Another video from the parade.

This is the other video from the parade the other night. I've been trying for three days to get it up, but youtube is suddenly not accepting about half of the videos I upload. Whenever I try another service (revver, dailymotion, etc.), my computer freezes.

Fanfan and I are leaving this afternoon for Thailand where we'll be for the next three weeks. I'll be attending the East-West Center's Summer Seminar on Transitional Justice in Bangkok, and she'll be wandering in Bangkok.

After the Seminar, we'll be heading to Ko Samet for a couple of days, then (if all goes well with my visa) we'll make our way back to Taiwan.

Wandering upon parades in Taiwan

During our recent stay in the States, whenever people asked me if I was excited about coming back to Taiwan, I always referenced my fascination with the sporadic parades in Taiwan that just seem to materialize with little concern for the day of the week, the time of day, or the weather. These parades can consist of a couple of trucks full of musicians playing music in the back of three or four of the ubiquitous little blue trucks one sees in Taiwan or a spectacle such as the one above (for the goddes Matsu). Sometimes they're so small and fast, they seem like little musical bullets on the streets of Taipei.

These events are perhaps the best image I could present in trying to explain why I love living in Taiwan. Aside from trying to explain the history, the politics, and the people I've come to know here, the sheer unpredictability of daily life, while perhaps a terrible prospect to many, gives me comfort and provides one simple image to those who ask me about life in Taiwan. (Of course, I do quite often expound on the history, politics, and people here, too, as best I can.)

I don't particularly like when things are the same day in and day out, and my day is brightened just a little every time a truck whizzes by me with an old man thudding on a drum followed by another with a group of squealing erhu players.

I would, however, like to better understand why these seemingly spontaneous parades happen. I've been told they're for "gods' birthdays," for funerals, or for marriages. As I mentioned before, they seem to take place at any time of day, and on any day of the week. Sometimes, I can hear them all day from the rooftops of Fanfan's parents house as they wander through the streets of XinZhuang. What's strange is that, often, I don't seem to be the only one who has wandered unwittingly into a parade, because I've never actually seen a group of Taiwanese people on the sidewalk waiting for one. Everyone usually seems just as surprised as I do that there's a giant, luminescent god-truck shooting bottlerockets into the night sky, and as soon as it's all passed, everyone goes back to what they were doing.

I've got a lot left to learn about Taiwan.

That refreshing tingle in my bum must mean I'm in Japan....

While I hope to get to some more serious matters soon, I'm still trying to settle back in at Redhead HQ Taipei. Yet, at the same time, I hope from here on out to maintain a better balance of life and politics here. Before Fanfan and I left and while we were in the states, I was a little too heavy on the latter and neglected the lighter stuff too much, which merits illumination if one hopes to better understand Taiwan.

Alas, what better way to display this desire than a video about the toilet in our friend's apartment in Tokyo? None.

As I mentioned before, we stayed with a friend in Tokyo for three days on our way back to Taiwan. I plan on writing at length about it later, but this will have to suffice for now.

You may also notice (but probably not, do to the shoddy quality of youtube video) that the overall quality of this video is much better than my older videos. Well, friends, that's because Fanfan and I invested in a snazzy Canon S5 IS before our departure, which is part of the reason I want to start taking more videos and photos for the site.

This means not only will my videos be of a much high caliber -- stereo sound recording with wind resistant microphones, anyone? -- but it also means that there are at least two bloggers in Taiwan who can take really close pictures of bugs (Yeah, I'm talking to you Michael)

Oh, and the panorama's too (click for larger version):

(The Ceiling in the Asakusa Shrine)

(The Meiji Shrine)

(a small shrine near the fish market)

A picture says a thousand calories...

These pictures go all too perfectly with what I was talking about yesterday:

Viewing America through Taiwanese eyes: Doggy bags and "Chinese" food

It wasn't just the supermarkets, as I mentioned yesterday, that offered moments of reflection on American eating habits, seeing as Fanfan has been introduced to another American cultural icon: the doggy bag. The first night we were home, we went to The Mellow Mushroom, and I encouraged her to get one of their delicious calzones. When it arrived, she looked at me half in amazement and half in concern over the steaming pile of deliciousness that lay curled up like a dead cat on her plate.*

A reassured her, saying that she didn't have to eat it all. That's the beauty of it all. We'd get a doggy bag (box) and get a second meal out of it. Two meals for the price of one.

"I know I certainly can't finish this either," I said and promptly, for lack of will to ward off my calzone's brick-oven deliciousness, finished my entire calzone, all five pounds of it.


"Chinese" Food

When I called up the Chinese restaurant, Fanfan yelled from the kitchen, saying jokingly "Now don't show off and speak Chinese." My spirits immediately sank. I had wanted to do exactly that, but I didn't want to feel like I was showing off. It makes me nervous.

After I hung up with the restaurant, I explained that she can't say that speaking Chinese is "showing off," even if she says it jokingly. I've busted my butt trying to learn the meager amount of Chinese I can speak, and, by God, I've earned the right to wow my friends and family. She smiled and agreed, noting that she wasn't being serious. I said that the point wasn't whether she was serious or not, it was a matter of me knowing and accepting the fact that I was trying to be Mr. Fancypants. I can't think about that when I speak Chinese. It makes me stutter (worse).

We agreed that I would speak Chinese to the delivery person and it wouldn't be showing off. However, half an hour later, the doorbell rang, and I was dismayed upon opening the door that the delivery man was of decidedly African dissent. Even though he very well could have spoken Chinese, I didn't bother. I hate speaking a foreign language with another native English-speaker. It kind of defeats the purpose.

Alas, Fanfan was about to experience her first (giant) servings of "Chinese" food. I put it in quotation marks only because calling it Chinese food is like calling grits "American food." Actually, it might be more like calling a hamburger "German cuisine" since it comes from Hamburg. If I understand correctly, most of the dishes that we call Chinese food are regional specialties that have been Americanized over the years. For example, my favorite, sesame chicken, supposedly has its origins in Hunan Cuisine, and eating it at my house was the first time Fanfan had ever tasted it, even though she comes from a country with such strong cultural ties to China (I'm not about to delve into the complexities of that statement).

That wasn't the only first of the night, either. "I've seen these so much in the movies," she said as she opened her fortune cookie. "We don't have these in Taiwan or China," she explained. I chimed in, noting that they were actually created in California, and may have their origins in Japan.

(Please excuse my brainfart, the "她開...她.....她....她")

And, of course, let it be duly noted that I made sure to explain that, in order for a fortune to be correctly interpreted, it must be concluded with "in bed."

Finally, even the little square boxes with metal handles that are such a symbol of take-out Chinese food were just the stuff of American movies to her.


"You've changed."

One of the most significant points of contention for Fanfan and I in the beginning of our relationship were over differences in our taste buds. I fancied myself quite the cook back then, and I intended to shatter the myth that Americans don't know food and that we can't cook.** However, I was disconcerted that nearly every time I made her one of my creations for dinner, she would look at me sadly and say, "C'est bon, mais....." It was always too salty or too sweet.

It took me a long time to realize that my taste buds had been honed on years of foods that had been perfectly engineered to pack a salty or sweet punch. I didn't fully understand until I moved in with Fanfan's family in Taiwan and ate lunch and dinner with them on a daily basis. Many of the foods, at first, were utterly tasteless. Yet, over time I grew to like them. It started feeling good to eat things that tasted so pure, to eat small quantities of many different things in one meal, and to know that it was all made from scratch.

Yet, I didn't know how much my tastes had changed until I came home. A glass of good ole' southern sweet tea, of which I used to trick four or five giant cups in one sitting, had become way too sweet. I sat in dismay staring down at my Alice Springs Chicken at Outback, a meal I used to love, watching it wallowing in its own greases. I started trying to brush the clusters of grease-laden salt off my fries, complaining, "These fries are way too salty." Though I used to relish an explosion of flavor, I now enjoy the more subtle.

Moreover, my insides have started registering daily complaints with me about the things I put them through. I'm not going to go into too much detail, aside from saying that I eat pretty damn healthy for an American, so does the rest of my family, yet within days of coming back to the states, my body turns into a gaseous symphony of disharmony. No matter how much I try to stick to fresh and natural stuff, there is undoubtedly something that simply do not please my intestines and causes various rumblings and cries of displeasure throughout the day.

I don't know what this is caused by, whether it be preservatives or other hidden chemicals in the foods we have here in the states, but I've noticed it every time I come back to the US. I'm wondering if anyone else's digestive tracts have reacted in the same way I'm explaining here.

*Sounds delicious, right? Perhaps that's not the best analogy, but they're calzone really are about the size of a cat, and they're curled up on a plate like a sleeping cat.

** One of my proudest travel memories was beating a group of French people at an impromptu cooking competition in our hostel in Ireland.

Viewing America through Taiwanese eyes: Big cars, open spaces, and a bathtub full of ketchup

About three weeks ago, Fanfan burst into my room at my parents' house looking feverishly around. After a couple of furtive glances about my room, she smiled shyly and asked where the camera was. I asked her why, and she grinned, "Le camion de recyclage arrive."

We found the camera somewhere among the debris in my room and ran down the steps. I wanted to make sure she got the picture, because I remember waiting months just to get a chance to take some videos of the garbage and recycling trucks in Taiwan.

For a little over a month now, Fanfan and I have been in Charleston, SC -- my hometown -- visiting my family. One of the best things about having her here -- aside from introducing her to the multitudes who've, 'til now, only known her as an Asian girl with a funny name -- is seeing the way she looks at the world that, for the first eighteen years of my life, was the only home I knew. These observations are far too many to count, so I'm just going to take a moment to note what, to me, are the most interesting or amusing.

Big cars, open spaces, and a bathtub full of ketchup

For the first eight or nine months that Fanfan and I were a couple, we were on different continents. We had met studying in France, but we didn't actually confess our undying amour for one another until months after I had come home to finish my last year of college and she had moved to Paris to pursue studies in cultural mediation and art. For months, we only heard each other by way of the fragile, fickle fiber-optic tones of Skype Beta and only saw each other through grainy webcam lenses.

Waking up late one morning, I was eating breakfast, talking to Fanfan, who was eating dinner in her apartment in Paris. At one point, I raised up my gallon jug of orange juice for chug of the liquid gold that makes life a little more livable in the morning (well, afternoon in this case, this was back when I still considered noon an early time to wake up).

"Qu'est-ce que c'est ça!" Fanfan said laughing. She said it looked like I was drinking out of a gas can. She couldn't believe that orange juice came in such a large vessel. I assured her that, indeed, not only orange juice, but also milk and various other juices come in gallon jugs such as the one that was replenishing my soul at that moment.

This is something quite particular to the US (and I assume, Canada), seeing as I have never been to another country where people are so predisposed to buying their milk and juice in jugs. I chalk this up to habit. We Americans have the mauvaise habitude of only going to the grocery store once ever week or week and a half, so we buy things big and chock full of preservatives, so that they last longer. In Europe and Asia on the other hand, there's no need to inject everything with a coating of preservative chemicals, because people go to the grocery store much more frequently. More often than not, juice comes in puny little one liter boxes in France, and maybe two liters in Taiwan.

Well, the first time we went to grocery story here in Charleston, Fanfan just couldn't stop giggling. The image, for instance, of an entire wall of refrigerators filled with snow-white jugs of whole, 2 percent, and skim milk was incredibly strange. The only feeling I can compare this to is when I worked in a pizza place (for four days) and I had to mix tomato sauce in a bucket the size of most people's trashcans. For her, it wasn't just the fact that the milk came in such a large receptacle but also the fact that it was sold in such numbers as to necessitate an entire wall in the grocery store.

Being there with her actually made the grocery store a truly interesting experience. Every aisle revealed to us another American idiosyncrasy: Why do you need low-fat soy milk if there's barely any fat in it to begin with, and they're all "good" fats at that? Doesn't that make lowfat soy milk bad for you? Why are the bagels so big? Is a king size candy bar for one person?

This was just when we were at a normal supermarket. Not long after, we went out to Costco, and the ball game suddenly changed. Fanfan gazed in wonderment at the sheer immensity. Not only the five story shelves and the spectrum of wares under one roof, but also the mere idea of owning a ten pound jug of mustard or a package of not one but two jugs of listerine.

If we foreigners are misreading the tea leaves in Taiwan, maybe this is pertinent...

With all of this talk about one's perception of the other's way of going about things, I found this interesting:

Neuroscientists Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research asked Americans and East Asians to solve basic shape puzzles while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. They found that both groups could successfully complete the tasks, but American brains had to work harder at relative judgments, while East Asian brains found absolute judgments more challenging.

Previous psychology research has shown that American culture focuses on the individual and values independence, while East Asian culture is more community-focused and emphasizes seeing people and objects in context. This study provides the first neurological evidence that these cultural differences extend to brain activity patterns.

"It's kind of obvious if you look at ads and movies," Gabrieli told LiveScience. "You can tell that East Asian cultures emphasize interdependence and the U.S. ads all say things like, 'Be yourself, you're number one, pursue your goals.' But how deep does this go? Does it really influence the way you perceive the world in the most basic way? It's very striking that what seems to be a social perspective within the culture drives all the way to perceptual judgment."

[via The Marmot's Hole]

Taiwan and Korea: Nice-off

From the Korean blog The Marmot's Hole:

David Watemeyer writes, “I live in Korea and have made the place my home _ yet I definitely find that Taiwan has the advantage in the consideration, friendliness and help it offers foreigners. The question I ask myself is why, given that the two countries have such similar backgrounds. Do the Taiwanese have a more secure sense of identity than the Koreans? Could it have something to do with Taiwan’s longer period of modern development?”

What follows is an interesting discussion in the comments section about the differences between Taiwan and Korea, mostly supporting the idea that Taiwanese people, to generalize 23 million people, are more friendly than Koreans, to generalize another.

I've been interested in this concept, seeing as all of my studies of Korea, both in person and anecdotally, have led me the closest I've ever been to what I would call a general disdain for an entire people. I don't hate Koreans. Some of my best friends are Korean, but I don't particularly like a lot of what I read and hear about Koreans.

I wrote about it here a while back, just as one example:

What I came to see during [our Korean friend] Luna's time here, though, was that in Korea, these sort of feelings may be more rooted in tradition and, to some extent, xenophobia than in practical worries. Before Luna and [her French boyfriend] Julien came, I new quite well that Luna's family [was completely against their relationship], and I knew that part of it was due to a belief that she should find a Korean man. Yet, I didn't expect to hear her praising the Taiwanese the way she did. She was almost awestruck by the way foreigners weren't stared down here, the way it didn't seem to be a big deal to pass a Westerner on the street.

Sure, I've heard instances of people being yelled at by old Taiwanese men about the fact that there's too many foreingers here or something, but not only do I believe that those instances are few and far between, I've never experienced anything close to that myself. Of course, people look at me. I'm tall. I have red hair and, depending on how long it's been since I groomed myself, a full, even redder beard. These looks, though, are never glares. I don't get stared down by people. Little kids, often, are first shocked to see me then almost giddy with interest in me.

...

When I mentioned [stories of my interaction with Taiwanese people] to Luna, she said she couldn't have imagined these sort of things happening to people living in Seoul. The idea of Fanfan's family being not only accepting but supportive of her relationship with me was astounding to her. Fanfan said that when she told her parent's that I was coming to Taiwan and they offered to let me live with them, she asked, "Won't the neighbors start to talk?" Her mom laughed and said, "Fanfan, don't you know? This is the 21st century!"

I have since been to Korea, and while I wasn't accosted on the street by anyone, I rarely felt very welcome. In fact, the night we arrived, after having planned for months to stay with Luna's family, Luna broke into tears, telling us her family just couldn't accept the idea of me, the American, staying in their house. I don't know if it was because I was American, or just that they would have felt awkward with a non-Asian foreigner in their house.

We got a room at a hostel, and we never met anyone in her family. It was the first time, after staying with friends in Sweden, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Taiwan, and France that I haven't been invited (forced even) to come over and meet the folks.

Southern Hospitality flows from the barrel of a gun: a contrapuntal view of guns in America

I've had a sort of morbid fascination with the deterioration of Detroit in the last couple of years. I've never been to the city, don't know anyone from there, anything like that. It's just that I saw some pictures a while back at Mental Floss that I mistook for pictures of Chernobyl. I was amazed at how fast it seems people just picked up and left. Taking along whatever they could, but not worrying too much about tying up loose ends.

It was with little astonishment, consequently, that I read the other day that Detroit is the nation's most dangerous city. What did surprise me were the cities listed after Detroit:

Last year's crime leader, St. Louis, fell to No. 2. Another Michigan city, Flint, ranked third, followed by Oakland Calif.; Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Calif.; and Cleveland.*

St. Louis? Memphis? Cleveland? I had no idea these places where dangerous. Sure, I can understand Flint, Michigan (seen Bowling for Columbine?) or Oakland, California, but North Charleston? That's pretty close to home.

I'm not from North Charleston, but very close by in the "original" Charleston, so I sent the article to my family. What my sister sent me in return -- an article from the Charleston Post & Courier entitled "S.C. most violent state" -- blew my mind:

South Carolina’s violent crime rate dropped slightly in 2006, but the state still holds the unfortunate distinction as the second-most-dangerous place to live in the country.

The state runs a distant second to the District of Columbia for its violent crime rate, but local law enforcement officials say that’s little cause for celebration.

An increase in murders and armed robberies caused the number of violent crimes to rise nationally for the second straight year, according to an FBI report released Monday. At the same time, property crimes dropped for the fourth straight year.

The South was the most violent region in the United States in 2006, and South Carolina led the pack with 765 violent crimes per 100,000 people. That’s down from 767 per 100,000 in 2005. But only the District of Columbia had a higher violent crime rate, with a dizzying 1,508 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

The Lowcountry was certainly not immune from the violence. Gunfire raked across the Lowcountry last year, fueling a wave of bloodshed that killed 76 people, a modern-day record. Dozens more were wounded.

From the beaches of Sullivan’s Island to the rural outposts of Berkeley County, no corner of the region was untouched by violent crime.

Hardest-hit were the urban cores of Charleston and North Charleston, which recorded their deadliest year in modern history. North Charleston had 28 homicides, the Holy City, 23, according to the FBI report.

South Carolina tied Alabama with its murder rate of 8.3 per 100,000 population. The Palmetto State fell behind Louisiana, 12.4; Maryland, 9.7; and Nevada, 9. The District of Columbia had the highest murder rate in the nation, at 29.1 per 100,000.

Since the Post & Courier is still behind a ridiculous pay wall (if it didn't work for the NY Times, why would it work for the P&C?), you'll have to go here if you want to read the rest.

I've written about my growing inquietude over guns in America before, and this isn't helping. I'm saying this as a gun owner. I got a shotgun as a kid and, for a time, loved to go hunting in the country around Charleston.

I grew up thinking that having a gun was an inherent and important right as an American. If I want to go hunting, who should be able to tell me I can't? And what the better counterbalance could there be to big government than a well-armed populace, right? Any group, whether from within or from without, trying to take control of the country would literally have to fight street to street.

Sounds great in theory, and this sort of argument probably works great at NRA political fundraisers.

Over the years, though, living abroad, I've come to see another reality. You don't hear about murder on the news in France, or, at least, when you do it's national news. It's so out of the ordinary.** Back home, there are stories of murders every night.

There is certainly violent crime anywhere in the world. I understand that. Why, just go to Glasgow -- the stabbing capital of the world, last time I checked -- and you see you don't need guns to do plenty of damage, but guns certainly make it a lot easier. The difference between killing someone with a knife and killing someone with a gun is, well, have you ever heard of a drive-by stabbing? Can you cut a steak (effectively) with a glock?

See what I'm getting at?

While, maybe citizens should have the right to hunt and to protect themselves, there seems to be a significant number of Americans who believe that any government involvement in how, when, where, or with what purpose you procure your firearms is atrocious. The funny thing is that many of the people who believe in the unalienable right to cold steel and a couple ounces of lead, also feel that things like what we watch on television, what we search on the internet, and what books we check out from the library should be scrutinized by the government as a matter of national security.

You know what they say, though, books don't kill people. People with books kill people.

What most people back home might not be able to fathom is trying to explain this all to your Taiwanese girlfriend. I made the mistake, I guess, of mentioning both of the above news stories to Fanfan (who's preparing for her first trip to the US with me in a couple of weeks), and a look that I can only describe as hesitant came across her face. She just can't understand why so many people have guns and why this isn't more alarming to people in America.

"Don't they ever watch CSI?" I could almost hear her asking herself.

I tried to explain that it's not as bad as it sounds, but I don't even believe myself a hundred percent anymore. It was easier when I lived there. I heard about murders every day, but never saw any violence first hand.

I haven't been home for more than two months in about two and half years, and I haven't heard about murders, or shootings, in about just as long.

Going and living abroad, I learned that the news -- the statistics, the numbers, the images -- aren't the whole story. The grands boulevards of Paris during the riots in 2005 did not resemble the "streets of Iraq" as some American reporters dared to say, Taiwanese people do not live in crippling fear of an attack as some articles lead you to believe, and, thusly, maybe things aren't that bad back home.

But, the numbers don't lie, do they? How can I tell her not to be worried when, I'm pretty unnerved by it myself?

It's a strange feeling to have to convince someone that your hometown -- a mostly quiet tourist town full of hundreds of million-dollar historical mansions -- is not a dangerous place.

To be fair, Fanfan's not looking stylish mylar vests to take with her. She's not scared, just taken aback, as I am.

"Just don't tell my parents," she said finally. I nodded.


* There has indeed been a lot of protest from law enforcement and even the FBI concerning the way these numbers have been used. While the numbers certainly don't tell the whole story, the objections don't seem to be backed up by explanations as to why exactly they find the publications of these stats to be hazardous, by which I mean to say they don't lead me to believe that the stats are wrong, but just that they shouldn't have been published.

** For now, social class and race relations seem to be at a breaking point in France....

Kidnappings, Stockholm Syndrome, and the delaying of adulthood in Taiwanese youths.

One of the first things that drew me to Fanfan was her youthful, playful disposition. I was shocked when I found out that she's four years older than me. Not just because she looks so much younger, but because -- I think -- for most Westerners, adulthood is measured in cynicism and disillusionment.

It gave me hope to meet someone who had managed to get all of the benefits of a good education, while having somehow missed the "world is a cold, dark place" train. Our first conversations were about music, about love, and about the importance of being dreamers.

I should clarify that being "dreamers" doesn't mean we want to build a cottage in the sky, learn to play the sitar, start writing haikus about raindrops, and spend our days endlessly pondering the wonders of our bellybuttons. To be clear, we both want to work, and we want to work hard. We just don't want to make compromises. We want to always believe that if we continue doing the best we can at what we love, we'll be among the best in that field, and we'll be recognized for it (by someone paying us to continue doing it).

However, this has also been one of the only sources of dispute in our relationship, because when it comes to money, why we don't have much of it and how we're going to get it, we turn into polar opposites. Perhaps not polar opposites, as such, but two people who agree that a middle needs to be found between happiness and following our dreams wholeheartedly (Childish? Naive?), and the reality that we need money and all this dreaming isn't really working right now (Adult?), yet who focus on either the importance of either the former or the latter as per our present strategy.

I certainly don't think that most Taiwanese kids are raised to think about anything but money. Taiwanese kids are pushed constantly to cram (memorize, then forget) as much knowledge as they can in their heads, to make good grades on tests, and to eventually become doctors, computer engineers, or a drone working for some awful accounting agency.

So, the fact that Fanfan absolutely hates the idea of constantly worrying about money is both exception and understandable. She doesn't want to fall into the same miserable life that most of our friends here live (which consists of work with almost no free time).*

Reminds of that Lynyrd Skynyrd song where they sing, "You can take the Taiwanese girl out of France, you can't take the France out of the Taiwanese girl"....or something like that.

Most Taiwanese, though, seem to resign themselves to this life of constant work, though, thinking that there is no other alternative (and, in Taiwan, maybe there isn't). It's for this that an article in the Taipei Times yesterday resonated with me:

A majority of Taiwanese between the ages of 18 and 24 are experiencing "postponed adulthood" compared with their counterparts in other parts of the world and a lack of self-regulation should be blamed for the delay, academics said yesterday after surveying Taiwanese youths' aspirations and outlooks on life.

According to a survey CommonWealth magazine conducted among 2,804 college and high school students last month, 53 percent of respondents believed a person should become independent between the ages of 20 and 24. However, over one-third of them said they did not foresee being independent until age 25.

More than 67 percent of the respondents said lack of self-regulation prevented them from being independent.

"The numbers tell us the most of the youths know what their problem is, but they are not motivated enough to be independent because they have been sheltered by their parents," said Lee Hsueh-li (李雪莉), the survey's leading author.

First of all, don't think for a second that I'm putting Fanfan in this group. She's certainly independent, having moved to t he other side of the planet to learn a language and study art, on her own buck, with only minimal technical support form her family. I'll be damned if she's not independent.

It's with Fanfan, though, that I started to ponder the difference between, what I see, as the present discrepancy between Eastern and Western ideas of what constitutes being/acting like an adult.

Yet, on a much larger scale, who could imagine the sort of cutesy-pootsy trash that is so mainstream here passing in the West? What self-respecting adult would open a bank account at a bank that has a mascot, especially a pink, dancing, pig named Pukii?

I think most foreigners here would agree that there seems to be a general sense of naiveté when it comes to Taiwanese young adults. This isn't some sort of condescending foreigner commentary on "those people," because God knows I've got just as much disdain for Western melodrama and faux-sincerity. There are bad aspects of every culture (yes, even Swedish), criticizing them isn't an indictment of the culture itself.

What I'm getting at, actually, is one thing that frustrates me the most about Taiwan: children's education -- or éducation rather. I've had many French people tell me that a child's éducation is not just what he gets in school, but what he learns in his everyday life, wherever he may be. There is a considerable amount of things kids learn outside of classrooms.

Taiwanese children spend very little time outside of a classroom, though, until they're in college. Their parents and teachers demand complete control over them, making all of their decisions for them. They are conditioned to take orders, learn what they are told, commit it to memory for the test. I've been surprised in my teaching here at how little kids are willing to think for themselves. If I give an assignment and don't tell them exactly what subject or what pattern they are to use, they freak.

There is another issue at hand here too. I recently asked Fanfan if her parents were as protective over her as they are with her little sister -- who's fourteen years younger than her -- she explained that when her sister was little there was a period when kidnappings became very common around Taiwan. So, as her sister was growing up, she never went anywhere un-accompanied, from what I understand.

Kidnappings (and of course fake kidnappings) still happen. Only a couple of months ago, Fanfan's cousin disappeared for a couple of weeks. We only found out about a week after she had been missing, and when she was found, there was never any talk of what had happened because it would be a shame to the family to talk about such things. We don't know if she was kidnapped, but she had met someone on the internet, gone to meet that person, and disappeared.

These characteristics don't bode well for Taiwan's next generation of leaders. It seems that in the late seventies and early eighties, you saw a generation that took its future into its own hands, only to lay down the law for their children, destroying their ability to think for themselves.

In closing, please be aware that I am cognizant of the fact that this situation is much more complex than I've made it sound here. One could write a whole book on the "Buxiban Generation." I just wanted to lay some of this out, and hopefully add more to it later.

*To be clear, I hate the idea of worrying about money, but I feel it's necessary. Therefore, I'm much less reluctant to address it, which is where the disputes come in. I also get reassuring emails from friends back home who say more or less that, even though they're making good money, they're bored out of their minds, which is thankfully a problem I don't have.

The Global Generation Gap

UPDATE: Indeed, it turns out that the Pew Research Center has a study called "A Global Generation Gap" that seems to confirm a lot of the things I'm considering in this post, most notably that young people around the globe have a different perspective of the world around them:

Older Americans and Western Europeans are more likely than their grandchildren to have reservations about growing global interconnectedness, to worry that their way of life is threatened, to feel that their culture is superior to others and to support restrictions on immigration. This generation gap is less pronounced in Eastern Europe and is virtually nonexistent in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, Americans and Western Europeans of all ages are less likely than people in other parts of the world to tout their own cultural superiority and are less wary of foreign influence. These findings are based on the Pew Global Attitudes Project's surveys conducted during 2002 and 2003 among more than 66,000 people in 49 nations plus the Palestinian Authority.

Throughout the world, there is a tension in opinion brought on by the push and pull of globalization. Strong majorities in all regions believe that increased global interconnectedness is a good thing. But globalization is more popular among the youth of the world. Everywhere but Latin America, young people are more likely than their elders to see advantages in increased global trade and communication, and they are more likely to embrace "globalization" per se¹. This hesitation among some older citizens to embrace the movement toward globalization may be due in part to latent nationalism. Trend data from the World Values Survey², in successive surveys over the past 20 years, show that for the last two decades older people in the U.S. and throughout Western Europe have consistently expressed more national pride than a generation of older citizens.

In December, Fanfan and I will be heading to the US for a four month stint with my family. Not only will it be Fanfan's first trip to the US ever — where better to spend it than in South Carolina? — it will also be her first time meeting most of my family (everyone but my parents) and friends (aside from a handful that passed through Paris while she/we were living there).

When I think of our time at home, my mind’s eye is presented with a mosaic of possibilities that range from “Tah-won, oh, dahlin, that's sooo in-turr-restin’. How do ya’ like it hee-yah in Chosston?” to “Don't y’all eat dogs?” to “Were you there when the tsunami hit?” There is also that lingering belief that people will see Fanfan as something of a "yellow fever" sort of fetish I have (which I don't -- before Fanfan, I'd always dreamed of having an Italian woman).

I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time, but finally decided to write it because of a post I read recently at X-Pat Magazine, in which Andrew Crosthwaite talks about being married to a Taiwanese woman and the peculiar curiosity it arouses in others. Fanfan and I aren’t married, but the question is always on the tip of everyone’s tongues.

“Their assumption, that a marriage like ours must have more problems than one between two people from the same country, appears to make sense,” says Crosthwaite.

This idea, though, is based on a blinkered outlook. It fails to take into account that our marriage doesn’t have all the same problems as other married couples precisely because it’s cross-cultural. Take, for example, our relations with each other’s families. I’ve heard many stories from Taiwanese women complaining about their in-laws. Often they live with their husbands’ parents and, due to pressure (coming largely from their mother-in-laws), are unable to live their own lives, or raise their children, as they choose.

My wife doesn’t have that problem—not in the least because we live several thousand miles from my parents. And even if we didn’t, English men who always do what their mothers want are derided as “mummy’s boys”. As for me, I get in-laws who are extremely helpful and supportive, but who also accept that their daughter has left their family and don’t try to interfere too much with how we run our lives. There’s also another very positive side of being married to a woman from a different country. It doesn’t suit everyone, but I enjoy being with a person whose upbringing and experiences give her a very different take on life from my own. Provided you keep an open mind a different opinion will help you to understand the world more fully. To put it simply, a cross-cultural marriage, just like any other marriage, has both good and bad points.

For Fanfan and I — as I presume most multinational couples would agree — we certainly do deal with strains that most couples don’t deal with, but we also have things going for us that most couples don’t have.

As for the hardships, they are plenty. The first one that comes to mind — which might not be so obvious to those who haven’t dealt with it — are governments. This problem is amplified when you’re talking about a couple in which one person is Taiwanese. I’ve heard this isn’t as difficult in the US, because the American government makes a pretty clear distinction between Taiwanese and Chinese, but I wouldn’t say that is true in France, or Europe. I remember sitting red-eyed and tired on the uncomfortable plastic chairs at the Préfecture de Police in Paris, thinking for the first time that I was going to throw up from the anxiety. It was our third time there trying to renew Fanfan’s titre de séjour, each time being sent away for this or that, a specified date here, a paper there. This time was all or nothing, if she didn’t get it, she’d have to go home, and I’d be stuck in Paris (I know, it doesn’t sound so horrible, but life in Paris wasn’t exactly what you see in the movies). Not only did they renew her titre, they gave her three months more than she was asking, just to spite us.

These sort of instances abound. I have an intense disdain for the whole process of getting visas and whatnot. It’s something I never look forward to, especially when it’s Fanfan who's getting one.

As I’ve said, Taiwan’s relations with the US are different from with Europe, as I understand, so it shouldn’t (I’m praying) be as much of a problem when we go for our stay in the states.

The difficulty that probably comes to most people’s minds is the fact that the cultures and heritages that contributed to our personal development are so different, most notably “She speaks Chinese, and you speak English. Don’t you have misunderstandings?” Sure, one thing that helps us though, is that we both speak our second language, French, to each other. This way, we’re more or less on the same lever.

We met studying French together, so it only seems natural for us to speak it together. Many people who don’t speak a second language — which becomes very clear when you compare English teachers in Taiwan that speak another language to those that don’t — don’t realize just how much vocabulary even the best foreign speakers of any language don't know. I hear people on a regular basis using words that are very simple to native speakers, but require a very intimate knowledge of English, for example, to understand.

• We plug headphones into a jack.
• To open a soft drink can, we pull a tab.
• Instead of just saying, "He has bad hand writing,” we might say, “Boy, that’s chicken scratch" or “You just scribbled on the page.”
• We don’t say, “Squeeze the water out of the towel." Rather, we say, “Wring the water out of the rag.”

I doubt any of those words were unfamiliar to any English speakers, even if they’re only about five years old. This is something I’m very self-conscious of when we go home. I can’t stop thinking that people will talk to her like a two year old because she won’t understand something she’s saying.

(This excludes any conversations about forensics or crime scene investigations. She and I watch so much CSI these days that she could probably hold her own when it comes to gun shot residue and blood spatter angulation)

Keep in mind, though, I’m not being critical. Once, I pointed out to Fanfan about how mad a good friend of mine got when some friends said his Argentinian girlfriend was “adorable.” “She’s not a toy,” he said, “She’s an engineering student that just has a different level of English grammar.” When I told Fanfan this, her face changed faster than a scooter running a red light. “What?” I asked, wondering why she seemed urked by my comment. I had been thinking about how much that would annoy me. Knowing that my girlfriend is a highly educated, multilingual, cultured femme du monde, I wasn’t ready to have people telling me how “adorable” she was.

“That’s exactly what you do when I speak English!” — which is completely true. I don’t hear her speak English very much, but when I do, it’s just pure sweetness and innocence.

This just scratches the surface, too. I haven’t even mentioned idioms and slang — the latter changes on a nearly daily basis in the US. Yesterday, Fanfan and I were eating at a restaurant and the Police song “Wrapped Around Your Finger” came on. I asked her if she knew what it meant to be wrapped around someone’s finger. She thought about it for a second, then, pointing to her finger, she said, “Like a wedding ring. It’s for engagement?” I explained to her that that wasn’t the case.

Aside from language, there is the whole idea of culture in general. She grew up in an oppressive one party state, spent all of her formative years in a classroom (I mean sunrise to sunset, for those who aren't familiar with Taiwanese educational practices), celebrates Moon Festivals and Lunar New Years with her family, lived for long periods of time with her grandparents while her father was at sea and her mother was working, a part of Taiwan’s economic development. Down the street from her parent’s house is a Daoist temple. I, on the other hand, grew up in South Carolina, in the “Holy City” nestled in the Bible Belt, in a Presbyterian family, where we celebrate the 4th of July, St. Patrick’s Day, and Christmas. Ostensibly, things couldn’t be any more different, which seems like it should make things difficult.

Yet, as is mentioned in the article from X-Pat, this perspective is neglecting a lot of important details, the most important of which is apparent just by watching the news in the US. So many assume that our different cultures would cause conflicts — “Fanfan, you mean your foreigner boyfriend doesn’t have his own broadsword? He has to borrow one of ours? Next, you're going to tell me he can’t fly either!” This seems to make sense on its face, but what people neglect is the fact that people from the same culture often don’t understand each other at all. Just turn on the news and you see a slew of people who couldn’t be more different from each other living in the same neighborhood, born and raised.

Our different cultures, on the other hand, are what bring us together. We are both travelers at heart, fascinated by foreign places and ideas. We, essentially, have our whole lifetime to learn from each other. It also gives you perspective in looking back on your own culture, seeing it through someone else's eyes.

Just to give you an idea of how trivial are cultural differences are, here are some examples of the "cultural differences" that have caused conflicts (by that, I mean "bickering back and forth"):

• Drinking "cold" things when I'm sick. This doesn't only mean things that have a low kinetic energy, but there are certain things in Eastern philosophy that are "cold," and others that are "hot" -- irrespective of whether or not they are served hot or cold. If I understand correctly, green tea -- served steaming hot or ice cold -- is a "cold" beverage, and "cold" things should never be drunk when you are sick.
• Not taking a shower before you go to bed is seen as disgusting here (which is oft-cited cause of Asian-Western couple disputes). As they look at it, you go around all day collecting filth on your person, you need to wash it off before you smear it all over your bed.
• Wearing shoes in the house is out of the question. There are families back home that don't wear shoes in the house, but here it is the norm.
• Taking medicine, in general, is frowned upon. While most American girls carry a bottle of Advil or Tylenol in their purse, you'll rarely ever find a Taiwanese girl that does the same. I also take a medicine on a daily basis, which took Fanfan a good two years to get used to.
  

All of the hardships listed above are surmountable, while all of the benefits — being intimately involved in another culture, learning one of the most interesting languages in the world, and, of course, being in love — far outweigh the downsides.

There is also something I like to call the “Global Generation Gap.” You see, our generation — Fanfan and mine — is the first in history to be so interconnected. Fanfan and I grew up watching more or less the same television shows (though she also watched Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean shows), listening to the same music (again, except that I didn’t listen to Japanese or Taiwanese music), and watching the same movies (except, finally, I didn’t watch Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, etc. movies). I’m pretty sure there was even a T.G.I. Fridays in Taipei before we got one back home.

If you didn’t get the point above, most people in the world are quite familiar with American culture — film, music, television, etc. — though, I feel, Americans are only starting to look outward. This is, of course, both good and bad for so many reasons that I’m not going to go into.

One of the first conversations Fanfan and I ever had was about Ben Harper — of whom I’m a big fan, who is a superstar in France, but wasn’t very well known in the US, especially at the time. Here was this Taiwanese girl, though, who had bought the CD in Taiwan, singing the lyrics to “When It’s Good,” I was amazed. But, I’ve run into this all over the world. Traveling alone in Ireland, I learned that The Simpsons and The Big Lebowski were the some of the best conversation starters that exist with any male under the age of thirty (it comes on about fifteen times a day in Ireland, too). I met Israelis, Italians, and Swedes who lit up trying to out quote me.

All over the world, I’ve met people from, well, all over the world, who were supposed, according to FOX News and CNN, to either hate me or want to kill me. Yet, I experienced quite the opposite: People seemed very anxious to talk to me once they knew I was American. Sure, our conversations often got very political, but no ever associated the things they hated about the US with me personally. It was such a nice feeling to have people tell me, “You really changed the way I look at Americans.”

I was equally appreciative to see that things are more complicated, more nuanced, than what you see on the news.

The most rewarding thing to come to understand is that our nationalities tell us nothing — or, at best, very little — of who we are. At any given moment, I could fit a number of American stereotypes — "Look! He’s eating a hamburger! It’s true!" — all of them, from one moment to the next, conflicting with the others:

There’s also the fact that none of these stereotypes or generalizations accurately describes either myself, or my wife. Indeed I doubt they could ever fully describe any real person. Real people (even shallow people), are not one-sided. Rather, their personalities are made up of a range of characteristics and influences. And, more and more in this shrinking world of ours, the influences that help to build our characters come from cultures other than the culture we were born into. In reality there is no such thing as “a foreigner” or “a Taiwanese girl”. These words have little genuine meaning when applied to individuals.

This is also why I have a very optimistic outlook for my generation on the world stage. Sure, there are plenty of examples of extremism in all of its forms, but what I’ve seen with my own eyes has made me believe that those who want to rectify past mistakes will be more powerful than those who want to open old wounds (and I know that the difference between the latter and the former is mostly semantic, seeing as those who want to open old wounds believe they’re rectifying past mistakes).

What it comes down to is that foreign cultures are getting to be a lot less foreign, it seems to me.

Then again, that says nothing of what I'll have to face when people excitedly come over to meet my "Thai" girlfriend. She can't wait, and neither can I.

Music in the wind

One of my favorite things about life in Taiwan are the constant surprise celebrations. It's not that rare to be walking down the street and be passed by a small blue truck full of musicians -- which I've been told is part of funerary ceremonies -- beating drums and tooting on the instrument you can hear in this video, sounds kind of like a gazoo.

Today is the last day of the ghost month, according to Fanfan, so there are little celebrations going on as the day winds down (or starts, I took this at about eleven in the morning).

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Uploaded by rmaguir

Media: At least, Taiwanese meteorologists aren't sensationalist

NOTE: It has come to my attention via the comment below and various emails that, well, not having seen meteorological sensationalism first hand in Taiwan, doesn't mean it's not there. It seems I just don't watch the news at the right time. Also, Tim Maddog was kind enough to send me the hilarious video I was looking for when I found the one of Brian Andrews at the bottom of this post.

The winds are picking up here, the foreboding huff-puffing of Typhoon Pabuk approaching. I'm sort of let down to see that it appears to have taken a turn towards the south. Not only do I love big storms, but I was looking forward to, maybe, not having to go to work tomorrow.

Alas, this is Taiwan though. Back home, if there's a hurricane warning, you're pretty much guaranteed a day off to board up your windows in time to get out to the beach so that Gale McDoppler from whichever national news network can ask you why you're so brazened as to stick around and risk a wretched, painful death at the hands of the angry God who has unleashed his wrath in the form of a low-pressure system.

As I left work this morning, I felt the steady winds rushing around the corner of my building, rustling the raincoats and umbrellas of all of the parents waiting outside for their chil'en. I allowed myself for a moment to dream of the possibility that the typhoon would get me the night off tonight (don't think it will) or tomorrow (don't think it will).

Whereas back home we start moving the furniture up to the second floor to prepare for the storm surge and people start boarding and taping up their windows, Taiwanese seem utterly complacent about an impending Typhoon. When we asked the secretary this morning if there was the chance that we might get some time off for the typhoon, she smiled and said, "No." She didn't even give us a "wouldn't that be nice" or a "I'm keeping my fingers crossed." Just, "No" and a smile.

Nearly every Taiwanese person I've talked to has said, "Oh, it's just a lot of rain and some wind. If we get time off because of it, we normally just go to the movies."

Come on! What's the fun in that? Where's the suspense, the trepidation, the melodrama?

I realized, as I was thinking about this (and praying that my umbrella didn't break), that I have never once seen a meteorologist on a Taiwanese news channel. Sure, I've seen weather reports, but I've never actually seen someone standing in front of a map, well, doing what weatherpeople do.

This isn't a bad thing. It just means that Taiwanese people also miss out on the sensationalism of what happens when weathermen have a "big story." There's at least several times every summer that there is a weatherman on one of the beaches around my hometown asking people -- 90 percent of the time crazy surfers taking advantage of the waves the storm kicks up --
"Aren't you scared?" "Are you going to stay?" "Have you bought all that you need?" "What are you going to do if the stores all sell out of canned food and you're here on your surfboard and you can't eat for days?"

Most of the time, the storm passes, and the crestfallen reporter has to pass coverage on to his comrade Hugo del Viento -- he always knows where they're going to hit! -- in the Outer Banks, NC. Alas, it is Hugo who will be the idiot who gets to give us a true idea of just how strong the hurricane is, because we just can't wrap our heads around it, until we see about two hundred pounds of living, breathing human flash laid out by a gust of wind.

In the case of Katrina, one of those idiots was Brian Andrews...



You see, the Taiwanese people have never gotten to see good ole' American-style sensationalism!

The big question: Do the Taiwanese have the will to fight?

NOTE: I did make some changes to this as it was published this afternoon (including the horrible grammatical mistake in the title)

This is a post that's likely to get a lot of people peeved, whic