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Well, I have my world-class Hwy 193, and my picture of a farmer's truck and his sheaves, but leaving this beautiful place that I have come to love is certainly no cause for rejoicing. I tried a video of firing up Esmerelda, but it's in kind of slow motion. I had a choice between filming or having a rear brake, so I took it easy. Using the front brake alone can cause low-speed instability on a motorbike, so I didn't film for long.
OK, I admit that comparing being housebound (for a moving sale) to house arrest is a bit of hyperbole, but it certainly didn't seem so at the time. It was very quiet yesterday (Saturday), but at least Ryan and Iris came through. We have "sort of" known them for months, and only as a consequence of our moving sale did we have the chance to really shoot the breeze.
They bought some of our stuff, more than their car would take, so we followed them home and had a coffee with them. Ryan is a Canadian fellow, the editor of a local bilingual magazine called "Highway 11". (Hwy 11 is the coastal route down to Taitung).
Entrance to Mountainside Aboriginal Village
Amis would be easier to read than Chinese if I had more than a 10-word vocabulary. They use the Roman alphabet instead of Chinese script.Ryan has a 150 cc bike made to look like a mean machine, and he calls it (to my great amusement) his "Hardly" Davidson. I decided to help myself to that term.
This promises to be an easy move. Our apartment came furnished, so all we have is personal effects and books and things to go home. Even at that, we still have six suitcases and two dogs to struggle with through two airports, and several shipped boxes. Where did all this junk come from? We have yet to unload our oil-filled electric radiator, but that is the last of the "big ticket" items.
"When the union’s inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. Yet what strength on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, but the union makes us strong!" I flew to Taipei last Monday, just for the afternoon. The Hualien County Teachers' Association (read "union") wanted some of us foreign teachers to meet in Taipei with the national union guys, then with some Ministry of Education people. Did anyone ever see the movie "Blood Diamond"? Some of the Caucasian fellows in the movie
Esmerelda, my "Hardly" Davidson
I have never so much enjoyment from any other vehicle I have owned as I have from this one. used the term "TIA" meaning, "This Is Africa" (things won't be the same as at home). Taiwan is like that too, but I cannot use an abbreviation for "This Is Taiwan" without being accused of immaturity and sexism. Neither accusation would be entirely unfounded, by the way. Before we even met with the employer, I wanted to know why foreign teachers can only be associate members of the association. "After all," I argued, "We are legally employed and legally resident in the country. What's the difference between us and ROC nationals?" It seems that by legislation, foreign teachers are excluded--and so is anyone who works in a school with fewer than 30 teachers. Evidently the membership restrictions are written into legislation. I tried again. "Since every teacher benefits from the gains that the association is able to achieve, why isn't membership compulsory?" That's in legislation too. Furthermore, there is no "no discrimination for union activity" clause in the teachers' contracts. I commented that the national government has aligned itself with the employer against the teachers, and that nothing short of a court challenge will do any good.
There was a changing of the guard at the Ministry of Education
Hualien 1
Pivot shots from a hilltop at Oceanside Park. last year, and there is hope that things will be smoother this year.
My jaw dropped when I read the newspaper this morning. So will yours (those of my readers who know me, anyway), when you learn that I actually agreed with feminists for once. According to an article, a women's group in Taiwan is taking issue with a court ruling on sexual harassment. A judge ruled that, for sexual touching to be considered harassment, it must go on for at least ten seconds, because that is how long it would take a male to get sexually aroused by the touch! In other words, a guy can get away with it if he has a stopwatch--or counts out loud. The law is sure to change. The article said the feminists want the criminal charge to be "interference with sexual autonomy".
That leads very nicely into my closing comments on Taiwan--The Good the Bad and the Ugly.
"The Good" is by far the longest list, but I'll stop at ten.
1. Genuine respect for Aboriginal history, tradition, and culture. The aching beauty of their Polynesian-sounding music in my MP3 earplugs as I blast down HWY 9 watching the
road and glancing up at the mountains. The party-at-the-drop-of-a-hat Aboriginal approach to life--and how they always think I'm starving to death or about to die of thirst.
2. The warm and hospitable and kindly people we have met. (It's more important to be kind than to be right).
3. Good money and great jobs for English teachers.
4 Fresh fruit and vegetables all year long. The best soup and the best veggie dishes in the world.
5. Wild flowers all year--even in the winter.
6. Prices that don't make you want to laugh at the storekeeper--or punch him out.
7. Putting 17,000 km on an "almost free" motorbike.
8. The darkest tan I've ever had in my life.
9. Scenery that makes you wonder how God could have put so much beauty and majesty into one place.
10 Top-drawer medical coverage--including prescriptions and glasses and teeth.
"The Bad" isn't really all that bad--mostly minor annoyances that can often be attributed to cultural misunderstandings. I'll have to stretch to make it to ten.
1. Betel nut chewing is the most disgusting habit on God's Earth.
2. Road-hog oblivious old men and old ladies on four wheeled electric scooters and motorbikes
taking no responsibility for their own safety. "I'm old. You're not. Gangway!"
3. Kids on bicycles without helmets (I almost made a tortilla out of one while driving the car last week when he whipped right in front of me--and I'm REALLY careful how I drive over here).
4. Western food that is either lousy or expensive, or both.
5. Different ideas about privacy, personal space, and noise.
6. Egghead foreigners who are Taiwan "experts"-- they know everything and understand nothing.
7. Earthquakes, typhoons, rain like a fire hose, and Chinese missiles pointed at us.
8. Cockroaches and ants, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction that I use against them. (While I'm on the subject, junior high boys make Improvised Explosive Devices out of pop cans--shake 'em up, kick 'em across the floor, and "get" a girl with the resulting fizz-bomb).
9. Six foot long venomous snakes in the public parks alarming and upsetting my wife but not my dogs, and six-inch spiders that have more hair on their legs than I do.
10 Spitting and smoking.
It will be hard to stretch "The Ugly" out to ten, so only the first five uglies are real uglies. The last
five are in the "why can't we do this at home?" category.
1. Sexism and chauvinism that even I cringe at. Women's T-shirts that say (I'm not kidding) "Little Miss Jailbait", "For $66.95 this puta will give you the shirt off her back", and "Tickle my Beaver".
2. Racism, against non-Caucasian foreign workers and (rarely) against us.
3. The piteous condition of unwanted street dogs and cats.
4. Disabled people who got hurt or born before National Health came in (before they could have had medical help that would have eliminated or at least mitigated the disability).
5. Obese and physically inactive kids sitting in front of a computer every free moment.
6. $150,000 Canadian dollars for a really nice townhouse, and $50,000 for a nice apartment.
7. Fast, clean, and efficient passenger rail service.
8. No tipping.
9. "Normanrockwellian" innocence about the people and the place. Children are safe, teens are obedient and compliant, and the elderly are respected.
10 Confucian values adapted to modern society.
What's our problem at home? I wish we Canadians would stop thinking that, just because we live in a great country, there is no need to try to make it
even better.
My next blog entry will be from home in Canada. Would we come back here? You betcha. Would we (if we had only ourselves to consider) end our days here? You betcha. Are we the same people as we were before we first came to Taiwan in 2001? Not at all--we are more Chinese and more Confucian in how we think, and at the same time we have rediscovered our western spirituality and the very essence of our westernism.
There you have it. Two years have gone by--two years in which there have been times that for two cents we would have gone home, two years in which the richness of an ancient culture in a modern world has changed us, two years in which exaggeration and hyperbole have not been necessary for an (I hope) interesting narrative, two years in which we have come to love a people and a place, two years in which to shiver and sweat, two years in which to slave and to loaf, two years in which to experience places we used to only dream of experiencing, two years in which I acquired 520 grandchildren (and more on the way
Looking up at TNA
Transasia from Taipei coming in. with Lao-puo's Cambodian orphanage sponsorship), two years of wanting to kill a kid one minute and hug him the next... In short, two years of life with a kind of extraordinary intensity and vibrancy to it.
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