My Taiwan, Seoul, and Guadalajara (Mexico) Memoirs

By Daniel Nardini

My Taiwan, Seoul and Guadalajara (Mexico) Memoirs are a combined work of three separate memoirs. The first deals with his life in Taiwan, and his experiences there during an important part of the nations history. The second deals with the authors experiences and that of his Korean wifes family history with the city of Seoul. The third memoir is based on reports Mr. Nardini made on Guadalajara during his assignments for the newspaper Lawndale News.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514424711

Daniel Nardini

Daniel Nardini was born in Bloomington, Illinois, and raised in Elmhurst, Illinois. He graduated from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, in 1983, with a bachelors degree in anthropology and history, and from Western Illinois University in Macomb, in 1986, with a masters degree in European and Asian history. Mr. Nardini taught English as a foreign language in Taiwan from 1990 to 1994, and in South Korea from 1996 to 1997. He worked as an editor for Lawndale News in Cicero, Illinois, from 1994 to 2014, and as a newspaper correspondent for The Fulton Journal in Fulton, Illinois, from 2018 to 2020. Mr. Nardini has written eight other books. They are: South Korea; Our Story; The Day China Cried; My Taiwan, Seoul, and Guadalajara (Mexico) Memoirs; My Italian American Family, Rural Taiwan, and Lawndale News Memoirs; My South Korea Photograph Memoir; My Taiwan Photograph Memoir; A Taoist in Rural Illinois; and More Lawndale News Memoirs. Mr. Nardini is retired, and lives with his wife Jade in Chadwick, Illinois.

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Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Nardini.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015918680

ISBN:       Hardcover         978-1-5144-2473-5

                 Softcover           978-1-5144-2472-8

                 eBook                 978-1-5144-2471-1

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Rev. date: 11/11/2015

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Contents

Preface

Taiwan

Dedication

Foreword

Political Shock

Freedom of Religion

Russ

The Surveillance State and Resistance

Sean and Art

Alex and the Taiwanese Farm

Idiosyncrasies, Rich Culture

1992

A Visit to a SEZ

A Visit to the National Palace Museum

and Other Museums

Changhua

Taiwan’s Dazzling Handicrafts and Artworks

Alex’s Roots

A Funeral

Police Raid

Russ’ Wedding

Departure

William Liu

The Earthquake and the Historic 2000 Election

Reunions

Postscript

Seoul (South Korea)

Dedication

Foreword

Historic Seoul

Colonial Seoul

Modern Seoul

When the Japanese Come to Town

The Heart of Korean Democracy

South Korea’s Ethnic Minority

Class Seoul

Education Seoul

Family Business Seoul

TV Seoul

Religious Seoul

City on the Precipice

Guadalajara (Mexico)

Dedication

Foreword

First Time in Guadalajara

The Regional Museum of Guadalajara

Poverty

A Very Religious People

Oscar

The Diaspora

Zapopan and the Aztec Pyramid

The Wax Museum

Sector Reforma

Parque Agua Azul

Postscript

Preface

This volume contains three memoirs. They are on Taiwan, Seoul–the capital of South Korea, and Guadalajara, Mexico. Each takes place in a somewhat different point in my life, and had an influence at what direction my life’s experience would go. I was in Taiwan from 1990 to 1994, and again in 1996 and the year 2000. I lived in Seoul from 1996 to 1997, and had traveled back and forth frequently to Seoul until 2007. This memoir is a personal look at one of the world’s largest cities. I traveled to and from Guadalajara, Mexico as part of assignments for the Lawndale News. This memoir is a combination of material published and unpublished about those trips.

Taiwan

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my close friends Russ, Sean, Art, Alex, and William Liu. Without them I could never have learned as much about Taiwan as I have, and I would most certainly have never survived there as long as I did. I also dedicate this book to all the Taiwanese teachers and staff at the school where I worked. I especially dedicate this book to all of my students, and I wish them the best in life.

Foreword

I lived in Taiwan, also called the Republic of China, for four years from 1990 to 1994. I had also visited the island in 1996 and 2000. In that time period I had experienced this country go from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy. When I first entered Taiwan as a teacher of English as a foreign language for children, Taiwan was for all-due purposes a one-party controlled state. There was no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no right of peaceful assembly, and no right to seek redress for grievances. The Legislative Yuan, the country’s legislative body, was still under the control of those men elected in 1947 and frozen in their office positions for life as long as the Emergency Period was in effect. They could not be elected by the people in Taiwan. Likewise, the President of the Republic of China on Taiwan could not be elected–he was chosen by the previous president to succeed him. This was the reality I had come to know when I was in Taiwan for the first two years from 1990 to 1992.

Then, a miracle happened. The year 1992 marked the end of the Emergency Period. With that began a democratization of Taiwan that has forever changed the face of the island and the lives of the people. This democratization had been building up before 1992 well below the surface, but really did not burst onto the scene until 1992. From that point on what had been below the surface sprouted as what had not been allowed before came to be accepted as the people of Taiwan began to find their voice and experience their new-found freedoms. Although I had not participated in any of these changes, I saw the face of Taiwan change, and with this change I had experienced the end of the island’s long one-party rule and had seen one of the most dynamic democratic states in Asia emerge. With the democratization of Taiwan, many of those people I came to know in Taiwan have been questioning what their identity is. Are they Chinese? Are they Taiwanese? Where do they stand as far as the status of their country today? These questions have yet to be answered.

I wish to thank my close friends Russ, Sean, and Art for all they have done while I lived in Taiwan. They remain my closest friends in life. I wish to also thank all of the Taiwanese teachers I had known. I wish to express my very best to all of my students who taught me many things about their country as I taught them English, especially my former student William Liu. I am also grateful to my friend and former landlord Alex. I will always remember the many discussions he and I had about Taiwan. As I look out of the window of my home, I cannot but help think about my time spent in Taiwan so far away and so many years ago. Yet for all-due purposes Taiwan will always be with me.

Daniel Nardini

Chadwick, Illinois

2015

Political Shock

I arrived in Taiwan on June 12, 1990, after having been accepted for work at a private school for teaching children English, a few months before. I had previously wanted to teach English as a foreign language in China. However, because of the June 4, 1989, massacre in Beijing I decided against it. Still, I wanted to learn something about Chinese culture and society so Taiwan seemed to be the logical alternative choice. I was met at Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport in Taoyuan (a suburb of Taipei, the capital) by Karen, the one who managed the school, and taken to her residence. She and her husband lived in a nice home somewhere in Taipei. I was impressed, and for the first few days I got to see something of Taipei.

I was taken by a few of the teachers from the school to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in downtown Taipei. The memorial hall, an impressive white palace-like building with a beautiful blue tile roof, was a tribute to the man who ruled Taiwan from 1945 until his death in 1975. On the main floor was a huge statue of Chiang Kai-shek himself, with two ceremonial guards on both sides. Stairs leading into the basement of the complex was a kind of museum showing paintings, photographs and memorabilia of his life. The memorial had one of his uniforms that he wore in life, the medals he earned, and documents he himself had written and affixed his personal Chinese seal to. One painting I saw that intrigued me was a depiction of Chinese Nationalist air force biplanes shooting down Japanese Mitsubishi monoplanes during an important battle in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). The fact that biplanes, being much slower and far less maneuverable, shooting down monoplanes was absurd did not seem to mean much to others visiting the memorial.

But I quickly learned that the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall was not just a memorial to Taiwan’s president but created as a propaganda showcase masquerading as a history institution that all people in Taiwan were taught as the truth. There was nothing in any of the memorial hall displays that was critical of Chiang Kai-shek, and certainly nothing mentioning how he completely lost all of China to the Communists. If anything, Chiang Kai-shek loomed larger than life at this memorial hall….almost taking on the status of a god! I guess that was the intention, since this was built just after Chiang Kai-shek died. One of the teachers, who took me on the tour of the memorial hall, was named Shirley. She showed me a metal sculpture of a white lily in an insignificant corner of the memorial hall. Shirley explained to me that not too long before I came to Taiwan, a mass demonstration of students back in March at the memorial hall had gathered to call for democracy. The demonstration, calling itself the Wild Lily Student Movement, was brutally crushed by riot police. The police simply moved this white lily sculpture, a symbol of the students, off to the side. This demonstration was not even mentioned in the Taiwan news media of the time. Many westerners living in Taipei at the time witnessed it happen.

Three days after I arrived in Taipei, I was taken by the director of the Taichung branch, David, and the head English teacher at the time named Teresa to Taichung, Taiwan’s third largest city. I learned that all of Taiwan’s major cities had at least one branch of this school. For a few days I was given the chance to explore this place. Taichung, located in Taichung County, is located almost in the middle of Taiwan on the west coast. A major transit point for railway passenger service to the southern part of the island, Taichung was the least hot place on the island in terms of temperature. Nevertheless, I found Taichung still pretty steamy since it was common for the average temperature to range from 90 Fahrenheit to 100 Fahrenheit from March until October. The rainfall was also quite abundant. During the first few weeks, I got pretty badly soaked during the frequent rain storms that hit Taichung. The other thing that struck me were the number of statues of Chiang Kai-shek in just about every public park in Taichung. There was even a statue of him in front of the Taichung train station. Every government building that I ever went into had two portraits hanging on their walls–that of Sun Yat-sen (the founder of the Republic of China), and Chiang Kai-shek. There was no way of escaping these two. They were even on all of the coins and currency of the country. I was put into an apartment not far from the train station. From there it would not take long to get to the three branches of the school. The apartment included two other American expats named Peter and Will.

During my first few months in Taichung, I started learning how to teach. I watched some classes, and I was impressed by the school’s detailed syllabus, which helped me even when I was not sure what to do. I had to hand it to Karen, her long time in Taiwan helped to know how to best teach children English. While I was in Taichung, I signed up to learn Mandarin Chinese. I had a bit of a rough time learning it because of the tones and also how difficult the sentence structure is. One of the greatest cultural shocks was the fact that so many Taiwanese smoke like chimneys. There were no laws at the time to prohibit smoking in restaurants and tea shops, and not even in a McDonald’s restaurant. Sometimes it got so bad I just went to a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant where smoking was definitely not allowed. Fortunately my roommates in the apartment did not smoke, and when I went to the Buddhist temples it was one of the few smoke-free environments I could go to.

Another cultural shock was the traffic. Taiwanese ran through the red lights as easily as the green lights, and at night it could be especially dangerous as people went through the streets at high speeds. The most common mode of transportation was a motor scooter. The Taiwanese motor scooter was smaller than an American motorcycle, and made of plastic that covered its metal frame. Taiwanese usually seated one or two people on one of these things, but I saw as many as three or four people (including children) riding on one of these. With how flimsy this type of vehicle was, spills and traffic accidents were frequent. I eventually bought myself a bicycle, which in the type of traffic I saw in Taiwan was a little safer because of how slow it moved. I also invested some money in a bicycle helmet. Surprisingly, most people did not wear helmets when driving these motor scooters. I especially feared for the little kids getting injured. Just as was the case in China (which I had visited a year before), Taiwanese traffic was just a huge sea of humanity moving through fairly narrow streets any way they could. Sometimes, the motor scooters drove onto the sidewalks, which they were not supposed to do, and pedestrians walked into the streets which was equally dangerous.

Having eaten Chinese food when I stayed in China, the food in Taiwan was not a major problem to deal with. Although some western foods, like cereal and sometimes fresh milk, were available (this was considered for Taiwanese children though. Adults were not supposed to eat cereal for breakfast), other western and American foods were pretty much lacking. That in of itself would not have bothered me except that the Chinese food was not always the best quality I could think of. The exception again was the vegetarian restaurants set up by Taiwanese Buddhist orders to serve the Buddhist faithful.