by Lillian Liang
High-waisted takuki (folk costumes with the Korean national flag pattern) and takusan (the Korean traditional fan in a three-color spiral pattern) are all I knew about Korea before Kim, now one of my roommates, moved in. She’s 100% Korean in nationality and in behavior as well. After some dining experiences with her, I came to believe that all Koreans must be really crazy about red pepper. Yes, crazy is the word; she can never enjoy a lunchbox or any dish without the small bottle of Tabasco she stores in the refrigerator, and I, seated beside her, always end up sweating all over merely by smelling it. Kim loves Chinese culture, and has studied Chinese for about 3 years. Although sometimes seeming shy because she lacks a large Chinese vocabulary, she had quickly adapted to a new life in Taiwan. “I love life here in Taiwan. Its so different!” she says. “In Korea, life is more restrained and inflexible under the domination of Confucianism. We care about virtues and what others think of us. Nowadays, girls who marry foreigners create a bad reputation, since during wartime it was thought that only prostitutes would marry foreigners. So we should be careful not to fall in love with a foreigner,” she said in solemn tones. “Despite the thriving economy of Korea in recent years, there is still a lot of conservatism and it seems hard to remove it. People don’t have much freedom under strict and demanding laws. When there’s a traffic jam, we never pass other cars since there’s always a surveillance camera nearby. And we are not allowed to stay outside past midnight, whatever our age. You can say that Korea is still full of conservative values and a restricted lifestyle. Maybe this explains why feminism hasn’t been very successful. Surely Taiwanese are much more open-minded. When I first came here, the way a couple showed affection for each other on the bus really stunned me; in Korea we never do such things in public. In so many ways male chauvinism still dominates. For example, women are strictly limited in their pursuit of a good job unless they are incredibly competent to compete with men in their careers.” “On the other hand the educational system in Korea is not much different from that in Taiwan. There are also countless cram schools and a torturous JCEE for universities in Korea, except that tutoring is illegal. But there are still some remarkable differences. For example, a second foreign language is required even in Korean senior high schools. Every high school student is required to learn a foreign language other than English; among them, Japanese, German, French and Chinese are the most common.” Having spent three years in Taiwan, virtually a land of freedom to her, Kim has decided to stay here and get a job after she graduates. As for her homeland, there are still some things that can’t be replaced and are worth going back for now and then–cheap fashionable clothing, delicious Korean food, highly modernized theme parks, and of course, skiing, all of which aren’t readily available in Taiwan.
0 Comments
by Amy Wang
True, such things do happen-my roommate suffered from it last semester-but not me! Somewhere deep in my unconsciousness I had known it all along, but I refused to acknowledge its existence. I only went for a regular check-up, but he found it all the same. “ You’ve got a little problem back here,” he pronounced, poking and probing. “Let me see your X-rays…Hmm, yes…right, it must be removed. Same on the other side. Have them treated as early as possible-the later, the worse! However, I don’t do surgery…go to Dr. H. at C. Hospital. I can make arrangements for you tomorrow.” Although this piece of news came without too much shock, it was still very hard to accept my death sentence, spoken in the kindest tone by my dentist. I had always been immune from dentist-phobia-until 2 p.m. the next day, when I sat in the torture-chair in the dentistry department on the second floor of the C. Hospital. Hoping desperately that Dr. H. would only take a look that day and arrange the surgery for a later date, I was seized with panic when I saw the assistant hold up the hypodermic. “Anaesthetic,” she explained in the most persuading manner. “With this you’ll have no pain at all.” But the whining and whimpering from the chair next to mine was realistically dissuasive. “ The drug will need some time to take effect,” said the assistant after she had emptied two full syringes of the anaesthetic in me. “Your first time here, right? You’ll have to have your X-rays taken. Walk straight down the hallway, turn right, first room on the left. After you get the X-rays, come back to this room and give them to me.” I heaved a sigh of relief-anything to get out of that chair. There was a long line of low-spirited strangers outside the X-ray room. No one spoke. I sat down in a vacant chair. An hour had almost gone by when I finally received my X-ray photo. It looked exactly like the bulletin outside Dr. H’s office. The bulletin’s caption read: “Disruptions in Teeth Eruption: A Frequent Problem With Wisdom Teeth.” Two X-ray photos showed wisdom teeth growing horizontally instead of vertically, crowding the molars in front of them. Mine was a standard textbook case. For the second time I was in The Chair. By this time, after waiting so long, I only wished to get the whole thing over with. All my fear gone, I even wanted to see the instruments. Before I could react, however, I found myself with my mouth iodized and my face covered with a green cloth, exposing only the iodized area. I could see nothing except a green haze. I asked Dr. H. to take the cloth away, but he replied that it was necessary for the sake of sanitation. I requested to see the instruments, but was also refused. “We call it our ‘secret weapon’; you’re not supposed to see it,” Dr. H. chuckled. As the surgery began, I could hear nothing else but the noisy drilling of the “secret weapon.” My face was numb from the anaesthetic and I felt nothing except the metallic instruments moving in and out of my mouth. As a result, I was positively bored! I left the chair feeling relieved, but at the same time, a bit disappointed that nothing very memorable happened. The sense of loss, however, did not last too long, for I suddenly discovered that I could not blink my eyes! My facial muscles were paralyzed. Unfortunately, I was wearing contact lenses at the time, and had to maintain a degree of moisture in my eyes. I had to blink manually all the way home-very awkward and embarrassing. Having heard many people complain about headaches, fevers, and swelling cheeks caused by wisdom teeth, I had often wondered how these annoying teeth are given the epitaph “wisdom.” How can this be when these teeth give people such a bad time? Is wisdom begot from toil and trouble? Is it the producer of pain itself? I have been trying to solve the mystery ever since I had my own wisdom teeth, but I still have not reached any conclusion-I have lost the wisdom to find the answer. |
Authors
The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
|