Confucianism & Confused Students -- Part Two

I decided to enroll in a Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language Certification Program hosted by NTU. It’s a bit of a drag ‘cause classes are held on the weekends (8 to 5 Saturdays and Sundays), but it’s always good to have it under my belt. Hopefully it’d open more doors when I get back to North America.

All it said on the website is that there would be a writing test and an oral test, but there was nothing on what the tests were about. How typical! For as long as I can remember, test-designers in Taiwan have always had trouble distinguishing the differences between geniuses and industrious people. The fact that they give you as little information about the test as possible shows suggests that the so-called “good students” are the ones that don’t need to study.

Since I had no idea what I was going to be tested on, I had no way to prepare for it. A week before the exam, I thought I’d start reading a Chinese book get myself thinking in Chinese again. However, I was very busy at work last week and the book I chose was extremely boring. I read the news online the night before the exam, just in case if they wanted to discuss some current events. That was about it.

It was hot like a sauna on the day of the exam. The air was not moving at all, and the city was covered in a thick layer of smug. I was walking toward the LTTC and reciting some Chinese phrases and sayings in my head. I saw some people scattered just outside the entrance of the language training center, and I noticed that they seemed to be “studying”. How odd?! They were reading their notebooks and mumbling. “Did I miss anything when I read the information on the website?” The though made my heart miss a beat, but then I started breathing again. It’s Taiwan! I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some kind of a course you can take at a cram school to prepare for this test. I decided to have breakfast in the classroom ‘cause it was air-conditioned. Boy, did I get some dirty looks from my fellow test-takers?! In Chinese culture, my behavior was considered as “showing off” – I’d studied so well that I didn’t have to cram at the last minute. With their little notebooks (I was so curious as for what they’d written in them), other test-takers made sure to make me, the weirdo, feel uncomfortable. It was really very amusing. Little did they know, I wasn’t pretending to be nonchalant. I truly had no idea what was coming up next.

The writing test was a breeze. The topic was “Returning Home”, something that’s up my alley. As soon as we finished the writing test, the staff was eager to herd us upstairs to prepare for the oral test. According to the schedule I printed out from the Internet, I had about half an hour until it was my turn to do the oral test, so I asked a staff member why I needed to go upstairs now. I wasn’t able to finish my question before she started fluttering in the typical Taiwanese “I’m-freaking-out-because-you’re-making-it-difficult-for-me-to-do-my-job” kind of way. This is how it went down:

S: “Okay, okay, everybody. Please hurry up to the third floor to prepare for the oral
test….. Hey! Put your name tag on your chest….(the person had it below her right breast)…okay, now hurry up to the third floor. Thank you.”

K: “I’m #72 for the oral test and, (showing her the schedule from the Internet)
according to this…..”

S: “Okay, please just hurry up to the third floor. You don’t want to be late for your oral
test.”

K: “No, I don’t. But it’s not going to start for another half an hour.”

S: “Please just….. where’s your name tag?”

K: “Here.” (Showing her the name tag in my hand)

S: (annoyed, sigh) “You’re supposed to put your name tag on your chest so the
teacher can see your name.”

K: “Okay, I’ll do that when I get upstairs.”

S: “Which is NOW, right?! I mean, look, everybody is going upstairs.”

K: “I just want to step outside to get some fresh air, especially after sitting down for
so long.”

S: “But why? You should go upstairs.”

K: “May I go to the bathroom?”

S: “Yes, but hurry. And put your name tag on your chest.”

I went out the front door and got a coffee from across the street.

When I finally made my way upstairs, there were three huge lineups outside of the teachers’ offices. The number didn’t mean anything ‘cause it was on a first-come-first-serve basis. There was no point “hurrying up to the third floor” ‘cause I ended up standing in line, (in the very stuffy and hot hallway, I might add), for more than half an hour until it was my turn to go in anyway.

The results come out this Friday.

If I can get in, great! If not, then I’ll be able to enjoy this summer every weekend.

Confucianism & Confused Students – Part One

Confucius was the most influential person in the past two thousand years of Chinese history. He was a philosopher and an educator. His father died when he was young, so he had to climb the ladder as a government employee. He never wrote or published anything when he was alive. It was his students who recalled and recorded his words after his death, and the collection became the Chinese equivalent of the Bible. Confucianism, however, is a way of life, not a religion.

According to what was recorded, Confucius was extreme and fastidious. He could lose sleep and forget to eat because he was touched by the beauty of a piece of music, but he wouldn’t eat unless it was prepared right. He only ate delicate, well-prepared food at the appropriate time of the day. If the ingredients were not cut properly, he wouldn’t eat it. If a meal was not served in the time he considered appropriate for dining, he’d rather starve until the next appropriate time to dine. He was a jock too; and like most jocks, he didn’t think much of women. He enjoyed sports, and was very skillful at archery, hunting, fishing, driving (?), and horseback riding. He did marry once, but his wife left him and he never bothered remarrying. Well, who could blame her, really.

According to Confucianism, a country is like a big family, with the Emperor as the head. In this hierarchical society, everyone should know his place and no one should ever challenge the authority. A person’s name and title represent his class in the society; hence everyone needs to know how to behave around other people. Manners are therefore important. The subordinate should always kowtow to the superior; a son must never disobey his father. One should always adjust the language one uses, both verbal and behavioral, based on the social class of the person one is talking to. It shouldn’t be surprising why it became a huge hit as soon as it was published: Based on this hierarchical pyramid, everyone must listen to the Emperor and no one else. Moreover, the absolute power an Emperor possesses is undeniable and indisputable because it’s determined by fate.

Confucianism quickly became the book to read for anyone who ever dreamed of becoming somebody one day in ancient China.

Back then, working for the government was a noble job, and millions of people each year applied for the few positions available. An Emperor in Tung Dynasty came up with the idea of establishing a selection process in which scholars from all over China would have a chance to express their interpretation of Confucianism. The rationale behind it is simple: people who thoroughly understand Confucianism are the best government employees. Such brilliance took the society by storm and it lasted for at least 1,200 years after that Emperor himself was long gone. That was the very first entrance exam in Chinese history.

According to the history textbook, Dr. Sun Yet-Sen demolished this selection system when he successfully overthrew the last Ching Emperor and established the Republic of China. However, anyone who knows a little bit about Chinese culture knows that the system still exists. This system has become a goal of life in ancient China and modern Asia. This system is the rotting core of Asian education. This system is the very reason that Asian students are good at memorization, not at invention and innovation. This system is why I’m getting up at 6 in the morning on a Saturday.

AQUA KITTY

I've been talking about getting back in shape and doing exercise, but the only muscles moved were the ones in my articulatory organs. Then I remembered that employees at the Language Training & Testing Center get a discount at the NTU Sports Center, so I went to check it out. It's ridiculously expensive for the public (CDN$600 for a year only to use the pool. You have to pay another CDN $125 to use the weight room), but we get a 60% discount.

So I bought two swimsuits and jumped in the pool.

The earliest pictures of me in a pool were taken when I was 5 or 6 years old. I remember aunt Wen teaching me and her daughter Carol how to swim, and we went swimming almost every weekend in the summer. Aunt Wen and my mom were best friends. They both ended their unfortunate marriages and were raising their daughters on their own. Growing up as an only child, I enjoyed hanging out with Carol on weekends and idolized single women like my mother for their strength and elegance. I can't recall a moment when my mom, or aunt Wen, lost their cool even though they had to juggle working full-time, doing chores, and being a mom AND a dad. With mothers like this, Carol and I were taught to be strong and independent from an early age.

We grew up to be strong and independent women.

Around the same time when I went to Vancouver, Carol went to Paris by herself, learned French, and studied hotel management. She fell in love and married into a wealthy French family. He told her that he didn't want to have children and his family didn’t want her to work. Despite what she really wanted, Carol quit her job and they never had children. She became increasingly unhappy and started putting on weight. He became progressively more irritable and started calling her names. Though she tried to hold their marriage together, she left him the first (and the last) time he laid hands on her.

Not long after she moved out of the family, he remarried and had a baby. Carol fell into depression and developed severe anorexia.

December 2004, I went to Paris to visit Carol. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment just outside of Paris with her then-boyfriend Oliver. She was still a bit too thin for her body type, but she looked healthy and happy. Oliver is almost painfully shy, but he's got a kind and gentle soul. They work in the same hotel. He is a chef and she is the manager of the front desk. They had a daughter last year and they moved to a bigger apartment in Paris.

I wonder if they're going to have a wedding.

I really should go visit them before I leave Asia.

Taipei -- you hate to love it





Where exactly do you expect me to park again?









This pattern on a cement wall. That's TAIWAN.






I loved the red.... and the three water meters side by side are pretty cute too.







B-brother's work.




A weird-looking bug resting on the T of Taipei City.

Happy Mother's Day

Originally we planned to take my mom to an experimental forest near central Taiwan, but the weather was too unstable and wet. Bill and I went for a walk after breakfast, trying to come up with another idea. Sunday morning (before 10) is the best time to go for a walk in Taipei. It's quiet and clean. Well...... most importantly, there are not so many psychotic bus drivers on the road yet. You also discover cheerful surprises that you may overlook during daily commute. For example, we found these pretty flowers on the sidewalk near National Taiwan University. We have never seen them before, and we live near the university!









After walking for a while, Bill suggested that we went for a drive along the coast. He said if the weather wasn't good, we could always think of it as storm-watching. When we told my mom the idea, she immediately agreed. She told us that she had seen a TV show talking about a white Mediterranean coffee shop on the coastline, and she really wanted to go there to have coffee.









The weather, as you can see, worsened as the day went on. However, the amazing thing about beaches is that, whatever the weather condition might be, you can always find beauty at the beach. We had lunch at a harbor (and later discovered that they have whale-watching boats there too) and stopped wherever we saw interesting. My mom kept an eye out for anything white. Everytime she saw one, she went, "Uh!... No.... that's not white." After a while, Bill and I started teasing her about this "imaginary" coffee shop. I told her that we were gonna make her walk home if we couldn't find it.















We were out on the coast for about six hours, making a loop from the east coast up north then back down to Taipei. The traffic wasn't as bad as we expected, and we were back in Taipei just in time for Mother's Day dinner with Karen.

We never found a white Mediterranean coffee shop, but we had lots of fun.

First Hike of the Summer

Dorion suggested going for a swim in the mountains,
Bill remembered the small pond that is tucked away in the middle of nowhere,
Kate just wanted to play outside,
so off we went to Pingxi.







There were many beautiful plants and flowers on the way.














and some pretty cute two-legged friends too (well, the beehive was scary & impressive).








After we reached the "half-way point", the boys went up to the summit of Xiaotzi (the dutiful son) Mt. Kate waited for them under a roof of tree branches, fighting off mosquitoes and bees.









Then Dorion went on to the peak of Tzimufeng (the loving mother) while Bill and Kate headed toward the pond, taking a short detour to get some brew.








Voila! The pond!














Time to pose for some cool (and cooling) photoes.








Afterward, we went back to the town to have some soy pudding. Once a bustling mining town, Pingxi is now famous for its sky lantern festival and hiking trails. Whether it's to carry coal out or to bring visitors in, the railway that runs through the heart of town remains the central lifeline of the people here.

















Though it has already become one the the most famous tourist attractions in northern Taiwan, you can easily find things that reveal the rugged core of a mining town.