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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
Read MoreTaiwan / 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...
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