WVU - ES: IFYE Program Newsletter

It's Saturday and kids here only have half a day of school. In the afternoon, the local 4-H'ers will meet to prepare dishes for tonight's exhibition. Two extension agents, an older 4-H'er, and I drive into Hwalien City to buy ingredients.

Hunting for a place to park is a familiar game in Taiwan. However, here on the eastern coast, the number of people and cars is somewhat lower. We find a spot in a parking lot a few blocks away from the morning market.

Hwalien City is built on level ground. Behind it, dark mountains rise straight into the clouds. A few of the city buildings are as much as a dozen stories tall. When I first arrived, someone told me they can't build any higher because of earthquakes. The 4-H agent, who is pudgy and cheerful, tells me no, it's because the military has rockets hidden in the mountains behind us. Buildings too tall would get in the way if the rockets were ever fired.

A block away from the parking lot, the golden M of a McDonald's arches high above the street. The Taiwanese aren't used to consonants other than n, ng, or r at the end of syllables. So, they call McDonald's "Mai Dang Lao." I often have to explain that I don't eat hamburgers every day back home, especially not for breakfast.

We walk to the market through streets lined with one-room stores. The awnings from shops on one side of the street almost overlap with those from the other side of the street. Some of my host families have bought their groceries in multi-story superstores, others from a woman who sells her vegetables from a gunny sack on the pavement. This morning's market is somewhere in the middle.

Here, a wide tin roof shelters rows of family market stalls. First, we buy a thick stack of paper-thin pancakes. The man behind the counter has an apron on and more white hair than black. His right hand juggles a big glob of mucousy white dough. To make a pancake, he rubs the glob on a hot metal plate. This spreads the dough so thin that it cooks in just a few seconds. His right hand is still juggling the glob of dough, so he uses his left hand to pluck the finished pancake from the hot metal. I'd like to stay and watch him work, but then we quickly move down a lane of butcher stalls.

The stalls are not busy; so the butchers call out to us as we walk by. Slabs of meat are piled on the wooden counters, ready to be cut to our liking. The stall we stop at first also features a pile of pig legs, skin and hooves intact. Hearts, tongues, ribs, and sausages hang from metal hooks along with sheets of white fat and soft red internal organs. The butcher chops ribs into ice cube-sized chunks for us, then we head a few rows over to another part of the market.

The rough cement floor is wet with the melting ice of the fish counters. The extension agents pile shrimp into a plastic basin and choose three pale squid and a large fish. We still have a lot of purchases to make. At a counter near the edge of the market, chickens, stripped of their feathers, lie on their backs. Their heads dangle over the edge of the counter. We choose two with large, pale red combs and hurry on.

At one large stall, we buy a can of imported peach halves. Here, plastic crates of loose eggs sit next to open boxes and bags of dried vegetables, tiny fish, peanuts, and lotus flower seeds. After seven stalls, we have finished our shopping list and I am beginning to feel like a nap.

Back in the car, the lady extension agent hands out a snack: chewy rice dough stuffed with Chinese turnip, tofu skin, and bits of mushroom. These "cai bao" are steamed on a piece of bamboo leaf. Mine is still warm. At 2:30 p.m., nine 4-H'ers assemble in the big kitchen on the third floor.

Taiwanese 4-H'ers don't have the sort of individual projects our 4-H work is based on. 4-H'ers here learn through group activities. These girls meet with a teacher once a week to learn how to cook. Last year they learned to bake cakes. This year they learned to make Chinese style meat and fish dishes. They are to demonstrate the recipes they have learned at the exhibition tonight.

It's already dark when my host mother takes me on motor scooter to the elementary school. The 4-H'ers have displayed their cooking, leatherwork, and other crafts on tables to one side of the gymnasium. Posters full of photographs showing the year's camping, gardening and dancing activities are also displayed.

Kids in yellow 4-H t-shirts crowd around the exhibits. The rest of the gymnasium is filled with folding chairs and women. A dozen home-makers' clubs have turned out for this yearly event. The women sit in files according to their clubs. I know this because the members of each club have dressed alike.

To my right are the orange-flowered blouse with black slacks club, the pink shirt with twirly knee-length skirt club, and the purple skirt and blouse with pink ribbon corsage club. I sit with my host mother's club. They have opted for a professional look with navy vests and matching ankle-length skirts. This year the yellow polo shirt club is responsible for signing people in and handing out the tangerines after supper.

Each of the clubs has contributed food for the evening. My host mother's club made the turnip cake. It and the other dishes form impressive piles on the tables at the back of the room, but for a short time only. The crowd soon descends upon them with chopsticks.

The dishes include traditional foods of both Minnan Ren and Kejia Ren. Minnan Ren are the main ethnic group in Taiwan. Kejia Ren are a minority. In this mountainous area there is a third group: the Sandi Ren. The Sandi Ren or "Mountain People" lived in Taiwan long before the Minnan Ren and Kejia Ren emigrated from Mainland China. Today, their social and economic situation is similar to that of American Indians.

I ask my host mother (who is half Minnan Ren and half Sandi Ren) if there are Sandi Ren dishes here tonight. She says no, Sandi Ren foods aren't good to look at, just good to eat. After awards and the mandatory photographs, the clubs begin the evening's program of singing, skits, and dances. The home extension agent uses Chinese to announce the performances. Mandarin Chinese is the official language of Taiwan and the only language taught in school.

However, as I sit with my host mother's club and listen to the women talk, I don't hear Chinese. They are speaking Taiwanese, the language of Taiwan's Minnan Ren. This is a whole other language. In Taiwanese, "Hello. Have you eaten?" is "Li ho. Jya ba bwei?" (the title of my newsletter). This same greeting in Chinese is "Ni hao. Chi bao le meiyou?" Many of my host families prefer to speak Taiwanese and some of my grandparents have never learned Chinese.

One of the most popular evening TV shows is in Taiwanese and there are even commercials in Taiwanese. Tonight, most of the songs and skits are in Taiwanese (which I don't understand). However, Taiwanese and Chinese aren't the only languages spoken here. The Kejia Ren minority has their own language, though some Kejia Ren I have spoken to say that their children aren't learning it very well.

When the home extension agent hears that I am asking about Kejia Ren songs; she gets on the microphone and asks for volunteers. One of the purple skirt and blouse with pink ribbon corsage homemakers gets up and sings a song in her own language. Each of the nine Sandi Ren tribes also has their own language.

However, in my one Sandi Ren host family, the kids usually spoke Chinese even when their grandmother was speaking to them in their tribal language. Two homemakers' clubs here tonight are made up of Sandi Ren. One of the clubs dances to a modern pop song. The other performs one of their traditional dances while an old woman bangs her staff on the stage to add rhythm.

This is my last stop and my last host family before I return to Taipei, Washington D.C., and finally home to West Virginia. If you are in West Virginia in the spring and see someone eating their breakfast pancakes with chopsticks, it will probably be me, trying to ease my homesickness for the thirty-two families I left behind in Taiwan.

Windsong

Special thanks to the Jefferson Co. Leaders' Association, the Jefferson Co. 4-H Foundation, and the Ridge Runners 4-H Club for their generous help with trip expenses.