One of the main things I got out of my recent trip was a reassessment of my relation to the US. Perhaps over the extended period of time I’ve spent in Taiwan,  a period that already covers most of my life up to this point, my recollections and impressions from my American childhood have assumed a greater status in my memories than they actually deserve. This is natural, I suppose, and comes to most people with the passing of the years, but on this trip I realized that who I am today is actually more the result of my experiences and choices as an adult in Taiwan than my experiences as a child in the US. I’ve never lived as an adult in the US. I’ve been out of touch with the on-the-ground culture there for almost a quarter of a century, if I ever really was in touch with it when I was growing up. We all attribute great meaning to our formative years, of course, and being away from the place where those years passed for me has accented that time and place in my memories, set them apart as something special and important. Which they are, but it was when I started to make my own choices that I began creating who I am today.

This point was particularly driven home when I was dealing with my relatives: I was the baby of the family when I was growing up; my older sister and brother seemed infinitely wiser and more in touch with the world outside than I was. Communication with my parents was difficult as I wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular. Their viewpoint was the only viewpoint, and if it didn’t make sense to me, I had nothing to fall back on. Now I see my brother and sister as equals, friends and  companions, and even difficult conversations with my parents are somewhat easier because I no longer depend on their judgement for my sense of self worth.

While I have changed significantly over the decades since I left the US, the country itself has changed as well, though it’s difficult to be objective with a moving target. Americans these days seem larger in frame, yet somehow diminished in daring.  Children don’t play, adults don’t wander. Cars, grocery stores and meals have all become huge, while people meekly submit to a general paranoia and mutual suspicion actively engendered by the government in various official acts seemingly designed to strangle open discussion. Perhaps one is a reaction to the other. Perhaps the two phenomena are symbiotic parasites.

Or perhaps I just don’t know what I’m talking about. How can I tell all of this after a couple of weeks flying and driving around the country? Obviously I can’t; it’s just my fleeting impression. Of course, Taiwan has changed as well, though this is even harder to note as it has happened day by day over a long period of time.

But when I returned to Taipei after my trip, I felt it: The familiarity, the comfort, the intimate knowledge of a place rushing back into your environment that signals the simple fact of coming home.

I’ve started another site (“Oh no, not another one!” you’re no doubt saying. But I’m just carrraaazzy that way). It’s called From my cave and it’s just photos that I take with my phone here and there, shots I don’t really want to bother with on my computer, things that I happen to see for which my usual cameras, for whatever reason, aren’t suitable. No text or commentary, just the snaps.  Uploading phone shots to my flickr account always seemed wrong somehow, and of course Facebook is just a walled garden, so I figured there might just be a use for this tumblr thingy after all.

Anyway, enjoy (if that’s your thing).

I was invited to attend the final presidential TV debates this afternoon up at the PTV studios in Neihu. Chenbl and I took the MRT out to Nangang and then up the Neihu line to Huzhou Station, which is now surrounded by a lot more nice new apartment buildings than I remember from the last time I was out there. It seems the MRT really does make a difference.

After a bowl of noodles at a nearby shop, we walked through the drizzle up slippery sidewalks lined with policemen to PTV and waited at a barricade while the candidates’ vehicles swept past up the hill. Some truant reporters were yelling at the policemen to let them through NOW, but the cops told them they had to wait like everyone else until the motorcades had passed. The reporters didn’t think much of this.

We walked up by the protest groups and through the layers of reporters into the studios, where we were shown to some sofas in the lobby featuring some snacks and cute little bottles of water, and waited while the other guests showed up. Each candidate could invite 25 people. These included some middle-aged women, an elderly fellow from Taichung, a portly photographer from Penghu, and the head of some government office. After about half and hour, we were led into the studio and sat down in folding chairs (Chenbl, not being an official guest, had to stay in the lobby where he could watch the debate on TV with the reporters there). I was seated right in the center of the central section, just behind King Pu-tsung and two rows behind Vice President Siew, Premier Wu and the first lady. One of the officials in the row in front of me was using a tablet computer.

I chatted with the old guy from Taichung, mostly in Taiwanese with some Mandarin thrown in here and there, until we both realized that we were the only ones in the room talking and that we really should shut up. The announcer appeared at her podium and called the three candidates on stage, to general applause. The cameraman counted us down to the brash opening music of the opening segment, and then the debate started.

After the opening statements, all of which included saying “Hello everyone” in as many dialects as possible, the candidates were called on to answer questions from various cultural and social groups. I won’t get into all the specific questions here, as that will be the topic of discussion on many other sites. President Ma was in the center, flanked by People First Party Chairman James Soong on the left and Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ying-wen on the right. While discussing the various topics, all of the candidates managed to fit in little political jibes at each other, but they didn’t really get into it, as all of their answers were limited to a minute and a half, after which their mic would be turned off and they would be left muttering to themselves while the announcer said “Next!”

We had a ten-minute break, during which I grabbed some water and chatted with Premier Wu a bit in the line for the bathroom, and then the second part of the debate began. When the candidates appeared on stage this time, it was very clear by listening to the applause just which section of the audience had been invited by which candidate. In this part, each candidate was allowed to pose a minute’s worth of questions to the other two candidates, and they’d each have two minutes to answer. Now we were really getting into it. Ma had opened with an attack on the recent Yu Chang controversy involving Tsai during her time as vice premier, and he returned to this at a couple of points, but mostly he kept pointing to his record and quoting relevant statistics. At a couple of points, when it was his turn to ask questions, he would call on Tsai to answer this or that accusation without addressing any question to Soong, who, when it came his turn to “answer”, said, “Here we go again!” to general laughter. It almost seemed as if he wasn’t taking himself very seriously as a candidate.

Tsai seemed subdued, almost distressed, something that didn’t come across in the debates I watched on TV last time. She issued a rare smile or two, but on the whole she gave the impression that she felt she’d been wronged, possibly due to all of the recent accusations, or possibly a head cold. Ma and Soong both countered her charges with numbers, and there was a lot of “Yes your administration accomplished that but it was my administration’s groundwork that let you do it” going on in all directions. Soong, when answering a question about high housing prices, said, “You do realize that Taipei is pretty much the only place this is happening, right? Man, you two you have lived in Taipei for too long!” He wasn’t a comedic foil, though; he brought both candidates to task on various subjects, and chided them for wasting efforts on what he called “senseless political bickering”. Ma, I felt, did better this time around than during the first debates, though that might have been because I was in the room instead of just watching on TV. But he stayed on message, and seemed more confident and assured than last time, though none of the candidates avoided at least a couple of verbal stumbles.

Finally, we had the closing statements, and the cameraman told us we were clear. “I thought that went pretty well,” I told King, who agreed. Ma walked over to thank us for coming, and I chatted with him for a bit before he left. Outside, the rain continued, and we walked back down the hill for some more noodles before taking the MRT back downtown, and then home.