謝謝台灣!

It's the last weekend of my year in Taiwan! And also of the most amazing year of my life, haha - though of course I hope to follow up with even more awesome ones in the years to come.

It's been awhile since my last update. First because I became a little wary of blogging when going through everything necessary for work this summer. Then because I was moving all over the city ("moving my house", as I now say under the influence of Chinese grammar) - 5 places in the space of a month! And finally because trying to write something in summary of the year is really difficult. My English comes out all goopy now, but the bigger problem is just trying to talk genuinely about my experience here without ending up imposing some kind of moral on it and without sounding annoyingly happy. I'll try my best but be forwarned that most of what follows is not to anyone in particular - I try to give some advice that might help if you are doing something like what I did (going abroad for a year to study Chinese in Taiwan), but most of this post is just so that I can remember how I thought about my year abroad as it was coming to a close.

Why has this year been so awesome? Ok, first of all, it was obviously the people. I came here thinking I would NOT make life-long friends at all, because I kind of just wanted to focus on my self and Chinese and Taiwan. But obviously the people I met are what made Taiwan feel like home. Being able to see and speak to my relatives has been so awesome! As well as meeting my dad's friends, who took me in like a member of their family. Everyone I met through language exchange was so cool and fun to talk to. My teachers have been so cool to connect with and I love that we can interact outside of class. The orphans I volunteer with are the most precious kids ever, my coworkers are so nice – and the list goes on, because even strangers in Taiwan have been warm and welcoming.

And then obviously friends from my program - I've met so many diverse, smart, fun people this year. The sheer outpouring of love on my birthday was overwhelming, and that was one of the first times I became very conscious of how much the friends I’d made in Taiwan meant to me.

Study abroad is kind of a trap because people end up connecting most easily with other study abroad students, and then it's like they haven't even left America (or wherever) at all. I'm really glad that I met so many people through ICLP though. This is the first time in my life that my group of friends has been so full of ABC's and that I've interacted with them as ABC's. It partially had to do with having similar Chinese levels and ideas of what it meant to be learning Chinese in Taiwan. I had awesome friends to travel with, eat with, study with, and live with, and this was definitely part of learning about Taiwan. Speaking Chinglish probably made my Chinese a little less fluent, but I don't think cutting myself off from the program and only spending time with locals would have been the right decision at all. It's something to think about when you study abroad, but I think I struck a good balance this year, and all of the people I was friends with contributed to my learning and exploring here.

I love solo-trekking and have had many refreshing hikes and walks on my own this year. In fact, that's also what made this year awesome, the sense of freedom and autonomy that came with the realization that I had the resources, knowledge, ability, and time go anywhere in the country that I wanted. But some of the most valuable time I've spent and coolest places I've been have of course been with friends, so thanks guys!

People have been slowly trickling out of the country since late spring, starting with Colton and Tracy, and I feel like almost every weekend since then has been a goodbye dinner or party. We'll be staying in touch though, since so many people have reasons to go back to America (teachers for work, local friends for school, my New Jersey contingent for New Jersey, everyone for NYC..), and since I plan to come back to Taiwan lots! I've had several moments that really made me realized how attached I am to this place where I just suddenly become very conscious of how much I love Taiwan, and many of these moments were shared with friends.

So what I have I learned this year? First of all is obviously Chinese. I've learned lots of Chinese! I can get by in almost any situation now, even though I might say things incorrectly or strangely. (In fact, I'm a little worried about plateauing now, since I can always communicate what I mean, just in a roundabout way - what if I never learn the correct way to say it!?). Most of the time, at least in daily life, I can speak confidently and without things coming out wrong from nervousness, which I remember always used to happen. I can chat and be friends with people :). I can understand the news and television programs, I can understand newspapers and many books, I can read without thinking every word out loud in my head and making educated guesses about vocab I don't know, I can think about certain academic ideas in Chinese - and I can see how from here I will be able to keep improving without the help of a teacher standing over me.

It is kind of funny that there always remains the possibility of a complete and total language collapse when the conversation turns to certain things, but I guess that's why language learning is a life-long endeavor. It has also been hard to feel totally immersed in Chinese, which I think makes it difficult to feel fully fluent. Even at work, my local coworkers (who are so cool by the way) drop in English ALL THE TIME. Like it's more normal for them to say "case" in kind of a tonal Chinese way than it is to say "檔案" – “你現在有沒有 kay-se?”. Chinese as taught at ICLP doesn't really exist any more, apparently even in grad seminars, which is kind of a problem. I do wish I had gotten some more normal vocab, like for TV remote and stapler and other words that I've learned slowly or not at all, but I guess that's what literature is for now. So anyway I have learned many "intellectual" words and I see the way towards building that and learning other things I may have missed.

I have learned to relax. You may find it illogical that I came to Taiwan with the idea that I was escaping Yale over-achiever culture. Everyone here, from preschoolers to adults, is out all day studying or working, and then has extra classes or unpaid overtime. I needed to come to Asia to even hear about the phenomenon of "過勞死" – working so much that you die! (Which sounded like nonsense to me at first and connects to all these questions about Eastern and Western science and causality, but that's for another time). Plus doesn't studying Chinese just mean sitting at a desk memorizing tons of things? But I think it was being an outsider in that culture that let me feel free to not overwork myself, as well as the fact that learning about Taiwan and learning Chinese is a lot about exploring and putting yourself out there. I think I've adopted a much healthier attitude towards school and my priorities in terms of health and happiness and I've learned to make decisions about what to learn and how, rather than just always trying to fulfill the teacher's expectations and outdo myself.

I've learned the importance to my mental and physical health of going to the gym everyday. I hope in the future that I can have a lifestyle that lets me do that, since every time I've gotten sick this year has been after missing several gym trips in a row.

I've learned that living alone in a city is quite do-able! And actually awesome! There are always places to explore and it's fun to organize your life and figure out where things are. Also now that I have moved around the city so many times I feel like I've learned so much more about different neighborhoods of Taipei. It's so convenient to get around here and to buy things and to get out of the city when you need it! Also there are a lot of things you can live without if you want to: a heater in the winter, a poncho in a place that rains everyday, a dryer in a humid climate, nice shoes and clothes.. hehe, and it's not too bad!

I've learned how much effect your environment can have on you. Moving to a low stress, happy place makes it easy to be happy. (Now that my place is nice and air-conditioned and I don't wake up every hour to kill a mosquito, it sometimes feels like I'm not in Taipei anymore. I almost miss my mosquito-y shoebox.) Oh, and how much your mode of transportation affects you as well. At first, I worked hard to figure out how buses worked here. They finally started making sense and I figured out how much more a part of the city you feel taking buses rather than the MRT. Don't get me wrong - the MRT is amazing, especially if you don't know much about Taipei and want to get to the standard places quickly and comfortably! I have a feeling that Taipei's MRT makes more sense than any other city in the world's (though I've only experienced NYC, London, Beijing, and HK). But buses are so much more flexible and you learn a lot more about where you are since you can see where you're going.

Then I started doing so much walking around Taipei - I would walk places that were 30 or 40 minutes away! Just like on the bus, you see so much more of the city and learn a lot more about where you are, but you also have this sense of freedom and that you can go anywhere. You can stop at little shops that you see and I almost always ended up with a drink or snack in a bag. And after Anthony left me his bike, I started biking everywhere, especially the commute to work. Taipei roads and sidewalks are really an obstacle course! There is always some weird thing blocking your way, and no one in Taipei knows how to drive or walk in a straight line. Biking feels really free, and you can get places so quickly. Also a little stressful, but maybe even more like you are part of the city.

So I would highly recommend to anyone who will be in Taipei for awhile to go as long as possible without taking a taxi. Figure out the bus system, figure out the roads, figure out the milk tea stands. Talk to people about living in the city! Just the other day, I learned from my driver that my favorite roads in Taipei, Dunhua and RenAi, were built for President Eisenhower's visit to Taiwan. No wonder the roads have such beautiful trees :) - and the person I was talking to had been there for the parade in 1960! In addition to learning some history, you will find lots of places to eat and shop and watch performances by getting to know the city yourself (busing and walking!) and by talking to other people (but not always taking all of their advice).

Last night I walked home from Guting. It was about a 40 minute walk. I used 101 as a landmark and got to walk through Freedom Square, formerly Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Square. Taipei makes so much sense as a city once you've been here awhile and just accept the things that don't make sense at first. It's funny how things just fall into place now that I've been here awhile - there are fewer and fewer times when I hop on the bus and end up in the totally wrong part of town, and more and more times when I realize I want a milk tea and know just where to go, or who to text for that information, the easiest way to bike and when to leave so that I don't get soaked in the daily afternoon rain storm.

Taiwan is a unique and special and amazing place. I think what let me finally discover that and the biggest thing that contributed to this year being a success was the attitude I arrived with. I knew I would be in Taiwan for awhile, so what else was there to do but embrace it, including everything less than ideal about it, and get excited about exploring new things. To everyone who comes here and doesn't learn the language or doesn't eat new foods or doesn't travel - what are you even doing here?! So my advice to everyone who comes here is to forget about what you do and don't like and just try new things. Have the street food that richer Taiwanese tell you is too dirty (just make sure it's somewhere with lots of other customers!), figure out how to go places alone and then take friends there, forget about your bug bites and the rain and the humidity and the heat and just enjoy it :)

Another thing I've learned is to not listen to people when they tell you what they don't or don't like. Don't listen to yourself! This is something my dad always tells me and I probably understood on some level but I didn't really understand until I experienced it. Who knew that after only a short time here, when I always thought of myself as "not Chinese", I would like to sing KTV, play Mahjiang, and drink milk tea - these things were always jokes to me before! I'm still not too into soup or the fashion here, and I still think it's more healthy and beautiful when girls are a little tan and have muscles- but some of my tastes have definitely changed. Some part of me even believes now that drinking cold things is bad for you. I've even adjusted to the humidity - when I moved to my new apartment with a dehumidifier, I started to feel like the air was too dry.

It's insane how much you will adapt if you just accept that you are in a new place and going to be there for awhile. If you can try to ignore your biases and your habits, you will find yourself living in a way that trashes all of the extraneous biases that have piled up with completely no thought from your history and your culture. While it may hurt to let go of some of these biases, I think in the end you come out with a more true reflection of who you are. It's taken me so many trips to Taiwan to get to that point, but I hope that in the future when I move to new places I can approach them in the same way.

The most valuable things I did this year were all outside of the classroom. This whole blog has been about my Chinese and my friends and my travels and daily life, but here are two other things that made this year completely amazing. The first was finding an orphanage of children affected by AIDS to volunteer at. I love this place so much - you can go there and play and read and eat with the kids anytime. The kids are super cute and smart and fun. For them alone, I wish I were staying in Taiwan longer. I would highly recommend finding a volunteer experience if you go study abroad, it is so meaningful and even good language practice. [If you are in Taipei and want to learn more about volunteering, send me an email and I can connect you with a lot of resources!]

The second is work. I would have never gotten the awesome internship I have now without this year helping me surpass minimal professional proficiency in Chinese. It's helping me learn about diplomacy and Taiwan and what I want to do with my life. Moreover, I don't think I actually felt like someone who lives in Taipei until I was a member of the 上班族, grabbing quick lunches and commuting back home after work in my little heels and pant suit. So if you are studying abroad for a year, I would also highly recommend staying longer in a professional capacity if you can, to use some Chinese at work and meet people in non-academic circles. Working with the local staff here has been such a joy :)

It's been strange to figure out that I relate so much better now with local Taiwanese than with most Americans here, at least the ones that have barricaded themselves off from Taiwan culture or are in various states of culture shock. It's so easy and natural now to talk to my old teachers outside of class or to my coworkers - and weirdly enough, it's not so much with Americans! It's funny because I've gone through most of the things they have - coming to Taiwan and finding things strange, or wrong, or exotic, or stinky. I still kind of feel like that a tiny bit! Because please, just a few years ago, I was the brat who only wanted to eat McRib sandwiches at McDonald’s when I came to Taiwan. Now though, I feel so much a part of Taiwan and wherever else I may have differences with locals, that’s one point on which I feel much closer to them than to most Americans here. A lot of expats I encounter just don't seem to want to be really "in" the culture, or if they do it's in this weird way. And a big part of it is language - how can you feel a part of Taiwan without Chinese??

I feel like I'm better now at speaking to strangers or people that I would usually feel distant from, like coworkers or teachers, in Chinese than I am in English. Isn't that weird?? But I think that I'm comfortable speaking to strangers in Chinese because I have some expectation that I can trick them into thinking I'm a Chinese speaker (fun), and I know that if I don't and I say something really stupid - they'll just write it off as a funny foreigner thing. And because I don't have a completely native grasp of Chinese, I worry less about if my language accurately represents the heirarchical relationship we have or is too familiar or not familiar enough - I just do the best I can! Failing finally feels so okay and normal and just the next step towards succeeding.

Whereas in English, I feel like I didn't even really learn how to make small talk until recently. I was a kind of shy (slash more standoffish than shy) child who started with a deep sense that there was a huge social barrier separating me from most adults (or teachers, or strangers), and I didn't really want to talk to most of them as people or get to know them. So in certain situations when I interact socially there is still this baggage and reticence or distance and I kind of just wish they would leave me alone. But in Chinese, every conversation is an opportunity to practice and learn, I know I shouldn't be scared of sounding stupid because I probably will no matter what, and all I have is the language put at my disposal in the last three years of Chinese learning, with almost no history of past awkward or stilted interactions.

So why I feel like this year I've been better able to interact with people as people, rather than as whatever role they play or whatever relationship they have to me, is in part also a function of language. In both Chinese and English I'm still in the process of learning what language goes with what situation - talking with teachers, job interviews, strangers, the elderly - but in Chinese this comes without any baggage, and I started learning from the very beginning how to make small talk. I find that there are social situations in which I'm more talkative, social, and outgoing in Chinese. Plus, a lot of times people start out liking me in Chinese because they appreciate that I'm trying to learn the language. All this to say, it's been surprising to find how many situations there are now where I prefer to speak Chinese over English, even though there are obviously many where my Chinese is not perfect. I no longer find it strange that in the office I find myself gravitating to the area of the room where I hear Chinese being spoken.

I'm still extremely uncomfortable about the relationship between the East and West, or Chinese and English. I'm uncomfortable with how most Taiwanese view Americans and how most Americans view Taiwanese. I hate the insane amount of social currency you can get here by just being white and speaking English. In so many areas of life here you see little hints of the story that's been repeating for awhile now: the West oppresses, dominates, and exotifies the East; the East responds by kowtowing or falling back to some version of tribalism (like Taiwan people who support the rise of China because finally "us Chinese" get a chance to teach American a lesson – um?).

But at least in my own mind the East and West are starting to make peace. I think I'm definitely more open to considering an "Eastern" perspective, if that even means anything, thinking in different ways and not just having reflexively American thoughts. I don't think that means in any way that I've compromised who I am. I hope it means that I'm closer to figuring out what I really believe and thinking with less bias. At the most basic level, study abroad does its best to help you identify and rid yourself of provincialism. I still have a lot more learning to do (Chinese and otherwise) to really understand anything, but I'm looking forward to it.

I think how I self-identify has definitely changed, though I prefer to think of myself as just myself and not a product of genetics or culture or race anyway. I think those kind of identities, like peoples "likes" and dislikes, are pretty much nonsense anyway. At a goodbye dinner, Feng laoshi said that she was talking to one of the other teachers, who said about me: "It's funny, Li-fan (that’s me) looks like a Western person on the outside, but her way of thinking is so Eastern!". I told her, truthfully, that most of my American friends would tell you that it's funny that I look so Asian but have such American thoughts and habits and interests.

Haha, so which am I? How many people have told me that I look completely Taiwanese, that I look Filipino, that they can tell I'm half white, that I don't look Taiwanese at all! And it totally doesn't matter, because most of this Eastern/Western stuff is nonsense. It's fun to think about, but in the end I'm just myself. The more I explore in any culture, the more opportunity I have to choose which parts of which culture and way of thinking I support or want to identify with.

Before I started learning Chinese, I thought of myself (and was) so American. I love baseball and cookouts and fishing and guns and long car rides. And I thought of myself as really "at home" with that - but then why did I want to travel so much? I've gotten to learn so much more about myself, not just more about the world. There's no reason I can't also love rice and milktea and suan mei. Chinese has opened up a whole new world for me.

Speaking of which, SCUBA! deserves it's own entry. Underwater is definitely a completely new world. My amazing, awesome friend Christina is a scuba instructor and she has patiently taught me so that I now have a scuba license!! yea! It is the most amazing thing ever and I probably never would have learned if not for this year and meeting Christina. I want to go all the time and learn about fish and get better at underwater flips :) So yes! Another suggestion, if you are a year-long Light Fellow, is to take the chance to learn a new skill! Because you are young now and you might now get the chance later.

So yes, I'm leaving Taiwan after this weekend. Despite spending my whole last weekend catching up on eating foods I won’t be able to find in the U.S., I come back 10 pounds lighter physically and thousands of pounds lighter emotionally. I have dozens of new sentence patterns and 1000s of Chinese words. A lot of new friends and good memories made with them. I have new ideas about what I might do after graduation and how to use Chinese. I have photos and stories to share when I get home and some new reading material that I can't wait to start – which, I think, is how you know you've had a good trip.

I'm so glad I got to come here. It is without a doubt the Light Fellowship that got me to this point - there is no way I could have learned this much Chinese or spent such an amazing year in Taiwan without it. Thank you Light Fellowship! Thank you to the Light Trustees, for supporting an amazing program and for meeting with all of us. Thank you especially to Kelly for everything, for reading my blog posts and for being awesome! Also to Ann for all of her help from the very beginning J. Erica, also for being there from the beginning and for getting me to seriously consider taking the whole year when my gut reaction was to go with the safe decision. Fedor, for putting the idea of going to ICLP in my head in the first place at that first info meeting. And everyone else who contributed to this or my first Light Fellowship experience, thank you for getting me started on what has been a completely amazing journey. And it’s not over yet, because I can’t wait to go back to Taiwan and probably also China and learn more Chinese!

Anyone who has questions about Taiwan or Chinese or is thinking about studying abroad – don’t hesitate to contact me! I would love to help if I can.

Thank you for reading, friends. Lots of love,

Katie

Thoughts as I'm doing homework

This quarter has been by far the most challenging and interesting class-wise.

1st quarter was about getting back the comfort with Chinese that disappeared after one school year of 5-hours a week of Chinese classes and a summer in England. I consolidated core vocabulary in TOCC and started to figure out how Chinese essays, news, and colloquial speech worked. I also had time to adjust to Taipei (how to get places, buying daily necessities), developed good habits (exercising, eating, laundry), and had lots and lots of opportunities to explore, from travelling and hiking to cultural events and television.

2nd quarter I had about as much fun as you can have with Chinese classes and still learn. Exploring was a little limited by a longer class schedule and rainy cold weather, but I still made a number of excursions, especially now that I had a group of friends to go on trips with. As opposed to just random explorations and constant children's television, I also started to engage with the language more regularly outside of class: Cat and I found language exchange partners, we started watching 2 different TV series, and I started following the news in Chinese.

This quarter is the first time I am rid of the awful (but necessary) concept of the "core" class (which you are supposed to spend most of your time on), and this means I get to take way more interesting and diverse classes and feel like the language is actually helping me understand things rather than just "learning" it with no end in sight.

Here are my current classes: Taiwanese short stories, television news, documentaries, and independent reader (a collection of essays gathered from Chinese language sources on various topics, from education to politics and society).

The first difference is that all of these things have been actually published or broadcast rather than being specially prepared or modified language materials, so they are mostly language that actual people use.

The second is that they are challenging. Like, I have lots of work I should be doing now.

The third is that they are content heavy. As in, real things and events are actually discussed in them. I feel like I'm engaging with actually significant issues. Part of this is that the content is more recent (within the last few decades for short stories, within the last few years for documentaries, within the last few days for news). But even reading outdated essays about the L.A. race riots still feels in a way like discussing relevant and pressing issues, because they are things people can and do have real opinions on with implications that matter today.

Also good for me in that dealing with concrete issues is something I tend to avoid. Theoretical facets of issues come easily to me and facts are just so much messier and frustrating. Chinese is now helping me engage with real, current issues. For example, my news teacher is a former reporter for 聯合報道 and she cares that I know things, like about ECFA and NATO and specific Chinese activists. Things which, otherwise, my brain would filter out in favor of gleaning and retaining purely general information which would later help me bs my way through situations requiring that knowledge.

From the beginning, Chinese is presented as a way to immerse yourself in another culture. And it is, in that intro language books are full of words for night market snacks, essays about Chinese history, or comparisons of Chinese versus American education systems. Besides providing a kind of shallow framework for understanding what you, as an American, are doing in a different culture, it also gives you the tools to have some "oh!" moments. ("Oh, so that's why diarrhea is something you totally don't talk about in English but is a favorite topic in Chinese" "Oh, so that's why the waitress won't let me order a cold drink in the winter" "Oh, so that's why I feel infantilized every time i come to Taiwan!")

But examining authentic Chinese literature, documentaries, essays, and news is such a difference in kind, and just at the time that I was kind of reaching a crisis of meaning in my language study career. And doing so as the main class activity rather than just what I try to squeeze in between the gym and homework is a much better feeling.

To give some concrete examples: The beginning of fall was election season, which meant having loud trucks with banners and megaphones blasting unintelligible and crackly slogans. This seemed super stupid to me. If the point was to win votes, this was the worst way to go about it, since it quite clearly was annoying to everyone (rich neighborhoods banned these processions from entering - they did so anyway). Then late first quarter I started reading Taste of Apples, a short story collection which gives you a really good feel for rural Taiwan. One is about a town crier, whose job it is to spread news by walking around town beating his gong. The disappearance of his job signals modernity's unstoppable encroachment on traditional village life. So after reading this story I felt slightly less hostile to the megaphone trucks, and a little more understanding of their existence.

In documentary class, besides watching our assigned documentary, we're also supposed to find outside materials to reference and provide background to the content of the documentaries. The first week we unraveled the difference between 外省人 and 本省人. There's really no good way to deal with these terms in English, and they are overly politicized terms anyway. But essentially, in order to understand Taiwan, you need to understand that it's population is mainly composed of aboriginal peoples, KMT descendants (waishengren) who came over after the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, and "Taiwanese" (benshengren) who originally came over from the mainland so were there after the aboriginal peoples but way before the waishengren influx.

This is something I've always understood fuzzily but never discussed or learned about concretely. It also opened up so many more avenues of discussion with Taiwanese people here, and especially of understanding the KMT, like hearing my teacher's story of her political coming of age in college, when she realized her strongly KMT upbringing hadn't given her all the facts. Or like hearing about how my language exchange partners studied Chinese history, not Taiwanese history, in high school, and had tests on the location of Chinese railroads, because the whole idea was always to attack and take back China from the communists. Why study Taiwan when it was just a temporary base for taking back the homeland?

Or right now, doing my work for news class. Instead of using the prepared "TV news" materials that everyone uses for that class, my teacher wants me to not just be learning the language skills but also to be dealing with actual news. So all of our clips concern the current week's news, and right now I am working on the State Department's 2010 Human Rights Report and how it is being received in Taiwanese and Chinese media, as well as the Chinese government's response (the 2010 report on America's human rights record).

It's been way interesting to see the commentary in Chinese newspapers, both the language that is used and the factual stretches that need to be made. Like this People's Daily article which tells us that America has been "kidnapped" by human rights. The article makes "discrimination again homosexuals" one of Clinton's three talking points, rather than oppression of minority groups (including homosexuals, but also China's equally or even more obvious oppression of racial minorities like Uighurs or Tibetans). For the obvious reason that in China this is less political sensitive than talking about racial minorities - no one there is worried that a united community of homosexuals will want to secede, and public consciousness about sexuality-related freedoms is non-existent.

Despite understanding every word in the article, at first it was hard to understand some of the points being made, because the worldview is extremely alien from my own: one in which a mainstream and convincing argument can be made that as each country deals with their own laws, peoples, society, culture, and religions in their own way, this implies it is the way it should be -- ok, this is just the culturally relativist argument so far...and to provide support for this claim based on the fact that in some African countries you can be imprisoned for being gay. Back off, West, and stop "encouraging homosexuals to resist the government" (quoted text is directly from the article. added words are in the spirit of the article).

Without Chinese, I would have a vague understanding that for all its failings, America's human rights problems are not comparable to, say, North Korea's. Hearing the Chinese accusations in the news, I would have some understanding of why I saw a few points worth considering and mostly a twisted and untrue position. A liberal arts education helped me get there, but there's always the nagging doubt that you are too culturally centric to really know. Chinese has, first of all, given me the impetus to gain more knowledge with which to evaluate this. But it's also helping me engage with arguments made in other cultural frameworks on the level of that culture and language.

At first language study is a totally formal and negative project, where all values begin to seem relative and you can't really convince your teacher that it is okay to drink cold things or be 100% confident that your culturally informed opinions on cold drinks are correct. Now it's also a positive project, where I don't have to fall back on English to find something that rings true, in other words, the truth or close to it, like that in no case do I think a government should imprison a person for being homosexual. And specifically in this case I can tell you that while some things are the West being a big bully towards developing nations and/or China, what parts are not and what is wrong with the Chinese response, from whatever culture you look at things.

In other words, now that language learning is giving me a chance to also learn more things about the world, I have more chances to authentically evaluate and form my own opinions and understand my values, which should be an aim of education whether abroad or not. As many things as I am finding are "relative", as much as things get more complicated the more deeply you understand them, I'm also tentatively building meaning that I hope I can honestly say is not a pure product of either English or Chinese and their respective cultures.

At first, language study abroad really tears down a lot of who you are, in that it takes away both your ability to express who you are and actually who you are in relation to what's around you. At the intro level of language learning, it provides in their place only some artificial phrases about the foods and activities and kind of education you like ("American!" "creative!" "independent!") and boy do you ever start to feel the nihilism weighing down on you. It's not until now that I feel like I am, more often than not, engaging with real ideas and issues in Chinese, and that doing so in Chinese makes this a significantly more intellectually honest project than it would otherwise be.

I hate reading my own writing and my blog entries are particularly poorly written (both an issue of time and priorities and what is discussed above, the tearing down of a language and cultural framework that I was used to using to communicate). Otherwise, it would be interesting to read back and see what things were like back then, because I really feel like how I'm learning now is so different and feels so much more constructive. The first five "levels" of Chinese were absolutely necessary, fun and new at the time, and did much to teach me about cultural differences -- but now I am actually reading real real real things!!! And I can see, actually, how this is fitting into everything I've been studying and want to learn and do, not just on the theoretical level of some future achievements but actually what I am already doing right now.

In class last week I argued that a feeling of alienation isn't just from encountering something Other, it also only arises when you don't understand yourself. The alienation that I've felt from living here is slowly, but concretely and authentically, being resolved through language learning. Most basically by making another culture more accessible, but also by engaging and affirming something outside of relativism and nihilism, values that I identify with and think are worth believing in.

Chaos

Cat and I have a language exchange partner named Catherine (resulting in lots of name confusion) who is really great. She is also taking African drum lessons and invited me to go see a outdoor performance her teacher was giving at Bitan.

When she invited us we joked around about whether she would be performing as well. Which of course she wouldn't be, she said, since she had just started lessons. Wouldn't that be funny, her being in the performance, haha.

HAH well. When I got there, after spending like an hour walking around the area with her and totally randomly running into my uncle at some international festival thing that was being held in the area (the performance started an hour late- artist types) - we were invited to sit in a circle with the other drummers. Then given drums. I explained I did not even know how to drum. 'That's ok, 亂打!' I was told.

亂 is word that appears all over the place, it means chaos and disorder and usually has fairly negative connotations. Like, when people explain why the Chinese political system fits the Chinese people, it's because the system is harmonious (valued in Chinese society) and not 亂 (not so much) like in democratic states. In this case it meant more like, drum "as you please", which is what we did. And people gathered to listen to us:



This does not really give you an idea of the crowd that gathered, since as more and more people gathered to listen, it would have been strange for me to take my camera out.

Then some other group of performers (that no one in the drum group knew, but you know, all musicians, with instruments from countries beginning with A, belong to the same community of music) with didgeridoos (took several days of thinking to come up with the name of this instrument - huge Australian aboriginal pipe things below) came to join:

[wow look at the onion-shaped sentence above! I am forgetting how to think in English..]


People got really into it, especially the kids:


Not every audience member was a big fan of spontaneous drumming. This one couldn't keep away, but kept his hands over his ears most of the time:


Anyway in addition to being fun and slightly embarrassing, joining the drummers was definitely an encounter with a totally different segment of the population than I am used to. Except for some notably Taiwanese characteristics, I could have been in CU (maybe at some kind of library sponsored cultural event or downtown). Taipei has lots of different people, although my favorite are the ones most unique to Taiwan (nothing compares to Taiwanese old people!), after a while you also find that there are some familiar categories (with a twist): punk rokkers, hipsters, club rats, fashionistas - and now, colorfully dressed internationally oriented musicians. Add a sunny afternoon at the park, a little bit of 亂, and stir for an extremely memorable experience.

I've also been to a few more international and/or Western culture type things in Taipei, mostly the influence of classmates (Tiffany!). In some ways things can't really compare to America, but it has its advantages and is also another way to understand Taiwanese society. Like the Monet exhibit was super small, but really nice and not too crowded and at the same time, 1 let me observe Taiwanese people appreciating Monet, 2 gave me a chance to see other exhibits on Taiwanese artists in the museum. Tickets at main venues like the National Concert Hall are also reasonably priced and convenient to get (yea 7-eleven!).

Seeking out things I'm more familiar with in Taipei is probably also just part of the transplant rejection/acceptance process as my body and mind continue to express doubts about all the Chinese they are supposed to deal with. Our baseball game (monkeys vs. cows) got rained out today or that would've been another thing to help me deal with not having been to America since September! But, let's be clear, baseball is also a huge part of Taiwanese culture. And as to Western concerts and art exhibitions, more and more understanding Taiwanese culture also means understanding Taiwanese culture as it responds and relates to other cultures, the 'West', and international trends. [Point of shame: finally caved and got a curry TV dinner thing at 7-eleven this week, they heated it up for me and it was actually not bad. though not something I plan to do again]

Well, anyway, ICLP's annual Matzu trip is coming up in a few days. Matzu is the sea goddess and we'll be seeing the super 熱鬧 (and probably insanely chaotic) procession for her birthday, among other things. Can't get much more authentic Taiwanese than that, so at the very least will probably erase the 7-curry from my list of sins. And be an awesomely fun time.

Yours in chaos,

K