Lien Chan's speech at Beijing University

My wife and I just finished watching a rebroadcast of Lien Chan's "historic" speech at Beida and came to the conclusion that one of his main points ran along the lines of "what a great man I am to have come to the mainland and to Beida". His speech was full of quotes from the leaders of different countries (Churchill, for instance, and Reagan's [ugh] "If not us, then who? If not now, then when?") that would make you think, if you didn't know better, that Lien was a national leader himself. (The Reagan quote came near the end of the speech, and Lien connected it to his reasons for being in China.)

He also got some shots in on the DPP and TSU, criticizing their ideas as still being in the 20th century. (Which is kind of ironic--I thought half the 20th century in Taiwan was dominated by a political party that spent a lot of its time thinking about how it would retake the mainland...) Altogether it looked like it was lapped up by the Beida audience (even though Lien did imply at one point that a lot of the intellectual giants of Beida, like Hu Shih and Fu Ssu-nien, escaped to Taiwan after 1949... ahem...).

Back from Ghent

My experience of the conference on Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics at the University of Ghent last week was great, particularly because I felt my session went quite well. The session title was "Direct Address" and featured Maria Boletsi from the University of Amsterdam, Olaf Du Pont from Hogeschool Ghent, and Fernand Vandamme from Ghent University (and me, of course!).

Boletsi's paper (abstract) on the conflicts between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the issue of the name "Macedonia" was a very interesting counterpart to my paper (abstract) on the naming of Taiwan in R.O.C. presidential inaugural addresses. Du Pont's paper (abstract) on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism also fit our "mini-theme" of rhetoric and national identity quite well. And the final paper by Vandamme introduced the idea of content management as it related to the study of rhetoric. I think the best part of this session was that the four of us hadn't planned to present together (we didn't submit a panel proposal, that is), but our papers still fit together so well. (This usually doesn't happen to me...) And the fact that we were all talking about different nations broadened our views of the rhetoric and politics of national identity.

I'll say more about the conference later. Just wanted to post this for now...

良藥苦口

"良藥苦口," my wife tells me (good medicine tastes bitter). Then she gives me the cup of Chinese medicine that is supposed to help bring down the swelling on my foot. I taste it and gag, instantly getting the the second part of this chengyu. "Hold your breath and swallow it in one gulp," she suggests. I can do the first half of this, but can't bring myself to accomplish the second. Wow! This is awful stuff! Indescribably awful! It must be really good for me!

Pedestrians need sidewalks

My colleague Michael Jacques had a letter printed in the Taipei Times yesterday on the lack of usable sidewalks in Taichung.

13th R.O.C. English and American Literature Association Conference

While I'm posting Tunghai-related events, here's some information about this conference that will be held at Tunghai in December. The conference theme is "(De)Constructing Identities: Cultural Translation and Literary Empowerment" and the Keynote Speaker is Dr. Shirley Geok-lin Lim of UCSB, who will be speaking on "Asian American Inventive Identities: Rethinking Difference and Hybridity in Chinese American Mixed Race Identities."

From the call for papers:

We welcome paper proposals on topics related to the study and teaching of English literature, particularly in Taiwan. We are particularly interested in the following: the ways in which literary texts dismantle and (re)construct such identity categories as race, nation, class, gender, etc.; the strategies via which Taiwan-situated readings of Anglophone literature recognize and negotiate cultural difference; and the ways in which literary works contribute to an increased sense of agency for and when acting in the world.

Abstracts (in Chinese or English) are due May 10. For more information, click the top link.

Panel discussion on "The Image of Taiwan in Europe"

My OFL colleagues in Tunghai's FLLD are going to hold a panel discussion on April 22. The topic is "The Image of Taiwan in Europe." They've invited panelists from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Taiwan to talk about stereotypes that Taiwanese might encounter in (and have about) Europe and "how to overcome such hurdles in intercultural communication." The panel discussion will be held at 6:30 p.m. in L007 (the FLLD theater). Attendance is free. I wish I could go, but I'm going to be in Belgium on that day. (Ironic, isn't it?)

I'm a little bit country, ...

If you can believe this... Seems to leave out a ton of varieties of American English. (I also think quite a bit of my English has been shaped by my experiences teaching English in Taiwan all these years.)

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

25% Dixie

20% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

[4/17/05 Update: Bridget Samuels (a.k.a. ilani ilani) has put together an analysis of the dialect test in order to answer "why is it that a bunch of Californians have been scoring 5% Dixie" on it... Check it out.]

Fourth acupuncture treatment

Today we went to a different place to get my ankle worked on. Originally we had been going to the China Medical University's hospital, but my recovery seemed kind of slow. So we went to a Chinese medicine clinic (a clinic of Chinese medicine? a Chinese medical clinic? er...) recommended by our neighbor. The doctor there agreed that the recovery was going a little too slowly. He said I should probably come to the clinic every day or every other day (which will be easier because the clinic is closer to home than the hospital).

Then he took me into the back and stuck two needles in the top of my head (to help my foot regain some of its flexibility--don't ask me how) and four in my ankle. That's about 3 times as many needles as they used at the CMU hospital. I told my wife I felt like a bulletin board. After a while the nurse took out the needles (almost forgot to take the needles out of my head!) and packed my ankle in some Chinese medicine. I'll go back tomorrow for another treatment.

After 15 years, Julien again

ERG will remember how in the early 90s, our mutual professor S would greet me as "Julien" every time he saw me. For some reason, I never had the heart to tell Professor S my real name (or maybe I just didn't care enough to tell him), but I was curious why he always addressed me as Julien. I guessed he was mixing me up with Julien Benda, author of The Treason of the Intellectuals.

Anyway, yesterday I ran into a former student who was visiting campus for the day, and he greeted me with a big smile: "Julien!" I'm pretty sure he was mixing me up with a former teacher here named Julien, though. Wonder if I should change my name, though...

Conference prep

Getting geared up to go to Belgium later this month for a conference on Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics (for some reason, I find the lack of an "and" in the conference title kind of cool). Now that I'm no longer worrying about how I'm going to pay for the trip, I can spend some time productively--worrying about what I'm going to say. I've got a paper that's about 8500 words and I'm still fiddling with the conclusion, which will probably make it longer. I've got 20 minutes in which to deliver it. So I'm trying to figure out what can be cut out of the oral presentation. My subject is presidential inaugural addresses in Taiwan, so I figure I'm going to need to keep a lot of the background information in, otherwise the presentation will be incomprehensible to most of the people at the conference. I suppose I can keep my quotations from the inaugurals to a minimum (though that means my audience will miss out on the A-bian imitation I've been working on).

I think this will be a good experience, though, because it's one of those times where I'm talking about Taiwan to people who probably don't have more than a general knowledge about Taiwan and its history. I need more practice with that, I think. It'll be interesting to see how clear and meaningful I can make my presentation in terms of the conference's focus.

[Update, 4/18/05: I've managed to cut the paper down from 30 double-spaced pages to 15, by cutting out all the inaugural addresses except for those of the democratically elected presidents. The word count is reading 5,218 right now, but I think I need to cut out more. At the same time, I've got to make sure this thing still makes sense to people who don't know much about Taiwan's history...]

Spring break gripes

I'll limit these to only a couple, since no one likes a complainer:

1. I told my students a few days before the break that I'd probably wait for the vacation before I got the flu that they were passing around. Well, so far I've avoided getting sick. Instead, I fell on the stairs the first day of spring break and twisted my ankle pretty badly (sorry, no pictures, but you can look at this from Earth Wide Moth to get a general idea). The good news is that I survived my first experience being acupunctured [is that a word?] without freaking out. I get the second treatment today. News at 11.
   
2. Because of 1., I've spent a bit of time on the sofa during the break. Besides moaning and groaning (like a typical male, I didn't go to get any treatment for my ankle until a couple of days after falling), I started watching 好美麗診所 on TV. It's fairly entertaining, but why'd they have to make the bad gal (Peng Chunmei 彭春妹) a Hakka? (And why did they choose A-ya (阿雅), who's about as Hakka as Ma Ying-jeou, to play a Hakka?)
   
3. On the bright side, I managed to hobble down to the travel agent yesterday to pick up my tickets to Belgium. Now if the NSC would just hurry up and approve my travel grant before the government disbands the NSC...
   

Finding new audiences for the former native speaker

I've been thinking about how I might expand my audience base beyond personal friends, family, and people googling for donuts. (Not that I'm at all unhappy with you folks!) But, I wondered, what could I do to ensure a connection with the savvy erudite group that I hope to reach? Then it hit me. The problem with this blog is that it just hasn't been discussed enough at scholarly conferences. In an attempt to help out would-be "former native speaker" scholars, I provide the following titles (courtesy of the amazing ... PoMo English Title Generator):

• Appropriation and Nationalism in Notes of a Former Native Speaker: Jonathan Benda Desiring Political Power
  
• The Borders of Subjectivity and the Seductive in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• The Labor of Womanhood and the Transformational in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Fragments as Subject: Hybridizing Historicist Dis-ease in Jonathan
  Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• The Murder of Intercourse and the Erotic in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Advocating Ethnocentrism: Primal Autobiography in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Male Transgression and the Transgression of Animal Mythos in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• The Self of Labor and the Peripheral in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Transforming the Patriarchal Politics in Jonathan Benda: Notes of a Former Native Speaker and Alterity
  
• Performing the Orgasmic Influence in Jonathan Benda: Notes of a Former Native Speaker and Labor
  
• The Resistant Assimilating The Marginalized: Jonathan Benda, Notes of a Former Native Speaker and Tyranny
  
• The Supplement of Autobiography and the Convicted in Jonathan Benda's Notes of a Former Native Speaker
  
• Community and Danger in Notes of a Former Native Speaker: Jonathan Benda Dismembering Neocolonialist Vision

Remember, this is a win-win situation--I'll get publicity, and you can get a line on your CV!

This has got to be a joke

I got this e-mail message today:

D‮ae‬r Ba‮syalcr‬ Me‮ebm‬r,

T‮sih‬ e‮am‬il was se‮tn‬ by the B‮yalcra‬s s‮re‬ver to v‮re‬ify y‮ruo‬ em‮lia‬ ad‮sserd‬. You m‮su‬t c‮pmo‬lete t‮sih‬ pr‮sseco‬ by cl‮ikci‬ng on the l‮kni‬ bel‮wo‬ and ent‮gnire‬ in the s‮llam‬ w‮dni‬ow yo‮ru‬ Barcla‮sy‬ Member‮hs‬ip numb‮re‬, p‮edocssa‬ and m‮rome‬able w‮ro‬d.

Th‮si‬ is d‮eno‬ for y‮ruo‬ protec‮it‬on - b‮suace‬e s‮emo‬ of our memb‮re‬s no lon‮eg‬r h‮eva‬ acc‮sse‬ to the‮ri‬ e‮am‬il a‮serdd‬ses and we m‮tsu‬ ver‮yfi‬ it. To v‮ire‬fy y‮uo‬r e‮liam‬ a‮erdd‬ss and acc‮sse‬ y‮uo‬r b‮na‬k a‮occ‬unt , b‮na‬k a‮occ‬unt , clikc on the lnik bolew: ...

I've gotten some bad spam before, but this is ridiculous...

Donut update

Stopped by Waili Donuts again the other evening and was pleasantly surprised to find a jelly donut filled with blueberry ... uh... jelly! This made me a little more hopeful about the future of my relationship with this institution.

On the other hand, Poagao reports that he found red bean paste-filled donuts at the Mr. Donut in Taipei. I guess this is one of those "glocalization" examples I can mention in my ICC class next semester.

By the way, I was interested (but a little disappointed) to see that one of the most frequently used search terms that led people to this blog was "donuts" (including "Mr. Donut" and "taiwan donuts"). I'd like to think I have more to offer than commentary on donuts, but I guess it's a surfer's market. And "donuts" is a better fitting search term than another one I noticed: "Who cares. Taiwan is a mess anyway."

A year older, none the wiser

Well... "the former native speaker" is a year old(er) today. A lot has happened in the past year (most of which, unfortunately, I can't talk about in this forum). One thing that hasn't changed, though, is that Lien Chan and the KMT aren't giving up on their search for "the truth" about President Chen and V-P Lu's shooting (even the pro-pan-blue China Post puts quotes around "the truth"!). But at least PFP Chairman James Soong had the sense to stay home from yesterday's protest march.

[Update: this is what I get for trying to be clever--my own brother (who knows my bd is in January) e-mailed me to ask if I'd changed my birthday and thinks I'm talking about "my" birthday and not the blog's birthday... (I'll resist getting into any mumbo-jumbo about mediated selfhood... for now... and just say "thanks" on behalf of the blog to those who wished us/it/me a happy birthday!) And now I've added quotation marks to "the former native speaker" which will probably make it clearer (or perhaps even more confusing...).]

Just a note here to myself, to read Amardeep Singh's post "Francis Fukuyama: The Protestant Ethic in an age of Islamic Terrorism" when I get a chance...

"...false friendships, deals, grudges, acts of political sabotage, indecorous alliances, favoritism"

"V. S. Ravens" writes about "The Limits of Tenure" at her large public university in the U.S. What strikes me is that her description depiction of dirty campus politics in the U.S. is remarkably similar to the way some folks describe depict university life in Taiwan. Which is to say, to quote Erma Bombeck, "the grass is always greener over the septic tank". (Gotta remind myself of this sometimes...)

(I should also note that I'm not particularly sympathetic regarding her attempt at what she admits was a "political deal" to remove "the department's ineffectual staff member". It comes off sounding both underhanded and politically naive at the same time.)

Hmmm... don't think they asked anyone around here...

According to a BBC World Service poll, most people see the PRC's influence in the world as positive rather than negative.

The small print that accompanies the graph, though, notes that the margin of error for this poll is + or - 2.5%-45%...

Hu Shih and public speaking

I was looking through Two Self-Portraits: Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao and Hu Shih and came across Hu Shih's description of how he learned how to be a public speaker in English. He was a student at Cornell when he first took a course in public speaking in 1912. As he describes the experience,

My professor, Professor Everett, was a very good teacher. Summer school began in July, and the first time that I was called upon to make a speech, I actually trembled. I had made some speeches before, but this was the first time that I had had to get up and speak in a class of public speaking. Though it was a hot July day, I felt so cold that my feet trembled, and I had to hold on to the small table while I tried to think of what I had prepared to speak. Professor Everett noticed that I held on to the table, so the next time he took away the table and I was forced to think of my subject unaided. In thinking of the subject I forgot my cold feet, so I did not tremble, and that was the beginning of my career as a trained public speaker. (216)

I want to mention this to the students in my FENM class on Friday--I think the Chinese majors in particular will appreciate it...

[3/6/05 Update: At first I thought the "Professor Everett" Hu Shih mentioned was Everett Lee Hunt, one of the early members of the "Cornell School of Rhetoric," according to Thomas W. Benson. But Benson says it wasn't until 1913 that Hunt graduated from Huron College in Huron, South Dakota, "whereupon he was immediately hired [by Cornell] as an instructor in Oratory and Debate" (5). Perhaps, however, Hu Shih was mistaken about the year he took the public speaking course.

Work Cited: Benson, Thomas W. "The Cornell School of Rhetoric: Idiom and Institution." Communication Quarterly 51.1 (2003): 1-56.]

Weather

Here it is only March 2 and it's already rained for about 300 days this month...

Today we did an impromptu speaking activity in FENM (Freshman English for Nonmajors) class. (I always feel like an enormous fraud conducting this kind of activity because I'm about the worst impromptu speaker on the planet... er... well, come to think of it, there's always GWB to make me look good.) In her speech, a student expressed her preference for Taichung because it's not as rainy and windy in the winter as Taipei. It's hard for me to believe that right now, given the rain and wind that have been pounding our apartment this evening, but I suppose it's possible that it's even worse in Taipei right now.

And I just bought a Lonely Planet guide to Belgium that suggests I take an umbrella with me because April is a rainy month...