ghostly nonsense and Taiwanese guests

Tuesday morning I was sitting around taking much too meticulous notes on an article by Steven Sangren[1] which was somehow a little less tightly organized than I’d remembered it being (though still, like everything he writes, great). I’m going to teach it this winter, is the only reason I’m wishing it were a little more simply organized. Because of course I’m terrified of teaching, and it’s taking me a very long time to come up with class outlines for even the simplest pieces (my notes for the Freedman[2] article I’ll teach in week two are almost as long as the article itself, e.g.). As a student, I am picky and demanding and need to be entertained, and now that I’m about to be a teacher, I’m imagining a whole group of eighteen year old me’s sitting around the seminar table, rolling their eyes. It’s very unlikely that this will actually be the composition of our class (I’m thinking maybe four very sleepy Chinese-American kids from California); but what can you do about your imagination? Besides, it’s been interesting to discover that I myself am my deepest fear.

Anyway, so here I am at my computer, switching back and forth between the article (which I have in pdf format) and my notes for it, which increasingly resemble a reorganized transcription. I’ve already taken my much too meticulous notes on the other piece we’ll be reading for that week, excerpts from two chapters of Donald DeGlopper’s Lukang, which I mentioned a couple of posts ago.[3] I’m starting to think how to put them together—the Sangren is much more complicated and detailed, and written in a much harder style. So I’ll want them to read DeGlopper first; he’ll give them a good sociological introduction to the issues at play in Chinese/Taiwanese supra-familial group formation, and then they can use what energy they have left to try to understand the actual cases that Sangren provides, of groups that slide on the scale of familial to supra-familial, and his very anthro critique of the field. And so on. Suddenly a little square bubble pops up in the bottom right of my computer screen: my friend Joe saying hello on msn messenger.

Being “in the field,” as you know, has been a highly technological experience for me. I got a cell phone for the first time when I got here, and last year I got introduced to the wonders of msn messenger, which has been hands down the best thing that has ever happened to my written Chinese (though not, of course, my hand-written Chinese, which at this point is abysmal—big difference between typing in the sound and recognizing the appropriate character, and remembering how to write it). I happened to come upon online chatting at a time when my fieldwork was in a kind of interstice and I had just made some very literate friends who had a lot of spare time. The first month or so of serious chatting, I would sit and sweat from the concentration of trying to keep up, and be funny, in written Chinese; now I can skip around and do other stuff while waiting for the other person to type their message, but it’s still excellent practice and a nice semi-passive way of keeping in touch with several friends and informants.

So my friend Joe, who works in the central government and is also a PhD student in land management and urban planning, sends a hello my way. Joe recently took a long vacation abroad, after which he disappeared for a couple of weeks, much to my dismay. I had already started on my critical self-reflection,[4] wondering whether I had given him reason to disappear, when he called me up in a boisterous mood last week, announcing that he had finally dug himself out from the shoulder-high pile of work folders that had collected on his desk during his absence, and was ready to paaarty, and did I want to go out with a bunch of people on Thursday night and how about Wednesday night maybe just a quick drink as well, and wheeee. So that was okay, then. And now yesterday he pops in to say hello while I’m taking notes on Sangren, a little after one in the afternoon.

After a little small talk he asks me if I’d like to go to Xinzhu, a city around an hour’s drive from Taipei. Its claim to fame is a big industrial park where a lot of microchip and other high-tech businesses have their offices; it also has a very prettily rebuilt city center and a lot of bars and clubs catering to the lascivious foreigners who come along with the high-tech industry. A very long time ago I was taken out in Xinzhu for goose innards and beer by a semi-lascivious Taiwanese guy who hadn’t really gotten the hang of American-style dating (paid for my drinks but made his friend talk to me, and stared at the [other] dancing foreign girls, it felt very junior high except the guy had an eight year old kid who lived with his--the guy's--mom outside of town), but aside from that and a government meeting last month, I haven’t been. What’s going on in Xinzhu? I ask. What’s the deal?

“I’m teaching a class in a college there. I thought you might want to give a lecture. How about it?” I’m not so hot on giving lectures. Last time I gave a talk, in Yunlin, around this time last year, the preparation almost killed me, and the actual experience—complete with dinner and breakfast with students, two hour class, protracted afternoon outing with the professors in the department, and an hour or two of chatting with the department chair—knocked me out for days. But I realize it’s a good experience, and I am about to start teaching, so I hedge. What kind of lecture? When? To whom? “It’s an undergraduate class, maybe sophomores mostly, you can talk about whatever you want, Wanhua history, community activism, whatever.” Okay, I say, I’ll think about it. When are you thinking of having me? “Well, I’ll leave here around 1:30. I can be at your place by 1:45. Okay?” Huh? What are you talking about? “It’ll be fun, you can practice your bullshit skills. Not that they’re not already very developed.”

So twenty-five minutes later I’m sitting in his car, hair still wet, and he’s talking to me about American politics. For once, I do not want to talk about American politics. I want to talk about what the hell I’m supposed to say to thirty Taiwanese undergraduates in the public affairs department of a small private university in Xinzhu. Joe does not seem to think this is such a big deal. Just give them some ideas to work with, they don’t know anything, anyway they’ll be so surprised to see a foreigner that they’ll think whatever you say is brilliant, talk about your research. What kind of juice do you want? Okay, so what’s the deal with Colin Powell, anyway?

When we met up last week, Joe was telling me that his recent trip to the United States was a journey of self-discovery: “I never thought I was a Tai-ke until I went to America.” Tai-ke 台客, the characters of which are just Taiwan-guest and the most straightforward translation of which would be something like Taiwanese, is a bit difficult to explain.[5] In fact during the dinner with the students at Yunlin, we spent a good long time talking about this term, which one of them claimed laughingly to be interested in researching. Notions associated with Tai-ke are things like song (Taiwanese) low-class, unsophisticated; su 俗 common (as in non-elite), unsophisticated (both of these often used when trying to figure out a Chinese translation for kitsch, as well); sometimes cu 粗 coarse, rough; and, of course, the Taiwanese language (rather than Mandarin) and Taiwanese people (rather than mainlanders). Other notions include three-quarter-length pants (shorts and sandals being the normal outfit of gangsters and low-class individuals),[6] and simultaneous cigarette-smoking and betel nut-chewing, especially while leaning on a motor scooter watching the world go by with nothing in particular to do and wearing blue or red shower flip-flops outdoors (see image below). Tai-ke has become, in recent years I am told, a very definite although still, upon attempted elicitation, usually quite vaguely defined social category. A mostly gay dance club is named Tai-ke, which seems to be a recognized category of (homo)sexual attraction, as a friend of mine who goes to a lot of gay sex parties has indicated.[7]

In fact Joe’s discussion of how he discovered that he himself was Tai-ke was probably the best description I’ve gotten yet of what the term means. He mentioned it when we went out for drinks on Wednesday, and brought it up again when a bunch of us went out to dinner the next day. Joe’s good friend, an old classmate, lives with his girlfriend in Queens. Joe stayed with them for about week, and then the three of them rented a car to drive up to Niagara Falls and other interesting points north. I think the girlfriend doesn’t know how to drive; Joe had gotten an international driver’s license before leaving Taiwan, but then it turned out that it was much more expensive to rent a car with two drivers than with one. They had a long discussion about this at home: Joe wanted to just rent the car in the friend’s name and not have to pay the extra cost; the friend, apparently somewhat Americanized, thought they should eat it up and sign up both their names. When they got to the rental agency, it turned out the company wouldn’t rent cars to international driver’s license holders anyway, so they were force to sign on just the friend and pay the lower amount.

“But did you drive too?” someone asked. “Of course I drove!” Joe replied. Shuping, a lively girl who used to work in the Urban Development Department, added, “阿你不講他怎麼知道 Yeah, if you don’t tell ‘em, how would they even know?” at which Joe burst out laughing: “You’re Tai-ke too!” Then it came time to choose the insurance for the rental car: there were four different levels of insurance, which the agent explained to them in great detail. After listening for a while, Joe turned to his friend and said, “gei ta pin,” as I understand it something like a cross between “whatever” and “fuck it,” and they didn’t take any insurance at all. “Now that is really Tai-ke,” Joe said with some pride, adding a Taiwanese phrase, “chhoe phang chhoe thang, search for the thread, search for the hole”—meaning to seek out whatever works, go where you need to in order to get what you want, rather than following the straight, regulated, open path. “What’s the point of getting insurance? 等你出事再說—If something happens, you can worry about it then.” Shuping agreed. “We’re very well suited to travel together.”

So yesterday Joe’s driving me to the college, buying me apple juice and talking about American politics, and we get there, and he introduces me, suddenly turning all serious and teacher like, much unlike his normal giggling spasmodic self: “Today we’re very privileged to have with us a scholar from America. Teacher An has deep knowledge of every aspect of Taiwanese culture and a very interesting perspective as a foreign scholar from the world-famous University of blah blah blah,” I’m sitting in the front row watching him perform and trying not to laugh. If you know him, this show is absolutely ridiculous. It’s exactly the voice he uses to propose a title for my thesis, in response to my question about what the hell Taiwanese people did for fun before they had private karaoke rooms to go sing in: “What did they do? Sleep and have kids. Hey! That could be your thesis: The Rise of Karaoke and the Decline of the Taiwanese Birthrate: A Correlation Study.” Then he’s finished performing and hands me the microphone—yes, microphone, no wonder everyone's so at home singing karaoke—and I start, as requested, to bullshit. I’m surprised at how fluent I’ve become in the language of ghostly nonsense (鬼扯 guiche, ‘bullshit’ = ghost + nonsense speech/prevarication/lie). I guess graduate school hasn’t been a total waste.

I tell them a little about anthropology and why as people who are majoring in public affairs (whatever that means, by the way), it would be good for them to learn to understand something about the society for which they may be devising or implementing policies (I give the example of unenforceable zoning regulations); introduce the idea of structure-practice-ideology; and talk a little bit about the neighborhood I work in. There are about thirty to forty kids in the class, densely packed into the four or five rows of desks towards the back of the room. Only a couple of people look like they’re physically falling asleep, but given the typical response of Taiwanese kids to questions posed by someone in a position of authority, which is to giggle, I’ll never know if they found anything I said interesting, or if they spent the whole time being weirded out by a foreigner who could bullshit for so long in Chinese, or if they were thinking about what to eat for dinner and why their boyfriend said that stupid thing on the phone last night.[8] Forty kids giving a total of one single comment, aside some shy wavy goodbyes at the end. Whatever the Chicago class this winter will be, it can’t be less interactive than that.

Jennifer happened to call me up right after the class was over. Hearing where I was and what I was doing there, she remarked, “Wow. That is really Taiwanese; everything at the last minute.” (Of course the reason she was calling me was to ask for a nice English translation for a Chinese slogan that her friend’s firm had decided to use. They needed a good English translation, of course, right now, by tomorrow at the latest, so the friend had run over to Jennifer’s bar to see if she could help out.) I relayed the comment on to Joe, who agreed: “I told you I was Tai-ke. Now I know how Tai-ke I really am.”

Afterward, Joe took me out to the Xinzhu night market, centered around the awesome Xinzhu City God temple. City God temples turn out to be my favorite: the Taiwanese temple that I like the most is the Tainan City God one. City God temples are not yinmiao, not ‘shadow’ temples, but they do deal with the darker side of things—specifically, with the post-death side of things. The Tainan City God temple has a huge abacus over the front door, on which the god’s accountant calculates the merit (gongde) you’ve acquired in your life along with the bad things you’ve done; he informs the god of his calculations, and the god decides what punishments you should suffer. The temple is full of spirits carrying scary implements of punishment, and bears the creepy inscription “爾來了, You have come”—because everyone ends up there sooner or later.

Shall I tell you about the delicious things we ate? Or have you had enough? I’ll just run through the list quickly. The defining aspect, as so often with Taiwanese foods, was texture, and in this case, as so often with Taiwanese foods, the texture was Q. I still have not managed to come up with a good description of Q in English (although I’ve written an almost pornographic description in Chinese, in my first attempt at a Chinese language story). Currently I’m sticking to “a kind of chewy resilience.” But maybe it was originally “a kind of resilient chewiness.” I am a bit preoccupied with this kougan, mouth-feeling, which Joe claims is normally the province of o-ba-san, old ladies. We avoided what are technically known to be Xinzhu specialties—fried rice noodles and savory meat balls—because they have become universal in Taiwan and I’ve had them a hundred times before, and concentrated on stuff I was less familiar with.

We started out with something that looked like a sausage but was actually pieces of very chewy meat wrapped in a smooth brown mass that was softer than Q but harder than pudding, made out of wheat flour and something else. This was complemented by bah-wan, a big, flattish dumpling with a chopped meat and onion heart boiled in a bouncy Q wrap of translucent dough made out of maybe rice flour. Then we went on to gui-zang, which is kind of similar when you describe it, except that it’s steamed rather than boiled, but completely different when you taste it—sweet and with an almost chewing-gum like Q-ness. My absolute favorite. After a couple of other less interesting things just to make sure we were properly stuffed, we finished up with a sweet ginger soup with tangyuan, also super-Q dumplings filled with sweet sesame and peanut concoctions.

Bellies full, we got back in the car and drove towards Taipei, stopping in at Joe’s home on the way and sitting for a while with his absolutely lovely father, younger brother, the eventually screaming three-month-old son of his older brother, and Joe’s also lovely, awakened-by-the-baby mother, who like a good grandmother is in charge of baby raising. The family lives in two neighboring apartments in a pretty high-class gated high-rise complex in Taipei County. Joe, his brother, brother’s wife, and their baby sleep in one apartment, and father, mother, and younger brother sleep in the one next door, which is also where the family altar and hanging-out space is located. It’s basically the ideal traditional living arrangement, a family compound with the third generation already started (and a boy at that), moved into a very modern environment. Joe’s parents sell seafood at the local market; his mother has a middle-school, his father an elementary school, education. I asked him if they had given him a lot of pressure when he was growing up and he said no, they just always made it clear that they thought education was important and that if you were more educated you wouldn’t have to work so hard, like they did, carrying heavy loads and having to be out at all hours all the time. The eldest son is finishing a degree in electrical engineering; Joe, as I mentioned, is also getting a PhD; and the younger brother is getting an MA in science education from Taiwan Normal University.

And that was Tuesday.

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[1] Sangren, P. Steven. 1984. Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship. Journal of Asian Studies 43:391-415.

[2] Freedman, Maurice. 1979. “The Chinese domestic family: models” in The study of Chinese society: essays by Maurice Freedman. G. William Skinner (ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. (235-240)

[3] DeGlopper, Donald. 1995. Lukang: Commerce and Community in a Chinese City. Albany: State University of New York Press.

[4] E.g.: Tseng Tzu said, "At the end of everyday, I ask myself three questions. 1) In my acts for others, have I been worthy of their trust? 2) Have I been true to my word? 3) Have I practiced what I taught?”

[5] The etymology of Tai-ke is a mystery to all I ask, but I have my own theory about it. Many years ago, for some mass media reason that I don’t recall just now (maybe a TV show?), the term Niu-yue-ke 紐約客 became a popular way of referring to New Yorkers or people who were like New Yorkers. Niu-yue is just the Chinese for New York. Normally to refer to someone who comes from a place, you’d say Place + ren, where ren is person. The ke in Niu-yue-ke is probably a phonetic play on the ker in New Yorker; that’s how it’s pronounced, anyway. So I suspect that the ke in Tai-ke is transferred from the ke in Niu-yue-ke.

[6] I think I’ve said this elsewhere but I’ll just say it again anyway: last year when the Cultural Association of the neighborhood I work in was having their elections, someone nominated Chairman Lin, a cigarette-smoking, betel-nut chewing owner of a textile business who contributes a lot of money and behind-the-scenes help to the organization, for the position of President. Chairman Lin stood up and made a little speech along these lines: “I never wear long pants [i.e. only wear shorts], and [waving one leg in the air and pointing to it] I never wear socks [i.e. only sandals]. So don’t elect me the Association President. Wait until I start wearing long pants and socks; then you can elect me President.”

[7] “我喜歡台客… 我聽國語我硬不起來” “I like Tai-ke… if I hear Mandarin I can’t get it up” (where “can’t get it up” = hard + not + resultative verb suffix). How’s that for a language ideology?

[8] I shouldn’t condemn the whole lot of them to giggledom, though. At some point I mentioned that many people call the area I work in fuza, ‘complicated,’ and asked if someone could tell me what they thought it meant. Joe picked a name from his list to call on (nobody would volunteer), and a girl sitting in the middle row, wearing a bright pink sweatshirt, raised her hand. She then gave an amazingly complete answer to what must have seemed a pretty odd, or at least unexpected, question, touching on every single area that has been mentioned to me by various people in the entire year and a half that I have been asking people what they mean by the term, from economics (relatively poor) to social structure (very diverse and with many informal elements), infrastructure (run down), public safety (not good), and ideology (makes us uncomfortable). Hope she goes on to graduate school.