think of it as kind of like an alley: part 2

Being what a professor once politely phrased as “high affect,” I experience fieldwork largely as an exercise in self-effacement. From the mechanics of interview recording, where I’ve learned that my normal “uh-huh, right, I see” responses and general propensity to interruption obscure the interviewee’s voice in a way that nodding and smiling do not, to the gradual realization that voicing my opinion will only sometimes encourage my interlocutors to produce opinions of their own, the fieldwork process has provided a valuable beginner’s course in shutting up. I have been rewarded in this endeavor by comments to the effect that I “don’t seem like an American,” which, although sometimes explained by euphemistic variations on “short,” is frequently enough described along the lines of polite, not overbearing, Taiwanese-demeanored that I figure I must be learning something. But sometimes when I’m tired, or relaxed, or when I’m tired and relaxed and someone seems to actually be interested in something, the reticence breaks down kind of in the way that, at a more advanced stage of tiredness, my speaking skills break down: my self starts emerging in blurts and starts, chunks of internal structure that crumble and break down at the edges.

So in response to the architect’s question about why 70% percent of Taiwanese women prefer to date foreign men (which statistic should perhaps be added to the recent American likely-voter polls), I proposed the not startlingly original idea that women and men tended to want different things from relationships and marriages. For instance, a male acquaintance of mine who works for an international computer company recently mentioned his two top priorities in finding a wife (which, at around thirty-six, he thinks it’s getting time to do). (1) Since the married couple will live in his family home, his mother has to like her. (2) She has to be young enough to have several children, since as an only son he needs to have a boy to carry on the family name. His own stats are not bad (steady job, good income, decent-looking, nice enough); as a reasonably pleasant and tolerant person with a respectable social position and bank account, he’s in a perfect position to do what a man is supposed to do and yang 養, support or nourish, a wife and family (yang is also used for children, mistresses, pets, and plants).

Unfortunately, at least the women I tend to know are not really looking to be yanged—or at least it’s not the decisive factor. In fact, the one woman my age I know who has been in a clearly yanging relationship was someone with a good income who supported her boyfriend while he got his second degree and then spent a year not finding a job. It’s a scewed sample, of course, since even Gallup would probably not accept “my acquaintances” as a reasonable polling block; but still it should be indicative of something. There are even statistics that suggest what it’s indicative of: although I am having trouble finding anything official or updated on the web, it seems that a bit over ten years ago women made up not-quite half of the Taiwanese workforce[i] and not-quite half of the students at both the university and junior college levels,[ii] although at slightly-over half, their average income in proportion to men’s was still at the level of “suck.”[iii]



[i] 44% of the workforce in 1992 according to some ; 46% in 1988 according to others.

[ii] Around 45% in 1992.

[iii] 66% in 1992.