Reading Between the Lines in a World Where One Can't Read

It’s funny how blatant illiteracy makes life twice as hard as necessary. Yes life is hard for even those of us who can read, but most of you out there don’t walk into a restaurant and have to order the only thing you recognize on the written menu, 牛肉(cow meat) and then have to eat some surprise curried beef innards because you couldn’t read the 10 other characters in the description. I’m lucky though, because I’m a pretty carefree individual. Eating beef innards is the least of my worries and can actually be pretty good sometimes. And for the most part in Taiwan, English is everywhere, pictures everywhere else and when in doubt a very kind, bright Taiwanese person will be there to offer help when asked.

I’ve only had a few occasions of my illiteracy bringing any kind of real embarrassment. One time at my gym, it was about 10 at night and as I finished up my work out I casually breezed by a huge sign in Chinese at the entrance of the locker room without giving it a second thought. I took a nice long shower and relaxed in the fact that I, for once, had the locker room to myself. And since I don’t own a full length mirror at my house, I took advantage of the huge mirrors and empty locker room to openly check out my own butt and see if it was actually getting smaller or if my pants are just getting bigger somehow. Mid self butt check out a very, very surprised looking carpenter rounds the corner only to see me, in my underwear, checking out my own ace. Honestly, I think he was more embarrassed than me. He’s probably never seen a white girl’s booty, or really any booty (this is Asia people). Only then did I realize that reading would have been helpful. He immediately left and didn’t come back, probably reporting me to the manager.

Pathetically, that was the 2nd time I’d embarrassed myself at my gym, the other time being when I called them by accident thinking it was my travel agent and asked them when I could come pick up my ticket to Thailand. Instead of rightfully telling me I was an idiot, they transferred me around to a number of people at the company and set up a time for me to come in and come get my ticket. I think we both had some kind of communication issues going on. Needless to say when I realized what I had done (you know after my actual travel agent called me and told me to come get my tickets) I had to call them back and apologize and explain, that no I didn’t need to come to the gym to pick up my ticket to Thailand after all. All of this wouldn’t have happened if I could just understand the first thing they said when I called, “Hello, this is True Fitness.” Oh well.

Another recent illiteracy problem came shortly after my birthday when a great influx of mail came my way. Basically I don’t give out my address because I don’t really know it. There are numbers that go in places that seem wrong and all the doors surrounding my door on the street are also number 11, so I don’t get how it works. But I gave out my address to a few friends and family and surprisingly had packages delivered to me on my birthday. It would have been great if it was just that simple, I open my mailbox and there is a big box of birthday joy for me, but no, this is Taiwan.

Instead I have two slips all in Chinese with my name on them. My roommate luckily translates it for me and tells me one says to go to a post office a 10 minute bus ride away and the other he’s not sure what it is (and he is Taiwanese so you already know that’s bad when he can’t understand it). The next day, I go to the post office and wait in line at the counter for my turn. I get to the counter and the poor girl starts speaking a mile a minute and pointing for me to go out the door. Apparently I’m at the wrong pick up place. So I walk around the corner to where I think she is pointing into an open truck bay and give the slip to another postal worker who tells me to go to a deserted parking lot. I, of course, follow blindly to where he points. There another worker points to an elevator in a building across the way and keeps saying “sun lo”, which I actually understand as floor three. So then I enter this vacated warehouse of a building and take the elevator to floor three where an old, disheveled and braless woman takes my slip and points at my name several times. I show her my passport and ARC card, but she still seems uncertain of my identity for some reason. Probably because this is where most people come to sell their kidneys to the black market and not to try to pick up packages. But she disappears for a bit and comes back after a few minutes with a box covered in my sister’s hand writing. I am relieved.

Perhaps too relieved because then I pull out the second slip and try to ask her what it is and where do I go to get it. After what seems like an endless amount of speech that I don’t understand, I give up and just say in Chinese “yes, yes correct, good ok, yes. I know I know.” I fool her good. She writes down an address and gives it to me. I assume this is where I need to go to get my other gift, and by golly, it’s my birthday and I want my presents.

Knowing I'm on a few minutes away from ripping open another gift, I hop in a cab and head to the other post office. I am happy to see it is a post office branch when we arrive and not some greasy fish market where an uncertified back alley surgeon is waiting to take my liver. The next 20 minutes is the same as before, walking from office, to parking lot, to truck bay, to inner office, to room of confused and staring post office workers. There finally a very nice gentleman takes me aside and reads my slip. He makes a few phone calls and comes back to me, in perfect English stating “your package will arrive tomorrow.” Oh… thanks. But I work at that time, I tell him and then he personally schedules it to arrive on a Sunday when I’m free, even though they are closed on Sundays. Then he takes my cell phone number and says they’ll call me when they’re close to my house. Then a few hours later he calls me just to remind me that in the future I can just call him instead of coming all the way into his office to ask about a package. I was mortified. If only I could read!

Sadly for the most part, I’ve become quite tolerant of my illiterate status. I get on buses not knowing where their going although their map is clearly outlined in front of me. I say to myself as soon as the sun is at my back, I’ll be headed east and should get off immediately. Then once on the street hassle some poor doorman as to where the heck I am. Amazingly this usually works out for me ok. My foreign friends and I all travel like this, like some kind of retarded herd of humans, wandering aimlessly, yet we always end up at our destination somehow. Well most of us. My friend Michael has a penchant for taking trains that go everywhere but his intended destination including ones that are express 2 hour long rides to the other end of the island.

In many ways my lack of understanding is beneficial to me on a daily basis. I have no idea what my bad kids are saying in class. They could be telling me they hate me and think I smell like rotten dairy products, but I’d never know so I treat them much nicer because of it. And when I watch TV I have no problem toning out commercials or ignoring those annoying typhoon warnings that run across the screen. And since I can’t read the advertising on the subways, I make up my own commentary to go with the imagery provided for breast enlarging electric bras and fat burning pills, “With each zap to your boob, you are slowly increasing your chances of death by stroke while simultaneously making your curves curvier!” “Feel the burn! Not from exercising, but from the pain unleashed by thousands of fat eating tadpoles naturally hungry for your belly fat!” Life, I find, is much more entertaining this way.

So illiteracy may have its downfalls, but for the most part one can survive without mishap fairly easily. Maybe it’s my incredible skills of deduction, or my ability to successfully guesstimate with surprising accuracy that makes living life illiterate bearable. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that when one must survive off of the kindness of others, Taiwan will never be in short supply of a friendly face.