When I arrived at the modern glass and concrete school that
had hired me long-distance, I was shown to my classroom by the school director;
the lights were out and I saw that the children were napping. A stocky young
woman dressed in an apron and slippers answered the director’s knock by
stepping out into the hall and pulling the door softly shut behind her.
“Nihao,” she smiled.
“Nihao,” I answered, hoping she wouldn’t challenge my
fledgling Mandarin further.
Shelley was the Chinese teacher assigned to my classroom.
She would act as translator, assistant and disciplinarian to the students. It
didn’t take me long to realize she was the real teacher and I was the English,
white-skinned figurehead for which the parents of these school children were
paying the big bucks. They hoped to provide their children with the best possible
education so that they would be fluent in English, one day able to study and
possibly work abroad. In many cases their fate was to return to Taiwan and
assist in its Westernization. In others, they would lay the foundation for
their families to follow to the West.
I had been preparing myself for life as an English teacher
in Taipei by reading the online forum, Tealit.org. It was quite enlightening,
but also kind of scary in a fascinating way. Some of the stories mentioned
Chinese teachers who were resentful of their English associates, hired many
times without proper qualifications, to teach conversational English to the
masses, for extraordinary amounts of money. These Chinese teachers made a
fraction of their English coworkers’ salaries so they often went out of their
way to make life as difficult as possible for them, out of sheer resentment.
Shelley’s eyes met mine as if to search me out and I found myself doing the
same. Her eyes cracked into a big smile then and I breathed a sigh of relief;
thank God, she was going to go easy on me.
I was taken to The Norseman’s (TN’s) classroom for what I
had imagined would be a warm, loving reunion. He had, after all, been the one
who suggested we run off to China together to make some money and get out of
the independent ruts we were in: mine were primarily financial, with maybe 10%
impulsive sense of adventure thrown in. Our relationship was only a few months
old, and tentative at best. He had gone
ahead to Taiwan a month ahead of me and had already made himself very familiar
with the culture, the language and the people. He had other Canadian expat
friends in Asia already and they were showing him the ropes. He didn’t
“desperately need” me as much as he had led me to believe in our long-distance
calls as I ran around getting passport, work visa and hepatitis shots, second
guessing my decision to leave my children with their father, every second day.
I watched as TN stepped out of the dark classroom and softly
closed the door behind him. Was it my imagination or did he look slightly
annoyed? Was he disappointed that I had actually shown up? I was given a
perfunctory peck on the cheek and a promise that we would go somewhere nice for
dinner, before being sent on my way. I could feel the wall sliding down between
us and locking firmly in place. He was already gone. I was completely alone, on
the other side of the world.
--------------
I unloaded about 70 pounds of picture books, costumes,
puppets and other learning materials from my suitcase before saying my goodbyes
and heading back out to the waiting taxi. I was told I had about thirty minutes
to get to my new apartment before rush hour began; after that the streets would
be gridlocked.
The driver negotiated his way
through ridiculous traffic on the main streets of Hsintien, a suburb of Taipei.
Pedestrians in office clothes continually jaywalked through the lanes of
stalled vehicles, smiling and raising hands to the honking of horns. Finally we
arrived at the apartment that The Norseman had leased. On one side was a furniture
store and on the other, a coin laundry. The apartment door was behind a wrought
iron gate. I fumbled for the keys as the taxi driver heaved my suitcase out of
the trunk - it was much lighter since I had emptied the books out at school,
and that was a good thing, because there was no elevator in the building and it
was five flights up to the roof. I turned to speak to the driver but he was
already halfway up the first flight, pulling my luggage behind him with both
hands.
I counted flights as we climbed and when we reached the
roof, the door opened onto a long, open-air, tin-covered hallway. I saw the
doorways to three apartments on my right and a similar rooftop setup over the
neighbouring building to my left. The hallways were separated by padlocked
wrought iron. At the end of the hallway was a laundry area with a small washer
and a spiderweb of clotheslines, all heavily laden with clothing that was once
white, now gray from the air pollution.
I paid the taxi driver for his fare and his help; $1000NTD
(New Taiwan Dollars) was about $40 Canadian, that
ought to cover it. By the look on his face, it certainly did. I made a
mental note to get some advice on tipping in this new country.
Opening the door to the apartment, I switched on the light.
It flickered a few times and grew brighter, illuminating a single L-shaped
room. A double bed was wedged under a window that opened into the tin-covered
hallway. The rest of the room contained a computer desk, a microwave stand and
two clothing racks. A small doorway revealed a toilet and the tiniest sink I
had ever seen. I looked behind the door and took another glance around the
room. No shower. I plopped myself down on the bed, which had absolutely no
give. I lifted the sheets to inspect the hard bamboo mattress. It was
surprisingly comfortable, and I lay there watching a blue gecko suction cupping
his way across the ceiling as I contemplated life in this short bed and tiny
room for the next year with a large, hyperactive man-child. The room just
seemed unbelievably small and I felt like Goldilocks waiting for the three
bears to return, but I managed to fall asleep anyway, using my childhood trick
of running pleasant thoughts through my head. I would take my share of the
savings and buy a small house. I pictured a small single home, a garden, a
porch. Then my girls would have more than one place to call home, and it would
be far more comfortable than the worn-out apartment I had lived in as a single
mom. Just as I drifted off, I realized for the first time The Norseman wasn’t
in my plans after Taipei.
-------
When TN got home from work he woke up his new roommate and
showed me our shower. Basically you stood over the floor drain in front of the
toilet and held the shower nozzle that was attached to the sink, over your
head. It took some coordination but you could even shower while sitting on the
can if you wanted to, to save time. The whole bathroom was tiled and recessed
into the floor like the shower room in a gym.
Over the next few weeks TN also showed me how to cross four
lanes of traffic during rush hour without getting killed - you don’t wait for
the crossing signs because the drivers don’t heed them anyway. The best thing
to do is follow a stray dog across; they know exactly what they are doing. And
of course he introduced me to his favourite street-meat carts among the food
vendors, teaching me a few simple phrases in Mandarin that would get me what I
needed to eat and where I needed to go. He had picked up the language easily,
learning phrases from his Chinese assistant at work and practicing them on the
long walk home everyday.
After getting over the initial
shock of the complete lack of refrigeration, I found my favourites. Breakfast
was tuna dan bing. A thin dough was poured out onto a hot greased grill. A
dollop of peanut butter was applied, followed by a scoop of tuna and an egg
that had been fried nearby. Then the whole concoction was rolled up and
drizzled with sweet brown oyster sauce. The combination of sweet and savoury
was absolutely delicious and I never grew tired of eating it. “Wo yao tuna dan
bing, shieh shieh.” My favourite lunch was thin-sliced barbecue pork with
shredded cucumber and carrots in rice paper. A simple meal out was hot pot,
where you choose your meat, veg and noodle of choice and drop it into a pot of
boiling broth that is set into the counter in front of you. Either meal costs
about a dollar Canadian. We never ate at home; it was cheaper and healthier to
eat out and, of course, our home was a single room. Indoor/outdoor restaurants
that appeared to be operating out of garage bays had huge vats of pig feet soup
boiling 24/7. I was leery of food safety issues but despite repeated warnings
from other Westerners, I did not get sick while my stomach was adjusting to the
new way of eating.
On weekends The Norseman and I took the train to the beach,
one hour out of the city on the North-east coast - it was almost uninhabited
even in perfect weather, because most of the Taiwanese are afraid of water.
With some Canadian friends Darren and Brooke, we set up our tents under the
trees and enjoyed meals of noodle soup from the nearby 7-11 with $1 cans of
Tsingtao beer. I loved camping on the beach – I even loved swimming in the
ocean, until I saw a wall of wave rise up carrying a small school of five-foot
long orange fish in it. That was enough for me. I bathed in the stream and the
warm dune pools after that. Shark fishing is fantastic off the northern coast
of Taiwan.
His Introduction to Taipei complete, The Norseman
subconsciously left the relationship. Elvis
has left the building. It only took me a few weeks of averted eyes and
whispered conversations in the hallway to realize that he had already found his
own path in Asia, and it certainly didn’t involve a Western woman ten years his
senior. Like most white men in Taiwan, this long-legged Canadian cowboy was
experiencing the red carpet treatment from young Asian women and he was walkin’
it with a big ol’ smile on his face.
It is also entirely possible that, even after months of comforting
me in my struggles as a single mom and encouraging me to take a year overseas
to make some money for a new future, now that I had done it – now that I had
actually left my children behind with their father and boarded a plane to
Taiwan, he had totally lost all respect for me.
I broke up with The Norseman about two months after I
arrived in Taipei - not that we were ever actually together. It was difficult
working together after our breakup; I created a bit of a fuss around the
situation and then slowly shook it off, realizing I had never felt quite so old
as when I was with him.
Like an untrained, adorable puppy, The Norseman bounded his
way around Taipei until he eventually landed in the lap of a beautiful single
mom named Lily. When I saw her using the bank machine outside the school on her
first morning of work, I had a premonition that The Norseman and Lily would end
up together - with her diminutive build, laughing eyes and long, shining black
hair, she was exactly his type.
They still live together in Taiwan, raising a family and
operating an English school in the countryside.
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