Hi there:
Today I’m excited to present my first-ever stories set in Taiwan. (On a side note, terrible news out of Hualien recently. Let’s hope for a quick recovery for the wounded and a speedy reconstruction for the town itself.)
It’s always been my desire to expand Gushi’s translation coverage to as many parts of the Chinese-speaking world as possible.
A special thanks to Story FM, which published the source material as podcasts on Jan. 29 and Jan. 31. The two episodes feature the lives of Ririn Arumsari and Thanh Ha Nguyen, who moved to Taiwan from Indonesia and Vietnam respectively.
Arumsari recalls in touching detail her 10-plus-year career as a caretaker of elderly people while Nguyen describes her unlikely journey from factory worker to graduate student to college professor. Here she sums up nicely the immense bias that Vietnamese women face in Taiwan:
The fact is if you are respected and valued, you don’t need to stress your identity. But what if you are constantly discriminated against, told repeatedly that you’re a foreign bride and someone I can abandon at any given moment, and that when I abandon you, when we get divorced, that is, you need to scoot back to your home country? That’s why the Vietnamese brides work so hard and are so desperate to get that ID.
As usual, feel free to send me your thoughts and comments at gushi20215@gmail.com.
Lastly, this issue is dedicated to the memory of George Hui, an old family friend who passed away unexpectedly on Monday.
Take care and see you soon.
—ML
Breaking Barriers, One by One: Two Foreign Workers in Taiwan Recount Paths to Assimilation
Narrators: Ririn Arumsari and Thanh Ha Nguyen
RA:
My name is Lili. I’m a native of Indonesia. I’ve been living in Taiwan for 12 years. Currently, I work in Taipei. My job is taking care of Grandma. I’ve been working in the field of patient care from my first stay in Taiwan up until now.
Apart from work, I enjoy writing and reading.
Back in Indonesia, I lived in a small village in East Java’s Ponorogo District. My parents are farmers. As a child, I enjoyed helping them out with farm chores in the field.
I wanted to attend university but my parents couldn’t afford it, so I gave up the idea. After graduating from senior high, I worked for a year in Indonesia before moving to Taiwan.
Why did I choose to work in Taiwan? It’s because I watched the hit Taiwanese TV series Meteor Garden as a kid. As depicted in the show, Taiwan looked gorgeous. I was also a fan of actor Jerry Yan. I wondered if I could look him—and the rest of boyband F4—up in Taiwan.
Before moving to Taiwan, I applied to an employment agency. I learned how to speak Chinese, how to clean house, how to take care of patients and so on. We spent some three months at the agency before flying to Taiwan.
When I first got to Taiwan, my first bosses weren’t very nice. I couldn’t understand Chinese at the time and they wanted me to pick up Chinese more quickly. But I was a slow learner, perhaps due to my limited academic ability, so they kept complaining and scolding me.
Eventually, I asked my agency to place me with a new employer. It just happened that a man needed help taking care of his three children. While working for him, I gradually learned Chinese from the three kids.
And thus my new life in Taiwan got off to an official start.
My boss had three kids. The kids loved to talk, so I slowly picked up Chinese from them, following what they watched on TV and their homework assignments and so on. I also met a Taiwanese friend on social media. We got along well. I use translation software as backup when writing in Chinese.
My friend examined my messages carefully. "You miswrote this character. You need to fix it," he'll say. Plus I like to read. I'd buy Chinese books and make my way through them slowly, looking up the definitions and pronunciations of characters on an app and marking them on the pages. Eventually I was able to read in Chinese.
I got along with the three children quite well. Whenever we had free time, we'd go to the park together. We'd take pictures together every single time. Those were happy days. We're still very close, even though all three are in uni now. We're all people who treasure close relationships.
I lived in Hualien for a year when I took care of Grandpa. I lived in a clinic. I wrote a lot that year, taking notes on how to perform tuina, massage and the purpose of various kinds of Chinese herbs and so on.
I was really happy during my days in Hualien. I liked to take Grandpa out for short trips near the clinic. Even though Grandpa couldn’t speak, he used his facial expressions and I could read his lips. Whenever we passed a guava tree, I’d tell Grandpa that this is someone else’s guava tree and we’d poach a few guavas and put them in a bag, hiding the bag under the blanket over Grandpa’s lap.
On the night Grandpa passed away, he kept on staring at me and holding my hand with a tight grip. From the time I took him to the hospital until the moment he took his last breath, I was the only person by his side. None of his immediate family members were there. He clung to my hand tightly, only letting go gradually after he died.
This grandpa is accounts for the most memories in my 12 years in Taiwan.
The elderly people I took care of were often extremely lonely. Take a grandma under my care, for example. She shopped for groceries every Sunday. Before she set off, she’d tell me: “My youngest son is coming for dinner later.” But her youngest son never showed up after she returned from shopping, always canceling by phone.
Incidents like that happened more than once or twice. I witnessed them many times because I cared for these people for many years. Grandma was constantly disappointed. As for Grandpa, he adored his children and grandchildren, but they never showed concern or took care of him. I was the only person by his side from the time he fell sick until he took his last breath. Eventually, the gaze he directed toward me was different from the way he greeted his family. He was extremely happy to see me, but he didn’t seem pleased at all to see his own family.
The Migrant Worker Literature Prize is now in its eighth edition. I submitted entries every single time. I think I was shortlisted in the second edition, but I didn’t win a prize. Because I plan on heading back to Indonesia for a while later this year, I thought back to a few other stories I had written that were largely complete but missing endings. I remembered the grandpa I had taken care of because he was under my care for more than five years. Every corner in that home is filled with memories of the time I spent with Grandpa.
So drawing from my recollections, I started to write our story: what kind of a person Grandpa was, the scene when he passed away. I put down everything. I finished the piece in one night. After rereading it, it struck me that this was the best story I had ever written, so I submitted it to the jury of the Migrant Worker Literature Prize.
Many of the elderly people we care for are extremely lonely. They need affection from their children. But many of the kids respond they already have their own families, which is why they forget to check in on their parents. But as far as the parents are concerned, they always worry: “Has my son had enough to eat?” They also hope their kids can visit them once a week, even though that is a far-fetched hope. Even though the grandmas and grandpas I take care of are quite well-off, I think they’re extremely lonely. That’s why I wrote this story about loneliness.
**
Because I've been in Taiwan for a long time—nearly 12 years—I consider myself assimilated. Some of my friends say I've already become a Taiwanese who can live alongside and hang out with them. Indeed, as part of my job, I can accomplish many tasks independently. If I need to go to certain places, I don't need to ask for directions. In fact, sometimes people ask me for directions. Naturally, we hold onto good memories.
On the flip side, there are still people who look down on us. For example, when we're out and about running errands, people will still say: "So you're a migrant worker?" But once people find out I can speak and write in Chinese they don't bully me. When you're competent and brave, people won't have the gall to bully you.
There's a government program that allows foreigners to apply for a residency permit. If you live in Taiwan for five years after receiving the permit, you can apply for permanent residency. But a successful application isn't guaranteed because it depends on your pay level.
I really want to stay, because I know Taiwan so well by now. I even find Indonesia a bit alien when I go back. It's like visiting a foreign country. It doesn't feel like my home country any more. There are so many places I don't recognize.
After spending all these years in Taiwan, I'm used to everything. Instead, I'm not used to anything when I go back to my own country. I'd really like to stay if I can.
Sometimes I wonder if I can find a companion, if I will meet the ideal partner. It's quite difficult for me to stay on strength of my job alone. But if I get together with a local, if I've decided on my future, then I can definitely stay.
Writing is my freedom. Because there are some things that I can't express fully when I chat with friends. When I write, I can tell complete stories.
I may want to diss someone, or I may have a crush on someone, and I can write these stories down. People who don't read your stories won't be able to figure out who your crush is, but you already feel better because you've put your thoughts to paper. Plus I don't enjoy discussing personal matters with other people. That includes my mother. I've been this way since I was kid. Whenever I'm upset about something, when I argue with someone or when I have a crush on someone, I write it down.
That's what writing means to me. Whenever I put my thoughts down, I feel a bit better.
THN:
Hello listeners. My name is Thanh Ha Nguyen. I’m from Vietnam. Twenty-one years ago, in 2002, that is, I set foot on this magnificent island for the first time. I came here to work. I was a migrant worker, as local Taiwanese put it.
My contract was for 13 years. After my contract ended, I married a Taiwanese man and stayed. After settling here, I completed master’s and doctorate degrees. After finishing my studies, I became a university teacher. Right now I’m an assistant professor.
My life in Taiwan has experienced all sorts of ups and downs. I’ve also held many identities. I’ve been a migrant worker, a foreign spouse, as well as a foreign teacher. At one point, I ran a shop in Taiwan, so I was also a foreign employer. I’m always proud to tell everyone that I’ve held every possible identity that a foreigner or immigrant to Taiwan can have.
The first time I set foot on Taiwanese soil was at 10:30 p.m. on March 23, 2002. I remember it clearly, because it’s still extremely cold in Taiwan in March.
My dorm room contained a single bunk bed. The next day our employment agency sent someone to take us to the supermarket. We could buy whatever we wanted. Back then we didn’t understand any Chinese. We just went wherever our agency told us to.
When I examined prices while browsing at the supermarket, I was struck by how expensive items were. When you shop abroad, you naturally convert local prices into your home currency and compare them to prices at home. If my calculations told me that a certain good was cheaper than at home, I’d be delighted and buy it, but almost all Taiwanese products were much more expensive than Vietnamese ones.
Factory work always involved night shifts. We worked at an electronics factory and were divided into three shifts. Most Taiwanese workers were assigned to the early shift while foreign workers were scheduled for the night and overnight shifts. I worked the night shift. The early shifts lasted from 7:10 a.m. to 3:10 p.m. and from 3:10 p.m. to 11:10 p.m. Our shift ran from 11:10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Some workers would go grab a bite after their shift, but because we’d be extremely sleepy, as soon as our shifts ended, we’d turn off our machines and find a corner to collapse in. The factory floor wasn’t equipped with beds. If we wanted to sleep, we typically slept on chairs. We’d even fall asleep on chairs next to the machines. When the factory bell rang, we’d wake up and resume work. My reverse schedule lasted for three years.
All I could do after work is head back to my dorm room. I didn’t have a bike back then. I couldn’t go wherever I wanted to. Even with a bike, at most you could travel within a 10-kilometer radius. You couldn’t go beyond that distance.
We worked six days a week, but sometimes we wanted to work overtime because that’s how we made more money. So whenever we could, we worked overtime. If we couldn’t schedule any OT, so be it. Even if we had down time, we had nowhere to go. We didn’t know any locals or the local layout, nor did we speak the language. All we could do was make do.
When I first learned Chinese, it was during the age of cassette tapes. I listened to my tapes everyday, so frequently that they were damaged. The voices on the tapes became distorted, but I kept on listening.
I used a Vietnamese textbook, which was in fact translated from material originally published by Beijing Foreign Studies University. The instructors on my tapes spoke with a Beijing accent, so I learned Beijing-style Mandarin. When I started speaking to people when I was out and about, they’d ask me: “You’re a mainland bride, aren’t you?” “No, no, no, I’m from Vietnam,” I’d respond. Then they’d say: “So you’re a Vietnamese bride?” I’d say: “No, no.” Then they’d break out in laughter.
Later on I got married. I married a Taiwanese man. My husband lived in Tainan, so when I got married I knew I was going to live with him in Tainan, but I needed to get a job there first. I majored in French in Vietnam, but there were no relevant positions in Tainan, plus my Chinese wasn’t great back then. It wasn’t as fluent as it is now. Eventually, I decided to return to my old company, taking a position in Kaohsiung. About eight months later, I became pregnant. I was scheduled to give birth in eight months, so I quit my job in Kaohsiung. My husband ran a bookstore, so I helped run the store while taking care of my child at the same time. After I got married, I was still working in Kaohsiung and living in a dorm for migrant workers. So raising my child in Tainan and running a bookstore marked the first time I came into direct contact with Taiwanese society.
That was the time when Taiwan-Vietnam marriages were at their height. Taiwanese were witnessing more and more Vietnamese brides. They thought these were financial transactions, so many people would just say to your face: “Oh, a Vietnamese bride. All it costs is 500 New Taiwan Dollars (US$15).” If you pretended you didn’t know what they were talking about, you were OK. If you didn’t, what they meant was that for a mere NT$500, you could have sex with the Vietnamese women in Taiwan.
When we Vietnamese got married in Taiwan, we were instantly looked down on. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that many Taiwanese at the time paid agencies to scout for potential brides in Vietnam. These couples didn’t have a relationship—they had just met and didn’t know each other at all. They’d return to Taiwan directly after a few days and get married. The age gap was often huge.
Even though I was a highly-educated intellectual, a university graduate, I was still subject to these insults. Maybe it’s because there were too many fake marriages back then. After moving to Taiwan, many of these Vietnamese women also couldn’t communicate with locals because of the language barrier and culture shock. That’s why there were all these misconceptions.
It is possible that there were women who got married to Taiwanese for money alone. Both sides were in it for the money. Because you’re a Taiwanese man, I’ll enter into a fake marriage with you just so I can move here to work as a prostitute—indeed, there were cases like that. If you were Taiwanese and you married a Vietnamese woman and then she started selling her body after she moved here, would you have a good impression of her? Of course not. But you too were paid to get married and yet you still despise the women, even spreading word that all Vietnamese immigrants are the same.
But are all Vietnamese immigrants like this? No. But positive events travel slow, while bad occurrences become news instantly. For example, if several Taiwanese news channels ran the same story about a Vietnamese immigrant doing something bad 24 hours a day, then everyone would only think that person has poor character. But if 10 channels cover the story with different headlines, then viewers would be prone to think that there are 10 problematic immigrants. Now, if each channel runs a different headline every hour, wouldn’t people think there were 24 bad guys involved? Ten channels make for 240 bad guys. That’s terrifying.
So I thought to myself: how can I change my own situation? I told my husband the answer is education and scholarship. My husband was extremely supportive. “Great. If you want to continue your studies, then you should go for it,” he said.
The history department at National Cheng Kung University has a professor who specializes in Vietnam. He said the purpose of their research is to educate the public about Vietnam. I asked the professor if he was taking any students, whether he would accept a student in my circumstances. He said he would, adding that I should check if I met university-wide criteria. If I did, he said I could enrol in the history department and that he would take he would take me on as a graduate student.
Other foreign students who applied to Taiwanese university normally don’t have to interview, but I was based in Taiwan, so I was called in for an interview. I was pregnant with my second child at the time. I attended the interview hauling my big belly, another child in hand to boot. The interviewer asked me what I was going to do about my kids when I went to school. I said my family was extremely supportive and that they would help take care of the children when I was busy.
That’s an extremely rare phenomenon in Taiwan, because the prevailing attitude toward foreign brides in mainstream Taiwanese society is: “We paid for you, so you will defer to us. If we tell you to stay home, you stay home. Whatever we tell you to do, you follow. If I want you have children and specify a number, you do so.”
Many of my foreign friends don’t have opinions of their own. They just cave. Many others just put up with the oppression, because you need to live in Taiwan for three years before qualifying for naturalization, which takes another two years, so that’s five years before you get your ID card and become a Taiwanese local. Only then can you do whatever you want without interference. That’s why many couples divorce as soon as the wives get their IDs. But that also reinforces the stereotype that Vietnamese brides bail once they become locals.
After beginning my graduate studies, I began coming in contact with a wider range of people. School officials also appreciated the novelty of a foreign bride attending graduate school, so I became somewhat of an icon, often being invited to various events as a promotional case.
Many people ask me if I will do this or that after I get my ID. I respond that I still haven’t gotten my ID yet. Then people will say: “That means you can’t leave yet, right?” This is always the case. All I can do is reiterate that not every Vietnamese woman marries a Taiwanese man for an ID card and explain why I personally don’t need one.
The fact is if you are respected and valued, you don’t need to stress your identity. But what if you are constantly discriminated against, told repeatedly that you’re a foreign bride and someone I can abandon at any given moment, and that when I abandon you, when we get divorced, that is, you need to scoot back to your home country? That’s why the Vietnamese brides work so hard and are so desperate to get that ID.
But if I can live freely and independently, why bother getting the ID? The ID doesn’t make a big difference to me. I can still study and enjoy health and labor insurance. The only thing is I can’t buy a home, but I don’t have enough money to buy property, so that’s irrelevant to me.
After I started graduate school, some media outlets began to notice the racial profiling and interviewed me about it. I agreed to the requests. It was an even better development when the journalists published their stories and made more people aware of the issue. As I mentioned earlier, one person’s bad deeds can easily morph into 240 pieces of bad news, so one person’s good deeds can also become 240 positive news items.
At that point, I had already started teaching Vietnamese at my university. Many of my students would say: “Teacher, I want to marry a Vietnamese woman just like you.” I’d respond: “That’s rosy thinking. Not many people are like me. Plus you don’t start off like me. You have to put in a great deal of effort. Look at me—I started as a rank-and-file worker. When I first started studying, I accumulated my Chinese slowly, slowly, bit by bit. I didn’t start off by being able to study in Chinese. There was a process that people didn’t see. All they see is my success, so they think it’s an easy task.”
Many people aspire to be like me. As I put in the hard work, Taiwanese journalists covered my story. Now that other new immigrants see my example, they begin to wonder if they can be the same.
Nowadays more and more immigrants have the chance to study. They may start out in primary school, progressing from primary school to junior high to senior high, all the way to graduate school. There are many people like us.
In all honesty, getting a PhD is an extremely tough journey. Not everyone can persist. Personally, I think getting a lower graduate degree is already more than enough. After that, the immigrants can participate in Taiwanese society pro-actively instead of being passive as in the past.
**
Most people like to make quick judgments and decide on your nationality based on appearance. That’s why I tell them: “Don’t treat me as someone from a certain place. Just view me as a human being. That’s the fairest approach.”
When Taiwan began opening up to foreigners some 30-odd years ago, people came here from all across the world. These people were called new residents. Actually, they were called new immigrants initially, but there are two types of immigrants—those who move to Taiwan and those who move away. The type that leave Taiwan do not pertain to our discussion, but people who move to Taiwan definitely want to stay, hence there was a shift to the term “new residents.”
But I wonder if we can remove the term “new?” Just “residents” is fine. We should enjoy whatever rights that you regular residents do. How come we are deprived of some of our rights?
Taiwan is way too diverse—and yet it is so onerously classified. There shouldn’t be any categorization. We are all here, after all. Why do we need to distinguish between people so meticulously? We are all Taiwanese. Whatever rights and duties exist, we should enjoy and shoulder them together. We should be viewed as equals.
So just treat me as a human being. This is what I always wanted to convey: that I am just like you. I can do whatever you can, maybe even more.