Misadventure in Luodong, Taiwan - Robert Vogt

I’m standing in front of the Luodong train station, my train was uncharacteristically on time and I’m waiting for my Taiwanese supervisor’s father to pick me up. My supervisor, Mr. Yang, is in China on business. I am stressing about whether or not the father will be able to get me back to the station to catch my train at 4:14 p.m. Class at the kindergarten where I teach ends at 4:00. The first time Mr. Yang the elder took me to the train station I had to run like I was fifteen again to catch my train back to Hualian, and I paid for it with sore legs throughout the rest of the week.

After a couple of minutes a woman with a ten-year-old child addresses me, “Eng-a-lish teach-ah?”

“Dui,” I affirm in Chinese.

I immediately think she is trying to strike up a conversation in an effort at finding an English teacher for her son. This happens from time to time. But she beckons for me to follow her. I am thinking that she must be the parent of one of my students and that this must be my ride.

“Yang Guo Wei?” I say Mr. Yang’s full name inquisitively, expecting her to respond to my question with a “Dui, dui.”

She looks puzzled and repeats my words, “Yang Guo Wei?”

That’s OK, I’m sure not every parent involved with my kindergarten class knows Mr. Yang.

“Shao student?” I ask mispronouncing the Chinese word for small as I hold my hand about two and a half feet off the ground indicating that I teach very small children. She nods her head assuringly and I get into her Nissan.

After about two minutes of riding I decide to start working on my all important ride back to the train station. I get my return ticket out of my wallet, point to the time my train departs. And in an attempt to tell her when my train leaves using awful Chinese I say, “Wo qong Luodong sugga Dee-in,” She nods and smiles reassuring me that someone will be thinking about the fact that I will need a swift ride back to the train station.

She takes a completely different route than Mr. Yang, his father, or the school’s principal has taken before. I start keeping loose track of the time in my head thinking about whether or not this woman is the best driver for my return trip.

We go over a riverbed.

“I don’t remember going over a riverbed,” I think.

“Different route.” I answer, “Probably just side-straddled it before or something, whatever that means.” We ride a little further and I see we are approaching the Luodong sports park.

“Maybe there’s a field trip today…,” I think. “That’s good, I won’t really have to work. I probably won’t have to do the ‘Hokey-Pokey.’ But we go right on past the sports park. “That’s okay,” I tell myself, “different route, the long one, or… whatever.”

Because of my trusty Lonely Earth Taiwan guidebook, at times it appears that I know parts of Taiwan better than some of the locals and I’m thinking this could be the case here.

There is a main stretch of highway, Highway 9, that leads from Yilan south to Luodong. I am quite familiar with this road because I lived in Yilan for five months before moving to Hualian. The kindergarten is on the east side of this highway, the ocean side. To the west of the highway lie the foothills of a small mountain range.

“If there isn’t a field trip today, we definitely, have a problem,” I’m thinking, snickering a little to myself as we ride along getting closer and closer to the foothills.

An excellent place for a field trip is a place snuggled at the base of these hills a few miles to the southwest of Yilan. A luscious lake park where children and adults paddle around in foot powered boats shaped like swans while throwing duck food to real life water fowl. I’m hoping maybe that’s where I’ll see the familiar faces of my co-teacher, the American born Taiwanese Jenny Zhang, and students Henny, Elisa, Peggy, Bonnie, and the rest of the adorables.

Nothing at all looks familiar, things look downright dingy. The plushness of the lake park area is definitely absent, and then we turn into a school’s parking lot. It’s not my kindergarten. The woman beckons for me to head into the school after she parks. I get out of the car with the boy who heads toward the building casually.

“Wait…, wait,” I say hoping she understands as I push slowly down with both hands open palmed waist high. She leads me into the school.

“Whoa!” blurt a couple of kids then sort of shy away. This is a common thing for the locals to do when encountering a foreigner for the first time at close range. I walk down a hallway not expecting to see any familiar faces. These aren’t even kindergarten students, they’re all pre-teenagers.

A couple of adults try to talk to me and I forget all of my Chinese and start talking in broken English in an effort to communicate. I mumble, “Not teach here.” Then, “Not right teacher.”

After a bit of this the man whom I perceive to be the principal hands me a phone and a woman speaking English is on the other end. I explain my situation, hand the phone back and soon this gentleman is escorting me to his Volvo.

Moments later we’re flying down country roads passing other cars at questionable spots. He offers me a cigarette but I turn him down. He says the Chinese word for name along with some other words, which I don’t understand. He communicates to me eventually that he wants to know the name of the school. Because of my unfamiliarity with the language I am unaware of the school’s name and I reply, “Bootsa.” But I must not be remembering the Chinese word for, “don’t know,” correctly because it doesn’t seem to be registering.

And I’m back on his mobile phone with the English speaking woman.

“The school’s in between Yilan and Luodong,” I tell her. “It’s off the main road, I think I know where to turn.”

After this the principal is still trying to get info from me so I make like the dashboard is a map. I point to the right saying, “Luodong.” And then to the left,”Yilan.” Then point to where the school would be.

He hands me the phone intimating that he wants me to call the school but I don’t have any idea what the number is and hand it back to him. Then I realize that I could try calling the Yang household. I get the phone back and dial the number.

“We-i,” Mr. Yang’s mother answers in Chinese.

“Hello Mrs. Yang…? This is Jack.”

She probably knows less than ten English words so I hand the phone back to the principal. He talks to her for close to five minutes and then hangs up, makes another call to the English speaking person and I’m informed that Mrs. Yang has told him to take me back to the train station.

I wait in front of the train station until about ten minutes before the kindergarten classes are over, then I go inside and wait for my train back home to Hualian.