73 days in Formosa

The experiment is over

2006-03-13T23:36:00.000+08:00

Yehlio, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

I spent the last days of my residency battling stomach flu and running around seeing relatives with Kort while trying to wrap up loose ends.

Towards the end, we took a trip to the seaside town of Yehlio where we finally had good weather.

It was an amazing 73 days with high and low points that has changed both my work and my life. I am grateful to many many people on the Taiwan side of things that made my experience abroad all the richer. For continued adventures, please visit me at my regular blog, Makura No Soshi.

Fossilized sand dollar

2006-03-13T23:33:00.001+08:00

Fossilized sand dollar, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Queen's head rock

2006-03-13T23:33:00.000+08:00

Queen's head rock, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

2006-03-06T15:28:00.000+08:00

Kort arrives tonight on an 8:35 p.m. flight.

Wrapping up the haiku manuscript, new title "Haiku Not Bombs."

A few weeks ago, I ate at a restaurant in Taipei that bears mentioning. Not for its cuisine but for its concept. We Are Children is a small restaurant located on the grounds of the National Taiwan University Hospital. The hospital in companionship with a corporate sponsor, runs a job training program for adults with mental disabilities wherein the program participants work in the restaurant serving the customers - taking orders, serving food, cooking food, clearing tables, etc. It's a really interesting idea and there is more than 1 of these restaurants here in Taipei which has a government quota requiring that the government hire so many people who have disabilities, I think it's something like 1%.

There are three McDonald's in the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall neighborhood. I had to bust out my bad Taiwanese language and map drawing skills to figure out where my lunch appointment was meeting me.

Yesterday, biking on the banks for the Keelung River at the Dajia Riverside Park. You can rent a bike, sort of like at Navy Pier, but more like riding around the Charles, but maybe not really like either.

I had my hair done at Yellow Ted. It was quite the experience. My hairdresser was 26 years old. The order of things was completely different than in the States. Usually, you get your hair permed and then cut. But here, I got the most amazing haircut that I almost hesitated about getting the perm. After having my hair thinned out there was enough hair on the ground to make another person a wig of very long hair. If we were wealthy jetsetters, I would come to Taipei everytime I needed to get my hair done. The variety of hairstyles for Asians is much more diverse than I ever thought - why can't we import these salons to America?

Publishing Updates

2006-03-03T23:09:00.000+08:00

Four poems from NUTRITIONAL FEED accepted for HOW2 edited by special guest editor Susan Schultz of Tinfish Press. Launch date TBD.

Five poems from THE LOVE HOTEL POEMS accepted for XCP Streetnotes, due out in Summer 2006.

A Gathering of Tribes has taken one poem from NUTRITIONAL FEED for its Fall/Winter 2006 issue.

Poems and journalings due out from @tached document at some point.

Convivio Bookworks has set a tentative release date of WORKS ON PAPER by June 2006, just in time for the Paper & Book Intensive. This limited edition handmade, handbound chap will include a combination of old and new poems on the theme of paper. Put in your orders now with Convivio!

Press Lorentz will release in late Spring/early Summer, a limited edition hand-produced chapbook of THE LOVE HOTEL POEMS.

Tupelo Press has won a NEA grant to produce work by "Japanese-American poet Shin Yu Pai." Put your money where your mouth is. Last time I checked, I could swear I was Taiwanese and not the ethnicity of the colonial powers.

Visual work to be shown in the Paterson's Museum exhibition Crossing Boundaries: Visual Art By Writers to open in Paterson, NJ in April 2006. Also, work will be on view at Blends & Bridges: A Survey of International Contemporary Visual Poetry at Gallery 324 in Cleveland, OH.

Taking a rest

2006-03-03T13:26:00.000+08:00

I went down to the Taiwan Heritage Company this morning to take a look at the foundation's private collections and archive of vintage images. The Company has published some very handsome books on Taiwanese visual history, especially during the Japanese colonial period. But little on Taichung/Ching Shui.

So this afternoon, it was go to Losheng, the leper colony, for a tour, or relax, slow down and enjoy the sunshine and temporary good weather. After 8 weeks of hard work, I am opting for a nice cold beer and chitchat with friends and enjoying the rest of my short stay in Taipei - I go home with Kort in 1 week. Bunny misread his ticket and is suppose to arrive on Monday, not Tuesday, which gives him an extra day if all works out. But he will have to cut short his training in SoCal which could be problematic. Which could mean, if he cannot cut short the training, than not coming at all, because current tickets are running for $2500.00. Drama.

I did a TV interview yesterday morning with Formosa TV, channel 53, which apparently aired last night and some of my relatives in Taichung saw the footage. Oh my dear 4th Uncle, I promise to return your family photographs. Just as soon as I finish my project. I know I have had them for 3 years. I promise to return them and when I do, you will also get a handsome book as tribute to the family and the ancestors. I am not a deadbeat. I swear.

Anyways, the interview was nutty - I explained that I sit and write - nothing interesting happening in my studio in terms of the visual. So we shot fake footage of me walking around my apartment, drinking water, typing, editing, going outside and taking pictures. I had to pretend several times. So if anybody saw that footage and thought it looked really awkward, well there you go.

But the interviewer Xavier Lin, who studied at NYU, was funny, down-to-earth, and extremely likeable as was the camera person who did some creative thinking with limited visuals. After I relaxed a bit and let down the wall that I keep around my work, things got a lot better. Thanks, Xavier!

Er er ba

2006-02-28T09:26:00.000+08:00

2-2-8
and the empty streets
everyone on holiday

Bunny says that "brotherhood of woman" thing gets me in trouble every time

2006-02-28T08:32:00.000+08:00

Do I hold my male and female friends and collaborators to different standards? Yes.

On some level, I have had a pattern of overlooking and forgiving major character flaws in female collaborators, for some unspeakable reason. These character flaws include laziness, poor communication skills, poor organizational skills, failure to meet deadlines, failure to see the big picture, personal agendas, bad intentions, duplicity, selfishness, greed, dishonesty, pretentiousness, cultural superiority and ethnocentrism. Would I ever put up with this from any of my male friends/collaborators or from non-artistic collaborators. Hell no.

It must be my wounded mother complex or something that makes me put up with certain women.

Kort called it first - another Keasler coming.

Since I'm reliving the past and visiting with the spectre of failed collaborations, let's revisit a poem from the recent past.

13 Ways of Looking at a Vulture

after documentary photographer M. Keasler

the eye
of the witness
the I of the commentator

grubby children at the rim
of a Guatemala dump
stunned orphans in Russia

lenses thick
as Coke bottles
motherless boy
in yellowed briefs

finding children
easier to shoot
because they let
adults
in

mirror compositions: nineteen
guajeros sorting through trash
eighteen vultures foraging

payment to a Third World host family tendered in Happy Meals

shellshocked
Louisianans housed
at Reunion Arena
survivors – no, refugees

Momma Key in curlers
in the double wide
taxidermied stags and
an uncle’s annual rite
East Texas: guns & boots
propped against the “I love me” wall

on assignment for
The New York Times:
the scorched remains of
a bus for the elderly
incinerated miles
beyond Dallas

documenting failed
economies amusement
parks crushed by Disney

nineteen vultures
to be located within the frame
eighteen visible, and one unseen

Under 25, the years
in which the artist wore
shit-filled diapers -–
Nan Goldin already
shooting junkies

empty love
hotel rooms
“pregnant,”
with “meaning”

Nanny interview #2

2006-02-27T20:48:00.000+08:00

She is called by a shortened adaptation of her family surname b/c the family cannot pronounce her first name.

She arrived in Taiwan a year a half ago. She is from Manila. Her family in the Phillipines includes an older sister (married), a younger sister (pregnant and just married), a mother who sells vegetables in Divisora and a disabled father who lost his legs in a truck accident in Saudi Arabia. She came here thru a broker in order to make money to send home. She will be 22 in March.

In her contract details, she was hired to work in Taipei for an elderly woman with a husband who suffers from a degenerative disease. But when she arrived, she discovered that her employer would actually be a relative of the woman in the contract - a middle-aged woman with a young child. She was taken to a coastal town and left with the child, grandparents, and second set of children to care for. Because the secondary employer is relatively young and in good health, it would be difficult to get a nanny on short demand, thus the work-around.

Eventually the employer felt that the child was old enough to return to the household. At this time, the nanny discovered that the employer has an adoptive son who was living with the family. The employer also runs a business and fired her cook. The nanny cooks for 77 people Monday - Friday. This is not in her contract. Nor is cooking in general. She is not paid extra for this duty.

The employer holds the nanny's passport illegally and rarely pays her salary on time. The salary is often short several hundred NT and though the contract stipulates that the nanny must endorse an affidavit saying her salary has been received, this protocol is ignored.

She says that Taiwanese people are not bad, she merely fell into the wrong hands.

ch-ch-ch-changes

2006-02-27T20:32:00.000+08:00

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through - David Bowie

This is a quick post to say in brief that my "artistic collaboration" with Jane the paper artist has terminated. She eventually revealed through a series of mistakes and missteps that she was looking to make a fast buck to the tune of $1500 - $3000 US dollars which can hardly be called "outreach", "community-based", "collaborative", or "service-oriented" - or any of those buzz words that get inserted into grant proposals. We did not just fall off the turnip truck and we - the open-hearted and benevolent people of Ching Shui - will not be exploited. In my retirement and golden years may I never be as fucked up and manipulative as the pair of elderly hustlers who came into my life via Sean Cole's radio piece. Note to self - ignore fawning groupies who propose collaboration and trust instincts when it sounds like someone is insulting the culture that someone does not deserve the benefit of the doubt and is indeed insulting the culture. A production artist is not = to a fine artist.

Rant rant rave rave. Hell hath no fury like the wrath of Shin Yu in her Kali-esque incarnation.

New-fangled expressions

2006-02-27T19:47:00.000+08:00

coined by Ching Shui friends:

from Teacher Hu "sayables" - the "combinating" of "parable and sayings

from Li-hung - "nok-you" or No Q for shorthand - meaning bu xie; your welcome; no problem; my pleasure!

Pineapple Field

2006-02-27T17:27:00.001+08:00

Pineapple Field, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

I always thought pineapples grew on trees. They actually grow in iron-rich fields on the mountainside of Ching Shui.

Bamboo groves

2006-02-27T17:27:00.000+08:00

Bamboo groves, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Yang Household

2006-02-27T17:22:00.000+08:00

Yang Household, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

One of the oldest and most prosperous households in Ching Shui.

This wood here was shipped from China.

The Yang family has several ancestral tablets documenting the generations of Yangs in Taiwan. Oldest go in back, Mr. Yang explains.

Woodcutting Knife

2006-02-27T17:19:00.000+08:00

Also useful for bludgeoning enemies....

the Ching Shui Service Area roof

2006-02-27T17:18:00.000+08:00

the Ching Shui Service Area roof, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Pigpen in olden times

2006-02-27T17:16:00.000+08:00

Pigpens, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Contemplating 2-28 and Taiwanese politics

2006-02-24T11:25:00.000+08:00

I had a conversation last night with someone of the blue party KMT persuasion/strawberry generation yesterday that left me a bit frustrated. Today's children in Taiwan don't even know who Chiang Kai Shek was. The anniversary of the 2-28 massacre looms near - no better time to explore the complexity of Taiwanese identity and politics then now. Here are some reading materials for the timebeing.

NY Times, 1947

2-28 Memorial Museum

Wikipedia Entry

2006-02-24T09:30:00.000+08:00

Ching Shui, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

No blogging for a few days - going on a research trip.

Chapeau Belgian Beer

2006-02-24T09:25:00.000+08:00

Chapeau Belgian Beer, originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Where can Belgian deliciousness be found in Dallas? Finally a beer that doesn't totally make me gag.

Cafe Odeon

2006-02-22T22:13:00.000+08:00

I met translator Steve Bradbury this afternoon at the main entrance of Shida University and we walked over to the Cafe Odeon where a poetry gumball machine installed with handproduced poems by Hsia Hsia, is located. Just as we arrived we bumped into the artist herself who had a box full of new poems which will be installed in the machine in the next few days. Currently in the machine are plastic eggs containing a poem by a Dutch writer (translated into Chinese) with a pair of earrings.

The poems that will soon be installed are matchbox poems - which include real wooden matches concealed beneath a poem printed on vellum in an accordion fold.

These little handmade wonders delight the eye and spirit. Hsia Hsia generously gave me samples of the latest poems - limited editions for sure.

Steve is Hsia Yu's primary translator, and also a poet and editor who put together an anthology of Taiwanese poets for last year's Taipei International Poetry Festival. Steve also translates the work of poet Shang Qin, another interesting local poet. He studied under preeminent scholar Howard Goldblatt at SFSU and has had a path that has taken him to Hawaii, Taiwan and Japan. His own poetry tends towards the formal -- lyrical sonnets exploding with beautiful language, word play, and clever enjambments exploring the range of human experience and emotion. He also has a fantastic collection of translations by Ho Chi Minh out with Tinfish.

My upstairs neighbor

2006-02-21T21:12:00.000+08:00

knocked on my door to drop off a plate of fruit. She is from Korea. She is very thoughtful. Give fruit and make a friend for life. If I were more talented, I'd make her a fruit pie to reciprocate the gesture.

Most loved ones know I love fruit more than chocolate and my biggest gripe with getting sick is you gotta limit the cold food. Pure torture. Nothing like a good summer harvest - berries, cherries, peaches and plums. Summers in Southern California, the family would drive to Cherry Valley for cherry picking - all you can eat ladders in the trees spitting out pits in the cherry orchard. We never spent any time picking apples, but spent many weekends in the apple orchards just beyond Yucaipa. Heaven was a caramel granny smith apple on a stick. And than I got fillings. Spiced cider was the best. When Kort and I went up to Oak Glen in December with my mom, I had forgotten the petting zoo and the bigfoot tracks leading thru the tourist attractions. There used to be 25 cent machines that would spill out a handful of corn kernels to feed the zoo's ducks. My brother and I could sneak under the turnstiles of the zoo's entrance b/c we were so little. There are many orchards in the Taipei area where fruit picking is allowed. I've been warned off the strawberries - they look delicious but are soaked in pesticides.

2006-02-21T19:58:00.000+08:00

In retrospect, I think I should have gone to school for anthropology or sociology.

After this last group of poetry manuscripts see the light of day, I am taking a hiatus from publishing poetry. Documentary, visual text, and songwriting are the new poetry.

2006-02-21T19:39:00.000+08:00

It was a very dissatisfying food day. The jelly in my ice coffee at the Japanese cafe was not coffee jelly but some fruity blend akin to mango. The kimchi in my meal was dried fish with peanuts and steamed vegetables. The fish bibimbap was overly sweet.

Spent the afternoon in Tienmu - the district where Americans and other foreigners live. En route, spotted the "Big Nose Italian Restaurant."

I met Chin's Filipina maid who helps to take care of her elderly grandmother and also looks after her cousin. The stories were not as shocking as I thought they would be, but had a different quality of tragedy. They call her No-no, because it is easy to pronounce. Not her actual name. She spent 8 years in Hong Kong as a nanny to some children and after that came to Taiwan where she worked initially in Keelung and later here in Tienmu. No-no was married when she left Luzon. Her husband could not find a job - according to No-no, the working situation is not so great and it can be difficult to find a job, even if you have a college degree. So because it is easier for Filipina woman to find work outside of the country, No-no arranged a job through a broker/employment agency to work in HK. During that period of time, her husband cheated on her and spent most of the money she sent home, while he remained unemployed. Eventually, No-no made the decision to separate from him, though they are not legally divorced, because the paperwork and processing fees for divorce are quite cumbersome. Last year, No-no's mother passed away. No-no used her savings to pay for her mother's funeral and all the arrangements. Her current contract in Taiwan ends in June, but she will try to find a way to stay for another three years and build up some savings.

In the park today, there were few maids, but we spotted a few of No-no's friends. A young, tough looking girl helped an elderly man with a cane walk back and forth, getting his exercise, while she held in one hand his hand and in the other, an umbrella to protect him from the heat of the sun. Back and forth they strolled across the plaza. She looked unhappy and I wanted to approach her when I first arrived in the park and was waiting for No-no, but thought better of it. After No-no arrived and we chatted, she waved down her friend who was pushing a wheelchair towards her aging employer. No-no ran across the plaza and pushed some questionnaires that I had prepared into the young girl's hands. The employer started yelling in Chinese while the two women talked quietly. It occurred to me that I should go up and say hello to this young woman, so I ran across the plaza too, but at that point, she had already broken with No-no and started wheeling the chair towards her boss who was still yelling and scolding. No-no said to me that the boss doesn't like the girl to talk to other Filipinos and when she does so, she gets beaten. At that moment, I felt very terrible to be causing someone's suffering. This young girl is just 26 years old. Has two children in the Phillipines and for the timebeing, a husband.

The other maid I met was responsible for taking care of a young boy. They call her Tenny which is nothing like her given name which is much more poetic. Like No-no she comes from Luzon. But unlike No-no, she has a child. A 19-year-old son who she is putting thru college. And a husband? She made an awkward face - a situation like No-no's.

Taking stock

2006-02-21T09:51:00.000+08:00

I have not finished as much as I wanted to since arriving here on December 27. But I need to try and keep things in perspective. I have finished:

- an adaptation of a play for a libretto
- a children's story
- editing a manuscript of poems
- developing the working draft for the ox-plow book

- started a 2nd children's story
- started developing ideas for another libretto
- conducted interviews of Taiwanese poets
- am in the process of interviewing an American prose writer
- will be working on another freelance article on a local theater company

Going to meet Filipina nannies and maids this afternoon.

My horoscope says I should make a disciplined push to get work done in February as things will get much more difficult after February in terms of focus and work production. That leaves me 7 days. Arggghhh.