almost none who actually want it. I know plenty of people who feel that keeping the status quo is the best way to go, but none who would think that way in a world in which China was not a threat: they'd vote for independence, not unification. The status quo is a necessity, not a desired state, in their minds. And for every apathetic sort, I know a few who would fight. Taiwan would almost certainly lose that war (OK, it certainly would without assistance), but not until horrific carnage was racked up. The death toll, the economic costs (especially in the tech industry, seeing as Taiwan is one of the core pillars of semiconductor technology, OEM products and more), and the political strife it would cause in East Asia is something the US can't possibly accept or justify. That alone should be enough to realize why Kane's idea goes beyond idiotic and into the "I'm just an idiot trying to stir up controversy" territory.

Plus, well, think about it: America not only can't afford to police the world for democracy, but also I'm not nearly convinced that the USA as a nation has the moral compass to be able to do so effectively. We can't go sending the military around the world to force democracy on people (as much as I am a fan of democracy). Taiwan isn't like that - it takes very little effort for a fairly big payoff. And while we can't force democracy on countries like China, we shouldn't go in the other direction and sell out functioning democracies like Taiwan to autocratic, corrupt states like China. We can't force democracy, but we shouldn't be taking actions that actively dismember it. Selling Taiwan out to China would do just that.

He says somewhere in the piece that people will think his idea is crazy and unworkable.

Well, DUH. Because it IS.

And with that, I've already wasted too much time on this worthless piece of tripe. I'm going to go find more funny pictures of AIDS brochures.

"A Workman Must First Sharpen His Tools"

From the back side of an AIDS brochure with very low production values from about five years ago.

I don't know about the other weird idioms, but the last one (The "C" Episode) is a Confucian proverb - "Before he embarks on a task, a workman must first sharpen his tools if he is to do his work well".

Good job, Executive Yuan AIDS Prevention Committee, for using a Confucian proverb in completely the wrong setting and in such a giggle-inducing way!

Enjoy!

Ninna Sun and the Strong List

Ninna Sun (Sun Xiaomin)

I’ve been thinking lately about Ninna Sun.

Ninna was one of my only two true friends in China who was not an expat. I have a tendency to befriend older women – especially in Asia - so my other friend was Zhang Fangshan, who was in her 70s, retired and was a volunteer in the Guanyin shrine at the nicest temple in town.

Ninna is about my age, but our lives and experiences couldn’t have been more different. Her father was a factory worker from Jiangsu, and her mother a Sichuanese woman who died fairly early in Ninna’s life. When the Chinese government moved many of the factories of Jiangsu to Guizhou, where they hoped they’d be less detectable by US surveillance, Mr. Sun moved with the jobs, and Ninna was born in Kaili, which boasts a large Miao ethnic minority population. As a Han Chinese, Ninna received better treatment in school and life, and managed to learn good standard Chinese unaffected by regional accents as well as become strong in English. While I was growing up in middle class rural America, she was growing up in working class rural China. She is, of course, an only child. She worked a poorly paid secretarial job at the school where I was a well-paid teacher.  While I was placated, she was fired for being “too friendly” with the foreign teachers, when her job was to be nice to us and then report back on our goings-on to the school.

I mention this – and Ninna – because she really was one of my only non-expat friends in China. I didn’t trust any of the other local workers at the school, and while plenty of other Zunyi residents invited me around, it was clearly a status symbol, a “look at this foreigner who is my friend! I am so cool that I have a foreign friend!” It was a pleasure to have the company of someone who genuinely liked me for me, and not for the status I provided when invited over for dinner.

It’s still a matter of great…what’s the word? Consternation? Sadness?...that when, after we became Friends For Real, the school asked Ninna about what I was up to in my spare time (which was nothing threatening, weird or illicit, mind you, just normal foreigner exploring China stuff). She refused to tell them, because she realized it was unfair to me to be my friend one minute, and spy on me the next.

She got fired for that.

Ninna, like most women – like most people – wanted to meet someone nice, fall in love, get married and all that fun stuff, and when I met her, she had a boyfriend. I never met him, because they broke up not long after I moved to China. He ended it because he felt Ninna was “too fat” and “not feminine enough” - she had a normal build for a Chinese girl, a facial structure and body type that would be considered classically beautiful by those standards. I think she wore what in the USA would be a size four. She was heartbroken, despite the fact that the guy was clearly a loser.

Zhang Fangshan, my friend from
Xiangshan (Fragrant Mountain) Temple

I’ve been thinking about it because recently, in my favorite advice column as well as other places, there’s been something of a related, ongoing discussion of the qualities of a good man and good mate, and what one’s dealbreakers should be. As a woman, a liberal and a feminist (WOOOOOO!) I would say that I don’t have a Long List, but I do have a Strong List. As in, I feel very strongly about everything that’s on it.

My list, in no particular order and probably with something forgotten because I’ve never actually written this out before, rather had it as a nebulous  set of ideals in my head:

-       He’s got to be kind and good

-       We have to find each other attractive and have a strong emotional connection

-       He’s got to be honest

-       He’s got to get my sense of humor and other elements of my personality (maybe not everything, but you know, enough)

-       He’s got to be a feminist, which includes pitching in with housework and no expectations of typical gender roles

-       We’ve got to have strong communication skills

-       We’ve got to love each other

-       He’s got to be intelligent and open-minded

-       No addictions, no hard drugs, no emotional or mental problems

-       He’s got to love, or at least like, travel and be OK with the sort of lifestyle I crave

-       We’ve got to be able to be ourselves around each other

-       Being religious is fine as long as he doesn’t try to convert me

-       He doesn’t have to be a high earner or provider, but NO SLACKERS

-        

I’d say I did pretty well with Brendan, who slam dunks all those criteria (sometimes there are communication gaps but we both sincerely work on bridging them and are doing a great job) plus I get some bonuses: great sense of humor and a hottie to boot, who peels chick peas when I want to make hummus and de-eyeballs squid when I want to make seafood.

All this, and I’m far from perfect.

It’s occurred to me, though, that I have this list and managed to marry someone who hits it out of the ballpark in part because, culturally, I have the luxury of having this list.

No, no, wait, hear me out.

The sexism I encountered in China was staggering. The director of the school (a woman) basically hid behind her boyfriend, who was the director in name only because “businesses need a man at the head”. This same woman, when she did the unthinkable in rural China in the ‘90s and got divorced, had to threaten to kill herself right there in court – she brought in a bottle, smashed it against the judge’s podium, put it to her wrist and said she’d kill herself immediately – in order to gain custody of her son, and in the process lost everything else. One of my coworkers was married to a local woman who married her first husband only because he said he’d kill her if she left him, and when she told her father, he said “well that means he must really love you”. Of course it was an abusive marriage, she left, and the entire town blamed her. My drunken slob of a coworker was the only man in town who’d look at her, and she couldn’t get a job.

These are anecdotes, but they describe a culture that was deeply engrained and deeply disturbing in Guizhou and, one can presume, other parts of rural China, at the turn of the millennium.

If Ninna, living in Guizhou - at least I assume she is still living in Guizhou - wanted to get married and perhaps have children, she certainly could have. She was an attractive girl with a lovely disposition and strong moral principles. She quit her next job after the language school, at a medical testing center, because to save money they weren’t actually testing patients’ blood and instead just telling everyone who had blood taken that the results were positive. For serious.

And yet, does Ninna have the luxury of my Strong List?  How much choice will she have – or has she had – in Kaili, Guizhou, China? Could she dump a boyfriend who showed a tendency to expect traditional gender roles? Could she leave a fiancé who made it clear that she was responsible for all of the housework and future child rearing, and reasonably hope to find another? Did she have the luxury of leaving a man for being a bit of a dimwit, for being a stick in the mud, for not adequately respecting her or acknowledging her equal part in their relationship? Could she simply walk away, as I did, from an otherwise great guy simply because a.) I didn’t feel a spark and b.) my traveling, expat lifestyle wouldn’t have worked out with his career as a US-based lawyer?

Maybe she could, and certainly if faced with these guys I hope she did – I use past tense because it’s been years since we’ve been in touch, and I like to think that she did meet that nice guy and get married. I hope she stayed true to herself and found a man who loved and respected her for it.

It’s an interesting question, though, because, let’s be brutally honest. Not that many women realistically have the luxury of a Strong List as we Western women and women in developed countries do (I could argue that Taiwanese women and some urban Chinese women have the luxury of such a list, whereas many rural Chinese women do not). Plenty of women face the choice of either having high expectations and demanding respect as an equal and equal help in the home…and getting married. They can’t necessarily have both.

That’s not right, but it is honest. It’s not fair, but it is true.

A favorite story of mine about the escapades of Jenna and Ninna in Zunyi: one day on the street an old vendor had a children's game where you would spin an arm on a wheel (like Wheel of Fortune) and it would land on an animal from the Chinese Zodiac. Me: "How does this work?" Ninna: "Whatever animal you get, he will make you a sugar sucker of that animal!" - so basically whatever Zodiac animal you got, he'd use hot sugarcane syrup to make you a candy pop of that animal. So we played (Ninna: "Normally they'd say I'm too old for this, but because I'm with a foreigner we can play, because they think you are strange anyway!"). I got a dragon. Ninna: "Oh, that's the luckiest one! You will be very lucky in life. You got a dragon sucker!" Then she spun the wheel. She got a rooster. "Oh, I have a cock," she said, "so he'll make me a cock sucker. It's not as good as a dragon."

Ahem.

And I sincerely hope that, as we churn slowly and painfully towards the future, that the women’s rights movement takes hold in more and more countries and more women can realistically demand respect and other good qualities in a mate and not have to sacrifice chances at partnership and marriage for lack of suitable prospects.

Of Workers

Just something I thought I'd share from this:

Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Part 1
Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Part 2
Bill Clinton on the Daily Show Part 3

A really great interview underscoring what a truly intelligent man Bill Clinton is. I didn't quite understand his charisma in the '90s when I was a teenager, but now I get it, especially now that my job is public-speaking oriented.

One thing I wanted to note, though.

At one point in the interview, Stewart says something along the lines of* "they have a factory in China with 400,000 people who work in conditions that no American should have to endure...why would we want to bring those jobs back?"

I just have to ask - in conditions that no American should have to endure?

Do you see where I'm going with this? Are we the Special People who shouldn't have to deal with that kind of work, but it's OK for everyone else to break their backs and ruin their physical and emotional health to make us plastic gewgaws?

How about in conditions that no person should have to endure - and that includes the Chinese, and the Chinese government (and every other government that has not tried or tried hard enough to put a stop to it) should be ashamed of themselves for letting it continue?

And maybe we'll just have to pay more for our gewgaws if it means some workers in China have better lives?



*I realize "he said something along the lines of" is not exactly a phrase imbued with great journalistic integrity, but I'm not a journalist. So sue me.

In Defense of Taipei

Here’s my question.

And I write this as someone one month away from leaving her old-skool back-lane neighborhood and becoming a Da’an yuppie.

What the hell is up with all these folks who live outside Taipei who somehow think that “their Taiwan” is more real, is better, is somehow qualitatively a step above Taipei? What is so bad or wrong about Taipei?

I know these folks like to think of it as an easy-peasy expat cocoon, where you never have to work to hard, study Chinese too much or get your feet wet. I know that that can be true: it’s certainly possible to set yourself up nicely in a foreigner enclave like Tianmu or even Shida/Gongguan and not have to try too hard. It’s easy to spend your weekends on Anhe Road and make only other foreign friends.

But just because one can do that doesn’t mean that one actually does. Taipei is a Taiwanese city just like any other, even if it lacks some of the, what’s the word, ineffable cultural qualities of cities elsewhere in the country. It’s only “warm and safe” for foreigners here if you seek that out. If you don’t, you can live a life that is not, to be honest, all that much different from someone living elsewhere – except the case could be made that there’s more to do, and not all of it is touristy.

Take a look at my soon-to-be-erstwhile neighborhood, Jingmei. (By the way, regarding my last post, Lao Wu’s not dead. I clearly misunderstood the old ladies, although I was certain they said ‘她過了’ so I’m not sure how). What have we got? One local coffeeshop that plays The Carpenters and serves Japanese curry. A night market. Old folks who hang out outside and gossip. A stinky tofu/thin oyster noodle vendor. A chicken coop where they’ll even kill the chicken for you. A-Xiong’s “everything” store. A few 7-11s. A Wellcome. A breakfast restaurant that turns into a betel nut stand after dark across from an 按摩店. Old ladies and Vietnamese domestic workers who collect recycling when the trash truck comes. Guys who own the breakfast/etel nut shop outside in wife beaters and 藍白拖 drinking all sorts of local liquor at all hours, who always say hello and often give me a shot of Gaoliang. My neighbors are Taiwanese – most of them prefer to speak Taiwanese or Hakka, in fact – and none of them speak English. Most are too old to have learned it in school and those who did have mostly forgotten. I have to speak Chinese and integrate into the neighborhood like everyone else. No helpful English, no special stores, no special help, no swanky cafes.

I have my old lady gang, just like any self-respecting wannabe-obasan should. I have my local friends. I have the people I see every day and greet. In Chinese, if not Taiwanese.

How is this any different from a neighborhood where I might live in, say, Yunlin or Miaoli or wherever? How is it any easier or any more foreigner-friendly?

Sure, I have more work opportunities. I couldn’t do what I do anywhere else except possibly Hsinchu: not even Kaohsiung has the demand for it. In fact I’ve been sent to Kaohsiung for seminars because there is a demand, just not enough to sustain much local English corporate training business. I can and do avail myself of public transportation: besides my own driving limitations (I really don’t drive – I mean I know how, and I have a license, but I have very little experience and I’m not that good at it), I really feel that public transit is superior to private. It’s better for the environment and it’s more social.

It saddens me that Taiwan is not investing enough in both building and encouraging the use of public transportation. This does not make a Taipei-based expat inferior: I’d argue that it makes them more environmentally attuned. Yay for MRTs, boo for gas guzzlers and polluting scooters.

Yes, I can take that MRT to swankier bars – although compared to Istanbul, Taipei’s nightlife kind of sucks – and nice cafes, and I have more choice than elsewhere on the island, but an expat based in a Kaohsiung, Taizhong or Hsinchu can go to similar foreigner-friendly places. Sure, they don’t have Carnegie’s, but I don’t go to Carnegie’s. At most of my favorite spots - including Shake House and La Boheme, my two favorites – the beer is good but English is barely spoken.

Again, how does this make my life easier, less authentic or less “really in Taiwan” than if I were to live elsewhere?

Honestly, ride a bike through the lanes, talk to the shopkeepers and old folks outside socializing (a perennial favorite of mine). Go to the 100-kuai beer and seafood joints – I was quoted regarding them in the South China Morning Post not long ago, unfortunately the article is no longer online – go to Dihua Street or just wander Wanhua, Dadaocheng or Dalongdong. Go to Bao’an Temple (my personal favorite).

How is any of that not the real Taiwan? These are the places where I tend to hang out (what can I say, I like old urban stuff), and I can guarantee that by doing so, my life is not easier, more cosseted or more cocooned than someone living outside Taipei. I am not superior (although I am more environmentally friendly with no wheels!), but I am not inferior, either, and I’m sick of hearing it. I’m sorry, but Taipei is just as good as whatever town y’all live in, and it is not necessarily any easier to live here. It’s only easier if you let it be.

Finally, most of my local friends in Taipei are not from Taipei – with a few notable exceptions (I do have one friend who waxes rhapsodic on how he and his grandmother would go for oyster omelets by 圓環 in the ‘70s). They’re from Kaohsiung County, Nantou, Miaoli…they weren’t born here, but they’d balk at the idea that – while plenty of southerners call Taipei “台北國” – it’s not just as much “Taiwan” as any other part of Taiwan.