夫妻真愛之旅 A Family Conference Cruise

We went on a cruise with a Chinese Christian family group真愛家庭協會. We were about 150 people scattered throughout several decks of the ship. I have heard discussed family issues many times from similar American groups and so I was looking forward to seeing the differences. Also, we went with some friends from our house group at church and that makes it a lot more fun.

The first night they talked about the statistics of divorce and how marriages need strengthening. Then they took a poll of how long the marriages were together. They ranged from newlyweds at 6 months to an elderly couple who were together for 49 years. We were on the shorter end with 7 years.

It seems that the biggest problem they dealt with was “growing apart” in a marriage. So, the exercises we dealt with were designed to aid in understanding our spouses more…”the language of love,” and that sort of thing. Apparently, one person or the other just walking out on a marriage was not as big a problem in Chinese culture, but like everywhere in the modern world busyness can be an issue in weakening relationships. In one of the sessions, there was also a film which told a story about God brought a challenge into one marriage that a husband and wife had to pull together to overcome. Everything was done in families and in groups, no one was made to feel "left out."

The 1st photo on top is of the deck late at night. A hand held photo without flash, now that is high speed digital photography! The 2nd photo is of our "luxury" room, but to be fair it was clean, roomy enough and we were as a family able to spread out over 2 rooms. The 3rd photo is of friends doing a good job feeding our little one with our daughter supervising in the background. He enjoys it when the spoon becomes an airplane and dive bombs vegetables into his mouth.

遊輪 Cruise

Sorry about not making any posts for the past couple of days but we just got back from a cruise early this morning. Now, I’m not really a cruise person. I will say I really enjoyed the cruise and I had some great experiences during our time, which I will relate over the next few posts, but my wife and I prefer to fly to vacation spots. This is not a small difference in the way to view vacation time.

For us, the destination is the goal. When we think of spending time in another part of the world, we normally enjoy most the time spent in that place. Since we are a bicultural family to begin with, exploring and understanding another culture is fun.

On the other hand, with cruises the fun is in the travel to the destination. As airlines seem to get stingier and stingier with their service, cruise lines seem quite lavish in almost everything they provide…at a price of course.

This cruise for us, was just not any normal cruise. It has a cross-cultural angle, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy so stop back after I get a good night’s sleep. This photo is our daughter with the mother of a friend of ours.

藤成熟的草莓 Strawberries

There is probably no fruit that is more commonly accepted and enjoyed than strawberries. Here you can see the early crop of strawberries that ripen in January. They are much tastier than the later ones, especially those that are vine ripened. Raised in the north, I also always get a kick out of living in places where crops ripen the year round.

Here in the top photo is a field not far away from where we live. We went out with my parents earlier this week. They bought 8 baskets at these growers and we bought 8 baskets. That meant we had more than enough to split with my wife’s parents and relatives. Our smallest one enjoys taking one jumbo-sized strawberry and munching on that for a while while his mouth and fingers turn red . It seems like almost a whole meal for him at this point.

For some reason unknown to me, but probably not to many of you out there, these growers place plastic wrap on the ground when planting strawberries. It may be to keep the soil from flooding in the winter rains, sort of like a monsoon season but they don't call it that here. The 2nd photo done, with my zoom lens in extreme telephoto position, is a close up of one of the plants. The 3rd photo is the end result in a basket on our counter with a lot of clutter around for special effects.

吵架 Arguing

I read an article on arguing on another blog and it made me think of this important topic for all couples, not just cross-cultural couples. I'd say, if they are smart, cross-cultural couples have an advantage because they know they don't know much.

They say the survival of a relationship depends not on the good times, but how the bad times are handled. That is true of disagreements. My wife and I don’t fight that much, but when we do fight we try not to prolong it. Both of us are similar in fighting in that we like to verbalize ourselves in Chinese, but we don’t insult each other personally and things are usually over quickly. Maybe it is also because we have both had experience with bad relationships so we have seen what not to do. (My favorite tactic if my wife engages in the rare pout is to tickle her until she laughs while beating me senseless.)

There are fighting styles where people will scream and yell at each other without control, trying to use things against the other person. They will 鬧得全家鶏犬不寧, a colorful expression meaning literally “chicken, dog, the whole household is unpeaceful.” This is bad, because it slowly erodes the love in the relationship.

There are also fighting styles where people will engage in a cold war冷戰, trying to get even with one another. This is even worse because it is unproductive and the problems never make their way out into the open. We know some couples that rarely talk with one another.

I know of a Taiwanese woman married to a Japanese man. Their fighting may illustrate cultural differences or they may just be idiosyncratic. He expects her to be really polite even when fighting, where as she is very frank直率 and lively活潑. My impression is that there is more passive aggressive behavior 被動進取 in Japanese culture, but I am no expert in that.

A Day in the Park 公園的過程

A warm, windy winter day is the perfect time to go to the park as I did with my children this past week. In these photos the children are in the midst of a class on weather and meteorology. They are making weather vanes and kites.

I have always thought of parks as important to a neighborhood. A good park can be a meeting place for different elements of society that might otherwise never meet. Families, the elderly, teenagers, ball teams all can get together in a park if it is well designed and in an area where the weather is nice. My preference is for parks that can be used both for relaxation/congregation as well as a field for playing sports if there is space. Parks should not be too large though, in order to be accessible to pedestrians as well as cars.

In Taipei, we lived near a nice little park on Shi Da 師大 Road. We could walk 1 block down from our apartment to the park. Both the children and adults had equipment to play on. There was a sort of swing for adults and various types of see-saw equipment for children that are vanishing from American parks.

Photo Updates

For those of you who have been faithfully visiting our photo web blog, I have finally updated it and hopefully will continue to catch up with it. There are also links to some nice blogs up now, with other links to come. Lastly, you can email us.

Homelessness 無家可歸, a Cross-Cultural Perspective

I had a special experience this weekend, having served at a homeless facility. It's not that I haven't served with the homeless in different ways before. As a Christian I have helped out in various homeless shelters but this was with a Chinese Christian group that was there to help American homeless in our inner cities.

The woman, Sister Amy or 王愛敏, is from Taiwan, and various Chinese church groups come down and help out serving food or setting up for the services that are held in the inner city facility. Photos from their web page in Taiwan and in the U.S . They have similar facilities in the Phillipines and in other places.

I got there about 10 in the morning and talked with a man, a Christian believer, who had been out of prison for about 6 months. He was so thankful for what he had in life and had a great testimony that he shared with me. Then our Chinese Christian friends from our group at church arrived and we set up the food to be ready to serve. I think there were 90 plates in all. A great experience to serve together. It was nice to see this Chinese-run ministry because some feel that the church in some cultures are not yet mature enough to reach across cultural boundaries, but this shows that reality is rapidly changing. In fact, the majority of ministry across cultural boundaries is done today by non-Western churches.

My impression is that homelessness does not seem to be as much a problem in affluent collective cultures as they are in the individualist West, but that gang problems are an issue. There is a little more protection from the group/family, but of course this can work the other way for problems of crime in groups. Not surprisingly, this ministry that works with individual homeless men and women in the United States, works with youth that have fallen onto hard times in gangs in Taipei. In poorer areas of the world, such as India, they work with children in poverty.

In-laws

Probably one of the biggest cross-cultural issues for Chinese American or any Asian Western marriage is the difference in how we view in-laws and other relationships in general. For men, you will become a 女婿. For women, you will become a 媳婦. (This photo which has nothing to do with any of this is of our daughter practicing on the beach -better than on the sofa- for her upcoming performance.)

In American culture, once married, the common wisdom is that it is 'unhealthy' to have too close relationships with the older generation. I always hear chatter on talk shows about "setting boundaries" with parents. In-laws are generally the enemy to be kept at a distance. Freedom and individual control are important.

Well, needless to say in Chinese culture it is not the same way. Family relations are close, which is not to say they are always friendly. Endless soap operas are written about conflict between the wife and the mother-in-law, but they are a close part of each others' lives. For example, I can always tell when my wife is talking to her little sister on the phone because she suddenly switches to that "big sister" tone of voice, but they seem to like each other. Children stay close to parents as part of 孝順 filial piety.

I think the key to negotiating the in-law relationships is to insist less on one's way and adjust more to the circumstances. My wife's parents are around most of the day and they help take care of the children. We also go out with them for lunch or dinner sometimes...which I view as a benefit. I like being a part of the household.

It helps to pick the right in-laws. My in-laws are nice. They seem to like me even despite my office which is not always in the best state of organization, though better since I read about that poor woman who was crushed to death underneath the weight of mess in her house.

For a cute blog I just found, but from the opposite perspective, a Chinese 媳婦 in Seattle try http://www.wretch.cc/blog/hiyy

連續劇

We just finished a Taiwanese soap opera, 超人氣學園. We can buy the Asian soap operas in boxes of 30 to 30 DVDs that (like the one in the photo below that we haven't opened yet) They can be watched gradually at our leisure, which isn't as much as we'd like these days, but at least we don't miss any crucial parts.

This one was very good although as my wife said it has no head 沒有頭 and 沒有尾 no tail. It started out silly and ended without tieing up all the loose ends like a Korean soap opera, but the middle was great. It had good character development and realistic but dramatic plot lines. I even liked the ending because realistically not everything comes together at a certain time and it was upbeat.

One can tell a lot about a culture by its television programming. Asian soap operas are different from their American cousins in that are limited in time. American soap operas go on forever it seems. Some of them have been going on since I was little, though I suppose the characters would have to change. A second thing is that, probably because of their limited duration, there is much more variety in Asian soap operas. Some are funny, some are sentimental, yet others are oriented around suspense.

Regardless of the type, though, especially the Chinese (Taiwanese) and Korean ones are relatively moral. There is never the feeling that we are cheering for characters that are doing the wrong thing.

小傢伙

Well, it finally happened. We got kicked out of a place for bad behavior and you can see the culprit in the photo above.

團圓 Meeting Classmates

I always try to avoid reunion-type activities but I took the bait this weekend to meet some former classmates 同學 in my profession. It gave me a strange combination of anxiety and sentimental emotions over the weekend as I met some of my classmates from former years. In fact, they came from all over the world. We naturally could compare and see how well or dismally we were all doing. Most people fit into one of 3 categories. Some were successful in personal life, but mediocre in professional life. These were people who did ok in their professional or else they wouldn't have been there, but they obviously put more time into their families or other outside activities.

Then there were those who had success in professional life but mediocre in personal life. These were the stars, often holding positions with a fair degree of power. But they didn't really have much to show in the way of a personal life, with no children and often still single.

There were also people who were very successful in both personal and professional life. They were also the ones who seemed the most relaxed and easy to talk to. Then there was the occasional complete failure like myself who kept everyone else happy by comparison...just kidding, I hope.

The one thing I noticed is that, almost without exception, we fell back into the same patterns of relationships we had before regardless of what had happened into the interim. So, if someone's office was messy before (not that mine would be)...

阿里山農產 Alishan

I love trying the local produce of an area. If you know Chinese or have a good eye for recognition, you will see the characters for 阿里山 Alishan on each of these agricultural products arranged on our elegant 99 cent table cloth. (well not the Thailand white guavas, they are from our backyard. They were ripe in January, right on schedule.) 阿里山is a mountainous area in the south central part of Taiwan.


At the warmer, but not tropical areas, they are starting to grow coffee. That is what is the packet with the train, the old railroad built 1906-12. It is really good tasting, but still quite expensive due to limited quantity. Most people think of tea when they think of East Asian countries, but coffee is also quite popular in most places.

The really famous growing areas on 阿里山 are dedicated to tea. That is the round container with the sunrise photo. I'll save talking about tea for another post but we had a really special experience on a tea plantation in that area. We were taken to a well-known tea plantation by the son of the bed and breakfast place we stayed. The owner had an amazing knowledge of agriculture in that area and had been visited the week before by a famous French director whose son lived in Taiwan. Our daughter enjoyed a motor scooter ride generously provided by the owner's wife.

Farthest up the mountain is the cherry honey in the top photo and the wasabi in the bottom photo. The wasabi was original planted by the Japanese earlier in the last century who found the cold climate of the high mountains perfect for planting the giant root. It is hot and goes really well with raw fish.

Language Learning, a 神話

As a complement to the "It's impossible to learn Chinese" myth I wrote about previously, I am reminded of the other fairy tale about languages in America. It's the "learn a very difficult foreign language in no time" myth. It's around, try it yourself. Do a web search on Learn 'Expert' Chinese or Arabic in (pick your silly time period). "Talk rings around native speakers." Not! 廢話!

Language learning, especially a language that is much different from your native language, requires a long time period of steady work. It doesn't mean it isn't fun, but it's not something that's going to happen in a day, a week or a month. I think someone described the process of learning golf, something that I have personally never done except for that professional sport of miniature golf but sounds like fun. To become really good at it, requires steady practice. There are no real shortcuts to becoming a good golfer. The same is true with language.

I would describe the process like this. At first everything is exciting and new. Everyone is all gung ho and studying hard. Then, after a couple of weeks the honeymoon is over and people start slacking off. Most people drop off at this point. Either they quit entirely or they just start putting in a minimal effort for maybe as long as another year or two, not learning very much. An example of 會的不難, 難的不會.

It is only a very few that continue the momentum to the next stage. I would say that some time after about six months or so of intensive work, the pleasure of communicating with people exceeds the difficulty of the effort put out. It is when this happens that people can really start to appreciate why they are learning that language.

Having finished this rant, here's a nice site on everything related to the Chinese language that just about anybody will like.

過年的習慣

I don't know what you do at the beginning of a New Year, but we tend to spend time meeting friends in parties and gatherings who have not yet fully gone back to our usual working schedule. Just these past two weekends we have gone to parties of friends, some of whom have come from quite far away to meet for the holidays.

Our daughter you can see in the photo to the left is busily impressing others with her knowledge of things that she herself is not quite sure about herself, a talent she shares with her father. Our youngest one, however, as you can see by the photo below remains unimpressed by all this as he is no doubt mistily dreaming of the piece of dark chocolate cake upstairs he hoped to plunge himself nose first into.

Another tradition we encountered, this time among friends at our church cell group, is of commenting on strengths 優點 of each one of the members of the group. That is a nice tradition. Each person had to think of something unique, but true, to say about another's strengths to build up fellowship and start the New Year on the right note. I myself was hoping to receive the 'least expensive haircut' award, but to no avail.

罪 行

Watching a gangster movie, it made me think about how differences in culture really come out with respect to crime. The following is just purely my observations and opinion. How much crime is committed I think depends on the health of a society, not culture. If a society is in good shape crime will go down and if it is in bad shape crime will be higher. What a genius you say! ...well, maybe not.

But I think the type of crime and how it is committed is heavily influenced by culture. In the West, at least today, crime seems to be of an individual or at least random nature. Some psycho terrorizes a neighborhood for a while, killing and causing mayhem, before being caught and glaring scarily into the tv cameras outside the court room. Down and out types steal and robs, maybe cooperating briefly with some other kindred souls to run an illegal business.

In more group-oriented cultures, gangsterism 黑幫 is much more common. My impression is that people are not as likely to get into trouble as individuals as much as they are to get into trouble as part of organized gangs. They are very common and are often the stuff of movies, tv series and even romances. ...even extending to such silliness as "My Wife is a Gangster" 我老婆是老大 or for the single crowd "My Girlfriend is a Gangster" 我的黑幫女友. Compare these to that Hollywood Classic "I Married an Axe Murderer," where the wife clearly has a more individual-focused hobby. Hard to say which is worse, but they do have a different flavors.

冬季

It's wintertime in our sunny, warm part of the world. Just as we visited fall, so we also visited winter in this post-New Year season.

First, we met friends in a university town near where we lived and then carpooled up the road to a lodge 6600 feet in altitude at the base of the mountains. Then, being a hardy band of mountaineers, we made the trek by a chair lift 電纜車 up to the notch (actually a valley where real hikes and/or skiiing expeditions start) at about 8100 feet.

This first photo is looking out on the mountains behind us. It was a nice scene with clouds in the valley and snow clinging to the trees and bushes. There is a solar flare but I left it in because it adds to the effect of the scenery.

The second photo is of our friends playing in the snow. They don't get that much chance to do so. One of the girls who was with us had never seen snow before. The third photo is of our daughter making snow angels.

After the obligatory round of hot chocolates and cider, we started hiking up the west slope of the mountains. We crunched part our way up the slope before stopping at a scenic point before sliding our way down, one of the benefits of hiking in winter.

新年快樂! Happy 2006!

After a wonderful New Year's Eve (at our church with lot's of good music敬拜與讚美 , prayer, video reports and greetings from around the world, and talking with friends) we got to bed.
Normally people think back over the past year about what has been done or not done and make resolutions for the future.

I can't think in those large chunks of time. Perhaps I am too simple minded. To me, I take life in seasons . This fall has been an incredibly busy season for me, and looking back I haven't gotten everything done I would like to do, but at least a lot of progress has been made. I am happy with my life and if things continue in the same way over the next winter 2006 season, that'll be fine with me.

Normally a dreary time of year, though the weather is nice in the warmer climes, January is fun in the Chinese culture. We have preparations for the Lunar New Year春節 coming up. Friends and family will get together and there will be lots of celebrations. From a non-Chinese perspective, it really does a good job of breaking up the year between Christmas and the beginning of spring.

The next morning, I spotted these 3 babies sleeping away. Shhhhhhhhh! Don't tell my wife. Oh no! She's coming, quick...gottttttt tooooo...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh