Taiwan is not China. (Let's see if that sentence gets my website banned in China like it was in the good old days.)

Having traveled around China for many years, my first impression upon arriving in Taiwan was: "Hm, this place is just like China." Really, it's not.

Now I've lived here for a couple of years, and from the beginning I quickly discovered it's nothing like China.

What makes it so different?

• Language: I was once jokingly asked (in Hong Kong, of all places) if I spoke "putonghua" (普通話) or "guoyu" (國語). At the time I assumed the two basically meant the same thing: standard Chinese/Mandarin. Only after coming to Taiwan did I realize I was totally wrong. What I'd been speaking all these years, putonghua, is actually rather different from the "Chinese" in Taiwan, which is called guoyu. The differences are primarily tonal and word choice, and although they don't often lead to anything as serious as miscommunication (in fact, many people don't even notice most of the differences), to someone like me who pays careful attention to every word, it can be a rather annoying phenomenon to keep track of. I'm also generally unable to use many of the fun words I learned in China, since no one here knows what the hell I'm talking about when I do. Doh.
  
  Being a relatively internationally oriented country, Taiwan has also imported several words from English and a few from Japanese; it doesn't quite sound right when an English word pops into the middle of a Chinese sentence every so often, but that's the way language evolves, and no one can stop it. Doh.
  
  But the largest influence on the local Mandarin comes from Taiwanese, which is spoken by almost everyone to some degree, and is responsible for many of the abnormal, spontaneous new words or slang that have no basis in Chinese whatsoever.
  
  Chinese characters are obviously different here, using the "traditional" form as opposed to the "simplified" form of China. I personally have always used the older characters, but on a passive functional level I don't distinguish between the two, so I never really notice this difference. When it comes to romanizing characters, however, Taiwan apparently prefers chaos, and because of it remains stuck in the stone age to this day. They refuse to openly adopt the effective system called pinyin used in China (I say they refuse to "openly" adopt it because it is scoffed at by most Taiwanese scholars, and everyone says they will not use it, but it's quite obviously creeping into more and more places), but they also can't decide on one for themselves, resulting in a random assortment of different spellings for the exact same street and place names. (Romanization of peoples' names also follows very few linguistic principles, resulting in unnecessary variation and confusion.) One day someone will realize this is a problem and actually fix it... maybe even before China comes over and tries to fix it with bombs.
  
  
• Culture: As with any "local area," there is a tendency to diverge from the greater culture to whatever extent the current envinroment allows, but whereas in China this tendency is increasingly dampened by the omnipresent central government through media and education, Taiwan has no such specific outside influence, relying instead on its people's own interpretation of traditional Chinese culture, as well as elements absorbed from the global culture (primarily the U.S.), to maintain its local identity, which grows stronger and more unique with every passing year (which is one of the reasons that a conflict across the strait here is only a matter of time).
  
  The other important component of past and present Taiwanese culture is Japan's influence. An island doesn't endure Japanese rule for the first half of the 20th century and then go back to being just the way it was again. Lots of older folk speak Japanese, and although not as many younger people know the language, the most important styles and trends to watch are those in Japan to the north. There is also a lot of trade between the two, with lots of Japanese commercial products coming this way, and lots of Taiwanese manufactured goods going that way.
  
  
• Government: Now here's the obvious one. No matter what Beijing says, considering that Taiwan has it's own independent executive, judicial, and legislative branches (although the legislative branch leaves a lot to be desired), it really is its own country. But in the Darwinian world of humans, whoever is bigger and stronger gets what they want: China says Taiwan is not a country, therefore it's not. Taiwan definitely doesn't have the most effective laws and policies, but it's certainly more of a representative government than China.

So with all these differences, what led me to believe it's like China at first glance?

Well, the fact that there is Chinese written everywhere does a good job of creating such an illusion. Seeing long rows of stores selling the same thing is also a common sight in China, as well as streets which are generally dirty and worn down. Actually, the Chinese have a knack for making places like shops and homes appear cluttered (髒亂, a trait pointed out and criticized by Bo Yang several years back); this definitely hasn't changed in Taiwan. And last but not least, as advanced and "international" as it is, the population is still quite homogeneous, making everyone either slightly xenophobic or a little too curious, not unlike the mainland.

Overall, I still prefer mainland China's "Chineseness" to Taiwan's relatively chaotic mix of languages and cultures. Besides, Taiwan is a tiny place without much of interest, compared to the massive China filled with all manner of cool and, yes, mysterious destinations.

 

What am I doing here, anyway?

This story starts back in 2002, and I think it's going to be a short one.

I first came to Taiwan on a scholarship received through the U.S. Dept. of Education, which I used to pay for food and a single room in an apartment while I was attending National Taiwan University's International Chinese Language Program. If you have to come to Taiwan to learn Chinese, it is a very well organized program which gives a lot of personal attention, I highly recommend it;but, if you have a choice, go to China instead. I actually only took one or two classes at a time, spending most of my time reading and writing for personal projects.

There isn't really all that much worth traveling around to see in Taiwan, so when I wasn't in school, I was either at the large park in the center of the city (Da'an Forest Park), or in my room, which got kind of crazy towards the spring and summer when the temperature in the top floor, AC-less, bathed in sunlight all day, 16 foot square space would go over 40 degC... (When I returned to the U.S. after almost a year of studying in Taiwan, everyone said I got thinner; must've been the sauna I lived in.)

The landlady, Mrs. Xu, actually lived crammed in the small room next to mine with her son, a college freshman. Though a bit talkative at times, she was extremely nice, and not only repeatedly said I'm just like a son to her, but actually proved it sometimes, for example by giving me 1/3 of my rent back as a hongbao ([generally,] money given by older family members to unmarried younger ones during Chinese New Year). She even accompanied me on a freezing, rainy four-hour hike on the first day of the new year; ain't she great?! By the way, she's a math teacher at a cram school.

Obviously we're already into 2003, and towards the end of this stay, I met my wife, Kei (it was technically a re-meet, since we saw each other a few times about 4 years before that), then had to return to Berkeley for one last semester.

Kei came to stay with me for the last few months of 2003, then in 2004, I began looking at the prospects of finding a normal job in Taiwan. This involved a trip across the Pacific every few weeks, and when I finally found an interesting job at a TV station about half way through the year, the government ironically refused to let me take it. (Many of the Chinese language programs in Taiwan are supported by the government (primarily through a large number of Ministry of Education scholarships) to get foreigners interested in Chinese and Taiwan, thereby improving relations and contact with other countries and even convincing some people to bring their expertise over to Taiwan; yet, when someone actually does want to move here, they don't let him. Funny.)

I thus shifted the focus of my job search to mainland China, but did not find any enticing long term opportunities that would allow me to maintain my relationship with my then-still-girlfriend, Kei. So I made her my now-wife Kei, and we lived happily ever after.

Without jobs, that is.

I'm gradually working towards getting a job, but it's perhaps because my pace is too slow that I am continually interrupted, often by myself. I did spent a chunk of time back in the U.S. helping mom and Peter finish their latest book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, but most of my days are still spent reading and writing on various ideas that keep popping into my head, as I certainly don't want to waste all this great free time!

[06 jul 05]