My Porn

If you live in a foreign country for any number of years, you are certain to offend people. And the more distant the culture is from yours, the more frequent your offenses will be. There’s really no getting round this. You can use your own language, their language, or a mix of both, but every couple months, in one context or other, you’ll set someone to muttering curses at you under their breath.

Just today, here in Taipei where I live and teach as an expat, I ran into Daniel, a student I’d taught five years ago when he was a senior in high school. I was waiting for a traffic light, and noticed a young man on the sidewalk a few paces away, staring at me gravely but not moving. I finally recognized it was my ex-student. I said Hi to him, he loosened up a bit, and told me he’d just graduated with a degree in finance. I wished him well on his job hunt, but explained that I had to run as I was late for my class. As I stepped away from him to cross the street, I couldn’t help chuckling to myself, wondering if he still remembered the terrible insult I'd delivered him when he was my student.

Given his initial glare as we waited for the light, I was guessing he did remember.

The insult, as usual, was an accident, actually more his fault than mine.

Back in the days when I taught him, Daniel was known in our school for two things. First, he was obsessed with magic. Rather than prepare for exams or finish homework, he spent free time before class performing magic tricks for the other students (who then likewise couldn’t finish their homework). I’d come into the classroom and Daniel would be at the front, in the middle of some trick.

“Uh, sorry,” he’d say, and sit down.

Second, Daniel was hopelessly smitten by a classmate at his high school, a girl who rejected his love and now and then left him visibly on the verge of tears. When Daniel had no one to watch his magic tricks, he could often be found sitting in a funk, staring at the floor or wringing his hands. None of us at our English institute knew who this mystery girl was; we only knew she was ruining his life.

In short, I knew Daniel as a budding teenage magician whose tricks did nothing to sway the unknown beauty he loved and whose picture he refused to show us.

How then did the insult happen?

One day after class, Daniel came up to me at the front of the room to show me a copy of a copy-shop printed magazine. He opened it to a certain page and pointed at a simple line drawing of a girl in a miniskirt on a park bench, sitting in what was supposed to be a seductive pose. There were some lines in Chinese next to the drawing.

“Teacher, this is my porn,” Daniel announced weirdly, pointing at the page.

I thought the drawing wasn’t very good, and as for porn, it didn’t even count. But Daniel was waiting for my reaction.

“Hm,” I said after looking at it for awhile. “That’s pretty bad porn. I feel sorry for you.”

I remember that his face went red at these words, and he clenched his fist, ready to punch me. But since the students had been raucous during class, and Daniel was something of a performer, I thought he was just joking, so I laughed and walked away.

Ten minutes later, after Daniel left for the night, my colleague Erica was putting away papers next to my desk.

“Poor Daniel,” she said. “He’s really totally in love with that girl. He thinks about nothing else.”

“Nothing else except magic,” I said. “Anyhow, suffering is good for art, so maybe he’ll end up being a great magician.”

“Did he show you his poem?” she asked.

And then it hit me. What Daniel had tried to show me wasn’t the lame line drawing of the girl, but the Chinese lines next to it, which I hadn’t bothered to read, and which were obviously a love poem he’d written. And the book he’d shown me must have been his school’s literary magazine, in which he was declaring to the world his true love for the girl. And when Daniel had said to me “This is my porn,” what he really was trying to say was “This is my poem.” So that, from Daniel’s point of view, our brief exchange had gone like this:

“Teacher, this is my poem [which I wrote for that girl I love].”

Teacher reads through poem, says: “Hm, that’s a pretty bad poem. I feel sorry for you.”

Student is mortally insulted, wants to stand up for himself and his love, wonders if he should punch teacher.

But before he makes up his mind, the teacher laughs in his face in front of the whole class, and walks away.

It was all so sad. I knew I’d have to explain to Daniel what had really happened the next time he came to class. But in fact, that night was the last time he ever came. It was end of semester, and he wasn’t taking summer classes.

Though this particular insult was mostly the fault of Daniel's poor pronunciation, I know for a fact I’ve also offended more than a few people thanks my faulty Chinese pronunciation. Any Westerner who lives here is fated to say at least a handful of outrageous things in public per annum. It comes from the fact that Mandarin is a tonal language, and if you get the intonation a little wrong, if you sing the words a bit off key, the words become entirely different words.

I knew one Canadian who, when he first got here, wanted to get some aspirin for his cold symptoms. He went into a pharmacy.

“Uhh . . . I have a problem,” he said to the woman behind the counter.

“Yes? What is the problem?” she asked.

“Mm . . . Uhh . . . I fuck cats.”

The pharmacist stepped back from the counter, and the other people present all turned to look at him.

What my Canadian friend had meant to say was: “Mm . . . Uhh . . . I have a cold.” But get the tones wrong, and “have a cold” quickly becomes “fuck cats”.

This is only one of thousands of possible slip ups given the slipperiness of tonal languages like Mandarin. I once left a coffee shop with all the counter girls laughing aloud at me. I’d wanted them to help me grind the beans I’d just bought and couldn’t figure out what was so funny. Later I figured it out. What I’d been saying was: “Excuse me. Do you think you could help stroke me?”

Often enough I leave people laughing or frowning, but still, later on, can’t figure out what I’d actually said.

With more Westerners in Taiwan now, the locals have grown used to these mishaps. It makes for good comedy. But still a basic rule applies: If you’re a man who makes it a decade in a country this foreign without getting punched, you’re already doing pretty well.

E.M.
Taipei

My new book Idiocy, Ltd. is now available at Amazon.

In the Reflection is the Daughter of Time (by Claire Fan-Chiang 范姜詠欣)

One of the great thing about teaching kids in Taiwan is that so many of them turn out brilliant. Their keen ability to study and remember (gained during their years of hard work learning to read and write their native language Chinese) now and again results in great things--especially when a student decides to take up the pen for more than just the usual dull homework.

The following story by my student Claire Fan-Chiang (范姜詠欣) is a great example of a serious young creative mind in action. Claire is in junior high school in Taipei. She’s never lived or studied in an English-speaking country. Nonetheless, she’s got a great knack for narrative in English, and pulls of some really fine passages. Claire’s a pretty serious artist too. Her own illustration appears below.

Eric Mader
* * *

IN THE REFLECTION IS THE DAUGHTER OF TIME
A battered green car sped over the muddy road, the rain thumping on its windows. Ingrid glanced down at the fuel gauge and furrowed her brows. The pointer was closing in on the ‘E’, but from what the GPS system showed she was still far from the campsite.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

What a mistake it had been to pass the gas station without fueling the car two hours ago. As she slowed down the car made a deep honking sound similar to a horn blowing through the wind.

The driving seemed endless. Three hours had passed, but she’d seen no landmark through the length of the journey. By now she seriously suspected that the GPS system had broken down. Cursing silently in her mind, she stopped by the road and dug out the map and compass. The compass told her she was driving east when she should have been driving north.

“Ugh!”

Night was falling, and she had no idea if she could reach the site in time. She was actually more worried about the fuel. It didn’t seem that it could last much longer. Since she had no choice but to head back, she turned the car keys in the ignition to restart the engine.

But the car would not react.

“Damn the bloody hell!”

She kicked hard against the floorboard, frustrated. Still, the car made no sound.

I’m stuck in the middle of the wild.

I’m stuck in the middle of the wild with bears lurking in the forest.

The thought shot a spasm of fear through her mind. Bears are strong and fierce, and her second-hand Toyota didn’t look stable enough to defend her from a bear. But if she got out of the car she would have nothing else to defend herself than the Swiss army blade in her pocket.

However, she was overwhelmed by fatigue, and after sitting there awhile sleep crept up on her before she had made a decision.

* * * Rap rap rap. Rap rap rap.

Ingrid’s eyes shot open, her olive green irises wide and alert. Her mind raced and her heart pounded. Slowly, she glanced out from the car windows. Outside stood a man, his face slightly illuminated by the snowy moonlight. Wrinkles were etched deep into his face, and he looked around sixty.

“Miss?” His voice was rather muffled, but she could still hear a thick accent in it. “You lost?”

Ingrid got a better image of him now: the man was wearing a hunting cap covering half his forehead; a red stubby nose shaped like a tomato sat between his rosy cheeks. He was rather plump, and his hair was pepper-and-salt. He carried a hunting rifle on his back.

Ingrid’s heart pounded so badly now she could feel it beating in her veins.

Should I trust him?

“Miss? Miss, you okay in there?” The rapping went on, harder and faster. Still, she made no answer.

“Miss? Miss?” The tone begun to change, worry filled it.

“Huh?” Ingrid faked a sleepy voice, as if she had just woken up. “What’d’ya say?”

“Thank God you’re all right! Are you lost?” The old man let out a chortle that sounded like the screech of a dying goat.

“Yeah, I mean, no, not really, you know—I just got tired and slipped off...heh heh. I’m not lost, really, just tired.” Ingrid laughed with some effort, trying to persuade the old man.

The old man laughed. “Plenty of people lose their way down here, missy. No need to be embarrassed. I guess you were trying to go to the campsite north, right?”

“Um…” Her cheeks burned red. “Well…”

“I’m retired. I usually lives by myself in my villa, hunting wild doves and smoking pipes; but my family visit me every vacation,” said the old man. “My villa is not far away from here, and if you don’t mind, why don’t you come and spend the night with me and my family?”

Ingrid blinked. Her instincts told her something was wrong: maybe it was the overt kindness of the man; maybe it was the invitation to spend the night at his villa. But exhaustion won over her instincts and her head nodded before she could stop herself.

The rest of what happened was a blur. All she remembered was that she packed up her things and walked after the old man for a long time. Just as she started to feel she could walk and sleep at the same time, they reached their destination.

As they approached, Ingrid could see the villa was filled with a warm yellow light and silhouettes of people moving inside. A thirst to get inside it as soon as possible burned inside Ingrid’s mind. The scent of porridge never smelt so amazing, and the warm air seem to be calling her into a paradise. The door swung open, and a boy with bright blue eyes and flaxen hair waved at her with enthusiasm, calling her name. Laughter like tinkling glass reached her ears, and her feet moved up the porch and in through the front door.

A woman named Chelsea with red flaming hair and a man named Edward greeted her. By the fire an old lady in a grey shawl smiled at her. A girl ran over, brown braids flying behind. They took her things upstairs, and Chelsea led her to the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later she was sitting in the tub, foam covering her body, all the aches from her cold nap having seeped out into the water.

Then she was led to the dining room, the scent of vanilla candles intoxicating. The silverware was well polished, and the mahogany table glowed. Vases held flowers of crimson, yellow and white, while the plates served all sorts of food. Steak tartare, boeuf bourguignon, cotoletta, and ossobuco; mounds of bread and desserts extended to the bottom of the table. The fragrance was killing her.

Chairs were pulled out and the family sat, motioning for Ingrid to join them.

Dinner was fabulous; the food was amazing, the kids charming, and the adults humorous. For a second Ingrid felt that she was part of the family, and she was even longing to stay.

When it was time for bed, Ingrid crawled under the blankets, all her luggage packed neatly under the bed. The pillow was extremely soft and comfortable—the best that she had slept on in her whole life. Her eyelids drooped and sleep engulfed her, whisking her into the land of dreams.

* * * Ingrid’s eyes opened.

She had a sudden urge to go to the bathroom. The moonlight slanted through the windows and bathed the woods in peace. An owl was cooing somewhere deep in the tree branches, and a few stars sparkled, like tiny shards of glass.

Ingrid swung her legs out from the quilt-covered bed, the tips of her feet touching the cold ground. It was icy, like frost in autumn. She smiled at the thought of frost. She loved the silvery-grey splinters of frost.

She stood up, stretching and yawning, hearing her joints make a faint cracking sound. She went over to the lights and tried to turn them on.

Yet there was no reaction.

She pushed hard on the button, but it stayed stuck in place, too stubborn to budge. Her brows knit, her eyes narrowing into slits of green.

After a whole minute of the pressing-the-button game (in which Ingrid lost spectacularly against the small, black square of plastic) she went across the room and dug through her pack. The large yellow flashlight was hidden deep inside her bag, and when she switched it on, it gave a strong beam of light.

Pushing the door open, she entered the corridor. The faces in the oil paintings seemed stiff and grotesque, the echo of her footsteps hollow. The corridors twisted and turned, and she was soon lost. It felt like walking in a never-ending labyrinth; she would always come back to the same place she had left minutes ago. She had never expected bathrooms to be so hard to find.

Climbing up an icy marble staircase, the ebony banisters glowing, she came finally to a new landing. The painting next to the staircase portrayed a serene woman, her pale fingers curled around a scarlet apple. Ingrid stared at it, a feeling of familiarity nagging at the back of her mind.

A hiss startled her, like the steam breaking suddenly from the lid of a copper kettle. She turned to see a hallway extend behind her; patches of white moonlight shone while eerie shadows of indigo slanted off the snowy walls. She took a single slow step, the floor creaking below her feet. At the end of the hallway was a door.

The door was dark and well polished, sleek and shiny under the silver moonlight. A brass handle glowed, not a single spec of rust could be felt on it. She knocked softly, making a dull tapping sound. No one answered. Ingrid knocked some more, yet there was still no reply.

“Hello? Can I come in?” Ingrid frowned at her voice. Somehow, it was raspy and dry. She cleared her throat several times, waiting for anybody to answer. Half a minute passed and nothing happened.

“I’m coming in,” she called. Wrapping her fingers firmly round the handle, she swung the door open, only to see a large empty bed, windows gaping wide and the curtains blowing. The room was empty, a feeling of desolation curling out from it. Cobwebs draped lazily over the chest of drawers, and a thick layer of dust could be seen on the glass panes covering the bookshelves. The shelves themselves were locked firmly, and they rattled when she tugged them. It was like the sound of bones knocking against each other.

The closet, however, was open. She shone the light at it and saw several pieces of clothing inside. They’d been thrown or stuffed into it without care, a chaotic heap. Behind them and to the side was a mirror, also dust-covered and filthy. Ingrid stepped forwards, slowly and carefully, and wiped some of the dust off. Black smudges appeared on her rosy fingers and soft white palm, resembling soot on snow.

Reflected in the mirror, however, was a smiling figure, the color of olive and putty, a conglomeration of deep purple gashes held together with strands of crimson thread. The eyes were two empty pits black as coal, and a few white hairs stuck out awkwardly from its head.

Held in his hand was a long hunting rifle; his red nose twitched.

“Hi, missy.”

Doing Everyday Business in Chinese: What Is the Problem Here?

I want to be clear from the start that I'm not writing this to complain and I'm certainly not writing it to imply that the people I deal with every day are idiots. No, I'm trying to raise certain questions about communication in English, say, vs. in Chinese. I'm trying to present what to me is a cultural mystery because, really, the people I deal with every day are clearly not idiots. The mystery is why they choose to communicate as they do.

The following runaround happens to me all the time. In fact it has happened to me so many times during my years in Taipei that I'm now going to take the trouble to type out an example of it verbatim. Today I walked into a restaurant to order food and the ordering process went like this:

At Mos Burger, a fast food restaurant. About 1:00 p.m. All dialogue is in Chinese:

SERVICE PERSON (a woman, about 23): I can help you here, sir.

ME: Yes, I'd like to order three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go. On the one to go I'd like no mayonnaise or butter.

SP: Okay, three original MosBurgers. Would you like them with a meal or a la carte?

ME: A la carte. All three a la carte. [I repeat the order exactly] Three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go, the one to go with no mayonnaise or butter.

SP: Okay. [she incorrectly repeats the order to me] Three MosBurgers, two to go and one for here. And you don't want any mayonnaise on them.

ME: No. I want two for here and one to go. And I only want no butter or mayonnaise on the one to go. The two for here are just regular, with everything.

SP: Okay. Three MosBurgers, two for here and one to go. No mayonnaise on the two for here. [she starts to pass my order to the prep people] Three MosBurgers. . .

ME: No, no. Excuse me. The one to go is for someone who is allergic to dairy. So it's the one to go that has no butter or mayonnaise. No butter on the bread or mayonnaise. The two for here are just regular, with everything.

SP: [she thinks for awhile] Okay. Do you want the original sauce on the three burgers?

ME: Yes, original sauce. Three original flavor. It comes with the sauce.

SP: Okay. So you want three MosBurgers, the one to go with no mayonnaise. Do you want mayonnaise on the ones for here?

ME: Yes. It's only the one to go that has no mayonnaise.

SP: Okay.

[Another service person has been listening. She helpfully pipes in:]

SP2: Would you like cheese on the one to go?

[I begin to feel like I'm on a sinking ship. Consider: 1) original flavor MosBurgers don't come with cheese, and original flavor is what I've now three times expressly ordered; 2) I've already said the one to go is for someone who is "allergic to dairy"!]

ME: No. I don't want cheese on any of them.

SP: Okay. Three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go, no mayonnaise or butter on the one to go.

ME: That's it.

SP: Would you like those with a meal or a la carte?

[What should I say at this point? Yes, a few years ago I'd have angrily pointed out that I'd already answered that question earlier, and that in fact I'd already given my order four times and it should all be clear by now. But I want to be helpful, the girl is in fact polite, so I just repeat:] All three a la carte.

So I've finally placed my order. But wait. Now the woman has to pass my order to the food prep people. And it happens almost just as I predict. I stand there and listen as almost the same conversation she's just had with me, only slightly less involved, occurs between her and her coworkers. In fact I have to talk to the food prep people myself to clarify what the order really is.

I go sit down at a table and wait for my food to arrive. In my experience, after all that has transpired, the chances are about 50/50 that the order will be screwed up. But when it comes, I check it and it's correct. I then go back to the counter and order a medium iced tea.

Why, you may wonder, didn't I order the iced tea to begin with? I made the omission intentionally. It's because I've been here many years and didn't want to add any further complicating elements to my order--radically complicating elements such as a drink. Since I knew I'd already have to place my order half a dozen times, I wanted to be sure the burgers were straightened out before even thinking about drinks.

This is how it has gone for me countless times in restaurants and other businesses. It was the same again today. Now let me make a few things clear.

1) This is not happening because the service person is stupid.

2) It is not happening because the service person is especially irresponsible or inattentive. No, she was polite and clearly trying to do her job.

3) It is not happening because the restaurant is busy or the service person feels rushed or is otherwise multitasking. No, I was the only customer ordering at the time.

4) It is not happening because Mos Burger doesn't like to deal with special orders. No, they deal with such orders all the time. And after all, my request wasn't even very special: I wanted three of their most common product, one with slight modifications to go.

5) It is not happening because of my Chinese. Though I'm a foreigner speaking Chinese to a native speaker, my Chinese is certainly good enough to conduct a simple hamburger order. A few years ago I used to suspect otherwise--that maybe these runarounds were my fault because I wasn't communicating clearly. Now I highly doubt it. Why? Because I regularly watch locals getting into the same kind of back-and-forth dialogues with each other that I myself just underwent. And today again it seemed the counter person had nearly as much trouble communicating my simple order to her coworkers as I originally had communicating it to her. But why? Why couldn't she just put it into a sentence and they listen to each of the separate elements of the sentence and make sense of them? Why all the back and forth for God's sake?

6) I am not exaggerating this phenomenon. In fact today I wish I'd recorded the whole thing so I could type it out in Chinese as proof. If anything, I've simplified the dialogue.

7) I'm well aware that such things occur in every culture, my own American culture included. But in the West so much back and forth is certainly not the norm. And the point is that even before walking into that Mos Burger restaurant I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen at the counter--that I was going to have to repeat myself at least four times. Because for some reason, in many situations here, repetition of details is the norm.

So what gives? There seems to be something like the following going on: When I as a Westerner go into a shop to place an order or conduct business of some kind, I expect that if I carefully formulate my request in a simple sentence that the service person listening to me will absorb my sentence and organize the elements in his or her head so as to get the desired result. But-- When the Taiwanese goes into a shop to place an order, things are quite different. What he or she expects, and the people taking the order expect, is that there will be a repetitive and circular back and forth about the order, a kind of verbal touch and go, that will continue until the order is all clear in both parties' minds. Further: If the person listening to the order misunderstands it the first two or three times around, this is not rude or inefficient service but rather just how things are expected to be. In short: Taiwanese don't mind repeating themselves: for them such repetition is part of the nature of communication. And further: Taiwanese don't bother to listen carefully, because they know whatever they hear will be repeated anyway.

Am I right about this?

My anthropological suspicions on this point perhaps get some support from another aspect of communicating with Taiwanese that I've long noticed--and one that has often driven me nearly mad. I'm talking about the tendency not to answer Yes/No questions with a simple Yes or No.

Example, on a Taipei bus:

A: Excuse me. Does this bus cross Chung-Hsiao East Road?

B: Where do you want to go?

A: Uh. It's hard to explain. I just need to know if the bus crosses Chung-Hsiao East Road.

B: Are you going to Chung-Hsiao East Road?

A: No. I'm going north of Chung-Hsiao East Road. It's straight north of where we are now. Does this bus cross Chung-Hsiao East Road?

B: What section of Chung-Hsiao East Road?

A: Never mind. Thanks for your help.

Now of course in this case the person might be commended for wanting to know precisely where I was going so as to better help me. But the gist of my question was clear. Either the bus crosses the road in question or it doesn't. The man I was talking to knew the answer, I believe. He just didn't want to tell me with a simple Yes or No. There were so many other issues to be raised, it seems.

I'm afraid this bus dialogue isn't the best example though. It's hard to capture these exchanges in print. It's true that at least weekly I will find myself posing questions to people--friends, strangers, etc.--that have simple Yes/No answers, but I will never get the answer I need. Instead I will get comments on tangential issues or answers to questions I didn't ask. I almost wish I'd kept a journal on these kinds of dialogues: some of them are almost uncanny in the sheer irrelevance of the evasion.

When I want to know if a bus crosses a certain road, why should I be made to feel that I'm trying to coax some secret out of someone?

I'm aware that in business negotiations refusing to give clear-cut answers is often a matter of strategy. And that Asians--Japanese and Chinese in particular--are particularly good at being noncommittal as the terms of a deal are hashed out. Still, why should this kind of dogged avoidance of clear-cut answers happen when the stakes of the discussion are minuscule?

I overhear Taiwanese conversing with each other and notice the same kinds of non sequitur. Namely, 1) a clearly stated order at a counter is not taken as such, but is rather a kind of invitation to go round and round restating the order's elements; 2) a direct question is not respected as such, but is instead an invitation to talk about something else.

What gives? I'm aware that linguists and people in East-West relations have probably studied these questions.

Make no mistake. I love Taiwan and its people. I've come to think of these linguistic oddities as a kind of mystery more than an annoyance. At times such runarounds are humorous because they are so predictable. But what are they grounded on?

Comments very welcome.