Taiwan Today

But oftentimes these students find they confront some uncomfortable realities once they arrive. Taiwan may be populated by the same race, and exhibit certain apparently similar cultural patterns, but it remains decidedly alien.

Overseas Chinese students soon discover they have adopted more of the "foreign" ways than they thought, and are not necessarily comfortable in Taiwan. In short, they encounter unexpected culture shock, finding themselves caught between two different cultures and not fully part of either one.

The experiences of these students is instructive, and not only for overseas Chinese and local residents, for broad issues of what it means to be overseas Chinese are brought into focus. FCR asked Tina Wong, herself an overseas Chinese from the U.S., to interview some of her contemporaries about their impressions of life in Taipei as lan­guage students. Excerpts follow:

Chow Shong-wen grew up in Tallahassee, a place difficult for a Chinese youth to blend in unnoticed. Although his parents emigrated from Kwangtung and Shanghai in 1958, they encouraged him to speak English so he would have no problem communicating with his peers. This was especially easy to achieve, because their restaurant business kept them too busy to teach their children Chinese.

While growing up, Chow often thought about living someplace where he would not feel so different from everybody else. "I thought that one of the best places I could choose to 'relax' as an Asian would be at the University of California at Berkeley, the campus with the highest number of Asian students in the country," he recalls. "I was what you could call a well-adjusted Asian-American. I had white friends, a white girlfriend, and some good job prospects. Despite it all, I never felt totally accepted as a person."

Berkeley unfortunately did not meet his expectations. Chow found that the other Asians looked down on him for growing up in Tallahassee. Then, during his last year at the university, he was deeply disturbed by three incidents involving Asian-Americans.

"The first thing that shook my confidence was a change in the university admission standards that indirectly cut down on the number of Asian students who could enroll," he says. "This was done by putting heavier emphasis on the English SAT, English essay writing, and extracurricular activities-areas in which Asian-Americans are weaker than other ethnic groups. The number of Asian Americans admitted suddenly fell by 15 percent, even though their applications had risen by 10 percent. No other ethnic group experienced such a drop."

The second incident was violent. An Asian-American coed was allegedly murdered by her white boyfriend. Even though the boyfriend led the police to her body and confessed to the crime, he was not convicted, on the grounds that a lawyer was not present during his confession. Soon after, a third event occurred on campus that Chow considered the last straw.

"A 19-year-old Asian-American girl was allegedly raped by black members of the school football team," he says. "This incident split the campus into factions—women, blacks, Asians, and the administration. But by the end of the semester, it was obvious the Asian community had no unity and no leadership. Justice was never carried out. My Asian-American classmates seemed to accept the unfairness, but I couldn't. I decided to leave the U.S. for a while."

Chow first traveled to mainland China, where he studied Mandarin for three-and-a-half months. But he soon realized there were teaching opportunities in Taiwan, and came to the island in search of a job. He now studies Mandarin in Taipei, and works as an English teacher on the side, further supplementing his income with some commercial modeling. Chow plans to attend medical school in the U.S. after his stay in Taiwan.

"My outlook has changed a bit since I arrived here," he says. "Coming to Taiwan has helped me accept myself more. I don't feel a need to meet other people's expectations in appearance or manner. But I must admit I feel more at home in the U.S. The advantage in Taiwan is that I'm not singled out as being Chinese. I must admit I expected to be 'embraced' for 'coming back' when I first returned to China. Well, although I may blend in, no one has particularly 'embraced' me."

Chow is irritated by what he perceives as discrimination against local people in favor of foreigners. He says there are certain Taipei discos that allow foreigners in free. The disco owners insist the double standard is to attract business, since many Chinese go to such establishments specifically out of curiosity to meet foreigners. Nevertheless, Chow complains that he must always show his passport at the door because he does not have a "Western face."

Sam Wu, who is a 22-year-old second-generation American, grew up in an upper-middle-class white community with very few other Asians. His parents are both physicians, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1965. "In my high school I was one of four Asians in a class of 680," he says. "Being such a small minority, we were never the target of any outright discrimination—we were more of a curiosity than a threat. About the worst experience was when the other children called me names in elementary school. Unfortunately, that is also the time when you can see the attitudes of the parents most clearly reflected in their children."

In recent years, the number of Asians in Wu's home community has grown markedly. Most are Koreans or Taiwanese, and almost all are well-paid professionals. "My younger sister, who is now in high school, has many more Asian friends than I did," he says. During his college years, Wu joined various Asian-American student organizations, including the East Coast Asian Student Union, where he edited the 10th anniversary edition of its journal, Asian-American Spirit. The journal included articles concerning harassment on campus, bias in corporate recruiting, violence against Asians, and exploration of the "model minority myth," a concept that Wu says prevents the exposure of discrimination.

"At Harvard we pushed for an Asian-American studies curriculum, which we partially succeeded in establishing," he says. "We also had a series of lectures on Asian-American issues in the spring of 1987. Now I'm interested in writing a research article on Asian-Americans studying in Taiwan to see if they experience 'culture shock.' I do have an advantage over other returnees because I have family contacts."

Despite the family connections, Wu faces linguistic obstacles when trying to blend in. "The environment is somewhat uncomfortable because I can't speak Mandarin or Taiwanese fluently," he says. "I grew up in a semi-English speaking environment. My parents used Taiwanese with us, and we always answered in English. So now I can understand what people say in Taiwan, but I can't answer in either local language. "

In the U.S., Wu feels he did not face much direct discrimination. "That was lucky for me and my generation, but I don't think my parents had it so good," he says. "They don't discuss it, but I think the discrimination they experienced is what prompted them to push my brothers and me to study technological and scientific subjects. In those fields, a person has a better chance of being judged on merit rather than on personal factors."

Wu has been to Taiwan often to visit relatives. He finally came for an extended seven-month stay this year, after graduating from Harvard, and will return to the U.S. later to continue his education in medicine, physics, or anthropology. Wu studies Mandarin about four hours a day at the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University, and is working for an English-language arts and leisure magazine for local expatriates.

"The first thing I noticed about Taipei was that there were few young people on the streets during the day," he says. "They seem very preoccupied with their school work. The second thing I saw was that the country has become rapidly industrialized at the expense of its environment and natural resources." Wu adds that the local attitude toward the outside world seems to be a primitive attraction to anything Western. "For example, they celebrate Christmas here in a superficial, materialistic way—of course the society is not Christian," he explains. "People here seem to be more naive than I expected. Taipei may be a big city, but it sure isn't cosmopolitan."

Wu's innate confidence has enabled him to seek out new experiences and become involved no matter where he is living. He has hopes that his stay in Taiwan will be a catalyst for gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to be Asian, and that it will help him to plot his future. "It also might give me better tools to use in contributing to Asian communities in the U.S. and other countries," he adds.

Christina Zee was eight years old when her parents emigrated from Hong Kong to Indianapolis in 1968. She came to Taipei six years ago and now speaks fluent Mandarin. Today, she works for CETRA, the China External Trade Development Council.

"The longer I stay here, the more I feel like I'm standing with my feet on two rowboats slowly drifting apart," she says. "I don't feel totally accepted in American society, yet I feel I can never be totally accepted in Taiwan either. In the U.S., I get along well with individuals, but as soon as I'm in a group of Caucasians the perception changes and I'm categorized as an Asian. In Taiwan, they accept me up to a point, but they always see me as different because I grew up in America."

Although she speaks fluent Mandarin and is well-educated, Zee finds that many cultural obstacles, large and small, block her in interacting with the local people in Taiwan. "Something as minor as one's gait might immediately arouse discomfort in another culture," she explains. "A coworker once told me that she thought I was arrogant and unapproachable when she first met me. I was amazed! I never had such thoughts, but my stance and bearing were American. Chinese tend to have a more humble and bowed stance, while Americans stand more upright. Americans also tend to see events as centering around themselves. "

Nineteen-year-old Vivien Lo is from West Germany, and like Zee she also finds it difficult to become intimate with Chinese people in Taiwan. "I think the Chinese are polite and friendly compared to us Germans," she says. "They like to give compliments and appear accommodating. The people in my country tend to be a bit cold. But it still seems that the Chinese always consider foreigners outsiders."

Lo has a Chinese father and a German mother, and has encountered mixed reactions from the people she meets in Taiwan and at home. "In Germany, people often take me for a full-blooded Chinese, whereas here in Taipei they think I'm a German. Most people never suspect I'm Chinese," she says. Her dark brown hair and creamy complexion give her a striking appearance. Although reactions to her looks may be unsettling at times, they have nevertheless helped her find work as a professional model in Taipei.

"I didn't feel as though I faced much discrimination when I grew up in West Germany," she says. "Sometimes the other kids called me names, and people occasionally spoke to me in broken English because they thought I was a foreigner. But since I speak and dress as a German, I have usually been accepted as such."

Lo says there are sharp differences between German and Chinese values, both materially and ethically. "In my country, one of the first things a person saves money for after the basic needs are satisfied is for travel, then a house and a car," she explains. "To my surprise, I discovered the first priority in Taiwan was food. People here also have a strong sense of family duty, which is not so apparent in Germany, where the children usually move away from their parents to live more separate lives."

Actually, Lo's sense of family obligation is stronger than she at first admits. She came to Taipei several months ago to study Mandarin in order to please her father, and plans to stay for one year before returning to Germany to pursue degrees in economics and Chinese. "When my younger sister and I were small, my father never spoke to us in Chinese," she recalls. "But when I turned 12, he hired a tutor for us and our mother. He really wanted us to learn Mandarin. But one hour a week of studying was useless. When I was 14, he suggested that I go to China as soon as I graduated from high school to study Chinese. I agreed, both to appease him and because, after all, I'm half Chinese."

Ironically, her father seemed to change his mind when they arrived in Taipei. After a day of accompanying his daughter around the city, he asked her to come back to Germany with him. He feared that English was not widely enough spoken for her to function alone. "I told him that since I was already in Taiwan I might as well stay," she explains. "Since last September, I've been studying at two different schools about four hours a day. I intend to learn 2,000 characters so I can read, speak, and write the language effectively."

Leopoldo Lim is from the Philippines, and at 30 is somewhat older than the average student staying in Taiwan to improve Mandarin facility. One of 12 children, he grew up in Cebu. His father is Chinese, and emigrated from Amoy in 1928, while his mother is a native of Cebu. Lim speaks Cebuano, the local dialect, and also has a command of Tagalog, English, Fukienese (a Chinese dialect common in Taiwan and Fukien provinces), and Mandarin. He learned to read books in Chinese at a Chinese primary school where the teachers spoke both Mandarin and Fukienese. He has a college degree in commerce and accounting and has worked as a bookkeeper in a bank.

Lim plans to move to the U.S. soon in order to help his sister and her husband manage their chain of restaurants. "My sister suggested I come to Taiwan first and then go to the U.S.," he says. "Her husband is Chinese, so she thinks it will be more convenient if I can speak Chinese."

Lim has visited Taiwan a number of times, but this is his first prolonged stay. He has mixed impressions of Taipei. "The prices are quite high, so I really have to budget my money," he says. "It's hard to even afford extras like a movie."

Blending in is also difficult. "The Chinese community in the Philippines is fairly well-integrated into the local society, but when most Filipinos come to Taiwan, they resent the way the local people look down on them," he says.

This attitude may derive in part from Taiwan's current labor shortage and the state of the economy in the Philippines. Taiwan needs laborers, and Filipinos want jobs, but there are no clear-cut laws governing foreign labor in Taiwan. As a result, the island has large numbers of "over-stayed" visa holders from the Philippines who take low-paying, officially illegal jobs. But this is not generally the case for Chinese-Filipinos. Most of them are in Taiwan to study Chinese, and they dislike the way their fellow countrymen are portrayed as poor and uneducated.

"In the 1960s the Philippine economy was thriving, and the roles were reversed," Lim points out. "The over­seas Chinese community in the Philip­pines even donated a bulletproof car for Chiang Kai-shek's protection. Just because the economic balance has tilted in the opposite direction does not mean the Chinese should belittle us now. I don't like the disrespect I must endure in Taiwan. When people find out I'm from the Philippines, they turn away as if they don't want to know anything more about me. If I were from America, then they would ask all kinds of questions."

At the same time Lim says he is familiar with this attitude, since in the Philippines people tend to admire for­eigners. "This kind of thinking is something we should all be aware of," he says. "Even though my appearance is Chinese, I feel more Filipino in my values. Society in the Philippines is quite mixed, and I have friends who are Filipino, Chinese, and mestizo."

Lim says that he finds students in Taiwan serious, though a bit naive. "I mentioned to some of the pupils I was tutoring in English that I'd gone to the airport to send off my brother," he says. "One student told me that he had never been to the airport! It's only about an hour out of Taipei city. Another time I asked a female student if she had a boyfriend, and she blushed with embarrassment. I was just making conversation."

Last summer, 22-year-old Justine (she prefers not to give her last name) came to Taiwan from Jakarta. She is a third-generation Chinese-Indonesian, and before leaving her home country she studied Mandarin at a Chinese school and English at an academy for interpreters. Her parents, who have been divorced for six years, speak both Hakka (a local dialect) and Mandarin.

After trying unsuccessfully to start a small business in Jakarta, Justine's mother married a man from Taiwan and moved to Taipei. Justine lives with her mother and younger sister, and they are experiencing a considerably different living situation from their home country.

In Indonesia, serious tensions exist between Chinese and native Indonesians. The reasons are rooted in historical clashes and contemporary economic problems, where the desperately poor local population contrasts sharply with the wealthy Chinese. "In Indonesia, society is severely segregated, despite government proclamations that say all citizens should think of themselves as Indonesians," Justine says. "All my friends there are Chinese, and it is rare to find native Indonesians mixing with the Chinese."

The tensions have increased to the point that finally all the Chinese schools were closed. An especially unsettling period occurred in the mid-1960s, when the military seized control of the government from President Sukarno after an attempted insurrection by the communists. "The authorities closed down my elementary school, along with all the other Chinese schools," she says. "I could only attend classes for a few years, so my Mandarin isn't too good."

Being accustomed to upper-class status, albeit in an environment of racial tension, Justine complains of irritations similar to those other overseas Chinese experience in Taiwan. She has a Chinese face, but she cannot speak fluent Chinese. This fact does not sit well with the locals. An example of the sort of treatment she has to endure occurred at the post office.

"I handed my envelopes to the clerk, who then told me to figure the rates myself using the charts on the window," she recalls. "I told her I could not read Chinese characters, and she said, 'Well, why can't you read?' I explained that I was Indonesian, and then she took my letters and scolded me about not being able to read Chinese."

Justine says while this may not be the typical treatment, she still feels people in Taiwan tend to be rude and arrogant. "If I had blonde hair and was a 'real' foreigner, I wouldn't be treated like this," she says. But being in Taiwan has its advantages, too. "I do feel safer here being among Chinese, though maybe that's a false impression since there are so many crimes reported in the news. Also there is more freedom here. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim society, and my family is Christian. To wear fashionable clothes or anything that is a bit revealing is frowned upon there. You can do it, but you won't feel comfortable with the reactions from people around you. In Taiwan, at least there is not as much social pressure to conform."

Justine has also had the opportunity to befriend a non-Chinese Indonesian student, which turned out to be a chance for personal enrichment never possible back home. "Being outside our country, we find we have a common bond in our Indonesian culture," she says.