I’m writing this on my way to Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taipei. I’m heading back to Tokyo today after a wonderful two weeks which included hiking in Taroko National Park (Tailuge) and on the northern coast at Yeliu. I had a bit of a fight with a taxi driver on the way to catch my airport bus this morning. Taiwan is getting rid of its old $50 coins right now and it is becoming increasingly difficult to use the old coins. I tried to unload my last two old $50 coins on the taxi driver for my $100 (about $3 US) fare. First he said, “You can’t use these coins anymore.” I knew this was a lie. Had he simply asked, “Do you have any other coins, these are a real pain for me to get changed.” I would have been nice but his attempt to fool a foreigner brought out my stubborn fighting spirit…
I knew from the Taiwanese newspapers and an encounter Sayaka had at a stationary store recently that the coins are still valid currency at least through the end of this month (More info here). I told the driver he was wrong and that I could still use them. I told him that I wasn’t going to come back to Taiwan for a while and, while he would continue to use them or exchange them at a bank or something, this was my last chance to get rid of the coins (I have already kept one as a souvenir). He continued to protest and say he wouldn’t take them while I demanded that he did until finally he changed tactics and said, “Look, one of your coins is a fake!” He was referring to a scratch on one of the coins. He was now playing dirty. I was very confident the coin wasn’t fake, even though the existence of counterfeit coins is apparently one reason for the switch to the new coin. I told him I would gladly pay him a $1000 if he could prove the coin was fake and he should feel free to call in the police if he liked. He backed off of this tactic but we went back and forth until finally we both got out of the car and he tried to convince another taxi driver standing nearby, this time in Taiwanese dialect so I couldn’t understand what they were saying, to back him in the argument.
I was delighted when the other taxi driver told him something in dialect that clearly showed that he thought the driver was making an unnecessary fuss. I was especially happy since at that moment I realized how stupid I was to argue with a taxi driver when I have my luggage locked away in the trunk. I finally offered a compromise and replaced one of the coins with five $10 coins. This got me my backpack back, saved him some face in what had turned into a public street event in front of waiting bus passengers, and I was able to use the other coin when I bought my bus ticket.
This experience really reminded me of my everyday living in Beijing. My little spat with the taxi driver was the first really big argument I have gotten into in the four trips I have made to Taiwan over the last year. Everyone has been so incredibly nice, helpful, and unlike my experiences in Japan, flexible in their dealings that I have felt completely spoiled by the experience. It truly is a wonderful place for travelers. Just in the last 24 hours I have had Taiwanese serve me things that were “sold out” but not yet marked so on the menu, offer to share their umbrella with me when I was crossing the street during a sudden downpour, and had a bookstore clerk give me detailed directions to her competitor down the street. This morning’s experience got my adrenaline running and gave me a chance to practice my fightin’ Chinese in preparation for a trip Sayaka and I will make to China in July. It has been a number of years since I have been back so hopefully, things will have changed there to the point that I won’t have to use any of it.
Perhaps the most amusing thing about my stubborn attitude this morning that I just now noticed while writing this posting is the fact that today I’m wearing a t-shirt I got in Japan upon which is written,
“Disagree without being disagreeable.”
I remember one time, when I was traveling in Pakistan in 1990, I was haggling with a rickshaw driver over the price of a ride. I forget the numbers, but I bargained him down to about 60% of what he initially offered, which I assumed must be the correct price. He seemed very upset, but I thought it was just a show. Half way to where we were going he stopped and tried to raise the price, but I refused. When I got to where I was going I asked the others what they usually paid – it turns out it was the original price the driver had told me. After traveling for some time you get so fixated on not getting ripped off, you can overdo it. The difference between the full price and what I paid was probably just a few cents …
Also, you refer to the local language as the “Taiwanese dialect.” There are two problems with this. First of all, the difference between a “dialect” and a “language” is a highly political one, but linguistically it is usually based on the concept of “mutual intelligibility.” Since Mandarin and Hoklo are not mutually intelligible, it seems reasonable to refer to them as separate languages. They are, after all, much more distantly related than “languages” like Spanish and Italian. Secondly, the language itself is sometimes referred to as “Taiwanese”, but this has become problematic because the Hakka and Aborigine activists point out that their languages are equally “Taiwanese.” A solution has been to use the term “Hoklo”. You will see that the Taipei Times has begun to adopt this usage.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/06/08/2003174219
See here for more info:
http://hoklo.org/HokloCulture
You are the man when it comes to issues like this Kerim, I look forward to reading your thesis! I totally agree with you that the dialect vs. language is a highly political question (if not exclusively so). As a speaker of the Norwegian dialect of Scandihoovian (in so far as we are mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish) I have long found the dialect/language thing something of a fascinating (and often tragic) joke.
Starting to call something a “language” often (but obviously not always) coincides with the rise of nationalist movements, and is thus a political question as you say. Everything I have read so far suggests this is definitely the case with Taiwanese/Hoklo. As such, I’m happy to submit to using the term that insults the least number of people (which is probably a foolish way to measure it since using Hoklo probably insults the nationalistic sentiments of somewhere around a billion Chinese).
While not the case with Taiwanese (except of course for the various movements to establish a writing system for it), sometimes these “languages” are practically invented or mashed together from various idioms, as in Norway’s second official “language” called “ny norsk” or “new norwegian” and Indonesian during Dutch rule etc.