November 9th, 2018

Hey there,

Friday snuck up this week.  Usually pen this end of the week and usually have some thoughts rolling around to share, but am plumb low.  Letting it rip stream of conscious...

Tuesday was Melbourne Cup.  There is always a party at the American Club hosted by the Aussies and each year hear about it after it's over.  The place I volunteer had bought  a table and needed to fill the seats.  Naturally, when people think about butts that can fill a seat, mine comes to mind.  I love the ponies, Australia and ladies in funny hats, so how have I not been to this before.  Quite a good time...they had a raffle where you pick horses out of a bowl and I ended up netting $60, which paid for the day.  Lucky I got the horse I handicapped as liking (Marmelo) if the track was off (it was) and he finished a strong second, so felt like I earned it.  If you don't know the Melbourne Cup, it is a 2 mile race that has been around as long as the Kentucky Derby and is billed as the Race That Stops a Nation.  The day is a holiday in Australia and is a huge deal with horses shipping in from Europe, Japan and NZ.  Like the Kentucky Derby, ladies (and fellas) with ornate hats are de rigueur.  I have a hat I bought 20 years ago that I have never worn but lugged around since that was perfect.  They took photos red carpet style and hope to share one next time.

What sets the Aussie race apart from its American counterpart is that the punters get wasted and there are dozens of sites that collect photos of the most trashed ladies and gentlemen in their finest at the end of the day.  Lying in the bushes, humping trash cans...classic Australia.  You owe it to yourself to check some out.  Here is one to get you started.

A piece of news I saw that did depress me was one on the demise of the company that makes the moka pot.  I use mine every damn day and it made me sad to hear the Bialetti corporation is in financial strife.  That this news came to me via the Melbourne newspaper 'The Age' that I still read every day 35 years after I lived there might explain why I loved the Melbourne Cup day so much.  Oh, and a new Midnight Oil live album from the tour last year came out today and it has been cranked all morning.  Scorching it is.  A very Aussie inspired week for yours truly.  That place put a tattoo on a 17/18 year old me that has not faded one bit.

Speaking of java, this week was also Coffee Morning and we had an expert in QiGong come in to explain and demo it.  Not gonna say I totally get it but from what I understand as of now, QiGong is the base that the other martial arts like Tai Chi build on.  It is the elementary school compared to Tai Chi being college.  Qi is your life force and the Gong is how you channel it.  Yin/Yang, meditation, breathing...all that crap is involved and the starting level is basically standing in a particular posture for as long as possible.  Lots of Yoga elements to it and the crowd of 15 seemed to enjoy it.  The teacher was good and have decided to organize a class in the park for us expats in the New Year.  More to come.

What won't be having more to come is me trying to learn any more Mandarin.  I am thwarted every time I try to say anything and feel equally stupid and humiliated whenever I do.  I said it a hundred times and never got QiGong correct.  I have been wanting to learn a certain phrase to use on my walks on the track for the times, which is one in four, where some butthole is going clockwise on the oval when the rest of the planet is going counter so I can explain to them proper etiquette.  I get in the car this morning with my girls and ask them how to say "counter clockwise".  They agree on the words and how to say it (sounds similar to 'hey so'), but then you know what comes next.  I repeat it exactly how they say it and they keep telling me I am using the wrong 'tone',  I try again, they ell me no again louder until the point that it  turns into a scene from 'I Love Lucy' except this is a rerun that has shown on a loop for the last 25 years.

One phrase I do whip out when dealing with the locals is buhaoyisi and always thought it meant excuse me.  An article devoted to buhaoyisi came through my transom last week that not only defines the term but uses it as a way to describe the culture.  It is a long article and is hard to summarize it in my usual pithy way, but if you want a view into what it is like here, think this thing nails a big part of daily life in a philosophical way.  I understand you don't like links so cut and pasted it to the bottom of today's entry.  As with anything cultural or otherwise, sometimes this way that they have aggravates but for the most part it really works and can really appreciate it.  Would probably get you shot on the streets of Anytown, America, but still.   

Finally for today, heard from The Boy and he confirmed he voted on Tuesday....his first time.  It should have been his second but he blew it off last year and have been on him something fierce ever since.  I didn't ask him what he voted for but was glad he made the effort.  There have been some commentaries out there about the young folks not voting, and at 53, feels like I hear those stories every year.  I did see a nice interview with some kids about the challenges this generation faces with regards to voting.  Their complaints might seem trivial to some, but felt they seemed perfectly sound and that they will be changing the way it is done sooner than later. First, since they are moving about so much, a permanent address is one that lasts a year, so a hassle to keep updated in the system.  As paper is almost nonexistent for them, having to deal with a ballot is like having to write in hieroglyphics on papyrus.  Not only can't they do it electronically, but then you have to stand in a line?  They can get shit delivered from Amazon faster than it takes to cast their vote.   The grumpy old man that was also part of the interview was talking about the "joy" of going to the polling place in the snow and stuff...Dude, your generation was lucky if they survived childbirth.  I'm with the kids on this one.

Will say that while there was some good news with the results, have been getting tired with the barrage of news in general.  No doubt you are too.  As part of my daily routine, have a rotating group of podcasts that accompany me on my errands and such.  Mostly football, a few funny ones, but some political ones too.  Those have become more aggravating and have been sampling some others to distract the mind.  One that I have liked recently is called You Must Remember This.  As the child of older parents who were into all the classics and were introduced to me subliminally as early as I can remember, have a fairly deep reserve of knowledge of the Golden Age of film.  This podcast does a weekly deep dive into a personality from that era, salacious details encouraged, that I find fascinating and is a good escape.  Thought I'd share if you have a similar history.

Allrighty then...here is that article.  Mangia!

Yun-Tzai Lee and Joanne Chen are one of those sickening couples that finish each other’s sentences, lace their fingers together and just won’t stop oozing adorable. But the three little words ‘I love you’ don’t come as easily to Lee as they do to his fiancée Chen. His face turns beetroot-red at the thought of uttering the phase, and causes him to feel ‘buhaoyisi’ (pronounced ‘boo-how-eee-suh’) – one of the many ways to feel mortified or to be sorry in Taiwan.  

“Most people here will feel this way,” Lee said.

Welcome to the linguistic minefield of apologising in Taiwan, where simply saying ‘buhaoyisi’ can open a Pandora’s Box of profuse politeness. The word is made up of four characters that literally translate to ‘bad meaning’ or ‘bad feeling’, and serves as a tidy catch-all that can be deployed in all kinds of situations, from meekly catching a waiter’s attention to expressing a guilt-ridden apology to your boss to the paralysing feeling that washes over you as you struggle to confess your love.

Buhaoyisi is forever on the lips of Taiwanese, according to Prof Chia-ju Chang, Chinese professor at Brooklyn College City University of New York. “We use it all the time as Taiwan is a verbally polite culture. So, we use it when we interrupt people or asking of a favour. We can even use it to start a conversation.”

Buhaoyisi is often spoken so fast that it comes out as a slurry of consonants that sounds like gibberish to the unsuspecting ear. And unlike ‘Entschuldigung’ in German or ‘excuse me’ in English, translating ‘buhaoyisi’ is no simple task, says Ouyu Yang, a teacher at National Taiwan University’s Chinese Language Division. The Western notion of ‘sorry’ is far too limited to express all the social graces and good form that weigh down on this loaded expression; buhaoyisi can also be a feeling, a sensation, a code of conduct and a whole system of thought that permeates Taiwanese culture.

Ride the subway in Taipei and you’ll hear a cacophonous chorus of ‘buhaoyisi’ as passengers gingerly nudge past others in humble deference. Enter a classroom, and you’ll see students start and end each question with ‘buhaoyisi’, dripping with a sense of indebtedness and gratefulness even as the discussion continues. Open an email, and the first line will usually be ‘Buhaoyisi’ – implying ‘sorry to slightly bother you’ – even for the smallest of favours. And if a dear cousin gives you a gift, the correct response isn’t ‘thank you’, but rather, ‘buhaoyisi’ for the inconvenience I’ve caused you.

For the uninitiated outsider, Taiwan may seem like the world’s most apologetic country, a nation obsessed with saying sorry – but in fact, the culture of buhaoyisi reveals a lot about the islands’ hidden layers of modesty and shyness.

Decades of Japanese colonisation, as well as moral teachings of Confucianism, have played a huge hand in shaping Taiwan’s extreme apology culture to what you see and hear today, according to Khin-huann Li, sociolinguistics professor emeritus at National Taiwan Normal University. Although the phrase’s exact origins are unknown, Li and other linguists theorise that it is largely a product of the millennia-old Confucian notion of harmony, which centres on maintaining interpersonal relationships rather than individual ones. Preserving social cohesion at all costs is still the bedrock of Taiwan’s social morality; placing the larger clan, the society, before yourself, the individual, is key.

In addition, part of Taiwan's buhaoyisi culture is heavily influenced from Japan’s sumimasen apology culture, with the two sharing a deep history. 

Overall, as a habit, saying buhaoyisi often helps confrontations from escalating further, Li said.

“Traditional Taiwanese culture is like that – more delicate and thinking of other people, trying to keep polite relationships with others,” he explained.

On the one hand, the expression carries an air of submissiveness and hyper decorum, but on the other hand, it also demonstrates the unparalleled politeness of Taiwan. That's why, for the traveller, saying sorry in Chinese can easily turn into a linguistic minefield. When in doubt, Li says, err on the safe side and just say buhaoyisi; chances are they’ll say buhaoyisi back to you. It’s the unspoken rule on the islands of Taiwan.

Li also suggests that this culture of buhaoyisi is unique to Taiwan, as opposed to the rest of the Chinese-speaking world; while you'll hear buhaoysi many times over throughout the streets of Taiwan, you are less likely to hear buhaoyisi being used in this way in China or Malaysia, which place less emphasis on such polite-isms.

According to InterNations’ Expat Insider Index, Taiwan is consistently ranked as one of the world’s friendliest countries. Around 90% of expats in Taiwan gave residents high marks for hospitality, compared to a combined average of 65% in the rest of the surveyed countries. Nowadays, more than one-third of expats are considering staying on the tiny Pacific island forever, according to the survey of 12,500-plus respondents around the world. The secret to attracting people to the lush, tropical islands of Taiwan is really no secret at all – just be, well, nice.

However, according to 25-year-old pharmacist Jieru You, who lives in the port city of Kaohsiung, this nice, little narrative that Taiwan is leading the world in friendliness may be a false one, or at least not the full picture. Having to make yourself smaller and apologise constantly for small inconveniences, and sometimes even your mere presence, can ultimately do more harm than help. And ironically, asking permission to do, to speak, to come and to go all the time can be unnecessarily inconveniencing yourself more than anyone else

“When making a request to someone else, Taiwanese people will often use buhaoyisi as a lead-in to express their desire to ask for help from a place of humble submission,” You said. As a matter of fact, he was already feeling a bit ‘buhaoyisi’ – embarrassed to be interviewed at all – before diving into his thoughts.

The concept of ‘saving face’ is a big deal in Taiwan. Imagine a chessboard of social exchanges, in which everyone else’s moves affects your next one. Face, in this case, is the social currency that allows you to make friends and foster professional connections that can lead you to your next big job, an investment in your company or even a warm introduction to your future wife. Without ‘face’, people are less likely to trust you or help you get ahead in life. The end game is to protect yourself, your self-image and your dignity and curry favour with others by reciprocating their acts of kindness.

That’s why Taiwan is confrontation-averse; it’s a country constantly striving to avoid conflicts and preserve harmony at all costs. But what happens when fiercely following that moral compass goes awry? You just might get something akin to Taiwan’s conundrum of over-apologising.

On the flipside, people with ‘thin face’, meaning a lack or loss of your social reputation and status, try not to trouble others for fear of inconveniencing them, and they certainly don't like to lose face in public, adds Yang. So instead of standing up, everyone sits down and stays there while little gets done.

Yang feels like she’s drowning in a pool of too many perfunctory apologies, in which saying buhaoyisi is more of a habit than a word with deeper meaning. The result is half-hearted, stripped of any sincere apology or regret. Not to mention, thanks to the island’s growing global isolation and economic malaise, Taiwanese are suffering from the poetically named syndrome of guidao, or ‘ghost island’.

On the world stage, Taiwan’s identity is often misunderstood, says Wenhui Chen, informatics professor at Ming Chuan University, who studies the ghost-island phenomenon. He says that the island is often viewed as a pawn between China and the US, floating along without many of the diplomatic trappings of an officially recognised country. Chen predicts Taiwan’s apologetic, kow-towing culture may not prove so fruitful in the end, and could even lead to the society’s own undoing.

Of course, not everyone bears such a doom-and-gloom forecast for Taiwan. Li, for his part, sees the island’s deep buhaoyisi culture as integral to keeping the peace – and if the culture of buhaoyisi disappears, then so will centuries of timeworn tradition.

“If the society keeps these concepts and expresses these words daily, then the society could be more polite, more moral and more conservative,” Li said. “If not, the society becomes impolite, immoral and too aggressive. Taiwan’s culture [must] be kept in a good shape in terms of morality and harmony.” He then ended with the obligatory ‘buhaoyisi’.