Taiwan Life: Two Stories

Life in Taiwan is not always full of excitement once you are used to living here (ministry can easily fall into routines, and comfort zones have to be even more actively avoided overseas where it's so easy to retreat to them), but interesting things do happen on a regular basis. Here are two stories from a couple of years ago, which illustrate the kinds of situations I often find myself in.

Story #1: McDonalds Atheist

McDonalds in Taiwan: Typically faster and a bit cleaner than a McDonalds in the States,
and with different food options, though not as nice as the renovated/re-styled ones.
(This particular McDonalds is the least nice one around here, I don't go to them very often these days)

Spring in Taiwan seems to bring insomnia to many. Winter can be rainy and humid, but the air doesn't have the heavy, supersaturated feeling that makes the days oppressive and the nights restless for those more sensitive to atmospheric changes. A couple of years ago I went through a period of insomnia around this time, and with the stress of some unexpected challenges I was dealing with at that time, often went out for a night walk to decompress.

There is a day market near where I used to live in this neighborhood, near an open grey/waste water canal. The mix of the tainted smell of waste water and fresh meat/organs on sale can be oppressive when there is no breeze to move the air, but the market is colorful, the atmosphere is relaxed but energetic, and the mostly car-free street provides an area for families to relax and children to play (you don't see kids freely playing outside here much except at parks with play areas). The area feels comparatively bustling for this wider community, which empties out during the day as people go off to work and school, or to lock down a place to sit somewhere with air-conditioning.

The market consists of fruit and vegetable stalls (and early in the day, fresh cuts of meat and organs) and temporary stands under umbrellas strung down the road which runs alongside the waste-water drainage canal. Continuing for a couple of minutes, the street becomes a covered thoroughfare under an assortment of metal and plastic roofing sheets, with a maze of stalls constructed from old or scrap wood. This is the covered portion of the traditional market, and while fish and some other things are sold inside, there are also various dry goods and small items. It's smaller than a real Chinese nightmarket and less lively and with less variety than a Middle Eastern souk, but seems to have been there for longer than the building around it have stood. (Some Taiwanese friends I have shown around our community expressed surprise that Taipei still has this kind of area; it's a holdout from an earlier era of the city)

At night, the temporary stands along the road are either left there or wheeled into little niches, and the covered area of the market becomes a dark and silent maze of a few alleys, full of the musty smell of old wood and dust that got very hot during the day and are now cooling off. I call it the haunted market for fun, as it does have that vibe at night, though the only ghosts I've seen are cats sneaking stealthily through the roofs and rafters, hunting large rats, and sometimes creepily staring down at you silently with eyes reflecting whatever light may or may not be present.

One late evening, as most of the city had gone to bed, I restlessly made my way down to a McDonalds I knew would still be open. The quickest way was through the "haunted market." I know those streets well, and emerging from a narrow opening onto the main road, my destination was directly ahead. The weight of my introversion was upon me, and I didn't want any social engagements, just to eat something satisfyingly unhealthy and read on my phone for a while. (Yes, missionaries have those times too)

As I sat reading and listening to music, a conversation beside me began to filter through. My Chinese had just reached a level where it was possible to "overhear" things people were saying, versus needing to actively focus and listen to catch anything. I heard certain Christianese phrases which indicated the people talking were Christians, and began to feel like I needed to at least say hello to them.

I turned and politely asked what church they were from. They were very surprised that a white foreigner had randomly done this, and I explained that I was a Christian who had moved to Taiwan to help the Taiwanese church. (I sometimes don't use the term 'missionary' as it's ambiguous and people don't ever inquire further) They were happy to hear it and invited me to join their conversation. They were speaking with a guy who had come to their church for a while and counted as part of their social group but who wasn't a believer, and was actually an atheist; skeptical that God existed at all. They asked if I could help them convince him that God was real.

It's rare in Taiwan to not believe in the supernatural or the divine. The significant majority of Taiwanese view the existence of an unseen, supernatural world as a matter of course; in Taiwan you are never living far from it, and many people's lives are entangled with it. (One need only visit some of the creepier temples to be well aware of it.) To deny it would be rather like stubbornly disbelieving the existence of unseen information being passed around in the air via wifi because you can't see or feel it.

I know some excellent arguments for the existence of God, solid enough that only those skilled and having experience in this area of debate would know how to talk their way out of them. However, this approach is all but useless in Taiwan, because religion is not a matter of logic here. People frequently follow multiple, mutually-exclusive belief systems simultaneously. This is not paradoxical for them because it is not considered reasonable for humans to presume to know which of the countless explanations of the divine are true, if that even means anything; for the majority of Taiwanese, a human's job is merely to be respectful and sincere in our approach to "the divine," and not disrespect anyone by saying their particular understanding is wrong, unless it leads to obviously bad behavior and societal disharmony. (or polluting the environment; mass burning of paper money on important lunar days has been targeted lately as contributing to the bad air quality here)

So although I recall mentioning perhaps one or two of these, I didn't dwell on them. My Chinese was also not quite up to explaining how the point of maximum potential energy in the universe could neither have eternally existed nor could an eternal universe gradually gotten there; something must have triggered it and/or supplied the energy itself.

Instead the very present circumstances suggested the most powerful approach: I informed the man that God had sent me, a foreign Christian, from the other side of the world, to Taiwan, to this McDonalds at midnight where I just happened to overhear their conversation, to tell him that God was indeed real. His eyes widened a bit at that, but I pressed the point home. What are the chances of this conversation even happening? His friends were excited. "It's an angel!" they said, not meaning a ministering spirit from heaven but in the sense Taiwanese Christians use, that person you need, sent by God at the right moment.  The guy dithered a little, saying he wanted God to give him some kind of evidence. I waved my hand. "Hello, I am your evidence. I'm hear from several thousand miles away in this McDonalds at midnight, sent by God to tell you that He is real." He looked scared. (As is nearly always the case, the problem wasn't lack of evidence; the problem was that he didn't want to believe.)

We talked for a while after that, and eventually it got very late and we all needed to head home. A few months later I moved to the other side of the neighborhood (and stopped eating junk food at midnight) and very rarely went to that McDonalds, and I didn't see that group of people again. But certainly God arranged that meeting. I hope the man took it to heart. In the midst of a challenging time in my adjustment process here, it was certainly encouraging to me.

Story #2: Accidentally Stumping the TCM Doctor

A packet of Chinese medicine, herbal powder to mix with water and drink.

Not long after that, I came down with a pretty bad flu. It took me nearly a week to get past it, yet while my body stopped aching and I could function again, I didn't really feel "better." I mentioned this to one of the men who attended my English class at the community center. "I'm going to see the Chinese medicine doctor in a couple of days," he said, "do you want to come?" I had not tried Chinese medicine yet, but I was willing to give it a shot.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is focused less on curing your illness or suppressing your symptoms and more on figuring out why you're getting sick in the first place, and fixing that. If you don't want to invest time and effort into becoming more healthy, you just want a pill to make you feel better, then Chinese medicine is not for you. Even in Taiwan many people are skeptical of it (you can take expensive herbal supplements and avoid certain foods for a long time and not notice any real change), but many people have experienced its effectiveness for certain problems. (Even in the West, acupuncture has made a name for itself by resolving certain problems in an almost magical way. It seems there are signal paths in the body that ought to be the focus of more research) Since Chinese medicine usually has less impact on the body than western medicine (even if various methods for increasing blood circulation to the surface of the skin look intimidating), people often view it as a better first resort, feeling that popping pills will damage their liver and possibly other things and that more natural methods put less strain on the body and encourage it to heal.

Knowing this, I was more interested to go for the experience than from necessarily thinking I was going to feel better quickly. Meeting the man early in the morning (there would be a line out the door, he explained), we walked across the neighborhood to where the clinic was located. As he predicted, even before the metal outer door was rolled up, there were a few elderly people waiting around outside. We decided to grab breakfast first, and by the time we returned, the doctor was seeing patients. My friend taking me to the clinic was a Buddhist (in a more strict sense than most people in Taiwan; he didn't believe in Chinese folk religion, and only followed Buddha, though he wasn't strict enough to be a vegetarian), and as we waited we began discussing religion.

He explained that a saying of Buddha compared religion to a river that various boats could get you across. We found that a difference in the teaching of Jesus and Buddha lay in their attitude toward their own teaching: "Heaven and Earth shall pass away but My words shall not pass away," said Jesus. But the man said that Buddha had predicted there would come a point when no one remembered the way or his teachings. (Anyone reading this who can confirm or refute that is welcome to comment, I couldn't find the reference myself)

Using another analogy, my friend insisted all religions, if not equally helpful, were at least equally valid. "Like us here," he explained. "We're all here to see the doctor, and we all want to be healthy. But the medicine he gives each of us might be different." I nodded. "We are, but using that analogy, we would need to make sure our definition of "healthy" is the same." At that moment, an assistant announced it was our turn to see the doctor. As we walked in, the man addressed the doctor breezily. "Doctor," he said, "we were just having a conversation you might be able to help us with." The doctor turned inquiringly. "What is the definition of health?" my friend asked.

The doctor's eyebrows went up, then he paused with a brief look of panic. One could almost hear him thinking "Oh no, I am supposed to have a good answer for this." He blinked. "Uh, let's... let's see what's wrong with you first." We acquiesced, and my friend continued. "Yes, perhaps health is as simple as the absence of sickness." I disagreed that it could be defined in purely negative terms. As the doctor examined us by carefully feeling our pulse at the wrist, however, he recovered his presence of mind and ended up giving a decently good definition of health by the end.

After taking my pulse he explained gravely that the instability he could feel in my pulse demonstrated that my body had too much "heat" (in Chinese medical theory it doesn't mean your body temperature is too high in a way that would show up on a thermometer), and was also too "humid." He gave me some medicine for my persistent lingering symptoms from the flu, and said as long as I had the excessive heat-humidity condition then summer in Taiwan would be feel even more hot and uncomfortable than usual, but to fix it would take some herbal therapy and dietary adjustments over the long term.

Leaving, we got our medicine in little packets, and I got a page listing all the foods I should avoid that would aggravate the heat-humidity condition. Noticing that it was pretty much everything I enjoyed eating. (from chocolate to curry to mangoes to coffee), I immediately resolved that it was entirely possible my diet was causing this problem, and that I was also not at all willing to correct it.

I would, however, take my medicine. I am used to taking a certain kind of fiber supplement that tastes like tree bark, so the slightly medicinal and bitter taste of the Chinese medicine powder was not a problem. My Taiwanese coworker was one of those people skeptical about Chinese medicine, and expected I wouldn't notice much of anything. However, the medicine had an unexpected effect on me. The packets didn't say what herbs or other ingredients had been mixed together into the powder, but after taking the first one I decided one ingredient must be guarana or powdered caffeine. Not only did my cold symptoms flee, but I found myself humming with energy and unable to sit down. I hadn't expected this at all, but took advantage of the burst of energy to straighten up my apartment.

After that I took a few of the remaining packets as instructed, but slowed down and used the rest as pick me ups for when I was feeling sluggish (easy to happen during Taiwan's rainy spring season, especially during bad allergy days). I still don't know what was in there, but it worked better than any energy drink I've tried.

So that's two pretty normal stories of life here. Want to hear more, or learn more about certain aspects of life here? Leave a comment and let me know!