cce blog

taiwan day two

Day two of my SARS vacation. Only 2% of people wear masks here, it's great. My body aches -- had a full day of nonstop sightseeing today. It might also have something to do with the night before spent drinking with the Australian bloke and an Irish lass last night.

It's a weird bunch, the kids living at the hostel. I've heard that back in the 90's, any native English speaker could go to Japan or HK and find work teaching English -- with little/no experience or TEFL certifications required. It seems that Taiwan is the new Japan, attracting dozens of scruffy 20-something Australians, Canadians, South Africans searching for a bit of adventure, cheap living and easy money.

Many conversations here center on different English-teaching jobs available, how many hours/week people are working (20-30 usually), and the hourly rates people are getting. People are getting paid pretty well, as far as I can tell, USD$10-20/hr, and there are always new positions opening up as teachers come and go.

One guy explained it to me like this: he was working in Australia, surfing every day, and sometimes he'd save up a bit of money, quit his job, and surf full-time. Then he'd get a new job when he needed the cash and start the cycle all over again. One day a friend of a friend told him that he could make a pretty penny teaching English in Taiwan -- and you didn't need a college degree or anything (which most people here don't have, as far as I can tell). A few weeks later, he found himself out of work again and simply thought, "Why not?" and bought a plane ticket.

Yeah, it sounds crazy to me, too, but from what I've seen so far his story is fairly typical of the crew here (except for the Irish lass, who doesn't teach English, instead she plays the bazouki in Irish pubs all over Asia). I can't really imagine any of my out-of-work American friends picking up and moving to Taiwan, though.

Touristy stuff
But I digress. Went to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial today. It was really big and impressive, blending the "fallen dictator hero" motif of the Chairman Mao memorial in Beijing with the "giant seated statue" stylings of the Lincoln memorial in Washington. The best part was the pictures of Generalissimo (yes, people actually called him that) Chiang Kai-Shek with various famous people: here's Generalissimo Chiang with Reagan. Here's the Generalissimo receiving a military award from Spain. Here's the medal he got from Mozambique. Here he's getting a medal from Nicaragua. Here he is with President Hubert of Dahomey. Dahomey? What??

Interesting tidbit (for me anyway): did you know Chiang Kai-Shek's son Chiang Ching-Kuo married a Russian woman named Faina Vakhreva and had a bunch of half-Asian kids?

Evidence of how much Taiwan has changed since Chiang's time was evident when I walked a couple blocks up to 二二八 (228) park. 228 stands for February 28, the date of a massacre of local Taiwanese dissidents perpetrated by Chiang's army when his forces retreated from the mainland to Taiwan. The park even had a 228 Museum that reminded me of other museums in Berlin, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. When my Mom was growing up the official history taught in schools was that 2/28 never happened; needless to say, times have changed here.

Took a clean-and-modern subway to the National Palace Museum, where all the art treasures of China's imperial past are kept for safekeeping. Chiang's KMT took the treasures out of the Forbidden City in Beijing when the Japanese attacked and moved them to Taiwan when the Communists won, which is good because the Communists probably would've burned them all up in the Cultural Revolution or something. The museum ought to be bigger because there's so much of the collection not on display, but it was really good anyhow.

Twice I've surprised Taiwanese people by speaking with my Western-accented Chinese and revealing I'm a foreigner -- they say, "Oh? Foreigner!" and look all surprised. I don't think I look like a local, so this is a bit strange. Taxi drivers guess I'm mixed right off. The English teachers all think I'm another white guy like them, and were surprised I knew any Chinese at all. My theory is that I'm neutral-looking enough to fit the expectations of my viewer -- people see what they want/expect to see. I'm developing a "post-Hapa" doctrine -- that your mixed ethnicity doesn't make you special/exotic/unique, and that the kids at EurasianNation should stop glorifying themselves -- so I don't really mention to people what my "background" is unless they ask me point-blank.

Finally, vendors really do sell chou dofu (fermented "stinky tofu", smells of rank ass) on the street here. I saw some yesterday and it smelled BAD.

Posted by cce at April 18, 2003 09:17 PM | TrackBack