zimatravels

I had a great job teaching English in a university in Taichung, Taiwan, in 1990.  I loved just about everything there — except for breathing.  Pollution was, and still is, very serious in Taiwan.  I didn’t renew my contract for the following year.  The pollution pushed me out.

Oct. 2, 1990

“What is that terrible smell?” was the first question I asked the other teachers the first night I was settling into my new home at the teachers’ dormitory at the university in Taichung.  I was told that there was a big dump behind the school that couldn’t be seen, but could often be smelled.  Ugh!  This may be a big problem for me.

Otherwise, my accommodations are fine.  My one room has a little balcony and its own western toilet and shower.  We all share a kitchen if we don’t want to eat in the cafeteria.  It’s convenient and cheap, only costing me about $44 a month, including all utilities.  That’s good because prices in  Taiwan for other things are very high.

Other benefits are that I can easily walk to work, and I have a big indoor swimming pool and library in my “backyard.”  A disadvantage is that my room has no view on my side of the building, but if I go to a common sitting room across the hall, I can watch the huge ball of a fiery sun setting over the ocean.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so close to the sun anyplace else.

Another disadvantage is that the mountains obstruct radio reception.  Therefore, I can’t listen to my short-wave radio, which is my English lifeline to the news of the world.  The dump is the major disadvantage because they burn the garbage several times a week, sending a smell and smog over the campus that gets so bad some teachers even cancel classes.

I like my classes and the students except that my conversation classes have about 55 students per class.  It’s like teaching a mob after my 20 students of last year in the small, private language schools.  New challenges for me are teaching an oral presentation course and a composition class.  The composition class takes a lot of time because of correcting help me understand more about the Chinese culture in Taiwan.  The students in that class are English majors who can write English much better than they can speak it.

Girl students in Taiwan are different from the girls I taught in China.  Taiwanese girls giggle a lot, act, and speak softly.  Their dainty mannerisms remind me more of Japanese girls.  That makes sense because Taiwan was under the domination of Japan for 50 years between 1895 and 1945.  Many of the older Taiwanese can speak Japanese because they were required to learn it.

Oct. 21, 1990

The air pollution at the school is awful!!  My body doesn’t like it at all.  My nose fills with an allergic reaction.  I sometimes go into sneezing fits, and my eyes feel terrible.  Often I even find black ashes covering my balcony.  People here don’t like the soot and smoke, but either their bodies don’t react or their minds can block it out.  Taichung city had bad air, but this is worse even though it’s on the outskirts of the city because of the dump right behind us.

I wrote an impassioned letter to the mayor of the city about the air pollution problem.  He responded politely.  Basically, it is not only the dump that is the problem.  People come out to the mountain area around us to illegally burn their own trash.  This apparently is not just residents, but also businesses that come here to burn chemicals as well as trash and garbage.  Even though it’s against the law for them to do it, the authorities don’t have people patrolling to enforce the law.

Garbage is a big problem for this island.  I have seen myself that a lot of the problem is the excessive packaging of just about everything you buy in the stores.  In our school alone, thousands of lunch and dinner boxes made of styrofoam are discarded in numerous plastic trash bags every day.  I suggested that students could bring their own bowls and utensils and be responsible for cleaning them.  That is what the students in China do.

My classes at the university take a lot of preparation time, but I’ve also started some private tutoring.  It’s so easy to find work here in Taiwan.  One student is an adorable four-year-old girl who spent a little time in kindergarten in the U.S.  She uses only four English words — “mine,” “no,” and “go away.”  I’ve nicknamed her “One Tough Cookie.”

While life in Taiwan has certainly changed as China surged ahead since I wrote the following in my travel journal in 1991, there are many parts of the Taiwan/China relationship that remain remarkably the same.  Some of the differences between 1991 and 2009 are also notable.  There is much more interaction and travel both ways between Taiwan and China.  Many businesses in Taiwan have established business ties in China.  The DPP  has had its time in power and now the pro-China party is back in charge, forging new pathways for reconciliation with China and finally establishing direct air transportation between China and Taiwan.

Taiwan was once a beautiful island peopled by aborigines who lived a close-to-nature lifestyle much like the American Indians did.  The Chinese from Fujian Province in China came over long ago and pushed the aborigines into the mountains.  Basically untouched by white men, except for a brief time by the Dutch, the Hakka people developed into Taiwanese.  Japan occupied Taiwan for 50 years from 1895 to 1945 when the Taiwanese threw them out at the end of World War II.  In the present generation, there appears to be little anger left about this long occupation, perhaps because the Japanese instilled a certain orderliness and modern technology that made it easier for Taiwan to become a “developed” country.

In 1949, Chiang Kai Shek escaped from mainland China with inumberable followers to set up the Kuomintang government on Taiwan in defiance of the Communists.  In the process, the occupiers murdered thousands of the Taiwanese.

And there it rests today.   The aborigines have become a focal point for Christian missionaries, as well as a tourist curiosity.  The present day Taiwanese-born whose parents came from mainland China feel they are in exile from their motherland.  Even Taiwanese from Fujian extraction feel they are connected to China by being Chinese.

Though physically indistinguishable to me, there is tension between the Taiwanese and the Chinese who arrived after 1949.  The older generation of Taiwanese hate the mainland Chinese for their cruelty to the Taiwanese and the systematic degradation of the Taiwanese culture, especially the Taiwanese language which is different from the mainland Chinese language and is not allowed to be spoken in school or government.

The Kuomintang government remains in power, although it has been losing to the DPP Party, which calls for Taiwan’s independence.  That means that Taiwan will no longer be a province of mainland China, which the Kuomintang and Communist China claim it to be.  Like David and Goliath, tiny Taiwan lives in dread of being attacked by the gargantuan mainland if Taiwan declares itself a separate country.  China constantly renews its threat of invasion.  Taiwan, like Israel, lives in constant fear and preparedness for war.

What are the people of Taiwan like?  Like most of the world, they are in awe of the U.S. and its lifestyle.  However, having become newly rich in the last ten years or so, they can teach even Americans something about materialism.  They flaunt it every way they can, in as obvious and gaudy a way as possible.  Everything is overdone.  If budgets allow, they are willing to pay any price and have little regard for quality.  They pay out money as freely as they make it.  They are generous in ways and to a degree that Americans aren’t.  A lot of the generosity is kind and sincere, while some is for gaining “face.”

While Americans stress self-respect, Chinese want the respect of others.  This emphasis on acceptable codes of behavior reminds me of both the Arab and Ethiopian cultures, which rely heavily on a group mentality.  And, like Ethiopians and Arabs, they also have a very strong, durable, devoted family system.  The father rules, and girls are of less interest and value.  There is a responsibility to each other, and respect for the old.  Arabs, Ethiopians, and Chinese make the best students because of a solid respect for teachers ingrained in them.

In bureaucracy and politics, Israel and Taiwan seem similar.  Both say what they feel they have to, but do what is expedient.  What Americans call “lying,” Taiwanese and Israelis might call “survival.”  And, if a law is not liked for whatever reason, it will be ignored if possible, or circumvented if necessary.  Rarely would it be openly challenged as in America because that’s inefficient, a waste of time, impolite, and unnecessary.

As in all cultures, there are the paradoxes.  The polite, gentle, kind Taiwanese become something else when behind the wheel of a car or motorscooter.  Even Israelis would find it a challenge to cross a street in Taiwan, or drive down one.  The only other place I have seen such aggression is in competition.  They are bred for competition from an early age since their educational system is limited and geared for the best.  This unfortunate fact has put too much pressure on little ones who need play as much as study.  Some teenagers dump responsibilities and join the pleasure circuit, which has led to a higher juvenile delinquency rate, as well as a climbing crime rate which includes arson, kidnapping, and extortion as ways to get rich.

Another paradox is that this Chinese culture, which is able to paint, draw, and compose delicate verses to the beauty of nature, defiles and violates nature flagrantly and unabashedly.  This does not only apply to garbage being strewn carelessly, but the worse pollution in every category.  The wonderfully sensitive and aesthetic Chinese have turned their water and air into an abomination, and they have constructed the ugliest cities of any I’ve seen in the world.  Only the wild, uncooperative mountains defy destruction.  In conjunction with a mentality that lags behind its technological capabilities, safety standards of all kinds are far behind western standards.

How do they differ from their mainland Chinese brothers?  Basically, the Taiwanese have kept traditions that communism has destroyed in China.  Buddhist temples here are very alive with children, parents, and grandparents in contrast to the temples in China filled mostly with curious foreign tourists.  Religion is part of their daily lives, filled with superstitions and ancestor worship.  I find their caring for dead ancestors a very effective way to feel rooted to something, to feel a part of something bigger than oneself.

Taiwanese girls differ from their Chinese mainland sisters in giggling more and being more delicate and traditional in spite of the fact that their ideas are more westernized.

Of course, the biggest difference between Taiwanese and mainlanders is that the Taiwanese are free — free to think, free to choose, free to leave, free to do.  However, the hardships of the mainland Chinese young people have forged a deeper character, yet purer and more innocent.

Taiwan is in many stages of transition.  I am grateful to Taiwan, my Taiwanese friends, and my Taiwanese students for warmly accepting me into their homes and hearts.  I value them, and I value what Taiwan is — and is becoming.  It’s an exciting place to be.  If only I could breathe here, I’d linger longer.  I’m sure I will never find a place that will offer me as many teaching jobs or make me feel more wanted.