My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

One of my ETAs has serious allergies, and has been taking medicines like Claritin-D for relief. Back in August, she asked her father to mail some to her, because she couldn’t find it in Taiwan.

Well, it turns out that there is a reason she couldn’t find it in Taiwan. It contains an ingredient that is a controlled substance here. The ETA’s father wrote the name of the medicine on the customs form that you have to attach to packages at the post office. The local customs officials opened the package, discovered the medicine, and that’s when the brown stuff hit the fan.

It was an innocent mistake on the part of the ETA and her father, but a law was broken, so the local authorities had to follow the law and investigate the incident. The ETA had to ask her parents to send documentation of the medicine’s purchase as an over-the-counter medicine, a doctor’s note stating that the ETA indeed does suffer from allergies, and had recommended that medicine as a treatment. The ETA’s father is a lawyer, so he included an affidavit describing the process of purchasing and mailing the medicine.

Today, after about two months of waiting (I’m sure that it seemed a lot longer for the poor ETA), she was summoned to the prosecutor’s office (equivalent to the District Attorney in the US) for a hearing. I offered to go along for moral support, and wound up being her official translator for the hearing. It was unlike the process in the US. We were in a room that looked like a mini courtroom, with the prosecutor sitting up where a judge would sit, and a court reporter sitting next to her.

It was clear from early on in the proceedings that the prosecutor has no intention of pressing charges, although of course she could not come right out and say that. But the line of questioning that she took indicated that she just wanted to document the process, slap the ETA on the wrist, and get it off her case list. The process took about an hour. Two members of the Advisory Panel and another ETA came along for moral support, but they weren’t allowed into the room during the hearing. It was just the ETA and me.

The biggest surprise for me was that as the official interpreter for the case, I was entitled to an interpreting fee. It was quite embarrassing for me to take money for helping the ETA. So, when the hearing was over, we all went out to lunch to celebrate, and I picked up the tab.

We aren’t sure yet what the final outcome will be, because the prosecutor has to make a final determination about the case. I’m confident that the case will be dismissed, but it’s still hanging over the ETA’s head. It can’t be easy to go to work every day knowing that the case is still unresolved. We joke about it, but we will all be relieved when it’s all over.

This wasn’t what I was expecting when I came to Taiwan. It’s another reminder that you have to expect the unexpected when you’re overseas. I’m also glad that I was able to help.

Stacy: Evan, I’ll make a sandwich for you tomorrow out of the leftover chicken from dinner tonight, OK?

Evan: You’ll take it off the bones first, right?

Hilarity ensued.

My favorite Chinese writer, Long Ying-Tai 龍應台 recently wrote a book called “1949,” describing her family’s experiences in fleeing the Chinese civil war in 1949. The book spurred a movement in Taiwan. People in their 20s have begun interviewing their grandparents, and have been putting a personal, human face on history.

It has been 60 years since the end of the civil war. For most of that time, that period of time has been hushed up. Partly because of national security, some details of the retreat from China to Taiwan have not been available. But most of the people who came over from China in 1949 are free to speak about their experiences. Why haven’t they talked about it more? I think probably because they lost the war. Are losers less willing to talk about their experiences? It stands to reason.

My father-in-law was one of the young people who fled the civil war in China, and wound up in Taiwan in 1949. I’ve heard bits and pieces of the story, but we never asked to hear the whole story. We’ve decided to join the movement, and interview him. This past weekend when we were visiting Tainan, we set up the camcorder, and asked him to tell his life story. Even Stacy, who has heard him talk about this past, heard many things for the first time.

We got about two hours of video, but we feel like we have just scratched the surface of his experiences. It was fascinating to hear about his story. His father and my grandfather were born only one year apart, but their respective lives followed paths so completely different, that it seems like they were separated not merely by a hemisphere, but by centuries.

We will follow up with more interviews during the remainder of our year in Taiwan. I also would like to interview my mother-in-law. She is a Taiwan native, so she didn’t flee the mainland. However, she was born under the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and also has led an eventful life. When I mentioned that I would like to interview her, she refused, saying that she doesn’t want to think about the past anymore. She says that right now she is the happiest that she has ever been in her life, and she doesn’t want to revisit her painful memories.

I respect her feelings, but at the same time, we all noticed that my father-in-law has been in a very good mood this weekend. In preparation for this weekend’s interview, he started to write his autobiography. Stacy and I suspect that he’s been thinking about his past, and having a George Bailey moment. Maybe if we can get my mother-in-law to review her life, she’ll be able to see her past in more memorable light.

I guess every religion needs to proselytize, but Buddhism isn’t the first religion to spring to mind when one pictures evangelicalism. I’ve been surprised to see it in Taiwan. There are billboards promoting the teachings of particular Buddhist monks. In Yilan’s train station, there is a television mounted on the wall, showing propaganda against meat. The program that runs constantly seems to be promoting vegetarianism. It shows the cruelty of keeping food animals in confinement, and links eating meat to the destruction of the environment.  The argument is that raising food animals requires resources like water and grain, and thus meat has a much higher environmental impact than raising vegetables. There’s probably some truth to that, but the program is over the top. Linking a hamburger to typhoon Morakot stretches credulity.

There is also a Buddhist television station here. Most of the programming is harmless, but the news programs are slanted towards the impact on local policy that Buddhism has, and promoting the Buddhist agenda. Generally, the Buddhist agenda is harmless on the surface. I have a great deal of respect for Buddhism, especially for the charity work that they do. These news reports aren’t objective, though, and the agenda is easily visible to the observer.

What really bothers me about the evangelicalism is the propaganda trucks. This morning I was assaulted by a pickup truck with a megaphone mounted on the top, shouting out the evils of meat and the glories of vegetarianism. In fact, I like to eat vegetarian food when it’s available, and I agree that eating less meat is healthier and probably easier on the environment. Again, I have little objection to the agenda. It’s the proselytizing that rubs me the wrong way. I think that if eating vegetarian food is really as good as that, that people will do it on their own.

Religion should not be promoted as if it were a soft drink or a cell phone.

My first Christmas in Taiwan was in 1987. I “celebrated” by going to a concert in the evening at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. It was a strange experience for me, to be in an environment that sort of observed Christmas, but not really.

This year was my sons’ first time to experience this feeling. The people in Taiwan, especially in the schools, have at least an intellectual appreciation that Christmas is an important holiday for Americans, but the holiday doesn’t have the emotional connotations for Taiwanese people that it does for Americans. It must be something like how Chinese people in the US feel on Chinese New Year. Americans know that it’s a big holiday for Chinese people, but we don’t really appreciate how important it is.

December 25 is Constitution Day in Taiwan, observing the date that the constitution was ratified. In 1987, the day was a national holiday, so schools were closed. Ever since Taiwan shifted to a five-day work week, the number of days off for holidays was reduced, and Constitution Day was one of the holidays that was sacrificed. This means that schools are in session on Christmas Day in Taiwan.

Having to work on Christmas day was a strange experience. My kids were indignant, and the ETAs were dismayed.

Evan was a bit indignant that he had to go to school on Christmas day.

We did our best to observe Christmas at home. We bought a Christmas tree, and did stockings for the boys. My sister Margaret sent a great package of silly goodies for the boys, too (Thanks, Marg!).

My parents sent some cookies and candy from the US. We watched “White Christmas,” “Charlie Brown Christmas,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

My ETAs’ schools elementary schools took the opportunity of having a foreign teacher to put on performances to celebrate the holiday. I went to as many of them as I could. The performances were an opportunity for the kids to show what they could do in English. There were skits, songs, dances, and a lot of Chinese Santas.

On the evening of Christmas Day, we went to Li Xing 力行 Elementary school’s performance. It was two hours of dances by all six grades (three classes of each grade), plus the kindergarten, special ed class, and the student teachers. That’s a lot of dances! The ETA at that school, Jessica, was very stressed at having to choreograph nine dances (and dance in one of them). But it was a great show.

We also bought big presents for the boys.

Evan got a Kindle, and Ian got a new computer (the display on his computer is slowly dying – about a third of the screen is dead).

By the end of the day, the living room was a mess, and the kids were engrossed in their loot. Another successful American-style Christmas!

You know how at carnivals you can get all kinds of food on a stick? Did you ever think that you could get potato chips on a stick? Well, the Taiwanese have figured out how to do it.

Last weekend, we went to the tourist town on the north coast, called Tamshui (æ·¡æ°´), for a field trip. While we were there, we found some fun food, including spiral potato chips. Tasty!

Evan’s class has a Christmas party this week. Evan made a Powerpoint file explaining how Christmas is celebrated in his family, and Stacy coordinated the food for the party. Everyone had fun. It almost makes up for the fact that we have to go to school and work on Christmas day. Hah. Who am I kidding? Nothing could possibly make up for that fact. Going to work on Christmas is going to SUCK!

It isn’t a Chinese party without Karaoke (unfortunately).

Evan’s homeroom teacher is an accomplished violinist.

We found a buy-one, get-one-free deal on Pizza Hut personal-size pizza.

My baby is 13 years old today.

The curriculum for English Village wasn’t working out for us. The lesson plans seemed stilted and unnatural, and the language level of the lessons wasn’t a good match for the language level of the students. The ETAs were complaining about the lesson plans, and the quality of the experience for the students was suffering.

I decided to take action and re-design the curriculum from the very beginning. The ETAs and I met several times, brainstorming ideas and talking about what an ideal experience would be, and how we could re-vision English Village.

The original lessons assumed that students come to English Village having prepared for the lessons. They teach new content in four different lessons in the course of one morning. We knew, though, that students don’t prepare for the lessons. Consequently, the lessons are much too hard for them.

We had to step back from the goals of the original lesson plans, which seemed to be to teach the language specific to the stations. The lesson plan for the restaurant station, for example, was a role play for eating in a restaurant. The lesson plan taught too many new expressions, like “how many are in your party?” and “What would you like to drink?” It was too much new language for the students. They don’t retain much, if any, of those lessons.

We want to use the environment, because there’s such great potential in the space. The situational approach allows students to role-play in a fun atmosphere.

We made new lessons based on a functional approach, building on language that the students already have learned, and giving them new situations in which to use the language. For example, in the restaurant station, we focus on phrases like “Do you have …?” and “I like …” We can thus incorporate language that they can easily use in situations that are particular to eating in a restaurant, like asking if the restaurant has a particular item.

I had to do most of the lesson planning myself, because the ETAs are both too busy with their regular teaching duties, and they don’t have the background in functional language teaching. I bought us some time with the administration to field test and refine the new lessons. We have been running the new lessons for a few weeks now. The ETAs agree that the new lessons are an improvement over the old lessons, and we’re revising the lessons for two or three stations.

In the end, we will have a curriculum that I can stand behind, that we all believe in, and that will give the kids an experience that is enjoyable, memorable, and that will allow them to use their English to interact with a native speaker.

Working on these lessons has been one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve had in Taiwan so far this year.