privy desires

Most people who have been around Taiwanese of a certain age (and certain class status) should be familiar with their pervasive colonial nostalgia and desire for all things Japanese; a yearning traced to a supposedly gentler and kinder occupation the Taiwanese endured under the Japanese (from 1895 until the end of WWII) before Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT arrived to impose martial law and to summarily expunge anyone with a whiff of Marxist sympathies following the Communist takeover of China in 1949. Sure, the Japanese treated the Taiwanese as second-class citizens and did their share of cracking down on "trouble makers" among their colonized subjects. But hey, at least the Japanese also genuinely advanced Taiwan's "development," so people today claimed. The Japanese built crucial infrastructure. They modernized the economy. They introduced all sorts of new technology. Chiang and his gang? Just take a look at the memorial marking the favorite pavilion of the Generalissimo and his cosmopolitan Wellesley-educated wife, Madame Chiang née Song Meiling at Taiwan's famed Sun Moon Lake. If you squint, you might be able to make out the former KMT leader's name underneath all the black blotches and furious scratch marks which more than one visitor scrawled across every mention of "Chiang" in his otherwise pristine dedication. How do people feel about "outsiders" from China today? No one will admit it but just ask them to expound on their experiences with all people and things "Made in China." It ain't pretty. No sireebob.

Japanese things, in contrast, especially Japanese technology, have remained potent fetishes of sorts. Even after Japan's decade-long economic free fall after the 1997 Asian crash, the words "Made in Japan," persists as a durable chant of commodity magic for any product, high or low, among the Taiwanese. Case in point: take this much-touted toilet at a very new boutique hotel in Taipei where I crashed when I first arrived last week in Taiwan.


It's a true point of pride on the hotel's website (not to mention one of the reasons for its high ratings among the largely Overseas Taiwanese cum Chinese/American netizens on Trip Advisor!). I can't deny being seduced myself by all the hotel PR and online ravings about the distinctive Japanese ingenuities of this toilet. Squatters may have their social charms and health claims (if you don't know, don't ask). Bidets their Euro-Francophile fans. The Japanese toilet? Let's just say it's a bit like the Stepford Wife of the lot. High-tech. Sleek. Seductively familiar yet NOT. It automatically opens and closes its lid when you walk by as if doing a half-bow or kow-tow. The seat is temperature controlled. It seems warm and inviting at first. It beckons. You sit. Whaddyaknow, it's pretty ergonomic too. Then there are those many buttons. Bouncing cute or kawaii like much of Japanese illustrations and characters. So Pikachu, you just want a stuffed toy version of those curly w's.


But then from the hotel bedroom, I hear my partner try his luck with all those buttons for the first time. Initially all I hear is some hysterical giggling--a sound of shock and icky delight I recognized too well from my earlier test drive of this Japanese wonder. A primordial carnal yelp of Freudian proportions. But soon this fades into a drawn out beat of silence. Just as suddenly I hear a panicked call from the privy: "Whaohaaaaah, hey, HEY! How do you make it stop? Make it stop! Staaaaaaaahp!"

Don't worry. No one was physically harmed in the tale recounted above (though I cannot vouch for psychic and/or social injuries, especially after publishing this post...apologies in advance, m). What the toilet actually did, I leave you to puzzle over for yourself via the buttons pictured above just as my partner and I did as non-Japanese readers (though knowing Chinese certainly helps). Let's just say it's my way of extending the magic of the fetish, "Made in Japan," while tapping away on my computer in Nippon-happy Taiwan.

Next time: privy redux (or Taiwanese consumerism at its most, um, how can I put it...to borrow from my buddy Alex, it's seriously un heimlich).

strait in/out of china: part 1

I'm trying to figure out what it's like to be one of these smiling men (sans the adoring reporters and red carpet treatment). Who are they, you ask. Well, well...they are the first passengers on the first direct flight from Fuzhou to Taiwan in fifty years. They're the Neil Armstrongs of a new Post-Mao venture into a former no-man's land (er, no-man's space, really) hereon known as the 海峡两岸 or "Cross-Strait." Until recently, this was simply "the Strait," no criss-crossing about it from Taiwan to China (or vice versa) given the ongoing disputes about what kind of place is Taiwan (China's renegade province or its own nation-state?). The dispute is not really settled yet, just awkwardly deferred in favor of what the folks negotiating have noted as more "technical" matters like, um, wait for it..."advancing tourism and trade"!



"Cross-Strait" is not unlike cross-dressing, so to speak. Cross it at your own risk. At this early juncture ("opened" since late last December), it's not meant for the shy and unimaginative (ready cash, connections & passport are nice too). Like cross-dressing, "Cross-Strait" is also a kind of repetition with a difference, miming the gestures of territorial space while neither really here nor there, neither 国际 (international) nor 国内 (domestic). How do I know? Well, I've been asking around for a ticket on one of these flights. Needless to say, it's all such a new thing here that no one---from travel agents to tour operators to local "cultural exchange" officials---understand exactly how and who can get on one of these planes. Especially someone like me who is neither here nor there, neither "Taiwanese" per se nor "Chinese" per se. These days people here say you can order up a plane tix on the web, no problem. So I surfed around and what do you know, the only options on all web templates for flight selection are either 国际 (international) or 国内 (domestic). Try to select Fuzhou to Taipei on the "domestic" flight page and the result is a "sorry, your data do no compute" message. Try again with the "international" page: ditto. Seems those webfolks know a pandora's box when they see one and have judiciously decided to leave "Cross-Strait" alone for now rather than work it into their nicely functioning web templates for flight selection. Wise, very wise. Me on the other hand? I'm gunning to traverse this newfangled (air)space. They say you have a choice of Taiwanese or Chinese specialties on board. They say they've assigned their "best" staff to these planes. They say "everyone" is welcome to board...er, well, YES, if you have a Taiwanese "compatriot" certificate (no Taiwanese passports, please; it's like a fake ID to the PRC) or if you are a Mainlander, yes, you are welcome too but only if you travel in pre-authorized tour groups of 10+folks and you are all accounted for at each leg of departure and arrival. Oh, then there's some throwaway line about how "other foreign nationals" can board too. The specifics on that last one? Still stuck in that no-man's land. So that leaves me somewhere in between, too.

Stay tuned for Part II when I attempt to do my actual crossing of the Strait.