I HATE this pressure to totally surrender one’s pr…
I HATE this pressure to totally surrender one’s principals in order to serve mass ignorance and pettiness.
What am I talking about? you ask.
My name is TC Lin. Ok, TC is a nickname of sorts, as my official name is Tao-ming Lin. I was going to make a namecard for myself so I wouldn’t have to use my company namecard all the time, as it lacks certain information(like my email address and this site’s URL). But a friend of mine told me I shouldn’t use “Lin”. He says I should use my ‘real’ name, the name I was born under, since I’m not “really” Chinese, and people should know that, because as everyone here knows Chinese people are the scum of the earth while foreigners should be worshipped as gods. Nobody will pay any attention to me unless I play the foreigner angle for all it’s worth.
He’s probably right, of course. That is, of course, the reason why I didn’t even get called in for an interview at the GIO, because I emailed my resume in and they thought I was just another Chinese person and didn’t want to bother with me. As it is, I feel like I need to wear a paper bag on my head just to order a meal at a restaurant to get something approaching ‘normal’ service. It really grates on me, especially when I am required to play the part for whatever reason. I can’t do it very well, and I feel like I need a shower afterwards.
Jesus…and I’ve been here for how many decades? I realize that, of course, there will never be a point, no matter what happens or how long I have lived here, that I will ever be treated as a normal person by most of the people here. I just hate having it rubbed in. I hate being required to participate in the idiotic delusion that foreigners are somehow inherently better than Taiwanese. Sometimes, more often as of late, I think about leaving Taiwan, even though this is my home. I know this place better than any other, but maybe it is time I considered giving someplace else a shot. I know that we take our emotional baggage everywhere with us and that I cannot run away from my problems, I would still like to see what life is like elsewhere for a while.
Ah, I’m probably making too much of this. Maybe Christoper Doyle wouldn’t be famous today if he had written “KF Du” on his namecard; I don’t know. All I know is, I’m not Christopher Doyle.
