Here you can see that it is possible to customize the amount of sugar and the amount of ice which is added to your drink. You can get everything from “full sugar” (100% the normal amount added) to “no sugar” and everything from the normal amount of ice to no ice. You can also order your drink warm or hot.

I like to order lemonade or a mixture of lemonade and mandarin orange with “half sugar” (半糖） and not much ice （少冰).

It is the little things about life here that really just make me smile. To give one little example, for the 3rd time in a row, as I walked home from the NTU library around 21:00, I saw a group of elderly residents of a neighborhood I pass through lounging in one of the many small parks and watching a Kung Fu movie on one of those large projector screens. The event doesn’t look very formal or organized, so I can only imagine that one of the locals dragged out the projector and large screen so the neighborhood could all watch it together.

The scale of the prison is not large, it can hold at most a few hundred prisoners, but their shouts and screams, blood chilling to hear, are audible from the street outside. The State has apparently limited the confined to younger prisoners, judging from the faces seen staring out from between the bars on the outer wall, perhaps in the hope that the revolutionary techniques of this experimental prison will soon return these convicts to society, newly molded into model and subservient citizens.

So what is it which makes this prison so unusual? How are its grey concrete walls, barbed wire fences, high walls covered in shards of glass, and metal bars any different from any other modern prison? In what way is this Taiwanese penal invention indicative of a coming larger epistemic shift?

The first and most obviously innovative characteristic of this institution which immediate captures the attention of the careful observer who identifies the prison as such is its location. Taipei Experimental Prison #1 is strategically located right on the southeastern edge of the Shida university campus, and its outer walls border one of Taipei’s most bustling night markets: the Shida night market.

Here we can witness a new shift in disciplinary technology. Where once the body was the site of punishment, and thereafter the State focused its disciplining energies upon the mind, we witness in Taipei Experimental Prison #1 the return of body, or specifically the senses, to the fore. However, instead of scourging or severing the body of the convict, here we see the imprisoned punished and disciplined through temptation of the body itself.

This prison is the very inverse of the celebrated Panopticon. There the gaze of the State falls upon the convicted in every prison cell: it is all-seeing and all-penetrating. In Taipei Experimental Prison #1 the reverse holds true. Here, it is the prisoner who is all-seeing. From their cell windows the confined can witness all around them the decadent excesses of student freedom. Happy youth calls out to them as students prance all around the prison in unbounded gaiety. They carry not only their books for study, but all the products of their exuberant material consumption.

But these painful sights are but the kindest tortures to behold in Taipei Experimental Prison #1, because my friends, these poor confined souls are not merely all-seeing but all-smelling. This prison is nothing less than a Panolfacticon. As the heat of the afternoon dissipates (not among the punishments of this prison, since all cells are supplied with air conditioning to prevent convicts from being distracted from the greater pains that await them), slowly the smells of the night market begin to penetrate through the open bars and vents, like a sweet airborne poison poured into the sleeping ear of a napping prisoner. The torture must be agonizing as the mouth-watering delicacies are being prepared and served to hundreds of hungry customers in the market just beyond their reach. No manner of confinement, save the torments of Tantalus in the depths of Tartarus, can more cruelly remind the prisoner of the pleasures they forfeit.

I was denied permission to enter the prison and conduct interviews with its residents so I cannot give authentic voice to the horrors experienced by those within. In fact, in an attempt to deny the atrocities that are being carried out, I was told by one guard, who feigned a look of bewilderment, that this was in fact a dormitory of the university! That they could even think to steep to such lies to cover up their crimes!

I first got a hint of this soon after I arrived in Taiwan. At a Sichuan style restaurant here with a group of friends I was asked what I ate in Korea and I said that I was a huge fan of Korean food, and that is probably what I miss most about it now having left Seoul. My words were met with what seemed to me utter shock and disbelief around the table. It was almost like I had insulted their mothers.

One of my friends responded, “But in Korea all they eat is meat and kimchi! What is there about Korean food to like? They have no vegetables!” I tried to explain that there are many dishes in Korea that have a wonderful assortment of vegetables but my further defense of Korean cuisine only seemed to make things worse. We moved on to other topics.

Since then I have kept my ears open when it comes to the way people I have met respond to things related to Korea and sometimes I have come right out and asked, “What do you think about Korea?” or “What is your impression about Korea.” The results have been interesting. Three recent responses:

1. Taipei, pro-Blue female. “Koreans are so arrogant! You know they tried to register the Dragon Boat race with [some UN organization] as a Korean tradition that they invented?”

2. Kaohsiung, female. “I hate (討厭）Korea! I have interacted with many Korean women at international conferences and they are always talking. They are so loud and very rude.”

3. Kaohsiung, male pro-Green graduate student. Has studied Korean at university level. “I hate (討厭) Koreans! I knew many Koreans at university and they were so rude, arrogant, and obsessed with their pride. Koreans hate the Japanese. They are always trying to show how they are as good as the Chinese, and when it comes to the Taiwanese, they look down (看不起) on us.

Though they fortunately lack any rocky islets to fight over and no effigies are being burnt in street protests, I was really surprised at the really strong emotions evoked here in Taiwan. I never got “我不太喜歡” or other more moderate phrases. The sentiment was unusually direct. Of course, it is nowhere near the kinds of reactions I have seen among many young Chinese towards the Japanese (first encountering these powerful emotions in Beijing in 1997 was my first motivation to study Sino-Japanese relations and the contentious historical issues in the region). Korean sentiments against the Japanese seems, by contrast, a little more tame these days, though I may get this impression because I have been hanging out with a lot of more younger “pro-Japanese” treasonous types when I lived in Seoul.

One explanation might be a general clash of personality types. As some of the comments above hint at, the generally more relaxed and polite personality style I have found to be common on this island may simply clash a bit more with the sometimes more intense and aggressive style often found on the peninsula to the north. Obviously, I have seen plenty of exceptions to this on both sides.

Something I heard indirectly which may play is role was from a Taiwanese woman who I’m told said that though Korea and Taiwan were long lauded as two of Asia’s leading economic “tigers” some Taiwanese feel like they “lost” to the larger and more powerful Korea, thus leading to the development of a kind of insecurity complex when they find themselves compared to their more populous and culturally distinct rival.

There is no doubt that Korea has a certain degree of international visibility that Taiwan lacks. Asus does not quite have the brand power of Samsung or LG and Taiwan’s cross-straits crisis doesn’t have the benefit of an official axis of evil member next door. If my Korean friends complain that most Americans can’t find their country on a map (to be fair, we apparently can’t seem to find most places on a map, even after we invade them) then imagine the chances of them locating this little Formosan paradise. My Taiwanese friends who have a lot of international experience often refer to the frustration they feel at having to explain to everyone that they are from TaiWAN, not from ThaiLAND. Yes, they survived the tidal wave nicely, thank you (when I hear such complaints I’m reminded of my Korean friends who express their annoyance at being mistaken for Japanese when they travel, and sometimes revealing a more condescending discrimination when recounting their much greater horror at being mistaken as Chinese. As for myself, I have long since stopped caring if people introduce me as coming from Sweden or Finland, I just feel a bit sorry for Denmark, since it rarely gets offered as my homeland and, really, to be fair, the Danish kingdom did rule over Norway the longest).

Korea’s visibility extends to Taiwan as well. I see buses around Taipei plastered with huge advertisements for the latest Korean historical drama, and a Korean drama always seems to be playing on some channel or other here. Somebody must be watching them. This afternoon I ate Korean food in a food court in a Kaohsiung shopping mall, and Korean 泡菜 (kimchi) or the word 韓式 （Korean-style) is added as a prefix to many food items in many regular Chinese-style restaurants.

Of course, I don’t get the impression the “Korea” brand is anywhere close to the “Japan” brand here in Taiwan in terms of its power. Thousands of Japanese products are sold in stores around Taiwan with their Japanese packaging and labels fully intact. The word “Japan” or “Japanese Style” is printed in big fat or highlighted characters on signs for all manner of products (especially anything related to cosmetics, electronics, and very often for food related items) in a way reminiscent of products sold in the US with “NEW! IMPROVED!” attached. Maybe my memory is off, but I don’t seem to remember anywhere near this extent of explicit use of the Japan brand in Korea.

Of course, everyone knows that Taiwan is infamously pro-Japanese. Japanese men seem to believe they stand a better chance of finding love here in Taiwan than anywhere in Asia. The postwar experience of dictatorship, the 2/28 massacre, and the importance of the long Japanese colonial period to the claims of a distinct Taiwanese national identity all contribute to this. This weekend I was introduced to a somewhat inebriated Taiwanese doctor who was told that I was doing my dissertation on Chinese traitors (漢奸). He turned to me, somewhat perturbed, and proudly announced, almost toppling over as he straightened up, “我就是漢奸！” (I am myself a 漢奸！)

When it comes to Taiwanese sentiments towards Korea, if my very limited exchanges are at all suggestive of anything, the Korean brand power, food culture, and drama fandom seen here are not incompatible with a degree of emotional disdain. Even one of the women included in the comments above who expressed a hatred of Korea and especially Korean women also says that while she loves Japanese kimonos and culture of all kinds she doesn’t like the Japanese people themselves because they, “Are so polite to you all the time but who knows what they are thinking on the inside.” This deep dislike of a purported Japanese “two-facedness” is a familiar image. I remember an elderly neighbor of my parents in Oklahoma who, after decades of negotiations with Japanese chemical companies told me something along the lines of, “Them Japs’d always lie to your face. ‘Yes’ never meant ‘yes,’ and ‘maybe’ always meant ‘no.’ And you’d never know when they might pull a Pearl Harbor on ya.” (His distrust wasn’t limited to the Japanese, however. He spent a lunch once trying to convince me that every evil of the 20th century could be blamed on the inherently demonic nature of the Englishman. I think he bore a very serious grudge against the English ever since he was arrested by an English MP in World War II when he was on shore leave in Gibraltar).

All being said, however, I was a bit surprised to find anything more than, at worst, indifference towards Korea. Instead, I might have expected a feeling of camaraderie for an economically successful and culturally rich counterpart that is similarly struggling to define itself in a challenging geopolitical environment dominated by its larger neighbors.

UPDATE: There was a surprising amount of interest in this posting but I feel my posting didn’t come across quite the way I wanted it to. I am not justifying any of the claims that I quote hear, nor do I think the feelings expressed by my informers were much more than the kinds of stereotypes we all engage in or somehow reflect some kind of genuine bubbling discontent here in Taiwan. On the contrary, of all places I have lived in East Asia, the people I have met here in Taiwan are the most cosmopolitan and open. That was precisely why the rare expressions of dislike for a particular group of people stood out such that it made me notice it and become curious since I expected the contrary to hold true among two places with much in common in their recent history and development.

2010.11 UPDATE: This posting continues to attract attention and I’m sad to see that apparently some Korean sites are linking to it. I just received an email which takes issue with my use of the word hate to translate 討厭:

One point about your interpretation of 討厭 as hate. There is a (quiet big) difference here.  Hate is more like 憎恨, 痛恨 which is much much stronger than 討厭 which can be interpreted as “I don’t like.” For example, if you are trying to do your home work and your brother keeps poking/bothering you, you will say 討厭.  Or in your word, it’s a more stronger “我不喜歡” (notice the missing 太 here since “我不太喜歡” is a little bit less strong then “我不喜歡”. The former is kind of detour a little while the later more straight-forward.)  Probably you don’t really care. But by interpreting 討厭 as “hate” makes all non-Chinese speaking people thinking that man Taiwanese “hate” Koreans which if far from true.  My wife and I have checked out many Korean dramas from our local library.  We use Korean products all the time (TV, cell phones, camera, monitor, etc.)  In fact, I just bought a Samsung camera about 3 weeks ago and this is the second Samsung camera we own.  So I’d appreciate that you can spend couple minutes correcting it. Of course, you can ask around and make sure my interpretation is correct.

The writer is correct that 討厭 is not as strong a word as the visceral hatred implied by 憎恨, etc. but I think it ignores that the English word “hate” also has a much wider range – as in “I hate Ice Cream” or “I hate it when he does that.”  At any rate, I stand by my basic point, that I have often been surprised to see a pretty emotionally strong (and quick) response from a number of my Taiwanese friends when it comes to Korea and I think it is common enough for us to ponder the reasons for it in the absence of any major historical grievances.  Some Koreans are taking this posting as evidence of Taiwanese perfidy to feed their own anger, while some Taiwanese are seeing this is as a blanket condemnation of them. If I did not feel strongly that I should leave my writings, both strong and weak, online, I would take the posting down since it has only led to a negative effect as far as I can see. As the writer indicates, many Taiwanese have a great love for Korean products and culture. I met a number of Taiwanese students studying Korean in various Korean language programs I have attended. It is perhaps partly because of this that there is a strong reaction (though the similar feelings of some of a much older generation need other explanations) against the sudden popularity, as Kerim suggests in his comment. We see similar things in Japan with the rise of the despicable 嫌韓流 related publications that give rise to old racisms.  As Sayaka said in the comments: let us all chill out – I raised a flag here, of curiosity as much as of concern, and merely wish for all the peoples of the region to get along well.

I’m a huge fan of Korean food and I will sorely miss it. I’m generally not as fond of the many oily and fried foods commonly found throughout China and Taiwan. I’m a big fan, however, of the many vegetarian buffets I have been to in Taipei. For the price of $2-4 you get a plate full of vegetables, tofu, rice, and vegetable dishes, eggs, and soup. These light meals work great to balance a heavier meal.

“Let Obama teach you charming English”

Above is an advertisement at some kind of English academy near Chinese Culture University in Taipei. Somehow I don’t think this concept would have worked with our sitting president as a model.

[Street-side trash cans] are labeled “For Pedestrians Only” and apparently this warning is enforced. When I was walking down the street one morning I witnessed an old man ride past a garbage can on his bicycle. Stopping clumsily, he squeezed a small bag of garbage into the garbage can. Just as I passed, witnessing this, a man leapt off of the bench to the right of me…and yelled at the man while flashing some kind of official ID. I couldn’t understand his crazed shouting but I imagine it was something like, “Freeze! Garbage Police!” I watched in fascination as the young garbage cop lectured the old man, who bowed his head low and listened quietly. I didn’t stick around to see if the old man was fined, but considering the fact that eating or drinking on the subway in Taipei can get you a $1,500 Taiwanese dollar fine, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was slapped with a hefty amount for his blatant misuse of the public garbage can.

As I mentioned in that posting, “Korean-style plastic surgery” (韓風整形) can be found advertised on the streets of Taipei. In this advertising we see a “before” and “after” shot indicating how a customer might be transformed into Bae Yong-jun:

On my recent trip to Shandong, I discovered that this was not limited to Taiwan but can also been seen in mainland China. In fact, the main shopping street of Jinan (which includes a Walmart and various famous brand clothing stores) was lined on both sides for several hundred meters with an illuminated advertisement for “Korean-style plastic surgery” (韓氏整形). This time, instead of Bae Yong-jun, they chose the image of a woman in a hanbok to give it an authentic look.

In a recent posting she talked about the differences in average salaries for those tutoring in Japanese and English in Taiwan:

日本人学生が家庭教師として日本語を教える場合、時給にして大体３５０〜５００元くらい（１１００〜１６００円）が相場だ。一方アメリカ人の場合は６００〜１２００元。う〜ん、差別だ！！と言ってみたがマーケットの需要が全然違うので仕方がない。本当の差別は「西洋人の見かけ（Western-looking)のアメリカ人」と指定しているところがあること。初めて聞いた時「は〜い〜？」と訳が分からなかったが、つまりアジア系アメリカ人などがなぜか排除されてる。

She says that Japanese students tutoring in Japanese can apparently get around 350-500 yuan (TWD, NT$) or about 11-15 US dollars while Americans can make 600-1200 yuan per hour or about 19-38 US dollars. While it seems like discrimination she admits this is really just an issue of market demand. On the other hand, apparently there are places which specifically are recruiting “Western-looking Americans” to teach English, and thus aren’t accepting Asian-Americans who are equally native in the language. I wonder if this is kind of discriminatory recruiting is common, and whether it is also something that happens in Japan or Korea? I know that I don’t see many Asian-Americans as teachers on the English language school advertisements on Japanese trains and subways (the advertisements are heavily dominated by white males, followed by white females, and the occasional black male or female).

And now for the postings:

Ancient Peoples, National Origins, and Ethnic Cleansing

Savage Minds is a wonderful group weblog dedicated to anthropology but there are often postings which any aspiring historian can benefit from. While not limiting his discussion to Asia, Taiwan specialist Kerim Friedman’s recent posting Ancient People: We are All Modern Now examines the cliché of “ancient people” in the media and elsewhere. Kerim reminds us that these “traditional” peoples are in fact continuously undergoing change and that frequently the tribes themselves are invented during period of colonization. He also suggests that the idea of “ancient languages” is equally problematic. He concludes that the idea of an “ancient people,” often used by people in reference to themselves, represents, “the dream of continuity in the face of ever accelerating change.” See also some discussion of this at Antropologi.info posting Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society.

In a Singapore related posting at Higher Criticism, Sheilax has a posting entitled The Malays of Tumasik- forgotten history which suggests that, “Singapore’s humble beginnings is inextricably linked with the Malay kingdoms that flourished in the region since two thousand years ago.” The posting is motivated by an admirable desire to challenge the standard narrative of Singapore history which dates the origins of its national community rather late and primarily to migrant groups and overlooks Malay connections. However, one question we might have for the writer, who wants to tie the nation of Singapore in some way to its “ancient” predecessors, is whether projecting the origins of a nation on a geographic basis, even to communities that we admit are culturally distinct, we aren’t contributing to the contradictions of the project to establish an unbroken line of “ancient” legitimacy for modern nations.

Laurence at Rejistan has given us a review of a book on the origins and destiny of another national people, Sons of the Conquerers – Rise of the Turkic World. He is pleased with the book, which addresses contemporary issues in Central Asia, as well as the legacy pan-Turanian visions, and how Turkish peoples adjust to the many lands they have settled in.

J. Otto Pohl, a scholar of migration and ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Union, has an interesting posting on one specific group among the Turks in his recent posting More Thoughts on Meskhetian Turks. He attempts to follow their attempts at repatriation and settlement outside of their homeland, after their initial expulsion from a part of Georgia by Stalin in 1944.

In other postings on ancient peoples, Shashwati Talukdar has some comments on the issues of religion, conversion, and the claims to being connected to an “ancient” community, the Bnei Menashe who claim to be none other than one of the Lost Tribes of Israel who were ethnically cleansed by the Assyrians. A community in Northeastern India was accepted as one of the lost tribes but had to go through a process of ritual conversion before migrating to Israel, which initiated an unfriendly response from the Indian government.

Orientalism

Owen over at Kotaji has two interesting posts on Said’s Orientalism. In his The Problem with Orientalism, Part I and The Problem with Orientalism, Part II he engages a critique of Said by Indian scholar Irfan Habib. Owen finds himself agreeing with much that Habib has to say and then goes on to apply some of these observations to the historiography of Korea. Meanwhile over at Sepia Mutiny An Oriental Gives Up when finding that an Indian television station has a finance program entitled “Oriental & Occidental”

Korean Economics and Colonial Rule

Foreign Dispatch has written a posting on The Korean Economy Under Japanese Rule, challenging some of the more dismal characterizations in the historiography of the colonial period. The post prompted extensive debate in the comments. Mike at Histor¥, who is an expert on financial reforms in Meiji Japan has expressed some doubts about the entire approach of the article. Other recent postings on Korean economics include one by Owen at Frog in a Well – Korea about the theory of uneven and combined development and Pak Noja’s discussion of the late development of market exchange and use of coinage in ancient Korea.

For another fascinating set of articles, many of which are related to imperialism and the colonial experience in Asia, see the newest newsletter from IIAS: Newsletter 38 for October. It includes intresting contributions including one by Poshek Fu (whose book on intellectuals in occupied Shanghai I strongly recommend) about recent historiography On Occupied China, and Kyu Hyun Kim’s article on War and the Colonial Legacy in South Korean Scholarship. I believe the IIAS Newsletter, along with Japan Focus are both excellent examples of how to bridge the gap between academic journals and history blogging. They include articles in the range of 2000 words per piece written by leading scholars in the field as well as graduate students and other qualified contributors.

Other Great Postings

Be sure to check out Matthew Penny’s “The Most Crucial Education”: Saotome Katsumoto and Japanese Anti-War Thought a sensitive and fascinating article focusing on three works by Saotome Katsumoto and exploring of his attempt to confront the tensions in his discussions of Japan’s wartime past and efforts for anti-war education.

Natalie Bennett has an interesting post about her visit to the Royal Academy’s Chinese exhibition: Royal Academy – China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795, giving us a room by room account as well as some comments about the somewhat derivative style of some of the offerings presented. Also read an interesting posting on Chinese badges on her personal weblog in a posting entitled Learning to Love Mao.

Alan Baumler has gotten considerable attention recently at Frog in a Well – China, especially for his postings on women holding up half of heaven and a discussion of the absence of foot binding among Manchus. I would like, however, to highlight an interesting discussion he has about Chinese witness accounts about dragons and the relationship between pseudo-science and modern science in his posting Last night I saw upon the stair a little man who was not there.

It was Alan, actually, who introduced me to my most delightful new blog discovery: Blogging…Walk the Talk. See for example their posting on Ketchup and the Manufacturing Myth in Hong Kong. He looks at an 1881 governor’s report to look at earlier origins of manufacturing in the region. Other posts worth looking at this wonderful weblog include Imperialism and the Kowloon-Canton Railway and the interesting posting The Writing on the Wall: Hong Kong, 1938 which quotes from a 1938 police report.

Matt over at Gusts of Popular Feeling has an interesting posting on some of his reading about foreigners in Korea during the Kwangju uprising: Some Reading Material. Another interesting posting on the uprising can be found on Antti Leppänen’s weblog Hunjangûl karûch’im in his posting on Kwangju 1980 and An Byeong-ha. Matt also has an interesting posting collecting some information on recent efforts to investigate the military incidents of Korea’s recent past in Investigating the Past. The title of his site, by the way, comes from the interesting passage in the travel writings of Isabella Bird Bishop from the end of the 19th century, in which she says “Gusts of popular feeling which pass for public opinion in a land where no such thing exists are known only in Seoul. It is in the capital that the Korean feels the first stress of its unsought and altogether undesired contact with Western civilization, and resembles nothing so much as a man awakening from a profound sleep, rubbing his eyes half-dazed and looking dreamily about him, not quite sure where he is.” (Korea and Her Neighbors, 59)

Roy Berman over at Mutant Frog has a fascinating posting about an old Taiwanese (Republic of China) military manual for teaching English: ROC Armed Forces English Manual. This is no ordinary textbook, as he shows us through some selections.

Finally, in Another Nail in the Ninja Coffin Jonathan Dresner adds some comments to a recent important posting on H-Net Japan related to the state of Ninja research. Referring to his earlier posting on some of his reading on the topic, he reminds us of the difficulty of doing the history of something as popularized as ninja history and the invented traditions of our times. Incidentally, it is wonderful that H-Net Japan, which is perhaps the best listserve related to Japanese history is getting some of its good materials brought into the online dialogue of weblogs. As in the case of Japan Focus and the IIAS newsletters mentioned above, it is important that we realize that there are a full range of mediums beyond those of traditional published scholarship in which questions about history are discussed and debated.

Not only is the plastic surgery Korean style, but you can even look like Bae Yong-jun, known in Japan as “Yong-sama”! Check out their “before” and “after” pictures in this advertisement.

They might even give you some Yong-sama glasses to complete the effect! Read more about their products at their phone-number-website.

Since she hasn’t blogged it herself, I’ll share a few things Sayaka has told me about living in Taiwan. She often visits a Korean restaurant near Taiwan Normal University. In many Korean restaurants you get free side dishes, including Kimchi. However, where Sayaka goes and a number of places I have been outside of Korea, they list these side dishes as “Kimchi” on the menu and charge money for it. Recently however, Sayaka visited the restaurant with a Korean and he asked, in Korean for Kimchi. The side dishes emerged and, of course, there was no charge for it…

One of the delightful things about Taiwan is its social and linguistic complexity. It isn’t unusual to be speaking with someone in Chinese and have them throw in some Taiwanese dialect (Minnanhua) or switch in and out of the dialect when they are speaking to someone else who understands it. It is fascinating also to see the different occasions and contexts in which each are or can be used. Here are two anecdotes along these lines:

1) While at the movie theater in Taipei, Sayaka recently saw the trailer for the Guoyu (Chinese) version of the children’s movie “Madagascar” She said that while the characters spoke mostly in Chinese, at certain points there would be phrases of Taiwanese that leaked into the dialogue (like “paise” for “excuse me”) – just as it might in daily conversations in Taiwan.

This kind of “language leakage” happens all over the world and indeed is a perfectly normal experience for hundreds of millions of people who live in environments where multiple languages are spoken. However, it also sits uneasy with various national attempts to create “pure” and “standard” languages for use. This is only one example of a phenomenon most of us have probably experienced if we think about it enough, but I think it is a very important one to emphasize. How would this movie, for example, fit in mainland China? It is the “Chinese language” version of the movie but highly customized for a Taiwan market. Of course, Chinese viewers are already more than used to a similar sort of thing, and not just when they watch Taiwanese movies. For example, the Chinese language subtitles of Hong Kong movies can often be found with all sorts of strange expressions. Some even in Taiwan might complain that the use of Taiwanese in the movie is inappropriate. From the opposite perspective though, it might be equally, if not more unnatural to use forced phrasings in dialogue in order to make it fit with “standard Chinese” when the children watching would find such use of language unfamiliar. This is not to say that there is a right or wrong way of doing this – just that it works both ways..

Of course, as I think many of my friends can guess, my own personal preference is heavily on the side of mixing, matching, and even erring on the side of outright language chaos. Sayaka and I speak to each other in a mix of languages, and I feel most comfortable with people where two or more languages are mixed to a certain degree. Granted, my own case is somewhat unusual. However, beyond my own comfort, I do honestly believe that the discomfort we feel in an environment were not everything we hear and read is completely familiar can as often as not be a positive and productive experience. I have begun to distance myself from my undergraduate studies in analytic philosophy where pursuing complete clarity in language is a virtue and I growingly view language puritanism in all forms (most of all English language purists) with an emotion bordering on disgust.

In practical terms, one way I have found to reform some of my older habits is to appreciate the many real life examples where imperfection, mixing, and “language leakage” takes place regularly. Daily life in Taiwan is just one of the many places where this is happening on a massive scale. Just off the top of my head, and though I have never been, I suspect India would be another great example of this kind of environment.

2) Sayaka’s Japanese friend Rumi recently told her an interesting story of a trip to Tainan city. Apparently there is a tourist attraction there which involves going through a long cave in a boat. In the cave there is a recreation of some kind of an esoteric Buddhist cosmos, including portrayals of heaven and hell. However, Rumi made an interesting observation: While traveling through hell, apparently the terrifying demons spoke in Taiwanese, a language she doesn’t understand. However, as the boat moved into heaven, the language switched into Mandarin Chinese.

Has anyone else been to Tainan and been on this ride? What message might the visitor come away with here?

UPDATE: My friend back on vacation in Singapore warns of some of the difficulties of multilingual society.

Today Sayaka and I are spending a leisurely afternoon reading in a Taipei coffee shop (chain) called QK咖啡. Although their motto is “ranQueen ranKing” which seems to explain the Q and the K in their name, we noticed the elderly Taiwanese couple sitting next to us talking about the name. The same couple had earlier taken notice of the fact that Sayaka and I were often using Japanese with each other. When they pointed the “QK” out to each other and read it out loud, our eyes met and I told them, in Chinese, that I just realized that the name is actually quite interesting. When you pronounce “QK” together you also get the Japanese word 休憩 or “kyûkei” which means “to rest” or “to take a break.” Since it isn’t unusual at all to see Japanese words in the names of Taiwanese stores and restaurants (For example, Sayaka lives very close to a coffee shop called 黒潮 (the Japan Current), which has the Japanese pronunciation for these characters, “Kuroshio” written next to it), we believe it simply can’t be a coincidence that the title of the coffee shop ends up a play on a Japanese word (the whole store name read in Japanese also makes a nice alliterative Kyûkei Kôhii, as it does in Chinese, QK Kafei).

Having thus broken the ice, the Taiwanese couple asked Sayaka if she was Japanese and started to speak to us in absolutely fluent Japanese. We complimented their Japanese and they said that they had both spoken Japanese as children through until they graduated from junior high school. If they graduated from junior high school in 1945, which at least the husband claimed to have, that would now make them about 75 years old. With this as an opening, we asked them all sorts of questions about their lives back during this time. As in my other encounters of this sort, they had lots of fascinating stories.

Neither of the couple seemed to come from backgrounds of poverty. The wife’s parents were involved in commercial activities of some kind in a town near Taipei but she said that during the latter period of the war, when food production became ever more important, her father was involved in developing farms in Taiwan’s mountainous areas. The husband came from Taipei too (which he interestingly pronounced “Taihoku” as Japanese from that period would have presumably pronounced it) but his father was apparently a researcher at some kind of “agricultural research center” and also taught agricultural techniques to farmers.

When the war ended and Taiwan reverted to the control of Nationalist Chinese forces, he finished his high school education in Taipei though all of his classes switching suddenly from Japanese to Chinese. The couple said that the switch was particularly difficult for elementary school teachers who had to study Chinese via the radio and change their materials from Japanese to Chinese, while junior and high school teachers came largely from China. After graduating the husband was accepted to and went to Zhongyang University in Nanjing after turning down an offer from Taiwan National University. The year was 1948 and within only a few months of starting college, he would be fleeing Nanjing with the rest of the Nationalist government and his fellow students as the Nationalist forces started crumbling in the face of Communist advances.

He said that he knew, vaguely, that there was a civil war raging on the mainland but didn’t think it was that big a deal before going. His first impression of China, when arriving in Shanghai by boat in early 1948 was the absolute chaos on the docks, where coolies were running around the arriving boats grabbing baggage for the arriving passengers. He later contrasted this with his return to Taiwan where, upon arrival, he was handed a ticket for his baggage which he used to retrieve it upon disembarkation, “Ah, that is why I like Taiwan.” 「だから、やっぱり、台湾がいい」

He took the train to Nanjing and only then realized how serious the civil war was. By this time it had turned against the KMT nationalist forces. When everyone fled the city in late 1948 (Nanjing was captured by the Communists in April 1949) he managed to get a 3rd class train ticket back to Shanghai and a boat trip back to Taiwan. 3rd class, he said, meant that one boarded the train through the window, and stood completely packed together with hundreds of other people.

When back in Taiwan he transferred to Taiwan National University (I think that what was left of his Zhongyang eventually became Nanjing University and some departments merged with what is now Nanjing Normal University). From 1956 he found work at the “United States Information Service” or USIS (Perhaps the predecessor of what is now IIP?) at the US embassy in Taipei and worked there for 36 years, through its switch to become the “American Institute” when official ties were cut with Taiwan. There he provided information to Taiwan about American, “culture and society.” I asked him, “Isn’t is pretty much an American propaganda office?” He nodded and said, “Yes,” but, “Unlike other countries, the things that America says about itself is true.”

The wife didn’t travel to China during the civil war but stayed in Taiwan to study public health at a technical college. Afterwards she worked in public health or nursing or something and would eventually spend a year studying in Detroit in 1953. She says that when her husband returned (I am not sure they were married at that time) as a “refugee” from China after the civil war, she had no idea he was coming. He suddenly just showed up on her family’s doorstep one day, pitiful and penniless. A number of years later she asked him why he came to her family to see her first when he arrived back in Taiwan. Somewhat to her husband’s embarrassment she told us that he replied, “Because I was completely broke and needed your money.”

When we asked if her English was good, she said it was, 「泥縄式」. Neither Sayaka or I had ever heard this Japanese word before, but she explained that it meant that she studied only a little English just before going (My dictionary says it means, “the eleventh-hour”). Like “taihoku” for Taipei, this was one of several moments where we felt their Japanese was using words from ages past. The husband also used the pronunciation はんねん or hannen instead of はんとし for “half-year” (半年) which I have never heard Japanese use before but Sayaka says she has seen it before somewhere.

We tried to ask them a bit more about the transition in 1945. I was hoping to stick the discussion to their personal experiences, but at this point, the conversation switched (in a fashion that I discussed in an earlier posting) to topics and areas where their personal experiences mixed heavily with material and narratives that were probably heavily influenced by things they had heard and seen. As the above quote contrasting the chaos of Shanghai’s docks and the orderly nature of Taiwan’s docks might have suggested, the couple had lots of anecdotes supporting the story of the transition as one of, “The dogs [Japan] going home and the pigs [China] arriving.”

I wasn’t able to get them to tell us any specific personal stories of their experience during this transition but instead they told us a number of stories that they had heard at the time and generalizations about colonial versus Nationalist rule in Taiwan which may be a heavier mix of things experienced, seen, heard, and read. I’ll just put as many of these kinds of things I can remember from their comments together below. I think anyone familiar with Taiwanese history and the two major competing narratives (which you might call the KMT and “Taiwanese” approaches) will find much they recognize here.

When the Japanese ruled here in Taiwan everything was very orderly. Whenever Japanese soldiers were stationed nearby we could leave our doors open at night and knew that we were even more safe than when they were not nearby. When the Japanese said, “Don’t steal,” then there was no theft. They protected us. In contrast, when the “pigs” arrived, they did nothing but “eat” and if there were Nationalist troops stationed nearby we would all have to lock our doors at night and live in constant fear of having our possessions looted by them.

The nationalist regime arrived from the mainland oppressed us in Taiwan. The Japanese had a cruel streak in them and committed many horrible crimes on the mainland but we lived fairly well as its colony. We were its food basket and provided it with many supplies without ourselves starving. The Chinese Nationalists were corrupt and they were a completely backward people. Through the colonial experience under the Japanese we had become their cultural superiors. They were so stupid that they thought that if they simply attached a faucet to a wall, water would miraculously emerge from it when they turned the screw. Once, when the KMT nationalist government were looking over the well-organized inventory lists left by the Japanese for their well-stocked warehouses they found one warehouse was labeled as being full of 金槌. They believed that they had stumbled on a huge treasure trove of golden hammers. Instead, when they raided the warehouse that night, they were shocked to find it full of regular metal hammers and believed that someone must have switched its contents (the Chinese characters for 金槌 can literally seem to mean “gold” “hammer” but it is the Japanese word kanazuchi, which simply means “hammer”).

We called the Japanese dogs in private because they “barked” a lot but overall our feelings are not that strongly against them. We have much sympathy for the Japanese even though we recognize the bad aspects of their rule. We are not like the Koreans who are emotional and always get into fights about everything. We had a tropical climate and had lots of food. The Koreans bordered with China and have a cold climate which helps explain some of our differences from them. Also, we Taiwanese are just more forgetful.

Japanese have a strong class-based consciousness. In the old days they had four classes, the samurai, the farmers, the artisans, and the merchants at the bottoms. Still today the Japanese are very class conscious. My Japanese friend showed me his family register and shared his pride with me that he is descended from samurai. We Taiwanese don’t have class consciousness.

America used to have a gold age in the 1960s. I visited them in 1961 and it was fantastic. There were few foreigners and people greeted me in elevators and were very kind to me. In 1972 Nixon and Tanaka Kakuei betrayed Taiwan. When I went to America again in 1976 it was like a different country. No one greeted me in the elevator and black people stopped me on the street to beg money for coffee. People used to dress nice in the 1950-60s but by the 1970s lots of people on the streets were dressed like you [I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt) and there were lots of different cultures being introduced.