Shared Experiences

Got together for lunch with a guy named John yesterday. He's 27, getting married in just weeks and then he and his new wife are going to grad school in the UK.

Like me he's American by birth but spent part of his early childhood in Asia; Hong Kong to be precise. Most Americans who've lived in Asia, seems to me, lived in Hong Kong. Only makes sense, of course, as it's where a lot of business people would go and everyone there speaks English.

Just as with my friend Joelle, John's experience was different from mine in that he came back to America not speaking a foreign language as much as having a British accent. He has two sisters who were also there so he's also been fortunate enough to have siblings to share in the experience.

Still, you don't need to speak the language to have the place affect you profoundly. John's studying Buddhism and told me about his studies of the faith and how his childhood played a significant role.

I told him about how I used to think Buddha was just the Taiwanese Jesus because the two figures were so alike. As I got older I realized this boyhood confusion lead me down a more profound path when I started seeing, as an adult, the surprising parallels between both figures. For people like John and I, we never were allowed to fall into the traps of fundamentalism or literalism. We both knew from an early age that life was bigger and more mysterious than any rigid interpretation could sufficiently explain.

It's curious, to me, how much time people spend sticking to their guns and attempting to distance themselves from each other with insignificant details when they actually agree in all the most profound, meaningful ways. Let me back away from such an abstract statement and give an example.

I recently tried to convince a group of conservative-leaning Americans that our country would be better off if we became fully bi-lingual and not stick so dogmatically to an "English Only" mentality. Granted, I started out the conversation being my usual, satirical self and they reacted with similar cynicism and sarcasm.

My desire wasn't for yet another pointless black-and-white, choose your side exercise in debate. I really wanted to get people to understand what I was talking about. Obviously being ironic and witty wasn't getting me anywhere, so I turned 180 degrees and told them I thought they were all intelligent, capable people and there's no reason a nation like ours should be incapable of bilingualism.

That didn't work either. They were less willing to agree with me than they were to pick apart some minute details of my argument. Rather than focusing in on my saying they were smart enough to learn a language and building on that they wanted to tear my statements down, accusing me of encouraging immigrants to not learn English by speaking to them in their language.

It seemed no matter what I did to get them to see what we agreed on they spent most of their effort in fighting me. I feel as though they knew we agreed but didn't want to admit it. Perhaps they feared admitting to commonalities amounted to losing the argument they so obviously wanted to "win?"

The whole thing ended in frustration. I was actually swearing at them (using *** to cover up all but the first letters so I wouldn't get censored but they knew my intent). I told them I couldn't believe they would spend so much time tearing down the peripherals of my ideas rather than attempting to add to the conversation about the hart of the issue. I accused them all of having more ego than sense and not being able to look past their own, petty pride.

Not very Buddhist of me or Christ-like, and I later apologized for the outburst, saying I was perhaps pulling a bait-and-switch game on them by starting out tongue-in-cheek when I actually wanted people to listen seriously for a change.

You can't make people do anything. This is a point John and I commiserated on: how so much about American culture angers us yet we try our best to calm down and realize we not only can't make people be any different but we shouldn't. Buddha could only show people the path to enlightenment, not walk it for them just as Jesus could only show people the way to salvation, not actively save them himself.

Even on the most simple things, such as where you're from, we're finding ways to distance ourselves from others. I told John about how some react with "Sounds like you had a more interesting childhood than mine!" when they find out all about my past and how I always felt like it was a dig. He said it sounded like an expression of jealousy and certainly an attempt by people to put space between themselves and me.

He said it was just like the reaction he gets when people find out he got his bachelor's degree from Harvard. Just as I would only offer one piece of my past, "I graduated high school in Bismarck, N.D." he'd answer questions about his education at first with "I studied out east." If someone wanted more, then they'd find out about my grade school years on the reservation or John would specify "Boston." Then, further back to my Taiwan years or John would say "Cambridge." Eventually, of course, "Harvard" would cross his lips and the cat's out of the bag.

I immediately said to him what I correctly assumed was often the response, "Oh, wow, you must be smart!" and the implication, "You must think you're smarter and all-around better than me."

I don't like space between people. I want to connect with people, get to know them and find out about their childhoods and what makes them happy. Now, if someone says "you had a more interesting childhood than mine" I'll tell them how jealous I am that they're so close to the land of their own childhood. They've got friends they've known for decades living close by and extended family perhaps only a couple hours drive away. They've got a sense of belonging, identity and roots that I'll never have.

That's what I want: understanding. I don't just want people to understand me, I want them to understand each other.

All through the conversation John and I had moments where we could have concentrated on our differences but we instead keep the focus on what was the same. I told him how my parents were doing volunteer work to develop a poor economy. He said his parents were there with a different motivation: greed. Somehow I immediately knew that wasn't an honest response from him, and called him on it, saying I'm sure their motivations weren't that dissimilar from my parents.

He readily agreed, and talked about his parents' love for architecture, design and engineering. Obviously, two people who raised someone who wants to study Buddhism aren't motivated by something as base as greed.

All along, every time there was a topic presented between us we would automatically find what was different and in conflict. Then, we'd think better of it, put it into perspective and realize how very similar we both were on a deeper, more meaningful level.

As we said our goodbyes and promised to speak again and continue correspondance, he told me it was great how there was a deeper connection there between us beyond words. I'm starting to see what he was saying, but I can put words to it and I think they're the most beautiful words any person can say to someone else, "I understand you as you understand me."

Hai Ou from the Sky

Dad called this past weekend to point out that Google Earth finally updated their satellite photos of Taiwan and he found Hai Ou! Here's where it's actually located on the southern end of the island. I added the name and red dot in Paint Shop Pro (don't bother searching for it in Google Earth yourself):



Here's the closeup:



The town hasn't changed at all in 27 years as far as I can tell. Still microscopic and still only two major streets, one on each side of the fish ponds in the middle. The majority of buildings are built between the main street and sea wall on the SW end. The other major street is on the NE end and those are mostly shops. One of those buildings on the NE street is where my pre school used to be.

The only real difference I can tell is in the little half-moon shaped formations on the beach. Looks like little, artificial bays to break up the waves. So much for taking a trip back there to get salt water up my nose by the waves crashing over me!

You can even see the seagull statue in the far Eastern corner of the village. It's just a white line running almost directly North to South and you'd probably have to zoom in within Google Earth itself to make it out right. You can sort of see the figure of the statue in the shadow it casts, though.

In the southernmost edge of the village is where the new ICA building was built. Just NW of it is a building with a blue roof that first housed my pre school before we moved across the ponds to the street with the shops. Just SW of there (up the hill of the seawall) is a restaurant where Mom, Dad and I would have the occasional dinner consisting of 100 Shue Jiao (Jiao Tze). Boiled pork and vegetable dumplings, basically.

So, for all those out there wondering just where this little village was on the island, now you have your answer.

I'm a Third Culture Kid

Ever since my revelations in Vietnam and since returning home I've been struggling with a definition of what I was. I've said I understood the Asian American experience but I'm not Asian American. I've been to a Taiwanese church and shared memories of cartoons and box lunches on trains but ultimately I'm not Taiwanese.

I'm not even fully American.

What, exactly, am I, then? According to a friend of mine who spent her teenage years in Hong Kong I'm a Third Culture Kid.

This friend is married to a fellow mountain biking enthusiast. We've known each other for a couple years and I knew she spent part of her childhood in Hong Kong just as she knew I spent part of my childhood in Taiwan. But, last week I decided I had to open up to her a lot more because of my reawakening to my past.

I emailed her husband as I didn't have her direct contact info. She emailed me with a very thoughtful and insightful email. I could tell right away that what I'm going through she'd already faced and was a lot further down the road to recovery or enlightenment or whichever you wish to call it. Mostly, she gave me some very healing terminology, the categorization of Third Culture Kid (TCK).

Before this I was searching the Internet for information about people like me. I Googled "Americans growing up in Asia" or but that only yielded a wealth of information about immigrant kids growing up in America, not the other way around. Now that I know to search on TCKs I'm finally getting results.

I've added a book, simply titled "Third Culture Kids", to my reading list for one thing. On Amazon.com you can read the first few pages where you get the first part of a story about a woman leaving Singapore for "home" in upstate New York. In the passage she's doing her best not to think about how much she'll miss Singapore and how much it feels like home despite her returning to a part of the world where she'll finally look just like everyone else.

The excerpt cuts it short to urge you to buy but I know the rest of the story anyway. She returns to upstate New York and feels like an outsider. She’ll talk all funny, not understand a wealth of cultural references and overall feel very lonely. Only once she accepts who or what she is will she be able to finally use her uniqueness to her advantage and grow. If she gives in and tries to fully assimilate back into American culture she’ll always feel like half a person.

On my Vietnam trip blog I posted a long, cathartic outpouring of what I was going through and remembering how painful and lonely it had been for me to come “back home” to the US as a kid. After the post I took a walk up Nicollet Ave. here in Minneapolis because I knew I’d be going by a variety of Vietnamese-owned businesses.

I spoke a little Vietnamese with some people hanging out by Pho Tau Bay, shopped at a couple Asian grocery stores and finally ended up at a very American café where I had a bottle of water and a hamburger. My emotions were so bound up I was only able to eat less than half of the burger.

While there I got out a piece of paper and started making a list titled “People to tell.” I had already emailed my parents, grandparents and a few friends asking them to please read my latest blog post as it was such a discovery of who I really was and I wanted them to understand. I jotted down a few more names and that was when the waitress walked by, spied what I was writing and smiled to herself.

I know she assumed the list was of people to whom I had yet to come out of the closet. At the time I smiled to myself at how clueless she was but later realized she assumed correctly in all the most meaningful ways.

Everyone needs to come out of the closet if they want to be a complete person and finally grow out of adolescence. The metaphor is used almost exclusively for gay people finally admitting who they are, first to themselves and then to everyone in their lives. But, it can be applied to everyone in the population, not just an exclusive ten percent.

The day I wrote that post I came out of the TCK closet.

The closet was the same structure as the wall my Vietnamese-American friend Ashley has around her according to her friends and family back on the Mekong Delta. As I was in that closet I’d do everything I could to over-compensate so nobody would think I was anything but a good old American boy.

To fit in I learned all kinds of tricks. The big one, of course, was not to talk about myself too much. That’ll light up anyone’s TCKdar like a big, red lantern. In my case, it’s being too Asian: “Hi, my name’s Chris, nice to meet you and now please listen to my life’s story in detail.”

Reese and I have been exploring the Vietnamese restaurants in the area we haven’t tried yet. At each one I’ve made it a point to say “Xin chao!” after “Hello!” and “Cam u’n” instead of “Thank you.” This, of course, opens up the staff at any Vietnamese restaurant. They’ll ask where I learned to speak, we’ll tell them we just got back from Vietnam, they’ll then launch into their life story.

As they’re doing that your food is getting cold, time is being wasted, your private dinner for two is so very rudely interrupted by this braggart who just won’t shut up about her own stupid life. Yeah, that’s the American response to such openness. The common complaint Americans have about immigrants, however, is they won’t assimilate into our culture.

Like hell! They’re assimilating just like they’ve been taught: don’t bother anybody because they’re not interested in hearing about you. Ask them what they want to drink, ask them what they want to eat, stop by after a few minutes to ask if everything’s OK, give them the bill, thank them and that’s all you do. There. That’s American!

When I started writing this I had some brilliant insight into how it’s easy to view American culture as rude, uninviting and cold. So, sorry but I seem to have lost that thought for now. All my life I think I’ve felt some small bit of contempt for this country, but I’m actually beginning to realize it’s not America’s fault.

As I said earlier, the rest of the story about the woman leaving Singapore for her native upstate New York was about how she couldn’t be a complete person until she finally accepted herself for who she really is. If she or I were actually gay and not TCKs that recognition would have been a whole lot easier. Being gay is actually more mainstream than being white and multi-cultural. There are literally tens of millions of gay Americans if you figure the percentage. According to tckworld.com there are only 3 million TCKs in America. In my own circle of friends I know many gay couples but only about two or three TCKs.

Don’t get me wrong, either. I know full well it’s more difficult to decide to come out gay in America. It’s downright dangerous and even deadly to admit that in some remote parts of the country. You don’t ever read of TCK bashing in the news and nobody’s trying to amend the constitution to refuse rights to TCKs.

No, the difficulty in my coming out was identification. How can you come out as a TCK if you don’t know about TCKs? Until then I just knew to keep my mouth shut for fear of being labeled “chatty” at the least and “self-centered” at the worst. On my Vietnam blog post I said “No, I don’t think my childhood was more interesting than yours.” Of course, that’s not true, my childhood was pretty damn interesting. What I now have to get comfortable with is that’s not my fault. It just is and I can’t fault anyone else for what they assume about me as a result.

I daresay I’ve felt more mature this past month, but I wonder how accurate that is. When I look back on my life until now it seems very selfish and almost infantile, that’s for certain. It’s as if I’m looking for atonement of some kind. Forgive me, I have sinned! I’ve been guilty of pride, greed and gluttony for starters and it’s surprisingly shaming for a non-Catholic. Was that all a side-effect of trying and failing to completely fit in as an American? Am I better able to live a moral life just like a gay man who’s finally able to settle down with one guy after a lifetime of one-night stands with women? How the hell should I know?

Everyone assumes they know it all, of course. That’s just natural. I’ve been guilty of assuming and I’ll continue to be guilty of it until I’m dead. Nobody knows the first thing about anybody they just met although they’ll act like they do. That first impression can be a real bitch.

On first glance it's easy to assume that Americans are a lot of gluttonous, amoral and greedy people. But, enough about how Americans view themselves. The “gift” a TCK like me should have is the rare ability to understand more than one culture. It’s not just lazy of me but irresponsible to give in and agree with such "common knowledge": Americans are fat, immature brats with more money than sense.

So, here’s my crack at understanding: you can’t blame the American people for an obesity problem. Americans don’t lack self control. They aren’t any more naturally gluttonous than the rest of the world. They have, however, created a for-profit food industry that makes it very difficult logistically and financially to stay healthy.

I stopped at Target yesterday to pick up a couple things and on the list of items was a bag of rice. I bought some dried, shredded pork this weekend at a local Asian grocery store and I wanted to get short-grain rice so I could make my favorite Taiwanese breakfast: soupy rice and shredded pork.

The store I went to was a “Greatland” Target and they have a small “food” section. They have a couple standard grocery items such as milk and eggs but the rest of it was “snacks.” Greasy, salty, corn syrup-filled foods loaded with preservatives. No rice unless you wanted it likewise full of flavored crap.

If you wanted something “healthy” it wasn’t in the “food” section but the “health and beauty” section. There you’d find a small array of low-carb, low-fat or no sugar added candy bars passed off as food for “active people.” If I’m mountain biking the Maah Daah Hey trail on a hot day, sweating tons of salts and nutrients out of my system the last thing I need is to eat something with only 3 grams of carbohydrates! If my goal were to pass out from exhaustion and malnutrition then I need look no further.

It’s easy to read that and think it’s the rant of an over-zealous health nut. I wouldn’t deny such an accusation, either. But, all I needed was something much of the rest of the world considers bare necessity: a bag of rice. I don’t want some kind of instant rice you pop in a microwave or some packet of rice with artificial chicken flavoring garnished with tiny vegetable crumbs. I just want plain, white, short-grain rice I can prepare any way I please.

No, I’d have to go to a real grocery store for real food, but I don’t have a list and it’s real busy on Sundays and … hell, just stop at McDonalds on the way home. No "good" food could be found at this Target, just the opposite ends of over-processed foods: fattening for when you're feeling weak and emaciating for when you're feeling guilty. Just skip it all and smoke yourself thin. Either way you’ll die early it’s just a question of diabetes vs. emphysema.

Americans are just working with the system they’ve got, so it actually takes more willpower than is possible for the average human being. I can’t blame them any more than I can blame immigrants for “failing” to assimilate.

No, I Don't Remember Land of the Lost

I was too busy watching Sea Prince or Mazin.

I attended the Evangelical Formosan Church of the Twin Cities Sunday and met a lot of "fellow" Taiwanese. We had a good time remeniscing about Taiwan and eventually the conversation between myself and a couple folks around my age turned to the cartoons we watched as kids.

My friends here talk sometimes about shows like Land of the Lost but I'm usually lost on the subject. There's a whole era of American culture I simply wasn't around for, basically the whole of the Carter Administration. Land of the Lost's first season started in '74 and went off the air in '77, I believe. So, before going to Taiwan I was too young to watch that kind of show anyway. I believe my American friends know it from syndication through the end of the '70s and early '80s, so I was either in Taiwan or on the reservation where our choice of TV stations was quite limited.

So, it was quite the release to join with others in remembering cartoons about a boy and his white dolphin or big robots and their adventures. We also shared our collective love for the little box lunches you'd get on the train from Gaoshung to Taibei that were not much more than rice, a piece of meat and a brown, hard-boiled tea egg. A lot of the folks there were actually from Ping Tung Province where Hai Ou is located. Of course, nobody recognized the name Hai Ou except for its meaning (seagull) but my parents shed some more light on this.

The community we lived in was very small indeed. And, the locals called it Hai Ou but to most everyone else it was either Hsia Liao or Dajuang. Mom even said one of her English students over there confessed to her in a hushed voice that the name of the town basically meant "Little Pig Houses."

The big seagull statue in town was part of an earlier attempt by the government at economic development. They saw the area as a potential tourist destination: "Seagull Beach." I do remember just north of town the little picnic area and public beach. That's where I once saw a guy taking a smoke break, sitting on his motorcycle and I asked if he could teach me to smoke.

Everyone smoked in Taiwan. My parents even smoked there. So, I was just trying to fit in.

The guy laughed at me first when I approached him, asking for a smoking lesson. He was amused, I'm sure, not only by a 5-year-old boy asking for a cigarette but a blonde, American 5-year-old boy asking for a smoking lesson in perfect Taiwanese.

I remember what he told me to do but only in English:

"Just inhale."

I inhaled about four times, coughed a whole bunch and he lauged at me some more. He took the cigarette back and concluded the lesson. I really didn't get what was so great about smoking after that.

When I told Michael, one of the members of the Formosan Church, about where, specifically the village was and the "Seagull Beach" plan he showed me just how far the area has come. Behold, just north of the little pig houses, the decadance of DaPeng Bay.

I Love Bananas

I'm starting this blog to collect memories of the three years I lived in Taiwan as a child. Here you'll find pictures, stories and anything else I can post as a collection of what I've found was a most unusual childhood. I'll have the first post be something I wrote last week to start everyone off:

I love bananas.

I always have. Mom was always worried I’d get sick from eating too many bananas but I never did. When I was three years old she told me we were moving to a place called Taiwan and pointed to it on a map of the world.

“It looks like a banana!” I said. I even remember it being colored yellow as it was one of those maps with all the nations set apart by color. To my added delight, the country turned out to be absolutely overflowing with bananas. They grew on trees there. No, really. You didn’t have to go to a grocery store and pick out the ones that just stopped being too green. Just pluck a big old bunch off any tree that has ‘em and they were yours. Of course if you did that you’d probably be stealing from someone’s crop.

Mom still wouldn’t let me, of course, fearing I’d get sick. Didn’t matter, I’d get Grandma Wu to give me as many bananas as I wanted any time I wanted. I wasn’t yet smart enough to hide them, though, and Mom would catch me red-handed, half-eaten banana stuffed in my mouth and the rest of the bunch in my arms. I think Grandma Wu confessed, too, although I don’t see her owning up to it with anything other than pride.

I’m getting ahead of myself with the story about Grandma Wu, though. That was in Hai Ou, a tiny fishing village on the south end of the island. Go ahead, look it up. You probably won’t find much information about it at all. You’ll get lots of information about the Hai Ou class missile the Taiwanese navy developed, but not the actual village of Hai Ou where I spent two years of my childhood.

Before that we lived in Gaoshung for about 10 months. Bananas growing on trees are a little harder to come by in Gaoshung. My memories of that place are of a lot of dust, construction, noise and geckos.

I hated geckos. They frightened me to death. I didn’t care how many mosquitoes and bugs they ate or how harmless they were. One night I was crying and wouldn’t go to bed at a friend’s house because the guest room was at the end of a hall crawling with some four or five geckos; all different colors.

My memories of Gaoshung aren’t many. We were only there less than a year, after all. Plus I think the place wasn’t fundamentally that much different from any other city in the world like the ones I’d already lived in: Kansas City, Chicago and Rockford, IL where I was born.

They don’t speak English in Gaoshung, though, and I learned Mandarin Chinese there as quickly as any 3-4 year old child would. The human mind just works that way. Doesn’t matter who you are if you’re young enough you’ll learn whatever language you’re exposed to.

When we moved from Gaoshung to Hai Ou I had to learn a new language: Taiwanese. To give you an idea of how quickly kids learn languages, my Mom asked me a month after moving to Hai Ou when I was going to start speaking Taiwanese.

“I think it will come in 3 days,” I told her. I was four years old, so I know I wasn’t bragging or exaggerating. I was saying it as plainly and obviously as I would say I had blonde hair. That’s about how long it takes: one month and three days.

After three years of high school Spanish I found myself begging Spaniards in Zaragoza to repeat things in English so I could understand them. After one month in Hai Ou I was playing with the other kids, shooting my mouth off in a regional dialect with eight tones. Mandarin only has four.

If you’re unfamiliar with tonal languages, let me explain. It’s like singing while you talk. The intonation of a word is part of its meaning. If you’ve ever spoken to someone from Vietnam who’s learned English you’ll get a taste of how important vowels and tones are to them and how insignificant consonants are. To English-speaking ears a Vietnamese speaking English doesn’t know how to enunciate. If you ask the Vietnamese he’d say he’s saying the vowels just right, so why don’t you understand him?

For the opposite reason many westerners are difficult to understand when trying to speak in a tonal language. They’ll read words like “Cam u’n” in Vietnamese and read it aloud, emphasizing the hard “K” sound at the beginning, giving the “U” a “ooh” or “ah” sound and totally screw up the tones. It will sound to an English speaking person like they’re saying “Come on!” and a Vietnamese will have no idea what this silly American’s trying to say.

I know I’m unique in this, but I don’t quite understand why hearing and repeating the tones is so difficult. I honestly think the majority of the problem is ego. Once you’ve heard enough jokes about the Chinaman naming his kids by dumping silverware down some steps you have a hard time taking tonal languages seriously.

Believe it or not, Americans sound the most like they’re speaking a tonal language when they’re making fun of it. Next time, listen to your neighbor Jason say “Ching chang chong chang!” when he’s whining about some stupid kung fu movie he totally wasted eight bucks on the other night. I’m willing to bet “Ching” is said with a flat tone, “chang” is said with a falling and rising tone, “chong” is said with a rising tone and the last “chang” is said with a falling tone. There you go, Jason’s a budding English-Chinese translator.

What’s more, English is a tonal language. Tones aren’t use as much and certainly not officially but very often the same word can have slightly different meanings depending on tone. Take “yes” for example. If someone says something you agree with, the “yes” you’d use would have a falling tone to it: start out high and drop off at the end. If someone gets your attention and you reply “Yes?” you’re using a rising tone.

The first “yes” means “I agree” and the second “yes” means either “can I help you?” or “can you please repeat?” That’s a tonal language.

The big difference between English and true tonal languages, of course, is degree. The majority of English doesn’t use tones for meaning, but every word in a tonal language has a meaning tied to the consonants, vowels and tone.

This is a big reason I was once informed by an American who lived for a year in Taiwan that “Taiwanese is impossible!” The four tones of Mandarin are already just about too much to handle for westerners. Double the number of tones and I wouldn’t blame someone for giving up. Even Vietnamese only has 6 tones, although sometimes I think it’s more like 7.

Not tough for four year old me, though. One month and I was fluent in an 8 tone language. Well, as fluent as any four year old can be with any language, of course. I spoke Taiwanese until the age of six or seven. I can’t say for sure because I don’t remember exactly when I lost it all. We moved back to the states when I was six, living in a small town on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Nobody there spoke Taiwanese.

How did I end up living in all these different places at such an early age? My parents were involved in an organization called the Institute for Cultural Affairs. It was an economic development and “human potential” organization that conducted projects around the world. Mom and Dad joined up in Chicago in the early ‘70s and I was born into the institute.

When they had been given a chance to do work in Taiwan they jumped at it. I, of course, had no say in the matter. But, I got to eat all the bananas I wanted.