Things I Never Did in Taiwan

Across the 39 years I lived in Taiwan, there are many things I DID that, had I remained in Los Angeles, I’d never have, but there were also things that I NEVER did because I was in Taiwan. 

I never slid a car into a ditch; I never mowed a lawn; and I never used a snow blower.  Though “home” (such as it was) where I grew up in Los Angeles involved both the car-in-the-ditch and several lawns mowed, like Taiwan, it had no snow blowing. What was normal regarding snow there is what is normal regarding snow in Taiwan. If you want it, it’s in the mountains in the winter. You drive up there and suffer, then go home and get warm again.

On Monday night, lots of snow fell upon Holland, MI, where I now reside. Being homeowners with a backyard garage for the car means clearing out the driveway. If there had been only a few millimeters it could’ve been driven across. Ours had to be driven THROUGH. We made it, but not without a bit of concern whether we’d make it to the street, where it had been plowed, or not. 

We look forward to January, when in order to vote for President Tsai’s re-election, we’ll spend a couple of weeks back home in southern Taiwan. Until then, I’ve ordered an electric snow blower to replace the 2-cycle gas powered one that reminds me of motor scooters. 

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

An Outlet

Sometime in the late 90s while residing in Kaohsiung, a little storefront on a side street near my house was rented to a guy who repaired motorcycles. He was a kind man, a bit younger than me. What made his shop similar to all others of the sort was a typical mess of greasy parts and dirty cardboard boxes full of replacements. What made it different than others was the walls, which were hung with oil paintings that he had done.  

The main branch of the library was a couple blocks away. I liked going to the basement gallery, where exhibitions were regularly hung. I’m not a fan of calligraphy, but the room was large, carpeted and air conditioned, so when our daughter was young we regularly stopped there on the way home from church on Sunday morning to give her a place to run about where she wouldn’t get run down by a scooter.  One day at the gallery I ran into my neighbor, the motorcycle repairman, looking at others’ paintings. I really liked that guy. Even though I didn’t have a motorcycle, I’d stop and chat with him from time to time. He earned his living in grease and oil. He expressed his inner self in oils. That’s the way it goes for lots of people, both in Taiwan and in the town where I’ve retired. 

I had the great good fortune to be able to express myself in my work, which in my last 2 decades in Taiwan included a great deal of writing and translating. I was a bit sad, though, because much of what I wrote stayed in the little college where I worked, and much of what I translated was spoken simultaneous stuff, which went unrecorded, and slipped away into the ether. Now in retirement I’ve been able to retrieve parts of things that got written. A few weeks ago I ran into a document containing translations from Taiwanese to English of stuff originally written in Xiamen in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Admittedly, they are church hymns, and some of them are rather dreadful poetry even in Taiwanese. But my translations appear to be a first-time thing. Before they de-materialize in a hard disk crash, I’ve made them into an ebook. If you’re willing to part with $2, you can buy a download here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989863 

I’ve found other files, all of which seem to have been created between 2002 and 2012, that are making their way into ebooks as well. Though these also started while I was in Taiwan, they’re not translations. Nonetheless, should you think to invest further two-dollar bills, you’ll also find them at www.smashwords.com 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Somebody Sprayed

Back when Taiwan was governed by martial law under a military dictator the entire nation was twice sprayed with DDT.  The intent was to benefit public health, and it worked. Taiwan was free of malaria by the end of 1964. The first spraying eliminated things like flies, fleas and other pests. But that was “collateral damage”. 

During the 25 years that we lived in older sections of Kaohsiung, we occasionally saw crews from the public health department spraying insecticide into roadside drains. This was often followed by the exodus of large numbers of cockroaches from drain covers further down the block. After we moved onto a college campus in Tainan we once endured the spraying of the entire place, including the inside of our house, after two people living nearby came down with Dengue fever.

Today, in Holland MI, someone sprayed outside our house. But it wasn’t insecticide.  Six months ago everything on both sides of the street was torn up, including sidewalks, curbs, street and parts of front yards.  Ancient pipes were replaced and all was renewed. The space between the sidewalk and the curb officially belongs to the city, so it was filled with good quality topsoil and reseeded. Neighbors up and down the block had this done late in September. Ours was delayed because we enrolled in a program to configure and plant a rain garden. That took more time. But on November 5th all of the digging and other work was done, so the sprayers came. 

A mixture of ground paper, grass seed, chemical fertilizers and green dye was applied today. We look forward to green grass some day, but the forecast is for snow much sooner, like, before the end of the week. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan. 

Standing Strong, Standing Bronze

They’ve generally been removed, the statues of Chiang Kai-shek that once adorned civic locations from one end of Taiwan to the other. The one in Kaohsiung’s Rotary Park had first been vandalized in place. The one of Chiang riding a horse in the middle of the San Tou Road Traffic Circle in the same city was moved to the nearby military academy in the middle of the night. Most dramatically, the giant “Chiang seated on a throne” at Kaohsiung’s Cultural Center was cut into pieces and thrown onto trucks for transport to his tomb up north. 

Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park

We were in New Brunswick, NJ recently, where statues seem to linger longer than those

of the Generalissimo.

 
There’s a statue of a Civil War Soldier in the plaza outside of the New Jersey State Theater. (The pidgeon is a seasonally optional element.)

An impressive statue of William of Orange, of whom the plinth bears witness, “when he died, the little children cried” has stood in Voorhees Mall on the Rutgers College campus of Rutgers University since 1928.

The statue of James Suydam, a 19th century benefactor of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, relocated in 2015 to a lower plinth and a location nearer to the Sage Library. 

As glad as we were to see the demise of the Chiang statuary in Taiwan, we were elated to see the endurance of the more varied subjects available in Central New Jersey.

And when WE die?  Perhaps no crying children, and hopefully no bronzeworks.

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan. 

Cities Change

When we took up residence in Kaohsiung in 1982, things around town were fairly gritty and the air was foul. In certain neighborhoods there were places not a whole lot better than shanties (though with running water, electricity and air conditioning) where some families lived at low rent until public housing became available. Anti-aircraft artillery was located on towers where Min-Sheng Road meets the Love River and at the corner of Central Park where the road crosses Chung-Shan. The block now filled with the 85 story Tuntex Tower held a no-longer used Tuntex factory. The park at the corner of Tze Chiang Road and Su-wei road was former fish ponds surrounded by shacks. We watched as roads widened, electric and phone wires (as well as TV cables) went underground, and a sanitary sewer system replaced the septic tanks. 

Moving there when we did, we were not all that taken aback by the urban conditions. For the previous year-and-a-half we’d resided in Jersey City, NJ, and for a year before moving there, I’d personally dwelt in New Brunswick, NJ. Both of those cities could be described as having been on a downward trend in the 1970s.

We recently spent a long day walking around New Brunswick, which is looking quite spiffy of late. We even spent about half an hour in a bygone cemetery which I remembered as having broken tombstones piled in a corner back in 1980, but which was cleaned up quite nicely now. 

Our trip did NOT include a visit to Jersey City, but the general economic situation of the area seems to have it on the uptrend. 

Cities change. Nations Change. Kaohsiung is now beautiful. How sad that, as these places are renewed, I just keep getting older. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan. 

 

It SOUNDED Like Taiwanese at the Time

We’d been in New York City and on Long Island for two days, consorting with Taiwanese people. With the exception between ourselves, we spoke Taiwanese with everyone else. Late on Sunday afternoon we boarded Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited bound for the midwest. It was crowded with lots of students from Syracuse University headed back to school after the weekend. When it dropped them off at about 10PM, I donned a blindfold and went to sleep. About an hour later, at the next stop in Rochester, I was stirred to semi-wakefulness when a new group of passengers boarded. Their children were excited and apparently running about. The parents, in getting settled for the night and corralling the kids, were a bit loud. They were not speaking English. Blindfolded and half asleep, I convinced myself that their language was Taiwanese. I made a plan to chat with them in the morning, and went back to sleep. 

Awakening the next morning somewhere near Toledo, I opened myself to the light again. It was nearly 7:30. To my surprise, there was no-one even remotely Taiwanese on board. I began to think that they must have gotten off the train at Cleveland. Then I overheard conversation that sounded like familiar from the previous night. It turns out that we were surrounded by West Africans.

Just how whatever language they were speaking sounded like Taiwanese to me in the middle of the night, I can’t explain. No doubt, I was dreaming.  Dreaming of Taiwan.

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

An In-between State

Less than 200 years ago, children went right to adulthood. Then someone proposed the idea of adolescence, which took on. The “teen” years were clearly defined as those during which a person’s age ended in a “teen”. Further parsing in recent years has given us the concept of “tweens”, who, though no longer children, have not yet acquired the coveted “teen” morpheme.

“Tween” is an in-between state.  

On a recent visit to Taiwanese friends in New York this “in-between-ness” was felt in at least two situations. The first regarded Taiwan itself, which, though independent since 1949, is not accorded independent status by the world at large. China claims this nation as its own. Taiwanese people disagree. A recent poll found that only 13.6% of the population would opt for Taiwan to become part of China. Discussing the situation with an elderly Taiwanese man who immigrated to the USA in 1965, I mentioned Puerto Rico as another example of an in-between place. He took great exception to my comparison. Puerto Rico, he said, would continue to exist whether it became the 51st American State, the next independent Caribbean nation, or continued to muddle along as a US Territory. Taiwan, should it become part of China, would be totally destroyed.

 

The other in-between-state occurred in Manhattan.  We had arrived by train, and without leaving Penn Station left for New Jersey for a night and day. The next day we returned to Penn Station and took the Long Island Railroad to Flushing, Queens, again without leaving the station. Less than 48 hours we passed through the station again, changing to a long distance train back to the middle of America.  Three times in Manhattan, but never there. 

 

Like international airports and their attendant conference centers, it’s possible to be someplace, and yet never be there at all. Train stations are that way. So, it could be argued, is Taiwan.
David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Waterview Rails

The train south from Taitung hugs the seacoast for several kilometers before turning west to go through the mountains to the opposite side of Taiwan. There are places where, on the “ocean side” of the train one looks out onto the waves of the Pacific breaking on the beach. At times, in typhoons, the bridges and tracks (though no trains, yet) have been washed away.

Across the ocean, near Capistrano, California, the train south of Los Angeles runs along the beach on its way to San Diego. In the right seasons, one sees surfers, sunbathers and volley-ball players while heading from one city to another. Because beaches are fairly level, and the routes of rivers generally move in a gradual way from higher to lower elevations, these present favorable locations for rails. Trains are notoriously reluctant to attempt steep grades.

On a recent weekend I was treated to two train trips along the Hudson River from Albany to New York City, one in each direction. Though I generally read while riding, I make myself put down the book or screen that had earlier been in my hands when along this stretch. It’s an hour and 45 minutes of sheer visible joy.  Over the past 15 years I’ve taken this trip in all four seasons of the year, sometimes, like this year, several times. 

Should you ever wish to imagine yourself elsewhere, I recommend taking the time to ride Taiwan’s train from Taitung going south to Tawu. or the Pacific Surfliner from Anaheim to San Clemente, CA, or any of the many trains offered by Amtrak from New York City to Albany.  You won’t regret any of them. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Taking The Chair

Growing up watching a lot of trash on TV, I learned the phrase, “I’ll take the fifth.” Wags joked that it was about a bottle of whiskey, but it was stronger than that. It refers to the rights of an accused person not to testify against herself. When asked, “Did you, indeed, kill your boss’s wife?” an accused person could “take the fifth.”  Nobody ever said, “I’ll take the chair.”

During my last year of service in Taiwan, a friend continuously pushed me to come up with some answer to his question about what I was planning to do in retirement. He had some ideas for the kinds of things he thought I should do. I think they were based on the kinds of things HE wished he had done when his working days were finished. One of his expressions was that he didn’t want to hear that I’d retired to a rocking chair. I haven’t. But, sometimes I think that I may have retired to an Amtrak seat.

Though seats on trains in Taiwan are wider than those on airliners, they’ve got nothing at all on the seats provided by Amtrak to its passengers. Many years ago, when friends in Ohio helped us board the westbound train from Cincinnati, we heard the remark that “the seats are like first class on an airplane.” Since that time, without bothering to measure anything, I’ve come to think of them that way. Retirement last year meant a certain amount of travel to visit churches that had supported our lives overseas for decades. When those visits, usually accomplished by train, were done, I flew to New Jersey two times for special events that didn’t last long, but I continued to travel by train to make lengthier visits. I’ve been to California, Colorado and now to New York on the train. Each of these trips involved an overnight or two. In all but one, I did the night in a seat. 

Of course, a train has more available walking than a plane, but it’s less necessary. As bumpy as air travel can be, it’s mostly smooth. Train travel always has some shaking back and forth and occasionally a bump or two. One’s body exercises to make the adjustment even when asleep.

Taiwan train trips are rarely more than a few hours in duration. The trip to California I made a couple months ago was 44 hours long. The trip to New York took 18. Taiwan’s trains don’t need to be “sleepable” (though I’ve napped comfortably on more than one). I don’t mind at all having “taken the chair” for these parts of retirement. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Homecoming without Alumni Friends

Schools in Taiwan mark the anniversaries of their founding from time to time, “School Celebration Day” might be accompanied with a sports day, a fair, or, in the case of church related academies, a worship service or concert. American high schools and colleges have annual “homecoming” days, scheduled not to coincide with an anniversary but with a football game or something else.

Last week I attended the celebration of the 235th anniversary of the establishment of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, from which I graduated. It was, in part, a homecoming event, though the seminary has no football team, and there wasn’t a fair.  We sang a lot, prayers were offered, a historical presentation was made, and the president said some brief words. But the main thing was a dinner.  

One may expect to see friends with whom one studied at such events, but I think I was the only member of my graduating class present. Unlike high schools or colleges that draw most of their students from nearby, and whose graduates stay generally near, theological seminaries draw more widely and scatter farther. That and, anyway, it’s been a long time. 

I graduated 40 years ago. I think I was back once in 1982, but it wasn’t until 1999 that I began to visit more regularly. I wanted to research certain topics and the school had scholarships and fellowships that covered travel and housing for those days. During those years I met a succession of administrators and faculty members who had not been present during my student days. It’s still like that. Though I find nobody from “those days” any more, a visit to New Brunswick is, indeed, “homecoming” for me. This time, I also got to be present at “School Celebration Day”. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.