DV8, the musty, wood-covered site of many late nights after work at the newspaper as well as a scene in the movie, is closing its doors for good after Chinese New Year’s, so David, Thumper and I met up there on Friday night to see it once more. A fair share of people were there, including Gavin, Bob from Carnegies and Matthew Lian. We did the traditional DV8 thing, that is we drank, hunted through the music collection, argued about politics and played some pool downstairs.

Our old co-worker Ronnie, who is now at the Taipei Times, wrote a story on the old place’s imminent demise. It was good, but one part made me laugh:

Kenbo Liao remembers one such hazy moment in 1996, when China was launching missiles over Taiwan. Lots of people had left Taiwan, but he was here with a few regulars. “The missiles were probably shooting over our heads,” he said. Around 2am they got together and pledged to defend Taiwan against China. “We were comrades,” Liao said.

Ah, Kenbo. What a character. It’s hard for me to get all weepy about his selfless act of heroism in drinking in a bar, however, as at the time my military unit in Hsinchu was on high alert, so with all the snap drills I didn’t have the chance to express my patriotism in such an eloquent fashion.

David was roaring drunk by the time we hit the street in the wee hours of the morning. He had a flight the next day to Australia, the lucky sod. After we had walked about 50 feet from the door, I turned him around to face the bar, from which music was still emanating, and said, “There it is. You can see it, and you can hear it.”

The next day was Chinese New Year’s Eve, and I spent the evening at a friends house in Nangang eating good food and playing with their new Wii. They only sell the Japanese version here, so we spent a bit of time squinting at the squiggles on the screen, trying to guess what they meant. It was a lot of fun, though. The tennis was probably my favorite, though I didn’t get to play the pingpong. The bowling was ok, as was the baseball. The boxing was just frustrating, as the punches seemed to bear no relation to one’s hand motions.

I got back to Bitan, exhausted from the food and the Wii-related activities, at about 2am, and the fireworks were going strong. I longed for sleep, but the constant barrage outside my window made it impossible. I tried going downstairs to the common room, but it was just as loud there. Then I tried my bathtub, which was even worse as it cut off my circulation and made me dizzy. In the end I just laid on my bed waiting for it to die down, and took a nap the next morning.

When I went down to the lobby, I saw a newspaper article posted on the bulletin board, about the strict anti-fireworks measures being undertaken by the Bitan Police. Patrols every hour, on the hour! The residents are suffering! More news from bizarro-land, ’cause it ain’t happening here.

Tonight looks to be more of the same, colorful explosions-wise. In fact, it will probably continue for several nights, and as I’m a bit short on money this month, I can’t afford to go stay at the Love Hotel just up the road for a night or two. I wonder if I have any old all-night sauna coupons left…

Happy Valentine’s Day. The pictured teddy bear wedding package, available at 7-Elevens around the island, originally featured a groom bear and a bride bear, so I bought another and replaced the bride bear with the other groom bear because I WANT TO DESTROY EVERY MARRIAGE IN AMERICA! LOL!!!1111OnEOzZZ

Sorry, I came perilously close to revealing The Gay Agenda there, and that just wouldn’t do. Seriously, I just thought it would be a cute thing to see. If I were a true activist I would organize an island-wide campaign to switch bride and groom bears surreptitiously in the stores themselves. As Taiwan isn’t the bastion of Puritanism that red-state America is, it probably wouldn’t cause much more than a few double-takes.

As for me, I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day alone again, or practicing Tai-chi as I usually do on Wednesdays. The whole spitting-on-swanboats thing is getting old anyway.

In other news, Ma Ying-jeou has been indicted after prosecutors discovered irregularities in the use of his special mayoral fund. While it’s not surprising that this happened (Ma’s been seen as the KMT’s presidential candidate for so long his opponents were bound to dig up something sooner or later to use against him), the fact that Ma made such a stupid mistake seems extraordinarily careless. I can only guess that he thought that the reality that declaring half of the office’s discretionary fund is SOP in Taiwan would somehow make him immune to prosecution. Either that or he truly didn’t know, which in many ways is just as worrying.

I expected Ma to resign from the KMT chairmanship after the indictment announcement, but it appears that he is still intent on running for the presidency despite a party rule that those indicted are not allowed to be nominated by the party for office. Ma himself came up with this rule years ago, so he of all people should be aware of its existence. Balls o’ steel, that man has. I was expecting Lien Chan to use this opportunity to regain the party chairmanship so that he could broker a Wang/Ma ticket, but it looks like this may not be the case. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Ma has been considered the KMT’s best chance at winning in 2008, but Wang would also have a pretty good shot, I think. In any case, speculation at this point is useless. The DPP got “lucky” twice due to bizarre circumstances that caused them to win the last two times, so I wouldn’t rule out some strange unforeseen incident doing the same thing this time around.

Meanwhile, Prince Roy wants to know my opinion on the DPP’s recent campaign to get rid of any reference to the terms “China” or “Chinese” in Taiwan.

Sigh.

Ok. Many media reports call this campaign one of “rectification,” which is of course a matter of opinion. This is actually just the latest in a thousand-year-old trend of dynastic thinking. One group gets in power and changes the money, the official designations, nomenclature, etc. on the claim that it is “rectifying” things. Then another group takes power and the pissing-on-trees starts all over again. Rinse, repeat. Imagine if each US administration issued different colored money with pictures of its heroes on it, and then changed all the official names of everything. Think of all the wasted time, effort and money that would result, time, money and effort that should be spent on improving concrete aspects of people’s lives. Ironically, the DPP in this instance is acting like just the latest in a long line of Chinese-style dynasties. Say what you will about Chiang Kai-shek, but a thousand-NT bill from his time looked like a thousand NT. A US 20-dollar bill features one of history’s most notorious mass-murderers, Andrew Jackson, but it looks like real money. We’re left with a bunch of kids stymied by a vaguely drawn globe.

But let’s say you’re hell-bent on getting rid of references to a certain culture and history. Ok. At the very least, you should make an effort to replace it with something solid and fair, something people can take some kind of assurance from in lieu of what they had before. The reason Taiwanese people have identity issues these days isn’t due to the influence of Chinese culture and history, which have been around ever since their ancestors brought it here with them from China starting centuries ago. No, the DPP, in its quest to remove these connections and associations that they feel threaten their political power base, simply hasn’t done a very good job of replacing them with anything significant. People are being told that the language they speak, the words they use, the customs they grew up with and the beliefs they’ve been taught are all now wrong and foreign and keeping them down. Fair enough, but in their absence, what’s left? Aborigines dancing for tourist dollars, a plethora of special reports on indigenous flora and fauna, and millions of people who have no clue who they are or what they believe in.

But back to the name-changing thing. Basically, it’s already 2007. The DPP may not be able to come up with a way to not be voted out of power next year, so now’s the time to do all the things on its to-do list. Chen wants his legacy, and the party doesn’t particularly care about the housekeeping since it’s the last night at the hotel.

Happy Valentine’s Day. The pictured teddy bear wedding package, available at 7-Elevens around the island, originally featured a groom bear and a bride bear, so I bought another and replaced the bride bear with the other groom bear because I WANT TO DESTROY EVERY MARRIAGE IN AMERICA! LOL!!!1111OnEOzZZ

Sorry, I came perilously close to revealing The Gay Agenda there, and that just wouldn’t do. Seriously, I just thought it would be a cute thing to see. If I were a true activist I would organize an island-wide campaign to switch bride and groom bears surreptitiously in the stores themselves. As Taiwan isn’t the bastion of Puritanism that red-state America is, it probably wouldn’t cause much more than a few double-takes.

As for me, I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day alone again, or practicing Tai-chi as I usually do on Wednesdays. The whole spitting-on-swanboats thing is getting old anyway.

In other news, Ma Ying-jeou has been indicted after prosecutors discovered irregularities in the use of his special mayoral fund. While it’s not surprising that this happened (Ma’s been seen as the KMT’s presidential candidate for so long his opponents were bound to dig up something sooner or later to use against him), the fact that Ma made such a stupid mistake seems extraordinarily careless. I can only guess that he thought that the reality that declaring half of the office’s discretionary fund is SOP in Taiwan would somehow make him immune to prosecution. Either that or he truly didn’t know, which in many ways is just as worrying.

I expected Ma to resign from the KMT chairmanship after the indictment announcement, but it appears that he is still intent on running for the presidency despite a party rule that those indicted are not allowed to be nominated by the party for office. Ma himself came up with this rule years ago, so he of all people should be aware of its existence. Balls o’ steel, that man has. I was expecting Lien Chan to use this opportunity to regain the party chairmanship so that he could broker a Wang/Ma ticket, but it looks like this may not be the case. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Ma has been considered the KMT’s best chance at winning in 2008, but Wang would also have a pretty good shot, I think. In any case, speculation at this point is useless. The DPP got “lucky” twice due to bizarre circumstances that caused them to win the last two times, so I wouldn’t rule out some strange unforeseen incident doing the same thing this time around.

Meanwhile, Prince Roy wants to know my opinion on the DPP’s recent campaign to get rid of any reference to the terms “China” or “Chinese” in Taiwan.

Sigh.

Ok. Many media reports call this campaign one of “rectification,” which is of course a matter of opinion. This is actually just the latest in a thousand-year-old trend of dynastic thinking. One group gets in power and changes the money, the official designations, nomenclature, etc. on the claim that it is “rectifying” things. Then another group takes power and the pissing-on-trees starts all over again. Rinse, repeat. Imagine if each US administration issued different colored money with pictures of its heroes on it, and then changed all the official names of everything. Think of all the wasted time, effort and money that would result, time, money and effort that should be spent on improving concrete aspects of people’s lives. Ironically, the DPP in this instance is acting like just the latest in a long line of Chinese-style dynasties. Say what you will about Chiang Kai-shek, but a thousand-NT bill from his time looked like a thousand NT. A US 20-dollar bill features one of history’s most notorious mass-murderers, Andrew Jackson, but it looks like real money. We’re left with a bunch of kids stymied by a vaguely drawn globe.

But let’s say you’re hell-bent on getting rid of references to a certain culture and history. Ok. At the very least, you should make an effort to replace it with something solid and fair, something people can take some kind of assurance from in lieu of what they had before. The reason Taiwanese people have identity issues these days isn’t due to the influence of Chinese culture and history, which have been around ever since their ancestors brought it here with them from China starting centuries ago. No, the DPP, in its quest to remove these connections and associations that they feel threaten their political power base, simply hasn’t done a very good job of replacing them with anything significant. People are being told that the language they speak, the words they use, the customs they grew up with and the beliefs they’ve been taught are all now wrong and foreign and keeping them down. Fair enough, but in their absence, what’s left? Aborigines dancing for tourist dollars, a plethora of special reports on indigenous flora and fauna, and millions of people who have no clue who they are or what they believe in.

But back to the name-changing thing. Basically, it’s already 2007. The DPP may not be able to come up with a way to not be voted out of power next year, so now’s the time to do all the things on its to-do list. Chen wants his legacy, and the party doesn’t particularly care about the housekeeping since it’s the last night at the hotel.

Though it’s been blogged about extensively, I just have to express my amazement at the city of Boston’s reaction to its recent discovery of a few publicly placed LED boards with cartoon characters on them. Spurning chance after chance to realize what they were dealing with, their reaction to international derision over the matter seems to have made them simply more eager to “prove” that there was some kind of “threat” involved. Now apparently they’ve cooked up some numbers for “restitution” for their blunder and have forced the head of the Cartoon Network to resign.

What I find most significant is that this is the first time I’ve ever witnessed such a huge disconnect between what the mainstream media is reporting and what is blatantly obvious to everyone else. It’s almost soviet. Even living here in Taiwan and being a bit older than the targeted demographic, I still know about the TV show the character is taken from. So, it seems, does everyone on the Internet. But despite the fact that both the show and the Internet have been around for years, the mainstream media in the US seems almost willfully ignorant. I suppose in the first couple of hours after the story broke such ignorance could have been explained, but even today, weeks afterward, they don’t seem to have been able to understand just what happened. It’s like the real world is a foreign land to which they cannot imagine. It really makes one wonder, if the major US media players can’t even get this right, what’s the point of their existence?

Seriously, this was just as perfect a test as you could ask for, and they failed spectacularly, right down to the scapegoating of everyone but those actually responsible for the hysteria. The media, the authorities concerned and city officials decided to ignore reality and spend all of their efforts trying to push their fantasy on the public. Before the Internet it might have been possible to do this successfully (and it no doubt has been). But after the laughter dies down and they’re still putting up their claims as “truth,” I think the general public will realize that it has a genuine cause for concern on its hands. Basically, this incident has shown us that we cannot trust them. Even in this kind of situation, they’ve proved themselves not only useless and only concerned about saving face, but untrustworthy and even dangerous. But it seems that those who are charged with fixing such problems have become the problems themselves.

“Excuse me,” the little gentleman said, “Where are you from?”

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? thought Dr. Daruwalla. It was always the question. For his whole adult life, it was the question he usually answered with the literal truth, which in his heart felt like a lie.

“I’m from India,” the doctor would say, but he didn’t feel it; it didn’t ring true. “I’m from Toronto,” he sometimes said, but with more mischief than authority. Or else he would be clever. “I’m from Toronto, via Bombay,” he would say. If he really wanted to be cute, he would answer, “I’m from Toronto, via Vienna and Bombay.” He could go on, elaborating the lie- namely, that he was from anywhere.

I just finished A Son of the Circus by John Irving. I spent the first half of the book wondering what it was about and whether I should continue reading it, but, as is typical in my experience with Irving, I was eventually rewarded for my patience, though later in the book than I would have liked (A Prayer for Owen Meany won me over immediately, but Hotel New Hampshire took a while. The Ciderhouse Rules never did anything for me).

Though it wasn’t the best Irving I’ve read, I was able to identify with the main character of Dr. Daruwalla, who, though he can act the various parts, doesn’t seem to truly belong in any one culture. Early on, he is told that, once one is an immigrant, one is always an immigrant. Much of the book focuses on this subject, which is portrayed in a melancholy yet matter-of-fact fashion.

As an immigrant myself, as well as someone who admittedly encounters a certain amount of discomfort while dealing with various cultural environments, I can somewhat relate to this fictional character’s situation. In the book, Dr. Daruwalla knows deep down that there will always be people in Canada who, based on the color of his skin, will only see him as Indian, as well as many people in India who will point out that he is not truly an Indian either. All of this translates into a kind of helplessness in the book until, towards the end, the doctor is asked where he is from by a child on the street, and he comes up with a uniquely accurate answer to the query, that he is from the circus.

Granted, you’ll have to read the book to know what that really means for Dr. Daruwalla, but it seems to me that there are more options in life than simply Nationality A or Citizen of B or of the C Ethnicity. And when I consider what my life would have been like if things had turned out differently, I wonder if I could have taken what a more standard path would have dealt me.

But that’s neither here nor there. I could wonder endlessly about such things (and I often find myself doing just that), but in reality, while I sometimes dislike dealing with the various cultural baggage that comes with an inter-cultural identity, I often find, as with a large, noisy party, that I am more comfortable outside than in. Perhaps that is a common point among immigrants in general, that restlessness that flies in the face of the natural desire to belong. Some immigrants cling to one culture or another, either retreating into the comfortable familiarity of their childhood or making a show of unreservedly throwing themselves into their adopted culture while daring anyone to notice anything out of the ordinary, but I think that, to a degree, we all reserve a section of ourselves that transcends the absoluteness of any one culture, environment or identity. Just in case.

I am not American, not officially anyway; I have never lived there as an adult. I don’t remember my birthplace at all. While my English remains a bit better than my Chinese, I don’t know anything about contemporary US culture that can’t be accessed through the Internet. Americans seem foreign to me. While my upbringing will always be a part of who I am, it is a static part and only changes in relation to the person I’ve become since.

I know Taiwan better than any other place in the world. It’s my home, and though I love to travel and explore different parts of the world, I always want to come back here. I am a citizen with all the rights and obligations of a Taiwanese national. Yet a random stranger on the street, seeing my features and skin color, will automatically assume that I am a cultural novice and completely unfamiliar with this land and its people. I will be treated like a child or an idiot by some, fawned over as exotic by others. Only those who get to know me will ever know any different.

Such inconsistencies are simply part of my reality, an unfamiliar aspect to many people who (understandably) rely on assumptions to get through life. It may seem like this kind of existence makes a lot of unreasonable demands, and it does, but with culture and identity, as with physics, there is only so much me to go around. Perhaps that is why some immigrants tend to stay on the outside, in order to allow them at least the illusion of control over their identities, even as they fly apart at the seams.

Occasionally in Taiwan I encounter what I like to call the Airplane! treatment. For those of you who haven’t seen this brilliant 1980 movie, some of the jokes run thusly:

Rumack: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.

Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?

Rumack: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.

The Taiwan version of this usually involves a conversation with someone who possesses the intellectual knowledge that I speak Chinese but also has some sort of cognitive dissonance that prevents them from successfully internalizing that fact. They’re perfectly willing to speak with me in Chinese, but sometimes, out of the blue, they’ll feel the need to explain some perfectly obvious thing, reminding me of the Airplane! jokes.

Some Person: I won a clothes dryer at the office party, so my wife had a baby girl.

Me: So you’re saying the reason your wife had a girl instead of a boy was…

Some Person: It’s a machine that dries clothes.

Ok, so that might not be the best example, but you get the point. In any case, I wonder if the people I’m talking to, when they see me break out in laughter, think that I’m just ecstatic that I’ve finally learned the Chinese word for “clothes dryer” or whatever everyday thing we happen to be talking about.

It doesn’t happen that often; friends and people who know me well enough don’t usually do this, as they know I’ll ask them what something means if I don’t understand it. But when it does happen, I keep waiting for them to add “…but that’s not important right now.”

Today was a bit frustrating.

It started out ok. Nice and bright. Xian-rui and I played ping-pong downstairs, and I managed to keep the ball in play for literally seconds at a time, a big improvement over the last time we played.

After Xian-rui left I took a shower and headed over to a Thai restaurant on Jinan Road where the “Little Bear Village” was having its annual New Year’s party. I didn’t know anyone there. Well, I did, online, but I’d never met anyone there face-to-face before. I was seated at the geeky table, apparently, with a few exceptions. I knew one guy from chatting online before. I noticed that there wasn’t a whole lot of animated discussion at the other tables. A round of weak alcohol seemed to help matters, as did the handing out of the exchanged gifts, along with a short introduction of each recipient.

I noticed a guy across the room who seemed familiar. And also very interesting. After the party broke up I went over and sat down at their table after seeing that one of the guys there had received the gift I brought. He turned out to be the cute guy’s little brother. We chatted for a while, and I was feeling pretty good about until I realized that he was already spoken for. What really smarts is that we’d exchanged messages online years ago but never got together. It’s too bad, really. He seems really nice.

So I left with my NT$200 red envelope and walked around the city’s alleyways for a while. I looking for a place to piss when I ran into an old acquaintance from the News. He’s still working there and was on his way to a bar that used to be Roxy 99.

It was still relatively early, and I decided to go to JB’s to watch Clay Soldiers on TV. The waitress switched the little TV in the corner to CTS, which for some strange reason was just starting “Free Willy,” as a drunk English woman put her ashtray on my table, sat down and decided to spray me with her repugnantly sweet perfume. As politely as I could, I refrained from punching her. I figured she probably had friends there and I didn’t want to miss the show over a bar brawl.

The time CTS had told me came and went, however, and no Clay Soldiers. I switched around the channels a bit, and then gave up. CTS was still showing Free Willy, and every time I saw that damn whale I just wanted to see a harpoon pierce its gaping maw. Preferably with the kid attached.

Discouraged, I waded through the crowd of soccer-watchers and left in time to catch the last train home. When I got online someone told me that they had seen the show, but very faintly on channel 11. CTS is channel 12. I’ll call tomorrow to see if they can explain what the hell was going on. Right now I need to take another shower and get this damn perfume off me.

UPDATE: DOH! It was on channel 11, one of CTS’s other channels. Oh, well. At least we’re being broadcast.