DeeAnn MelevinDeeAnn MelevinDeeAnn MelevinDeeAnn Melevin

Memoirs of A Life Lived BackwardsMemoirs of A Life Lived BackwardsMemoirs of A Life Lived BackwardsMemoirs of A Life Lived Backwards

ii

Memoirs of A Life Lived Backwards (Ramblings of a Disconnected Mind)

Three Years in Taiwan & Travels in Latin America and the Asias & Early Years on the Farm By DeeAnn Melevin

Copyright © 2010 by DeeAnn Melevin All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Published by www.instantpuslisher.com

First Edition 2010 Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-60458-722-7

iii

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Taiwan 1996 ................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 2 Hong Kong--Sung Dynasty Village, Guangdong—December 1996 .......................... 17 Chapter 3 Taiwan 1997 ............................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 4 First China Trip—Kunming, Dali, Jinghong, Guilin, & Yangshuo with Wu Szi Hui--January 1998 ................................................................................... 43 Chapter 5 Taiwan 1998 ............................................................................................................... 58

Chapter 6 Second China Trip--Beijing & Xian with Elsa & Sandy—February 1999 ................. 67 Chapter 7 Taiwan 1999 .............................................................................................................. 74

Chapter 8 SE Asia--Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam—October and November 1999 ........ 90 Chapter 9 Tibet, Nepal, Burma—September 2000 ................................................................... 109 Chapter 10 Peru--August and September 2002 ............................................................................ 133 Chapter 11 Chile—January 2003 ................................................................................................. 157 Chapter 12 Chile and Argentina—February 2003 ...................................................................... 173 Chapter 13 Bolivia and Return to the Peruvian Amazon—March 2003 ................................... 198 Chapter 14 Trans-Mongolia Railway Tour—Russia, Inner & Outer Mongolia, Tuva, Moscow,

St. Petersburg—August 2005 ................................................................................... 216

Chapter 15 Yucatan Peninsula--Chiapas, Tabasco, Quintana Roo with Bonni & Dylan Huff -July

2006 .......................................................................................................................... 232 Chapter 16 Silk Road Adventure--Beijing, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Xinjiang, N.E. China,

and Turkey—August 2007 ....................................................................................... 240 Chapter 17 Central Mexico--Guadalajara, Ajijic, Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Mexico City, Oaxaca,

Queretaro, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta with Bonni Huff--January-February 2009 .............................................................................................. 263

Chapter 18 Ancestors .................................................................................................................. 281

Chapter 19 The Farm ................................................................................................................. 285

Chapter 20 Bailey and Joshua’s Adventures in Oregon-July 2010 ............................................ 301

iv

v

Plaudits for Memoirs of a Life Lived Backwards

Memoirs of a Life Lived Backwards is not really an autobiography. Neither is it a travelogue, and not a culture study, but contains some of the best aspects of each. Memoirs is the story of a farm girl from Douglas County, Oregon. She grew up, playing with neighbor children, riding her horse as rodeo queen, learning to appreciate music, and traveling by train to visit family members in the Midwest. Silent on her young adulthood, marriage, and child-raising, DeeAnn picks up the story again when, at a late age, she is a student at the University of Oregon. During her university days, DeeAnn is challenged to consider teaching English in Taiwan. She begins studying Eastern culture and learning Mandarin. At an age when her contemporaries are thinking about retirement, DeeAnn goes East. While teaching English in Taiwan, DeeAnn learns to live successful in another culture, and begins traveling (to Hong Kong and China,) backpacking as the young travelers do. Although her first trips are relatively short and taken with one or two other people, within a few years, DeeAnn is backpacking solo around Southeast Asia, visiting Laos, Cambodia, Tibet, Nepal and Burma (Myanmar). Returning to Oregon, DeeAnn does not stay put, but rather, continues her adventures, traveling to four countries of South America and making trips to Mexico. And before long, she is going east again, traveling in Tuva, Mongolia, and Russia. Another trip takes her to Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan and Turkey. Smile with DeeAnn as she encounters helpful stranger and makes new friends. Wrinkle your nose with her as she braves filthy toilets, (sometimes, no toilet at all). Consider some unusual foods, travel on hazardous roads and wide open salt flats, (via train, airplane, boat, jeep, motor-scooter and very decrepit buses). Endure a major earthquake; check into a very unsanitary hospital; and trek for miles and miles, uphill and down in all kinds of weather. Enjoy beautiful natural scenery, and relive some history. You can do all this, reading Memoirs from the comfort of your favorite chair. But be careful; it’s just possible that DeeAnn will inspire you to begin adventures of your own. Jeanette

Burchell, Retired English Teacher, Winston, Oregon. Central Mexico was quite the best travelogue I have ever read! David Mulder, Retired Geologist and Professor of Math, Edmonton, Canada. Welcome to this backpacker’s fast-paced trekking adventure. Join DeeAnn Melevin as she faces language difficulties, steep and dangerous trails, missed connections, dubious food, and daunting out-houses. You will tramp through numerous museums, peek into stranger’s homes, wonder at ruins and slap mosquitoes while almost magically crossing deserts, seeing hidden lakes, turbid rivers and snow-capped peaks in remote and unpronounceable places. Ms. Melevin has been there, seen this, and now takes you there. Gerald Reed, Douglas County, Oregon, Retired English Teacher and Country Gentleman.

vi

vii

Preface When I was about 19 years old, I read Pearl Buck’s award winning book: The Good Earth, set in rural China, probably in the early 1900s. I was so intrigued with everything in the book: the clothes, the exotic people, the food, the culture, the history, the music. I fantasized about going to China, I wanted to go there, but knew I never would. About seven years earlier, my mother and I had gone to see a movie called, Lost Horizons by James Hilton. This was about a land, Shangri-La, set somewhere in the snowy Asian mountains, perhaps the Himalayas, where people never grow old. I envisioned the setting as being in exotic and distant Tibet, but many years later, I read that some people think it may have taken place in the Hunza Valley in northwest Pakistan, another place that I could only dream about seeing. Many years later, 1992-1994, I was studying toward a degree in music at Umpqua Community College. One of my world literature English teachers, a Fulbright scholar, had taught English in China the year before. He brought photos made during that year and showed them to the class. I was extremely interested in his photos and his experiences in this Asian country. When he declared that anyone with a four-year degree could teach English there, I resolved to complete my degree in music, go to China, spend a year there, and see the Red Country. A couple years later, I was taking an ethnomusicology course at the University of Oregon. I sat next to a young woman, Jai Yu, from Taiwan. I confessed to her that my desire was to get a degree and go to China to teach English. She informed me that wages were horribly low in mainland China. If I went there and taught English, I could not afford to travel. She said, “Why not come to Taiwan, and teach English? You can make a great deal of money, and then, go traveling to this country of your dreams.” Her advice led me to change my major to Asian Studies, so that while earning my degree, I could learn a little Chinese language which would surely be of help in my quest. Unfortunately, I had never imagined how difficult studying Chinese characters would be at my mature age! I also took classes in Chinese History and Chinese Literature. These were extremely enriching and helped me when I embarked on my new adventurous life. Completing my studies, I commenced on the journey that is told in the following pages. I felt fortunate to have earned a degree, even at such a late age. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. A psychic in Eugene had told me in January 1995—that going to Taiwan would open many

opportunities for me. She was correct. Over the next several years, I traveled to several exotic foreign countries, saw wonderful sights, and, surprisingly, met many interesting, kind, and helpful people.

viii

ix

Introduction

Why I Wrote This Book and Why I Traveled A few quotes From The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton that are relevant to my story. Botton says, “A dominate impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it, and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me. . . . The camera provides an option.” (p. 214) Botton relates that in Rouen in 1883 Gustave Flaubert, told his diary, “I am bored, I am bored, I am bored.” He felt life there was sterile and banal. He was afraid his life would turn out to be like everyone else’s: monotonous, sensible and stupid.” (p. 73.) Like Flaubert, I have been bored most of my life and, more often than not, feel like screaming, “I am bored, I am bored, I am bored.” Botton adds that Flaubert went to Egypt and was not bored. The reality of Egypt met his expectations. While he was there he had an intense romance with a famed courtesan. Upon leaving Egypt he remarked, “Infinite sadness, her face will fade from my memory. . . . this is the end; I’ll never see her again, and gradually her face will fade from my memory.” It never did. (p 91) My writing this book is an effort to save some of the good memories that happened in my life, which may seem overwhelming when you read these essays, but in reality were a very, very small percentage of my life. Travel was for me an effort to escape the realities of life. I wanted to learn something about some of the countries of the world and the people who lived there, so I traveled, and it was so interesting and educational that I wanted to share these experiences with others. In a few instances, because of memory problems or other difficulties with research, I may have inadvertently invoked poetic license.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A BIG THANK YOU to the following people for their generous donation of time, expertise,

and help: Julie Beck, my very patient computer teacher. Editors: Ruth Stafford, Gerald Reed, and

Jeannette Burchell. Proofreaders: Bettie Wright, Lea and Archie Boster, Jeannette Barnett, Jason

Lynch, Kyle Johnson, Golden Scott and Cindy McSperitt. Research librarians Joy Sanada and Linda

Joyce. I was lucky to have your assistance.

Taipei 1996 1 Chapter 1

Taipei, Taiwan—1996

Chapter 1Chapter 1Chapter 1Chapter 1

September 10, 1996—Let the Adventures Begin! I flew from Eugene, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, and then departed from Seattle at 2:30 a.m. on Taiwan’s Evergreen Airline for Taipei, Taiwan. The trip was long and tiring, perhaps twelve to fifteen hours, but because we were chasing the day that was breaking, we arrived at Taipei about 7 a.m. Except for me, all the people on the plane were Taiwanese. As soon as the plane was in the air, and the fasten seat belt sign was turned off, the attendants, all slim young Taiwanese women served us Ramen noodles and hot tea. After the passengers had eaten, everyone turned off his/her lights and went to sleep. Everyone except me, that is. Being somewhat afraid of flying, mildly put, I apprehensively stayed awake all night holding the plane up! I never have been able to fathom how a gigantic aircraft made of balsam wood and aluminum foil could hold all that baggage and all those passengers and stay aloft in that clear stuff that looks like nothing, but is called air! At the Taipei International Airport, a nice Taiwanese man helped me by accompanying me to the airport bus that went to the city of Taipei about one hour away. This bus station in Taipei was located near the tallest building in Taiwan, the Xin Guan San Yue (actually it was the world’s tallest building at 101 stories, known as Taipei 101 or Taipei Financial Center 101.) This is a distinctively noticeable landmark, and everyone in Taipei knows where it is. The railroad station for trains traveling all over Taiwan is, also, located in the same area. My former tutor and friend, Patricia Lin and her husband Jack (Su Shi Jie) met me at the Xin Guan San Yue. I had met them at the University of Oregon, when Patricia was my second tutor in Chinese. They took me to a hotel on the only street in Taiwan named for an American, Roosevelt Road. This street was named for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by the Taiwanese people, upon their liberation from the hated Japanese occupiers by United States troops after the Second World War in 1945. TUTORS-- I had met my first tutor for Chinese Language, Jin Hui and her husband Feng Jiao Yang at the University of Oregon (1994). Both were 26 years old and were from mainland China, she from Beijing, and he from Xian. They attended the University of Oregon studying for doctorates in microbiology. Both of them had made straight A's all through grade school, high school, and college. They told me, “If you don’t have straight A’s you cannot get out of China to study in the U.S.” He wore thick glasses, and I commented “How can you look through a microscope all day long with such bad eyes?” They told me that I was the only non-Chinese person on campus who was friendly to them. They said that, one time in Eugene, they had been booed while

walking down the street. I thought how sad. They were so friendly, kind, and helpful. They stayed at the University of Oregon for

only one year, and then went to Syracuse, N. Y. to continue work on their doctorate degrees because they had been awarded the most money in scholarships from Syracuse. I followed their lives through the birth of their daughter, Jasmine, and later, their

son, Joseph. Then we lost touch with each other much to my regret

In 1996, I was still taking Chinese classes at the University of Oregon, and continued to need a tutor. That was when I found Patricia and Jack from Taipei. When I met them in 1996, Patricia was studying for a master’s degree in French Literature; she had to master three languages. She said later that she wished she had chosen another major as French was too difficult, just as I said Chinese was too difficult for me at such a late age. After completion of her master’s degree, she returned to Taipei and obtained an administrative assistant job in a business. She was not satisfied with her salary, and she hated this job (just as I have always loathed my jobs in the

Taipei 1996 2 Chapter 1

business world). (So, much later, she went back to school and became an English teacher in the public school system.) In 1996, Jack was studying for his master’s degree in architecture; at the U. of O., after which he returned to Taiwan and secured a job with an architectural firm, only to learn that he detested architecture. (So, several years later, after Patricia became a teacher, Jack, too, went back to school and became an English teacher.) They were extremely helpful to me while I was living in Taipei, and I treasured them as if they were my children. (I might add that like most Taiwanese women, Patricia was extremely petite, she wore size 2 pants and had to buy pants in the children’s department while living in Oregon.) After arriving at Taipei Airport and taking the bus to the city, Patricia and Jack met me at the Xin Guan San Yue and took me to an economical hotel for $20 per night. I stayed in this hotel for about two weeks until I had a job. Patricia kindly came back the next day (I believe she had the day off and Jack had to work), and took me to the marvelous National Palace Museum. Here, I saw the most famous jade piece in the museum and probably in the world, a cabbage with two grasshoppers carved from a single piece of jade. The valuable, irreplaceable objects shown in this museum have a most engrossing history. They had been moved around China continually from 1925 to 1948, because of wars both external and internal. First came was the Japanese invasion of China. Later, when Chiang Kai-Shek was losing the war against Mao Zedong in 1947-48, Chiang was driven further and further south, so Chiang ordered all the fabulous, valuable arte de objects that had once been in the Forbidden City in Beijing to be packed up and carted to southern China, to the Szechuan and Kuei Zhou Provinces. They had been moved various times previous to this due to the war with Japan. Later, when Chiang lost the war and left China for Taiwan these priceless historical relics were shipped to Taiwan, ahead of Mao Zedong’s advancing army. Over 600,000 pieces were moved numerous times, occasionally by oxcart, and not a single piece was broken! The Forbidden City in Beijing has practically no historical objects left—they are all in the National Palace Museum in Taipei! Hooray! (I would return to this wonderful museum, considered to be one of the four best museums in the world, about every six months for the three years I lived in Taiwan. I never tired of seeing these wonders of ancient China.) I did buy a fascinating, informative book about the museum, but poring over this detailed book is not the same as being there. Loads of exquisite porcelain pieces were in this museum, China’s gift to the world, plus paintings, jade, celadon, laquer ware, enamel ware, tapestries, ancient bronze objects, and myriad writings in Chinese calligraphy. (Those were Greek to me!) All these ancient objects are priceless,

irreplaceable. We, also, went to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

Hall and Lung Shan Temple). These three famous sites are in three different areas around Taipei. Patricia then informed me that I had seen the three most famous tourist places in Taipei. When first getting around in Taipei I walked much, sometimes miles, because if I rode a bus I was terrified that I would not know where to get off. At least a year went by, before I was able to get around Taipei by bus confidentially. Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall was a gargantuan edifice built to honor the former first president of Taiwan. He was born in 1886 in China and died in Taiwan in 1975.

Two sets of eighty-nine steps lead into the structure, representing the years of Chiang’s life. The memorial building houses both a library and a museum inside, which displays information about President Chiang’s life and some of Taiwan’s history. Also, inside is a gargantuan auditorium for

Taipei 1996 3 Chapter 1

concerts and plays. My former piano teacher, Claire Wachter, and her husband, Dean Kramer, from the University of Oregon gave a duo piano concert there while I was living in Taipei. These esteemed professors of piano presented a brilliant performance of my favorite Schubert duet and other pieces, and the acoustically magnificent concert hall showcased them perfectly. Room at Susan’s--Oct. 7, 1996—Upon arrival in Taipei, I lived in an inexpensive hotel room for two weeks. After I had found a job, Patricia and Jack helped me find my first monthly accommodation in Taipei. They saw an ad on a bulletin board and took me to Susan

Chen’s where I rented a tiny room from this kind, helpful, and friendly woman, age 35. This room cost about $160 U.S. money per month. Susan’s husband Eddie, age 40, was a computer programmer who put together and sold computers out of their home. (I might add that even rich people in Taipei live in what we would call apartment buildings or condos that they usually owned.) I shared the kitchen and bathroom, and we had no problems, except they had two small children, Sonny who was about two, and Danny who was three months. These children took a late afternoon nap from 5 to 8 p.m. and then stayed up with their parents who watched television until 12 p.m., or 1 a.m. Chinese parents are permissive, until the child was about 7 or 8 years old, then; supposedly, they expect the child to mind. Unfortunately, while I was staying there, I was stuck teaching a 7 a.m. bank class for one year. I had to get up at 5 a.m. to get there on time. Therefore, I needed to go to sleep about 9 p.m. With Sonny playing noisily outside my door I was unable to sleep. So, later, I found other accommodations. Susan’s little two year old son, Sonny, and the neighbor’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter played together all day one day and not one peep of a fuss out of them. They played together amazingly well; I have never seen two children play together any better for that length of time. They were noisily clumping around in Mama’s heels for hours. I enjoyed seeing that Sonny had a playmate. But by 10

p.m. though, I was wishing they were both in bed! One time, Sonny was leaning on my door looking into my room. I wanted to close the door so I could have some privacy. I closed the door, not noticing that the small boy had his fingers in the hinge part of the door. I felt terrible about hurting him, and I have not forgotten this, and probably never will forget this incident as long as I can remember Taipei, and Susan and her sons. Susan Chen always kept all of her apartment windows open year round, day and night. She complained at times that she was cold. I said, “Why don’t you close the windows?” She answered that she liked fresh air. I replied, “Well, you certainly aren’t going to find any here,”

thinking, of course, about the horrible and continual air pollution. When I returned from my first trip to China, I learned that both of Susan’s small sons had had pneumonia and had been in the hospital. I wondered if always having their windows open was a contributing factor. The boys always seemed to have colds and runny noses all winter. And, of course, the apartment had no heat. Taipei was usually scorching and humid, but for about six weeks in January and February, the weather was cool but still damp. My bed was a raised box about eight inches off of the floor with a half-inch hard pad, but at least my bed was off the floor. I noticed that Susan, husband, and boys slept on pads directly on the floor. My room was about eight feet by ten feet, which was large enough. In Susan’s tiny kitchen, I could use the two-burner gas cook stove and small refrigerator. The bathroom had on-demand hot water for the shower only; no hot water was piped to the kitchen or bathroom sink or to the Kenmore washer that I was allowed to use. Susan and I hung clothes out on a covered balcony and in the continual heat they

Sonny & Danny Grown-Up

Long Shan Temple

1999-Susan, Eddie, Sonny & Danny

Taipei 1996 4 Chapter 1

dried rapidly. The weather was always too humid, and usually too hot for me, even in January when it cooled down, maybe as low as, 65 F at night. In July and August, it was always 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in my room night and day. I had to keep my door closed to keep the small boy out, so my room was sweltering. I did have a small fan. Susan told me they did not run the air conditioner, because electricity was extremely expensive. In the bath tub a hose with a sprayer on the end was held in one’s hand for showering. Unfortunately, there was no shower curtain, so the water inevitably sprayed all over the room, including other people’s towels hanging on the racks. The only thing that stayed dry was the toilet paper, because the small squares of paper were sitting on the back of the toilet in a box with a closed lid. In Taiwan, they do not have hot water tanks that store water as ours do in the U.S., but instead have on-demand hot water units with a gas burner that I had to turn on and light whenever I wanted a shower. The burner would come on, and then I waited and waited and waited. After that, I took the sprayer in my hand, and once I adjusted the water from cold to hot, I tried to regulate it to warm. One moment it was too hot, a silly millimeter to the right, and the burner would go out, and the water was cold again. If I shut the water off while I was soaping up, I had to start all over again. This was really irritating, but, of course, better than washing in cold water. Philosophically, I put up with these little irritations, so I could have all of these new adventures! Susan discovered that I loved music, so she kindly made copies of a couple of her tapes of pipa music for me. Pipa is similar to banjo only prettier. She made another tape of gujiang, an instrument resembling a zither. They are exceptionally melodious sounding instruments (to my classically music trained ear, anyway). I loved the music and still have these tapes and other traditional Chinese music tapes. Unfortunately, I never learned to appreciate Chinese opera. That reminds me of cats yowling on the fence! Traditionally, Chinese opera is an art form that tells a story for teaching purposes instructive for the illiterate masses. I think spoken Chinese is as an extremely musical sounding language also. Taiwan History in Brief—Taiwan was settled about 6000 years ago by people from other islands out in the Pacific. In the past one thousand years, a few Chinese people came from the east coast of China to settle in Taiwan. In the 1600s during The Age of Exploration, other countries became interested in Taiwan so the Qing Dynasty in early 1700s encouraged the people of Fujian province in China to emigrate/immigrate to Taiwan. These people did not speak Mandarin, the dialect then spoken in Beijing and the northern part of China; they spoke the Fujian dialect; this is still spoken in Taiwan and is called Taiwanese language in Taiwan. These early settlers drove the indigenous peoples into the mountains, where their descendants still live. In 1882, Taipei became a city. In 1895, militarily stronger and wealthier Japan became the unwanted rulers of Taiwan, their poorer neighbor. Therefore, numerous older people in Taiwan speak Japanese in addition to Taiwanese. While ruling Taiwan, Japan did make some improvements such as building schools. In 1945, when Japan lost the Second World War, Japan was dispossessed of all of the foreign countries that it had conquered, and Taiwan, became independent. In 1949, when Chiang Kai-Shek lost the battle for China to Mao Zedong, Chiang and his Kuo Ming Tang (KMD) army decamped to Taiwan, over powered the local Chinese, and became the defacto rulers of Taiwan. Taipei Facts--For me the move to Taipei was a culture shock. I had read that the population of Taipei and the surrounding county was seven million. I was raised on a farm and the nearest town boasted about 2000 people, while the county seat about an hour away (in the old days, before the advent of the I-5 freeway), had about 16,000 people. Taipei City, itself, had about six million people and since it was in a basin surrounded by mountains, the population density was high, and all the buildings were tall. All the buildings in Taipei City were at least four stories, but I managed to find the only one single-story house in the entire city. Close to my room at Susan’s, was a small, one-story Chinese-style house

Patricia & Jack & Author

Taipei 1996 5 Chapter 1

enclosed within a wall. I could look over the wall and see the aged Chinese woman that dwelled within, but no one else seemed to live with her. This house was an anomaly in Taipei! After the earthquake, I wanted to ask the old woman if I could room there with her. Taipei is on the same latitude as Miami. All day and all night in July and August the temperature in my room hovered between 90 degrees F to 100 degrees F., and the humidity was high. This was unbearably torrid and excessively sultry. I had a fan, which helped me sleep at night. I have never cared for humid weather. Taipei was too hot and sticky for human habitation was my thought! One time, I met another American English teacher on the bus and was complaining about the heat, humidity, and my continual sweating. We agreed that we were the only people who seemed to be bothered by the sultry weather. (Years later, I read that Asian people do not have as many sweat glands as we Caucasians. Then someone else said that was incorrect.) Frequently, local people would ask me if I was cold. When I said no, they would invariably reply, "Oh you must have strong health.” When I first arrived in Taipei, a woman supervisor at my school advised me, “Taipei gets cold in January, and you must have warm clothes.” I estimate that the temperature went down to about 68 degrees Fahrenheit in January, and I just felt comfortable. Taipei had countless people, cars, trucks, public buses, taxis, and motor scooters, but few bicycles; the latter were seen more frequently in mainland China. Taipei had too many people, too much traffic, constant noise and terrible air pollution. The air pollution was so bad my eyes burned all the time as if I were in a bar room full of cigarette smoke. It was alleged to be worse in Taipei than in L.A. Also, the noise pollution from traffic, especially at 5 p.m. was unbelievably loud, a glaring contract to the pastoral and quiet countryside where I was raised. Most Taipei residents that I talked with during my three years’ stay said that they disliked the noise and air pollution, too, but they came for the jobs and the money. The other American teachers declared that this was where you came to make money, not to enjoy life. Most Taipei people would agree. Everyone found the quality of life lacking.

As mentioned before, traffic was extremely heavy and scores of drivers ignored the rules. Despite having traffic lights, the sheer number of vehicles made traffic dangerous. The biggest danger in the city was getting across the street with all the traffic. Every day the paper reported about six vehicular accidents. During my stay in Taipei, an 18-year-old girl, riding a scooter

was run over by a bus. She was not killed, but suffered a broken pelvis and other serious injuries. This was particularly newsworthy because her father was well-known in government. An Irish man, age 22, was killed crossing the street in traffic a couple of weeks ago, like me he was either teaching English, studying Chinese or perhaps both. So while Taipei was less dangerous than being in Los Angeles crime-wise, crossing the street and riding the motor scooter were perilous. I asked one of my Japanese students if he had ever done anything brave. He thought for a moment and said, “Every time I have to cross a street in Taipei, I am being brave.” The sidewalks were unusually uneven, and I did worry all the time about tripping and falling. Everything here was westernized. The only things Chinese were the written and spoken language, and people’s appearance; everything else was the same as in any large city in the U.S. People were engrossed in their families. One of the reasons that I could feel safe here was that ninety percent of Taiwan people were Buddhists. Buddhists are peaceful. I felt safe from any kind of attack or violence. One woman supervisor at my school told me someone on a motorcycle might try to snatch my purse, but no one would use physical force, because they would not want to be involved in an international incident. Because I had to get up at 5 a.m. to get to my early morning class, I usually did not go out at night, except when returning from a rare class that ended after dark or when with one of my friends, I

Sun Yat-sen Memorial Taipei

Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall

Taipei 1996 6 Chapter 1

seem to be an early morning wren person, not a night owl. Whether that is my nature or because of job constraints, I do not know. Perhaps, if I ever get to retire, I will learn what my natural sleep pattern is. Most people took the bus to work and for shopping. (I rode the bus the whole three years that I lived in Taipei, the fare was 36 cents U.S. per ride. In a month, I spent $50 to $60 on bus fares, mostly getting to my jobs outside the school.) Most people did not want to own a car, because of the difficulty of finding parking. My exceedingly rich student, Mr. Huang, who owned two marble factories, and Dr. Ho, who owned our school, employed chauffeurs to drive their cars. March 14, 1997--Very few people here rode bicycles, unlike the hordes of people who used this form of transportation in Beijing or mainland China. Riding a bicycle here with all the heavy vehicular traffic was definitely hazardous. Once I observed a man riding a bicycle with a six-foot-tall tree tied on the back. He had obviously bought this plant at a nursery and was pedaling it home to plant in a container. I assume he made it! Most people did not have any kind of a yard in Taipei--front or back. Some had tiny gardens on top of their buildings. My second landlord, who lived on the fourth floor and rented out four rooms on the fifth floor, had a small flower and herb garden on the fifth floor patio. The economy was thriving at this time. I did not observe any deprived people on the streets of Taipei. Even the people running the little food stands were well-off. A Taiwanese friend told me that someone running a little noodle-stand on the street could make $65,000 per year! (That was much more than I made teaching English, but running a noodle stand was hard work and involved numerous hours labor per day, standing on one’s feet.) I did see a few beggars, but they were mostly at a temple where numerous foreign tourists visited. Even though the economy was thriving, I did see a few unfortunate people living in Taipei. This paragraph is not for the weak stomached. I noticed a woman begging at a temple. Her whole face had been burned. I could not even look at her. I could only think about the excruciating pain that she must have suffered when her misfortunate accident had occurred. Another unfortunate person was a man with a growth covering one side of his face, reminiscent of the Elephant Man. He could not see out of one of his eyes. A second man had warts all over one side of his face. I wondered if those could be removed, if he had some money. (Socialized medicine had recently been instituted, but perhaps he didn’t qualify for some reason.) Or perhaps they could not be removed without leaving scars that would be just as bad as the warts. Here were several crippled people, about age 40-45 whose problems could have been solved with modern orthopedic surgery, but when those people were children the country was underdeveloped, and probably did not have advanced medical techniques. Once, I did observe an albino Chinese man, and a case or two of vitiligo or white spots on the skin similar to Michael Jackson. I saw blind men begging in the underground tunnels (where you go to cross the street to avoid the heavy traffic above). They usually had a radio or a tape player with them playing music, maybe for their own interest or perhaps to attract donors, I don’t know Schools--The Monday following my arrival in Taipei, I applied for work at four schools and had job offers the next day from three. (Before going to Taiwan, I had been to a class reunion. One of my classmates, Lloyd, was aghast, “You are going way over there, and you don’t even have a job?” Fooled him, didn’t I?) The only reason I did not have a job offer from the fourth school was because when a Taiwanese man phoned my hotel I could not understand his English. I chose the job teaching English at a private school called Taipei Language Institute (T.L.I.). T.L.I. had about eighty part-time teachers who taught Chinese, both the written and spoken language, to foreigners who came from scores of different countries, with the largest percentage of students coming from Japan. Their companies conducted business with companies in China, and they needed their employees to live in China, and be fluent in Chinese. In addition, the school employed about twenty-five teachers to teach English to Taiwanese people around Taipei. The Japanese students at T.L.I., also, studied English, because English has become the universal language of business. We were told the school did not make money from their English teachers, but kept them as an adjunct to the Chinese language part of the school. I talked to an English teacher at our school who said the trouble with the English Language program at T.L.I. was that

Taipei 1996 7 Chapter 1

they had no curriculum. He added that their Chinese language program had an excellent curriculum, but the English teaching was only an addendum, so this program did not warrant a great deal of attention. A few teachers at our school taught: Italian, Spanish, or German; plus the aforementioned Mandarin, Taiwanese; and, of course, English. Mandarin has four tones. Taiwanese has eight tones. Vietnamese has 10 or 12. Even four defeated me. Unfortunately, my memory bank did not have enough memory stick left! During my three years with Taipei Language Institute, I taught both at the school and at outside locations. Most of the outside classes were in various offices, such as banks or other businesses, but frequently I would teach a class with only one person in the student’s home or at the school. I think ninety-eight percent of my students were adults who needed to use English for their jobs, and the greatest percentage of my students were between the ages of 25 and 40. Because I taught mostly adults, I met countless people and had loads of mesmerizing conversations on a variety of topics. After my first year, I did teach a few children; these students tended to sign up term after term. Because he could speak and write excellent English and Chinese, David, was the liaison person at my school, between the Chinese staff (the school was owned and run by Taiwanese people, most secretaries spoke no English) and the English speaking teachers,. He told me when the doctor’s two little daughters, age seven and eleven, became my students, that their mother had asked for a woman teacher. He added that when the male Japanese students asked for a female Chinese teacher, they did not comply. After thinking about that statement, I wondered how they could not comply, as all of the Chinese teachers at our school were women! When Miss Korea’s husband wanted to find an English teacher for her, he asked for a woman, and they complied. Do you think he felt insecure? Because people applied to my school from countries all over the world, I found that the school had received loads of letters and envelopes with stamps from these mysterious places. I was allowed to shuffle through all the envelopes and cut off the stamps. Even more enthralling would be a trip to all these countries, but at this time, I had to settle for stamps, from: Russia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, Israel, West Africa, Ghana, China, Canada, England, Germany, France, South Korea, and Jordan for Bonni and Dylan’s stamp collection. (My daughter and grandson.) STUDENTS General—All of my students came from the upper or middle class. Most Taiwan people really revere and prize education, and they highly regard scholars. I had been told that in Taiwan seventy percent of people, between the ages of 25 to 35, had college degrees. (In America, the percentage of college graduates was about thirty percent, at that time.) Almost all of my adult students had college degrees, except the few children that I taught. During my stay in Taipei, I taught only one housewife. Most of my students were in the business world and wanted better English for job advancement. Some who studied English planned to travel and believed that speaking English would be helpful, even though they were apt go on tours, rather than traveling independently as Americans tend to do. A few students were going abroad to study for advanced degrees. Almost no Taiwanese high school graduates went abroad for their bachelor’s degree, because their parents thought they were too young to leave home or to go abroad to college at age 18. Many went later for master’s degrees. All of my students had taken English in public school and college, but they had no opportunity to converse with an English speaker. When I was in Taiwan, all children started learning English in the sixth grade, but I was told that the public schools were going to start teaching English in progressively younger grades. All doctors had studied numerous textbooks in English. The Taiwanese, along with other Asian people, really believed in and stressed education, and they worked hard and sacrificed much to give their child the best education. (However, most of them expected to be repaid, by one of their children taking care of them in their old age.) They, also, tended to push the children to study, some almost to excess. Tommy Luo (age 14) told me he went to bed at 1 a.m. and arose at 7 a.m., every day. He studied all those hours so he could be number one in his class in his high school, which was the top rated high school in Taiwan. Taipei had various types of schools that hired English teachers. A few private kindergartens, that only rich parents could afford, taught all classes in English from 9 to 5 to small children, cost about

Taipei 1996 8 Chapter 1

$3000 per year. Kindergarten aged children learned English easily, rather like a sponge absorbing water. Bushi bans (cram schools) tutored English after regular school hours. Of course, it was these kindergarten children whose whole school day was in English who had the easiest time learning English. This school included classes of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. These kindergartens were, however, most expensive and only affluent parents could afford them. The one that I visited charged $75 a week. I met Cecile Schoenberg, a French woman, who had lived in Canada for twenty-seven years; she had a heavy French accent but taught at one of these kindergartens 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. She had a contract to teach for one year at a straight $2000 per month. And, lucky girl, she had Saturday and Sunday off. Her contract stated that she could not teach private students, so every weekend she was free to travel around Taiwan, and this she did. One after-school bushi ban where I went to apply for a job cared for children of doctors, lawyers, and corporate executives at the end of the school day. I was appalled by the conditions in this after-school care center on a second floor. The rooms were small, each with about ten children and one teacher. They had no playground or place to play outside. These children had already been in school all day. They did not need more schooling; they needed to be out on the playground. Where was the playground? In overly crowded Taipei, no extra space was available for one. They did have some pads that were put on the floor, and the children did gymnastics for a few minutes, not nearly long enough. The boy’s bathroom smelled akin to an animal den. (When the cleaning lady came to clean the hotel room that I stayed in for two weeks when I first arrived in Taipei, she used various brushes, but no disinfectant of any kind.) I assumed these bathrooms were cleaned in the same unsanitary method. Evening classes consisted mainly of adults who needed English for job advancement. Some businesses, especially banks, paid for mandatory classes for their employees that continued for a year three hours a week for a full year. The classes were difficult to teach, because the English level would be greatly varied from student to student within the class. Some students were eager to learn, others just came to class because they were required to attend a certain number of classes each term. Usually my classes consisted of one adult student who wanted to have conversation using the English already learned. These students truly wanted to learn, but were discouraged when they realized how long it would take to become fluent. Sometimes (frequently), a student’s English level was too low to keep a conversation going, and we had to use a tedious book. Any English speaking person with a college degree could teach English in Taiwan, even if his/her native tongue was not English. To teach in the public schools, one needed a teaching certificate, the same as required in the States. But the pay in the public schools was lower than private language schools. Some teachers who had lived in Taiwan for several years, were able to attract sundry private students, in addition to their language institute students, and could make even more money. When I first went to Taiwan, I had to rely on my school to procure students for me. My teenage students told me that they were under constant pressure in high school to study, in order to pass the entrance examinations and be accepted by the best universities and colleges. They told me they do not get to sleep in on weekends, but must get up and study. One teenager said she was allowed to watch television one hour per week on Sunday evening. However, most teenagers and younger students said they were not allowed to watch any television, except during the three-week summer break. With one exception, all of my teen students said that they had never spent the night with a friend. I did find one teenager who had spent the night at another teenager’s home once. This may have been because most people’s homes were so small, but I surmised it was more likely because spending the night away from home would interfere with study time. Even during summer break, most students took extra cram courses. Because most people who wanted to improve their English had jobs, they wanted to take English in the evenings after work; therefore, the main brunt of my work was after 5 p.m. Some of the Japanese students would have their lessons in the afternoon, and some of my outside one-student classes would be an hour in the a.m. or p.m. My most disliked hour was the banking class that I had from 7:30 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. Unfortunately, I had that class for over two