My Corner for Education

It is Father's Day tomorrow. Here is a song that I personally love very much. On this special day, I would like to dedicate the song to my father (and in-laws) who is in Heaven looking down on us. I didn't tell my dad often enough that I loved him very much before he passed away. I guess the traditional culture we were brought up didn’t encourage us to openly disclose our love towards each other in the family.

My father and I didn't quite see eye to eye after my mother almost died from a surgical operation. I also resented him for many of his failed business attempts that affected our life for so many years. It was unbearable for me to see my mother worry about him over the years. He was the one who made me rethink about the definition and the purpose of a traditional marriage.

My father, however, was the drive that made me the way I am. I learned to be independent from the very young age. He was the one who encouraged me to be a leader and to love life passionately. He was the one who brought laughter and fun to my family. We all got his good sense of humour. If my mother was the one who instilled in me the virtues of self-discipline and diligent work ethics, my father would be the one who inspired me to be adventurous and ambitious.

The truth is, as much as I loathed my father’s faults, I love him dearly. He was a charming man and a loyal friend to many of his acquaintances. He was the listener that I shared my glory and sorrow with when I was growing up. I have the image of my father. I am my father!

For years, I have carried this guilt that I did not stay in Taiwan long enough to care for him and I did not stay with him by his death bed. I couldn’t forgive myself that I didn’t get to the hospital in time to say farewell. Every year on this day, it is like my therapy session. This song is merely my redemption for my guilt. For my father in Heaven, I love you and I miss you.

The following is an article I published at English.Tw.

 

 

Many friends have published their thoughts on why they wanted to learn English. Well, I can not type in Chinese because I don’t have any software to input Chinese characters. I am not familiar with the keypad phonetic input either. (I am a computer dummy, you see.) So, I am just going to post my thoughts in English.

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My grandparents grew up under Japanese rule, so they were quite fluent in Japanese. Every time when they had serious matters to discuss but did not want us to know, they would speak to each other in Japanese. Growing up with my grandparents in Chiayi, I realized a very important benefit of speaking a foreign language; a language is a tool to communicate, including secret messages. (Unfortunately, I didn’t get to learn much in Japanese, but only our code names in Japanese. Heheheh…)

 

When we were living in Si Men Ding, Taipei, my tall handsome neighbour, three years of my senior, was a product of interracial marriage. However, his mother later remarried and moved to the USA with the new husband. He was left to be raised by his grandparents as their son. This guy had blond hair and blue eyes but could not speak a word of English. When his grandfather died, I was the one who dialed up 411 international operators to try to locate his mother’s new phone number and delivered the sad news to her family. I realized, English is a tool that I can use to help people, and get messages across to people who are foreign to our culture outside Taiwan. (Heck, I didn’t get a date with the guy but I told myself then, I might be able to make some money speaking English one day.)

 

A Wallflower

Definition 1: a flower name, a member of the mustard family, is cultivated for its attractive flowers.

Definition 2: a person who, because of shyness, unpopularity, or lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance.

No kidding! I was a wallflower.

A while ago, someone asked me to write about my dating stories. (Remember that, Jean?) My reply was, “You don’t want to know. They were pathetic.” The truth is they WERE pathetic indeed! People may think that I am just kidding. When we were at school, I probably organized more school dances and trips than anybody could have imagined. I had a group of good friends who always helped me out for the organization. They were there to fill the party dance floor and be the participants for the trips. When I was organizing a big event, I almost always needed to rally a group of faithful supporters to make the place look less empty. I guess it is like organizing a political protest; you just need to find a group of people who can carry the placards and shout loudly. (Hehehe….) So, there must be some interesting love encounters or courtships for me! Well, not exactly.

My mother was a very attractive woman. However, a girl from a poor family had no means to marry early in life. In fact, her marriage was a sheer beautiful accident. Apparently, my father, who was on leave from the marines, saw my mother pass by my paternal grandparents’ house one day. My mother was on her way to visit a relative who happened to live next door to my grandparents. My father was so taken back by the glimpse of her that he immediately rushed inside to urge my grandparents to find out who the pretty girl was next door. The next thing was that a matchmaker was sought to help talk to my mother’s family and then a marriage was later arranged.

 

For my mother and her family, the marriage was considered a good catch because my dad was a charming young man and his parents were very reputable. What more could she ask for? However, life was not easy for her to be a wife to the first born son and the first daughter-in-law in a large family. Her adult married life was not a smooth peaceful ride. In fact, life was full of disadvantages and disappointments for someone like her who always feels ashamed of not being able to read and write.

 

After having four children and establishing a hairdressing business, my mother still did not have any chance to go back to school for continued education. She spent her time raising her four children. After my father fell ill to cancer and paralyzed, she took care of my father full time for many years. After my father’s passing, she then moved on to help care for my brother’s children. After my father had passed away, she finally decided to do something that she always wanted to do for herself.

 

A few years ago, I received a Christmas card in the mail. It was a greeting card from home. My first nephew had just started grade one and he was so adorable. I read the cute writing on the envelope and opened to read some more. Surprisingly, the card was signed by my mother. My mother had gone to school to learn to read and write! Those words were not childish writing done by a 7 year-old. Those were precious print pressed down hard, stroke by stroke, by my mother’s bony hands. I held that card close to my heart and cried my eyes out. For those people who do not appreciate the privilege of education, they just don’t understand how lucky they are, compared to those who luck out in life.

 

It has been and always will be a struggle for my mother to learn to read and write. But at this point in life, she just wants to do something that she did not get to do long time ago.

Four years ago, when my mother came to visit me, she was studying Japanese in her spare time. We had a giggle about that. Of all foreign languages, why on earth would she pick Japanese? She really should learn English which will eventually benefit her if she ever wants to come to visit me. I guess the truth is she is more familiar with Japanese than English since her generation grew up learning Japanese when Taiwan was occupied under the Japanese rule.

The purpose for my trip to Taiwan was to be with my mother. The hugs from my mother just made me melt after long hours of tiresome transcontinental travelling. It was embarrassing, but I just had this urge of holding on to her like a little kid the day I arrived. For the whole time I was there, I fully prepared to spend my time at home with her. The funny thing was that my mother was probably busier than any of us. It was a big laugh among us that my mother had her own appointment book and we had to “book” our time in advance in order to take her places. What does an old lady like her do to be so busy? Well, let’s start with a few interesting things about my mother.

 

If the literacy rate in Taiwan is 96.1%, as stated in the Wikipedia, my mother would be one of those 3.9% illiterate population in Taiwan. My mother, like many people in her generation, had very little formal education due to her life circumstances.

 

My mother had a really hard life. She lost her father when she was less than three years old. My maternal grandfather was a farmer who was accidentally electrocuted by a downed hydro line at the rice field. During the Japanese occupation, life was a devastating hardship for a widowed mother with two young daughters. My grandmother was not entitled to anything because my grandfather was not the oldest son, and certainly there was nothing left for a family with only two daughters as the heirs. 

 

My grandmother rented a very small rice field from relatives to farm as the main meager income to support her family. My mother and my aunt had only been to school for a couple of years before the war erupted. Everything in life was interrupted for a few years. By the time peace time finally arrived, my mother had already passed her formative years. For a poor family of three females, it was obviously too late for my mother or my aunt to go back to school. My grandmother kept her older daughter home to help her farm the land and made the decision to send my mother away to learn a skill. My mother started her apprenticeship as a hairdresser in the County of Chia-Yi in her early teens.

 

My mother has my grandmother’s physique and personal traits. She is very petit and very shy with words. She is one of those very traditional Taiwanese women who would rather swallow their pride and plow through the hardship quietly on her own. My mother was a very good apprentice at the salon but she had suffered so much teasing all her life because of her illiteracy. Illiterate people are not ignorant; however, people, including those dear ones in the family, could sometimes put her down with mean and harmful words like adding salt to a wound.

 

I started teaching right after I obtained a BA in English from Fu Jen. Before I graduated from Fu Jen, I received a “second-hand” information from my friend who happened to have a friend that worked at the Continuing Education at Fu Jen Catholic University. (Hahaha. Networking is very important.) Apparently, the Continuing Education Department was accepting applications for instructors at the main campus in Hsin Zhuan. They were looking for teachers to teach a pronunciation class and an introductory conversation class. All I needed to do was to submit my resume, two lesson plans along with my full English self-introduction and a demo instruction on a cassette tape. It all sounds very simple and easy right now, but I was all stressed out then.



I really wanted the job but I also knew that may people, as some of my friends had revealed to me, were also eyeing for the same position. For an undergraduate student, it was very brave in my part to apply for the position. It was a good opportunity for me to go through the interview just for the experience though. I thought I probably would not get the job at all because I had to compete with all those graduate students from the Linguistics or English Literature departments. It was a bit intimidating. (Well, maybe I went to the right temple and prayed to the right God. Gee, it is too bad that I can not remember which temple I went to because I may have to ask for more luck. Hahaha…..) Somehow, I ended up with the job offer. You could imagine that I was totally on cloud nine.



I wanted to work at Fu Jen because I had full intention of applying for the graduate study in linguistics. Plus, they paid really REALLY well, way better than a language centre in Taipei. When I graduated, I was teaching at two different centres during the day in Tien-mu and Shih-lin. Life was good and the pay was even better. I liked working with children; however, without a degree in Education, a regular university graduate in English Language was not allowed to work in a formal school setting. So, it was a no brainer that I should happily accept the job to teach adults at the Continuing Education at Fu Jen Catholic University.