September has ended, get out of Bed Green Day!

Well a month has passed since my arrival in Taiwan, and it’s been a busy one. I have still have to do things like get a cellphone number (I have the phone now). I’ve had a lot of once-in-a-lifetime experiences such as the prayer rituals at the Daoist/Buddhist temple and Confucius’s birthday ceremony (which actually quite somber, with not a single tail being pinned on a donkey or Legalist), and have survived 3 typhoons. I am, however, struggling somewhat with culture shock, yearning to break up the endless erray of rice and noodles with pork with some good old Decker French fries. I’m not saying the food here is bad, though don’t be surprised to find a cockroach running around your table if you have a table, but it is generally quite greasy, fatty, and/or overflowing with sugar – and one cannot only eat so much of it day after day without wanting a break. To be honest, my life hasn’t been that exciting here. Chinese makes Spanish look like Pig Latin in terms of the difficulty of learning the language. I spend most of my days trying to catch up on character memorization, and on weekends the residence curfew (and lockout) and long-commuting distances effectively mean I have to start heading home at about 9 or 10 pm at the latest even on Saturday or Friday night. Even my adventures off campus are often quite tame. I went to the beach with some Taiwanese last week, but I was the only one who brought my swimsuit. Swimming to the Taiwanese, generally means wading in over your ankles and seldom higher. They will literally just walk around in 1 to 2 feet deep water, the DANGER DEEP WATER flags only come up to my waist and I can basically walk out to them without even getting my shorts wet (of course, the Taiwanese won’t go near them less they get eaten by a jellyfish – their words not mine). Despite the fact that nobody goes deeper than their ankles, the beaches are still equipped with a full squadron of Team Taiwan Life Guards equipped with emergency speedoes, and the occasional full-body scuba wet suit with neon racing stripes. They will shout and whistle at you angrily and come and chase you down if you try to go past the flags. Seriously, I’m not kidding. Though apparently most Taiwanese can’t swim, despite living on an island, and many won’t touch the water because it’s “icky.”

So yeah, I’ve had a little trouble getting used to some aspects of the culture. At the residence, we are crammed 3 people to a small room despite the fact that there are vacant rooms still left vacant, which has lead to problems because my roommates and I have such different schedules and are constantly interrupting each other’s sleep. The Taiwanese are generally quite passive, preferring to live “harmoniously” though this often leads to exploitation. In terms of Labour, for example, the Taiwanese will denigrate Westerners as complainers for refusing to work overtime without pay, while on the other end my Taiwanese friend Chanel is called into work, overtime without pay, practically every weekend (and often for 2 days of the weekend) in addition to overtime and fulltime work during the week. Her employer: Hewlett-Packardt.

One day, I found myself at an intersection, that wasn’t busy but the light was still red and a large group of people were waiting. Eager to get home before being locked out, I walked across the empty street, prompting a random New Zealander who saw me to lambaste me for “setting a bad example for the Taiwanese” (apparently, a large crowd followed my leadership and marched in social revolution under my banner while I nursed a bubble tea in ignorance). “How do you expect the Taiwanese to ever behave properly, if they see a foreigner acting irresponsibly” the Kiwi asked me. I basically told him that I didn’t come to Taiwan expecting to teach the Taiwanese how to behave, and that what I did wasn’t such a big deal in Canada (in Quebec, it was often the only way across the street). A long debate than ensued, which was actually a nice refresher as I haven’t really had a person-to-person intellectual conversation in a long time, even with a guy who admits he’s “not very PC.” Communication barriers are huge at Tamkang University, where my Chinese is barely good enough to order a coke and the level of English, with the exception of the European exchange students, tends to be only slightly more stellar. The Taiwanese at the university more or less act like high school students (or in some cases like junior high school students) as most have never had a job, never done anything without “their bestest friends,” or done anything on their own or against their parent’s will (who provide them with their funding). When I tell them I came here alone, their jaws drop and they are speechless as to how anyone could be bold enough to attempt such a thing. I don’t mean to sound ethnocentric, but maturity generally stems from experience and the shy nature of the Taiwanese means they are often less experienced, and seem less mature than their foreign counterparts of the same age. You can really notice the differences between those who have studied overseas and those who haven’t, the differences are uncanny (I wonder what I’ll be like when I return to Canada, but somehow I think I’ll be the same old Ryan). In one class called Intercultural Communication (the only non-Mandarin class I’m taking), the professor wanted us to go and discuss intercultural issues as groups and so told us we could go outside the classroom to discuss things. It took about 10 minutes for me to convince the group that it was okay for us to do so, to ACTUALLY leave the classroom. We did actually have a little discussion, the subject was homosexuality and how different cultures accept it. I talked about how Canada just legalized same sex marriage and the controversy involved with that but the Taiwanese preferred to spread gossip and gigglying about 2-28 park (which is actually a memorial to those massacred by the Nationalist Chinese government in the late 1940s, but they never mentioned that so perhaps they didn’t know or didn’t feel it was important) being a hangout for gays and some Japanese talent agency which rumour has it forces its young male stars to have sex with the management. One guy said he thought they were legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan, but he wasn’t sure. I tried to explain to them that some Canadian cities, such as Montreal, have neighbourhoods known and proudly designated as gay villages, but I think they interpreted that as “Canada has little cities just for gay people, separate from the big ones.” Overall, it seemed somewhat superficial.
In general terms, they seem quite materialistic (when asked what they do for fun on a Friday night, both men and women generally respond with “GO SHOPPING!!!”), and overly romanticize Western culture and Westerners as strong, independent, punctual (they are very big believers in the punctuality of Westerners) are very concerned about appearances (since light skin is popular, girls will routinely carry umbrellas, more to block out the sun than the rain. As well, girls will wear very revealing short skirts but cover up pimples with potch marks, not unlike the ones sported by 18th century European aristocrats). Like Victorian England, social rules regarding sex and gender are somewhat strict and while they are generally obeyed on the surface, sexual advertising and literature suggest a culture exploding behind the scenes. From billboards where the models wear detachable skirts (ready to flap off with the next typhoon), to the phallic shaped skin coloured cartoon plush toys (whose “feet” look suspiciously like testes) that have in some of the arcade crane games. Y’know, the type of games where you throw in a coin, and get 30 seconds to operate crane with weak claws in the hopes of grabbing one of the plush toys inside. You try and try and try, but you can never get the crane to actually pick up anything, and even if does, it hits the wall of the hole and falls out, and it never really occurs to you that you have no real need for stuffed version of Doraemon . Anyways, they’re all over the place, mainly in the night markets (which also contain various food vendors who sell everything from stinky tofu, which really does stink, to snake blood and other delicacies) but then Taiwan is just one big night market.
The Taiwanese people are very bubbly, giggle a lot, and have been very generous with me, but often seem in denial of the darker aspects of their society. It seems like every famous bridge or precipice around Taipei is known as a “popular spot to suicide” (they use suicide as a verb). I always thought individualist societies were more prone to depression, but collectivism ain’t so great either if you don’t fit into the collective. It’s quite sad really, and makes me wonder how happy everyone is under their masks. Perhaps though, ignorance is bliss.