Time, Talent, and Treasure
Friends,
I am experiencing some guilt lately: I have hardly picked up litter in our neighborhood in the last month. We’ve had so much rain, and on days it hasn’t rained it was hot enough where picking up trash would involve being covered in sweat before morning appointments. Excuses. I could’ve gone out there this morning instead of writing this. But it’s so easy to be knocked out of habits. In this case it’s especially disheartening when I walk around our neighborhood and see how quickly new trash accumulates (though, I will say, there is some satisfaction in continuing to watch plants slowly devouring an abandoned scooter). Do me a favor and set a reminder for August to tell me to go out and clean up those streets. I know I’ll need it.
Although my outdoor service has declined, I’ve started work on a new indoor-friendly line of service. After years of admiring the writing (and frequently linking it in this newsletter) of LEAP, a publication on Medium, I’ve joined their team as a volunteer editor. The publication takes articles by younger Taiwanese writers about gender-based topics, helps them translate the article into English, and then gives them a platform. It’s run through the Foundation for Women's Rights Promotion and Development (財團法人婦女權益促進發展基金會), which also runs the Taiwan Women Center, and they’re a really great group of people. I’ve just started and will get more involved after the summer, but I was part of the editing feedback for the last two articles, which focused on digital gender-based violence (1, 2). I’m hoping to help them get more readers - their work definitely deserves it. Our meeting also just reminded me how important and nourishing it is to be around people who care and are energized about something. I’m looking forward to that.
This volunteer opportunity fits me kind of perfectly, and I was surprised at how long it took me to find something like it. In the US, I volunteered with Upward Bound for a little while, then the library and a GED class later, and like here I also served as a volunteer mentor at the university. I assumed that there would be some obvious fit for my skills as an English teacher here in Taiwan. But, there’s not - the kind of English help that volunteers need to help with is the kind that’s taught in grade schools here, which means mostly vocabulary and grammar memorization. I have learned from experience that I am unhelpful, and even sometimes harmful, to learning that kind of material. I am unable to control myself when it comes to context, root words, different usages… things that are unnecessary and frequently confusing in this situation. The people who need the kind of English I can help with are part of a very privileged group already, excluding a fairly narrow subsection of university students who I best help by just making myself as available as I can through my work as a professor and a part of the school’s writing center. So I’m glad I finally found something where I can put my training and time and talent to good use.
It is summer, which means complaining about the weather as usual, but this year hasn’t been too bad. A high amount of rain has meant a few cool days even now in June. Summer also means fruit: we had our first mangoes of the season, though we’re told the mangoes this year aren’t that good. Apparently it got too hot too fast and the mangoes fell from the trees too early. Every year we hear something like this about mangoes and cilantro. There’s too much rain, there’s not enough rain, it got hot too fast, the temperature’s been too unstable, etc. etc. Is it climate change, or is it people justifying prices, or is it just luck? I have no idea. I just know that every year we’ve lived here there’s been a time where I go to the market and they’re out of cilantro, and they tell me a reason they’re out of cilantro, and every time it’s different.
A student also gifted me some kiwi from New Zealand that were the best kiwis of our lives. Carolina learned from the experience that you can eat the skin - I don’t eat as much kiwi as I would enjoy, but I’ve always loved the contrast between the fibrous skin and the softer interior. This year we’ve also eaten a ton of pumpkin; not the jack-o’-lantern shaped kind, instead something that looks halfway between an acorn squash and butternut squash. I’m not 100% sure it’s better in Taiwan because I’m not sure we gave fresh pumpkin a fair chance in the United States (though I can say with confidence it’s better than the typical grocery store butternut squash), but roasted with just a little salt, pepper, and olive oil and, man, it’s good.
Pumpkin is better here, as is a lot of fruit, but not avocados. The avocados grown here are the bigger kind, which still have a good texture but are missing that lovely flavor. If you want avocados, you still buy Haas, and they’re grown the same places that the Haas avocados in American grocery stores are. Taiwan lets their vegetables get bigger. Carrots can be used as rolling pins and I don’t think I’ve seen a baby spinach leaf in this country so far. The cauliflower is left in the ground until the stem tastes positively virtuous. But the disappointment in Taiwan’s produce selection continues to be the tomatoes. We were so spoiled by the Texas tomato flavor. We didn’t know how good we had it. I’ve looked for a tomato dealer who can get close to those backyard and farmer’s market tomatoes, those golden pear and purple Cherokees, but I haven’t found them yet. If you know an underground tomato ring in Taipei, please get in touch.
Further reading:
I am someone who easily dips into obsessive activities. It explains my addiction to MMORPGs; the year a flurry of activity led to me creating a 5,000 entry family tree; and my Google Drive overflowing with notes about every experience I’ve ever had with reading, teaching, traveling, and more. I can feel that trying to reorient my life to being more sustainable/environmentally friendly is taking on some of that obsession, which is why I found myself deeply engrossed by Michael Fischer’s article on becoming obsessed with wasted water while in prison, at Longreads. Halfway through the article he boils it down to a single questions: “How many choices until I am good?”
Here’s one from way back in 2019, but it feels very relevant to today: Michael Hobbes on the well-named “glass floor” that nepotism creates for the children of the elite. “According to research carried out by Reeves and others, the likelihood of the rich passing their status down to their children — ‘stickiness,’ in economist-speak — has surpassed the likelihood of poor children remaining poor.”
Absolutely loved Haidee Chu’s profile of the individual people who make up NYC’s Dance Parade. You can see a video of the parade here.
I couldn’t quite get into Attack on Titan. Maybe I’ll try to change that one day. Despite that, I found Longreads’ AoT reading list really wonderful. The first linked essay, “Taking Solace in ‘Attack on Titan’” by Joy Hui Lin, is one of the best things I’ve read this year. The feelings she describes are some of my favorites from a lot of anime, comics, and video games that tackle this sort of storytelling: “At one point, the leader calms his terrified troops saying, ‘It is for us to fight this cruel world.’ The show is, to some extent, about the realization that you are responsible, even in some small way, for the future.”
Recently read A Wizard of Earthsea and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” with some students, and in the process read Le Guin’s 2013 Paris Review interview: “I’m not a quester or a searcher for the truth. I don’t really think there is one answer, so I never went looking for it. My impulse is less questing and more playful. I like trying on ideas and ways of life and religious approaches.”
The newest addition to my Mandarin karaoke repertoire and regular at-home listening is 《愛人錯過》 by 告五人. Simple lyrics and a catchy beat!
One of the pains of learning a different language is that nuance exerts itself differently across the vocabularies. For example, in Mandarin there are three different words for being surprised: 驚嚇, 驚訝, and 驚喜. The first is a word for a negative surprise, which might be better translated as shock. The second is for a neutral surprise, and the third is for a positive. So if you type “surprise” into Google Translate and then try to apply the results, you might have a very different connotation than what you intend. Similarly, I always mix up 滿意 and 滿足. Both mean satisfied, but one is focused more on a mindset whereas one is focused more on meeting a need. The extra confusing part is that, of course, in some situations those are the same thing!
It’s no surprise that there are some Mandarin words that cross definitional boundaries. If you translate the words “trust” and “believe”, both will return 相信, and what makes this process fun is that it begs the question of what situations those two words diverge in meaning.
I don’t know that I 相信 his story. Do you 相信 in God? 相信 but verify. I would 相信 them to be reliable.
相信 me when I say that I hope your world is spinning well.
-g