Friday 11/15 Trip to I-Lan Day 2
Got up by 9 so I could use my free
breakfast ticket at the Barista Coffee downstairs. Juling’s husband had talked up Barista so much when I first got
to Taiwan, but now I’ve had it twice I don’t know why—it’s just another
overpriced, trying-to-be-European-
but-not-quite-getting-it-right
café. Kind of like Au Bon Pain.
Vickie
picked me up and took me to Julia, one of the teachers’ classes so I could sit
in and watch. She was a third grade
teacher and had three 3rd grade English classes in a row, teaching the
same exact thing each time. I wondered
how she does it every day without going nuts?
The kids were so cute though.
Their sweatsuit uniform was a normal blue, red and white. They had to take off their shoes before
going into the classroom so outside every room were about 30 pairs of tiny
shoes.
Julia
introduced me as “Grace Ayi” (Auntie
Grace) from America. When she said Mei
Guo, they all gasped and said, “[But she doesn’t look like she is!]”
This
lesson, they learned to sing along to the song:
“How old are you? How old are you?
Hm, hm [pronounced, “mm, mm”], I’m
eight. Hm, hm, I’m eight.
How old are you? How old are you?
Yeah, yeah, I’m eight. Yeah, yeah, I’m eight.
Are you seven? Are you seven?
No no no no no, I’m not.”
The
class was split into six groups and Julia would roll a big squishy die onto the
floor to determine which group had to get up and sing in front of the
class. Each time it landed on the
number, the group groaned and threw their hands in despair, while the rest of
the kids laughed and pointed at them.
Of course, they all went by the end of the class.
At
the end of the class Julia said I could tell them a story. I thought for a bit and asked if they knew
Three Little Pigs. They looked blank
until I said [Three Little Pigs] in Chinese, then yelled, “Shan Zhe Shau Zhu!” I said then I’ll tell something else since
they know it already, and started telling them Hansel and Gretel. I spoke as slowly and simply as I could, and
they looked like they were listenly quietly and intently. But after a minute Julia asked them, “[Do
you understand?]” They all shook their
heads in unison and said, “[Don’t understand!]”
She
said, “Why don’t you just sing ABC with them.”
So we just sang the alphabet song instead. Sigh.
They
brought in two biendang boxes for us for lunch and we chatted. Turns out Julia got her PhD in I think
biochemistry and did a post-doc at Hopkins.
She nodded unsurprised when she saw my amazed reaction and knew exactly
what I was thinking—What was she doing being a third-grade English teacher in
I-Lan with those credentials?
Basically, she met her husband in the States during her studies and when
they returned to Taiwan, he got a professor position at the university in I-Lan;
she tried to as well but they had no openings.
She said they favored their own, students who’d studied/trained
there. I was surprised, “Wouldn’t they
prefer people who’d studied in the US? ” But she said she hadn’t gone to a “big
name” school for her degree so they didn’t care.
She didn’t sound very happy with her
job either, mentioning parents who have a snobby attitude toward the public
school and take their kids to expensive private English lessons with foreign
teachers, not believing the instruction here is good enough, especially because
the teachers are Taiwanese. She said
even her fellow teachers have the same stereotypes about Western-looking
foreigners, i.e. whites, vs. hua chau.
I didn’t understand. She told me
in previous weeks and seminars, teachers had expressed less interest and shown
lower attendance to workshops run by Chinese-American Fulbrighters than
whites. She pointed out, “Did you
notice how many people went to Jonathan’s workshop today versus yours?”
I
was thrown. Was that why? How could teachers who were facing the same
kind of discrimination turn around and use that attitude themselves? How ironic that my workshop was precisely
about stereotypes and the “reverse racism” I faced here, and now it seemed the
people who should have heard it most, didn’t show up because they wanted to
hear someone white.
Joanne
and Vickie drove us up to a teahouse in the mountains for our second day of
presentations. They said things would
be less formal, we could just have a nice time drinking the traditional
hand-ground tea, LeiCha. During the
drive I got a call from ZuenHong who told me Agong had to go to the
hospital. I panicked and asked what
happened. He couldn’t give me details
in English, just that the doctor said he must be admitted, they were waiting
for a bed but were told one wouldn’t be available for hours, maybe
tomorrow. He asked if I knew anyone in
the hospital who could help. I called
Dr. C and explained; he wasn’t surprised and said this is very common and it’s
happened to his family before, and usually you just have to wait. He asked about the problem and since I
didn’t know specifics, I gave him ZuenHong’s number so they could talk
directly. I hung up worried.
The
tea house was in a rustic looking cabin open to the air, with wooden tables and
stools outdoors and indoors, run by a small family. Jonathan’s group sat inside while mine took the outside. We had about an even five students each
today; some who came yesterday didn’t today and vice versa. Joanne had told Trace so many times about
how I had a really sad and touching story to tell that he told me he was
looking forward to it.
I
started in the same way as yesterday, feeling more well-rehearsed and organized
and telling my stories with a little more drama than yesterday. But it was hard to keep their attention
because we were sipping tea and eating nuts and cracking pumpkin seeds; trucks
and motorcycles would rumble by noisily, we heard voices from Jonathan’s group,
and the overall open-air sounds and sights of nature were just too distracting
and pleasant to put one in the mood for talking about racism. If I thought yesterday’s room was too
formal, this was on the other end of the spectrum. After about an hour someone said the host was ready to have us
grind the LeiCha and Jonathan and I had to wrap up abruptly. Trace asked me,
“So Grace, what’s the touching story about your mother that everyone was
talking about?” I said, “I told it
already, but I guess you just didn’t think it was that sad!”
Everyone
went inside to the big table where they ordered special tea eggs that were
incredibly good, and we grinded the LeiCha with big mortars and pestles. It was a fragrant mix of seeds and nuts and
had to be ground a long time to a fine powder.
I grinded long enough just to get a photo. Jonathan kept at it, trooper that he is and managed to get it
ground “good enough,” according to the host.
They added hot water, red bean and puffed rice and we drank it like
soup. Ahh. Was worth the work.
Around
5 we tried to decide what was going on—I called LeHsin, Dr. C’s PhD student who
lives in I-Lan who really wanted to show me around. She wanted to have dinner and take me to a hot springs. I wasn’t sure if Joanne, Vickie and Trace
already planned something for us and didn’t want to be rude, but she just asked
me how many people I was with, told me to bring them all and meet her and her
husband in town, and sounded like they were going to treat us.
I
told her 6 people but later found out Joanne had to leave so it was Vickie,
Trace, Julia, Jon and me. She spoke
with Trace to arrange the meeting place.
We ended up at the police station where her husband is chief of police
for three districts. Everyone was like
Whoa. She took me in their car and the
group followed us to a seafood restaurant that they said is their
favorite. They got a table in a private
room and we all sat around, somewhat quiet and awkward. Thankfully Jonathan was there who of course
they found very interesting. Her
husband gave us all his business cards which were engraved and gilded. The food was excellent and came out dish
after dish. Her husband amusedly
watched Jonathan put it away and said to me, “[You told me 6 people and I saw
only 5, but good thing I ordered for 6.]”
Jon was completely abashed and asked me several times later if he really
ate that much, but I knew they were just happy to see us enjoy the meal.
After
that they took us to the police station’s private hot springs sauna, a
beautiful house with two huge landscaped sauna rooms, showers and towels, a
foyer with hardwood floors, stereo system, small library, photos of the squad,
and old Chinese tablets inset in the floor; and a stream and fishpond out back
that you could watch from inside one of the baths. They left us for an hour and were going to their own private
bath—they said they come here sometimes for a “romantic getaway.” It was incredible! The girls didn’t want to bathe and told me to take one room,
while the guys went to the other.
I
took a short bath with massaging jet streams, then joined the girls in the
foyer who mentioned that Jon and Trace had each taken a book into the bath with
them. I said maybe it was to cover
themselves with, and that we should check out the size of their books when they
came out. We cracked up as they came
out and asked what was so funny. We finally broke down and explained; they
weren’t amused.
LeHsin
and her husband took Jon and me to the train station while the others went
home. On the way we walked to a store
which sold dried fruits and I-Lan specialties.
I was about to buy a pound of dried GingTsa fruits for my grandparents
and parents, but suddenly LeHsin and her husband, who we thought were buying
things for themselves, handed us each a bag of GingTsa and “cow tongue” crackers,
really just long thin crackers named that for their shape. We tried to refuse
but they insisted.
We
boarded the train still raving about their incredible generosity and how the
past two days have just been like a vacation, and about the most random time we
just had--taking a hot springs bath in the private sauna of the police chief
magistrate of I-Lan county? He also
told me about staying at Trace’s house in a room full of cutesy pink stuffed
animals, and feeling rather strange to be naked in a tub with him two days in a
row.
Plus
we got paid a lot more for our “speaker’s fee” than we expected. They’d told us both we were welcome to come
back and do it again. I asked Jon if he
was going to and he said, “Why WOULDN’T you?”
I’d
sensed they were more enthusiastic about asking him back than me. I understood; it was just more fun, a
novelty for them to have a white foreigner there. I could tell just by listening to his stories. Trace had taken him to a kids’ class and he
had to pretend he couldn’t speak Chinese at all, so the kids would be forced to
speak English to him. The kids were all
in awe, touching his hair and stuff. He
said he had to fight so hard not to say any Chinese, and at the end he couldn’t
help saying “[You’re welcome, bye]” in Taiwanese to some kid who went, “Wahh!”
in total shock.
I
told him what Julia said about the teachers showing preference to workshops by
white Fulbrighters. He was confident
that wasn’t true and said they were assigned to the workshops. Maybe, but I’m more skeptical and cynical so
I just shrugged.
Walking
home from the MRT I felt I’d been gone a long time. It definitely had been nice and relaxing to be out of the city
among nature again. But who would’ve
thought I’d be glad to be back in Taipei, and I’d never seen these city people
as being so worldly, sophisticated, modern and open-minded as I did now. Foreigners passing left and right, and no
one looking twice at them.