the sad taiwan

I was doing some research online when I returned to a blog I haven't bothered with in a long time: The Real Taiwan. The name is apt. Taiwan is overrun with English teachers (including me for five years before I moved to Shanghai) who spend most of their time outside the classroom drinking, partying, and figuring out how to have sex with each other, and those are the only topics covered in the posts. I read a few that fall under my purview, namely "Dating in Taiwan: A Man's Perspective to [sic] Yellow Fever," "Dating in Taiwan: A Foreign Woman's Perspective,"Taiwan Culture Shock: It Is Hard Being the Superior Sex," and "How to Score with Taiwanese Women."

What I have to conclude after living in Taiwan for five years, taking part in far too many conversations about the dating scene, and reading blog posts like those I listed is that everyone hates one another.

The typical foreign woman who is willing to leave her friends and family in selfish pursuit of a life experience abroad is the kind of woman who carries her own luggage, moves her own furniture, and makes her own decisions about her life, her body and...

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Teach Yourself

Since Beau's been out of pocket for the past few months, I've been rather distressed. There's the hard fact that he's not here with me, then there's the persistent anxiety that comes with moving--packing, job-hunting, worrying about packing and job-hunting, and trying to get through the work day like you don't have myriad other things on your mind. My Chinese has definitely been on the backburner, as my poor teacher can attest. She made every effort to get me through my last book, and we did get through it, but without the heavy dose of pencil pushing I usually which I usually put into it. There was a lot of idle conversation about my day and my week, which is always good practice, and a lot more fumbling through vocabulary lists and pages of questions I was looking at for the first time each lesson. In the meanwhile, I found out that I liked at least two Taiwanese singers and that I could find Chinese KTV videos--with the Chinese lyrics--online.

I found three songs that were particularly easy and fun to learn. The first is "Girl over There, Look over Here." It's dated, but Richie Ren looks particularly yummy in the video.



The second is "Mouse Loves Rice." As always, the lyrics are sickly sweet: "I love you/I am loving you/Just like a mouse loves rice/It doesn't matter how many storms/I will stay beside you/I miss you/I am missing you/It doesn't matter how much bitterness/Just to make you happy/I'll do anything." And then a lover dies and another lives on, forever tainted by the memory of happiness lost.



And then what I think is the saddest song of all, "Fairytale." If you can't bother to watch the other two videos, watch this one because for me it typifies my Taiwan-KTV experience: a gaggle of lovely, well-dressed women chowing down on buffet food, singing tragically sad songs in sweet voices as recreation. And of course, someone dies... The video also seems extremely typical to me in that the girl is adorable to the point of really annoying and juvenile and her partner seems to take her childishness in stride. Another point of interest is that Guang Liang is singing about becoming the prince she wants him to be, unfolding his arms like wings and protecting her, and living happily ever after. I think we are pretty dismissive of that kind of sentiment in the West, but the song is really beautiful.



Here, however, are my gems. My language exchange partner introduced me to Lu Guang Chung. Another friend of mine who can speak fluent Chinese and also play the guitar pretty well calls Lu "the Chinese John Mayer." I think the styles are pretty similar, but I can listen to the Chinese version a lot longer than I can stomach John Mayer's saccharine expressions.



My favorite has to be Sodagreen, which is a group. Their musical ability is evident far beyond the language barrier. I got to see them in concert (and Lu Guang Chung opened!) on my birthday. My students claim to hate them because the lead singer is gay and has pink hair, but they also tell me that Super Junior, a Korean boy band featuring twelve Asian Justin Timberlakes, is really cool.

jie jie

There are some high school girls coming to our school each day to learn about teaching and lend a hand where they can. The girl that is helping out in Mel's class is an adorable little thing of about 15 with big eyes and a clueless smile. Every time she sees me, she chirps "Movie star!" in a squeaky voice and giggles. We haven't been able to get much more out of her. I just smile and go about my business. It's a little odd and inexplicable.

I just met a Russian woman working at Bangles. She's here studying Chinese, and apparently, she is waiting tables. I was just momentarily disoriented when I saw an obviously Western (are Russians Westerners?) face peering out from under a cowboy hat and framed in adorable curls. I think she said her name was Anastasia. Something like that. It was very romantic and it made my name sound like cow poo plopping on the floor when I introduced myself. I'm a little jealous--not only is she here studying for her degree and learning Chinese, but she's working in an environment where she is guaranteed to learn the language exponentially faster. I hope there are more opportunities for me to practice my Chinese with local friends in Shanghai.

Aaah, the dream of Shanghai persists...

This woman also spoke excellent English, which continues to confound me. Not only can we assume she speaks Russian, she speaks fluent English, and is here studying Chinese, while "high school Spanish" has become embedded in American parlance as a cliche for a language ability that is useless to nil. On a more selfish level, I hope her language ability results in the rest of us being more likely to get what we ordered, and putting an end to conversations like the one I had on the phone with the waitress when I ordered my takeout.

Me: Can I have a bacon mushroom cheeseburger?
Her: So you want two cheeseburgers?
Me: Oh, no. I just want one hamburger with bacon and mushrooms.
Her: Hamburger?
Me: No, sorry, a cheeseburger. With bacon and mushrooms.
Her: Sorry, we only have a bacon cheeseburger.
Me: Can you put mushrooms on it?
Her: Oh! Yes.
Me: Thank you.

Wow. The people here never cease to amaze and impress me (or confound and infuriate me, for that matter, but that's a different blog). I had to push my beau's scooter down the street to get a new battery put it in because I let it die in his absence. I jumped up and down on the kick starter but no dice, so I just had to put my back into it. Because beau drives a beast of a scooter, I couldn't even get it up the steep driveway of my parking garage. I thought I was really in trouble until a man drove his car past me, stopped it, and without saying a word helped me get it onto the road. I was already pleased when I got to the shop. Of course, the mechanic had the magic touch and got it started almost right away. He and his assistant tinkered with it, sprayed some lube in all the right places, and pushed it back onto the street. All the while, his wife chatted with me and tried to make her youngest daughter speak some English to me. When they were done, I asked the man how much it would cost, and he just shook his head. "No charge--there was nothing wrong with it. Sometimes it's hard to start if you haven't driven it for a while." How lovely and generous.

My roommate leaves the balcony door open all day, so mosquitoes have become a problem. I tried to solve this problem by lighting a mosquito coil in my room while I was at work. I came home and immediately had to swat away a mosquito and my whole room smells like a Taiwanese barbecue.

mixing it up

I have never seriously contemplated dating a Taiwanese guy, and the reasons for that are myriad. I could probably write like a 6-piece series exploring each reason in detail--the language barrier and the difference in cultural expectations (they aren't masculine enough by Western standards and I'm not feminine enough by Eastern standards) are the easiest and most...er, acceptable...to point out. But I've observed Taiwanese men from a distance for lo these four years and there are certain things I've seen or heard that make me think going local isn't the worst idea a girl over here could have.

Taiwanese dudes almost always open the door for women and let them through first. I'm a total sap for chivalry, so when the middle-aged man next to me holds the elevator door back for a minute and makes sure I make it safely through my first early morning peril, I am smiling before I even hit the scooter.

While some of them make a mild nuisance of themselves at the bar trying to get the bartender to translate for them while they ask for your phone number (just pause and think about the futility of that endeavour), they generally aren't rude or aggressive. The typical Taiwanese giggle they emit in awkward situations can be a bit off-putting, but you get used to it. I have had guys hit me on the ass or something likewise offensive, but my beau dealt with it and the situation was quickly resolved.

Typically, Taiwanese men seem quite loyal and attentive toward their wives. Now that I've said that, I of course have to point out the dirty KTVs on every other corner filled with drugged-up dancing girls and the businessmen who spend six months of the year in China doing their business while their wives run their homes in Taiwan, but I have seen some really amirable examples of men who dote on their wives and children and treat others around them with a great deal of respect. I like to think these are the best examples of Taiwanese ideals.

I'm not an idiot, either, though. I've heard the horror stories about how the younger assholes treat their girlfriends. I've even been warned off Taiwanese men entirely by a Taiwanese woman with two young kids who left her abusive husband--"Don't date Taiwanese men," she cautioned."They hit their girlfriends." That kind of negative generalization is no more enlightening than when one of the women I tutor encourages me to explore the world of Taiwanese men because "they are very kind and respectful." Having heard both these suggestions within days of each other, all I can conclude--again--is that there are assholes all over the world.

NB- I am already dating a Canadian, which is about as far-removed from the American culture as I want to get. I am extremely happy with him and I am not actually considering changing things up, I am just sharing some observations with whoever's reading.

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All this being said, I had a really great chat with my Chinese teacher the other night. I find that with my two adult women students and my Chinese teacher, most of our conversations stray toward comparing the situation of American women and Chinese women. My Chinese teacher started asking me whether or not I wanted to be married, and I had to confess to her that I was rather ambivalent. The thought of companionship, of sharing a life, of the comfort of a family at home any given evening, of being part of a family, is so alluring. But the reality as I now imagine it is harder to swallow. I would probably work all day, come home and clean the house and make dinner. As frantic as I think my morning is now, it's probably nothing compared to rousing multiple kids and getting them ready for school while I'm trying to get myself dressed. The things that interest me--books, museums, travel, foreign languages, horses, coffee--will probably have little or no attraction for whomever I'm with, especially in the long run, so I if I want to take the time to pursue my interests, I will be doing it alone. To most of this, my Chinese teacher vigorously nodded in agreement. She's married with a teenage son, so she's been doing it for a lot longer, but she has long felt the expectations that I dread--the pressure to be a good wife, good in bed, good in the kitchen, charming on demand, beautiful even after a long day at work or too little sleep the night before, some kind of whore and homemaker all at once, not to mention a career woman. She finally said that to be happily married, a woman has to be very independent.

That is not what I thought I would be signing up for.

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I got a raise from one of my students the other night. She just randomly gave me NT$200 more than I usually get, and when I began fishing for change just told me very flatly that her husband had decided they should be paying me more since I've been teaching their son for so long now. Once again, kudos to Taiwanese men.

hump daze

So I got wildly political there for a second and then I had to take a breather.

Things have been going really well. I have been trying to keep out of the bar so much and have been largely successful. I have noticed a relationship between how late I am up the night before and how many kids I want to strangle in the morning, so I am tweaking that at the moment. Also eating wholesome things like plain yogurt and muesli for breakfast and cooking my own healthy dinners, trying to drink more water (or at least carting around a two-liter water bottle with me everywhere I go as penance for not drinking enough). Lots of good stuff going on around here. The massive room-cleaning overhaul is almost entirely complete, as in I only have one pile of papers to sort through and a tiny bathroom to scrub before it's all good as new. It's a GREAT feeling to have my living space so clear and free of useless items.

I had a pretty shitty day at work caused largely by misunderstandings and cultural disjoints (and, in my opinion, some people being assholes) but it isn't worth going into details. Thank god today is Wednesday and I had my Chinese class because my Chinese teacher is brilliant and wise and after hearing me gripe about her compatriots for an hour in broken Chinese, agreed with me that some people are just jerks. It is hard sometimes, I have to admit, being so immersed in a foreign culture and interacting with Taiwanese co-workers who don't always catch your drift or understand the subtle reasons you might be offended. Most of the time--the very large portion of the time--it isn't even an issue, we are all just focused on our jobs and focused on the students, but sometimes there are bumps in the road and you realize you are looking at each other through a window that you might never be able to penetrate. Taiwanese folks like my Chinese teacher who are Chinese through and through but are open-minded and kind-hearted stop me from descending into evil biases against everyone but me. Basically, you just have to fall back on the common sense notion that there are idiots and assholes of every flavor all over the world.

brrrr

It is now officially getting cold. I am not looking forward to another winter here. It doesn't snow, but it rains incessantly and it is very, very cold. This suckiness is compounded by the fact that we drive scooters, not cars, and our houses are tiled, not carpeted. We have air conditioners in every room, but no heaters, and most of us have washers but no dryers, so that our clothes are always stiff and not a little damp when we put them on in the morning. (Though I confess that I now take all my laundry to the local laundromat where for about US$6 they will wash, dry, and fold a large bag for me and I can pick it up after a few hours all warm and fragrant.)

It has been raining all weekend, so I expect that plus or minus a few precious warm days, we are well on our way into winter now and it will be cold, gray, and miserable until around March or so. It is a little depressing because the sun sets by five, so by the time we get out of work, it's already dark and probably raining. I have some hope, though--during the summer, my neighbors enjoyed a really nice breeze through their apartment that kept the whole place pleasant and cool while my place was as hot as an oven. I am hoping that during the winter, we will stay a little warmer.

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I have been cleaning my room, like I've mentioned before. I have found bags and bags of things to throw away, but last night was the gem: I finally sorted through two bags of "important papers" that I have been carting around me from place to place since I came here. I went through them last night and found a bunch of old bank statements that I can shred without any repercussions and random articles of interest that I had printed and amassed without ever giving them a second thought. Here I thought I had all these kind of to-do tasks laying in wait for me and it was all junk that could be thrown into the recycling bin. Now that is the kind of qi stuff I am talking about. I really did feel like a weight was lifted all my shoulder when I could just get rid of this stuff that had been taking up a whole lot of space right at my feet for the past couple of years, not to mention a small nagging space in my brain.

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That also kind of relates to my horoscope. I shouldn't be reading it, I know, and if I do, I shouldn't be placing so much stock in it, but sometimes things just make sense. Yeah I know it's written to be general enough to apply to almost anyone, right? But sometimes, like in June or so when I read that I was having trouble at work, specifically with a woman, I definitely got some creeps because I was having trouble at work with a bull-headed woman. What about the remaining 1/12 of the world's population that are Geminis? I don't know, I can't speak for them, except maybe some people are more determined by their signs than others. Or it's all bullshit, whatever. But I have been exceptionally on top of my game lately. I told you already about cleaning my room, not going out, cooking my own dinner...these were all just some of the things that seemed impossible for me. Tasks that I didn't seem to have to the time and energy to do, or decisions requiring a degree of self-control that I didn't trust myself to have, and then all of a sudden, within the past few weeks, I have felt like an experienced conductor in front of a harmonious orchestra. I have just been making things happen, bippity-boppety-boop. The reason I find it particularly noteworthy is that I haven't even been all that stressed or anxious, which is my normal state of existence. But I read in my horoscope that I should be feeling more stability and security lately and well, things just resonated for me. Whatever, I am not trying to convert anyone; I still can't take it seriously myself, but for the bored and curious, the link is www.astrologyzone.com.

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A friend actually recommended that I get my star chart read the other day. I doubt I am going to shell out US$150 to find out when I'm gonna die and who I'm gonna marry when I can't really take astrology seriously, but she had it done and she felt it had been useful. She also asked me if I would pose nude for a calendar she wanted to create to raise money for the humanitarian work she is involved in in Palestine. Ummm...no. She kept prodding me about having a positive body image, but that is hardly the problem and I didn't feel like she would understand if I just explained to her that even though I think I have a nice body, I don't think everyone should get to see it. I don't even like trotting around in skimpy bathing suits. The only one who gets to see me nekkid is my Beau, and I like it that way. My body is special to me, and hell, yeah, I love rocking sexy clothes when I'm out with my friends and I most definitely wore a Hooters' chick outfit on Halloween, but that doesn't mean everyone gets to see my nipples.

That's essentially my initial and most fundamental reason for not doing it, but I am afraid it sounds dated to most people. Apparently, since I am satisfied with my physical appearance, I shouldn’t have any problem exposing myself to everyone else. However, in addition to offending my sense of propriety, I feel like I would have less control over how such pictures would be interpreted as a minority in an otherwise homogenous community. As Beau pointed out, Western women here are stereotyped as some kind of nymphomaniacs and a calendar of naked English teachers would reinforce the stereotype. Since I know of at least one woman who was attacked by a local man here and I have myself dealt with the occasional rude groper in the bar, that could not only be negative but dangerous. Moreover, I am a kindergarten teacher in a not very large city. It is entirely possible that people I know--including my co-workers and the parents of my students, or even my students--would get their hands on such a calendar, and I don’t think anyone really needs to see Miss Rae in her birthday suit.

It’s not the worst idea in the world—successfully completed, it could likely sell well and raise some much-needed funds for my friend’s good work. She promised it would be tasteful and even guaranteed that she could photograph her subjects in such a way that no one could make out their faces to recognize them in passing. I believe her, but I am still not going to do it.

Now’s as good a time as any to share a joke that my friends and I have been tossing around. Remember how in Van Wilder they had the “Topless Tutors” to help struggling students with their math grades? We could totally have “Topless English Tutors” here. I bet we’d make bank, too. Again, totally not gonna do it, but man would it work.

Taiwanese men and masculinity

I just read this in an article at slate.com about traveling Mongolia:



It's true. Westerners do emasculate Asian men--I still can't take it seriously when a thin Taiwanese dude my height tries to chat me up at the bar because I can only imagine crushing him at a critical moment--but "cultural ideals of manhood" are indeed varied and because Western standards of masculinity are so high and so rigid (no pun intended), we take a very low view of other modes of masculinity. As interested as I am in gender identities and as concerned as I am that people are treated as people and not forced into small boxes and categories that limit their freedom to express themselves, I am still always surprised by the way men relate to each other and to women here. Women here love sporting big, flashy, shiny purses and the best boyfriends will always carry it for their girlfriends. A man once introduced his male friend to me by telling me he liked him because he was a very cute guy. I have straight male friends and gay male friends, but straight men who act effeminately always leave me wide-eyed and giggly. I wonder what they think about Western women who do everything for ourselves? We must seem pretty macho to Taiwanese folks, though some of them profess admiration for our independent lifestyles.

Idle thoughts. I have a few things planned for this weekend; if any of it turns out to be more interesting than I expect it to be, you'll hear about it.

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