Stepping Stones Across the River

.
Crowds in Taiwan breath like a school of fish. There is a lubricated nonaggression that informs the way people manage to negotiate the precious resource of space. Here on the mainland, it is all corners and elbows. Broken movement gives rise to a wobble of continual missteps; a constant cold sore like irritation of blockage and avoidance.
.
It is as if there is a bass note mantra that beats from the brainstem; “I’m ahead of you, I’m ahead of you, I’m ahead of you, I’m ahead of you…”

Perhaps it is the Chinese version of driving a Hummer, the Chinese way of declaring oneself important and above. It might simply be that population density and scarcity breed a particularly acidic aggression. Or that the forces of capitalism and the free market banging up against faux-socialist belief that leads to a different kind of Cultural Revolution. The current rate of growth, as evidenced by a battleground of demolition and rebuild creates a feeling of rootlessness,  as the wheels of commerce churn out consumer lust and dreams of keeping up with Chen’s. It leaves one with  the metallic taste of aggression, careless disregard and the feeling that life is a commodity to be parceled and bargained.

Taiwanese temples effuse a perfume of smoky dreams and wishes. Its guardians, gods and psychedelically carved ceilings smoked black by prayers and burnt fragrance. In China you know a temple is close by when the cigarette shops give way to those hawking over-sized incense and ghost money. Unlike the yellow and gold currency used in Taiwan, here they burn fake American $1000 bills. Should you wish to enter the temple itself, there is a fee.

There is always a fee.
The divine is accessible; on a pay per view basis.

.
.
For some reason, the temples here remind me of refrigerators with abandoned food that is neither spoiled, nor eatable. There is a complete lack of nourishment, and an emptiness incapable of being filled.

Temples in Taiwan are as common as bus stops. They can take up entire city blocks, or the corner of a thin alley. They all radiate cathode light, an incense of burnt wishes and the hope that questions will have acceptable answers; that problems will have familiar solutions or that one’s dreams and hopes are not too far out of line with the vision of the gods.
Unlike the solemn and whisper of western religious sanctuaries, Taiwanese temples are unfettered, flip-flop casual and without holy pretense. Still lives of fruit, flowers, boxed snacks and cans of liquid refreshment adorn tables that offer to the Chinese pantheon of gods a snack while they consider the mortal requests of those who are still learning how to craft our own destiny.
Taiwanese temples offer DIY fortune telling.
 We all have questions, spoken or not. We all have answers, touched upon or not.

It works like this:

Fire up the incense; face out toward the world and feel the invitation of divine intervention. Let it creep up your spine and wiggle into the interstitial spaces between the flesh; drop three sticks of incense into the cauldron outside the temple.
Then face inward, to the pantheon of gods, deities and local heroes, recognize they are all in you in the first place. Drop another three sticks of incense in the alter cauldron; reach inward and ask the proper question. Then pull one black patina’ed bamboo stick from amongst the tribe of bamboo slivers in the unpolished brass can. Chose an intention, a path, a belief, choose a commitment to unfold life on a path of our own creation. We all walk into the temple looking for a little guidance, a wink, a nudge; we want a nod from the future that we are choosing wisely.

.

We all know that fooling ourselves is fiendishly easy. 
But, fooling the gods is another matter.

There are no fortune cookies in Taiwan, but in every temple, next to the brass canister of inscribed bamboo are a pair of wooden crescent moons that easily cup in the hand. They look like petrified fortune cookies, but they are the oracle’s way of confirming the honesty of your inquiry. Should they fall one face up and the other face down, the chosen stick will give an insight into your question. Otherwise, try another question.

There is a book that holds the explanations of all the sticks. No one really understands old Chinese. It actually gives me an odd sense of satisfaction that most people in Taiwan, like me, need to read the explanatory text to understand how to dream more deeply into the path at hand.
Really though, in Taiwan, if you read English there are oracles all around that whisper and remind, point and nudge, to the path held in one’s heart.

Taiwan is a goofy place. It’s like it was designed by a nine old.

I am not at all saying that it is childish here, but that there is an unvarnished sense of playfulness. Nine year olds know how to play, they are experts at it. At the same time they know there is a larger wider world, and some of their ideas just might make a difference too; if the adults would listen.

Nine year olds believe in good ghosts, have secret hideouts, ride on two wheels with expertise and abandon. They hold their friends close, argue freely, and are always on the outlook for a tasty snack and fun time. How else could you explain night markets, and streetside silver carts brimming with treats, scooter culture and fist fights in the legislature?

As evidenced by the bing lang sirened lights, overwhelming collage of placards splashed with neon and photoflash, and buildings dressed in a dance of zig-zag, floodlit bath or slow stream of liquid color, the Chinese love affair with illumination touches that place in all of us that wonders at the magic of light.

Sure, there are gangs and mafia, like any playground with its cliques and bullies. Sometimes it is hard to take them seriously with the perm’ed hair and Hello Kitty motorcycle helmets. But, then the gangsters of the west cannot seem to keep their pants on their hips. Perhaps all outlaws need a black hat badge of some sort.

Here too are the closer connections of family. We cultivate independence in the West; Taiwan grows a tangle of interdependent tendrils of connection and support. While there is as much theft and corruption as any other human community; the former president is currently behind bars for having his hands on tainted money. The US could take a page from that playbook, and the one for healthcare as well which provides easy and affordable access to skilled providers; it includes dental and Chinese medicine. Even foreigners who work here and contribute to the common welfare are included.
While some of the largest chip foundries in the world hail from here, the real strength of the country comes from the free wheeling lemonade stand capitalism; Taiwanese do business like morning glory grows vines. People dig in here and DIY.

Taiwan is a unique gem. More traditional than their mainland cousins, modern in a way that would seem like science fiction to the West; tinted with the scent and habit from its crossroad connections with Asia and the West, Taiwan has a fractal like attraction and depth.
Pause for a moment and you can end up mesmerized and entranced for a lifetime.

.

The air is a few grades denser in Taiwan; if fog felt like it looks, it would feel just like this.

It is familiar as the smell of warm baked bread, or salt ocean spray, except it contains the oily residue of life and the vibrancy that comes naturally when an abundance of it is compressed into a small space.

Overstuffed upholstered chairs, like Japanese Manga marshmallows, absorb the sway and jostle of the bus as it wheels a grey snake of concrete highway that winds through hillside emerald. Hills invaded by explosive drapings of flora and trees. It is wildly jungleously green. Achingly green, as only humidity and heat produce. Layered highways lead to a desert camouflage of grey, rose, beige and yellow tiled structures, the boxes, alleys, and neighborhoods upon which the life and blood of Taipei thrive.

The twitchy, hyper-vigilance that is the required body armor of the mainland begins to melt away. It is like being able to converse deeply in your mother-tongue.

…are likely to be Chinese.

Sukhumviet road hosts six lanes of congested traffic, an elevated skytrain, tables of tourist goods, pimps, hookers and a mosaic of peoples and language. The lanes, which branch off, are home to tailors and travel agents, massage salons and hotels, sidewalks congested with tables and stainless steel carted street food, and off of Soi 11, near the Nana skytrain station; the Suk 11 guesthouse.

What could have been another featureless concrete block of rooms has been transformed into an appealing wood and brick maze of guesthouse delight. In 2003 reservations were as required as a wool sweater. They have build steadily on their appeal to the traveler who is not interested in the foreigner ghetto of Koh San road. If affordable accommodations that allow for the opportunity to rub elbows with fellow travelers from all over the globe is your cup of tea, the Suk 11 is for you. It is one of the few hotels that has an expressed policy of no sex tourists. They will toss you out without a refund should you use their cozy operation as a landing pad for amorous amusement by the hour. Smoking in your room, or general unruly behavior is also grounds for dismissal. Increasingly, Chinese is one of the common languages that wafts amongst the jasmine and mosquitoes.

I’m familiar with the voluminous punch of an argument in Chinese. This one steamrollers through the usually lively, but polite buzz of Suk 11’s teak and brick lobby. Shortly afterwards two anger and adrenaline soaked Beijing girls seek out my Chinese-English skills.

They think there is a language miscommunication. They are wrong. It is a cultural divide that they have failed to navigate.

They are not untypical of the modern young Beijing professional. These two are accustomed to a diet of privilege and favoritism that their jobs at one of the government television stations affords them.
 They think their rules apply.

There is indeed a misunderstanding about the amount of time they had agreed to stay, but when one of the girls sharpens her Beijing tongue on the owner, the previously option of more time in this quiet corner of Bangkok vanishes like protesters do from Tiananmen Square.
I really thought it was useless to act as their go-between, but I’ve received lots of help in my time in China; repaying debts of kindness greases the wheels of karma.

“Boss, these girls are afraid that perhaps their English is lacking, and as a result you misunderstood what they where trying to say.” The owner, now well seasoned from years of dealing with unruly guests is quite clear, “I understood them well enough, their English is fine. The problem is not their language. It is their attitude.”
“Sorry girls, you are out of here.”

They start to windup the buzzsaw of entitlement.
“Forget it, forget it!”
It is the Chinese word salve that means game over; walk away.

In the ensuring postmortem they are insistent there simply must be a way to talk the boss into letting them stay. “Girls, you are not in China, you are not in Beijing.”

In China no way can mean “I can not do that”, “I don’t know how to do that“, ”you need to bribe me”, or “you need to ask someone else.” No way usually means there is another way. It is quite different from “that’s inconvenient”. When you hear that, you know you are fucked.

.

Eventually the girls figure out that language and culture are not the same thing. Wearing their Beijinger worldview eyes they had translated “no way” into the belief that were was an opportunity, and that their aggressive Beijing stance would abracadabra open a not yet seen door.

After these past four months of dealing with PMPH’s pretend HR department, it is now my turn to observe angry foreigners, as these Beijinger’s bite down on the “I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore” taste of cultural frustration. They have no idea how well I can relate.

Beijing, while full of embassies, and various foreign businesses chiseling inroads into the market of 1.3 billion people, while it has the traffic and subways of a developed city, while it sprawls unrestrained by six ring roads, it has nothing of Bangkok’s international flavor.

Bangkok is textured with a collage of languages, cultures, skin color, and habits. Signage in Thai, Chinese, French, Arabic, and English. Germans in shorts, Muslim women wrapped in black, tourists in tee shirts, Thai’s in pressed white shirts. Traffic counterflows using the British standard. Hello kitty pink taxis, a neon rainbow of scooters, buses that roll slow motion through stops, skytrains and subways, river taxis and tuk-tuks create the circulation through a city dense with humidity and humanity.

Bangkok’s heat and humidity unlocks Beijing cold from the skin. It is nourishing in a way that only nature can arrange. The authentic cuisine from around the world finds its way into every nook and cranny, as if there are wormholes that connect all the cultures of the world. Bangkok is not only one of the major transfer stations for air travel throughout the world. It is a crossroad of culture that reminds us of how different, and how similar we all are.

It is an antidote to the regionalism and single vision mindedness that naturally grows out of being completely surrounded by your own kind.

It is a company that does not revolve its business or practices around the pivot of profitability. Incentive, excellence, even mediocrity are not to be found within its fossilized business structure.
It is an old style company

This is the excuse given for why no one will ever, never ever give a straight answer, speak a truth, break the lock step structure of who is above or below in the interest of efficiency or productivity.
It is an old style company

Which means it operates on a kind of human capital of connection that is terribly elusive to the western mind. Iron rice bowls dull any sense of incentive or innovation. Individual brilliance is suspect; there is safety in the rule of committee where no one can be blamed, nor can they bring forth anything with a spark of metamorphosis or ingenuity.
It is an old style company

Horizontal communication is absent. No one would dare to step outside the rigid structure of their duties. Anything that might streamline or pre-empt problems, anything that could smooth a process, or remove an obstacle is experienced as a threat. A problem is not a problem if it can be ignored, or passed onto someone else.
It is an old style company

Which means nothing gets done between the hours of 11am and 2pm, and if it is after 4pm you had better come back tomorrow.
It is an old style company

Which means there is far more pride in past proclamations of victory, than curiosity and drive to create something unique for the future. Stealing or copying past their pull date ideas is preferred to taking a shot at the moving target of the unknown.
It is an old style company

Popular books which students and practitioners clamor for are not printed or shipped, they must resort to purchasing pirated copies. At the same time, resources are spent on sketchy markets which are not likely to turn a profit. Foreigners are not consulted on what opportunties lay within our borders. The all seeing top-down fantasy of Chinese know more about Chinese medicine is like an iceburg waiting for a shipwreck. But, after all it is….
…an old style company

Beijing has changed a lot since I lived here in 2002-04. Most of the old “hutongs” the winding alleys where the “Old Beijingers” have lived for centuries have either been replaced with 35 story apartment buildings, or have been rehabbed into tourist districts where endless streams of tour groups are ridden through on ricksaw/bicycle like things. The once emblematic bicycle of Beijing has disappeared like frogs from the rain forest.

While China opened one door to the world with the summer Olympic games, they slam another shut with torturous new regulations and rules concerning the acquisition of work visas. After three months in China, three months of rat maze regulations and evil-clown house of mirrors human resource procedures I am either one step away from the paperwork that will force me out of the country yet one more time so I can receive the coveted Z visa, or even further a field as yet more obstacles loving appear to test my commitment.

I really did think I would just slip right back into an Asian life, but I’m finding that I’ve brought more “baggage” than those two suitcases. Time to burn some more karma. Life is a bitch when the the man in HR with the iron rice bowl is your new meditation teacher.

熱鬧, in Chinese, it translates as “lively.” To the standardly tuned Western ear it would translate as a riptide of cacophony, chaos and volume. But, in the middle kingdom it means joy and excitement. Especially around Western holidays that generate gifts and gatherings, singing and funny hats, shared meals and an excuse to enjoy the company of those who light your life. Christmas in China, is anything but a silent night.

While it does not turn the wheel of commerce with a feeling of held breath at the end of the year. It does show up here as carols blaring over tired speakers that compete with the rapid-fire barking of instructions by the green army coated attendants that help the Chinese to navigate their cars in a direction completely foreign to Chinese thought and habit; reverse. There are red elf hats on every waiter and waitress, red Christmas cups at Starbucks, and grinning Santa’s hung like a revolutionary Mao next to the Chinese symbols for abundance and renewal.

The old Catholic church at Wangfujing, a relic from before the “liberation” hosts throngs of those born after Deng Xiaoping’s “opening” of China, who know nothing other than increasing material wealth and Christmas as a western import that allows them to gather with friends, light sparklers, eat ice cream and be happy. The original message of a young rabbi who preached a liberation theology; spoke of an inward turning that allowed a glimpse of heaven, is as lost on them as it is on much of our western world with its blind adherence to an outward worship of dogma and faith.

Still, I suspect that young rabbi just might have resonated with the “re nao” light generated in the dark of the year. Connected with the noise and heat that is generated from the connection of humans engaging each other with joy and happiness. Perhaps it is that which brings the sun back from the cold and dark for another spin around the seasons. We all benefit from a season of renewal.

Should one rely on signs, signals or the logic of rules, China will appear lawless, chaotic, and dangerous. The usual cues and clues that Westerners believe as reality is like the new Olympic glossed paint on Beijing‘s innumerable buildings. Merely a surface treatment which hides leaky pipes, faulty electric outlets and hallways of rotting trash that neighbors are too lazy to carry down a few flights of stairs.

Beijing still lives a rhythm based on hierarchy, peristaltic pressure and a convolution of Rube Goldberg rules. Viewing it from any perspective other than a Chinese-centric point of view is an invitation to red-tinged rage and a constant mantra of “what the…” as Western bred sensibilities constantly abrade against the grindstone of cultural expectations.
I’ve always enjoyed Chinese puzzle boxes. Marvelous works of engineering where first the right side must be raised before you can slide the latch that opens the drawer, which gives access to the switch, that slides the bar which turns the dowel that unlocks the lid.
 Chinese puzzle boxes are fun; but a bit more challenging should you happen to living in one.

One of the first lessons in Chinese is how to respond to praise. In English we say “thank you,” but in Chinese that would be rudely self-aggrandizing; the proper response would be “where where? Not me!”It is humorous for the beginning student of Chinese. However, it is enough to make one consider hari-kari with an ice pick when you are striving to cross culture divides in pursuit of employment.
The Games of the 2008 Summer Olympiad brought sweeping changes to the visa policies of the middle kingdom. Fears of protests and other face losing mischief forced all the foreigners currently working out of the country by requiring new visas which could only be issued from the Chinese embassy in our home countries.

As the post-Olympic hangover abates, the Chinese wheels of political commerce slowly grind out yet another new set of rules. Sadly, no one knows exactly what they are, or where we really can get that coveted Z visa; not even Beijing’s official visa office.

Where I actually need to go to get the required work visa, as they say in Chinese 船到橋頭自然值 “when the boat gets to the piers of the bridge, it naturally will straighten its course“ ‚ In the mean time, there is the Rube Goldberg maze of Chinese Chutes and Ladders to navigate.