Studying Chinese: Not exactly Mr. Miyagi

After a few weeks of Chinese classes i was beginning to curse The Karake Kid and Mr. Miyagi.

The classroom consisted of four desks arranged in a rectangle facing the board; I was sitting in my usual seat next to the teacher, on her left hand side.

For the moment, all was silent because we, the students, had collectively complained: to practice the dialogue from the book we always started with Eric and read a sentence each going around the class, today, we wanted a more creative way.

The teacher finally spoke. “Park, you read the first sentence this time,” she declared proudly to the Korean guy directly opposite Eric.

I want to buy a book.” “How much is that book?” ‘Which book?” “That book,”
we all repeated.

Praise the lord, I thought, the dialogue conversation sounded so different and fresh on this, the tenth time, now that it was circling clockwise rather than anti-clockwise around the class.

"Now let’s read the vocabulary,” she announced.

Clockwise or anti-clockwise, I thought, or maybe, we are going to get another spectacular piece of innovation like odds and even numbers?

"Not exactly Mr. Miyagi is it man?” said Adrian. “It doesn’t get any better.”

Adrian sat on my left, he had been in Taiwan for about five years. He was back at the Chinese school studying Chinese because he needed a visa.

Unfortunately, I was beginning to understand Adrian wasn't just a moaning old hand: the teaching was still very Dead Poet’s Society and i was wondering why i was bothering to study. I had got an apartment near Shih Ta University because I planned to study Chinese in their language program - supposedly the best in Taipei, Taiwan. I thought having to give them a letter of reference was strange because I was a paying customer, studying for personal pleasure, but I nonetheless prepared all the documentation to prove himself worthy of a place. Then it started: rote combined with memorization, repetition and drills, and only the register in between. I complained that perhaps they should at least be allowed to make a sentence to practice, but apparently the teacher knew better, we were too basic to be allowed to innovate. Finally, there was a weekly test which I began to be sure she just hid behind to waste a lesson. I walked out after two months shaking my head telling them: 'You waste one lesson a week testing me when I am a paying adult. Gonna make me stand in the corner next?' I decided if authority was going to be so unquestioning, I would head to a private Chinese language school like this one, where there were no rules.

"Wipe on, wipe off...” said Adrian, pleased with his observation. “You watched the Karate Kid when you were young, right, man? I wanted to come to Asia because of that movie. Wanted to be taught by a cool little Asian dude like Mr. Miyagi...The ultimate teacher, with his cool, alternative methods for learning karate. Not like the reality, eh?”

"I hear you, man,” I replied.

It was funny: east Asia have done one fantastic thing, they have managed to convince the world that they are these great delivers of knowledge. Trust in me and I can impart knowledge to you in some magical way. It is not just Mr. Miyagi. There is Kung Fu with Grasshopper, Jackie Chan…In fact whenever Chinese, Japanese and maybe even Koreans appear on the scene it is inevitably a double act of master and student with the student getting wiser by the second just by being in the aura of the great teacher.”

"But they are actually good students?”I countered because all the top students in my school were East Asian.

"Much more earthy reasons.” Adrian pretended to crack a whip.

He continued, "Five years I have been here man, in and out of schools studying Chinese, and I haven’t met a teacher who threw out the traditional for the creative, the tried and tested for the unusual and inspirational. Unfortunately, the downside of Miyagi’s techniques, unquestioning loyalty for the teacher’s methods I have seen too fucking much of.”

"Thanks. You want to go to lunch?” I said making an excuse to get away. The unfortunate reality Grasshopper got his pupils to write the sentence a thousand times behind the curtain wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

Where is Taiwan?

Where is Taiwan, is usually the next question asked after the acceptance you don't live in Thailand after all. Your friends are confused because they spent a lot of time checking flights to Bangkok and imagining which islands they were going to visit.

Taiwan is off the South-East coast of China, a little download from Japan, a little higher than Hong Kong. It kind of also answers the question of when you return in winter to your western country why you don't have a permanent suntan. Taipei has a winter, not a zero degree snowy winter, but definitely a winter where you have a wear a medium sized jacket. Nobody has central heating because this winter only actually lasts for around 6 - 8 weeks, so you definitely know it was cold.

Although Taiwan is a small place, the weather actually gets significantly better as you move down the island. Even in winter Kaohsiung, Tainan and Taitung have sunshine, you can swap the jacket for one long sleeved layer and expect much less rain.

Also it is eight hours ahead of the UK and around fifteen hours ahead of pacific coast USA. For more details check out the Taiwan wiki.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Taiwan

Free Availability of The Betelnut Equation Kindle Book

Hi All,

I recently made this blog available as an e-book with reformatted, reorganized, rewritten and added content. It will be available for free download from the Kindle store on Christmas Day, the 27th and the 28th.

I did made it available as an e-book for a number of reasons. Ideas and understanding of the situation are continually evolving and improving so I have spent a lot of time to go back and review all my posts and make sure points are made clearer and quicker - and connections that I previously hadn't noticed are drawn - As well as adding additional content. 
The e-book format also offers several other advantages: all the content is grouped according to categories and, as there is a hyper-linked index, it is very easy to jump instantly from one story to another or one chapter to another. This way you can definitely get deeper into the stories and come back and forth quicker.
The amount of content is huge so I have split into two parts, the first is available on the Amazon Kindle Store at the links below - I will be adding the second part very soon and also adding the content to other book stores.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.it/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.es/dp/B007QSGZ3U
My passion and mission hasn't changed: to deliver some real and extremely relevant insight into the culture of Taiwan in an entertaining style. Hopefully, arm anyone coming with knowledge I didn't have. I look forward to hearing whether I have achieved that aim – And will of course work hard to answer any of your questions.

China and Taiwan: The Olympics and Really Understanding Taiwanese Thoughts about Not Having a Country

For foreigners it is not always easy to gauge Taiwanese feelings about not having their own country.
We know the China and Taiwan situation (this is a rough guide for the people who are not familiar with Taiwan): Taiwan exists in a state of de facto independence with its own army, currency, government and passport, but in reality has only relations with a few tiny countries and no nation-level representation in any international organizations because China doesn't allow it to be a country. When SARs happened it is said the WHO guys were scared to come to Taiwan without asking China, and then refused to take Taiwan off the list until China came off the list of SARs affected countries. However, as Taiwan pretty much functions as a country, you really only notice when you are applying for a Taiwan visa; searching Google for Taiwan embassy, and finally work out there is no embassy, just a trade office.
Of course there is a political party that stands for independence – or used to – and if you go down south the people are more vocal in their desire for a country. And, during the fifties, sixties, and seventies 10,000s were imprisoned or killed fighting for democracy. However, looking at now: the people managed to elect the party in favor of unification twice, about a million or more Taiwanese live in China, an awful lot of guys will do all they can to avoid military service – and the Taiwanese keep a healthy sense of humor about it all based pretty much on the practical knowledge it is a lost cause (It is 23 million against 1.4 billion). And that comes back to the Army thing again: the Americans were apparently surprised when they found the Taiwanese army wasn’t like the Israeli, but Israel has a chance of winning whereas Taiwan doesn’t against China. Apart from in stupid movies people don’t fight to the last man in lost causes; in much fairer fights than this one, plenty of countries have given up early when odds turn against them (as my father would say about a certain neighbor across the water who apparently just wanted to protect their architecture).
Often people stupidly cite surveys where Taiwanese answer that they support the status quo not a declaration of independence, as proof they don’t want independence. They are answering the question practically not in a dream land, ie, the status quo means they won’t get bombed, then they reluctantly choose it. If they asked the question, ‘would you like independence?’ (forget China invading) of course they will resoundingly answer yes.
They can appear apathetic, but then when the Olympics comes round it kind of reveals their true feeling. Or in fact any sporting occasion or sign of success overseas:
1) Jeremy Lin – A Taiwanese American did well in the NBA and now is a national hero in Taiwan even though he is in fact really an American.
2) Wang Jien Ming – A genuine home grown baseball pitcher who a few years ago played for the New York Yankees. When he was playing they erected screens in public places all around the country and the normally hardworking Taiwanese all stopped to watch.
The incident that most sticks in my mind is the Olympics in Greece back in 2004. Taiwan won 2 Golds in Taekwondo. When the Taiwanese went up to the podium to receive their gold every channel had been changed to broadcast from children’s TV to stocks to news. As they raised the shitty Chinese Taipei flag and broadcast some weird national anthem that nobody knew their wasn’t a dry eye in the studios. Presenters who had covered wars, seen the results of terrorist attacks and lost family and friends could not control the tears from raining down.

Taking Taiwanese girl back to the West to make her more outgoing

I had really assumed this kind of behavior was a relic of the past, but then the friend who inspired me to write this blog confessed to doing it, and then I bumped into the guy below. Clearly, some things never change…
Dave Ritco had got married to a Taiwanese girl and left about 2 years ago. I had got occasional emails from him but now I suddenly saw him on the street in Taipei.
“Why are you back? Thought you were nicely settled in Canada?” I asked.
“It is a long story man. Sorting out the divorce.”
“What?” I asked. We then had a long conversation about what had happened and how she had refused to work or make friends in Canada. It wasn't a surprise to me but then the key words came out: “I thought she would change back in the West. Become more outgoing.”
I felt sorry for him because we had all been through this stage. It was also an interesting confirmation of that fact: to lesser degree or more we had all bought into the nonsense that the West was going to make Taiwanese girls more outgoing.
The argument of course went like this: Taiwan was sexist and given the freedoms and emphasize on being yourself in the West, said Taiwan girl will come out of her shell. It was an easy mistake to make, but still a bad one nonetheless.

1. Not everyone in the West was outgoing – Once you thought about that fact and realized that most people spent their time knocking themselves or trying to do anything possible to gain more confidence you would realize the take them back argument wasn't going to work.
   
2. Outgoing was a personality issue not a society one – This tied in with the above and had reams and reams of evidence to prove it. Once you met loads of Taiwanese you realized that an awful lot of them were extremely outgoing. Taiwanese: set up businesses, they are extremely social, they have little fear of public speaking or even public singing and dancing. They just operate within a social framework which makes certain aspects of their character appear timid. They are scared of their parents and bosses and we define outgoing and freedom as the ability to tell our parents to fuck off. I always like to refer to Dangerous Liasons the film with Glen Close. Clearly she is an outgoing, determined woman but she has to keep it under wraps because of the society in France at the time. 17 or 18^th century France didn't by default make all women doormats, but rather made them think harder about where and how they could express their character.
   
3. Taiwan society isn't that repressed – As well as being very sexist and paternalistic, Taiwan is also one of the most socially and sexually liberal places in the world. Parents in general don't care what their kids do as long as come home, pay up the monthly allowance and are seen when relatives come to visit. They operate an extremely long rope policy turning a blind eye to most of the things their kids get up to. The classic being the Taiwanese girl who is on the phone to her mother at 11pm to tell her she is staying at a friend’s house; the mother says nothing even though she can hear a guy discussing hotel room sizes with the receptionist in the background. In short, if someone was naturally outgoing there were a million ways to express yourself. And, in even shorter, if your Taiwanese girlfriend was afraid to sing in KTV, or dance in the disco, or meet your friends, or get up and speak at work; she was naturally introverted and that was that. No amount of time in the West was going to change her.
   

The above may appear commonsense and it was. However, if you were able to keep your commonsense while in deep culture shock there wouldn't be a need for this blog.
Don’t forget to check out the kindle books linked in the post below.

Betelnut Equation Now Available As An E-Book

Hi All,
I have now made this blog available as an e-book with reformatted, reorganized, rewritten and added content.
I did this for a number of reasons. Ideas and understanding of the situation are continually evolving and improving so I have spent a lot of time to go back and review all my posts and make sure points are made clearer and quicker - and connections that I previously hadn't noticed are drawn - As well as adding additional content.
The e-book format also offers several other advantages: all the content is grouped according to categories and, as there is a hyper linked index, it is very easy to jump instantly from one story to another or one chapter to another. This way you can definitely get deeper into the stories and come back and forth quicker.
The amount of content is huge so I have split into two parts, the first is available on the Amazon Kindle Store at the links below - I will be adding the second part very soon and also adding the content to other book stores.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.it/dp/B007QSGZ3U
http://www.amazon.es/dp/B007QSGZ3U
My passion and mission hasn't changed: to deliver some real and extremely relevant insight into the culture of Taiwan in an entertaining style. Hopefully, arm anyone coming with knowledge I didn't have. I look forward to hearing whether I have achieved that aim – And will of course work hard to answer any of your questions.

Stupid expats: Hate yourself too much to appreciate Taiwan girls

The two expat guys in question were called David and Swen – although we guessed there were plenty like them.
David and Swen were friends of John’s who he always met in the bar at around at 11:00. He would ideally like to go with us but we, like most expat foreigners in Taiwan, sat around in someone’s apartment drinking beer until one in the morning to save money. John worked 50 hours a week or more and, in his own words, didn’t want to sit around waiting for his evening to happen. It was arguable if he even needed to meet them as, as soon as the bar got crowded they would fan out, only passing another twenty minutes of conversation together all night. David to one side of the bar and Sven to the other, while John wandered around introducing himself to anyone who would talk to him. When pushed on the subject, he admitted that it wouldn’t make much difference to go alone, but it was that initial thirty minutes or so of knocking back Tequila, he didn’t want to do by himself. None of us liked Sven and David, but John explained they were disgusting Neanderthals and after working hard all week, behaving like a decent human being, it was good to talk to someone without a good bone in their bodies.
Sven and David were in the bar to pick up Taiwan girls three nights a week; rain or shine, sick or healthy, on their own or with friends, they had to be there to stop there lives falling apart. They had not evolved – This was Taipei, everyone had a Taiwanese girlfriend so you could talk to your friends for most of the time in the bar; there wasn’t such a hurry. Not them, they were to be found heads above the crowd, staring hungrily, agitated, consumed, like the desperate guys in the over-25 Nightclub back home, who hadn’t met a girl for months, and were beginning to question whether they ever would do again. They were so focused a 100 people could walk by and spit in their glass and they would never know, yet they picked up the night before, 3 days ago, 5 times this month and countless this year. Surely they must have proved to themselves that they were men by now…it seemed not.
“What’s up mate?” asked John suddenly finding himself next to Sven.
“It is a bit slow tonight.” And with the sheer horror of not picking up that night dawning on him, Sven set off back into the crowd, efforts redoubled.
Then John saw David. “How is it going?” asked John.
David and Sven were not assholes because they liked to pick up Asian girls; they were assholes because of the manner in which they did it.
David replied, “I can’t find a decent girl, man - these Taiwan girls are all sluts. I am going to have to leave soon…to somewhere with decent girls. I expected to be married by this age, but not here!”
That was the problem: David was absolutely sincere in his disillusionment and disappointment, and because of it, destined to lead an unhappy life: arriving a nerdy virgin with an ultra conservative upbringing, meant he had to fuck as many Taiwan girls as possible to try and prove his worth as a man; then recoil in disgust because the girl was prepared to sleep with him. Drawing large maps of his hypocrisy, with bright colors and 3-D shapes specially designed for kids, didn’t help.
“Look at that slag. I fucked her last week and now she is with another guy,” he continued.
“It is okay, I don’t think you were planning to marry her,” replied John.
“I decide when things are over.” As an expat David’s ego had also got out of hand: he had got the idea that getting Taiwan girls had something to do with his looks and personality.
“Hey, that guy is ugly. You are ugly. This is Taiwan.” retorted John.
Sven returned, “I got to go someone else. I don’t care if it takes all night.”
“Just get yourself a whore. Save your energy,” replied John.
“I’m not going to pay for it.” Sven would never see her again; she could be anyone and he didn’t care if she liked him or not.  However, it was different from prostitute for reasons only known to him.
John was glad to see middle-class liberal contradictions weren’t dead.
Sven wasn’t finished. “Man, I just don’t get these 3-hour Take-a-Break hotels,” he said. “I mean, my girlfriend is at work so I go to one with this thing I picked up and the woman behind the desk is looking at me like I am some sort of smuck. She doesn’t know it ain’t my girlfriend.”
“There you go - Shows why we all hate lawyers,” said John.