Peer Pressure and Hidden Elevators

Friends,

Boy do I look silly with my flippant last newsletter painting Taiwan (and the world at large) as a land of overreactions when it came to the coronavirus. Who knows what combination of medical masks, hand sanitizer, school closures, travel restrictions, general staying-at-homedness, and luck led this country to be, so far, escaping the brunt of the outbreak when it should logically be so at risk. My students started this semester with Found Poetry , so I put together a found poem of my own using the Taiwan CDC press releases. Everything is grist, I suppose.

One interesting aspect has been the peer pressure surrounding the whole thing. I’ve felt immensely self-aware every time I’m on a bus, or the subway, or even out on the street and have the urge to clear my throat. I wear a mask while teaching, and it makes my face gross and sweaty, so I usually keep it off if I’m out in the open. On buses, though, I always have one on now, as do about 95% of people. I don’t want to be the foreigner who is selfishly ignoring protocol, but it goes beyond that. Carolina has had a little bit of allergies as is her wont, and the panic I feel when she has to cough on the subway is both ridiculous but also maybe evidence of why Taiwan is doing okay? I mean, there’s a million factors and it’s impossible to say, but wow, it’s interesting.

We’re back at school, but I received some frightfully sad news just before the semester began. During the extended break, the school removed all the lovely, multi-lingual graffiti from the desks in my classrooms. Fortunately, for reasons I don’t fully understand, they sent us a PowerPoint slideshow with the offensive desks, and I have my own archival efforts. The artwork will live on.

The school semester has started on a fairly negative note in the office. The extended two weeks off from the virus means two more weeks of summer. There’s a whole lot of uncertainty about the calendar and about how to deal with previously planned events, etc. The floor is shifting under the teachers, and trying to be flexible while also doing the day-to-day work while also being in a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop has led to a more tense than usual environment. Having to work this Saturday (a previously planned “Winter English Camp” to introduce prospective new students to the school) didn’t help, of course, but it actually turned out to be pretty fun. I spent 80 minutes talked to sixth graders about their favorite food. Teaching is incredibly enjoyable when you don’t have to worry about a grade. Who knew?

Last weekend we had friends visiting and so we made two excursions. One was a lovely jaunt down to Tainan (the -pei of Taipei is actually more of a -bei sound and means north; Tainan is on the opposite end of the island so I’m going to give you a single guess as to what the very creative -nan means). There, we went down a narrow alley to find the Narrow Door Cafe, ate entirely too much shaved ice, and walked around a different alley dedicated to snails, like the studious, solar-powered, spoon-antennaed good boy in the picture above. The train was very sparsely populated on the way down, and it was our first time seeing much of Taiwan’s flatter western half. Lots of small rice fields that shimmered as if they contained waves thanks to the shifting light above.

Our other excursion was to go do an easy hike to go see some volcanic vents near Taipei. Or, that’s how it was advertised. Instead, it involved about three hours of hiking, which included the very clumsy yours truly falling a couple of times, and I’m pretty sure my tailbone is in an incomplete state. Let me tell you about humbling experiences, though. Struggling, and struggling to climb this peak and thinking back to how good I was feeling about climbing the five floors of stairs multiple times each day at work and thinking about how good I was feeling about being a little better about regular exercise only to get to the top of this peak and find small children as well as people more than double my age up there, looking no worse for wear. My ego requires me to assume there’s a hidden elevator.

Further reading:

• A pair of articles in honor of coronavirus. The first: in a country where employers reign supreme, taking off work because you’re sick means not getting paid. Which means you don’t take off work or even go to the doctor when you’re sick, because it’s unaffordable. It also means that quarantining someone in the name of public safety can lead to bankruptcy .
• A totally, completely unrelated article: “I’ve seriously tried to believe capitalism and the planet can coexist, but I’ve lost faith.” On privatizing gains and socializing losses.
• Lighter. Carolina and I are a little obsessed with this Billie Eilish music video .
• Politics and intrigue and clout and Duchesses and Instagram .
• Samin Samin Samin Samin Samin .
• Finally, our apartment in Taiwan is equipped with the Toto Washlet and I approve this message .

Are you washing your hands every time you enter the house? Are you trying to get out of the habit of touching your eyes and mouth and nose? Are you considering what products you would buy just before fourteen days of self-quarantine? Get the dried beans and rice. It’s the only way.

-g