man of the people

Our man in Taiwan, Darin Cole Caudle, accounts for his Chinese New Year. He's been sending random transmissions from the other side of the planet, which should all wind up here at some point. This one, however, is lengthy and satisfying and like a whole story, so hop to it. He teaches English to little Taiwanese children, so he knows what he's doing.

It wasn’t at all what I expected.

I imagined stepping out onto a deserted street like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man to discover that I was the last human being alive on earth. That was hardly the case. True many of the shops were shut for Chinese New Year, but the kind of places I basically frequent here—the grocery store, the Internet café, the video store, and of course 7-11—were all open and eager for business. So they, as they usually are, were wrong. Taipei does not turn into a ghost town during this particular holiday. It merely thins out a bit.

Alex was meeting me in front of my building at three. Alex is Auntie’s eleven-year-old son. Auntie is the lunch lady at the school I work for here in Taipei. At that time I still had no idea what Auntie’s real name was. We work at one of the many branches of the Hess Educational organization, and at all of the branches I’ve been to the lunch lady is simply referred to as Auntie. The male janitors and bus drivers are referred to naturally as Uncle. Let me point out that Alex’s name is not really Alex either. Alex is his English name. Most of the Taiwanese I’ve met so far have English names that were given to them at some point in their childhood by teachers like myself I assume. Not only did I not know Auntie’s name, we had never really spoke at any great length together since we were both unable to speak each other’s language.

But what Auntie cannot express in words she has more than made up for in the form of food. Auntie is constantly giving me everything, from packets of soup or vitamin enriched gruel to mix with my coffee, to full-fledged meals of chicken, noodles, beef, and rice. It has become a source of indignant grumbling from some of the Chinese staff that I always seem to have a free hot dinner when there isn’t any leftover food for anyone else. And sometimes I manage a free breakfast, too. For example, one morning I dashed into my branch at around eight in the morning to pick up a book I needed for the kindergarten class I teach at another school. There was Auntie whispering conspiratorially at me from the kitchen doorway clutching a plastic bag with a steaming hot dumpling inside.

So Auntie didn’t invite me directly to her house for Chinese New Year Eve. It was done, as most of my transactions at work are, with the aid of a translator. I was touched by the offer but a little intimidated to accept. I had visions, fueled by watching In The Mood For Love too many times no doubt, of all night mahjong games, excessive drunken toasting in a language I didn’t speak, and wild eyed kids lighting fireworks in the hallway. All the while I would be sitting at the table drinking and eating things I could never identify and feeling totally out of my element. But when I thought about it for a moment longer those were exactly the kind of experiences I had come here hoping to find. So I told my translator, and she told Auntie. I would be honored to come.

Of course my expectations were slightly off the mark, but I can’t say I was disappointed by the experience. In fact I can’t think of when I’ve had a better time.

Alex was right on time. It was me that was a couple of minutes having dawdled too long in the video store across the street. Alex speaks very little English, so after we said our hellos, our walk to his house was virtually silent. I’m always amazed, however, by how good silence can feel sometimes. This was one of those moments. Suddenly my perspective floated above us and looked down at this image of an eleven year old Taiwanese boy and a nearing thirty-year-old white man walking down a street in Taipei, Taiwan on Chinese New Year, and I felt giddy by what I saw. This was an exhilarating moment and I don’t know if I’ll be able to even come close to describing why. But the next two days were full of such moments, so I won’t dwell and hope that the accumulation of these incidents that I’m about to relate will somehow paint the picture I want to show.

As we climbed the concrete steps in the drafty hallway of Alex’s building, I was at the peak of nervousness. Nervous that I would make an ass of myself. Nervous that the family members I hadn’t met would immediately hate me and see my interloping presence as inappropriate during this time for families to be together. Nervous that the evening would be a disappointing bore and within half an hour I would want to feign a sudden illness that could quickly excuse me from staying. Nervous that my memory wouldn’t get it right. That somehow all of the small, intimate, and truly unique moments would escape my powers of attention.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the somewhat large Buddha shrine directly across from where I stood in the doorway as I took my shoes off. Offerings of fruit were placed in bowls on the table underneath the carved wood replica of the Buddha. Sticks of incense filled a slender vase on the table as well. It set an immediate tone of seriousness in my mind, so I started to prepare myself for a possibly very austere evening. The second thing that caught my attention as Auntie ushered me into her immaculately clean home was a DVD copy of Minority Report that had been left on the couch. Any fears that this might turn out to be a rather stiff and formal affair were quickly put to rest as Alex, his youngest sister Anna, his two older sisters—whose names I didn’t know at the time—and myself, all sat down and watched the movie. All the while Auntie assaulted us with an arsenal of fruits, chocolates, and Vita Maltz soda drinks for our enjoyment. This suddenly wasn’t much different than the holidays back home. This is one of the reasons I think I love movies so much. No matter where you are or who you are with, movies are the great bridge that connects all people.

Auntie is miniature sized. However she is not delicate looking. Her face is smooth and free of wrinkles but there is a strong, striking, and almost plainswoman quality to it. That day she was wearing a red blouse—red is the lucky color for the New Year—and cream-colored slacks. A simple outfit that she could have easily worn to work. The children were dressed casually in either denim jeans or sweat pants. Apparently it was cold in the house. Anna, who sat in a chair directly behind the ottoman on which her brother sat, and who had to peer around his shoulder to see the television screen, wore a thick ski coat. Alex got up during the movie to put on a hooded sweatshirt, and then came back and sat down leaving the hood over his head. The other two girls wore thick cotton pullovers as well. I, on the other hand, was fairly comfortable wearing only a cotton blend shirt with the sleeves rolled up and my nicest pair of DKNY black slacks. I wondered if they would change clothes for dinner. In my house I was always forced to put on a tie and maybe a festive looking sweater that made my neck itch during holiday gatherings, and I assumed it would be no different for these children. I’d almost worn a tie to this evening, but was now glad I’d left it at home.

The children are all beautiful. Anna is actually a student of mine in unfortunately one of my least favorite classes. The class is full of rabble-rousing boys who make it impossible to teach well. In class she barely speaks above a whisper, and I have to become a lip reader whenever she answers a question. But it turns out that Anna, when not speaking moronic English language sentence patterns, has a normal voice and is not the shy wallflower I believed her to be. Alex proved himself to be the most generous and lovable boy I’ve ever met. When we first attempted to watch the movie, no Chinese subtitles appeared on the lower part of the screen. I kept doing my best to ask if we should stop the movie and fix the problem, but none of the kids seemed eager to stop it once we had started. I now think it was because of my presence there. As long as I could understand was all that seemed to matter. I was the guest, and as long as I was happy they were all quite willing to sit through a two-hour film not understanding a single word. I’m not sure which of the older sisters finally said we should stop the movie and fix the subtitles. It was probably the thirteen- year old whose English name I never did learn. She was the one who seemed to make a point of not speaking to me. After a few failed attempts I navigated Alex’s PS2 to the correct menu and switched the Mandarin subtitles on. “Very good, teacher”, he said giving me the thumbs up.

During the movie a man would occasionally walk through the living room. He wore a flimsy windbreaker and sweat pants. His hair was thinning and greasy, and the gold paint on his glasses was chipped and the lenses looked dirty. I assumed this Auntie’s husband, and the children’s father. Though no one really ever confirmed this assumption. The first time he entered the living room, I hesitantly stood and said hello in Chinese. He motioned for me to sit back down, mumbled something in Chinese, and exited the room as quickly as he had come in. I’m not sure where he kept going, but I think there were other family members in the apartment across the hall. Closer to dinnertime, I could hear someone slowly making his or her way up the steps. Alex and Auntie rushed over to open door of the apartment, and spoke rapidly to someone I could not see yet. Finally I saw a wrinkled and severe looking face peering into the apartment. Alex explained that this was his grandmother, but for some reason she never actually came into the apartment. Instead she went into the one across the small hallway that connected the two apartments on the second floor. A thought occurred to me sometime later, that maybe the reason I only met the immediate family was because a separate dinner was being held in the other apartment, and the one I was at was solely for my benefit.

And then before I knew it, dinner had started. Auntie had been setting out various plates of food on the dining table for the past several minutes, but none of the other children seemed to take much notice or say anything that would leave me to believe it was almost time to eat. But then Dad crossed over to the Buddha shrine and lighted a few sticks of incense. He bowed a couple of times with the lighted sticks cupped in both hands, and then left them to burn in small pot of soil on the shrine table. The oldest sister, who has an angelic smile which is appropriate since her English name is in fact Angel, turned to me and said, “Dinnertime. We eat now.” Alex led me over to the table and I sat down. No one made an immediate move to join me. Auntie stood in the kitchen doorway and asked me if I wanted rice. She wasn’t sure of the English word for rice and began referring to a little notebook of hers with English words in it fearing I didn’t understand what she had asked. Fortunately I know the Chinese word for rice, and she didn’t have to waste time searching for the word in her book. Dad eventually joined me at the table, but the kids were still glued to the television, even though they had turned off the movie. They had found an animated program that had their attention now. Dad motioned for me to fill my bowl with the various selections of chicken, deeply fried and crispy fish with the heads still intact, pork, and noodles. He began to fill his bowl as well. I set aside the fork and spoon they had laid out with my bowl, and used chopsticks to get my portions. Still no one besides Dad had sat down. So in an effort to be polite I waited for everyone else. Apparently this isn’t how things are done in Auntie’s household. Alex stepped over to the table and pointed at the food. “Food, very good. Eat.” I nodded and Dad and I began to eat.

I don’t think the whole family ever was at the table at the same time. Alex briefly joined us, as did Anna, but not at the same time. The older kids stayed on the couch, eating while watching television. After the children had all sifted in and out of the kitchen to get their rice from the cooker, and had served themselves, Auntie eventually joined Dad and I at the table. Dad soon became concerned that I didn’t have anything to drink. I could have sworn he said the Chinese word for beer. I repeated the word, and then out of some automatic impulse said the sentence, “I would like to drink a beer.” It is one of the few full sentences I can speak in Chinese. But as I said it I was shaking my head and motioning in way that I thought would explain that I really didn’t understand what Dad was trying to tell me. Auntie brought me another Vita Maltz soda, which I believe is some sort of vitamin enriched carbonated beverage from Germany that tastes quite disgusting actually, and I nodded approvingly and said that it was fine. After that we ate while trying our best to communicate with each other. Me with a foldout language map full of not so helpful expressions like, “Where can I buy a stamp?” and Auntie with one of Alex’s English grammar textbooks that she had him fetch from his room. All the while Angel, who spoke the most English, tried her best to bridge the language barrier from her seat on the couch. I’d never noticed Dad leave the table. In fact I don’t think I was even aware of the fact that he was ever gone, until he’d come back into the room carrying a six-pack of Michelob beer. He handed me a beer, and set the rest in the kitchen. The man had went out in the middle of his meal and bought me beer. I felt awful, but I couldn’t show it. That would have added insult to injury. I smiled and twisted off the bottle cap, trying my best to express my gratitude.

The dinner itself was a simple but delicious affair. There was soup but no dessert. However with all of the fruit and chocolate I’d been gorging myself on all day, my sweet tooth hardly went unsatisfied. Little Anna brought me my second beer, holding the bottle with both hands. In Taiwan, you always hand things to people using both hands. It is a sign of respect. Dad, as it turned out, was a smoker and he seemed delighted to discover that so was I. After a slight moment of hesitation at the idea of smoking in front of one of my students, I graciously accepted an offer of one of his cigarettes. After all, that same student had just handed me a beer so any chaste image she might have had of me was already tarnished. I paused momentarily to smoke Dad’s cigarette before I continued eating. I only ate at this point because Dad kept insisting I did. My stomach was way past the bursting point.

After dinner it was time for the firecrackers. I don’t have much experience with firecrackers. My friend Matt has related stories to me about him and his old man happily spending Fourth of July together lighting explosive device after explosive device. They’re probably some of his favorite experiences with his Dad. Me, on the other hand, don’t have an old man of my own so that may explain why the appeal of this particular male pastime has always somewhat eluded me. Until that night. At first we lighted the more harmless stuff, sparklers, and roman candles that didn’t actually shoot anything but just exuded a pretty bright flame until they eventually went out. Alex and Angel encouraged me to swing the sparklers round and round to fully enjoy the experience, but I wasn’t really feeling it. The real fun began when Alex brought out the harder stuff. Little tops that would spin when the fuse reached the end shooting out violent sounding and random sparks while they spun across the pavement of the alley. The real kickers were these little helicopters that would shoot straight into the air while shooting dazzling sparks of light. Some of them didn’t quite go straight up and would ricochet off other houses or cars. Then Alex became more adventurous and began combing two helicopters by intertwining the fuses. So now we has two different helicopters haphazardly shooting off into two different directions. Then we began stacking up bricks to place the helicopters on in order to make them project higher into the air. Other neighborhood kids joined us and brought their own goodies. We turned the little intersection of alleys onto our own little war zone and it was delightful. There was no adult supervision for any of this. Except for me I guess, but being that I’m the only one who actually suffered an injury—while trying to light one of Anna’s sparklers with one of my own, it suddenly ignited and singed the hair on my arm—I was hardly what you could describe as a responsible adult. (A side note to the burning of my arm incident: Angel noticed me examining my tiny flesh wound and disappeared upstairs reappearing a minute later and handed me two bandages. This had to be the most considerate family I’ve ever met.) It was purely coincidental that my helicopters were shooting higher than the ones then other kids lighted. However, this fact encouraged Alex to have me light more than my fair share of the firecrackers. Then again, maybe that had nothing to do with it. He, like the rest of his family, was merely being extremely gracious and just trying to ensure that I had a good time.

“Very good. So good, teacher,” he said repeatedly as we would watch the firecrackers briefly flash high in the sky before falling back to the ground. Very good indeed.

Before I left that evening Auntie and her family extended an emphatic invitation for me to return to their home the next day and have lunch. I was once again terribly hesitant. Surely, I thought, I was quickly wearing out my welcome and their offer was nothing more than some form of aggressive Taiwanese hospitality that I was expected to politely refuse. Then again, Angel’s face seemed so genuine when, acting as family representative, she invited me, I decided to take it at face value and agree to come on Saturday for lunch. I was told to come at ten o’clock, slightly earlier than I assumed most people here had lunch, but I decided since the tradition was to stay up very late on the New Year’s Eve everyone might be sleeping in., and what I was really attending was more like a brunch.

I told myself I would only stay for a short time, in order to avoid taking total advantage of their generous hospitality. However, things did not go as I planned. As with dinner the night before, lunch or brunch or whatever the Hell you want to call it was hardly a formal affair. When I arrived at ten sharp, having carefully retraced my steps from when Alex had escorted me there the day before, Auntie asked me—with Angel acting as language go-between—where her son was. Apparently I misunderstood and didn't realize Alex was supposed to act as my chaperone once again today. My face flushed with embarrassment and I said that I would go back to my building and fetch him. I hated the idea of him waiting patiently for God knows how long for me to come downstairs. Auntie rebuked this notion and told me to sit on the couch. Apparently she was confident that Alex would the get the idea soon enough on his own and come home.

Today Auntie and Anna were dressed in matching purple dresses. The first day of the New Year is traditionally the time when families visit relatives and neighbors to offer good wishes and warm regards, and judging by the way the senior and junior women of the house were dressed I expected that this was their plan for the day. This was another reason I wanted to make a somewhat swift exit. I didn’t want to be in the way of whatever plans they might have, or have them feeling obliged to bring me along. However Angel and the other quiet and sullen sister were dressed much like they were the night before. So I wasn’t really sure what was going on.

Lunch itself offered no clues either. Last night’s food was carefully wrapped and still on the table, but instead of sitting and feasting on leftovers, Auntie handed me a pita wrap style sandwich stuffed with chicken, cheese, and egg. The wrap was inside a white paper bag with some sort of restaurant logo, so I wasn’t sure if it had come from Auntie’s kitchen or some vendor in the neighborhood. No one else was eating, but Auntie encouraged me to go ahead, so I tore into the delicious sandwich. I sat on the couch alone; watching some awful made for video movie with Billy Zane and Keith Carradine on the television, while everyone else in the household sauntered in and out of the room going about their business. Then Alex came home, and I began to apologize profusely for not waiting for him, and he kindly waved off my intonations of regret. Soon all of the children were sitting with me in the living room as the terrible movie reached its climax.

After the movie Angel turned to me and said, “Now we go to mountain.” I thought maybe I had misunderstood her. Auntie came into the room and pointed to Alex and Angel, and then she pointed to me, and then she pointed towards the door. I didn’t have a clue as to what she was trying to tell me. Using both hands she made a gesture that resembled hands on the handlebars of a motorcycle, then flicked her wrists a couple of times to suggest the revving of the engine. Then she pointed at me again. I pointed at myself and simply shook my head. Was she asking if I had a motorcycle? Was she asking if I would like to ride one? Was she asking if I would like a free motorcycle? Who knew? Certainly not me. With a sigh of frustration she got Alex’s English textbook and began searching for a word. Angel stepped in and tried her best to explain.

“Walking,” she said. “We go walk. Mountain. Bus.”

I nodded like I understood. I smiled to make it seem more convincing. I almost convinced myself, but as I walked out of the house following Angel and Alex I still didn’t have the foggiest where I was going, or how we were getting there.

“So, where exactly are we going again?” I asked my pair of guides after walking for a couple of minutes.

“Mountain. We take bus,” Angel patiently told me.

Okay, I thought. But why? I decided to leave this question unvoiced and go with the flow.

Throughout all of this, I’d never actually been formally introduced to Angel, even though she was the one I’d been talking to the most. As we waited for the bus, I silently practiced the Chinese sentence for, “What is your name?” Then, as if she could read my mind, Angel answered my question before I could even ask it.
She gave me her Chinese name, which I practiced saying a few times. She then told me Alex’s real name. Throughout the day I kept forgetting how to say them so to avoid asking every other minute I eventually wrote their names down in the notebook I always carry in my messenger bag. Later in the day, out of curiosity, I asked for her English name, and only then did I learn it is was Angel.
We boarded the bus and made our way close to the back, where we stood as all the seats were already occupied. At every stop, crowds of people got on board. In a matter of a few minutes what had been a moderately crowded bus, turned into a claustrophobic’s nightmare. Just when I thought no more people could possibly fit onto the bus, another ten would get on. People were packed so tightly against the rear door; it had some trouble shutting properly before the bus could resume moving. By this point I’d been pushed even further back, and had completely lost sight of Alex and Angel, even though they were still only a mere few feet away from me. On bus rides like this, there is usually one stop where a majority of the passengers are going. You pray at every stop, that this will be the one where loads of people get off, and you can let out the breath you’ve been holding to make room for the woman and her three children who are pressed against you. It took a while for the realization to hit me that the stop all of these people were waiting for was the same one I was. We were all going to the mountain. Now I had no idea, if the bus would let us off at the base of this
mountain and we were expected to climb, or if the bus traveled to the top.

Once again I wondered what exactly the point of all this was. Did the kids want to go the mountain, or was it an idea Auntie had conceived solely for my benefit? I felt bad for the kids, if this was the case. Surely they had other things they’d rather be doing than play escort to the bumbling American. Before we had got on the bus, I asked Angel if the mountain was very beautiful.

She wrinkled her nose and said, “So. So.”

It turned out the bus did travel up the mountain. It slowly wound its way up the winding and narrow road, until we reached a point, where suddenly there was no more road. End of the line. Instead there was a shack with a tin roof in front of us, which it turned out to be a noodle stand. The road made a U shaped curve in front of the noodle stand, and before we could exit the bus, the driver made a very tight and hazardous turn, nearly missing a couple of parked cars, and maneuvered the bus so it faced the opposite direction, ready for its descent back down the road. We filed off the bus, and I tried to take in my surroundings.

We hadn’t really been traveling that long but in a space of half an hour, we had totally left behind the urban sprawl of Taipei. We were now on the mountain. Zhi Nan Mountain to be exact. I stepped close to the edge of the road, where there was a steep drop, and could see nothing but trees, other small mountains in the distance, and the occasional rural dwelling peeking through all the greenery and pollution. Crowds of people swarmed around us. Where the road ended, a dirt trail picked up, and we took it past the noodle stand, only to find an assortment of candy stalls, more noodle shops, and 10NT junk shops along the way. We passed a few ramshackle dwellings that looked as if people were living in them, and saw a few small temples as well. We climbed enormous flights of steep steps made of stone. One set of steps created a wide rectangular shape, and it made me feel we were climbing toward the base of an Egyptian pyramid.

In fact when Angel used the phrase “so-so”, she was being kind. It was quite dirty and pretty ugly up there. A couple of times we stopped at the base of yet another flight of steps to contemplate the small ponds of water below us. The water was filthy. One particular pond was covered in a skin of green algae. A couple of kids sitting on the muddy bank were throwing stones to break it up, and would giggle in awe as they watched the algae, moving fast like a spreading virus, quickly seal the hole temporarily made by the stones.

I didn’t question where we were going, or when the endless flight of steps and uphill trails would end. Thankfully, right when my heart was nearing its bursting point and my nicotine scarred lungs were at their height of agony, we reached a point where there were no more steps to climb. In front of us was an impressively large and decoratively ornate temple. The temple from where the mountain got its name, or vive versa I’m not really sure, Zhi Nan Temple.

It was a brightly colored, Xanadauesque, place of worship, with numerous bronze statues of the Buddha, towering arches with detailed carvings, and hundreds of worshippers filling the halls inside. Long tables, covered from end to end with offerings of fruit, crackers, and other snacks, were scattered throughout the room we stepped into. We crossed over to a cylindrical shaped oven where an open flame burned within. Angel handed me three sticks of incense that she picked out of a vase from a table next to the oven. Following Alex and her example, I held my three sticks to the flame until they caught fire, and then blew the flames out. The sticks continued to burn slowly, emitting gray trails of smoke from their tips.

“Now we say a prayer for you. To wish a good and happy year for you,” Angel informed me with a warm smile spreading across her face.

I got goosebumps when she said that. I don’t come from a particularly religious family, and none of my close friends I believe are in any way shape or form the kinds who say their prayers before they go to sleep. I’m sure people have prayed for me before. Prayed for me in that, “Oh Lord please make Cole see the error of his ways so he doesn’t burn in a lake of Hell,” sort of way. But when I realized that the sole reason for making this extended trek on the most crowded bus in history, up more steps than if I’d climbed the Sears Tower twice in one day, was so that these two kids could make a good luck wish for me, I felt like crying in gratitude.

Angel told me it was time for me to make my prayer to the Buddha altar, which stood about thirty feet away from me on the other side of a small archway. I’d watched her and Alex make their silent prayers, burning sticks held in both hands, close to their chests, and how they’d bowed three or four times in the direction of the Buddha. The bows had been quick and short, and I was so busy trying to perfect the movement while I stood before the Buddha, I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t thinking much of anything. Instead of returning the good wishes to my new friends, I was more concerned with how I looked. Apparently I became so wrapped up in the bowing movement, that I’d done it about ten times too many. Finally Angel stepped up to me, and placed her hand gently on my shoulder.

“Okay,” was all she said.

On one side of the temple was a lookout point made of thick stone and concrete. Separating the lookout from the temple was a small plaza with a concrete wall surrounding it. In the middle of the plaza was a fat Buddha statue. Angel encouraged me to rub the Buddha’s belly for luck. Then she insisted she take pictures of me doing it. Then on our way to where the bus would take us back, Angel stopped at a junk stand and bought two tubes of what I can only describe as blow-glue. Weird sticky substance with a purple hue that can be squeezed out onto the end of a short plastic straw. You then blow on the other end of the straw causing the glue like stuff to expand into a large bubble. I could hear passerby chuckling at the sight of a tall, gangly, American man and a sixteen-year old Taiwanese girl blowing plastic glue bubbles together like two lovers in a Claude Lelouch film. When we reached the bus stop, Angel turned to me and said with childlike excitement, “Now we go play video games.”

And play video games we did. We went to the top floor of the Hanshin Department store and wasted 200NT in the arcade there. After that we saw two Chinese movies at the bargain theatre nearby. Angel then made it clear I was expected to return home with them for dinner. I happily obliged. By this point I honestly wanted to move in with them.

Of course I haven’t moved in with them, but I did get an open invitation to come back for dinner very soon. I left that evening, after having spent nearly twelve hours with Angel and Alex, with a feeling that I’d finally caught a glimpse of the thing that had driven me here in the first place. For a weekend I felt connected. I felt a part of something. I felt like an active participant in life. And it wasn’t by witnessing any huge spectacular thing. It was in the small moments that can happen when you connect with another person while igniting fireworks, sharing chocolates, competing in a heated air hockey competition, or when you stop long enough to blow bubbles for no other reason than because it’s fun.

Posted by xtop at March 16, 2003 12:49 AM