From Chapter
2 of Counting Mantou:
The days ticked
by as I wrapped up the last details of my civilian life. I had to quit
my job and move all of my belongings out of my rented room in downtown
Taipei and into a friend's apartment out in Taipei County. I stashed
my motorcycle under the staircase of my old apartment building and covered
it with cardboard, and the keys on my once-full key chain dwindled to
none. I felt like a ship shedding its moorings as it prepares to head
out across an uncharted ocean. I had decided not to tell my family in America what was I was doing, knowing that if I did it would only worry them unnecessarily. I rented a post office box in Taipei to receive letters and a Hotmail account for email that I could check from Internet cafes. I hoped nothing would happen during the next two years that would require my presence in the U.S. because I certainly wouldn't be able to leave Taiwan. I tried not to think about the possibility that I wouldn't survive the next two years, in spite of the slew of unexplained training accidents and mysterious maladies that had claimed far more soldiers' lives than a peacetime army should have to endure. And even assuming I could dodge those particular bullets, one prospect looming over the horizon never failed to induce anxiety in the region: The People's Republic of China, with which we were technically still at war after 50 years. The PRC still rattled its saber now and then; I was gambling that they wouldn't attack just yet.
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The
day of my entry into the army arrived: February 26th, 1996 -a Monday,
of course. I spent the night at a friend's house in the suburb of Sanchung,
where I had stored all of the things I couldn't sell or throw away.
That morning I struggled up at 6 a.m., put on some old clothes, and
threw a few shirts into the red motorcycle helmet-bag that I had become
accustomed to carrying. A friend drove me to the bus station in downtown
Taipei. What I was about to do hadn't sunk in yet; I still felt as if
I were an actor in a play. A light drizzle began, the only semblance
of day was a general lightening of the grayness surrounding the station.
Feeling
rushed along by events beyond my control, I got on a bus to Hsinchu.
I was destined for the training center at Guan-dong Bridge, on the outskirts
of the city. Although I had lived in Hsinchu for a time with my adopted
family, I had never been out that way. The reputation that preceded
it, however, was not encouraging. Guan-dong Bridge was supposed to be
one of the toughest boot camps in Taiwan. Taiwanese refer to the most
famous of the training centers with adjectives such as "Happy,"
"Bloody," "Sweaty", or in Guan-dong Bridge's case,
Lei-sha Guan-dong Qiao, which refers to a tearful experience.
When
we reached Hsinchu a couple of hours later the rain was hard and steady.
In Taiwan rains frequent the spring, not to mention summer and winter,
which accounts for the verdant mountain scenery as well as the old Portuguese
nickname for the Island, Ihla Formosa. Indeed, the more-or-less constant
humidity that makes the summer heat so oppressive works equally well
in making the winter cold feel much worse than the actual temperature.
I got
off the bus and walked several blocks to the combination Northern District
Government Offices/Municipal Baseball Stadium to find a small crowd
of people waiting nearby the ticket counters. As I approached, I could
see that the crowd was made up of about 50 young men, most of them surrounded
by various relatives and friends. Five or six of them had already shaved
their heads completely bald. My brown hair was past shoulder length
and pulled into a ponytail in back. People had warned me that the base
barbers were butchers and that I should get my hair cut off before I
went, but I was adamant that my golden locks' final destination be the
floors of Guan-dong Bridge. The real reason was that I didn't want to
spring for a haircut when I could get nearly the same one for free.
I went
up to a table behind which sat a couple of nondescript civil servants
and obtained, in exchange for my draft orders, a small round sticker
displaying the ROC flag, a gold border and the words "Love your
country, love your home. Hsinchu North District, Army #1748T'"
to affix to my shirt. The lack of any space on the sticker for my name,
though not unexpected, was a foreboding reminder of our worth as individuals.
Since
most of the guys were busy saying goodbye to their girlfriends or chatting
with their families, I didn't get to meet anyone in the parking lot.
I got a few strange looks after I put the sticker on, looks that said,
"What is this foreigner doing here? And why is he wearing a draft
sticker? But no one said a word to me. I was wondering exactly when
the drill sergeants that you always see in movies were going to pop
out of the woodwork and start yelling at us and treating us like dirt,
but there weren't any. As if by design, the rain stopped and the sun
came out, and we were told to get on the buses. Feeling again like a
twig caught up in a torrential river, I got on the crowded vehicle.
There weren't enough seats for everyone, and I had to stand, but soon
we were off. And then we were lost. |
This was my ID when on base. The "85" is ROC years, and translates into "1996" by most calendars. |
In the
old days Guan-dong Bridge Training Center was located out in the countryside,
but the city of Hsinchu had grown so much that now all that separated it from
the city proper was an industrial park, which was still being built at the
time, so that the roads were a muddy mess and our civilian driver didn't know
how to get there. The training center was just visible across the vast construction
site- a sprawling complex of brooding gray-and-white buildings huddled against
the dark green of the hills behind- but there seemed to be no way across.
The driver tried different combinations of corners and U-turns, but each one
seemed to culminate in a dead end next to some muddy field. The sky darkened
again with the threat of more heavy rain.
"If we can't find the place, does that mean we don't have to go in the
army?" I joked awkwardly during one particularly long pause while the
driver consulted a hand-drawn map. I tend to become talkative when I'm nervous.
No one replied; everyone was preoccupied with his own thoughts. Perhaps that
was why nobody was paying any attention to an obvious foreigner with a ponytail
being inducted into the army along with them. I tried to strike up a conversation
with the guy next to me, but he was just as distracted as everyone else. There
was a cloud of suspense and apprehension verging on outright dread on that
bus, as if no one wanted to violate the unknown, as if offending it would
cause even more dire circumstances to occur.
Eventually
the driver did find his way to the base. From my standing position all I could
see as we bounced over speed bumps were the pant legs of the Military Policemen
as they waved us in. I wondered what they thought of us. It was drizzling
again when I stepped off the bus and onto an enormous parade ground where
around 30 tables, each one facing several benches, had been set up. We were
directed to various tables according to some invisible system and told to
sit down and wait until the benches were full. As we sat down, we were each
given a serial number that was to become our military ID number. Each number
began with a Chinese character and an English letter. Mine began with Tian
(sky, or heaven) followed by the letter A and the number 981643.
Soon
my area was full of nervous young men, and a silent man in the uniform of
a sergeant appeared. He carried a large, white sign on a stick not unlike
those carried by protesters. The placard's big red letters politely asked
us to "Follow me, please." Standing there with the sign over his
head, the sergeant looked not a little like a cartoon character with a dialogue
bubble hovering over his head. I almost smiled at the idea despite my nervousness.
He led us into one of the nearby three-story concrete buildings that bordered
the parade grounds. "Here you will receive your uniform and accessories,
the sergeant told us curtly. "Line up and take one of each item."
We
went around the room, receiving olive-drab pants, long-sleeved shirts and
short-sleeved shirts, black belts with brass buckles exactly like those of
my Boy Scout uniform so many years before, dull olive-drab T-shirts with "Army"
imprinted in Chinese on the left breast, bright green sweat suits and shorts,
black combat boots, white running shoes, underwear, socks, and two short elastic
green laces with metal hooks on each end that served no purpose that I could
discern. Finally we all lined up in a sort of loose formation, everyone with
all of their new possessions piled around them. There were 109 of us in that
room that morning.
"Now
strip down and put everything into your personal luggage. Then put on your
uniforms." The sergeant's tone was a tad more urgent than it had been
just a moment before. Guys rushed to strip naked and stuff their civilian
clothing- including shoes and any jewelry- into their bags before putting
on the unmarked olive-drab uniforms. Soon everyone had finished changing.
It was more than just a change of clothes, however. Up until then it had felt
sort of like a tour, but now it was clear that we were destined to be a part
of this place. I felt rather self-conscious about the ponytail hanging down
my back. Maybe I should have gotten my hair cut on the outside, I thought,
as my friends had suggested. Some of the more corpulent members of our group
couldn't find properly fitting uniform parts and started complaining. The
sergeant addressed all of these concerns with one sharp order: "Upstairs.
Now."
On
the second floor we found the barracks that would be our new home. They consisted
of one long room, lined with aluminum bunk beds. Each bed slept four guys,
two on top and two on bottom, so that about half of us could sleep in this
room. The remaining 50-odd guys would sleep in identical barracks on the third
floor. On top of each wooden plank that comprised the bed was a solid mat
about an inch thick, with all the softness of plywood. This was covered with
a dark green wool blanket. Aluminum rails guarded the sides, and arranged
on each bunk were various items such as utility belts, canteens, steel helmets
and neatly folded thick white quilts. At one end of the room were rows of
dark red wooden lockers, each about a foot square, and a couple of doors.
Behind one was the storeroom, into which we all tossed our bags containing
our personal stuff. The sergeants' quarters were behind the other.
It
was almost lunchtime, and we were led downstairs to the room in which we had
been issued our uniforms. The uniform gear had disappeared, and in its place
were several tables, a large vat of noodles and several stacks of gleaming
steel bowls beside equally clean steel chopsticks. As we dug in-some of us
sitting on tables, some squatting on the floor-several short, squat middle-aged
women entered the room carrying bundles of sheets and electric shears. Those
of us who had finished eating were told to line up in front of a woman. Being
a habitually slow eater, I was at the back of the line and got to watch most
of the shearing. It went quickly, and I felt almost relieved to get a haircut
more befitting my attire, at least until I went up to the bathrooms to wash
the stubble off my head and looked in the mirror. I was shocked to see a reflection
so radically different from the one I had woken up to that morning.
I
splashed my newly shaven head and went back downstairs. This was another small
shock, for whereas I had left what seemed like a roomful of similarly dressed
tourists, I rejoined a company of soldiers. And I was one of them. The sergeant,
however, didn't leave us much time to ponder this concept. His tone was becoming
more urgent and biting with every sentence. Now other sergeants were arriving
on the scene, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
Soon
we were upstairs in the barracks again. "Line up!" the first sergeant
barked. The politeness was gone. First we were taught how to tie our boots
the army way, and then we found out what the little hooked elastic bands were
for. They were called bang tui or "wrap legs," and were used to
hold our uniform pant legs in place by stretching them around the ankles and
hooking around the insides of the rolled-up cuffs, quite effectively cutting
off circulation to the ankles and feet, which, considering the amount of stress
which would eventually be placed on those particular areas, was probably not
such a bad idea.
The
sergeant then recited to us, line by line, a song -one we would be singing
every morning for the next two years and one that most Taiwanese men know
by heart: "Feng yun qi, Shan he dong, Huangpu Jianjun sheng shi xiong!
('The wind and clouds rise, the mountains and rivers tremble. The soldiers
of Whampoa look and sound tough!'). It was just the first of a whole slew
of army songs we would be required to memorize. The reference was to the Whampoa
Military Academy near Canton where the ROC army was founded amid national
chaos in the 1920s, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.
Things
were becoming more intense. A general air of urgency materialized as even
more sergeants appeared. At least the rain had stopped. The 109 of us, we
were told, made up Company 3, part of the 1st Battalion. Within the company
were three platoons, each platoon made up of three or four units. They lined
us up in block formation by height and assigned each man a number. There was
only one guy there taller than me, and his height exceeded mine by at least
five or six centimeters. His name was Ye Yun-long, but he would be referred
to as #001, pronounced dong-dong-yao, which made me #002, or dong-dong-liang.
"From
now on, you will refer to yourself and fellow recruits not only by name,
but also by number, preceded by the title Xin-bing Zhan-shi, the sergeant
recited to us. He had obviously given this speech many times before.
Although our flattering new designation translated roughly to 'Recruit-warrior,'
I felt more like a chess piece-one of the more expendable ones. "You
will always use the full title! Also! You are not allowed to use pronouns!
You will use the proper name for whatever or whomever you are talking
about. You may not allow the words 'You,' 'me,' 'him,' or 'it' to escape
your mouths! Is that understood?" Other
than a few muttered 'Yes's, there was silence. The sergeant, rather
put out, shook his head and resumed: "When you asked a question
you will answer! When you speak, you will begin your statement, whatever
it may be, with 'Baogao (Reporting)' then the title of the person you
are addressing. In my case you would say 'Baogao Banzhang' (reporting
to Unit Leader). When any officer calls you, you respond by saying 'You!'
(Here!) Do you understand?" "Baogao
Banzhang! Understood!" most of us managed to say, in a collusion
of semi-loud voices. "Eh?
What was that?" "Baogao
Banzhang! Understood!!" It was again louder this time, but the
sergeant was still not satisfied. Needless to say this went on for some
time, until we got it right. Or I guess it was right. The only thing
the sergeant did before we stopped was shake his head and sigh. "Ok,
right face! March!" We marched, or made some attempt at a semblance
of marching, out to the ring road surrounding the parade grounds and
the obstacle course. At one end of the parade square was a stage-like
pavilion, and at the other was a large stately four-story building we
would later come to know as Brigade HQ. Our destination was the base
supply store, which was brand new and a vast improvement over the old
one, which had been located right next to our barracks but consisted
of a tent and concrete structure located on a platform perched atop
the base perimeter wall. Inside
the store we were handed our Whampoa Duffel Bags: large, dark green
bags with the ROC army insignia printed on the back, into which we stuffed
our toothbrushes, toothpaste, wash-pans, wash-cloths, shower sandals,
sewing kits, brushes, and the army's preferred brand of laundry detergent.
To this day, the smell of that particular brand is one of two scents
that bring back vivid memories of boot camp. The other is Diesel fuel.
We were also issued heavy brown journals titled "Military Journey:
A Record of Thoughts." All of this kit had to be inscribed with
our numbers. I got confused and wrote the wrong number on my sandals
several times, which turned out to be good later as they were easily
identifiable, being now more black than the original blue and white.
All of our clothing had to be marked as well, in order to avoid confusion
and prevent theft. Armed
with our toiletries, we marched back to the barracks, where we deposited
them into our lockers. Then we were assigned bunks. Being #002 meant
that I was on the lower bunk right next to the lockers and one of the
doors. On the bunk next to me was #004, an academic-looking fellow with
glasses who had been known in civilian life as Shi Xi-sheng. On top,
next to Ye Yun-long, was #003, a wiry, dark-skinned guy named Guo Jin-shui,
who preferred to be called Ah-zui. |
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This was my ID card when I was in the army, invaluable to prove I was a soldier, especially when I was on leave. |
That afternoon we were
led to the mess hall, which turned out to be a large auditorium-like room
in the building located right behind our barracks. There we underwent a basic
physical check-up, running around and lining up in flimsy open robes and underwear.
It was then that I noticed a group within our group, composed mostly but not
exclusively of overweight guys, many of whom had been among those complaining
about snug uniforms. Some of them still wore their sneakers, as no boots would
fit them. They were thoroughly prepared for the physical, producing voluminous
notes and lengthy explanations as to why they couldn't be in the army. The
physicians listened patiently but took no further action at the time. It wasn't
the last time I would notice that particular section of the company.
There were no more
requests or suggestions. All communication came in orders, and I guess the
officers in charge figured they had given us enough time to adjust. We spent
a lot of time that afternoon being instructed how to turn left and right,
how to turn around, how to walk, to run, to squat, and to kneel.
"Gui Xia! (Kneel!),"
came the order. Immediately we all fell to our knees, something that has quite
a bit of significance in Chinese society. It is not a gesture taken lightly,
and is usually only seen in movies when the pupil/son/inferior has committed
some great wrong or injustice to his teacher/parents/superior and is in the
act of dramatically begging forgiveness. When the instructor, who was now
wearing a red-white-and-blue sash over his shoulder, saw us kneel, he wasn't
too happy. "ROC soldiers NEVER kneel in subservience! Only kneel on one
knee!" Squatting was also on one ankle, one leg in front and one in back.
It wouldn't be comfortable for long in ordinary shoes; in combat boots it
quickly became painful. Accordingly, this turned out to be a popular form
of punishment, and we soon found ourselves squatting for great lengths of
time, or listening to the sergeant give a rapid-fire series of orders: "Squat!
Stand up! Squat! Stand up! SquatStandupSquatStandupSquat..." The reason
for this (and a great many other things) was that it would be hard to prove
such exercises had broken any of the recently implemented rules against unreasonable
punishment. All of the new rules were going up against a veritable tradition
of punishment at Guan-dong Bridge, a tradition that had been handed down from
generation to generation of drill sergeants over the course of several decades'
time. Naturally there was going to be some conflict of interest, as most of
the drill sergeants saw their primary mission as the successful completion
of our training, no matter how it was done, and the means by which they accomplished
that mission were simply not important to them. It was months before I regained
any feeling at all in my toes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Conscripts in Taiwan Induction Order in Chaos Coming to Grips Making the Grade Politics and Obstacles Pizza, Missiles, and False Hopes Graduation Picking Lots Da Ping Ding Prospects and Tonsillitis The Guard Company On Duty Two Captains and a Typhoon Zhang Fang and an Intriguing Offer Corporal The RHQ Company Fitting In Gas Masks and Inappropriate Wristwatches War Readiness and Captain Ah-mi-tou-fou Killing Pigs for Star Wars The Rapid-response Unit Return to the RHQ Fighting Captain Zhong and a Fire Arrogant Officers and Railway Safety Tips Karaoke Nights and Sesame Baozi Old Soldier Release |
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