Taiwan

Absorbing All, Understanding Little 

Arrival Tainan. Parades of gods and pounding drums, giant puppets and painted faces. Ghost money burning in metal bins. Thick clouds of sweet incense hiding vivid dragons and ancient banyan trees in the manicured gardens of temples. Firecrackers and fireworks punch the air. Scooters swarm like mosquitoes, channelled between colourful walls of flashing adverts and giant signs, along densely populated pavements where market stalls spill into the road. I pedal through chaos; absorbing all, understanding little.  

My money had run out and I stayed in Taiwan to work for a year. Tainan is a small city in the south of the island, far from Taipei where most of the foreigners lived. I found a group of English, American, Australian and South African teachers, who helped me rent an apartment, borrow a scooter, and pick up work in a Buxiban; an after school “cram school”.  

Living on the road, I never truly took time for reflection; it was easy to cycle on knowing that tomorrow would always bring a new place and new people, the bike could constantly avoid obstacles. But staying in one place for a year gave me the opportunity to take on new challenges; learn about a new culture, understand a new language and find a job. 

I built a new life; teaching English by day and playing drums at beach parties, festivals and concerts by night. After days in air-conditioned classrooms, the other foreign teachers and I took to the evening roads and headed to the coast. Fireflies rose from dust, the sun set over the ocean and the last of the two-stroke exhaust diluted into the humid air as we played in the bamboo beach huts. Hot evening air on sweaty skin, fire dancing and percussion. The city and its beach became home and a year on this tropical island became a punctuation for reflection on myself and travelling the world by bike. 

You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup 

Working in a family run English school, every month the owner and I met for brunch, to discuss work and chat about my life in Taiwan. I admitted that, although the students enjoyed my lessons because I played games and had fun with them, I was worried that I wasn’t a good teacher. Over a sandwich and coffee in a colourful cafe, the owner shared his metaphor for teaching. “Imagine education as a glass being filled with water: the water is the educational content and the glass is the student” he said. “Too many teachers focus on the content, but if we keep pouring and pouring water into a small glass or if the glass is weak, it will soon fill up or break. If we create an education system that focusses on making the glass bigger and stronger, then we can pour much more water into it.”  

My teaching might not have reeled off pages and pages of vocabulary or grammar but when the students were engaged, they learnt without knowing it. In having fun and enjoying class, they were becoming happier and more confident young people and, consequently, becoming bigger, stronger glasses.  

I, too, was becoming a bigger glass. When I first arrived in Taiwan, I’d intended to embed myself in the Taiwanese way of living, seeing the country on it’s own terms and becoming a part of the local culture. Over the year I spent there, I realised that wasn’t fully possible. We are each products of the environments we grow up in and, even if I learnt perfect Mandarin, my European background was so different to that of Asia that it would take a lifetime to fully fit in. That was also reflected in perceptions locals had of me, too; I would always be a foreigner in this city of few Westerners. Accepting this helped me to embrace the opportunities I was given and I spent my time growing. My year in Taiwan benefitted me not only with the money for onward travel but also with a new circle of friends who showed me the country through their native eyes. I gained a richer understanding of Taiwan than I would from cycling through alone, and I took away basic Mandarin language skills that would help me understand more of the world I would travel to next.  

No Regrets 

The year in Taiwan was never planned and, in the beginning, I saw it as a stop that took away from my cycling pursuit. However, pausing to reflect on my travels and the goals I set for myself was an important part of my journey forward. I built a great life in Taiwan with good friends and a good job, I could have stayed there and settled down. However, when I considered who I wanted to be, my heart was still set on cycling around the world. I was happy to sacrifice my comfortable life for the growth I would find by continuing to travel. I wanted to experience more, to complete the circle and to be able to look back and say I saw the world from the saddle. 

Reflection also changed my planned route. My original intention was to fly across the Pacific to South America and cycle up to New York. My revised plan extended the journey much further, cycling around the ocean. So, I packed up and cycled away, through a city I came to know as home and year of memories; reading the pictographic words that a year before were just shapes and passing things that were so alien on arrival that I came to understand. I began to find my cycling legs and routines again, and the numbers once again ticked over on the small LCD bike computer as I cycled towards new horizons.