That Time I Almost Fought a Hobo: 3 Stories from Taiwan

Doing ministry in Asia, one encounters all kinds of interesting situations; interesting both because the cultural context is not one's home culture, and because one's reason for living in that culture involves not just trying to make oneself as comfortable as possible "despite" the unfamiliarity, but immerse oneself in it to understand it better. That immersion leads to lots of interesting situations, which are not always pleasant at the time, but those always make the best stories later...

Today I'm sharing three random stories of life in Taiwan.

1. Southern Hospitality

Last summer I was down in Kaohsiung visiting some American friends, and they decided to take me to a certain beach near a university. (The night before we'd climbed a mountain with dozens of monkeys surrounding us as darkness fell and took pictures of Kaohsiung's nighttime cityscape from the Martyr's Shrine, but that's a story for another time) We took a short cut which ended in a locked metal gate, with various warnings about not going that way, but also a very obvious wallowed out spot under the door where everyone had been going underneath it. We hesitated, not wanting to trespass, and asked a Taiwanese man on his scooter whether there was another way. He looked at us kind of funny and said we should just go under the door. Going by his seeming confusion that we would be considering other options, we decided it was established practice enough that we could "do as the Romans." So, we did, and I was happy I'd lost a good bit of weight since getting to Taiwan, as it was not much more than literally a human-sized gap, and not an especially large human.

Once we were through we quickly descended to a nice beach, which was "maintained" by the people who used it. They regularly picked up trash, and had constructed a little walkway down to the beach (from the main road, if you were coming from the opposite direction we had been) made only of driftwood and scraps, which led down from a path that led through some woods and then dense hillside foliage.
There was also an artificial basin that held water from a spring, clear and cold, which wasn't for drinking but could be used to wash the sand and saltwater off. People had also constructed a changing booth and a couple of beachside huts, again from mostly scrap materials, wire, and some boards and bamboo poles, sheltered from the wind behind large boulders/rocky outcroppings. (It was well and efficiently designed; as an engineer by trade, I approved.)

I don't have many pics from the beach, but here's one showing the scrap-constructed walkway

While at the beach we met a Haitian student who'd been studying in Taiwan for a while and seemed to find solace in the beach from her loneliness and culture shock in general. There was also a random streaking incident by a young lady we were told was mentally confused  ("Whelp, guess we'll have to go find her again," said the older lady who'd brought her). There was a pack of dogs roaming around too, but they were not quite wild, more like beach community dogs, who would bark a little but just to make sure you knew it was their beach that you were borrowing and didn't bother you otherwise, but appeared to be greatly enjoying themselves in general.
It was an interesting day all around.

As we were enjoying the ocean (though siltier than usual), we bumped into some students from the Taipei police academy. After chatting with them for a while, they invited us back to a small gathering which had convened in one of the beachside huts. It seemed to be a family and some friends, and they kindly offered us a spot to sit and cold drinks they'd ordered a lot of, not even thinking of accepting payment. Though they spoke on English at all, it seemed perfectly natural for them to have a few foreigners drop by and chat, eat some snacks, and then wander off. (Southern Taiwan especially is like this, I am told) The hut was constructed so that the breeze could easily blow through, yet it was sturdy enough to apparently withstand typhoons (or had been repaired since the last one). We chatted until more people came and we felt we should let them have our seats, then thanked them and took our leave. It was a friendly and laid-back sort of encounter I rarely have up in the hurried north, though sometimes one merely has to get out of the city to find them.

2. Attack of the Belligerent Hobo

Over a year ago now we had our Winter VBS for the community kids. The community center where we held the VBS has an outside courtyard and little park alongside it, a great place for a VBS in our area where community centers are usually small and cramped or share a building with other occupants/businesses.
Having decided to take advantage of some good weather and this outside area, we let the kids go on a scavenger hunt, with a list of things they needed to take pictures of using their cellphones.

Where it all went down..

A couple days previous, a hobo had claimed a spot on the perimeter of the courtyard area. I call him a hobo because that's seemingly what he was; an older man with unkempt hair and beard in old but not filthy clothes, seemingly well-fed and not on drugs, but who was obviously homeless and carried his things around on a large cart. In the US someone noticing a hobo hanging out by a park where kids play would probably fear for their children and call the police, but in Taiwan the police won't come if he hasn't done anything specifically wrong yet (which I think is fair, being homeless doesn't make you a bad person), and also by the time they get there he's easily able to wander off, as he did on at least one occasion when the police did eventually show up to check things out.

They did show up in this case, later on, because he was what I'd call a belligerent sort of hobo. He seemed somewhat bitter, acted like having parked his cart there meant he owned the place, and had no qualms about angrily lecturing those using the playground equipment if he felt they were doing so improperly. He yelled at kids and made them cry for using equipment which was really for adults to exercise on, and when the mom asked him to stop since he was scaring her child, he scoffingly explained the reason the child was crying was not his warning but her own poor parenting.

So as the kids are going on their scavenger hunt, they are mostly skirting the old man but aren't necessarily afraid of him. But one of the items on their list was "dog" and since the old man had two dogs with him, they skipped over and took a picture of one.

"Raaaargh!" -instantly the man jumped up yelling angrily, and began wrestling the camera from the child. I couldn't understand what he was shouting at the kid in Mandarin at first, but as I physically interposed myself between him and the kids, I heard him saying "delete it! delete it!" As best I could make out, he considered the dogs his own property and not a public display, and was offended that the kids felt they could take a picture without asking. Furthermore, he informed me as he calmed down (slightly), after I showed him that I had deleted the pictures in question, he didn't think a foreigner should be teaching Taiwanese kids anyway, as this was "educational failure" according to him. (This was a really great incident to occur right during the most difficult portion of my culture shock adjustment, let me tell you..)

Fortunately (and interestingly) the kids were only briefly startled and not terrified, perhaps since many of them were neighborhood kids and familiar with odd customers coming and going and grumpy old men in general. So "I don't like him"/"He's weird"/"What's his problem" was the consensus, versus the reaction I can only imagine a lot of American little kids would have had in that kind of confrontation, of stark terror. I was probably more shaken up by it than they were, as having to use my limited Chinese to half take, half talk the camera away from him was also a rather stressful language test (Hey, Mandarin pop quiz! Violent-crazy or just crazy?), and at the beginning I was beginning to physically intervene as I thought he might hurt the kids. (And though I was willing to drop him if necessary to protect the kids, being seen as "the foreigner who beat up that old guy" would be a terrible way to start out in this very aggression-averse culture. The really tough cultural hurdles are those when local moral sensibilities like "there is almost literally nothing more shameful than ruffianism like fighting publicly" collide with my upbringing of "if you had to fight someone off to save a child, you did a praiseworthy thing." In a pinch, I'd have to stick to my principles and take the consequences whether I was understood or not. So I'm glad in this case it turned out not to be necessary.)

Interestingly, the nearby moms (of other children in the park, not our VBS kids) stood by awkwardly during this incident and seemed not angry or indignant at the man so much as relieved the publicly embarrassing situation was resolved peacefully. (I'm guessing part of that really was embarrassment on their part, due to the fact that I was a foreigner and that was not a good face of Taiwan to be showing me) The man remained there for another day or two, with more angry lectures (we have a great word for this in English: "haranguing") but no more confrontational outbursts, until people finally asked the police to come, as they'd begun to threaten him to do if he didn't stop yelling at their kids. (He disappeared before the officers showed up, leaving his stuff, then disappeared altogether later) Massive cultural learning experience all the way around. But once is enough!

3. Chinese Mafia Noodle Soup

In the wider community where I live, there are a number of small restaurants, but fewer than in many parts of the metro area. So I was happy to discover, about seven minutes' walk from my home, a beef noodle soup restaurant. These are common in Taiwan, and beef noodle soup is a Taipei specialty, with nearly infinite variations on a few basic types. This place was run by an older gentleman, who looked to be well past potential retirement age.

He greeted me politely and after I ordered, suggested I try the tomato beef noodle soup next time, because "you foreigners all like that kind." (He was being friendly, and I wasn't offended. Nor would it have mattered if I was offended. Some people these days need to take the rhetoric down a notch.) He knew this was true, he explained, because HTC (the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer) main HQ is within eyeshot of the restaurant, and there a good number of westerners coming through on business trips who always liked the kind with tomatoes.

I said I might try it the next time (I still haven't, come to think of it, the kind I ordered was so good I get that every time), and enjoyed my meal immensely.

Now, there is a certain table in the back that's the sort of place and angle where I like to sit in restaurants, and I always try to sit there. I haven't yet succeeded, because the owner moves me every time. "No no, that table is too small, please sit over here, it's much better, you can see the TV," etc. Sometimes he doesn't even offer a reason, just apologetically moves me. In all the times I've gone, I've never seen anyone sit at that table, regardless of how many people are there.

Also, as I left that first time, and all the times since then, I've noticed the cook is a man of about the same age as the owner... with arms covered in triad-style (Chinese mafia) sleeve tattoos. I should note that tattoos (at least obvious noticeable ones) are still somewhat culturally taboo in Taiwan, partially due to gang associations. So when you someone in Taiwan of his age with the sleeve tattoos like that, it's more or less a dead giveaway.

 I also noticed that the cook and the owner seemed to be friends more so than boss/employee. So now I'm pretty sure I know what happened...
A mafia higher-up had a dream: He was getting too old for this nonsense, and one day soon, he would quit this life of crime, and open a nice little noodle shop. One of his mafia brothers joined him, and together they retired and settled down in a suburb of Taipei City to make amazing beef noodle soup.

One cannot simply leave the mafia, however, and there is necessarily a certain level of 'business' that still goes on. Those wishing to partake in it signal that... by sitting at a certain table in the back of the restaurant. I wonder if there's a certain dish you have to order. ("I'd like the beef noodle soup with the very special spice.") Like I said, I've never seen anyone sitting at that table, even with the restaurant busy, so maybe one day I'll have the chance to find out...

One reason it's an awesome place: So much meat! Some places only give you slivers

Hope you enjoyed these little anecdotes... Though most days aren't full of crazy situations, it's still true that when you walk out your door here, you never know exactly what might happen by the time you get back...