The Moon Festival, Two Anniverseries, and a Super Typhoon

This weekend, all Taiwan stops to celebrate a legend that dates back to the year 2150 B.C.   As a culture that preserves China's ancient cultural traditions-and in this case a tradition that goes back to ancient times, I find myself as a  historian just gasping in awe when contemplating the persistence of human memory here.  Celebrations in Taiwan  have roots that are so old,  that literally every small occasion is layered like an onion with custom and ritual.  The Moon Festival chronicles the story of an ancient Queen,  Chang-er, who drank the elixir of immortality rather than see her cruel husband, who was a tyrant, take the potion and live forever.  She took the elixir, and found her body growing very light.  She floated up to the moon, and now lives there, watching over humanity.  The Moon Festival also celebrates the rebellion of the Chinese people against the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in the 12th century.  The Chinese rebels made special cakes which signalled the beginning of their uprising, and signalled the recovery of the Chinese Ming Dynasty-the government that  took power from the Yuan or Mongol Dynasty-the regime of Ghengis Khan.  So people here eat moon cakes on this weekend as well, to celebrate the recovery of Chinese sovereignty at that time.

Since both the 60th anniversery of the establishment of the Chinese Communist regime,  and the anniversery of the Tiananmen Square student uprising in 1989 took place last week and this week, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, populations with a history of being outside the Communist regime, have staged protests and memorials for the victims of the Communist regime.  Taiwan and Hong Kong are also places where in a sense the "losers" in the Chinese civil war of 1949-1950 have established an alternative version of modern Chinese society.  My home in Hsinchu is a center for democratic protest and mainland China watching-watching with an eye to maintaining Taiwan's sovereignty, democratic freedoms, and freedom of public expression.  Last weekend my friend and I came upon a huge protest parade in downtown Hsinchu.  It was a consortium of protesters:  the Falun Gong-a group of meditators who are banned on the mainland, workers who worry that the new Taiwanese/Chinese trade agreements over free trade across the Strait will affect their job security,  and human rights activists commemorating the Tiananmen Square anniversery.  To the beat of drums, whole familes paraded down the main street of Hsinchu, draped with  slogan-bearing placards.  It was peaceful, huge, and awe-inspiring.

This weekend all of Taiwan is also watching a pair of big typhoons make their way across the Pacific.  Typhoon Melor is going to hit Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas Island chain, hit the Northern Philippines which is already reeling from another horrific tropical storm that has claimed hundreds of victims in Manila last week,  and then slam into to the southern Chinese coast.  The other typoon in the area is Typhoon Parma, which is set to turn into a supertyphoon and hit southern Taiwan early next week, in the very area still recovering from a prior tropical storm:  Morokot, which devasted the region last August.  The Pacific is a storm factory-and here in Taiwan, each storm as for all the peoples of the Pacific, can in one day change one's life forever.  This reality contributes to the atmosphere of timelessness here-the constant sense that what is important is the present moment.  This is a Buddhist belief, a Taoist belief, and is at its most basic an outlook ground into the spirit here-where people face the terror of the Pacific, the uncertainty of earthquakes, and in terms of the politics, the uncertainty of being in the middle of a never solved civil war-a conflict that has divided Chinese and Taiwanese families here for generations.

When I was reading the Taipei Times this week  I came upon a story which illustrates how this deep past, and this living in a Buddhist, moment oriented present can weave itself into daily life.  I read a story of a man who lost his mother  to a hit and run car accident seventeen years ago, who prays to the Goddess Matsu (a Goddess nearly as old as Chang er-the lady on the Moon) that he will find the person who hit his mother.  He sets up a shrine to her on  the anniversery of her death, and also tries to live in the present-meditating everyday to help himself live with his grief.  Pragmatically Chinese, he uses a combination of traditions to address his pain.  It is this varied mosaic of traditions, politics, history, and geography that come together in Taiwan, making it a fascinating place to live.

Shopping for Clothing and Dumplings

Well, last Friday, I went to a store in Hukou (near me) to look at Chinese style clothing.  I am a big Westerner who at my thinnest would have trouble finding clothing here.  As one who needs to lose weight, I accept that I am just out of luck here on clothing most of the time.  But, my friend Jennifer accomplished the impossible!  I found clothing in my size.  I did not not have even look for it myself.  I was measured, and then  the proper size clothing was handed back to me.  I bought a pinkish red jacket, with a tropical flower on the back that buttons up in Chinese style, and two larger pull-overs-again like Chinese jackets for  the winter.  When I turned next to shoe buying I was on more solid ground so to speak.  My feet at size six and 1/2  are well within Chinese size range.  So, when I started trying on slip-on thong-like shoes with a wooden heel and gold straps, the ladies in the store complimented me on my "lotus feet."-which used to mean of course feet that had been bound into a tiny shape not so long ago!  My new shoes have straps wide enough to be inscribed with a traditional Tang poem.  My friend Jennifer, a colleague from Kaoshiung, who is as tiny all over as I am big, was wonderful in negotiating a cheaper price for me from this store, which is run like a clothing warehouse.  She is a Tang dynasty poetry scholar; she promised to translate the poem on my shoes next week!   She also expanded on the translation for Hsinchu.  Hsin means "new" and Chu means "bamboo."  So the full character for Hsinchu pictured on this blog  literally means:  New Bamboo.  Jennifer lives in Jhubei, which could be spelled "Chubei."  Bei means north in Mandarin.  Chu still means bamboo.  Therefore, Jhubei, which is very near Hsinchu means: Bamboo North, or North Bamboo.  The same logic applies to towns here.  Taipei can also be spelled Taibei, and means Tai North, or Taiwan North.  Nan means south;  Tainan, means Taiwan South-Tainan is the oldest city in Taiwan south of here.  Taichung means Taiwan Middle, and Taidong or Taitung means Taiwan East.  See the related character combos in my pictures.  I am working to learn these place names, because already, just knowing the characters can prevent me from getting lost, particularly in the south-where English signs are not so plentiful.  Taiwan itself roughly translates as a platform for a bay.  But my friend Catherine in the office, who helped me translate this word  said that often Chinese words do not combine meanings so logically for every word or pair of words.  Sometimes two characters are just put together because someone thought the two would look nice together regardless of  the meaning.   This is the picture side of the characters.  She does not think anyone was really thinking of a meaning when Taiwan was originally put together as a character pair.  I think the characters for Taiwan  are pretty-perhaps their pleasing look to the eye is what prompted someone to put them together as a pair.

After buying my new wardrobe, Jennifer and I went out to eat dumplings, a very Chinese delicacy.  They are steamed and have a variety of stuffings and sauces in which one dips these savory little morsels. The sauces are soya, or vinegar based with garlic or ginger.  One goes to a special table to pick one's sauce as carefully as one picks the stuffing for one's serving of  dumplings.  Each region of China and Taiwan has their own dumpling specialty. The trick of course is picking  the slippery dumplings up with  chopsticks.  I managed this pretty well last Friday!  I have learned that the secret is to pick up the bowl while eating-so that I do not have to transport any bite of food too far.  This is the Chinese way, to place the bowl just under the mouth, and then to use one's chopsticks.  Bowls are tiny-so one is never lifting a large amount of food in this technique.

The Tang dynasty ruled China from 600 A.D. to about 900 A.D. and is considered the "Golden Age" dynasty,  in which China became a world power in Asia.  It was in this dynasty that China spread its culture to Japan and Korea, invented printing, and began to dominate this part of the world culturally.  Chinese people learn Tang era poetry the way we learn Shakespeare sonnets in the West.  It is great to have an immortal Tang poem on my new pair of shoes.

There is  the week's snapshot-gracious living-so easy to do here in Taiwan. Shopping followed by a good meal.

History: Living it everyday

 This is my first ever post on this Taiwan blog!   I have been living in Taiwan for two years as a teacher.  I have been living outside the United States (my country of citizenship) since 1997.  When I first left the U.S. to teach history in international high schools, our hyper connected by computer world was in its infancy.  Then, just getting email was incredible.  Now, one can tell anyone what one is doing:  anytime, anywhere.  I have been writing letters home describing my various countries of residence since 1997:   Berlin, Germany, Moscow, Russia, the island of Guam, and now Hsinchu,  Taiwan. This blog is going to be a permanent public place where what would be in a letter will now be posted-and recorded for whoever might be interested-now or in the future.  Listen to me!  Such a historian!  Historians are all obsessed with who might be reading what they write.  Even if I knew that my impressions would remain secret or anonymous-which is obviously not the case or I would not be creating this blog -I would write my impressions down anyway.  Don't we all want someone to know we were once here?   

What follows is what I am doing, what I notice, and  what I observe here in my Asian home right now.  See my biographical information for exactly what my bias is!  That is how I train my students.

Part of my bias I will reveal here:  I am a child of  the space age.  I was raised on Star Trek re-runs and and Star Wars movies.  I dreamed of space.  I dreamed of travel.  I imagined  that I would somehow feel more at home in any society other than my own.  My experience as a child who had to move around much of the time in the U.S. fed these dreams-as did a constant stream of travelers who infected me with the excitement of learning about the unfamiliar-my parents, their friends, and later my colleagues at work.  So, I have become a professional traveler.  In the process I have also learned to appreciate that one can never just read about history or a particular society.  Only when  actually experiencing  a people and a place is one on the path to   true cultural knowledge.  The process of discovery never ends.  I am now addicted to the journey; an addiction I never want to break.

Hsinchu is a suburb of Taipei, in the northwest corner of Taiwan.  It is filled with workers in the computer and science industries-principally the makers and designers of computer chips-the ones in Acer computers.  It is connected to Taipei by a high tech high speed rail system, and thus is also turning into a place where tourists can stay.  Hsinchu is old enough to have its own city gate, and its own temple, dating from the eighteenth century, when Taiwan was a province of the Chinese empire.  Originally it was located in a bamboo grove, so part of the character for its name in Chinese represents bamboo trees in a grove. That is how I recognize this town when I am on the train or somewhere in Taiwan where the characters are not translated into English.  I teach in a bilingual high school-Chinese/English-originally begun to help Chinese students, whose parents had worked in the American computer and science industries, mainstream back into the Taiwanese educational system.  Now, my school helps students who are English speakers receive advanced training in English, and offers college level courses in English-principally in the Advanced Placement Program- as well as a full Chinese program.  My school is part of a larger Chinese universe, a high school that trains  the children of all the workers in the Science Park of Hsinchu-an enclave of science and technology offices and residences.  This enclave is gated;  I live within this community which is very educated and high tech oriented.  In the past I have lived within totally  American enclaves.  It is great to live in an all Chinese enclave-I feel much more part of the community than has been possible in other places I have worked in my career.

I have enjoyed getting to know Chinese and Taiwanese culture in the last two years.  Mandarin is not easy to learn.   One must learn to speak in four tones, which must be pronounced at precisely the right pitch for words to be recognized.   Fortunately here people speak plenty of  English, so life for visitors is relatively easy.  This evening I enjoyed getting a massage in the downtown area, and last weekend I went to the Juming Museum north of Taipei to see the sculpture of a modern sculptor:  Ju-Ming.   I also went to Baishawan Beach earlier this month, which is near the northern tip of  Taiwan.  Taiwan deserves its other name which is Portuguese:   Formosa, which means beautiful.  Everyday I immerse myself in a complex Chinese world, which also has streams in it which belong to the native peoples of  Taiwan, as well as to other Asian cultural influences from Japan and Korea.  In each post I shall endeavor to describe something personal to my own experience, and then to relate it to the larger history I am learning.    History marks all places.  The mystery is to discover how and where.