Even Fresher Cultural Perspectives After My Latest Visit Home

First impressions as I enter my apartment:

Wow, everything is so short and small. The table is like half the height of American tables. The Couch is half the size of American couches. The Refrigerator, cabinets…literally everything about my apartment is a significant downgrade when it comes to size compared to America. The ceilings even seem lower. It reminds me of how Japanese this place is actually. You could fairly say that Taiwanese people and their culture are a good part Japanese. The food, the styles and even their excessive politeness. 

As I completed each leg of my return Journey, I went on a kind of a reunion tour through all the places I’d lived in the past decade. I left from my childhood home in Upper Gwynedd to go to my beloved city of Philadelphia. After that, I took a flight to Beijing, where I had lived for about a year. Then, I arrived in my current location of Taipei, where I have been for the better part of 3 years. Each place reminded me of why I felt the way I did when I lived there. And, the unique experience of being in these places one after the other afforded me an opportunity to make some new observations and to compare and contrast once again from my present perspective.

Upper Gwynedd left the same impression as it always does on me. It was really nice to see my parents and family and they have a beautiful home, but one must drive about 10 minutes to access even the closest business. I got the feeling after being there for about a week of being trapped on all sides by oceans of roads where only single file traffic passes. All goods and services are restricted by a tide of very slow moving drivers in single file, cramming through town intersections to access the large strip malls and shopping centres. I find that the wanderlust in me cannot tolerate knowing the sparseness of the sprawled suburban towns that awaited an hour in each direction. The wait in the traffic lines is a heavy price to pay for limited cultural experience if you ask me. 

Let me backtrack a little bit there though. I used to say that the Lansdale area had no culture. But that is definitely not true. It has a very distinct small town culture. It is the historic American culture first brought by the immigrants who came to the American East coast and settled in Pennsylvania. When growing put here I perhaps did not appreciate these things, but on my return visit, I paid special attention to the colonial architecture of the houses and businesses, surely some of which must be over 2 or 3 hundred years old. These towns and hamlets are breathtaking beautiful…rolling across the rich farm land and forest south of the Lehigh valley. You can see the small nuclei of what used to be disparate towns. This area has as much history if not more than anywhere else in America. The Pennsylvania Dutch, the Schwenkfelders, the Irish and Italian Catholics, the Presbytyrians, the Swiss-German Mennonites,  and our own tiny town of Upper Gwynedd, which was founded by Welsh Quakers.
At this time, many immigrants from other places have come to call the region home. There is now a Jamaican barber shop on Main Street Lansdale, and plentiful Korean owned stores with Hangul translation on them. A Greek restaurant and a Spanish restaurant (although I severely doubt its authenticity) now also inhabit Main Street. There are sushi restaurants run by Chinese people and even Vietnamese pho restaurants. There have been improvements in diversity no doubt, yet I still feel that all of these places have been extensively “Americanised”. While at a local sushi restaurant, I ordered the aptly named “Godzilla Roll”; A freakish conglomeration of fish and mayonnaise all rolled together in seaweed and rice wet with the tears of Japanese sushi chefs who lament the bastardisation of their magnificent art. 

The Korean grocery store Assi is certainly authentic enough however. Complete with ridiculous English translations of Korean product logos, this place gives one a true feel of what Asia is like. I think the Koreans have really colonised the area quite extensively. They have their own Churches, supermarkets, restaurants and schools now it seems.

Because I have forgotten to do so, let me now say a bit on the magnificent Italian American culture which is uniquely American. “Italian” restaurants in America can be found nowhere else. Even in Taiwan, the Italian food is quite accurately Italian. You cannot find a Chicken Parm Hoagie at these places, or even Chicken Parmesan at all, “Italian” hoagies, or even the American pizza which has denser dough and is much larger than usual. You can only find what we would refer to as “artisan” pizza, but is probably just what the Italians call “Pizza”, although I have also heard of it referred to as “Napoli” style. Don’t misunderstand me though. I LOVE American Italian food. It’s one of my favourite things to eat back home. The Italian American deli, or even just the deli in general (Jewish I suppose) seems to be pretty uniquely American. You just don’t find that stuff here. I don’t think there is anywhere in Taiwan that you can just walk into a deli and tell them I want such and such on a Kaiser roll. In fact, I don’t even think they have kaiser rolls. 

So, these are the things I noticed in my home town. Everything seemed bigger and clumsier than I remembered. And although while in Taiwan, I have touted the superiority of American drivers, I actually found them to be cumbersome and fearful upon my return. I have become used to the free flowing Taiwanese way of driving. That is not to say that I am used to psycho drivers here. After all, a psycho driver is a psycho driver no matter where you live. 

Next on my reunion tour was Philadelphia, a city of great culture, history and character where I spent about 5 years working and studying. I returned to West Philly to visit some friends and was quickly reminded of how much I love the place. So beautiful…so rich in culture and history, and with such a wealth of diverse, intelligent, and interesting inhabitants. And the musical culture is so rich! There is not enough room to begin to elaborate on everything Philadelphia has to offer. It is the “big city with a small town feel”, the home of Rocky, and birthplace to some of the greatest musicians in American history. It is a foodie and a beer snob town, and also home to some of country’s best universities (namely Penn). 

While in Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to compare it with Taipei. Everything downtown seems to be in a large stone building, which is a bit different from Taipei, which has haphazard stands everywhere. I wouldn’t have noticed that before. I was struck there by the relative sparsity of nearby businesses in West Philly. Every destination required a walk of several blocks or so. Which, in the bitter Pennsylvania cold, was something I had to reacclimatise to. Taipei has spoiled me. There are like 50 businesses within a 5 block radius where I live. And the climate is much warmer here.


Beautiful, however, Taipei is not. The architecture here is straight up ugly. It’s just a very ugly place. It has a ramshackle charm to it, no doubt, but it does not even pretend to approach the beauty of a city like Philadelphia. After the awful experience I had as a customer in the Philadelphia and Chicago airports though, the Taoyuan airport just outside of Taipei was a breath of fresh air. Nobody does convenience like the Taiwanese, with the exception of perhaps Japan. Everything is clearly marked, and there are uniformed attendants waving you in the correct direction, even though the airport is very small. When approaching the baggage claim, there was a mobile digital display to tell you where to go to get your bag. That is the asian proactive customer service that I have become accustomed to. In Chicago, I had to get the attention of restaurant attendants to find out where to go. And in Philadelphia, only a passing pilot assisted me with where to go. The checkin lady didn’t even tell me which direction to walk in after checking me in. It was a bewildering experience and triggered some rather strong feelings about how far my own country has to go to improve things.

So I am back in the city that the Taiwanese tourism department refers to as “The Heart of Asia”. It is good to be back, but I have had such a whirlwind readjustment in the last two weeks. Traveling to America after a year and a half abroad entailed some serious reverse culture shock. Everything is just so huge in America. After re-acclimating to a more regal space, I find myself a little disappointed coming back to my little apartment. We live in very close quarters, and the walls are quite thin. Every morning I get woken up by a phone alarm that plays music from what sounds like a nintendo game and it’s impossible to know where it’s coming from because of the way the sound echoes off of the many building facades lined up facing each other. I often hear the children in the apartment above whining when I’m in the bathroom, and the sounds of the street drift right up and keep me awake if my windows are open. Taipei is a loud and ugly city. This is kind of the stark reality that I have to accept as I return to spend the next 1-2 years of my life here. 

An ugly city, but a convenient one. Everything is so convenient here. Doctor’s appointments, job interviews, traffic. Everything moves quickly and efficiently. You simply make an appointment online and then you are in and out within an hour usually. There are convenience stores everywhere and so many businesses are packed together so tightly. It’s a very dense city. 

Beijing was pretty much the same as I remember. With every sentence ending in an “Arrr” and everything moving at a snails pace. I even snapped some hilarious misspellings on the restaurant menu at the airport. I don’t know what it is about that place that they can’t spell English words correctly. Of course, Beijing is the place where I was delayed overnight because of a luggage issue. It took them about an hour of deliberation and about 10 phone calls to figure out that I had to stay overnight. Everything in Beijing just takes like three times as long and has like three times as many steps as it should. Even at the currency exchange booth, they had to stamp like 10 documents and sign like 4 carbon copies. But one thing I will give to Beijing airport: it is still way better than Chicago! I leave you with these hilarious photos: 

PA is cold!

That's a noodle boi!

Nobody does sandwiches like Wawa!

Scooter culture slowly creeping into Lansdale? 

West Philly Charm (Ali's Place)

Fresh Cultural Perspectives After My Latest Visit Home

Each time I come back to my home country, it is an opportunity for reflection. I observe, with wonderment, the things and places that have changed since my last return. Of course, not only have the places changed, but so have I. My expectations are so different this time. On my first visit back home, it was kind of a shock coming back into the US airports. The service sucks, the facilities are dirty, and there is no proactive help. This is quite different from airports in Taipei and Tokyo, where neatly uniformed attendants greet you and smile and are far more available to ask questions. In many ways, I have an easier time navigating facilities and ticket problems while living in Asia than I do even in my own country. 

People at the airport here can just be straight up rude. They cop an attitude when you have the gaul to ask them to do their jobs. Now that’s not everyone of course. There are plenty of nice and helpful people too. But as I observed on my last visit home, it seems like customer service is conditional here. It may be given if you are polite and not inconveniencing the working person that much. And it’s not that I’m not polite in Asia. But it’s almost as if polite is not enough in America, but you have to be practically obsequious to get people to do their jobs.
Case and point: When at Christmas Eve dinner with the family, I overheard a customer pleading with the waitress to bring their check so they could finally leave. They were slammed and the service was rough that night. People were waiting way too long for their drinks, meals and checks. The customer entreated the server “I know it’s super busy and you’re working very hard, but we would really love if you could bring us the check because we’ve been sitting here a while and would really like to leave.” This type of thing is very unlikely to happen in Taiwan or China. Most likely not in Japan either. In Taiwan the interaction would go like this, “excuse me, I want the check. I’ve been waiting so long. Thanks.” ”不好意思，我要買單，我等很久. 謝謝。“ Let’s take a look at them side by side:

America: I know it’s super busy and you’re working very hard, but we would really love if you could bring us the check because we’ve been sitting here a while and would really like to leave.

Taiwan: 不好意思，我要買單，我等很久. 謝謝。

So at’s one of the things that has been difficult for me coming back. I find that I have really internalised Taiwanese service norms and I think Americans actually find it rude and sort of shocking. I really had forgotten how much small talk people make at the check out or to just any type of employee at all. It pains me to be rude, and after my second week, I am more adjusted, but I feel like it would take even longer than two weeks for me to really get back into it.
But it’s not only the length of the interactions. I had forgotten that the USA is a place of many cultures, and that I come from but one. White suburban culture. There’s city culture then too, and many different types of that as well. So America I think is actually quite difficult to navigate in general with regards to behavioural and cultural norms. Taiwan is actually largely homogenous. I mean, they will openly refer to me in the third person as “the foreigner” right in front of me. Can you imagine that happening in an American city? 

Now, I would like to state a kind of disclaimer and say that I experienced beyond kindness and warmth more than negative experiences. So, for the record, I would like to say that my experience in America was spent mostly dealing with very warm, kind, loving and generous people. And those people were all different colours and ethnicities.

But, I had an interesting conversation with my friend Sam, who said he had taken some courses on body language and communication with regards to race. To make a long story short, people internalise and carry with them racial anxieties and tensions and then express them in their body language. And in America, we have a dark racist past (and present). So for example, a white woman is in an elevator and she unknowingly clutches her purse a little tighter as a black man steps in. Now that’s just one example and I think it is worth noting that these type of racially heated moments can be expressed passive aggressively in all types of interactions…probably mostly subconsciously. Like, for example, I had a very rude experience with an African American woman at the checkin counter. 

They announced that if you were in the boarding group I was in, and had luggage that would not fit under the seat, they would tag it and send it to your final destination. Now I had a backpack with stuff for the plane and my trumpet. As such, neither of these things could be sent on the stowaway. So I approached and verified that there would be no overhead storage. She repeated the line that bags could be tagged. I told her I could not send my trumpet on stowaway. She repeated the line again that bags could be tagged. I repeated, I have a sensitive instrument that cannot go in stowaway. She repeated the line again, at which point I stopped her and said “I know that you can tag the bags, that’s not why I’m talking to you.” When I pressed the issue, she said, “well, do you wanna miss your flight?” Now I was heated. I won’t regale you of every last detail, but let’s break it down for a moment. 

I had an expectation that the customer service person would try and find a way to help me, because that’s what they are supposed to do. Her expectations were apparently very different from mine. She didn’t really give a shit if my problem got solved, she was just chucking out the stock line that she knew and that was it. But what made it much worse for me was that she really patronised me on top of it. Her tone was condescending, she laughed and looked at other people while I was talking to her, and wouldn’t even let me speak barely when it became apparent that I was irate. Now I didn’t use abusive language or threaten her in any way, but I felt as though I was the recipient of more than just bad customer service. 

Now what was the origin of this “more than”? Perhaps it was cultural, American vs. Asian service principles. Maybe I was too rude for her and she wanted to make me pay for it. Perhaps, and this is what I believe, she (a black woman) was in a service position to me (a white man) and couldn’t help herself to dish out an attitude in response to what surely must have been an observation of the smug surety of my white privilege. Or maybe she was just not a very helpful individual. Now, we will never no for certain what the cause was. Maybe you all could comment below and let me know what you think. AND, I am in no way saying that all, or even  many African Americans act this way towards white people, I am merely saying that it happens on occasion. Also, I accept that it could have nothing to do with race. She just may be an obnoxious individual with a poor (perhaps American) sense of what it means to do your job. I guess I just forgot how complicated life in American can be with trying to navigate different cultures and locations. Here I was in Asia, thinking of how hard it was to do this…but I actually genuinely think it might be harder to do in America, even though I speak the language.
That was one thing that was really surprising to me. I thought “oh great! I’m coming back and will be able to deal with things in my own language.” I thought things would be way easier. But there are so many factors at play here that I just didn’t expect. Even now, as I sit on the flight to Chicago, I have some moderately loud Chinese people sitting behind me. I want to turn around and  tell them to be quiet, but I can’t tell if it’s just my prejudice against loud Chinese people (and they are loud), or if they are actually too loud. Update: I turned around and politely asked them to be quiet. I think that was a good solution :). 

So I guess a lot of it comes down to how we approach situations. But I’ve got a lot to learn about how to react to situations as well and I’ll be honest, it’s really hard for me to not get upset when I feel like someone is being unfair on unjust. Do you swallow your pride or stick up for yourself and press the issue? I suppose these are questions that everyone deals with on a regular basis. 

On a broader spiritual path, this may just be another life lesson for me in patience and expectations. With regard to the former; have it, and the latter, do not have them. This will improve any situation no doubt. I am a bad horse, tough to train and stubborn. But there is hope for me, for as Zen master Suzuki says, “a bad horse is a good horse”. Demystified: it is our faults that we learn from. We learn more from having more faults. We also probably suffer more too… but that’s neither here nor there, is it? Happy 2016 everybody.