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?...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreMonkey 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. To which...
Read MoreTaiwan / Weeks 7 & 8: Surprises Big and Small
Surprise: The Big Secret (mee mee in Chinese) Before leaving for Taiwan, I contacted the American School in Kaohsiung. I had the idea to both tell the new stories from Journey to the West that I was hoping to translate in Kaohsiung and to work with the teachers at the American School to identify the Chinese words that were most relevant to the children for the story. A week after arriving, I visited the school and met with the Principal of the Middle School, Gerry Dery, an affable, easy...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 6: Friends, Food and Fern
This post was written on Election Day in Taiwan, when incumbent President Ma Ying–jeou won a second term. Effie returns on Tuesday to China. Ma Ying–jeou has won the elections. After their wedding ceremony yesterday, the bride Huan Yi–ju, and her groom drove directly to the polling station in Nantou. Greeted warmly by the voters she said, “Although getting married is one of the most important events in our lives, voting in the presidential elections is even more...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 5: Learning/Birthing and Chinese Characters
The Reckoning comes on Fridays as well as the unexpected gifts. I got a 69 out of 100 on last week’s quiz. Up from 32. It was a relief but I knew it wasn’t going to last. I’m too wobbly. I’m wobbling among too many undertakings: how to hear the tones, learn the words, remember how to write the beh, peh, meh, feh, write the characters, learn the characters, understand the grammar. Today’s quiz was all in Chinese characters, there were no more comforting beh peh...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 4: Celebrating the First Month
Let me start with Effie. Before I do, I did as badly as I thought I had on last week’s quiz: 34 out of 100. This Friday I was determined not necessarily to do better on the quiz but to be relaxed with the process of taking a quiz. Also, Jasper at the front desk helped me put the week’s lesson on my computer so I could listen to it repeatedly. That helped in placing it in my mind as well as recognizing the characters. Over and over I listened, sometimes reading the text, sometimes...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 2: One to Another
The wave, shall I call it the onslaught, of material in Chinese to master is relentless. Our daily classes are galloping. Our march is forward, no stopping. I feel as if I’m in the army. If I slow down, I’ll be left behind. My friends in Taiwan keep advising me, “Don’t worry.” But how does a marching soldier relax? He has to move, to think, to remember what he has learned and to be ready for who knows which questions he will be asked that he has no information...
Read MoreTaiwan / Week 1: An Unlikely Story
“Chingwen ni, jiao shenme mingzi?” During the next six months, Diane will be in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where she is studying Mandarin Chinese as part of the research for her adaptation of Journey to the West (also known as the Monkey King Epic). From time to time, she will share stories of her adventures in learning and living in Taiwan, starting today. I am the slowest in my Chinese class at National Sun Yat–Sen University. The other nine students, all men, are twice as quick...
Read MoreHighly recommended: My Reincarnation
©2011 Zohe Films. Courtesy Long Shot Factory. My Reincarnation, directed by Jennifer Fox, is an epic father–son drama, spanning two decades and three generations, about spirituality, cultural survival, identity, inheritance, family, growing old, growing up, faith, meditation, religion, magic, dreaming, Buddhism, Dzogchen — and past and future lives. The film follows the renowned reincarnate Tibetan spiritual master, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, as he struggles to save...
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