After a delicious lunch of famous Taiwan noodle soup, thousand-year-old egg, and stomach strips, we had a good time at the Museum of World Religions in Yonghe, Taipei, Taiwan. There was a class of elementary age kids visiting from Nantou who had never seen foreigners before (according to one of their teachers). I wondered why we were being followed and stared at as if we were one of the museum’s exhibits! We had a fun time talking with them, taking pictures, and of course, letting them measure how tall their were compared to me, how big their feet were and the obligatory “sure, rub my arm hair all you want! Yeah wow. Look at that!” It was fun.

The Museum
The MWR is all about atmosphere. The elevator on the way up dims the lights, plays a moody welcome message, and opens to a display about purification beside a transparent waterfall. This leads to the entrance hallway called “Pilgrim’s Way,” where esoteric questions (in several languages) are played over a background of ambient music and the walls light up with the same questions in Mandarin and English beside life-size pictures of people praying. The hall ends at a heat-sensitive wall on which you can leave your hand prints. All this is probably the least-impressive part of the museum experience, but it sets the mood.

The museum is designed to make a strong impression and send a message, rather than primarily convey large amounts of cognitive information (though there is a lot of info to be had). It’s an engaging multi-sensory experience; it’s easy to get “lost” among the displays. In addition to the main hall profiling ten major world belief systems and traditional Taiwanese religion, there is: a small movie theatre showing “Creations,” an artsy story-telling of various creation myths; a globe-style theatre that attempts to help visitors “grasp the spirit” of the Avatamsaka sutra (“one is all; all is one”) through an audio-visual experience; a tatami-style “meditation gallery” with a giant video screen on each wall and banks of meditation instructions for various religions; a “Hall of Life’s Journey” show casing religious paraphernalia associated with birth, coming of age, marriage, old age, death, and afterlife; detailed replicas of famous religious architecture with movable internal cameras; and more. In the main hall, each world religion has a wall with text, a floor to ceiling video screen, a large, tall display case set in wall with audio selections corresponding to various numbered and encased religious paraphernalia, and a touch-screen computer database.

Critique
The museum was founded by a Buddhist master for the purpose of promoting peace, tolerance, inter-religious dialogue, and for providing a “department store of religions” where people can learn about and choose a religion. On the whole it’s really well done. It didn’t seem to be overly pushy with the Buddhism, though there is a pervasive message of Buddhist inclusivism, or maybe pluralism. Judging from the Christianity displays, they’ve done a lot of homework, but I don’t think someone would have a balanced or basic understanding of Christianity if all they knew was what the MWR told them. It seems to go out of its way to emphasize the similarities and inconsequential differences of each religion at the expense of fundamental, mutually incompatible differences. For example, the Christian meditation instructions in the Meditation Gallery say, “As the aspirant progresses in the ascent to God, he/she experiences a breakthrough en route to a dazzling darkness beyond all desires and concepts” and uses the quote “My being is God” while referring to kenosis. In an Eastern, Buddhist/Daoist context, this will likely be understood to mean things that are actually more Buddhist than Christian.

I should also mention that St. Nicholas gets much better treatment at the museum than he does on their English website.

See our photos here.

We spent 2 hours at Yonghe’s Museum of World Religions. In these photos you’ll see the entrance hall, which has this hypnotic atmosphere created by the lighting and the sound mix of esoteric questions in several languages with ambiant music and other sounds like a baby crying. There are also some of the meditation gallery, some interesting info on traditional Taiwanese religion, and museum staff getting a training lecture on Christianity. We also met a group of kids from Nantou that had apparently never seen real live foreigners before.

We weren’t supposed to use a flash, so a lot of photos were pretty blurry, but the museum sort of intentionally tries to blur a lot of lines anyway. Maybe it just shows in the photos. But there’s much more to the museum than what’s in these photos.

You can read about the Museum of World Religions here:

• Museum of World Religions

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Christmas is coming; we hereby officially claim the first Christmas-related post of 2006.

“Holy Santa, Batman!”
We’re visiting the Museum of World Religions tomorrow, a famous museum in Yonghe for the promotion of Buddhism pluralism mutual respect and acceptance among religions. Check out the website; it’s really flashy. The real action is on the Chinese version, but there’s still a big English site.

The museum’s website profiles the major world religions by mythology, ritual, pilgrimage, history, and figure. Personally, I think it’s too artificial to apply the same grid to every religion because it forces them all into an artificial shape that will be more or less appropriate depending on the religion. But it’ll be interesting to learn about Eastern religions from people that practice them, and hear their perspective of Christianity, the ‘Western’ religion.

Speaking of which, go here and select “Religions” (on the left) : “Christianity” (top right) : and “Mythology” (in the middle). Christian mythology – I was expecting maybe something on the Genesis creation accounts, the Exodus, or maybe the Incarnation, Resurrection, or Judgment Day. What do we get instead? Go see for yourself, or

I’m not questioning their intelligence, but I would like to ask, “What the heck kind of message is Western culture communicating???” And if you’re going to do historical research on Santa, there should at least be something about Saint Nicholas.

Chinese Firefox plugin
This is great – I just found it. When you mouseover any Chinese characters, like the ones in our sidebars, it instantly gives a translation. And there’s a bunch of other features I haven’t tried yet. All you have to do is go here and install the plugin. Then right click on a page and select “Toggle Chinesepera_kun.”

But you have to be using Firefox, which has been giving me a faster, ad-free internet for months now.

Today was Remembrance Day. We had the older students in two classes from 9-12am, so I spent on hour on Remembrance Day with pictures and everything.

They didn’t understand.

I think Tolkien may have been on to something.

Four of our students were in a city-wide English speech contest today for Grade 6 and under. That’s not so exciting, except that it had a sort of Disney-style, underdog-cheering, Hollywood ending. We’re really proud of our students Chester, Claire, Thomas, and Cody!

Our kids are public school kids. The public schools don’t bother sending many students to the contest because they know they can’t compete with the elite private bilingual schools in English. The private schools prepare for months for this contest – winning has big marketing potential. Our kids? They started drawing idea webs two weeks ago and practiced speaking for a couple days. Jessica and I added zero content. We helped them organize their ideas into “beginning, middle, ending” and make idea webs so they’d have enough content to draw from. And we recorded mp3s of us reading their speeches for them to practice with (one girl slept with Jessica’s on repeat all night long). All the speeches were titled, “My School Life.”

One of our kids, Thomas, went first. He was tiny, 7 years old, petrified, and other than the customary bow didn’t move the whole time. After him, the prep school kids started going. They didn’t even bother with the microphone but just belted their speech/performance. Their teachers were giving them cues from the audience for their over-the-top, canned, choreographed gestures. It was painful, like watching cheesy commercials for their school, scripts that were so flowery and overwrought that it was obvious the kids didn’t write (or choreograph) them. One kid actually said that his school’s great program “helps me become self-actualized.” Self-actualized? Are you kidding me? He’s 10! And on top of all that, every single speech had the same super expressive, positive, “we LOVE school AND learning and our GREEEEAT TEACHERS!” where every possible word had a poses or gesture or prop. It was a total gong show.

But these kids were good. It was obvious that they’d given it their best effort for weeks. They had everything perfectly memorized, every facial expression, voice inflection, gesture, everything was there, and they showed no fear. Our kids were mostly too scared to remember everything, had no choreography and hadn’t thought of props, and Jessica and I had edited out the extra big words that their parents had put in the first drafts (no 7-year-old EFL kid is honestly using “correlated”). We weren’t expecting any of our kids to place in the top six as we waited for the judges to say their piece and give the final scores.

6th place was a three-way tie between the least fake-sounding of the private school kids. 5th was Chester! We could see that the teachers from the private schools were surprised… but so was Chester’s mom. 4th place was a private school girl who really did a good job. 3rd place was Thomas, the littlest of all – the crowd audibly gasped and the people around him cheered. And by now the private school teachers were visibly upset. 2nd place was Chester’s sister Claire! Their mom was floored. And first place was Cody! Cody, who didn’t even want to do it but his parents dragged him to PEI and sat there at the desk prodding him while I helped him with his idea-web. His whole speech started with, “I go to school every day because if I don’t, the police will cart me off the jail” and included a part about a kid puking (we opted to ‘let the kids express their own thoughts’ ;) ). We couldn’t believe it! The private school kids cried. Their teachers were furious and started discussing conspiracy theories. Our boss had us get out of their ASAP because he didn’t want any of their wrath directed at PEI… we’re a small start up and those schools are big players in the English learning scene. But he’s ecstatic that our kids won.

Apparently the judges appreciated the honesty. In their general feedback (before the marks) they compared the private school speeches to a particularly cheesy series of English buxiban commercials, among other criticisms. We were so glad to see that our kids’ honest efforts were rewarded.

The one bright spot among the 30 speeches was this one kid, about 11, who easily had the thickest accent in the contest. I guess he figured he had no chance of winning so he decided to have fun with it. He opened his speech with a rap, told a story about dressing up like a hula dancer (and did the dance for us with a pink scarf on), and then put on swim shorts over his pants and told a story about swimming to fast and his shorts came off (while pulling the shorts down) and his friend commenting on his bum. He didn’t win anything, but he had my vote.

UPDATE: I stole and edited Claire’s and Chester’s from their school’s website.

Every week, we have two days off….Sunday and Tuesday. However, due to some morning commitments on Sunday, it doesn’t feel as much like a “day off” as Tuesday does.

On this particular Tuesday morning, I….

-slept in until I couldn’t sleep any longer! :D :D :D

- had a wonderful cup of “Ghirardelli Chocolate Coffee”…courtesy of one of Joel’s grandmothers when we visited Canada this summer. We saved it, Grandma…and now we’re enjoying it even more!!! (Thank you!)

- went for a nice long walk around the park. It’s about a mile around, and I try to go around 3-4 times. It’s always interesting…there are so many people to watch and so many different things to see! Among the things I saw today were 1) one of my students. As I was walking, I heard “Hello, Mrs. Loose!” from across the street. It was one of my little students, Linda…and boy did she ever look excited to see her english teacher outside of school!!! 2) I also saw a number of people wearing winter coats, scarves, and even touques! How cold is it, you might be wondering….a nice brisk 72 degrees (22 for you metric people). The breeze is cool, the humidity is low…and it’s beautiful. We’re certainly not thinking about touques or scarves yet…but I think when it gets below 80 around here, a lot of the Taiwanese start to feel cold. That’s because it’s SO stinking hot the rest of the year! 3) Apparently, the pets are also starting to feel cold, because they are putting on more clothes too. Today, I saw dogs wearing baseball uniforms, sweaters, and jackets.

- I followed up my walk with a visit to the local wet market. Every Tuesday, I try to drop in and stock us up with fruit and veggies for the week. I love, love, love shopping at the wet market. It’s so much fun, and the vendors are always really nice to me. I get to try and use some of my “shopping Chinese” and they get to laugh at my terrible accent and pronunciation. It’s a pretty good swap. Today, I bought oranges, plums, green peppers, pea pods, mushrooms, onions, and carrots. All for less than $8 US.

- I also stopped by the local “baking supply” shop today. I hardly ever go in there, because there’s just no reason to – our apartment has no oven. However, in two weeks, we’re going to make a huge Thanksgiving feast for our students and their families…so I wanted to see what they have. Aside from being a baking supply shop, they also have a limited supply of some specialty import items (at pretty decent prices, for imported stuff). Today, I noticed that they have a few of the essentials for our feast – cranberry sauce, pumpkin, frozen pie shells, and whipped cream. So, at least we’ll have traditional thanksgiving pumpkin pie! Our boss is working on locating all the rest of the goods, but at least I can tell him where to find a few things. This shop also has christmas cookie cutters…which is great news, because sometime around Christmas, we’re going to have a Christmas party where we make and paint sugar cookies with our students. Yeah for some holiday festivities!!!!

- Now I’m home, savoring my second cup of the chocolate coffee, eating breakfast and getting ready to start working on homework. Tuesdays when we don’t have homework are even more exciting, because then we get to go hiking, visit the National Palace Museum, or find other exotic things to see/do. But even with the homework, Tuesday is still pretty relaxing…and a nice break from the crazy pace of the rest of the week.

Right now there’s a funeral/memorial/what they do when someone dies in Taiwan going on a couple doors down from our apartment complex on the route to work. These things go for 49 days; this one’s been going for about 10.

The front of a business has been turned into a memorial site with chairs and tables spread from the door to the street. Inside has a table with offerings (food, wine, incense) on it. On the walls are photos of the deceased and pictures of (I’m assuming) the ancestors, with lots of flowers and lotus decorations made from folded spirit money. Outside on the sidewalk around the tables and chairs are big flower arrangements, large specially decorated packages of gifts (like beer and pop) and a big metal holding bin for burning large amounts of spirit money. When we walk through it at 12pm on the way to work, relatives are there eating and talking. When we walk back through it at 9pm, people are also there, eating and talking.

We asked our practicum advisor for information during our last practicum debriefing meeting. Turned up some interesting (and unexpected) details, some of which I’ve bolded. ***These are just tidbits from our notes – the terminology isn’t accurate and it’s not a general representation of Taiwanese funeral rites. We often only learn about things bits and pieces at a time, through experiences like this. Somewhere in our pile of reading I know there is a whole big explanation of funeral customs – but this isn’t it. Still, some interesting stuff.

[Discussion Notes]
Jessica asks about the ongoing funeral/memorial near our apartment, about last night when they were wearing KKK-looking white hoods. White hoods: worn by relatives of the dead. Special ceremony is performed every 7 days for 49 days. Doesn’t know why 49 days (7 7′s?). By the end of 49 days they will perform a ceremony that transports the dead to the place “sort of like heaven.” Fundamental differences: Taiwanese believe people have three souls: one stays with the shrine, one goes for reincarnation, one goes to “heaven.” The body stays there for 49 days: behind the wall of the memorial there is a big freezer with the body in it (if they can afford it they don’t go for cremation).

They want to consider the fung shui of the tomb, and after 5/10 years (unsure how many) or so they check the tomb to check the bones (if there is flesh attached it means there is something unfinished… more ritual/ceremony/sacrifices are required).

Probably offensive not to burn the incense to the dead, although Christian pastors would tell you not to burn the incense. He says this is not the right place to claim your own religious distinction; it’s rude not to burn the incense.

Purposes of the funeral: show respect, and also it’s the final act of your life, everyone has to be there to go through the final stage of the person’s life to lead them to “the West.” It’s a necessary act – step to take – or else the person would be uninitiated (unable to reincarnate, go to the West, or rest in peace, they would be a wandering ghost).

About 90% of the population does this kind of ritual we’re talking about. South and North may have details that are different. When these times come, the service providers have the whole systems worked out.

Is it Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian? They probably wouldn’t even know.

There’s a way to communicate with the god or the spirits – casting new moon shaped lots (jiao1 bei1) on the ground in the temple – the results of their throw tell them what they need to know.

Christian funerals seem disrespectful. Less days waiting, you don’t hear people bawling at the Christian funerals. Who decided what Christian funerals are supposed to be like? Missionaries? Local pastors? He doesn’t know. There is some wiggle room. Death and funerals is a generally avoided topic.

Departed (recent Hollywood movie) based on a Hong Kong movie (English title: Infernal Affairs) that has this very Buddhist message re: suffering and death (Chinese title actually refers to the worst part of hell, but as a metaphor for the life we experience and its suffering): death is a relief from suffering if you’ve cultivated yourself.

Pronounced: hu? j?
Literally: fire chicken
Means: turkey.

Writing from Hong Kong in 1991, Michael Harris Bond digested the available psychological insights into Chinese culture and people in Beyond the Chinese Face: Insights from Psychology. He identified four, possibly five, “Golden Threads” – strands of difference that define the Chinese as distinct from others. Each thread “represents a basic theme that can be used to make sense of a variety of observations about Chinese behaviour” (118). Here they are:

1. The belief that hierarchy is natural, necessary, and inevitable. “It is self-evident to the Chinese that all men are born unequal” and social order requires the ordering of people. The alternative is chaos and anarchy, which are worse that harsh authority.
2. “The bases of this inequality are achievement, usually academic; wealth; and moral example,” which “is especially important for commanding political authority.”
3. ‘Rule of law’ is inferior to the “judgement of wise and compassionate men.” Laws are too “rigid, artificial, and insensitive to the changing circumstances of life.”
4. “[People] exist in and through relationships with others.” Child-rearing focuses on training for lives of harmonious interdependence. Family is social security, and requires special commitment.

The fifth is optional:

5. The need to learn to write Chinese characters “reinforces an academic emphasis on memory, attention to detail, and lengthy homework. It also strengthens a predisposition towards perceiving stimuli as a whole rather than as a collection of parts, and high spatial intelligence.” This in large part accounts for why Chinese dominate in fields like engineering.

But does this make the Chinese unique? Bond says the answer is “an Oriental ‘yes and no.’” Each of these themes are found in other, non-Asian cultures. But the particular combination of these themes, especially in relation to other factors like “agricultural heritage, population density, historical longevity, and numerical strength as an identifiable group” make the Chinese “distinctive, special, and different” (119).

One caveat, which Bond himself repeats often in this book, is that psychological investigation of the Chinese is necessarily limited and much more research needs to be done. Writing these tentative conclusions in 1991, Bond says he fully expects his understanding of the Chinese to change in the future, just as these conclusions represented a change from his previous perspective. I’m curious to know how he would write this list today.

Got this in an e-mail. A family member’s recent discovery at the T&T Supermarket in Surrey, B.C.

I just saw the best translation I’ve seen yet in T&T tonight while wandering around T&T….I was laughing out loud all by myself in the store…:)

“Instant Rice Noodle Ass Flavour” !!! I looked at the box to see what was
under the sign….It was packages of instant ramen soup –beef spare rib
flavour.

Amazing what one letter and a period can do.

ps – Hmmm… speaking of bad translations, we have a Chinese lesson today!