zimatravels

My first time in Taiwan was in February of 1990.  I was hoping to find a job teaching English there.  And, after teaching in the P.R.C. (People’s Republic of China), I was curious about the R.O.C. (Republic of China).  This continues with what I wrote in my travel journal.

Feb. 28, 1990

Long shots sometime pay off.  I am temporarily settled in the home of the mother and sister of a couple I met while I was in San Diego.  I had called a museum that specialized in Asian art in the hope of being put in touch with someone from Taiwan so I could ask some detailed questions before I decided to come to Taichung.  They gave me the names of a couple living in San Diego who visited me and reassured me that Taichung was a good choice for teaching English.  They had also said that his mother and sister had a big home in Taichung and would love to have me stay with them.

True to their word, his mother and sister came to pick me up from the bus stop.  Mama Chen was dressed exquisitely.  She asked me some fast paced questions about my age, marriage, children, took me to a restaurant, asked me what I liked, ordered five dishes, and left saying she had an appointment.  Her daughter, Emily, explained that they had already eaten.  Then Emily and her little six-year-old, Theresa, took me to their home with several plastic bags filled with the food.  I eyed the soup sloshing around in its plastic bag worriedly as we rode home.  Amazingly, it arrived without spilling a drop.

Their house is huge.  Mama Chen lives on the bottom floor.  Emily, Theresa, and I live on the second floor.  A family and a student rent the third floor.  Emily brought into my room a gadget that combines a radio, tape recorder, and small television.  The room is quite large, even including an air conditioner.

March 1, 1990

Emily introduced me to a friend of hers named Nancy.  She is a native of Taichung, daughter of escaped Chinese mainlanders, who married an Australian and has lived in Australia the past nine years.  She said she has changed a lot and re-evaluated her value system since living in the westernized world.  She has come to appreciate her Chinese parts even more since living “outside,” but it has also made her fit into Taiwan less and less.  She is divorced, mostly she believes because of her Chinese habit of hiding her feelings and not telling the truth.  Now, she values the privacy she could never have within her Chinese culture, and the need for her to decide her own future.

She is worried about the very recent prosperity that has weakened the Taiwanese traditional family and has made them indiscriminate consumers and racers after big and easy money.  She has been to Bali and agrees with me that Balinese have something very special.  Being outside Taiwan has helped her to see its faults more glaringly because of her wider view.

Her English is excellent.  I hope I’ll get to see her again.

March 2, 1990

I wandered to get the lay of the neighborhood.  I found some stores I’ll need to use.  And I noticed some cultural norms — like small stores with puppies and dogs who come to work with their owners, afternoon siesta in offices after lunch where workers sleep somehow comfortably with their heads on their desks, and prized autos driven right into the store for safe keeping.  They can do that because the whole storefront has bars that can be pulled down and locked at night like in Israel and China.  Most of the stores, by size and lack of stock and activity, make you wonder how they survive.

There is the similar grittiness and griminess of China, but also gaudy decoration that reminds me more of the Arab sense of decor I saw in Arab villages in Israel.

I walked into a residential side street, which ended in a garbage-strewn field with some dirty, stagnant water.  Many white butterflies seemed not to notice the pollution.  And there I found a little neighborhood temple.  It was wonderful!  It had the love and care that the streets and field did not.  Brother Buddhas were locked behind a shrine gate.  A fantastic tree came right through the temple — crashing through the roof and continuing upward.  The branches were distorted and twisted, but that tree was very alive.  It seemed to actually hug the shrine with its branches growing right around the dragon decorations.  There was a strong sense of religious harmony with nature in that little spot that smelled of incense.

To be continued….