My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

We got out of the city this weekend. Evan was feeling a little stir crazy, and wanted to see some nature. So on Sunday, we rented scooters, and got out of the city. First we went to see the ocean.

The ocean is only about 3 or 4 miles from our apartment. That’s a fishing boat in the background. The beach was a little dirty, so I won’t show pictures of it here. The boys had a nice walk along the shoreline.

Because Taiwan is closer to the equator, the sun is really punishingly hot here. The local choice of headgear does a good job of keeping the sun out.

Then we got back on the scooters and went to the mountains.

Taiwan’s mountains and geology have created some beautiful waterfalls.

Taiwan’s tropical climate has produced some really scary spiders.

But the beauty of the waterfalls makes it worth the spiders:

Many teachers and principals in the local schools have said that they want ETAs because they’re “energetic” 活潑. I really didn’t like hearing them say that, because although some Americans are energetic, not all of us are, of course. I was afraid that the schools were setting themselves up for disappointment. The ETAs had no idea what was expected of them, because Americans typically don’t know what the stereotypical American is in the eyes of the Taiwanese. The locals had this expectation of the ETAs, but the ETAs didn’t know what the expectation was.

The stereotypes that the Taiwanese hold about Americans is a challenge for me and the ETAs to overcome. There is a negative stereotype and infuriating prejudice that the Asian American ETAs have to endure here: that the color of their skin means that they are somehow not really Americans, and not really native speakers. I received phone calls from schools asking that they have a “real” American ETA placed in their school. They wanted a white person, and weren’t at all ashamed of coming right out and saying so. I had to choke back the response that I wanted to give them, namely that in the US, that is an illegal request, and that phone call puts the school in an actionable position. Taiwan has no such law, so it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against people to an extent that is blatantly wrong to us Americans.

Another prejudice that is less insulting, but that is just as unfair and problematic, is the belief that real Americans behave just as the Americans on TV and in the movies do. Hollywood has shaped the image that the rest of the world has of Americans. Think of how people behave on soap operas, prime time dramas, and action films. That’s the America that Taiwanese people see, so that’s how they think we all behave in real life.

Not that America receives an accurate view of Asia at the hands of Hollywood. Every time I see a movie that supposedly portrays China and the Chinese, I want to cringe.

We had a problem in one of the schools that stemmed from this misunderstanding. In the middle of a class, without warning, the local English teacher suddenly turned to here ETA, and asked her to lead the class in an activity. The ETA was stunned, because she hadn’t planned an activity, and had no idea that the LET would ask this of her. She wasn’t prepared to think up an activity on the spot. In the eyes of the LET, this was a reasonable request. After all, Americans in the movies are creative, spontaneous people who have lots of ideas and can pull them out of their minds at the drop of a hat. While there may be such people in the world, it sure isn’t fair to expect that all Americans can do that.  It was an awkward situation for everyone. The LET felt a bit indignant that the ETA couldn’t do what she expected Americans can do. The ETA was indignant that an unreasonable demand was placed on her.

I had to admonish the local teachers not to expect the unreasonable from the ETAs, and I think that it sunk in, but I still have a lot of educating to do. I’m going to earn my paycheck this year.

The boys’ first cell phone bills came today. Evan’s was $160, and Ian’s was $314. Before you freak out, remember to convert those numbers to US dollars. That works out to $4.90 for Evan, and $9.62 for Ian. CHEAP!

I made a day trip to Taipei today to read applications from Taiwanese graduate students who have applied for a Fulbright grant to pursue a PhD in America. Several of us Fulbrighters gave up our afternoon to read the application materials in the foundation’s office in Taipei. The foundation staff divided us into categories that roughly matched our academic areas. My pile of applications was for fields such as literature, music, anthropology, and education (and one linguistics applicant – hooray!). Even only a portion of the applications still left me with about 20 to read. I’m not exaggerating when I write that the pile of application materials was about 12 inches tall. A lot of it was transcripts and transmittal forms, but there was still a substantial amount of material that needed to be read.

After a few hours of reading Taiwanese English, my brain was pretty mushy. We managed to rank the applicants and recommend a list of people to the foundation. The next step is to invite the applicants who passed this initial screening for a face-to-face interview. I imagine that will be very stressful for the poor grad students, but it will give them a taste of what a dissertation defense is like. Who knows, maybe it will toughen them up.

Yesterday Evan came home from school and rushed into the apartment. Before Stacy could ask what was going on, Evan threw open the door to the balcony and stepped out, waving like crazy down to the street. Stacy peered out, and saw seven or eight of Evan’s classmates waving back to Evan. They had walked him home, and were saying goodbye to him.

We knew that he would make friends here, that it was just a matter of time. Still, that scene was heart-warming.

Sunday afternoon, Stacy’s brothers’ wife’s uncle invited us to lunch at his restaurant in the town of JiaoXi 礁溪, just north of Yilan. The restaurant serves a dish that is a specialty of Macao; drinking soup mixed with the marrow of a large bone . Sounds weird; tastes good.

Then we went to a special “coffee museum.” Apparently, the founder of Mr Brown coffee is from Yilan, and there is a special coffee shop dedicated to Mr Brown coffee. Since Mr Brown and I have a long friendship going back many years, I had to get a picture in front of his house:

The distant cousins had a bit of a communication gap at first, then they broke the ice playing a game. First they put a GOB of sugar into Mom’s tea, then then they did rock-paper-scissors to determine who would have to drink it. This is called “fun.”

BTW, in the first picture there, cousin Gene 楊昕 is wearing a mask because he has a cold, and he didn’t want to infect us. There is a huge scare about H1N1 in Taiwan now; I’ll post more about that soon.

You want to talk about health care reform? Taiwan has a national health insurance program. It isn’t perfect, but it works. Here’s what my health card looks like:

As members of the local economy, Fulbrighters are required to join the health insurance program, which means that for the year that we are here in Taiwan, we get to enjoy the same health benefits that the Taiwanese do. We just pay a small co-pay for doctor’s visits, prescription medicine, Chinese medicine in addition to Western medicine, everything from soup to nuts. Oh, and it covers dental, too.

The system has been up and running for several years, now. This is an expensive government program, but the people here recognize it for the valuable service that it provides.

The card contains a computer chip that tracks individuals’ medical records and treatment history. You swipe your card in the doctor’s office, and the clinic is instantly tied into the nationwide network. The office visit is automatically paid for, and your records get updated in the central database, and

If Taiwan can do this, why can’t the US?!

Every two weeks, the ETAs assemble at the Teacher Training Center (where my office is located) for a three-hour workshop. Today was the first such workshop. The ETAs spent the time working with their LETs (Local English Teachers), planning lessons and activities. We talked about several issues that have arisen, the most important being the “No Chinese” rule that we imposed on the ETAs.

Many (perhaps most) of the ETAs had studied Chinese before coming to Taiwan, and many of them came to Taiwan with the intention of continuing studying Chinese while here. Of course they all recognize that while teaching,they are not to practice their Chinese. However, our policy has taken a further step. Not only are the ETAs not to speak Chinese, but they are not to reveal to the children that they can speak Chinese. If the children speak to them in Chinese, the ETAs are to tell the children that they do not understand.

The purpose of this policy is to encourage the children to try to use their emerging English to communicate with the ETA. The motivation to communicate is very high. The children are very curious about the ETAs, and want to ask them countless questions. So why do we put this barrier between the children and the ETAs? Why not just let the ETAs speak to the children in Chinese?

This was the topic of intense discussion during today’s workshop. Some ETAs have expressed the feeling that since the LET can speak to the children in Chinese, that the LET is developing a closer relationship with the children than the ETA can. I expressed my sympathy to the ETAs. It seems almost cruel to prohibit communication. But there is a method to this madness. It has to do with the “teachable moment.” When children are motivated, and need to learn something new in order to accomplish a goal, that is an opportunity to teach. I encouraged the ETA to work with the LET to help the children learn to communicate with the ETA. The LET can serve as the language teacher, teaching the children how to say what they want to express in English. The children can then say what they want to say to the ETA, who will respond. Some LETs who have tried this in the past backed me up on this approach. So we’ll try it, and see how far we get with it.

Some ETAs also shared some strategies that they stumbled upon. One ETA likes to walk around the school grounds during the breaks. Students follow him around, and he maintains a running monologue as he walks, telling the children the English words for things that he sees on campus: “that’s a rock, that’s a tree, that’s Confucius” (a statue of The Sage is an obligatory fixture in every school in Taiwan). Another ETA, whose Chinese is actually pretty good, is “learning” Chinese from the children. They’re teaching him words in Chinese, and he’s teaching them the words in English.

Eventually, the children will discover that the ETAs can speak Chinese. But I hope to delay that, and in the meantime, foster in the children the habit of trying to use English to communicate with the ETAs.

This weekend we traveled to Taipei for a post-arrival orientation for all Fulbright scholars. Of course we have already been here for a month, but we were the exception. Most Fulbright awards begin on September 1. We had to be here earlier so that we could have the month of August to train and prepare for the school year.

So we met with the 40 or so other Fulbright scholars, who will be researching or teaching at universities throughout Taiwan. Many of them have already been to Taiwan before. Their research projects range from computer-aided costume design for theater programs to studying the relationship between marital status and criminal behavior. It was interesting hearing about the various projects that were funded by the Fulbright foundation.

As part of the orientation program, Dr. Tong-jong Chen, the Executive Director of the Foundation in Taiwan, invited me to present on the educational system in Taiwan. It was fun putting together a talk that drew on my knowledge of the schools in Taiwan, what I know of Stacy’s past, and our recent experiences with the public schools. I tried to keep the talk relevant to what the Fulbrighters will encounter in their interactions with local students and faculty. I think the talk went smoothly, and it was well-received.

On Friday evening, there was a reception for all of the Fulbright awardees, hosted by the honorary chairman of the Taiwan Fulbright foundation, Dr William Stanton, who is the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, America’s unofficial embassy to Taiwan. I was impressed to hear Dr. Stanton speaking Chinese, and later, when talking with him, I learned that we were both studying Chinese in Taiwan at the same time in the 1980s.

Me with Dr Stanton, Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)

I was also thrilled to meet some other people who are influential in the local government, including the former Director of the Government Information Office 新聞局, Dr. Yu-Ming Shaw 邵玉銘.

With Dr. Chen, Executive Director of the Foundation (and a graduate of MSU!!)

Ian’s having a great year, hanging out with so many pretty girls.

And the weekend wasn’t complete until we visited the CKS Memorial Hall, complete with a reproduction of the President’s office.

It was an intense weekend. It was a relief to get back to the office so I could relax. 😉

We’re enjoying a slight break in the heat, with temperatures “only” in the upper 80s instead of the mid-90s that we endured in August. I still break into a sweat walking to work, but the idea of hot coffee didn’t seem ridiculous to me this morning. Unfortunately, with the lower temperatures comes the reminder that winter in Taiwan is rainy and dank. We have some rain this morning. I got caught in a downpour when I snuck out for a cup of coffee this morning. Luckily I had my umbrella.

Evan is doing much better at school. His classmates have worked up the nerve to talk to him. What I really like about Taiwan is that the people are genuinely friendly and not mean at all. Even when kids are “naughty,” they’re really just being rambunctious, not mean-spirited. I was never concerned that Evan would be ostracized or picked on. That just doesn’t happen here. In addition, Americans are held in such high regard here, that I knew it was only a matter of time before the kids in Evan’s class would start to talk with him.

Yesterday Evan came home and reported that several kids talked with him, and two kids bought him a cold drink at the school’s store. Today he brought money to school so that he could buy drinks for them in return. This looks like the beginning of friendship.

Evan was so apprehensive about starting school. Hearing that he is starting to interact with his classmates and make friends gives us a huge feeling of relief.