Taiwan / Week 3: Learning in Kaohsiung

Attack! Fire! Fire! Hit! Dead. Almost… Yep, that’s what the quiz in Chinese characters felt like this morning. I’d studied for nearly three hours the night before with Jasper. I’d learned 26 Chinese characters. 26!! Meaning I could write and recognize them. 26!! So I felt happy and prepared. The quiz began and we were asked which beh, peh, meh, feh sounds were which characters — easy. Then I turn the page and we’re supposed to match sentences. I can never match sentences. I don’t think the way quizes think. I panick. Panic with a k. My heart starts racing. Then the teacher says, “Finished?” I leave the room with the quiz so I don’t have to hear her say “Finished?” every minute. I wonder how this system of testing began. I sit on the stairs outside the classroom and try to calm down because now I can’t even recognize the characters anymore. A few minutes later the teacher comes out and says, “Time’s up.” I put the paper on her desk and sit down. My heart is pounding. She looks at me with pity and says, “It’s just a quiz.” I forget how much I like her. I forget I adore her. I can’t look at her. She was the one who sent the bullet.

The class continues. She realizes that I’m no longer present. We’re now considering “Is this her book?” “Is this your book?” “Is this the teacher’s book?” I’m certain this has relevance, but I’ve been shot. And then I realize what a struggle it is for all those who can’t learn quickly. I want to cry for all the students who do not understand quickly. Why must tests be done quickly? Why must we learn quickly? So many students suffer. They try hard and yet it does not come easily. I think of my own arrogance. I was always a quick learner and I never thought to consider the ones who were behind. And now, I belong with the slow ones. I know the characters but I can not quickly identify and make relevant comparisons.

The teacher comes over. She tries to help me with this new section. I repeat the Chinese words she is saying. Over and over. Maybe seven times. I appreciate her kindness. She coming to help with the wounds. Her voice is soothing. I try to rally. We’ve gone ten minutes past the class break. Shah Tien is trying to encourage me as well. Finally the break comes. “What’s the trouble?” Shah Tien quietly asks. I explain that I just can’t do the quiz that quickly. He says, “I’m sorry but that’s how language classes are in universities. Maybe you should consider learning in New York.” He leaves for the ten minute break. I sit there stunned. What did he just say? I speak to the teacher. She is very comforting. “We’re older,” she offers. “I was trying to learn Japanese this summer and I couldn’t remember words from one day to the next. It’s just slow. You’re learning every day, just at a slower pace. Be easy with yourself. Be easy. I had a Czech student. She learned by writing each character 50 times. Then by the next month she was much quicker. It’s not even a month.” Okay. Okay. Wounds heal. Go on. Breathe.

At 12:10, there is a Christmas party for all the Chinese Language Center students on the roof. Good fun. We are divided into groups and play “Telephone.” Each group passes on a Chinese word from one to another. The group that comes closest to the word in the quickest time wins. Good fun. Playful. Afterward, I sit with our teacher and ask her about her interest in Japanese. Her parents spoke Japanese in the house when she was young when they didn’t want her to understand what they were saying. How interesting that she would be revealing languages to others. I tell her my parents did the same; they hid from us by speaking Yiddish. Her grandfather had studied in Japan and then her father. Both were intellectuals who never worked; they just studied and read. Today her father never leaves the house. He reads a book a day. Forty years ago, he invented the match that never goes out. Which is useless. And dangerous. The match that never goes out? Well this is the part I like the most — learning her story.

After the party, I go to Dante’s where I meet Wanling’s friend, the compser Kwang–I. We drink apple vinegar juice and discover we are both practicing Buddhists and her teacher is the Karmapa.

At three, I meet Effy, a young student from Mainland China, who wants to have an exchange with an American. We’ve met twice and each time we laugh and our drawn more and more to one another. She intends to teach English when she returns to China so she is eager to tutor me. We also drink apple vinegar juice and laugh and spend two and a half hours and it is all fun. No pressure, no anxiety, no fear; just enjoying one another’s presence and stopping to sing Christmas carols. The invasion of American culture throughout the world is extraordinary — the music, the clothes, the iPhones. I remember forty years ago going to France and not even being able to buy milk. And here we sit, Chinese and American, teaching one another and laughing while someone is singing “Go Tell It on the Mountain” on the radio. We laugh at how hard it is for me to say in Chinese Djeh geh yong djong wen zen ma shoaeh, which means How do you say that in Chinese? She’s going to Taipei for four days and says, “I’ll miss you.” We both smile. We are happy to be together. We’ll meet again on weekday three: Wednesday.

Learning is large. It’s what happens every minute. We are almost always offering some information to someone. The kindness of this exchange is so crucial. I am deeply touched by the kindness of the Chinese language teachers. And even more so, the many young people I meet at the university. I stop at the art gallery and chat with the guard and we are soon doing a language lesson for a half an hour. I chat for an hour with Tangie at the front desk. We learn from one another. We feel fortunate to share what we know with the other. That is the joy; the gratitude of having something to offer that helps the other. Ahh, that’s the learning. And also remembering, the pace must be my own.