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Published: September 3rd 2007
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Wild Hibiscus
I love the year-round flowers here. Chapter 12
It seems that I have a part-time job on my hands, dealing with the English names of my students. The “remediation” is easy, but time-consuming because the Chinese is beyond my (pathetic) Mandarin ability and my colleagues must interpret. My results so far are as follows:
1. Hunk. I explained that maybe “Hank” would be better.
2. Hebe. Even though the student pronounces it “Heebee”, anybody western will nevertheless look askance at her written name. Phoebe. That’s better. A Greek Goddess. I told my student that I wanted her to have a name that has the same power and beauty that she herself manifests.
3. Dick. Forget it. Richard is a famous king of England, renowned for loyalty and bravery. That is an improvement.
4. Kidd. Even with the additional “d”, it is still a name that invites disrespect. He has become Christopher. The “Chris” for short, will follow.
5. Fanny. She has become Frances. If you can find your bum with both hands, you should also be able to find the reason why I encouraged her to change her name.
6. Batty. No. She is henceforth “Elizabeth”, and she can shorten her name if she wants.
520 Grandchildren
No wonder I love it over here so much. 7. Joule. A nice boy, for all that he is predictably a science nerd. Jewel is normally short for Julia. Jules. That’s better. It pleases him to be named after a science fiction writer.
8. Cater. I explained the verb about meeting the needs of a self-absorbed person, and suggested he change his name to Carter. There are worse persons to be named after than a former American president noted for humanity and decency (characteristics sadly lacking in the incumbent). That’s what he meant, but he can’t spell worth a damn.
I never trot out my Mandarin in class, other than in controlled circumstances. It is too easy to become a laughingstock. I already had that experience in Taipei, when I tried to say ‘clothing vendor”—“my ifu de”, but instead said “may ifu de” (no clothes on). How can you expect kids not to laugh at that?
I don’t know who put the fear of God into Rain but all of sudden he and I are great pals. My UK readers will know why I did not select “Randolph” (for his English name) with its unfortunate contraction. He is henceforth “Raymond”. At first I thought it was my
colleague the retired ROC army major who had a word in his ear (audible in the next township), but it could have been anyone.
Chinese women in general, and Chinese female teachers in particular, are very frequently ‘an iron fist in a velvet glove”. I caught a kid with smokes the other day, and asked my colleague Janice to interpret my comments on kids smoking. Something tells me that she did not interpret my comments literally, because the next thing I knew the ‘tough guy” was bowing to me and begging forgiveness. All I said was, “I am your teacher, with a professional duty to concern myself with your welfare, but that is not the only reason why I do so. You are a good boy, from a good family, and you go to a good school. People have expectations of you, and hopes and dreams. You are responsible to others besides yourself. I don’t want you to have lung cancer when you are my age. I don’t want you to have a heart attack, before you have the opportunity to even be my age. More immediately, I don’t want you think you’re cool, smoking in front of girls. You might think you’re cool, but they will be thinking, “He is a nice boy. Too bad he smokes.” I suspect that Janice was a bit more direct than I was.
On Sunday, I went all the way to Taroko Gorge, but I turned back after a few km into the gorge itself. It would have been foolhardy to have continued—the road was down to one lane in places, there were also one-lane unlit winding tunnels as black as sin inside, and tour buses wandering on to my side. There was even an intersection in one tunnel, with a yield sign that was getting ignored by cars with no lights on. The gorge is quite the most spectacular place I’ve ever seen—in some places the marble cliffs are actually concave. However, it’s just too dangerous to do Taroko Gorge on a motorbike.
Anyway, that was my second adventure of the day. The first was earlier in the day at ‘my” beach north of Hualien. I took a few good pictures of some activity at the Air Force base, but not enough to invite an unpleasant conversation with the military police. I set off a few minutes later, and was merrily cruising down a deserted country road. I went round a curve, and ran smack into a platoon of infantry in full battle dress blocking the road! It seemed prudent to stop. At first my heart sank, but then I saw that a couple of the guys were setting up a machine gun on a tripod. That’s away too much muscle for an old fool on a motorbike. As I approached, I lifted my visor and pulled down my mask and asked “have you eaten?” (polite but informal Chinese—sort of like “hi”). They were on some kind of exercise, I suppose, because they just waved me through. Nevertheless, it was a few minutes before my heartbeat returned to normal.
I’ve been as sick as a dog for two days, but better now. I am the suffer-in-silence type, but I want everyone to know what I’m doing when I’m suffering “in silence”.
By the way, my colleague advises me that current market value of our new digs (the place where I thought we’re getting such a honking deal on the rent) is $67K in Canadian dollars. Would all those people who keep saying “I must keep working because I cannot afford to retire.” please step forward. Alien residents can own land here. Mind you, it’s possible that you might be better off in Malaysia, where your Canadian retirement income will get you servants. I could cheerfully end my days in this place, without looking elsewhere in Asia.
Life is about choices. I’m torn between my dad’s oft-repeated advice ‘to thine own self be true”, and my lecture to that kid with the smokes.
We have two short weeks in a row coming up. Friday October 6 is Moon Festival (analogous to Thanksgiving-sort of), and Tuesday October 10 is National Day (anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China in 1911).
Friday September 29 is Teachers’ Day. This is a very traditional Confucian concept, but not a statutory holiday. I was inundated with enough little treats to severely set back my weight loss program, some shy and carefully-rehearsed choral greetings, and some cards. Most of the kids don’t know that I speak even a word of Chinese, and they enjoyed but were puzzled by my asking (in response to the cards) “wo de hongbao nali?” (Where is my red envelope?). A hongbao is a gift of money. It will be a long time before they understand western humour of that sort, and for the moment the students just think me eccentric. They may be right.
All this, and a pay cheque too.
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