Back in Black

This post originally appeared on my first blog Gawain in Taiwan, on Sep. 27, 2007.

At Berlitz, one of my students asks why I like Taiwan at all. A banker, he’d just answered the question my teacher’s addition instructed me to ask, carefully phrasing his response to use the same words I’d given him. “I think the economy situation in my home, Taiwan, in the last twenty years is . . . not good.”

“Economic situation,” I said by means of correction.

He repeated the correction, and then I told him I thought thing’s were pretty good. I’d gotten in the habit of contending with Kenneth, his English good enough to pick out even the finer points worth disputing. “Just across the way is a designer department store so massive they separated it into twelve distinct buildings!” Indeed, just behind Taipei 101 (at the time, still the world’s tallest building) is the infuriatingly large Shinkon Mitsukoshi department complex. Massive…it actually manages to sprawl luxuriously across wide courtyards and covered walkways. Sprawl in a city with 25,000 people crammed into every square mile.

Kenneth has a disarming grin, though, and as he steeples his hands, employs it. “But the 1970’s was the,” he pauses to to taste his direct translation, one he knows works, as either side of his neatly parted salt-and-pepper bangs twitch, “Golden Age.”

The 1970’s was?

He catches his mistake the second time. “And XinGuan (he uses the Chinese name) is Japanese! Look at the Taiwan GDP - it’s only growing at four percent. In Japan, the GDP is much better!” I nod sternly, as is my job, and stress Taiwan GDP twice before he changes it to Taiwanese, then counter his point. “But that’s Japan. What about, say, Korea?”

“That’s the point!” Kenneth leans forward excitedly, “Ten years ago the average Taiwanese made more than a Korea person!”

Korean.

“Right, but now their GDP is growing nine percent and they make more than we do! Even me! I’m moving to Shanghai,” he pronounces the city’s name in Mandarin, with the tones intact.

“What’s the wrong with Taiwan?”

“Taiwan missed the chance to grow with China. Look at any other economy - Scotland, Ireland,” he pronounced them half in their Chinese transliterations, but I didn’t interrupt. “As long as there was a dispute [a battle between unification and independence], they couldn’t grow. That’s Taiwan.”

“Do you think China will invade?” I say, asking the question I never even touch.

“No. Taiwan will always,” again he pauses and I can see him tasting his words, “play it safe. China will never have an excuse. And so we’ll wait.”

I can’t decide if it should be we will wait, or just we wait. I paw for a moment at my tie, tap my dress shoes, think, then go ahead and read the next question the book gives me. Across the way, in the Japanese department store, girls in dress hats futz with their white lace gloves. They’re paid to stand in the elevator, ask your floor, and announce your arrival. What do they do when there aren’t any customers?

-sb

I looked up all that stuff he said about the GDP. In 2006, Taiwan’s was 4.6%. Japan’s at 2.2% and South Korea is growing at 4.8%. China is schooling everybody with growth of 10.7% and the US is at 3.2%.