Culture Shock– The five month blues

Culture shock is a painful thing to experience.  I have stabs of it; but for the most part I’m doing ok because I’ve had a spate of good luck that has buoyed my mood.  I was researching culture shock a month ago because I was suffering from it much more intensely in the small town where I lived.

Basically, the stages of living in a foreign land are the “Honeymoon phase”, when everything seems wonderful and new and you’re thrilled and it’s all exciting.  For me that lasted two months.  Then 3-12 months are the “Negotation phase” where the culture shock part kicks in.  The difficulties due to language and culture barriers become magnified and sometimes overwhelming.  Depression is a big part of this.  Even now, living in Taichung, I find myself often unwilling to negotiate finding places in other parts of the city.  My comfort zone grows slowly.

One part of culture shock that I feel creeping in and saw on display yesterday is disdain for the people of the country one is living in.  When you’ve traveled a lot, it’s easy to look down on those who haven’t.  They just don’t know that their ways are not THE WAYS of the universe.  They tend to be less accepting of difference.  I met a French graduate student who wafted disappointment (legitimately so), over her grad program.  She was pretty down on the Taiwanese people; seeing them as inefficient and childish.  That is an easy snap judgement to make about them, but there’s a lot of evidence that there’s more to the Taiwanese than that.

It’s important for the traveler to remember that travel is still the privilege of the wealthy and/or educated.  Especially in traditional societies; travel for young people isn’t encouraged.  The tightly knit communities that discourage a lot of outside exploration are conducive to flourishing in their own societies.  How do you keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen gay Paris?  And what if you really really need them on the farm?  I’ve experienced first hand the degree to which Taiwanese people rely on their networks of family and friends.  It’s really not in their interests to encourage their kids to backpack across Europe.

This leads a lot of expats to gather together.  I used to scoff at this; people who flee their country only to set up a facsimile somewhere else.  But now that I’ve become one, I see that that is only one tiny part of the story.  There are a handful of people like that, but most expats are extensively well-traveled.  They’ve visited and lived in many places and gather together because they want to be around other travelers.  Travelers are less risk-averse, have different schedules, priorities, experiences, and world views than others.  I don’t think they’re better, but they are definitely a sub-culture.  Expats gather because they want to be around people like them, which is natural.

So what do you do for the 5 month blues?  Give in and find expats, but at the same time, try not to disdain the locals.  Try to understand how their lifestyle really does work for them.  Try to notice all the ways they are kind and not focus on the crazy old men who give you shit for wearing a tank top even though it’s warm out.  I delight in pointing out the ways Taiwanese culture differs from American culture, but I do want to understand why Taiwanese ways make sense to Taiwanese people.

 

Out for a walk in Taichung

I live in Xi district and I was walking to the Carrefour behind the train station and I decided to walk up Linsen road between Lequn and Fuxing.

I saw this banyan tree filled with lanterns.

It was in a courtyard surrounded by these buildings:

This was a municipal building at one point.

This served as a jail at some point, a dojo dormitory before that.  Now it’s a space for art installations.

There’s a Japanese tea shop there from the time of the Japanese occupation.

This is the front of it.

I’m glad I decided to take a different route than normal.

Taiwanese people and weather

I don’t think they notice it.  I’m impressed and envious; I feel like a hot house flower compared to them.  Taiwan is mostly hot, with a non-freezing but chilly and uncomfortable winter.  Today in balmy Taichung, it’s 24 C, which is about 80 F (I think), and it’s a bit close.  High humidity, not much of a breeze; frankly I’m uncomfortable in a long sleeve cotton shirt.  This is ideal short sleeves weather.  Yet as I walked to church where I failed to find a seat because half the Philippino population of Xi district had beaten me there, I saw Taiwanese people in jackets, sweaters, and other cool weather staples.

My outfit of choice today

Taiwanese women are very concerned about not getting brown; whiter is righter.  So they run around in 33 degree heat with 80% humidity in long sleeves and and long pants.  How do they not die on the spot? Tank tops are a bit scandalous here, and I had a hard time forcing myself to wear enough clothing to not get looks.  Fortunately I live in a big city now, so I expect to be able to get away with showing some shoulder.

You’d think this would translate to Taiwanese people curling up and dying when it gets down into a wet and 12 degree day.  Nope.  Taiwanese buildings aren’t heated, but that did not stop my coworkers from throwing all the doors and windows open and sitting at their desks in their coats.  “Why not close the windows and doors and not wear your coat?” I asked in wonder.  “We want fresh air” they say.

Ready for fresh air

They were perplexed that I would feel the cold so keenly– I’m from Chicago originally.  “Well, we heat the insides of our buildings, so you’re usually not sitting in in a room that’s 16 C” I responded. Imagine sitting not in a freezer, but in your refrigerator or unheated basement; you’re not going to die, but there’s no place to warm up.  It gets uncomfortable.  My tip for that scenario is to get a hot water bottle and take it with you to work.

Like my other questions about Taiwan, I need to ask where this weather hardiness (obliviousness?) comes from.

Taiwanese sales clerks and coconut oil

Taiwanese sales clerks are frequently aggressively helpful, which is distressing.  What they don’t realize is they drive me right out of the store; I wonder how many other people are this way?  I wonder how much revenue Taiwanese shops lose driving the introverted out of their stores due to intense sales clerk scrutiny. Shopping for me can be a fun, almost meditative experience where I gaze upon products and ruminate about a future reality in which they are a part of my life.  But because I rarely have much more money than I need, I don’t part with it that easily, and sales clerks make me feel embarrassingly cheap.  I went into a store called Sasa to look at girly foo-foo water and I did get a chance to buy a sample size of a conditioner I was curious about that I saw at Carrefour for half the price.  But Jimmy, my dedicated assistant, ruined my perfume browsing by insisting on spraying the little cards with any scent I expressed interest in.  I wanted to be left alone for 40 minutes to smell each one, but instead I declared the tuberose lovely but did not buy any because it’s $60 a bottle and I don’t make $60 impulse buys very often.

Shin Kong Mitsukoshi in Tainan

What I want to tell the overly zealous shop clerks is to clear out.  I did tell Jimmy I just wanted to look, but that didn’t scrape him off my ass for more than about 45 seconds.  I don’t know how to communicate “please go away; you’re giving me a panic attack” politely.  I went to Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing store I’d never encountered and was blissfully ignored.  I went on to spend the princely sum of $30 US on an accordian pleat grey chiffon skirt and sea foam green top that will undoubtedly make my life more meaningful and love-filled.

Me in my new grey pleated skirt.

Coconut oil update.  If your hair is dry and damaged, get some right now.  Leave it in as long as you can.  But know this– it will leave grease stains on fabric (including what you slept in and your pillow case if you leave it in overnight) so cover your head or just have a designated coconut oil t-shirt.  I’ve been reading about hair because I’m shallow and I like to do research, and if you use silicone products or argan oil, they will coat your hair and prevent the acids and fats of the coconut oil from penetrating.  I do use silicone products, so I washed my hair with one of the shampoos with lauryl sufate that everyone tells you not to use.  But it does get out the silicone.  Then I drenched my hair in coconut oil for about 36 hours (I just put it up in a bun when I went out) and washed it out this morning.  This stuff is amazing.  I will definitely be using it as a deep conditioner a couple of times a month.

Don’t, however, put it on your face in any large quantity.  After an oily, pimply teenhood, I am now blessed with clear, not too dry skin.  But after putting coconut oil on my face, I got like 3 zits.  It will clog your pores.  I’d dab it on to places that get dry to the point of flakiness, but it’s just too heavy for your face.  Even for your body, I would go more lightly next time than I did this.  I took 10 hours to sink into my skin fully and I felt like I was leaving a (admittedly lovely smelling) snail trail behind me.  Now that it has soaked in, my skin is soft and smooth.  I think what I’ll do in the future is have a designated set of coconut oil pjs and just do my coconut oil routine as an over night thing.

I got 2 Chic by Giovanni conditioner with keratin and argan oil and Giovanni’s leave-in conditioner, which promises to be weightless and Giovanni Root 66 volume shampoo.  I will let you know how those work out for me.

I’m ready for Chinese New Year

Adventures in Taiwanese psychiatry

Psychiatry update!

China Medical University Hospital (branches in Taichung and Beigang) has done an admirable job in taking care of my anxiety and depression.  I cannot get Vistaril, but they are giving me Xanax like the end of the world is nigh, which is good or bad depending on your viewpoint.

One experience worth recounting is that I ran out of Celexa and went abruptly onto Lexapro, which given the chemical similarity of the two medications, you’d think wouldn’t be a big deal.  It was a big deal.  A very big deal.  I felt like shit-death for two weeks.  Don’t do what I did.  Ease off one to the other, even if you doctor doesn’t instruct you to do so.

Train to misery town. Mind the gap.

They are free and easy with the ambien.  I take ambien more to ease evening anxiety than to sleep.  My doctor kindly prescribed me Neurontin, which my old doctor cross-prescribed because it takes a bite out of the anxiety.  I also got an Abilify kick, which is very helpful.

All in all, my experiences managing my anxiety and depression from the pharmaceutical stand point have been reassuring.  My visits to the doctor plus medicine cost about $33 U.S.  We really need socialized health care in the States.

Taiwanese/American cultural differences

My recent post have been kind of negative, but rest assured, dear reader, I still like Taiwan.  It’s just that I’m still in the “negotiation” phase of culture shock, which means a lot of the stuff I got a kick out of initially seems normal (beautiful plants, low priced lots of things) and a lot of other stuff I thought I understood about the world is kicked upside down, which is irritating.

With this great adventure (as people I know who are not me and are not here like to think of it), comes 98% normal, everyday, going-to-work/the store/to sleep-ocity.  I’m too poor to jet off to the Philippines or Thailand (or Hualien, for that matter).  So life is normal, but with more beautiful plants and much nicer weather (it’s January and 78 degrees out).

So now with the long “why I’m so bitchy” preamble out of the way, here are some cultural differences that will rub Americans and possibly other western expats the wrong way.

1. Gossip.  Gossip is universal, so what makes Taiwanese gossip somehow worse?  They don’t bother to pretend they aren’t gossiping about you, which is awkward.  We’ve all been grist for the gossip mill, but where I come from, people know not to just blurt out that your misdeeds or secrets are the most fascinating thing about you.  I’ve faked surprise over news I already knew many times in order to give my friends and acquaintances the impression of privacy.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a man I met once before, and one of the first things he mentioned was hearing that I left my job and was being kicked out of my apartment in ignominy (ignominy because I took the high road and did not trash my land lady or tell everyone her studio is haunted, something I was severely tempted to do) in front of his wife and daughter, who I had just met a few seconds ago.  That is uncomfortable!  In my forthcoming book (not really) “How to Deal with Americans in the Workplace”, one of the cardinal rules is to never ever let an American know that he or she is being talked about.  We hate that. Fortunately, I had my Berkeley shirt on, so I could do a counter move of evoking my superior education and that the job I left my old job for is teaching college, so if I had face (not sure whiteys have face here), I would have saved some of it.

2. The Taiwanese Yes.  This isn’t unique to Taiwan by any means, but is common throughout east Asia.  The East Asian version of “Inshallah” but even more confusing; the Taiwanese yes means “I don’t want to hurt your feelings and lose face by appearing uncooperative, so I’m going to say yes, when I have no intention of following through and can and will change my mind if and when I choose.”  We all say yes when we mean no, or at least I assume we do, but you don’t consider how culturally conditioned the circumstances of this practice actually are until dealing with a surprise yes-no on an issue where you considered clarity important.  In the States, this is limited largely to vague future social plans or other low stakes ventures.

3. Personal responsibility for mistakes.  Thus far, none of the Taiwanese people I’ve met in positions of authority have admitted to an error.  In the U.S. it’s part of professional culture to own mistakes, especially small, understandable ones with an “I’m sorry, won’t happen again.”  Pointing out another’s error here (I’m guessing) causes him (in my case it’s men) to lose face.  In the States, you gain face from taking responsibility for your errors.  To do so implies you are aware of what went wrong and have the power to prevent it in the future.  Here, that just isn’t the attitude.

After a series of inquiries into who let me walk into class with half of my students gone on a field trip with no forewarning, the misdeed was traced straight to the director of academics.  When I asked my co-teacher to ask him to make sure we know about major schedule changes, his response instead of “Sure, no problem” was “It doesn’t happen very often.”  To American ears, that is the wrong answer.  I really want to explain to these men how immature it makes them seem to us.  Denying wrong-doing is teenager territory.

4. Comments about appearance/age.  This one can be very nice, but even in its nicest manifestations, it feels weird.  I am told that I am beautiful by Taiwanese women and children, which is very nice.  I’ve got the Snow White coloring they like and my white (not Caucasian, super pale Caucasian) skin is considered attractive.  But after a while, it’s weird to have people comment on your looks.  I’ve had a friend of mine who is big get asked insensitive questions about how much she eats, etc.  Not cool (and debatably cool in Taiwanese culture, we have reason to believe the perps knew they were being rude). Now being told that one is beautiful by strangers doesn’t sound like a legit woe, but it does go hand in hand with comments about how long in the tooth I am.  35 and single?  “That is a bummer”, announced most of the Taiwanese ladies in their 50s or older I’ve met.  I don’t consider my age a big problem, although my sentiments on being single have been explored in other posts.

5. Money questions.  The last one for this entry– people will ask you how much you make, how much you pay in rent, how much you paid for that.  It is jarring.  And it’s not in the “I hate to be rude, but do you mean telling me what you rent is?” way we cringe around the subject just in case we’re trying to get an idea of how much to budget for whatever item you have that we might want to purchase.  You don’t get the sense that people are asking because they want to know what salary to ask for at their next job or how much a place in that neighborhood goes.  It’s just idle curiosity.

My admittedly brief training in anthropology leads me to believe all of these practices evolved for good reasons.  The practices that seem weirdest in the world have reasonable rationales when explained by my ethnography books in college.  As I spend time here, I will learn what function these practices hold.

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.

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.

With-the-Wind-Ear guarding Beigang