Americans Support Taiwan (but can’t find it on a map)

Yesterday there was an article on the front page of the Taipei Times, announcing that the majority of Americans support Taiwan’s bid for UN membership. Apparently, according to a recent Zogby telephone poll, American liberals and conservatives are both inclined to oppose China’s stance on the issue and approve Taiwan entering the UN. Well, that’s cool, right?

Except that I could have sworn that most Americans don’t know the difference between Taiwan and Thailand. And it turns out, I’m right. According to the article, out of the Americans being polled, only 39% said that they were “familiar with Taiwan”. 14% believe Taiwan is not a democracy and 42% don’t know if it is or not. Almost 1/3 of respondents were unsure how developed Taiwan is.

Now, consider that “none of the questions made reference to Taiwan’s international status or the background to the Taiwanese government’s bid to join the UN.” So, a large percentage of the people being polled didn’t really know why it’s even an issue. They were just guessing, maybe?

To be fair, it seems that 72% of Americans think that, in regards to UN membership, “all countries should be treated equally and without discrimination.” 81% say the U.S. “should respect every country’s right to UN membership based on the principles of democracy and self-determination.” So maybe they weren’t just giving random answers after all.

Still, I have to wonder if the results were a bit skewed by the fact that the respondents didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

Here are a couple articles: link and link

The ups and downs of Yangmingshan

A few weeks ago I went on a hike in Yangmingshan National Park. It’s a beautiful place and at points we were literally walking in the clouds. Here’s a basic summary of the hike:

We went up…

And down…

And up…

And down….

Up!!!

Happy Anniversary to Me

As of today I’ve been in Taiwan for one year. I’m not at all sure if the time has flown by or if I feel like I’ve been here forever and ever and ever.

They’re Everywhere!

Yesterday one of my students told me that her mom sees me at the gym everyday. I’ve never met her mom, but it was a reminder of how often I’m being observed without my knowledge.

Over and over I discover that people I see all the time are my students’ parents. I’ve never had a parent tell me themselves. They don’t speak English or aren’t confident about English or just don’t want to talk to foreigners, or something. But gradually, from students or third parties, I learn: The beef noodle vendor is Lucy’s mom, the owners of the pasta place are Alice’s parents, one of my older students (still not sure which one) is my neighbor’s friend’s son. I must have around 200 students, all of whom live right in this area. That’s a lot of parents. They are everywhere, and they are watching. I’ve never met most of them but you can bet they know who I am. The really tall white girl, I doubt further description is needed. In general, people here are overly curious about everything I do, and to some extent I always feel like I’m under the microscope, but it’s just that much more disconcerting when I think they might be parents.

I had a discussion with a coworker about this yesterday and she pointed out how often parents see us at our worst and we don’t even know it. Make a stupid language mistake at the 7/11…a parent is watching, nearly crash the scooter… a parent is watching, walk home drunk at 4 AM… a parent is watching, get impatient and glare at the person who is giggling and pointing at the foreigner… well that person probably IS a parent. As if I wasn’t paranoid enough what with the staring and pointing and talking about me in Chinese while I’m standing right there, I also have to worry about parents! They are everywhere…. watching us…

Running and Complaining, Complaining and Running

Sometimes I think back fondly on the days when I could make a quick drive to Costco and back without getting blistering sunburns on my shoulders. Not that I ever went to Costco in the U.S., but never mind that. The point is, it’s HOT.

Fortunately, I won’t have to worry much about sunburn over the next month or so, since I will have absolutely no opportunity to go outside in the sun. I will be at work. All the time. Two of my coworkers are quitting without much notice, so there won’t be any time to find replacements for them. This means that those of us who are left will have to take on quite a few extra classes. Although, given their individual circumstances, I can’t blame either of my coworkers for leaving, it puts me in a very frustrating situation. My free time will largely disappear. There is no word yet on how soon we can get new teachers to fill those positions.

Now that I’ve whined and complained for a couple paragraphs, let’s see if I can come up with something positive to discuss….

Remember Taroko Gorge, where I spent last Christmas with Dad and Quinn? (Follow the link and scroll down for Taroko pictures.) Every November there is a Marathon in Taroko. It is, apparently, the “only Marathon run in a gorge”. Whoopty-do. Anyway, I’m planning to go down there and do the half marathon. I’ve never been much of a long distance runner, but I guess this is the year (year and a half?) for trying new things. It should be beautiful. And very hot, and very uphill. Or maybe very rainy and very uphill, depending. Uh oh, I’m coming dangerously close to whining and complaining again so I better stop.

This could be me!

Not That Super

The Supertyphoon failed to live up to its exciting title, at least here in Taipei. It was rainy and windy (no kidding, right?) but nothing spectacular. Oh well, I got two days off work, who am I to complain?

Typhoon’s a comin’

It looks like Taiwan is about to be hit by a typhoon. Not just any typhoon, a “supertyphoon”. They call it Sepat. Apparently the center of it will hit Kaohsiung and Taichung, so I don’t know what that will mean for Taipei. I guess I’ll find out in the next 24 hours!

3 Random Anecdotes

I owe you all an update about Malaysia and Hong Kong, I know. Patience, it will come. Basically, I’ve been procrastinating on that so long that I haven’t written anything else. But I thought I should type a little something just to say “Hey! I haven’t died!”

Unfortunately, other than those trips in May my life has been rather mundane lately. I wake up and sit in front of my air conditioner until it’s time to go to work. I go to work and play stickyball games with a bunch of screaming little kids. I come home and sit in front of the air conditioner until it’s time to go to bed. Sometimes, to liven things up a bit, I watch bad movies on cable.

Anyway, here are three things that happened to me in the past two days. A slice of life for me here in Taiwan:

I saw a dog fall off a scooter. I always wondered if that happened. I see dogs riding on scooters all the time and it would seem that every dog in Taiwan is perfectly trained to do so. This poor little thing was not so lucky though. It had a leash on so when it fell off it sort of bounced along the road a couple times until the woman driving stopped. She just sat there and waited while the dog ran around a bit and eventually decided to get back on. Actually, she never even glanced at the dog after it happened. She was way too busy staring at the foreigner across the street.

One of my 1st grade students asked me if I was pregnant. She hardly speaks any English but she pointed to her tummy and said “Teacher! You… baby here?” Um, no Victoria, teacher just needs to lay off the dumplings.

I have frequently had taxis stop for me without me hailing them. They see me wandering around Luzhou and assume I just must be a lost tourist, I guess. I just had the worst unsolicited taxi experience yet, as I was coming home from the gym today. I had just parked in front of my building and was getting off my scooter when the guy stopped to call out and ask if I needed to go somewhere. I had barely taken off my helmet! Maybe that means I’m capable of transporting myself?

So that’s the “news” from here. I live a highly adventurous life here in the exotic far east.

好久不見！

I know, I know, I’m a terrible blogger. When things are actually happening I don’t have time to write, and when I have a free moment I can’t remember what it is I do besides work.

Early this month my mom was here visiting. We had a trip planned to Penghu, which is a group of small islands off of Taiwan’s coast. “The Pescadores”, I believe we say in English.

Our hotel in Magong, Penghu’s biggest city, had the hardest beds known to man. You think you understand what I mean when I say the beds were hard, but unless you have been to this particular hotel you can’t truly comprehend it. Other than that, the hotel was nice. Penghu may have been nice too if I had been able to see it through the sheet of pouring rain. We got to see the oldest Matsu temple in Taiwan and a few other things, but the weather was so awful that we quickly got our poor aching bodies (I’m not kidding about those beds!) on a plane back to Taipei.

The rainy weather never really let up for the rest of my mom’s visit, so there was a limit on what we could do. We went to some night markets though, and a couple museums.

Speaking of museums, last week I went to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum to see an exhibit on theatre design. Naturally, I was eager to see it, since I am always hungry for a little taste of my old life in the thea-tah. The part which was most intriguing to me was the display of designs done by Taiwanese students including their research, sketches, models, etc. Unfortunately, when these students were told to put English on their displays they must have just played “eenie meenie miny moe” with an English dictionary and written down whatever random words they came up with. It was almost all totally incomprehensible. I’m not trying to be critical of their English skills, I just had to think that if I were writing something in a foreign language that thousands of people could see, I might find someone who could proof read it… In any case, it was disappointing not to be able to really understand a lot of the exhibit.

I don’t know what else I have to say about my own life right now, so I’ll leave you with an article that my friend Gretchen sent me. I often enjoy reading Johnny Neihu in the Taipei Times, even when I don’t entirely understand the issue he’s talking about. This one is particularily amusing. I don’t actually have anything against missionaries, but to me this seemed like a funny commentary on Americans’ views of Asia (and most of the rest of the world outside of America and Western Europe) in general.

Guide For Missionaries

In 19 days I’m going to Malaysia!

I always do things backwards.

I did two things today that I’d never done before:  I got my scooter repaired, and I crashed it.  Yes, in that order.

I didn’t even go home in between leaving the mechanic and smashing into the back of another scooter.  It wasn’t exactly my first incident since I started driving it; an SUV sort of scraped against me a bit in February, but this was the first actual impact.  I felt pretty bad about it, although if I were in the United States I would definitely say it was the other person’s fault for stopping so suddenly in front of me.  Traffic works a bit differently here, though, and if I were a more experienced scooter driver I think I might have managed to avoid the whole thing.

In any case, I was fine.  The guy I hit seemed pretty angry, and I have the feeling he would have given me hell if he thought I’d understand.  His license plate was crunched, but there was no other damage, so he just let it go.  I lost a bit of paint off the front of my scooter (and spilled beef noodle soup all over it) but fortunately, I didn’t have to head right back to the mechanic.  It actually took a few tries to start it after I picked it up off the ground though, so I hope there isn’t some other problem that got started.

In unrelated news, I actually managed to fit a few hours of scenic carpentry and painting into my schedule last weekend.  Another teacher I know is in a bilingual production of the Vagina Monologues in Taipei, and the (American) director was looking for volunteers to help with sets.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work with my schedule to put very much time in, but it was nice to have the chance to get a little involved with theatre again.

Actually, theatre is the one dark cloud still hanging over my new-found happiness with life in Taiwan.  I don’t know how important it still is to me, for one thing.  I thought that being away from that world for a little while would give me some clarity on how much it mattered to me, but instead I’ve left it so far behind that it’s hard to even remember that it used to basically be my entire life.  I am afraid that each month I choose to stay here makes it a little more impossible that I will ever find my way back to that career path, but maybe that isn’t really the way it works, I don’t know.  Oh well, lots to think about as always.