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  The school had no idea how to teach us, and decided to start with children’s primers. I learned to say “little white rabbit” and “mama is good” but these phrases didn’t get me far on the street. On my own, I acquired a limited survival vocabulary that made a big difference in my integration into the society. I learned to count, which meant I could read numbers on a bus, and I picked up some basic words for shopping. “Duo shao?” I’d say at the market, meaning how much? The shopkeeper would fire off some unintelligible price. “Tai kwai.” I’d reply, meaning too much. A few more words would be thrust at me. I’d nod my head, hold out a relatively large bill, and pretend to count my change. I’d then look up and smile my approval. Sometimes I caught the numbers thrown at me, and on those days I felt a short-lived sense of empowerment. I learned to count quite well by the time we sailed out, aided by the fact that I was our sole shopper, a responsibility I enjoyed.

  Bernard picked-up very little Mandarin in the time we were there. He was totally focused on building the yacht, and the boatyard owners spoke English. Years later he regretted the fact and took lessons for a while, but it was out of context, and he eventually dropped the course.

  “I never looked at the culture,” he told me later. “I missed half my journey.”

  Chapter 4

  GETTING OUR FEET WET

  1980–1981: Taiwan

  What each must seek from his life never was on land or sea.

  It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could be experienced by anyone else.

  — JOSEPH CAMPBELL

  During our stay in Taipei, our main contact was the small band of yachties who came to build their boats in the local shipyards and found common ground in their anger and frustration. Taiwanese workers had little knowledge of how to make a safe vessel, and shipyard owners didn’t care whether a boat sank once they’d been paid. Taiwan and China were at war. When a yacht sailed out, she became a foreign vessel and wasn’t allowed to return. This absolved boatyard owners of all responsibility for their yards’ shoddy work.

  Having observed the agitated state of our fellow yachties and the dishonesty of the shipyard owners, Bernard began to have doubts about building. Yachties came, built their boats and left, while Bernard tried to make up his mind. Always a cautious man, he took his time studying each shipyard carefully.

  Meanwhile, I was becoming acclimated to a rich and interesting culture. To pass the time, I taught English in the evening at the Taipei American School, auditioned and was hired to act in a series of English second language films for Ming Chuan University’s Women’s Business College, continued with my private classes in Chinese water brush painting with Theresa Chen at her gallery, and went every day with Jonah to our Mandarin classes at the Daily News Language School. I managed to advance to my third children’s pre-school primer, and knew I could carry on a conversation with any three-year-old who was a little slow.

  At one of the local galleries, I met the owner, a young American who introduced me to his American girl friend. Katharine was doing graduate work in Chinese culture and worked at the National Palace Museum. Through her I had the privilege of being present at a private auction where refugees who’d escaped from mainland China sold their family heirlooms from dynasties as far back as the Han. In a small dusty room inside a derelict office building in downtown Taipei, priceless works of art were displayed one at a time while a group of Taiwanese gentlemen, Katharine and I sat around a large, circular table cracking sunflower seeds between our front teeth and sipping tea.

  I felt uncomfortable seeing these priceless objects shown under such shabby conditions. The grass-script scrolls, brilliantly glazed ceramics and hammered bronze pots belonged in a museum. I thought about the many generations that had possessed these items, and the family stories behind them. I wondered if the bidders felt justified in taking these objects from the refugees. Did they feel superior at not being in that position, or grateful that it was not their personal patrimony up for grabs? And then I thought ... Who am I to judge?

  On free evenings, I went to Sun Yet Sen Park and soaked in the energy of another culture, a people seemingly different, but so alike in matters of the heart. Families cuddled their children, watched them play, and praised their efforts. Young women waited for their lovers or husbands to return from work, ran to embrace them, and walked off arm in arm. Elderly couples shuffled around the park tenderly holding hands. I was moved by the display of tenderness that made up the tableau of the park, and thought of my students who would cross the street with me after class to make sure I got safely to the other side, sometimes insisting on taking me for shao shung, dog meat, an expensive delicacy that I politely refused.

  Years later, I met a business woman in Montreal who had spent the odd week in Taipei negotiating contracts for her company.

  “They’re a cold people,” she told me. “Racist. I never felt trusted and was treated rudely.”

  Her perception of the Taiwanese people reinforced for me the value of “slow” travel with no agenda or time frame. Spending time in the countries where we dropped anchor brought home how much more alike than different people were, and made me sensitive to sweeping statements about other cultures.

  On occasion, I went to calligraphy exhibitions with Alice, one of the students in my evening English classes. All the scrolls looked alike to me, while Alice enthused over some and dismissed others. I asked her to give me lessons in exchange for extra English. She was thrilled to do it and refused the exchange.

  Alice looked at my first attempt and seemed dismayed. “From the heart,” she said. “You’re not writing from the heart.” I tried again thinking about that place in my heart, but I failed to impress her.

  “Not the head,” she said. “Think of the brush as an extension of your heart. The energy flows from the heart through the arm, into the hand, and onto the page. You must write with your heart.”

  And then I got it. My characters started to live, to have energy. The writing was a moving meditation, a centering. The more I practiced, the more integrated I felt with the world around me. I could now go to exhibitions and see the difference in work done from the head and work done from the heart.

  I impressed the teachers at the Daily News Mandarin School with my writing. They were amazed that a beginner from the West could manipulate the ideographs of Chinese characters so well. I didn’t tell them I was practicing daily to make strokes from the heart. They thought I should exhibit. It surprised me to what extent Alice’s coaching carried over to the way I practised my strokes in the school exercise book.

  I could write like a native but never learned to speak well. More importantly, I understood the loss for this society when they were forced to move from brush to pen — a slippery first step from connection to alienation. Ballpoint pens were on the verge of being introduced into the school system, and parents were upset. They complained in letters to the newspaper that it would be the end of their culture. I thought their cries reflected a need to hold on to the past, and later discovered it was a well-founded fear for the future.

  All this was taking place before the arrival of the computer. Today that connection between head and heart is more threatened than ever. Like the last generation of Taiwanese parents, I believe the death of the brush should be mourned. And in my own culture, I feel the loss of the pen to the computer. Each new generation of technical development seems to take us further away from our heart centre.

  Jonah, being a typical sixteen-year-old, was far less diligent in his Mandarin homework than I was. “You’ll never learn without studying,” I’d say. “Why bother taking classes?”

  “Don’t worry about it, mom,” he’d say, usually as he was about to fly out the door to meet his friends. He had found a girlfriend who sat in one of the art galleries, and through her, a group of Taiwanese youth his age. He gave English lessons to some of his newly acquired friends and made a bit of spending money for himself.
He also enrolled in a class on scroll mounting and won an original woodcut on rice paper in a raffle at the class. By the time we left Taiwan, he was fluent in Mandarin.

  The three of us lived in separate worlds. Jonah had his gang of friends that he spent time with, and when he wasn’t with them, he studied for his final high school exams that would be sent to Taipei from Quebec. I worked, continued with my cultural interests, and befriended a number of my students. Bernard went every morning to the various boatyards, and showed no interest in what Jonah and I were doing.

  With each passing month, tension grew between Bernard and me. He harboured fears about the seaworthiness of Taiwanese yachts and the possible insanity of our adventure. His growing unease worked on my nerves, and I looked for ways to distance myself. His frustration with the situation erupted in unexpected barbs. Over dinner one evening, he snapped at me without provocation. “This isn’t a life for you. You’ll miss your friends.” I was too taken aback to answer. He also berated Jonah for no reason. “Why don’t you read more about sailing than those damn novels?”

  “It’s for school,” Jonah said. He didn’t let Bernard get to him. I resented Bernard’s picking on us to relieve his tension. But instead of facing the issue head-on, I focused on my life in Taipei, while he became more morose. We had so much at stake in this adventure that neither of us dared talk about it for fear of exacerbating the situation.

  To ease the pressure, Bernard, Jonah and I spent evenings at the Taipei Night Market, an experience we could enjoy together. The market was always packed body-to-body with shoppers in search of anything from tiny firm-fleshed eggplants and foot long string beans, to men’s cotton striped pyjamas for warm days and women’s pink silky nightgowns for special events such as weddings and eating out in fancy restaurants. Night clothes for bedtime were not part of the Taiwanese culture.

  Most fascinating were small stalls of medicinal herbs and shrivelled animal genitals for men in search of sexual prowess. One night we stumbled into a crowd of men watching a mongoose pitted against a snake. Men jostled and pushed for a clear view of the spectacle. Invariably, the mongoose won. The handler held up the dead snake for the bidding war to begin. Hordes of enthusiastic men outbid one another for small plastic cups filled with freshly spilled snake blood to increase their virility. I felt like vomiting and was happy to move on. Along the edge of the market we passed venereal disease clinics alongside brothels to accommodate whatever the victors in the bidding war needed. Taipei has since been cleaned up, and all that’s left is the name “Snake Alley” and a few streetwalkers.

  Another escape was Sunday breakfast at the Taipei Hilton. We’d sip bad coffee and absently stare at the handful of pasty faced westerners in their well-pressed suits who were in town to discuss business with their Taiwanese counterparts.

  During one of our visits, Jonah looked over at a neighbouring table and whispered: “Isn’t that Spiro Agnew?”

  Spiro Agnew had been vice-president under Richard Nixon, and had to resign his position in 1973 due to charges brought against him for bribery, conspiracy, and tax fraud. I couldn’t believe that the person Jonah was referring to could be that man. In my mind, Spiro Agnew was under a rock somewhere hiding in humiliation.

  “No,” I said. “It just looks like him.”

  Jonah kept staring in that direction. “I’m sure it’s him.”

  Neither Bernard nor I took him seriously.

  “Go ask him for his autograph,” Bernard said, teasing.

  Jonah took up the challenge and walked over to the table. A few seconds later he was back with the signature of the fallen vice-president scrawled across a napkin. It made our day.

  Chapter 5

  THE DIE IS CAST

  Spring 1981

  Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.

  — FREYA STARK

  When Bernard decided to build at the Shin Hsing Boatyard, we made our fourth move to Shilin, a suburb outside Taipei. The new lodging shortened our travel time to Danshui, the small town where the boatyard was located. Mr. Feng, who knew Bernard from visits to his ship chandlery, offered to rent us a furnished apartment above his shop. It had been vacant for years and derelict, but the location was good. We grudgingly accepted. A metal frame with bare springs, covered with a sheet of plywood on which lay a thick quilt, served as our bed. Jonah’s bed was a series of folded and stacked cartons covered with a similar thick quilt. The remains of giant cockroaches were pressed between the layers of cartons and littered the grimy tile floor. I forced myself to focus on the old TV that actually worked and the useable bathtub. I pictured us already on our spiffy yacht in order to deal with our new lodgings.

  I soon learned the bathtub was more a necessity than a luxury in Taiwanese homes. Tubs are filled with potable water before the coming of a typhoon since no one can predict the duration or damage a typhoon will leave in its path. During one of those intense storms, a foot of water covered the floor of our second-story apartment, and I came to appreciate our grubby plastic furnishings as well as my rubber flipflops that floated from room to room. I also came to appreciate the courage and resiliency of the Taiwanese people.

  The day of the typhoon, the metal gates of Shilin’s small shops banged shut in unison. The scraping noise of the gates reverberated throughout the neighbourhood, and then stopped as though on cue. People vanished off the streets. Even the ubiquitous flying cockroaches and ever-present geckos disappeared. I experienced a silence so complete, it seemed as though all sound had been sucked out of the universe. My body had the sensation of floating in space.

  Then without warning, a terrifying howl ripped through the stillness. The wind seemed to have held its breath and now expelled itself with a force that could annihilate the planet. The sound carried with it an angry deluge of rain and whipped-up wind that moved so fast we later found microscopic holes in the windows where sand particles had cut through. Within minutes we were standing in water, but had no idea how it entered the apartment. The typhoon lasted a full day. The second it was over, the stores rolled up their metal gates at precisely the same moment, and it was business as usual. Taiwanese shopkeepers never took a day off except for Chinese New Year and typhoons.

  Most mornings, Bernard, Jonah, and I took the Danshui bus through small communities along the banks of the Danshui River to the Shin Hsing Boatyard. Even though the boatyard hadn’t started work on our yacht, we went to see the progress on the boat ahead of us and to pressure the yard to move faster.

  We rode through Kuang Do, revered by Taiwanese as sacred earth where mountain and water meet. Here cemeteries and temples crowded each other for space, and funeral processions dominated the highway, their vehicles smothered in plastic flowers. Cylindrical coffins carried the deceased with photos mounted high on trucks — the last viewing for public and mourners alike. Mourners in sackcloth and white hoods followed behind. I noticed through the bus window that the bodies of the dead were laid in circular family plots with stones carved to fit the circle. The circular plots, set against the dark green of the surrounding hills, reminded me there was no linear time in the universe, and that all of nature was circular from birth to death to the turning of the seasons.

  Kuang Do was the highest point on the highway to the boatyard, and as soon as the road curved round the bend, the Taipei Yacht Club came into view. Once the private dock for Chiang Kai-Shek’s personal yacht, it was now under the domain of the Taiwanese army. The burnt-out frame of the clubhouse and the piles of rubble blocking the entrance were a daily reminder that yachting was strictly an export business and not an island sport in Taiwan. A few small yachts were anchored in front of the derelict clubhouse, the meagre reward of years of pressure by persistent members of the foreign community. This bit of neglected
property would become my home base for two months after the yacht was built.

  Past the yacht club rice fields spread out on both sides of the highway, and the rice farmers glided through the paddies, ankle deep in water, their heads bowed in concentration. In the distance their brick homes, passed on from generation to generation, sprawled out in various directions, depending on the whim and the size of the families that inhabited them. In the year that we travelled from our home in Shilin to the boatyard in Danshui, I never tired of this section of the road because of the serenity of the scene.

  Though Bernard hired the Shin Hsing Boatyard in May, by mid-July the yacht was still nothing more than a promise. He had chosen this yard because it was small, but they were also slow. I watched impatiently as the boat before ours crawled to completion. It annoyed me that the Australian building ahead of us came to Taiwan three months after and would be leaving before.

  “I wish you had made up your mind sooner,” I blurted out in a moment of frustration. Bernard had a different perspective.

  “I can study his construction and learn from his mistakes.” I couldn’t argue with that.

  The Australian was a dynamic fellow who had done a lot of cruising on his motorboat before making the switch to sail. It was the first time he had ventured this far from home, but he was full of selfconfidence and absolutely sure of every decision he made. His wife was a hairdresser.

  “We’re having a beauty salon built into the yacht,” he told us. “Bronica will have no trouble getting clients.”

  He invited us aboard to see the two special chairs he had ordered to be installed. Bronica matched her husband’s bravura. She talked as though she was raised on the sea and spiced every conversation with nautical terms.

  “She’s a real sea adventurer,” Bernard informed me. “You can learn from her.”

  Learn what, I thought. She’s all talk.