Leaving Beigang and quitting a job in a Taiwanese public school

I found a job teaching college and so I will be leaving my teaching job in Beigang/Shuilin and moving to the big city.  I will follow up with a best of Beigang post just so that the handful of people who make it there know where to eat/get their hair washed/find a dance studio.  Basically, I’ll give you the info I wish I had when I got there.

Beigang was nice, but it was difficult living there as a single expat.  There just aren’t many other expats or that much to do.  I also got kicked out of my place.  Here’s what I think happened.

I was supposed to teach ballet classes in exchange for rent, but there was confusion from the start.  I’m a belly dancer, not a ballet dancer; a critical difference.  I did bail on my end of the bargain, and was refused my offers to pay rent.  I did hold up my end in terms of tutoring my land lady’s kids, but she wasn’t that interested in that part.

What really sucks about the above is that finding an apartment in Beigang is this side of impossible.  One pretty gnarly place was trotted out, and that was my only choice.  Thankfully the job in Taichung, where apartments are more plentiful, popped up.  And the apartment I found here is nicer than any I’ve seen in Beigang.

My apartment is cool

Here are two cultural differences that were highlighted in my varied exoduses.

Firstly, the Taiwanese yes. “Yes, you can move in.  Yes, it’s ok that you aren’t a ballerina.  Oh wait, I wasn’t allowed to rent you the space and I thought you were only staying a month.  You have to move out.”  This was the dialogue about my apartment.  I’m still perplexed about who was lying, but someone was in order to save face.  The man who found me the apartment either forgot to tell my then future land lady that I was planning to stay for more than a month (I had 8 months left on my contract) or that I was a teacher at his wife’s school (implying a stay of longer than a month), or my former land lady really did rent me a space she had no authority to rent, which is weird.  I’ll say this; someone was very careless/thoughtless because as previously mentioned, finding apartments in Yunlin county take connections.  I worried that I had offended or been somehow wanting as a tenant.

I heard through the gossip mill (which is prevalent in rural anywhere) that the land lady was pissed about the ballet classes.  Well, I tried to make amends, so life goes on.

My leaving the school was another cultural difference.  To quit, you need to give 30 days.  That’s just a heads up to the five of you reading this.  Your boss has to “let” you quit, which is jarring to an American. My bosses and recruiter (Teach Taiwan) initially told me they could have me deported (they can’t).  Slowly we moved from “We can have you deported” to “We’ll let you go after 3 weeks and you get your full pay, but you won’t get your termination documentation for two weeks, so your new job won’t be able to pay you on time.”  I considered that to be as good as could be expected.

So now to new adventures in Taichung.

HSBC in Chiayi– it no longer exists.

I have a plan to figure out how to send money home for free (it currently costs $12 and is kind of a hassle).  Again, this is a Yunlin County problem, my fellow Weigouren in Tapei, Hsinchu, Taichung, and Kaohsiung (possibly Tainan, don’t feel like looking it up) who have access to all modern conveniences are probably mystified that this is a problem.

I have been told that HSBC has an English website and that you can move money from linked accounts for free or a nominal fee.  So I used my banking hours to go and set up an account at the Chiayi branch.

The Chiayi branch no longer exists.  They have not updated the website, but I have verified this with my eyes and feet.  So I will have to try again next month at one of the Taichung branches.  Once I have done that, I will fill you in on how it went.

These shoes I got at the night market for 200 NT are not standing in front of Chiayi HSBC.

Ugly Americans

This post is actually in defense of us.  Many many Taiwanese people are kind, friendly, and welcoming.  There are those who resent expat teachers.  I have my own experience, and I have seen sentiments posted on other blogs.  The people who I would like to see this probably never will, but I feel like putting it out there anyway.

I work for a public elementary school, and there are lots of little marks of disrespect and distrust from our employers.  It’s subtle, but real.  We are denied use of facilities (not for private Weigouren-only orgies, but for teaching our Taiwanese students).  We are almost always in the dark about schedule changes until the last minute.  I am personally given very little support for classroom management issues.

When we try to get a situation fixed (like getting more than one usable printer/computer combo in an office designed to support 20 teachers) we get no results, yet are later told in a meeting that we need to communicate our needs.  There are a lot of disheartening and discouraging cultural misunderstandings.  Here in Yunlin County, the onus is more or less entirely on us to bridge the cultural gap.  To some extent that’s fair, we’re guests in someone else’s home.

But the guest in someone else’s home analogy only goes so far, because we are not just lounging around being entertained; we work.  We pay taxes.  We spend money locally.  I was looking at some comments on a post about a Canadian who got busted for dealing pot.  The westerners who commented had a less serious attitude about the infraction– the man wasn’t Pablo Escobar.  One of the Asian posters in particular went on a rant about dirty, scumbag westerners cashing in on Taiwan merely for doing something they could easily do– speak their native language.

Well, there is that.  Models get paid for being really beautiful; they had the good luck of having hit the genetic lottery.  We get paid for having hit the born-in-an-Anglophone-country lottery.  They also get paid for not eating and standing in freezing weather wearing bathing suits.  We get paid in part for leaving everyone we know and giving up the comforts of home.  In both examples, one could say “well if you don’t like it, no one forced you, don’t do it.”  Well, sure, but like models, we’re supplying a service that someone wants to pay for, and if people didn’t pay other people to teach English in Taiwan, there wouldn’t be enough people willing to do it.  The “if you don’t like it, no one forced you to do it” argument can be applied to every person ever in the history of mankind who had any complaint about his or her job ever.

Additionally, we do actually work.  It’s not like we just show up and shoot the breeze with our students.  Is finding lots of songs about the days of the week the world’s most difficult or taxing problem to solve?  No.  Do I have to do whether I feel like it or not?  Yes.  Would I do it for free?  No.  So it’s work.  I also had to earn at least one college degree to get this job, and in point of fact, have two and many years’ teaching experience.  So no, I’m not here draining Taiwan of its resources doing work that a Taiwanese person could do just as well.  I have never met a Taiwanese person who can speak English better than me, and I’d bet the ranch that they are rare on the ground if they do exist, assuming they would want to teach ESL to children.

Now I’m not going to lie, we do have it easier than our Taiwanese counterparts in a lot of ways.  Most of us don’t really speak Mandarin well or at all, and living in Yunlin County, very few people speak English, so it’s harder to drag us into weird work place politics and it’s harder to use the subtle shaming and hinting that is used a social discipline when everyone is from the same culture.  I think we make more, but we also aren’t on track for a pension, so I’m not sure how the finances fall out.

Here’s where our Taiwanese counterparts (especially in rural places like Yunlin County) have a distinct advantage– they know how to get shit done. This goes beyond just knowing the language.  I was talking to one of my Taiwanese co-teachers, who is very sophisticated and earned her master’s degree at a UK university, and asking her where I could find someone to move all the boxes out of my kitchen (my land lady never got around to clearing them out).  She thought for a minute and said “I don’t know, I guess I’d just ask my friends for help.”  I have some friends.  I have three friends.  They aren’t going to help me move boxes.  I wanted to find a paint store in Beigang.  There’s no Yelp; most businesses aren’t online.  To get anything, you have to find someone in the know and hope that they are willing to fill you in.  Do they withhold information to be evil?  No, they just forget to find out; it’s not their problem, so it easily slips their mind.  We all understand that, but if you’re the person in need, it gets frustrating.  The language barrier issue doesn’t even kick in until several steps into the problem solving process.

Westerners in my demographic are not used to relying on networks of friends and family past a certain age, and even if we were, how long does it take to generate those?  I belong to the nomadic middle class, where we move for the job and have to start from scratch in a new place periodically.  Obviously I’m not alone, because America is quite well set-up to cater to our needs.  Rural Taiwan (and probably rural many places) is simply not oriented the same way.  I’m not really attacking my Taiwanese acquaintances for being unhelpful; they have their own lives to run.  But in a place like Yunlin, where very few people spend any amount of time overseas, virtually no one recognizes how problematic and stressful that is for us.

So if there were one thing I would want my bosses and coworkers to really understand, it’s what it’s like to be stymied for weeks over the problem of how to get a bunch of boxes out of your kitchen, or how to figure out how to get a flat pack futon up three flights of stairs.  I’ve been asking around for a general handy man for three weeks now and I’m no closer to finding one than when I started.  Unlike Midwestern America, there aren’t Taiwanese teens around looking for pocket money doing odd jobs.  I will continue to work on this problem, and so far, the times when I have solved a problem it has been through word of mouth and asking around.  If you are shy or have a hang-up about asking for help (that would be me), you will have some moments of discomfort here.  That’s why so many expats cluster around cities; they form networks of their own, which are useful for day-to-day living.

Bored to death and sad and lonely

The flip side of expat life for some of us, are the boring parts in between the outstanding parts.  In so many ways, life in Taiwan is such a huge step up for me than life in the U.S. had become.  But on the other hand, I had a dog and a cat and a fantastic sexual partner in the States.

As an introvert, it takes a while for me to reach the end of my introvert rope and get bored, but Monday and Tuesday seem to be the prime time for this to happen.  I don’t want to do any solitary pursuits; I want to play.  I want a sympatico English speaker.

I had this fantastic period of serenity and feeling of completeness all by myself for the first two months.  Now I’m itching for a dude.  It’s not that I need to have sex; I want the fun of a romantic relationship with a guy I dig.  When you want to get with someone, they are initially fascinating.  So I find being single boring (but I find being in a bad relationship worse)  I wish it weren’t so; I’d rather be cooler than that.  But I’m 35 and I’ve been married and in a long term relationship, so I know what I’m missing, and it’s a pain in the ass.

Back in high school and for most of college, I never had boyfriends and it bothered me, although I had lots of time to spend with my friends and that was a blast.  After my divorce, Cleveland was not a happening place to find guys.  For some reason, there were tons of dudes in Indianapolis to go out with, and several to have flings/short-term relationships with.  For the first time ever, I was a hot chick and lots of dudes wanted to squire me about.  Now I’m back on bench– only older women and children find me piaoliang.  I liked being a hot commodity; it was fun.  One take away from this, dear reader, is that context is a big factor on whether you’re a backstage betty or a wallflower.  I have not changed in looks or demeanor and my stock has risen and plummeted and the only difference seems to be where I live.

So boredom— I guess the best thing is is to make a feature of it.  Hang out with it, Buddhist style.  Make art for it.  What does boredom look like?  What does boredom feel like?  For me, it’s very stomach based; a little like nausea and asphyxiation.  But I’m not really going to die.  I just don’t happen to feel like doing any of the things that normally entertain me.

Being bored is boring.  I’m boring myself describing being bored.  If anyone read down to here, I’m sorry.

Ugh, guys.

For me, I’m recently relatively unafflicted by romantic woes largely because I have enough other stuff to occupy my attention.  But after a really awesome afternoon at Bantao Village (beautiful, pictures to follow), I made the mistake of coming home and getting online instead of going straight to the salon and getting my hair done.

Before I came to Taiwan, I had a great but tragically flawed relationship with a man I still carry a torch for.  I got an email from him noting that I had rejoined OKCupid (which is iffy here in Taiwan), which bummed me out, because I still haven’t totally made peace with the fact that things didn’t work out between us.

The real fly in my ointment is that I did go back on OKC and I actually have discovered a man whose attention I straight-up long for.  I don’t know him, but he looks perfect for me and I want to find out if I’m right or wrong about it.  But I can’t, because he hasn’t returned my last damned message.  Does it sound like I’m frustrated?

Meanwhile, the men whose attention I do attract all seem to see me as a free therapist; a service I offer because of the social leverage it offers me and from genuine human empathy.  So I spent over an hour “counseling” a guy I decided weeks ago that I don’t want to bang, while simultaneously discovering that a runner-up to Mr.-Perfect-for-Me-in-Tainan just broke up with a long term girlfriend like 10 weeks ago (hurray!).  So now I have a new client instead of a frisky playmate who may have the hookup to fun.

I only joined OKC because I wanted to make friends (No!  For real!), and now I know about a man I want to project all of my romantic fantasies all over who is winning a blue ribbon at ignoring me.  Why didn’t I just stick with more quality pursuits like learning Chinese and finding a ballet instructor?  Grrrr.

Matt Forney II

He’s politically conservative.  He gets no money from me.  I’m bored now.  It was so much cooler when I thought he was being ironic.