Taiwan / Week 22: I Love You
On Monday I invited my classmates in Nihong’s grammar class to have lunch at our hotel. I asked them to each talk a little about themselves. They’re young, between twenty–two and thirty, and quick and smart and forthcoming in a refreshing way. I told them that while studying again after forty or so years, what was fascinating to me was not only learning the language but the pedagogy — how Nihong teaches and how we learn. When I was their age, I took the method in which we were taught for granted, but now, I’m constantly considering how this or that approach is or isn’t effective. They all agreed Nihong is a wonderful teacher and that we were very fortunate. I told them that I felt especially fortunate being in the class with them because they made so many jokes and learning Chinese is so serious that their gaiety greatly helped to relieve the dullness of the textbook as well as the stress of learning, forgetting and relearning the same characters.
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Monkey King at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, May 6th
On Sunday May 6th, Monkey King, our beloved Great Sage Equal to Heaven, will be cloud–somersaulting to San Francisco and wreck havoc in Heaven! Don’t miss this funny, inspiring, and family–friendly adventure at the Asian Art Museum‘s Target Free Sundays event!
Journey to the West, China’s most famous epic, is the tale of the impetuous Monkey King, who sets out in search of immortality and learns such extraordinary skills that no one &mdashl not the Sun, not the Moon, not the 28 Constellations — can defeat him. Diane and multi&ndashlinstrumentalist Jeff Greene have performed the cloud–somersaulting Monkey’s antics on three continents. Join them as they bring this classic Chinese tale of adventure and deep wisdom to San Francisco.
Monkey King: Journey to the West
Sunday, May 6th, 2012, 2 p.m. — 3:30 p.m.
Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall
200 Larkin Street, San Francisco, California
Free Admission as part of Target Free Sundays
To help Diane and Jeff spread the word, go to their Facebook event page and like and share the concert. For you to share the event with your Facebook friends would mean a lot to them… thanks!
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An intimate performance of “Journey to the West”
on May 5th in Berkeley
Please join us for the spiritual adventure of the impetuous, all–powerful Monkey King, whose concerns are himself, and the pure–hearted, determined Tang Priest, who wants to help others. Together they struggle not only with demons and ogres, but with one another, as they travel from China to India to bring back the Buddhist scriptures. Based on the travels of the historical monk Sanzang.
Diane Wolkstein has been researching the story for the past 5 years in India, China, and Taiwan and is just returning from a five–month scholarship in Taiwan, studying Mandarin. Diane and Jeff Greene have presented this humorous, poignant epic to audiences throughout the USA, Australia, Taiwan and most recently in Myanmar and Thailand.
Date: Saturday, May 5th
Time: 7:15 p.m. — 9:30 p.m.
Place: Private home in the Berkeley Hills, California
Space limited, for reservations, call: 510–548–7890
$25.00, includes refreshments
URL: Facebook Event page
Join Diane, Jeff, Monkey King, Sanzang, and Gwan Yin for an intimate adult evening of storytelling, discussion, refreshments, and surprises.
To help Diane and Jeff spread the word, check out their Facebook Event page and like and share the concert. For you to share the event with your Facebook friends would mean a lot to them… thanks!
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Taiwan / Week 21: Darkness in Summer
One day my classmate Lorenzo / Shah Tien (Summer) and I were standing in line waiting for the school bus, and he said to me, “I’m getting more and more frustrated with their forcing us to take this stupid test to keep our scholarship. I need to be careful.”
“Why careful?”
“I have a terrible temper.”
“What do you do about your temper?” I asked him, thinking to myself that I rarely lose my temper.
“My Grandmother told me to count to ten.”
“Does that help?”
“When I remember.”
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Taiwan / Week 20: The Taiwanese Traditional Market: Shining Slowly
I have a new friend, Chaoli Hsu. Her name means Shining Slowly. Her father told her that her name means that she is to shine slowly for herself and to shine for others, thus lighting up the world. She is the beacon her father envisioned. She is the director of faculty development at Wenzao College. What more important job can there be than helping teachers to develop their skills? We are dependent on the ability of our teachers. Education creates culture and humanity. If only we Americans understood this with our tax dollars. Missiles of destruction don’t bring safety. Education, clear thinking, and compassion bring safety. But back to Chaoli. She’s very spiritual and she also loves to eat. I often forget to eat so to be around Chaoli is wonderful because we are always eating and the best food.
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Taiwan / Week 19: The View from My Window
In Hans Christian Andersen’s story of “The Ugly Duckling,” the mother duck tells her ducklings that there is a great wide world beyond the moat. But the ducklings can’t imagine it. From my window I see northwest. I see the Taiwan Sea and the many large ships that pass by on their way into and out of Kaohsiung’s busy harbor. Since I arrived in December of last year, in the mornings around seven, I watched the swimmers. Polar bears, I called them in December. The sign on the beach says no swimming until April. But the swimmers were there every morning until I returned in March from Myanmar and then, suddenly, they were gone. From my window the beach was empty. I asked at the front desk. Jasper told me that the hotel had had a fight with the swimmers because they refused to pay more dues and the fee for keeping the showers and keeping the beach clean had gone up. I shook my head. Those intrepid people, men and women, would never give up swimming. I remember them heartily heading out of the water, flushed with the joy of nature and exercise. It brought to my mind Eleanor Farjeon’s story of Elsie Piddock in which the villagers love to skip and suddenly the landlord is blocking their skipping ground. “But can’t the hotel make money another way?” I asked. “The hotel is losing money,” Jasper answered.
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Taiwan / Week 18: Wedding Preparations
Ahh, spring break! What a relief. I must confess that as much as I love my teacher and am glad to be learning Chinese, I often watch the clock throughout the morning waiting for the breaks (sho–shee). So break! Or sho–shee. Today, the first day of break, my stomach was churning. It’s been churning for nearly a week. Hard to tell what brought it on. I’m allergic to soy, wheat, and dairy so any of these ingredients snuck into the food starts an unhappy reverse digestion process. What I tend to do when this happens is eat less with the idea that the new food will increase the churning and since I’m feeling so awful I don’t want anything more in my stomach. But eating less actually makes matters worse.
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Taiwan / Week 17: A Day with Wanling Sun
I met Wanling at a hot springs two years ago in northern Taiwan and then invited her to a program I was doing at the Ford Foundation. She loved the audience participation in the story of “The Magic Orange Tree,” and from then on we were friends. During my stay in Taipei in 2010, I visited her several times and she tried to teach me tones by playing the cello. I loved her tones. It wasn’t very successful for learning but from then I was eager for every opportunity to hear her play the cello.
Wanling is a magical person. She appears, a bit like Mary Poppins, suddenly without notice. And then magical things happen. (She was the one who called the university and suggested I stay at Seabay Hotel.) When I returned from Myanmar, she was staying in the next room in my hotel and we had breakfast together in the morning. Last December she arrived in Kaohsiung and invited me the same evening to hear her cousin Ellen play the cellist with the Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra. She was Ellen’s first cello teacher and before she retired was the first cellist in the Taipei Orchestra. She is very merry, relaxed, refined. She has an innate sense of what is right and doesn’t seem to mind that everything is falling apart and not quite right. She just continues beaming serenely. An anchor. (more…)
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