Neighbours

August - October 2007

as always, when westerners and taiwanese happen to be living in close quarters, misunderstandings and tensions arise. how can they not? we dont understand each other's cultures and often dont even understand what each other is saying. i have experienced this numerous times in taiwan and had some paticularly special encounters with our neighbours.

first off, there was the senile landlady whom i could never understand and i dont think particularly liked me anyway. our conversations normally consisted of me pointing and trying to communicate in broken chinese; "Here. There is a problem with this machine. Please help." and her shouting and frantically waving her hands, which i took to mean either;

(a) "You stupid foreigner. It is not broken. You just push that button. Do you understand? Do you understand"

or

(b) "You stupid foreigner. I will fix it, but I am waiting for the technicians to come. Do you understand? Do you understand?"

either way it was quickly decided that she was useless, most probably because she WAS senile! and that her son was the one to deal with. he was professional, friendly and most importantly, NOT senile! luckily she didnt bother us too much except to come and demand rent etc.

Rusted gutter

then there were the strange people that shared a wall with our flat. The father was a taxi driver and the unfortunate, miserable-looking daughter worked double shifts at her job. They were unfriendly from the start. walking past colin and i on our veranda and ignoring our attempts at neighbourly greetings, perhaps even glaring at us - although this might just have been paranoia on our part. although, we did start to notice that whenever we had to make a noise such as knocking a nail into a wall, there was always an answering noise from our neighbours. it got to the point where even coughs were mimicked?! their veranda was a dump and their flat very run-down. in fact, their rusted gutter was left hanging for weeks after one typhoon, their veranda littered with rusted metal (hmmm, tetanus!) until the father decided to saw the gutter down at 6 am on a saturday morning (i hope he got tetanus!).

in fact, the most direct contact we ever had from them, the only tangible evidence of their loathing was a letter found in our gate one morning. i had had convulsions late that night (which is always noisy) and then colin and i had had one of our legendary fights. the gate was opened the next morning to a short letter written in perfect english, "Dear neighbour, Please be quiet after twelve o'clock as we have to get up early for work. Thank you." fair enough! and after that a concerted effort was made to be quiet by twelve o'clock. but that didnt seem to stop the passive aggressive behaviour. often, if we were deemed to be making too much noise, they would just open their gate, mutter loudly and then slam it again. so what?! 'no skin off my nose' - and we would continue to make our terrible noise.

now, the taiwanese are generally not confrontational and this kind of passive aggressive behaviour is quite common. if a taiwanese person has a problem with you they will tell someone else to tell you eg: your boss or your landlord. there are various cultural reasons why face-to-face confrontation is generally avoided (one of which is the concept of guanxi (and 'face') - which i will not presume to explain here), but even knowing that and living with it for 3 years, i still found it irritating and childish. i often wished that our neighbours would either come and talk to us directly or, preferably, just chill the fuck out! but that is because i am a rude, confrontational, bitchy south african ;-).

Toothless
besides these anal neighbours we had the british guy who, as i have said before was very nice, but made me very angry with his loud music, constant drug-taking and partying. i felt that he negated the point of me moving into the mountain flat in the first place. i had moved to get away from noise and stress, to enjoy some natural beauty and tranquility in the hopes of speeding along my recovery, but all that i had found was some crazed brit who incited colin to party and take drugs too. GREAT! just what i needed for my stress levels! besides him there was also 'toothless' (who has been mentioned before). she was lovely; friendly and helpful although impossible to understand, but she did spend an inordinate amount of time pottering around on the roof gardening when she actually lived on the floor below. but it was nice to have someone beautifying the rooftop.

there was one last neighbour with whom i had an explosive encounter, but i have no idea who she was or what she looked like. i do know that she lived on the 3rd floor though! it all happened one sunny day while rose was innocently emptying the bucket that collected the dripping coolant from our air conditioner down the same old drainage hole that she always used. a few minutes later there was a knock at the door. i opened it and there stood our british neighbour's landlady who lived on the 4th floor. "hi?!"

"dont pour water down that hole! how can you pour water down that hole! you dont understand because you are a foreigner! do you understand me?! how dare you pour water down that hole! etc etc"

"i always pour water down that hole. that is what that hole is there for."

"the lady on the 3rd floor is angry! her washing is wet! you made her washing wet because you are a foreigner and you dont understand!"

(intermittent screams of rage from the 3rd floor balloon up to the 5th floor)

"well, it's not my fault. i didnt design the building. i didnt know. me being a foreigner has nothing to do with it."

"she is very angry! do you understand?!"

"why doesnt she come and speak to me?!"

and the circular argument continued until even my senile, old landlady was involved. i was really angry by the end of it all, because i didnt understand why i was being screamed at in the first place, i didnt understand why i was being screamed at by a totally different woman, and i seriously resented the implications that because i was a foreigner i was stupid and didnt understand anything. of course i bitched about the whole palaver to colin when he came home and he went and shouted at both ladies who were arguing with me and because he is a man and 2 m (6'8") tall there were apologies all around. however, i still never met the mysterious banshee from the 3rd floor.