My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

Stacy is helping Evan with his math. She doesn’t like him to write unnecessary details.

Stacy: Why did you write that number?

Evan: I’m writing that down for dumb people.

We went to a fun hot pot 火鍋 restaurant for dinner last night. If you’ve never had Chinese hot pot before, it can be described as a cross between soup and fondue. You have a boiling pot of soup in front of you, and during the course of the meal, you add raw goodies to the soup, picking them out when they’re done, dipping them in sauce, and eating them. At the end of the meal, you can drink the rich soup that you’ve gradually made through cooking your goodies. It’s a fun way to eat, and it’s popular in Taiwan in the winter.

At this restaurant, everyone makes their own hot pot. The pots are embedded in the table in front of you , and you can control the temperature of the heater under the pot. They start you out with a soup stock, and give you a large bowl of vegetables, tofu, and other goodies. You choose what kind of meat you want. The menu had the usual boring choices of pork, chicken, lamb, beef, and seafood. What caught my eye was “ostrich.” Then I saw “alligator.” Now I had a dilemma: what to choose?

I decided on the ostrich, and Evan tried the alligator.

The consensus at the table was that the alligator tastes better than ostrich. Ostrich tastes like a cross between chicken and beef. Alligator is like very tender chicken. But both are tasty. We give them two thumbs up!

My favorite Chinese writer, Long Ying-Tai 龍應台 recently wrote a book called “1949,” describing her family’s experiences in fleeing the Chinese civil war in 1949. The book spurred a movement in Taiwan. People in their 20s have begun interviewing their grandparents, and have been putting a personal, human face on history.

It has been 60 years since the end of the civil war. For most of that time, that period of time has been hushed up. Partly because of national security, some details of the retreat from China to Taiwan have not been available. But most of the people who came over from China in 1949 are free to speak about their experiences. Why haven’t they talked about it more? I think probably because they lost the war. Are losers less willing to talk about their experiences? It stands to reason.

My father-in-law was one of the young people who fled the civil war in China, and wound up in Taiwan in 1949. I’ve heard bits and pieces of the story, but we never asked to hear the whole story. We’ve decided to join the movement, and interview him. This past weekend when we were visiting Tainan, we set up the camcorder, and asked him to tell his life story. Even Stacy, who has heard him talk about this past, heard many things for the first time.

We got about two hours of video, but we feel like we have just scratched the surface of his experiences. It was fascinating to hear about his story. His father and my grandfather were born only one year apart, but their respective lives followed paths so completely different, that it seems like they were separated not merely by a hemisphere, but by centuries.

We will follow up with more interviews during the remainder of our year in Taiwan. I also would like to interview my mother-in-law. She is a Taiwan native, so she didn’t flee the mainland. However, she was born under the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and also has led an eventful life. When I mentioned that I would like to interview her, she refused, saying that she doesn’t want to think about the past anymore. She says that right now she is the happiest that she has ever been in her life, and she doesn’t want to revisit her painful memories.

I respect her feelings, but at the same time, we all noticed that my father-in-law has been in a very good mood this weekend. In preparation for this weekend’s interview, he started to write his autobiography. Stacy and I suspect that he’s been thinking about his past, and having a George Bailey moment. Maybe if we can get my mother-in-law to review her life, she’ll be able to see her past in more memorable light.

My first Christmas in Taiwan was in 1987. I “celebrated” by going to a concert in the evening at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. It was a strange experience for me, to be in an environment that sort of observed Christmas, but not really.

This year was my sons’ first time to experience this feeling. The people in Taiwan, especially in the schools, have at least an intellectual appreciation that Christmas is an important holiday for Americans, but the holiday doesn’t have the emotional connotations for Taiwanese people that it does for Americans. It must be something like how Chinese people in the US feel on Chinese New Year. Americans know that it’s a big holiday for Chinese people, but we don’t really appreciate how important it is.

December 25 is Constitution Day in Taiwan, observing the date that the constitution was ratified. In 1987, the day was a national holiday, so schools were closed. Ever since Taiwan shifted to a five-day work week, the number of days off for holidays was reduced, and Constitution Day was one of the holidays that was sacrificed. This means that schools are in session on Christmas Day in Taiwan.

Having to work on Christmas day was a strange experience. My kids were indignant, and the ETAs were dismayed.

Evan was a bit indignant that he had to go to school on Christmas day.

We did our best to observe Christmas at home. We bought a Christmas tree, and did stockings for the boys. My sister Margaret sent a great package of silly goodies for the boys, too (Thanks, Marg!).

My parents sent some cookies and candy from the US. We watched “White Christmas,” “Charlie Brown Christmas,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

My ETAs’ schools elementary schools took the opportunity of having a foreign teacher to put on performances to celebrate the holiday. I went to as many of them as I could. The performances were an opportunity for the kids to show what they could do in English. There were skits, songs, dances, and a lot of Chinese Santas.

On the evening of Christmas Day, we went to Li Xing 力行 Elementary school’s performance. It was two hours of dances by all six grades (three classes of each grade), plus the kindergarten, special ed class, and the student teachers. That’s a lot of dances! The ETA at that school, Jessica, was very stressed at having to choreograph nine dances (and dance in one of them). But it was a great show.

We also bought big presents for the boys.

Evan got a Kindle, and Ian got a new computer (the display on his computer is slowly dying – about a third of the screen is dead).

By the end of the day, the living room was a mess, and the kids were engrossed in their loot. Another successful American-style Christmas!

We found a buy-one, get-one-free deal on Pizza Hut personal-size pizza.

My baby is 13 years old today.