SEVEN - From behind the mask in Taiwan

Special to the Advance

June 2003

Okay, I’ll admit it. My previous article was a bit premature in stating that the SARS virus scare was over in Taiwan. In fact, it had just begun and it blew wide open just a few days after the article was published.

By Mother’s Day weekend, every public meeting place had an ‘entry with mask only’ policy. Bars and pubs are still mask free, but clients must have their temperatures taken at the door. It is quite disconcerting, if you aren’t expecting it, to have a thermometer inserted rather abruptly into your ear while you are digging through your purse for your passport (in order to prove that you haven’t traveled to any high-risk SARS areas recently, like Toronto).

Some of my friends were joking that it could become quite messy if bars decide to go ‘masks only’, with clients sloshing their beverage of choice all over themselves, forgetting that their mouths are covered.

People in this country are quite accustomed to wearing masks, as the air pollution necessitates such equipment any time you are on a scooter, stuck behind a city bus in traffic. But the masks we are required to wear now are specifically designed to ward off viral infection, and most foreigners aren’t used to wearing them at all.

You can imagine, with a population in Taipei of 4 million and 23 million across the island of Taiwan, stores have run out of masks in some areas. In Tainan to the south, the news coverage included photos of women cutting their bras in half to make face masks. Hey! You and your friend could have a matching, colourful, lacy set! It doesn’t surprise me, in this fashion-conscious country, that some people have found a way to make facial masks attractive. Some clever entrepreneur has taken advantage of the situation, selling specially designed masks with slogans and familiar cartoon characters on them.

In Chiayi, on the south-west coast of Taiwan, a friend writes that teachers in kindergartens are required to wear masks at all times. Teaching ‘from behind the iron mask’ (actually, it is charcoal but equally stifling) is quite a challenge. Teaching English as a second language is difficult enough, even when the students have full view of the instructor’s mouth. With just muffled noises instead of words, you might as well give up.

Give up is exactly what some foreign teachers have decided to do, taking to the extreme the possibility that their home country may not let them back in if this virus spreads much further throughout Taiwan. Instead of waiting for summer vacation at the end of June, they are planning to go home early.

At Kimberly American School where I teach, the risk is taken very seriously but no one is panicking. We have a full-time nurse on staff who takes our temperatures twice a day, and we have our hands sanitized with a special solution regularly. Each classroom is “zapped” with a disinfecting ultraviolet light daily, and the floors and walls are scrubbed down throughout the day.

This virus isn’t supposed to be airborne, but we aren’t taking any chances. Being one of the few schools catering to the city’s elite in this suburb of Taipei, we have a few students whose parents are doctors. If any risk of contact is suspected, the student must stay home in quarantine for fourteen days. Any students that have close relatives traveling to high risk areas such as Hong Kong or Singapore are also quarantined.

Our school is part of a publishing company that produces the bulk of the educational materials on the island. One of their latest masterpieces is a poster alerting students and their families to the dangers of SARS and how to protect themselves against it. The banner depicts a sinister-looking character in a skirt and hood (a la Little Red Riding Hood), scattering handfuls of ‘bugs’ from her basket into the air. She has a pointed tail and horns as well.

The children are so obsessed with this disease that it is beginning to infiltrate their creative thinking. One teacher reported that his best four-year-old student actually wrote “SARS” on a piece of his artwork, during the lesson on emotions. Another student in the three-year-old class calls Dustin “Teacher SARS”, like he’s some sort of super-villain.

Soon their free play may begin to take on the appearance of a battle against the unseen enemy, with masks and gloves and disinfectant squirt bottles as their play gear. Much like children growing up in war torn areas, they must think that this battle is just part of normal life, and will remember it as part of their childhood.

I felt like I was in the Middle East myself one day earlier this month when I forgot for a moment and absentmindedly removed my mask on the subway. Within seconds, a security guard was blowing his whistle and heading in my direction at quite a clip. The other passengers gawked at me, horrified. It took me just a few seconds to realize that I was the focus of the attention and not someone stuck in the train door. I fumbled with the mask to secure it over my mouth and nose, and muttered a muffled “doy boo chee” (sorry; excuse me).

Well, charcoal makes my nose itch. Just stick your head in a barbeque and breathe in and you’ll get the idea.

Don’t worry too much about me, folks. I am from hearty Canadian stock and I have been sick for only a couple of weeks out of my first four months here, less than any other teacher I have met.

My immune system is strong. It must be all of those Centrum Forte vitamins I am taking. Thank goodness I brought them from home; they are about $40 CDN per bottle here!

Experts say that this disease will have run its course long before the hot weather hits and if it is still looming, the smothering heat will no doubt kill it off. That is the only positive thing that I have heard about the coming summer in Taiwan, however.

The thermometer is expected to rise to 35 degrees Celsius for a few months, with the humidity bringing it close to 40. So when you are uttering that all too common phrase - “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” – in Canada this summer, think of me, sweating it out on Isla Formosa (Beautiful Island).

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