TAIWAN, MY OTHER COUNTRY
(Sept. 22, 2022)

"Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Away, you rolling river.
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Way, we're bound away
Across the wide Missouri."

                Many years ago, I think it was 1987, I attended a graduation concert by students in the music department of Fu-Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan.
                I was expecting a charming presentation by extremely talented young people, showcasing their various instruments, and I was not disappointed in that.
                But I was floored, stunned, by one particular performance that has remained moving in memory, ever since: the graduate choir singing the beloved traditional American folk song, “O Shenandoah.”
                At first, I was slightly amused in an “ugly American” way by the accent, but that vanished when I felt the sincerity accompanying the vocal beauty on display. I have heard a lot---I mean a lot---of music in my life, but I have never heard anything performed more earnestly, with more heart, more love, than that rendition of “O Shenandoah.” It left me with goose bumps, and in tears. I wondered how young people who had certainly never been out of Taiwan could invest this song with such reality, poignancy.
                And that was one of my first clues about the essence of Taiwan’s extraordinary spirit.
                Taiwan is the smell of fresh-baked boroh pastries, machine solvent, night market barbecue, temple incense, scooter exhaust, heavy wet air. It’s 3 a.m. yowling cats galloping over corrugated tin-roofed balconies, darting taxis blaring bad Chinese pop, old men arguing over games of Go in tiny parks behind bus stops, and off-key gongs and caterwauling singers in pop-up Chinese opera street performances. It’s tired, overworked young students in handsome school uniforms, and tired, overworked garage mechanics in torn, grimy T-shirts, endlessly cheery waitresses and waiters singing out, “Huan ying guan ling" (“we are honored to have you”), heroically dedicated teachers, brilliant nerd engineers, doting moms and dads with happy little kids---all sitting around together on flimsy aluminum stools, having doahua (tofu pudding) or yo tiao (long, fried donuts) at street stands. Taiwan is a raucous machine shop next to a frilly café named Alice in Wonderland next to a walk-in dentist next to a baby supply store next to a morning produce market next to a 7-11. It’s impersonal skyscrapers, boba tea (which it invented!), betel-nut juice stains in the streets, and frosty green-label bottles of Taiwan beer in refrigerators, and garbage trucks that, believe it or not, all play “Für Elise” by Beethoven. It’s New Year’s Eve bottle rockets and roaring roosters in rustic villages, and giant lantern festivals in the big cities. It’s scooter armies and jabbering pedestrian throngs and whooshing monorails and tons of rain that fall hard and deafening. It is serene mountain lakes and sunny tropical beaches and thick, funky jungles and lyrical fields of tea, and moody, rocky shorelines and wind making abstract music in forests of bamboo. It is happy and sad and joyous and heartbroken and exalting and sentimental and argumentative and deeply philosophical. A sunny day is called a “shiny day” and children are called “little friends.”

I spent many a happy hour walking on the streets of Taipei.

                In short, Taiwan is a real “you had to be there” kind of experience. And I recommend that you make it one. At first glance of Taipei, you might see only overpopulation and drab, gray, boxy apartment high-rises. After a few months, you won’t see either---instead only the invigorating, inspiring bustle. The charm of the place is in the culture, not the cement. The closest term I know for the infectiously madcap, almost naïvely impassioned atmosphere of Taiwan is the Mandarin word, ren-ching-wei, literally “people flavor spirit,” which connotes doing absolutely everything---from welcoming strangers to arguing to painting kitten faces to learning the piano to fixing bulldozers to tying zong-zi (sticky rice in bamboo leaves) to caring for those in need---with ardor, commitment, elan. It might sound tangential, but finding such western staples as irony and sarcasm in Taiwan humor is not an easy proposition. There is profound appreciation for life here.
                How and why? Well, I don’t know if the Taiwan attitude is rooted in Confucianism, or just came to emulate it, but either way, the term famously applies. Ethics, good behavior, civility, decency, hard work, devotion to family, respect for elders—all Confucian ideals---are as commonly found in Taiwan as they are not found in today’s USA. If this sounds corny to you, I submit that, given time in Taiwan, you would most likely start to admire these values, if not try to adopt them. They are catching. It is quite moving to see a society---even with all the grisly faults you would expect any society to have---attempt to comport itself with such an empathetic ideology, and such love of family.

                I lived in Taiwan for well over a year---six months in one particular stretch---and I think it’s fair to say that I know enough of the place to make these comments. If you want to get into the many fascinating particulars of the island---the ridiculously varied geography, topsy-turvy history, all the permutations of culture that vary from locale to locale (sometimes village to village)---by all means read travel and/or history books. I’m here to talk about the feel of the place, and how it stands alone, at least in my experience. And, yes, how it is independent.
                My former wife, a tremendous human being born and raised in Taiwan, and the reason for my time there, used to occasionally remark:
                “You know, Rip, Taiwan is a really special place. It’s like a secret place the world doesn’t know about.”
                At first, I took this comment with a grain or two of salt, chalking her enthusiasm up to understandable pride. But I eventually came to understand that she was right. It’s not easy to explain. You wind up trapped in hyperbole, claim, assertion, superlative, to the point of “protesting too much.” The sad fact that much of the world still does not know much about Taiwan, even with the ongoing deranged threats from China, does not help. (Please see accompanying commentary.) I mean, often as not, it’s Oh, you mean Thailand?
                Here is one truth. I have not traveled extensively in Asia, but I did spend a little time in Hong Kong (long before China took control, and fiendishly broke its promise to allow for self-rule). If you are at all curious about Taipei, or Taichung, or Tainan, or Kaoshiung---Taiwan’s booming, effervescent cities---well, they have the feel of small towns, in their warmth and ambience, compared to the New York complexity and aggression of Hong Kong. To return to Taipei---even with all its hyper-crowding and  energy overdrive---after a week in Hong Kong was to de-stress and be comfortable. Frenetic streets, terrible traffic and cacophony notwithstanding.
                I was lucky to travel all over the country: to the ethereal mountain retreat of Hsi-Tou, the little beaches of tropical Kenting in the south, the papaya and mango farms outside of Tainan, the white ginger-scented jungles north of Taipei, the “rainy city” (now drought city!) of Keelung on the northeast coast, the little Hakka (a nomadic Chinese clan whose name translates to “guest people”) village of Hsin-Pu (now not so little), all the major cities. I studied Mandarin in Taipei (enjoying the gusto of walking home each day through several miles of heavy foot traffic, and elephant stampede commuters), gave a few lectures about classical music with my then-wife (a professor of piano) at suburban high schools, tutored students in grammar, pronunciation, writing. I shoehorned my way regularly into various temples to worship various deities, bowing three times with huge sticks of smoking incense (bai bai); white-knuckled through careening high-speed taxi rides, hiked up mountains (not so daring as it sounds; I was in line with hundreds of others), drank pu-erh tea at sunset in a one-time Japanese mining village overlooking the ocean, picked seasonal strawberries along with hordes of giddy kids, declined offers to drink fresh snake blood for virility (which I hope no longer goes on), once walked all over Taipei in a pounding rain, sans umbrella, singing along with earphone-pumped Beatle songs at the top of my lungs. (Talk about nervous looks.)

                 Funny the things that stick in memory. For some reason, I often think of one incredibly delicious cup of coffee that put me in a quasi-ecstatic state, sitting with my wife one afternoon in a dear little Taipei café. As we paused, simply watching the crazy parade of machine and people outside, the din of Mandarin washing over me, incomprehensible, the burnished wood interior comforting, a light rain falling outside, I really thought there was no better place in the world, ever. But that has more to do with me than Taiwan. . .maybe.
                You could say I got the cook’s tour of the island, but it was much more intimate than that, because I was welcomed into my former wife’s wonderful family---people who embodied ren-ching-wei to the hilt. The brothers were rollicking, great guys---both engineering geniuses---the sisters were sweet and a little scolding, and it combined for an earthy family atmosphere that I had never experienced. These were country folk, at heart, though all went on to enormous success, studying in the U.S., and working in Taipei. My former wife could look out the front window of her childhood home and see the fields where she had, as a little girl, fallen asleep on the backs of water buffalo on hot afternoons, courtesy of the local lady rice paddy planters. My very tough Hakka ex-mother-in-law, a widow early in life who singlehandedly raised five children, had a long lineage in the little hamlet of Hsin-Pu, and had spent about 45 years heroically teaching grade school there. Her story was bound up in Taiwan history: her husband was a fine water-colorist from China who came to the Taiwan countryside to paint, fell in love, and was marooned when the Communists took over China.  He designed the family home with a roof emulating a college graduate’s mortarboard, to instill the idea of scholarship in his kids.
                I have very fond and touching memories of spending several Chinese New Years in Hsin-Pu, where different families set off strings of firecrackers at pre-arranged moments alllllll night long, as prescribed by fortune-tellers for the banishment of bad luck. To the accompaniment of highly disturbed maniac roosters with pipes to rival Pavarotti. There were toasts, homemade feasts of local dishes, and endless pay-respect visits on New Year’s Day by neighbors, former students of my mother-in-law, all part of heartfelt tradition. (Hell, the whole country feels like one big family at New Year.)  There were evening bats that chased rocks you threw, thinking they were prey; bottle rockets from rooftops popping over fields, long morning walks through a tranquil valley of persimmon farms, then up the side of a mountain several hundred steps to a freezing hillside temple, where a troupe of shave-headed monks and nuns chanted O-mi-to-fo (Amida Buddha, a deity/concept of Shin Buddhism). And there were trips into the big temple in the nearby big city (well, medium) of Hsin-Chu, a kind of riot of antic families in new clothes (for New Year), rain, umbrellas, Chinese opera, the perpetually rising fingers of incense, a jigsaw puzzle of hawker stalls purveying everything from the trademark local dumpling to hot red bean soup and black sesame sweet rice balls (tang yuan.)
                Yes, of course, I experienced some very troubling moments and aspects of the country, as one would anywhere. There can be suffocating air pollution (thanks largely to China’s notorious “brown cloud” of particulate matter that periodically swoops in). I remember a woman in Hsin-Pu whose life and dreams of coming to the U.S. were ruined by a date rape, pregnancy, and subsequent insanity. There was the time I accidentally clipped a rear-view mirror on a car that happened to be filled with punk gangsters. Suffice to say I lived. There was the abysmal treatment of animals, and preponderance of sick, mangy cats and dogs, and while that problem persists, there has been much improvement since my time there (including legislation to protect animals, and the advent of many animal welfare organizations.) One especially poignant memory was when I took a few hours to trim and cut the matted fur of the family guard dog who normally let only family approach him. He looked at me with trust and gratitude as I cut clump after clump away, speaking to him gently, then managing to bathe him in soapy water and brush his fine coat out to a lustrous sheen. Ha-Lee---what a good boy he was! Well, I seem to be off on another tangent here. . .
                So why did I not remain in Taiwan, if I liked it so well? Stupidity, really. I placed more importance on my so-called journalism career back in this country, never mind that I was paid wretchedly, and too often treated like used tissue by some truly awful, awful people masquerading as editors. Despite what I unabashedly call the excellence of my work. In the end, the strain simply proved too much for the marriage. Such, sad to say, is life.
                But to get back to that college graduation concert featuring “O Shenandoah”. . .Taiwan is also, I must mention, Music Land. I do not exaggerate. People just exude do-re-mi. Put Taiwan blood under a microscope, and the cells appear as musical notes. Everybody, it seems, knows how to sing on key, or whistle (really well!), and usually to play instruments. I mentioned the Beethoven-broadcasting garbage trucks, well, that’s just a hint. Cars backing up play “There’s No Place Like Home” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You” (which, by the way, delightfully dogged me all over the island, from café to bus to taxi to 7-11, on my first visit there, way back in 1986), and cafes pulse with everything from opera to Sinatra to the late, beloved Taiwan songbird, Teresa Teng. People might not know the name of a piece, or its composer, but everyone seems to know such classic melodies as, for instance, the heart-rending 7th movement of “Scenes From Childhood,” by Robert Schumann. Hell, you hear the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9^th coming out of machine shops. The preponderance, the ubiquity of music---classical, jazz, and, yes, all the latest western trends in terrible pop (sorry to say)---are a phenomenon, nothing less. It seems that people in Taiwan simply can’t live without music, mostly pretty good music, and I believe---as countless studies, and many a philosopher and literary figure, from Shakespeare to Nietzsche, allege---that this plays an enormous role in the mental health, happiness, and ren-ching-wei of the place. I mean, every major city in this little 14,000-square mile land seems to have a symphony orchestra and lavish performing arts center. In fact, a visually arresting, downright spectacular new center just opened in 2018 in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, complete with huge symphony hall and opera house---built, ironically, by a Dutch company, a kind of poetic continuation of the 17^th century Dutch occupation of parts of Taiwan. It was the Dutch, by the way, who dubbed the place “Ilha Formosa,” or “beautiful island.”

                And the ilha is still just so formosa, in every important respect, literally and figuratively. The idea of China attacking and occupying Taiwan---for strictly hegemonic reasons disguised with sheer lies about the place being a “renegade province” (see accompanying article)---is too horrific to contemplate. To imagine this shimmering, buoyant, thriving crazy-quilt of humanity subjugated by the brutes of Beijing is just shattering. Taiwan not only is a de facto self-contained society and country, with no history of ever being part of Communist China (and little history of ever being designated, against its will, part of ancient China), but it is just a singular, vibrant, rambunctious place, drunk with freedom, relentlessly productive, doggedly committed to democracy, human rights, and. . .the best stuff of life.
                See? I told you. I’m reduced to superlatives. Maybe it's best to say that for many years now, whenever I hear the tender, poetic, wistful words of that loving paean to that almost mythic, American river in Virginia. . .
                I think only of Taiwan.

                        © 2022 Rip Rense. All rights reserved.


RECOMMENDED:
Taiwan Plus: New 24-hour English Language Taiwan Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/TaiwanPlusNews
Ten Things Taiwan Does Better Than Anyplace Else
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/10-things-taiwan/index.html
How To Enjoy Your Life in Taiwan
https://www.foreignersintaiwan.com/blog-370963385326684/how-to-enjoy-your-life-in-taiwan
Top Seven Things to Do in Taipei
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YL50CiVheo
Walking Tour: Ximending in Taipei
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfwiwt1OAZk
Jiufen: Quaint Former Mining Village on the Sea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qJy-1XdqjY
Josh Ellis's Wonderful Photo Journal of Taiwan
http://goteamjosh.com/

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© 2022 Rip Rense. All rights reserved.