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Published: September 6th 2007
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I Always Used to Wonder Why Lao-puo's Late Mother...
...always said "Port Arthur" instead of "Thunder Bay", and "TCA" instead of "Air Canada". Now I understand. Taoyuan Airport will always be "CKS" to us. I am including a picture of Thai Airlines, because we hope to go back there soon. It’s a rainy Monday morning, my prepping is all done, and I have two hours of free time until my first lesson. This afternoon I have my two-hour drama class. Never would I have imagined that teaching drama would be so much fun, or even that I could do it in the first place.
I awakened early on Saturday morning, for my train trip into Taipei to get Lao-puo. Joe arranged for a semi-express train, so the trip was quite direct, even given the time we spent in Hualien changing locomotives.
I can’t turn around in this town without bumping into a student. One of “my girls” was waiting on the platform at Guangfu Station for the same train as I was. With a very limited command of English, she introduced her mother and sister. In my equally limited command of Mandarin, I asked, “Which one of you is the mother and which one of you is the sister?” The conversation began to lag shortly thereafter, because of the restriction placed by everyone’s knowledge of the others’ language. There was a lot of polite smiling and very little conversation, so I started to sing.
“Down by the station,
Sir Suzelot
This picture will go into our family folk lore, I think. early in the morning,
See the little puffer-bellies all in a row.
See the stationmaster pull the little handle,
Puff puff! Toot toot! Off we go!”
Any locals who consider foreigners to be eccentric might have a point.
It felt strange being in Taipei again. Every other time I have been to that place I have always either been on holiday or I was living there, and it seemed strange for once to be neither.
Taipei Main Station, when the subway comes in, still looks like someone kicked an anthill, the air is still just as rank with exhaust, and the vibrancy and the stark contrasts are as vivid as ever.
There is a lot of political protesting going on at the moment. President Chen is similar to President Bush, in that they are both a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy. There is a major corruption scandal going on, the First Lady has been indicted, and the authorities will be going after Chen as soon as he is out of office and his immunity runs out. There is a swarm of protesters every night in front of Taipei rail station, all dressed in red
t-shirts with a
thumbs-down logo, vociferously demanding that Chen step down. They are loud but well-behaved, and the dozen or so bored-looking constables keeping an eye on things could probably just go home.
Feelings about Taiwan independence run hot over here—especially in the south and east, and Chen throws gasoline on the fire. He seems to encourage division, and his supporters accuse people from the mainland of not being “real” Taiwanese. They hassle the former mainlanders for speaking Mandarin, and this kind of thing.
The ancestors of the Taiwanese people came from China a few hundred years ago, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Jeff (the HR fellow at the school) told me that some people around here consider the mainland Chinese (Republic of China) presence here to be tantamount to an occupation. There is even a splinter group over here that wants to achieve independence by armed uprising. Good luck to them, considering that Taiwan’s military is bigger than Canada’s.
Anyway, I loafed around Taipei for a few hours, and went to bed early. The first bus to the airport was 0500, and Lao-puo was getting in at 0620. She had a smooth and pleasant flight, all the more pleasant because it was on MOE’s dime. Nevertheless, it was quite an ordeal—Nanaimo to Victoria by car, short flight to Seattle, a four-hour layover at Sea-Tac, 14 ½ hours on China Airlines to Taipei, waiting for the train, and then another four hours home. At least she had a pack-mule to handle the two enormous suitcases full of household stuff and whatever I asked her to bring—along with her own stuff.
She was beat, but we managed to have lunch before we set off from Taipei, at a beautiful yet inexpensive vegetarian buffet--one of those places that dishes up cheater chicken, phony fish, and pretend pork (all made from tofu and whatever else). It’s good, but I have often wondered if it wouldn’t be better to dish up artificial vegetables made from meat.
There you have it. The foreigner population of Guangfu Township has now doubled.
We walked the 200 m or so from the station to our home, and several people greeted Lao-puo and me along the way. She even got an offer to be an English teacher for the children of a friend of a neighbour woman whose puppy I had admired a few weeks back.
I didn’t think the place looked too bad for her arrival, (once I took my motorcycle out of the living room that is), but admittedly I did cut corners here and there. We will have housework and settling in to do.
This morning (Monday), we awakened early, and went for a spin on Esmerelda before breakfast. It was cloudy, with a light misty rain, but we had a wonderful drive nevertheless.
Now, Lao-puo is home unpacking and I’m at school having a coffee and doing some writing and chatting to the students who wander in to see me between classes.
We set off early again on Tuesday morning for our ride, but it started to rain in earnest so we turned around for breakfast at Lucy’s parents’ place. Lucy is Amy’s sidekick, and another of the favourites I’m not supposed to have.
Stephen, the academic director of the school, asked me to invite Lao-puo for lunch today. When we arrived, there was a reception laid on, complete with roast duck and BBQ pork, curry and rice, all kinds of fresh fruit, and a plum wine punch (sort of like sangria). The staff sang a Chinese welcome song to her, and gave her an enormous bouquet of lilies—more flowers at one go than she’s pried out of me in 32 years.
Lao-puo wanted to buy a dishpan and a particular kind of mop after supper, along with some other stuff. It is astonishing what will fit into and onto a scooter, but she had to hold the dishpan and the mop in her hands. When I stopped the bike to open the gate, I looked back and saw that she looked like a knight on horseback in armour with her helmet on, her lance (mop) in one hand, and her shield (dishpan) in the other.
She chose, perhaps deliberately, a mop that does not lend itself to the production of a rink for a game of floor/ice hockey. (I got bored mopping the floors before Suzanne came over, and amused myself with the slipperiness of the concrete tiles) We could have played as the Shirts vs. the Skins, just like in school those years ago and (gentleman that I am) I would naturally have been on the Skins.
Today (Wednesday) I only have one class all day, because the 7’s and 8’s will be away camping. Tomorrow morning I’ll take Suzanne into Hualien City on the motorbike, to the Foreign Affairs Police Station so she can get her Alien Resident Certificate. Then we’ll ride up to Carp Lake, spend the day with the kids, have a nice dinner in Hualien, stay there overnight, and go back to the camping the next day.
Last night we went down to Fonglin, but it started to rain. It was a misery coming home in the dark and the rain.
She wants to go the hot springs pretty soon. Sounds like a plan to me.
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