Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Jul 18 2004

Prince Roy has finally received a copy of my book,…

Prince Roy has finally received a copy of my book, and I’m guessing that by now he’s finished it, since it’s a pretty quick read. It was fun to read his take on our days back at Tunghai, where we studied Chinese together. Three of us, me, Roy and another student whose name I don’t recall (except for the fact that he liked to take devil’s-advocate positions a lot), rode our motorcycles up the side road and parked in front of the library for a class at the night school building. Roy had, I believe, a black Suzuki Katana, and I had a burgundy Honda Custom 135.

 

I guess I was pretty standoffish back then (I know, hard to believe, enit?), but I do recall avoiding most of my classmates, except for the few, including Roy, who actually wanted to be there and weren’t just in Taiwan for an exotic experience or whose mainland program was canceled because of the Tiananmen-related unrest. I remember I was more dismayed with the fact that they arranged for us to be living with other foreigners (in my case, an actually nice guy with very good Chinese, David Loeb) than the actual decrepit state of the dorms themselves. Roy and I were in the top-level classes, but as soon as I could I started taking actual university courses in Chinese, even sitting for exams in the big hall on top of the hill. Though my grades were dismal and pretty much excluded any chance I had at a Phi Beta Kappa key, I got a lot out of those courses just by being part of a Chinese class environment. In fact, I still stay in touch with my Taiwanese roommates from Tunghai.

In other linkage, Wayne makes an interesting observation (down, after the monkey-brains stuff) on the would-be political pundits on Forumosa. I’d never thought of it that way, but it really does make sense.

posted by Poagao at 5:10 am  

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