Day 7: A new name (and beginning?)
I felt popular. Walking back from meditation I was once again called by cell phone. Fabian’s nearly inaudible voice this time. He told me that he found a solution for the internet and was coming to see me. Ok, fine. Nothing better than a call in the middle of the road to look like a future businessman in shorts.
Back home, I didn’t know what to do. Cleaning seemed to be the only option, but what? There is no real feeling of achievement from cleaning if nobody else can enjoy the results. So I decided it was about time the neighbors knew that this apartment is once more occupied. And not only that, I wanted to make a good impression, so what about cleaning up that front door?
I was starting to get a bit discouraged when I took a good look at the big red ‘gate’ (as called by the locals). Five years of dust made it seem more grey than red. Nevertheless this future businessman commenced the tiring task and after three buckets of water, I was satisfied. As the final touch, I replaced a sticker of a lotus flower from some kind of Hindu religion with my own paper lotus flower. There are now practitioners living in this apartment.
Now, I wanted of course to go back in and do something else. There was just that little problem that the door closed itself while I was cleaning it…and the keys are still inside. Great, this is exactly the kind of things you hear about in pubs or read in blogs, never actually experience. I shut myself out while cleaning the door, with everything – keys, cell phone - left inside and I didn’t even know if there was a janitor of some sort. I was only reduced to a self-made homeless person for ten seconds, as my mind was racing for solutions. And I remembered Fabian. Well, I guess that’s one of the advantages of being popular. Else what are the chances of getting visit 5 minutes after shutting oneself out? Fabian, of course, had his son’s spare key. So besides a near-panic moment, no harm was done.
Try telling that to a Japanese girl that doesn’t know any English. Modulating a door wasn’t that difficult. But I don’t know what made her laugh: the story itself or the exaggerated movements on the imaginative doorknob? At least it’s one more point for Belgian-Japanese relationships.
There is also great news everybody! My name is no longer Thomas. In class I would from now on be identified as Fan DeBang. (范 德邦). That is what was written on the small paper that the teacher gave me. DeBang means ‘Virtuous country’, and it is not referring to my native country. The teacher didn’t give us these names by hazard, she simply took our English names and find some positive Chinese counterpart. She clearly took ‘Van den Bossche’ as the base, why not my first name? Well, we got enough Tomasi’s (Tomaaseu) running around here, a Van den Bossche however, is not that easily found outside Belgium. What a pity that the Taiwanese people had more difficulty remembering my Chinese name…
In a certain way I felt reborn. Got a new house, new school, new name, other people around me and completely different things to do than back in my old home. With Danny back from his trip and loads of Chinese homework to do, I sure had no time or memories anymore to count the days. Instead I’ll just try to recount the things that cross my mind while writing the next post.
Day 6: Living in Neihu
A strange call woke me up. Once again I had to try to understand all the strange noises that came from the other side. But even when the words started to sound more like English, I didn’t understand a thing. It’s simply no use calling a tourist on jetlag.
And for some reason I didn’t care what it was all about, as if the phone call never happened. I knew my number was passed down to some people that might want to contact me, but I didn’t really give much though about it.
This would maybe have been the only free day I could get here in Taiwan. Nobody would barge in and drag me someplace else, neither did I know anywhere to go on Sundays. So as I was looking out of the window, down to the street, I knew that today was just for Neihu and me.
Neihu is basically a residential outgrowth of Taipei, with row after row of five-story apartment buildings destined for growing families. Along the main streets there are plenty of small shops and restaurants where the locals would get breakfast before going off to work. With a bit of exploring I could find some nice small parks where the elderly would gather on exactly the same spot everyday. It made me think of my village back in Belgium where housewives would do such a useless thing as cleaning the walkway in front of their houses to have a chat. I also found several elementary schools that seemed larger than my old high school. I’m clearly not a city person for it chocked me to see that even some of the metro stations were named after nearby high schools.
Later I would hear that Neihu is named to the lake that was close by. The whole district is characterized by the so called ‘Big Lake’, Dahu. To keep it original they decided to call the space surrounding it ‘Inner Lake’, Neihu and the park in front, Dahu Park. This all sounds so easy, even childish if you ask for the translation. But thinking about it, the original names of most European cities must have been no different. We just grew used to them like the locals here. Nevertheless, it is still funny to find out that Taipei means ‘place of the north’, and yes, there is a Tainan (south) – Taidong (east) – Taixi (west) and even a Taizhong (middle). And there’s where the easy geography ends. Most other countries’ names are similar to the original one. I don’t think that Faguo (France) or Yingguo (England) are so difficult, but why does Meiguo (America) get to be named ‘beautiful country’?
Nevertheless, back in Neihu I think that a lot of people were wondering what a foreign student was doing here. Normally I would go live close to my school, but this apartment was really too good to miss. There is a lot of space with the little furniture I found here. The kitchen is nicely equipped with enough machines to cook dinner. And even though there were some problems at the beginning, with hot water and such, they got resolved. But actually the greatest advantage of living here is the Taiwanese friend Danny who would come to sleep in this apartment too.
Well, once he would come.
Day 5: A sharing of experiences
The jetlag I left in Belgium finally caught up with me. I was glued to bed like a teenager that doesn’t want to wake up for school. Then again, I was a teen and going for another round of painful meditation is not that pleasant either. But it when coming here, it was not the jetlag that I was afraid for, I’ve learned from my trip to Paris that there is something far more terrifying. It is basically a kind of homesickness.
Some people would think that it comes when you’re not used to the strange new environment. I believe it’s the opposite. When everything is new, and there is still a lot to take care of, then one’s alertness is so high that there is no room for any sickness. Your subconscious would still be thinking that you’re traveling and that you’ll get back home after this. But guess what, it doesn’t last forever. When I’ve started to let my guard down, got some free time at hand and the ‘Have a nice trip’-messages died out, that’s when the mental test begins. It was here that sensible and lone travelers would break down. And I would prefer losing a week to jetlag than that.
Anyways, I’m neither sensible neither really alone, it’s just that the feeling is unstoppable. And when something like that comes up there is nothing wrong into doing something about it. Well, staying the whole morning in bed isn’t going to help. So I’ve decided to try out two possible remedies: talking to new people and talking to old people. I’m not talking about age here, with ‘old’ I mean those friends I have left back home and with ‘new’ I mean everybody else. After all, the majority of mankind is nice - we just haven’t met each other.
Well, that and the fact that we all don’t speak the same language. Whenever I went to a McDonalds (because they have conquered Taiwan too), it’s the manager I need to speak because the staff is not trained for a foreigner. I’m not complaining, I just went to that place to endure another one of their fish burgers so I could go on the internet. Turns out that I needed to register and pay for the service. I was not really planning to come here so often so with some luck I got showed the direction to an internet café.
The place I found was strangely located next to a large arcade hall. Even though I didn’t see any signs that told me there was internet here, my instinct to me I had to enter this one. The interior first made me think of an office. Most of the room was taken by a good number of wooden cubicles which hided their occupant, giving the impression nobody was here. The walls on the sides of the room were entirely covered with Chinese mangas and magazines. When I could look inside, I saw in the cubicle a sofa for two and a large screen attached. I was really impressed by this strange combination of an internet café and arcade hall. It takes you some place far from the outside world for only €1,5 an hour.
It was also there that the idea of making a blog began to grow.
There is something called a Fa-study. It is nearly unavoidable to join one from time to time as a real practitioner of Falun Dafa. And as I have said in the introduction, this whole undertaking is also a way for me to advance spiritually. So what is it exactly? It is mostly just a bunch of practitioners meeting up in somebody’s living room and studying Dafa for a few hours. Dafa itself means Buddha Law and that refers to the books and scriptures in our practice. To make it easy, you can compare it to a Bible study.
It was the dullest thing ever happening to me back when I was a kid. But now I grew into a student, and just like I gained appreciation for fine arts or a well-prepared dish, the Fa-studies started to attract me more. But secretly, there is always an experience sharing attached to the study. It’s no coincidence, you got a group of alike-thinking people in the same room and it turns into a social happening. I’ve never found such peaceful environments anywhere else. The experience sharing among practitioners is a free place to talk about one’s deepest attachments and unusual experiences without shame or fear. Thinking about it, non-practitioners would need their most intimate friend or some Anonymous-meeting to reach the same goal.
So It’s after such an event that I know there are friends everywhere I go.
Day 4: Chasing after the Garbage
I thought that going immediately to the practice site would be a good idea. I even went early like usual to see how the park looks like in daylight. It has a lot of bending stone paths that pass between the tangle of the uncovered tree roots. Where there are no trees, one can find shelters that protect form the sun and the rain. And that is where I did my first 1-hour meditation in Taiwan.
That is a long time to sit cross-legged on the floor. Imagine both feet on top of the upper legs. That hurts and I was not used to it. Only after half an hour did I start to feel very uncomfortable. So there was no way I could hold against the temptation of putting my legs down. And I couldn’t even think about entering a meditative state yet, there is still a long way to go for that. But even then, I felt that this exercise will make me mentally much stronger, so I will come again tomorrow.
A new person entered my class. Apparently the Korean woman found intensive class too difficult or so and thus made place for a Japanese woman. It was class-changing week, where everyone could still move to a more adapted class. This must be an administratively impossible task for the centre. But luckily, nobody in my course thinks about changing. Unless I moved, I would be stuck for the whole term with: three Japanese women, one Englishwoman, one Englishman, an American, a French guy and last but not least, the Taiwanese laoshi. Most of them are over 25 years old, but one of the Japanese was the same age as I, what a coincidence! Just a little problem, she can’t speak English. So there’s another reason for me to learn some Mandarin faster.
Later that day I would be visited once again by my three trusted friends, Ann, Mahjong and Fabian. They brought me even more supplies and help with cleaning. Among the things that I received were a few special garbage bags. Before even starting to clean, we filled one of the bags with all the trash we could. It get things out of the way, but there were far more urgent things that some paper lying around.
After an hour of clearing the kitchen and my mind of all the Chinese characteristics that would never have stayed for long anyways, I heard a nice little melody coming from the streets. ‘Hey, the Ice-cream truck!’ was certainly the most childish thing I said all day. Suddenly, Ann sprang up to her feet, grabbed the trash bag and ran down the stairs. She urged me to come with her, and it was merely out of curiosity that I followed.
I was not really disappointed for not seeing a nice white truck with ice-cream pictures and yelling children running around it. Though what I did get to watch was not much worse. The whole neighborhood came running down the street holding a series of bags with them. Several trucks where parked along the street, one for the general trash, the others collect the recyclable kind. I was surprised to see so much recycling going on, although maybe it has something to do with the expensive special garbage bags. The locals were surprised to see me, it is not usual to see a stranger throwing his trash in far out Neihu.
Before setting out again, my three friends told me about some things I could do on Saturday. I nearly forgot that there was no class tomorrow. I’ve already lasted five days here. Can we survive in Taiwan? Yes, Wee-cand!
Day 3: A lesson in Chinese
My roommate Danny is gone. He just stepped out of the door after saying “goodbye and see you in five days”. I can’t really blame him for having a job which brings him all over the region, it’s just a bit inconvenient. I don’t know any Chinese whatsoever.
So when I had to open the door for the repairman (because I was not planning to stay without hot water), it felt a bit awkward to depict in a theatrical way how I couldn’t take a hot shower. The skinny Taiwanese in front of me that was holding just a handful of tools nearly laughed at my big hand signs. He clearly knew what he had to do, no need for explaining. After five minutes, I could say I have moved up a degree in civilization. So what’s next, internet?
Luckily, Fabian dropped by to see how the hot water got fixed. He finished the deal with the repairman and left me again on my own. This is really a direct hit to my independence, if I want to live alone in Taiwan, I would have to learn Chinese. And that’s exactly why I’m here for.
I learned by now that the metro is way faster than the taxi. Even if I were to walk the half mile between the metro station and the university, I would still make a better time than a cab. So the day before, I simply wasted a lot of money.
But this time I went very early. I always do that, it’s like a golden rule for starting anything new in a good way. Not only does it give me enough time to find a way to get there, I also have all the time to get used to the surroundings. This is especially important for people who don’t like change. They can just walk around and not get too traumatized by all the new people and things around them. But I have a more social reason for that. When I arrived as one of the first person, there is plenty of time to talk to the other early birds. That’s much better than to arrive in a crowded room and pick what’s left over.
I’m in intensive class. This is maybe one of the few times when I’ll thank the not so accurate sense of organization of the locals. My name must have been on that ‘intensive class’ list. But then I was not sure what to expect. On Orientation day, the speaker literally said: “If you want to torture yourself, go to intensive class.” I would often hear later that they try to discourage people to go to intensive.
But anyway, I got in. And the first three hours went by unnoticed. I had a very friendly and agitated laoshi (teacher), and the amount of information she can get into your head is phenomenal. Her English isn’t perfect, but more than enough to survive the first weeks until the students can have the class entirely in Mandarin. The language itself is complex and simple at the same time. But I’ll continue on that later.
Fabian still hasn’t forgotten about me. How that company boss and businessman could free up time to help me get a hold on Taiwanese life is amazing. Although he still has to pick up his cell phone like every 5 minutes. That is the only way you could recognize the better-off people here, because nobody would see that by looking at their clothes.
So Mr. Fabian went all the way searching for a practice site for me. He found a park close to my home that holds one every morning from 9 to 11. Since I get class in the afternoon, that’s just a perfect time for me. I would go there every day and sit in meditation for one hour and do the other yoga-like exercises afterwards.
This day I also met one of the practitioners close to my home, I pass his large fruit shop every morning. So it’s certainly not as if I’m all alone in remote Neihu.
Day 2: Getting used to it
A fan is a man’s best friend in subtropical regions. One lives with it, sleeps with it. Nobody wants direct contact from it and neither for it to be too far. It’s basically like a pet that never lets you down, until it breaks down. I was given one for the night and afterwards, I was two steps away from giving it a name. I blame this sudden affection for fans to the lack of air conditioning.
But there’s nothing that a good cold shower can’t resolve! Back then there was no other kind of shower I could get. But seeing that I did have running water, electricity and, of course, a fan, I wasn’t complaining. Anyways, I preferred to see it this way: It’s like practicing for the real thing in the future.
I believe that, whenever you goes to another city or country for any period of time, you should always try out the local taxi. There is always something worth mentioning about it. It could be the price, the driver or the cab’s state of decomposition as I have once found in Ecuador. There was no danger of encountering that last one in modern Taipei, but I still didn’t know what to expect when entering one.
I was in a hurry, and not entirely sure how to get fast enough to the university with the metro. It seemed logical to me to catch a cab until the driver did not understand anything I said. Thinking about it, why should drivers here know English? They are not exactly highly educated and neither is Taipei a hotspot for foreign tourists. After some aimless driving around, I luckily found that the admission letter to the university with the entire address in Chinese. And once you have that, a taxi can bring you anywhere. I think I was not the only new student who decided to take the taxi to the university.
I wanted to get in time for the orientation day of the Mandarin Training Center. It was nothing special, just a two hour long lecture about how things were done and they also gave a lot of practical information. It took so long because I got to hear everything twice, in English and in Spanish. Apparently, half the audience in the aula was made of South American scholarship students who want to learn Mandarin as their second language. Who would have thought that Latin countries had such close relationships with Taiwan?
Anyways, I felt that there was plenty of support that first day. Everything was well indicated: which class I had to go to, the books that I needed to buy on the spot and how to get that student ID card that I wanted. They even explained to me why the card-making machine didn’t work: we used the wrong ink roll.
At home, I got a sudden call from Fabian inviting me to come to the Mid-Summer Ghost Festival Parade in Keelung. Of course, I went into the offer and I can say it was well worth the rather long trip with the car and the train to go to the harbor city. While Fabians friend said that this was just a regional festival, I though that a lot of fireworks were put into this one occasion, “You should see how the sky lights up at our National Day” he said. I really liked the parade, there was much more variety and performance involved than for example the carnivals back home. I also got the see the Taiwanese Celestial Marching Band that is completely made up of practitioners. I hope to join them while I’m here. It is a really rare occasion for me to see so many Falun Dafa practitioners getting together for such an event. They even had their own beautifully decorated chariot! This would have been unthinkable in Belgium.
I came back home really late, greeted by my loyal fan. This was a long day, and I only get the feeling there will be more of these.
Day 1: A New Place
It took me a while to get used to the surroundings. This hotel room is maybe the smallest liveable space I’ve ever been in. It was to me a mystery how they got the double bed in here. It occupied three quarters of the room, and it was flanked by three walls, with one side left open. In one free corner stands a large flat screen TV. Now that was comfortable.
Of course, there comes a time when I wanted to get a refreshing shower. So when I went for the bathroom, I had the full right to expect to find a bathtub, with some kind of futuristic shower system and whatnot. If they have a flat screen TV, what won’t they have?
I was kind of disappointed while staring at the blank wall where instinctively should have been a bathtub. I was standing in a toilet room, a very hygienic one that is. And it is only after that I notice the shower head hanging form one wall that I realized why this room’s walls were so well tiled and why there was a drain in the floor. These Taiwanese really bring out the best of their space don’t they?
And yes, I took a shower.
Once ready, my luggage and me, we got picked up by another practitioner. I’ll call her Mahjong. I was really in luck that the local English-speaking practitioners came to help me. She brought me to my new place. And what can I say, I started to miss a little my small room in hotel Leo. It’s not that bad, just not ready. The apartment where I was to stay, stands in a northern suburb of Taipei, but is very close to a metro stop. There is a mall nearby, so I wasn’t really worrying about placement. I was more thinking about the amount of years my new home must have been deserted.
Apparently, I had to stay at that hotel in the first place because they were renovating the apartment. I did notice the new ceiling, floor and some painted walls, but that didn’t stop the neglected kitchen from standing out. That’s not difficult; all the other spaces were simply empty.
The kind practitioners, who came with me, spared me more of this by sending me with Ann to the university. I still had to register, and it was the day before orientation day. It was a bit late, but there was not much I could do about it. I don’t know what I would’ve done without Ann helping me. Most people we encountered were not all that proficient in English. How closer to the Mandarin Training Centre where I get class, how better I could understand them, but not by much.
I was certainly not the only one who is registering late. There were a lot of people in the main office going from one desk to the other, and as I understood that you start at desk number 1, everything went all right.
Ok, I’m just kidding, Murphy’s Law is never always wrong. I wanted intensive class, and they told me it was full. After quick check of the list I was doomed to stay in regular class. It’s not the end of the world, just a bit disappointing. So I had to give some preferences for regular class too. To top that, the machine that makes the student ID cards is broken. Even though I was sure of having repaired it, it just wouldn’t work.
So that’s the end of day one. No intensive class, no student ID and nothing even as near a home (unless an empty space with a mattress counts as one), and I like it. After all, when things are bad they can only get better. ;)
Day 0-bis: The arrival
This flight was a really bad combination of jet-lag and flying against the sun. I left at noon from Amsterdam, I arrived in Bangkok in the morning and I haven’t slept an hour. The worst thing is, we didn’t even finish travelling. They just let us walk a bit around the terminal, making us find our way back to the gate as to give them enough time to clean the plane. Well, if we did arrive at destination, I would have worried a lot, giving that Bangkok lies in Thailand and my flight booker wouldn’t be the first person I knew who would confuse Taiwan with it. Anyway, the connection went smoothly, it felt good stretching my legs a bit in that big open space. Now, only five more hours of terror for the claustrophobic to go.
Even for somebody hat has travelled a lot like me, is going to an Asian country alone for the first time too much of a challenge. Just considering the first few problems: not being able to communicate with basically anyone, not knowing how they do things around here, and more important, having no place to stay. Just try finding a hotel when most of the billboards are written in Chinese characters. So that’s where my fellow practitioners kick in. After a few mails, the two persons I surname Fabian and his son Danny decided to pick me up at the airport. That seems like holding hands isn’t it? Well, when I got there, the perspective of not having anybody for support was just frightening. So it’s with a calm hart that I saw the huge Taiwanese flag proudly hanging on the airport hangar. Maybe a bit too calm, because while staring at that flag, I must have missed some lady passing some papers around.
Immigration paper, I’ll never forget them again. If you don’t have one – or you neglect to COMPLETELY fill them up- you can do the entire queue through immigration again. But I don’t really mind, it’s nice having nobody behind to pressure you on. It was not nice for Fabian and son waiting as the last ones in an empty arrival terminal. But now I can finally say: ‘Taiwan, at last.’
But this day was still long not over. It was only midday, and that made me really surprised of not swaying on the brink of exhaustion. It was still a long car ride to my new home: hotel Leo. It’s nothing permanent, just cosy and cheap. I was really too sleepy to do anything else, so the first thing I ever did in Taiwan was to sleep.
Day 0: The Departure
My family stayed with me until the last second. That was a nice thing to do. It is strange how the realization hits in just before you walk down the queue. It’s not when you go on the plane, that’s just how they show it in movies to make it dramatic. The ‘This is it, no turning back’ moment came to me when I was in queue to passport control, showing my back to my loved ones. Going to them would simply not be practical anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so upbeat the hour before.
The officer at the passport control stared at me a bit too long. Maybe he was searching for some parents at my side, or the three year old picture in that document simply doesn’t look like me anymore. He finally had to give in; there was no way to stop me from going international.
When entering the plane, I knew this was going to be a very long flight. About 16 hours of flying. But I’m used to it, it’s not the only traveling I have done, just my longest and loneliest. I don’t mind, when one finds something to do, the hours literally pass by as the plane rushes thru the time zones in a race to reach destination before the sun does. I had a treacherously short night and I didn’t sleep at all.
How did I manage? Well, by looking around of course. People around me are like nameless living forms, all going about their business it’s just like if I were to watch National Geographic Live. That is, until somebody got the brilliant idea of breaking that perfectly illusion of social separation and introduces himself. That was me.
Next to me were sitting two Japanese. I had the honor of getting the window seat and to annoy them every time I had to go. What struck me about them is that they were wearing nicely decorated, fabric mouth masks as if it were some fashion accessory. That is certainly not a good way to get introduced to Asian countries.
Introduction
Hi, I’m Thomas Van den Bossche, a mere 18 years old and on the other side of the world. What I just said was the cause of some anxiety from mothers of my family and in my village back in Belgium, Europe. They would never have let their own little adult sons go all alone like that in this ever more dangerous world. But I feel confident after my one-month stay in Paris, and luckily, so does my own mother.
So, what am I doing in Taiwan? The idea was that I would study Chinese so I could socialize with a few hundreds of millions of individuals in this earth. I must have heard “Oh, yes, with China as a growing economical power.” or “Ah, the language of the future!” about three dozen times by now. Of course, it is interesting for my future studies in Economics and Sinology.
But actually, despite the fact that all that may be true, I have still a major reason to do so, perhaps, the most important of all, and it is related to my spiritual formation (or life, or, existance, etc.). I am a Falun Gong practitioner. It is a cultivation practice where the focus lies on cultivating one’s own character by personal experiences and the teachings. All of those teachings originate from China and are thus written in Chinese. And so it is my wish to go back to the original writings of the foundation of my spiritual existence.
Now, I know that a lot of people who know me don’t know about Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong) and some of them might not be interested at all to read how it influences my life. But just like my cultivation is a solid rock on which I can resist any hardships, so are the practitioners like me in this strange country. They provide me a place to live and the support I need to make this voyage that I see as my own little modern pilgrimage.
Ow yes, I nearly forgot. I’m writing this blog for all my family, friends and acquaintances that may want to know of my whereabouts. Some of them even reproached me of not writing to them when I was in Paris. So this is kind of my way to say sorry and not to repeat the same mistake. I hope my English isn’t too difficult for you.
Have a nice lecture, and don’t forget to come check my blog once in a while for new posts!
