Month: February 2004

“What went wrong?” was a question often on my mind as I worked through the Korea material. For most of my adult life I have had a problem with certain things, and at times it has threatened to get me down. What exactly was the problem in Korea?

I believe that the problem had to do with identity, and specifically the role that environment plays in its development.

The environment in which my identity had been nicely developing until I was about fourteen years old changed dramatically within the space of a few weeks. From that time on – my early teens – I was constantly confronted by failure, for the simple reason that the measure of success was always money, manifested in the clothes you wore, what you could afford and what not, where you and your family lived, and your status in the community. This was compounded by Unpaid Debt, and the fact that goods such as furniture and a few boxes of childhood toys that were stored in a garage could be carted away by people who had the right to take it because of the unsettled debt.

I had to absorb all this new information in my process of developing identity. No surprise that shortly after my life had entered this period I increasingly started defining my identity within the framework of fundamentalist religion.

My early twenties arrived in a socio-economic environment that had not improved much since my teenage years. Due to various reasons, fundamentalist religion had also begun to lose its lustre as a determinant of identity for me. And all of this at a time when I had to raise my hand and say, “Here’s another young adult man. Where should I stand?”

By the time I started eating kimchi and sticky rice for breakfast in Korea, I had acquired a lot of knowledge, understood little, clearly knew “something” was wrong with “something”, and I still couldn’t quite work out where my place on the parade ground was. What exactly was wrong and what should be my struggle would take another few years to express in the proper vocabulary.

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FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2004

The fact that I have made my peace with middle-class suburbia does not mean that I don’t have a problem with the layout of many suburbs.

The average suburb spreads out over several hectares of land. Each house is on a plot which is often cordoned off from the next with wires, walls or sharp poles. Neighbours may be familiar with each other, but regular interaction between fifty or more people of a particular area is not common. Little space is usually reserved for public use.

As an example of a better layout, I can point to the neighbourhood where I currently reside in Taiwan. It isn’t in or near the business district, and can probably qualify according to Taiwanese standards as a suburb. My immediate neighbourhood comprises ten lanes with four-storey apartment buildings – about eight apartment buildings in a row on each side of the lane, with a small alley at the back of the building. On the other side of the road is an area with small houses with very little yard space, if any.

The central point of the area is the park at what can be described as the entrance to my neighbourhood. The park has a basketball court where young men test their skills in the evenings and on weekends; next to this is a tennis court where older men and women and sometimes younger people play tennis throughout the day. Stretching south of this area is a tree-lined park with tables and benches where people of all ages regularly sit and talk, where old men play cards, where grandparents relax with their grandchildren, and where people go for a walk in the late afternoon and early evening.

At the entrance to the park are a few stalls selling snacks and drinks from morning to late at night. There is also a sizeable general store right across from the park. Further down the street is a bustling market in the mornings and some evenings, and by the roadside a variety of small shops, restaurants, bicycle repair shops, and so on.

It is certainly not a wealthy neighbourhood. I get the idea that it is mostly old people, taxi drivers and office workers who live here; nobody at first glance looks as if they can afford any extravagance. However, there is a strong manifestation of community, of people who are comfortable spending time with friends, acquaintances and strangers in public.

I would very much like to return to my own country, but it is unfortunate that I would have to leave this type of neighbourhood for – if I am lucky – a suburb where you can probably not even go to a convenience store without a car, and if you can still reach the local 7-Eleven by foot, you can most likely not walk to the nearest bank or post office. And it is indeed unfortunate that I will probably not end up in a neighbourhood with a park filled with activity and life for at least twelve hours every day of the week.

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FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2004

As I read through the 1996-1998 material, I got the strong impression that Korea had been an incubator for my grievances, and for my insecurities and fears. I was somewhat surprised when I saw how much poison I had spat in that time over “suburbia” – things like “the bane of suburbia”, “I hate suburbia now more than ever” and “culture and art die in suburbia” (just to name a few of my favourites).

What exactly was my problem with life in a middle-class suburb? The architecture of the place isn’t comparable to old European cities, but my goodness, what do you expect? The average suburban garden is also not Kirstenbosch, but the average suburban citizen is not Cecil John Rhodes! And what is a barbeque on a Saturday night, Christmas meals, birthday parties, rugby on TV, and late afternoon walks with the dog if not culture? And “art dies in suburbia”? Give me a break!

Nevertheless, I feel compelled to stand up for myself. Suburbia was to me about more than just the architecture of three-bedroom houses – or any other version of a suburban house, or the number of flowers in the front yard or dog droppings in the backyard. It was a symbol of a broader phenomenon in society, where people constantly peer over the proverbial fence to see what how the neighbours are doing, in what clothes they’re walking around, what model car they’re driving, and how often and to where they go on vacation. Status in this community is like a devil that forces people to do things they never thought they could devote an entire life to. How are success and failure measured in the middle class? Money and professional status. A man beats his wife? That’s terrible, but it would be much worse if he were a financial failure as well. The Johnson children are doing well in school? That’s nice, but did you hear that the father is changing jobs again? A man or woman who doesn’t know how to spell morality, but “did you see they’re driving a new BMW?”

Of course, it made a difference that my own family had tasted dust on the wrong side of the line. Of course you’d have some difficulty with grievances when you get up off the ground. I could nevertheless not fail to confront myself with the question of whether “they” were right, or whether “something” was wrong with the “whole thing”.

How do I feel today about the socio-cultural phenomenon that is middle-class suburbia?

I have mentioned at some point that I no longer have a problem with the idea of a pleasant three-bedroom house, a nice garden, a lawn mower, two dogs and a car (and I know the middle class is about more than just that). I can take this position because in recent years I have taken the concept of middle-class suburbia that had so haunted me in Korea, pulled it apart, and examined exactly what had bothered me so much about the place, and what aspects are actually quite innocent – like the poor dog, and the lawn mower. I finally realised that it is not about the house or the garden or the neighbours, but about what you do to afford life in the middle class.

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FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2004

On Saturday, 14 March 1998, I wrote: “I’m afraid to commit to anything where success is not guaranteed. To tell the truth, I am unwilling to commit to anything where failure is even a vague possibility.”

How do I feel about that now?

I have so far spent five years in Taiwan as an English teacher in a city that does not rank as one of the top locations in the world. (I am talking about Fengshan, not the larger area of Kaohsiung, which is the fourth largest container port in the world.)

I would probably not have considered such a life worthy of my commitment on 14 March 1998, and if perhaps such a life, certainly not in this place. Yet, I can categorically state that despite the price one pays and the imperfection of it, it has definitely been worth the time. Or, like a character remarks in the movie Breakfast for Champions, “It’s all life.”

The alternative is to get older year by year, never committing yourself to anything, all the while waiting for the elusive “perfect” project, or “ideal” life. And what will happen? You will realise too late you’ve gotten old, you mean nothing to no one, and you have done nothing with your life.

Get busy with anything remotely to your liking. It is a million times better than to allow your life to expire while you wait for “something better”.

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FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2004

I went to Korea as someone with nothing to lose – except of course communion with the people I cared about, a particular brand of beer, and perhaps the unique South African landscape. The longer I stayed in Korea, however, the more I began to hold on to things I didn’t have in South Africa before I went to Korea – a job, an income, and a place I could call home, even if it were only temporary.

Of course, these things weren’t enough to keep me in Korea. The people and the things that I had missed in my own country proved to be a much more powerful magnet. In South Africa I could once again enjoy a Black Label, smell barbeque on a Saturday night, and see my family every few weeks. The work, the income and my domestic situation in South Africa did not of course weigh up to what I had gotten used to in Korea.

From the beginning, my situation in Taiwan was similar to what I had had in Korea. I had a decent job, I was making money, and I had a much better residence than I had expected (except for the lack of windows).

What is the difference then between the life I had in Korea and my life in Taiwan? My teaching schedule in Taiwan is better – fewer hours and a wider variety of classes, I have a better domestic situation – especially my current apartment, but the most significant difference is personal projects.

I started doing in Taiwan what I had just talked about in Korea. I do things here to motivate myself, to keep myself going when there isn’t much else to inspire me. I continued making notes about my life when I got here, and this habit picked up a notch when I purchased my first computer in June 1999. Then there were photography, musical instruments, English textbooks, Chinese studies, and for the past year a specific literary project.

My projects and the fact that I have enough free time are more than anything else responsible for my life being better in Taiwan than it had been in Korea.

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