Taiwan / Weeks 15 & 16: The Art of Teaching
How refreshing to be mistaken. I had imagined that my second semester class would be just like the one that I had failed. It was with Nihong, the same teacher, and with Mrs. Ding’s Family, the same miserable textbook. But — my imaginings forgot who my teacher is. Nihong is not an ordinary language teacher. She is Transformation Woman. We have not had one day the same as a day in the first semester. Whereas in the first semester, she talked and drew and we sat and listened. Now, we move about and interact with our classmates. And no time for spacing out because her method this time is that when she asks us a question, we can’t shake our heads or say no, we must ask someone else in the class the same question, receive the answer and then explain it to her which means we need to be paying attention all the time because we might be asked a question by anyone. The class moves both vertically and horizontally. (more…)
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Taiwan / Weeks 13 & 14: Memories of Myanmar
Myanmar still remains mysterious, misty, not yet of the twenty-first century. There is poverty and difficulties, few doctors, little medicine available, not enough schools. And there is hope and beauty. Such beauty in the faces of the people, the animals, the art, the pagodas, the land and waters. Aung San Suu Kyi, at last, can speak and there are many ethnic groups eager to hear her words and eager for Democracy for Myanmar.
Jeff and I had adventures and misadventures. Collectively, we survived stomach poisoning, fever, sunburn, diarrhea, good and bad guides. Together we were awed by Aung San Suu Kyi, the art, the dance, the people.
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Meditating on Myanmar
Myanmar and Thailand (last photo), early March 2012.
Myanmar still remains mysterious, misty, not yet of the twenty–first century. There is poverty and difficulties, few doctors, little medicine available, not enough schools. And there is hope and beauty. Such beauty in the faces of the people, the animals, the art, the pagodas, the land and waters. Aung San Suu Kyi, at last, can speak and there are many ethnic groups eager to hear her words and eager for Democracy for Myanmar.
Jeff and I had adventures and misadventures. Collectively, we survived stomach poisoning, fever, sunburn, diarrhea, good and bad guides. Together we were awed by Aung San Suu Kyi, the art, the dance, the people.
My dearest memory was the quiet of Inlay Lake, a deep–body–letting–go peace, spending the day, watching the young boys fish and watching the sun set on the water. I loved the faces of the women, their vibrancy. A special treat on the trip was enjoying Jeff’s passion for music, playing with every person we met who had an instrument and was willing as well as on car rides and by the lake.
In Chinese one of the earliest words for medicine is music — because it is healing. We hoped to bring Monkey King to Myanmar to create mutual healing. Because of a beloved Chinese TV series on Wu Kong, everyone in Myanmar knew Wu Kong and welcomed him. I was deeply touched by the children and adult’s warm response to our three performances of Monkey King. At the end of the trip, I knew that at Sun Wu Kong’s party in heaven, he had definitely invited Burmese dancers to entertain the constellations.
The photos below (also accessible on Flickr) follow our journey: Mandalay, Bagan, Kulaw, Inlay Lake and Yangon:
a dewdrop falls
from a silk pavilion
wait between moments
no sound
observe.
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Taiwan / Week 12: Time Out — DING!
The computer’s Guardian Angel heard me. It’s been nearly three months since I’ve been in Taiwan and I am feeling lonely for a companion. Yesterday morning I opened my computer and received a message for a Time Out update. I clicked! I had previously had one but it kept ringing when I was sleeping, so I’d turned it off and forgot to put it back on. Ahh, how wonderful that she dings and this one is very unusual because I have no idea when she is going to ding since there’s no button for programming. Sometimes it’s at a ten minute interval, sometimes twenty–five, and the length of the ring varies between fifteen seconds and a minute and seven seconds. She rings and I return to my breath and awareness. A twenty–first century Gwan Yin for the lonely Buddhist traveler.
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Taiwan / Week 11: Do You Have a Car?
Responses: ling?
Because of a web installation, the blog comments went out for a week and all the comments went to 0. Ling (0). I hadn’t realized it until today but I was daily feeling slightly more depressed. I write the blog because I’m here in Taiwan, inside these moments, trying to move into another consciousness, language, understanding. No prepositions. Subject, time, place, noun, verb. What does this signify when the verb is at the end and there’s no past or present tense? struggling both outside and inside, trying to connect with how I once experienced learning with how I’m learning now with the process of learning. The importance of the relationship to the teacher and the importance of a good method for learning. I’m writing to watch the process. And, I also write to connect, to share with friends the insights, the puzzlements, the surprises, the wonder of this new adventure.
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Taiwan / Week 10: Footnote Romances (Unusual Chinese Love Stories)
For the past two weeks, I’ve been working with a new translator of Journey to the West. Vance, a Chinese literature major, a senior at at the University, is always bouncing. At first, I wanted to grab her and tell her to settle down and stop giggling and shaking. But her enthusiasm is contagious and her translating excellent. Last year she studied the ancient Chinese texts, so she often pauses to take time to explain to me small subtleties such as eight tones also means eight different kinds of ancient Chinese instruments: gold, stone, soil (clay), leather, silk wood, bamboo, gourd. Or the effect of the yin negative energy in the fiery plantain fan. (The original cold yin watery energy overpowers the fiery yang energy of The Flaming Mountains.) Unlike the strict, “forward, march” Chinese lessons, our translating sessions meander. At our last session, we came to the line in The Plantain Fan: “The slender young woman with delicate eyebrows, green eyes, and red lips was as beautiful as Wang Zhao Jun as alluring as Xue Tao.” “Wang Jhao Jun? Xue Tao? Who are they?” I asked Vance. She told me their stories:
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Taiwan / Week 9: Roadblock — Meeting the Dharma Master
People say I am courageous to go to Taiwan for six months. I don’t consider myself courageous to travel. Mostly, I love to discover new cultures, lands, people, ways of thinking. But where I can see my courage was in Chinese grammar class on Friday when I wanted to flee and stayed.
Every Friday we have a quiz. Teacher Fong hands out the quiz at exactly 9:10 when our class begins. When I arrived at 8:45 at the bus stop, no bus was waiting. No one informed us that the school bus was not running on Fridays because of the winter break. After waiting fifteen minutes, the other students decided to walk. The hill is very steep. I had three heavy books and I didn’t want to miss class, so I chose to hitchhike. Two young men in a broken down car picked me up. They asked in Chinese where I was going. I pointed in the direction of the mountain and kept saying, “Up, Up, that way.” They nodded and kept driving up the hill. “Zheli, here, ” I said. They stopped, left me off and then turned around and went down the hill. Such kindness on their part, but I didn’t take it in completely. I was feeling shaky that campus schedules change without notice and what could happen next.
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Monkey and the Puzzle
This short parable — identified as “an ancient Chinese Jewish story” — came to us as a reply to Diane’s recent post from Kaohsiung:
Once upon a time there was a Puzzle.
And along came a Monkey.
And he looked at the Puzzle.
And he became rigid with fright and all his hair stuck out in every direction,
and he could never
move
again.
And that is how the Monkey Puzzle Tree came into existence.
And the moral of that is: Character building must not be rushed.
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