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[A.K.A.T.D.N.]

Today I'm wearing my cowboy hat. But you won't notice me, because I'm somewhat of a sneak about it. I wear it at night, just so I don't run into Fortigurn or Pop Fly and have a showdown. I still chew gum, and right now blowing bubbles in the street trying to form some caption to enclose in it.

I feel pretty proud that there's a community of us out there taking notice of this cowboy, verses the Chinese who don't seem to realize we're not yankees, or carpetbaggers, just here for greed. I'm pretty happy there's no Southerner or Northerner mentality, no Confederates or Yankees, cause if there were, I wonder what the Chinese would think of us, and themselves, seeing they're the 'hot little spicy fella's' compared to their more Ming Bao-like Northerners. So it makes me wonder who's really on who's side, also seeing the Taiwanese are a breakaway province and we 'wei guo rens' nothing but the cowboys we pretend to be, blazing new trails, taming the unknown frontier of globalism.

Or perhaps some of us think in terms of that farm we came from back home. These are the guys that worry me. Like myself, they think of themselves, and others, in a stereotypical degree, as many comments about my cowboy hat seemed to point out. The fact that a Southwesterner is considered 'backward' because he wears a cowboy hat is somewhat of an oxymoron since in fact I'm a Northerner and I hardly doubt the Chinese know the difference. But the plaintive voices here seem to share the same sense of stereotypical prejudice that they do. So where do we stand?

We stand amidst the ideal we've portrayed as a lie, that English is somehow tied into one ethno-centric culture, and that this is what qualifies us to be here. It's this culture we think the Chinese believe is the Real McCoy, therefore presenting a certain cultural clime. In turn we give in to theirs, thinking that perhaps their culture is the "only" one, making it mold us into the same mentality that "others" outside this clime are backward, foreign, foolish, and that just because they wear a cowboy hat or someother anti-Chinese regalia. What hogwash.

I'm gonna wear this cowboy hat until I take the bull by the horns and stand against the bronco-busting rodeo of reason that some foreigners are apt to ride on their sojourn here, much like the Mounted Police, or "Mounties" in Canada, fighting the lawless elements in the Rockies. An antiquated, anti-thetically modernistic image, they're nonetheless still one that is uniquely alive today. Who knows that they exist(even in Taiwan,) yet Canadians wouldn't call their presence a cultural anachronism back in Canada, let alone their style of hats. They're symbolic of that cultural clime.

But perhaps the image some want here are like the guy I saw walking into the subway train with a pierced eyebrow and dyed hair. I saw him nudge his way into a crowd with a big, pointy Roman nose, his hips leading straight towards a gawking Chinese girl. I wonder if this is the cultural clime that some people here think we should represent, LAish, European, English.

[Fortigurn]

What did any of that mean?

[Rice Paddy Daddy]

I read that 2 out of 10 long-term TEFL'ers need Psychological counselling.

[Fortigurn]

[Mrs. Fortigurn]

I'm an American, and I can say that Americans like this, give America a very bad name. It's a sad day.

[Ki]

I have never been called a 'wei guo ren' in Taiwan (with or without the extra s). It has always been 'may guo ren' despite the fact that I'm not American. Apparently all white people come from the USA. I may be wrong but isn't the plural of 'wei guo ren', 'wei guo ren men'? Or is it automatically plural?
Ki.

[MTurton]

It can be either singular or plural. Rarely do I hear the formal -men at the end of that phrase.

Seems like the OP is just trying to be ironic....

[myesl]

AKATDN, just say no to drugs

Re wai guo ren, never heard 'men' on the end. I've never had anyone call me a Meiguo ren, though I am, unless they knew I was.


As far as why they might ass-u-me a white or black person is American, it's simple. Though things have changed in recent years, most whites or blacks in Taiwan used to be American and most Taiwanese who went abroad to study or emigrate used to go to America. Same thing was true with Japan and Korea, so they still have this attitude, too.

some examples:
Before I left Kaohsiung in 2000 more and more Taiwanese I met would ask me if I was Canadian. I don't have statistics, but the number of Candaians in Kaohsiung seemed to grow A LOT during the year and a half I was in Kaohsiung.

As far as cowboy hats being for the less sophisticated, probably just comes out of the impression of the South in regards to Aparteid segregation long after the rest of the US, the fact that blacks couldn't even vote there until 1965, etc.

I bet most people's parents (even if your 30, 40+ years old) still have a lot of old ideas about you from long ago. It's true for me in my thirties!

People's impressions change slowly. That's why I hate what George Bush is doing to my nation's reputation in the world

People from different places _tend_ to be a certain way. There are exceptions, of course, but people tend to conform to their surroundings. Also, Taiwan, though less head-bangingly culturally homogenous than Korea or Japan, is still more so (I dare argue) than America (or as far as I can tell the other English speaking countries), so . . . if one were to come from a more conforming culture one would assume (oh, there's that word again!) that people from other places tend to be a certain way. It took me a while in East Asia before I could honestly see the opposite (just saying it is easy): people in EA tend to be more conformist because there are (less now, but still) consequences to not being so. [those are not usually good consequences]

[markholmes]

What the hell was that all about?

And what's a TP?