Chapter 2 #9
I was developing something that I called the exposure theory of language: that language was primarily absorbed through daily interaction, by inferring connections between things the way that Helen Keller had inferred the hand signal for water by feeling it under the pump.
Everything you learned in a language classroom just put a name to connections you’d already apprehended.
When we learned what verbs were in English class, it wasn’t like we discovered actions for the first time—we just finally learned the name for that category of word.
The solution, then: Exposure, endless exposure. Walking around, processing the background noise, soaking in the interactions, imitating the locals like a parrot until it felt natural. Could I do this in just ten weeks? Could I ever manage to sound like I was from here?
WHEN I MENTIONED THIS TO JC AND ANNA, JC DECLARED THAT WE needed to make better use of our free time.
“We have to go out more! We have to go on day trips! We have to get out of Taipei—it’s actually criminal that we haven’t left the city center yet.”
He showed us his phone. There was an app that collated all the best discounts on nearby cultural experiences. Did we want to go get massages at the Village Spa? Take a ride on the Maokong Gondola? Hire a private car to tour the Taroko Gorge?
“Lily feels guilty about spending fellowship money,” said Anna. She had joined us at lunch once again, as her one-on-one instructor kept canceling with suspicious frequency.
Anna was being spiteful. I had told her the night before that I didn’t think Taiwan’s Ministry of Education wanted to pay for a NT$3,000 silk blouse, not that we shouldn’t spend our cash at all.
“The fellowship is for cultural enrichment,” said JC.
“Squandering it is the point. And some of these packages are stupid cheap—I mean, look at this.” He stopped scrolling.
“A luxury room at a hot springs resort in Beitou. This is a crazy deal! It’s like, fifty bucks a night!
” He showed us a series of promotional images on his phone: tatami mats; a breakfast buffet; a group of pretty women wrapped in white towels, laughing as they dipped their toes in what looked like radioactive green water. “Do you want to go?”
“It’s kind of hot out for hot springs,” said Anna.
“I think they have cold springs too.” JC clicked through to the booking page. “Come on, let’s do it. It’s only an hour out by train.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. One year into college, I was still struggling with my new autonomy.
I hated to deviate from a routine of waking early, studying hard, and going to sleep in my own bed.
The most daring thing I had done last semester was stay out late after a Broadway show with a group of girls from my floor, and though we were safely home by two in the morning, I felt a sick dread the entire time.
I wasn’t afraid I would get in trouble—how would my parents find out?
—but I felt a moral horror, like I was losing my discipline and virtue and being corrupted to the ways of sloth.
“There’s only one bed,” said Anna.
“But the one room is only fifty dollars,” said JC. “That’s like—sixteen per person; that’s a crazy discount.”
Anna and I looked at each other. I could read her face; we were working through the same logics.
Did we all want to share a bed? What if only one of us shared a bed with JC, and the other had to sleep alone on the floor?
What if one of us didn’t go, and the other got to share a bed with JC?
Anyhow, I did not want to be the kind of person who was prudish about sleeping in the same room as a boy, or who was closed off to new and suspiciously affordable cultural experiences.
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine,” Anna echoed quickly. “When?”
“This Saturday.” JC was so excited, totally blind to our psychodrama. “I’ll book it right now.”
THE FORECAST PROMISED RAINSTORMS FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS, and this indeed meant five consecutive days in which we never once saw the sun.
The city was cloaked in a humid gray. The rain was never a light drizzle.
Always it announced itself with a crack of thunder, and then it came down in thick, violent sheets, against which umbrellas and rain jackets were useless.
At best they kept our textbooks dry, but the rain hammered from all angles, sometimes flying horizontal, so that whenever we got where we were going, we were soaked through except around our necks.
Water pooled five, six inches on the streets.
Our shoes were never dry. We left them out on the windowsill, but no matter how long they sat, they remained damp and ice cold.
We bought ugly plastic flip-flops that were waterproof, but they gave us blisters between our toes.
At the department, the hallways were filled with the squelches of feet padding in soaked shoes.
In class we sat shivering, lips blue and toes pruney.
We were not allowed to turn the heat on.
This was department policy. We couldn’t have heat in the summer, it was energy inefficient.
How could anyone live like this? How could the sky hold so much water? When would it end?
“Rainy season,” Teacher Sun said, gazing out the window. “Did you know it rains in Taipei for two-thirds of the year?”
IN CONSIDERING THE NEWS, WE WERE PRESENTING OUR “FURTHER research” on toilets.
We had learned that the key to keeping ourselves entertained during News was to bring the strangest nuggets of information we could find into class discussion.
News was not challenging otherwise. The grammar of reportage was always simple and direct, so we got more out of class if we could get the discussion to spin out in unexpected directions.
This way we picked up more interesting terms, such as “colony collapse” and “asexual reproduction.”
Our weekly reading was about how Xi Jinping had declared a Toilet Revolution in 2015: a public campaign to improve the quality of mainland China’s public toilets.
I was the only one in the class who had been to mainland China, so I told everyone about the toilets I had used on my childhood trips to my father’s hometown—a place my sisters and I only ever referred to as “the village.” They weren’t exactly pits in the ground—most of them were paved, with a flush handle or foot pedal—but you did have to squat over a hole to do your business.
There was never any toilet paper. You had to buy little rectangular packets of tissue at cigarette stands and remember to tuck one in your pocket whenever you left the house.
“But this form of pooping can be good for you,” I explained.
“Research indicates that squat pooping alleviates pressure on the bowels and makes it easier for poop to slide out of you. In this way, the Western seated toilet is like many conventions of imperialism. It makes things worse for no reason.”