taiwanese politics

Before I start writing what I originally planned, a random interlude that only a parent would understand the post-worthiness of: while Daniel and I were watching Almost Famous on HBO this afternoon, Declan was playing around in the living room when, all of a sudden, he fetched the blue potty that he would have nothing to do with thus far, took the lid off it, squatted, and proceeded to pee a good amount of liquid into the potty. I reached and grabbed it right before he got up and seemed to be about to flip the potty and dump his pee out. He was not happy by that turn of events, and shrieked for me to hand it back until I asked him to follow me to wash the potty out in the bathroom. I don't know if his sudden matter-of-fact autonomous potty utilization was a happy, genuine step towards successful potty-training, or if he was just bored and thought, "Why not?"

Anyhow, back to our regularly scheduled content. So there's been a piece of news that's all over the TV channels and newspapers and some of my DPP friends' Facebook accounts. Basically, the (former) secretary-general for the Executive Yuan, which is currently dominated by Taiwan's nationalist party and DPP's (the opposition party...think Democrats vs. Republicans) main rival, has confessed to bribery and corruption. He's pretty much going to be a jailbird for a long, long while and his political future is utterly destroyed at the tender age of 44. And this is a major embarrassment for the KMT since he's so high-ranking. Now investigations into other party members are underway.

I hear the news and kind of shrugged. I despise the DPP overall for a lot of reasons that my DPP friends would never keep an open mind long enough to hear about, but I've studied the history of both Eastern and Western governments enough to hold no party infallible. This current scandal, which seems to be giving the average citizens spats of histrionics, is really...ordinary to me. Another person, faced with near-absolute power, falls to the temptation of becoming filthy rich. Yawn. And, unlike my DPP friends who want him crucified, I do find it slightly refreshing that he confessed fairly quickly. In past corruption cases where it's a DPP member involved (*cough* former president Chen *cough* and his wife *cough*), the standard fare is to admit nothing even after being indicted despite numerous appeals. And then have their rabid supporters continue to insist that it's all an opposition party conspiracy to besmirch their name. This is better. You know it is.

But it remains that there's a lot of angry, self-righteous ranting right now, and since my family lives in southern Taiwan, which is a DPP stronghold, my stalwartly KMT-supporting dad is absolutely heartbroken and unusually quiet these couple of days. Until tonight, when we were eating at a roadside buffet. I don't remember how it came up, but eventually my parents started talking about how the only reason why the party secretary embezzled in the way he did was because he was merely operating the way southern politicians do things i.e. DPP politicians, since they hold most of the offices down south here. My parents are not known for volume control, and we were in a fairly small A/C-ed room. I noticed, out of the corners of my eyes, people at other tables starting to stare at us. Also, I kind of disagree with my parents' rationale. Wrong is wrong, even if it's the political climate. If he's really a principled enough man, it wouldn't matter how other people do things. He should have stuck with what was right. I mentioned that, in an equally loud voice, in part to appease our eavesdropping audience. I do not want to be yelled at like what happened once when I disagreed with a taxi driver's political view and got kicked out of the cab halfway to my destination.  My parents argued back that it's like smoking--habitual smokers who grew up among smokers don't see what they do as wrong or bad. It's just a way of life. I pushed back and said, smoking isn't a crime. It's not the same as bad morality. And then I changed the subject to something about living in China, because the people nearby still wouldn't stop staring and in fact had turned their bodies to face us directly.

As it turned out, that wasn't a safe subject either. I had changed the subject to China by retrieving an earlier thread of conversation in which my mom asked if I should in fact visit Hsinchu with Daniel when he visits the university there. She worried that the accommodations wouldn't be good enough for Declan and me. I said that nothing here could be worse than what I experienced in China. I joked about how I loved doing dishes so much after returning to the States, because I actually have two basins and hot water and I don't need to stand in pooling water. As I was detailing how sucky China was, one of the people who own the roadside buffet came by to clear the table a bit. I was pretty liberal in my descriptions since bashing China is not that unpopular among Taiwanese in the south...until the person asked my mom in passing when the latter went to get more green bean soup, whether we're from the mainland because our accent is not typically Taiwanese. The person, you see, along with the other owners of the roadside buffet, came from Fujian. So I felt really bad for bashing her country right in front of her; I held out a wisp of hope that maybe she secretly agrees, hence the emigration to Taiwan. Still, I admit I'm pretty bigoted and prejudiced against China and Chinese culture on the mainland. I had hoped that living there would erase that, but my bigotry seems to have actually grown.

Oh, and also my dad then started talking about how Fujianese and Taiwanese are basically one and the same dialect, so Taiwanese people who are anti-Chinese and proclaim that we're a completely separate culture and, in fact, race, are just fooling themselves. Eyes turned and glared. So much for my attempt at peace-keeping. I finished my green bean soup and suggested we go. Like, right now, please?

my beloved mountain

It's been day two since I hiked to the top of "my" mountain in Kaohsiung. The mountain that was restricted military training ground until about two decades ago when army privates carved out a hiking pathway all the way to the top in the 40% of mountain area that became open to the public. This hiking oasis had been one of my solitary places to go and destress when I was working both day and night shifts in Taiwan during my first full-time job out of college. I would hop on my moped and ride through the city to reach it either in the early twilight hours just before the sun is rising, or around dusk when sometimes I would bump into the nightly patrollers with their headlights-on-helmets as I was descending towards home.  The thick forest canopy covers the harsh sun even during midday, and I loved listening to the birds, watched the giant butterflies, kept an uneasy truce with the pack of macaque monkeys that would sometimes eye my ankles as I walked past their supine, nit-picking forms.

It's been two days and I'm still ridiculously sore in my calves. Like, painfully so, walking like I had a vasectomy kind of sore. My mom said that was the first time she's ever heard me pant while hiking. I hope that I'll be able to return to the mountain enough times during this visit to get back into my former fitness, at least while hiking. Not sure if that's possible while pregnant, but I'm going to try. 

The mountaintop was refreshingly cool, and we drank tea brewed by volunteers who carried at least 25kg of water up from ground level to brew it with. They do this on a regular basis, simply because it would be nice for hikers to have something good to drink when we get to the top. Visibility out to the Taiwan Strait was excellent. I saw at least seven ships and the varied shades of blue/green that belie the ocean depths.

                            Declan enjoyed the exercise equipments on the mountaintop

random-ness...perhaps

So tonight.

Given there's only one week left before ma petite famille flies to the Midwest and visit family, it dawned on us that we really need to visit the TECO in Seattle asap to pick up Declan's Taiwan passport and take one more step in the process of nationalizing Declan for good and permanent residence-ing Daniel.

This means that I need to translate a birth and marriage certificate before then. The birth certificate was a piece of cake. The marriage one is giving me a headache, and possibly carpal tunnel. Not so much because the terms were complicated--I've encountered much harder assignments--but the chart/layout was gobbling up my time. I called upon the power of the Internet to help me possibly cull up some templates. No luck, as this translation gig is a money-making opportunity for certain businesses. I did, however, stumble upon several families' adoption blogs. (They all adopted from Taiwan, through one particular agency.) Beautiful stories, and with my interest piqued, I looked up the agency's name/mission/etc.

And was completely blown away.

His Hands Taiwan started in 2007. 2007?? That was right when I completed my Masters program and started a new job! If I had known about this organization at that time, I would have so applied/volunteered/made a complete nuisance of myself to get involved in its mission, especially as it's operating right in my hometown! Well, probably not. I'll explain later.

All the reasons why I returned to Taiwan to work before graduate school, all the things I care about regarding my country, all the criteria for why I searched for the job I did at that time -- concern for especially the working class, most socially vulnerable people in Taiwan, investing long-term in truly strengthening my country, hopes of sharing the gospel in a genuine, lives-entwined way --

It's all here.

After learning as much as I could, all translation work put on hold, I am now so excited I don't think I can fall asleep if I go to bed. I've been staying up too late this week, and I've been paying for it in the morning with my lack of energy to run. I really should force myself to go to bed.

But I'm so excited. By the magnitude of what God's doing. By His incredible sense of humor should I ever have the opportunity to partner with this group. Me, who never thought I'd get married. Never wanted children of my own. Always ambivalent, even now, of being a caretaker of children, although I can honestly say this work may be just as important as being the president of the United States. And so if I had known about this group in 2007, I would have still been excited about it....enough to contribute some money from my real job that I would have considered to be more prestigious. I am so different now, one difficult pregnancy, APD/PPD, and 1.5-year-old toddler later. You see, it wasn't until I went through what I did during 2010 and 2011, did I adopt an additional criterium: to care for any and all pregnant or new mothers I come upon in the future. After meeting my doula, Katie, and how wonderful and vital she was in that period of my life, I had wanted to do the same for other women. All this had been very recent development.

Good grief, if what I hope do end up happening, I will have experienced--and inhabit in--one of the best jokes / humorous stories I have ever seen God tell.

Calm down, and go to sleep. Oyasuminasai!