The five-hour bus ride south swept me past the hazy concrete sprawl of factories and suburbs. A gargantuan figure loomed out of the late afternoon haze, towering over the urban wasteland spread beneath him – advertising for the local karaoke bar, as I discovered later. I stepped off the bus into evening in another world. Hot neon stained the night and flaming dragons rode the rooftops. The sidewalks bred thick nests of parked Yamahas. The air was soupy with fumes. On the street, slop shops sold pigs’ ears and intestines and baby-chicks-on-a-stick. A man passed by on a scooter, IV stand on his foot board and needle in his arm. City-slicking; Asian-style. Threadbare palm trees tried in vain to sweep clean the cluttered sky. Not your usual, run-of-the-mill, tropical island, this.
So, here I was; in Taiwan, about to embark upon a year-long sojourn teaching English, learning Chinese and generally imbibing the mystique of the Orient, or whatever mystique I could find in the land of the plastic gizmo.
Having successfully managed to extract a two- month visitors’ visa from the zealous guardians of Taiwan’s immigration policy in Pretoria, after much form-filling, paper shuffling and impassioned pleading, (an approach preferred by most of the visa offices I have frequented in my long and illustrious travelling career) I approached the next hurdle with high confidence … two months in which to find a job and apply for a work permit.
My job search netted a couple with the alliterative names of Dick and Daisy. He – a blonde, boozy Yorkshireman of thirty and she – a Chinese Ma Baker in pastel suits. The deal was done over lunch. I would teach in their language school and they would apply for my work permit which I could pick up in Hong Kong before my tourist visa expired; no work permits being issued within the country. In the meantime, I was to start work immediately. I congratulated myself, seasoned traveler that I am, on successfully negotiating the treacherous waters of foreign employment and sallied forth to find myself a house.
My new housemates proved to be several warring colonies of ants, the resident rat who shared his kitchen stronghold with an armored battalion of cockroaches, and six Western men far from home, earning lots of money and raising all kinds of hell.
Our little foreign community was not popular with the neighbors – our immediate neighbor in particular. She was an elderly Chinese lady with strongly traditional values and an uncertain temper, not improved by the fact that after most of her life spent in this quiet little cul-de-sac she now had to share her neighborhood with a boisterous pack of carousing ‘big noses’.
I remained undaunted. I moved into the room affectionately known as the ‘Iranian cell’ by all those who had passed that way on their way up the ladder of the house’s hierarchy. Last-one-in landed the cell and had to wait for a member of the ever-shifting population of the house to move out before acquiring a more desirable room. My little green square of space had a single window that looked out upon 25 floors of red-brick apartment block across the road. I didn’t get much sun. Nonetheless, the job was secured, I had a place to live and I’d have a work visa by the time my two months were up.
Buoyed by self-confidence, I launched myself into the task of teaching English to fledgling anglophiles in diapers. I was cheerfully undaunted by warnings that teaching without a work permit was a potentially risky business as the police occasionally got the wind up and raided schools, netted illegal teachers and put them on the next plane home.
Tirelessly, I rose at seven every morning and saddled up my scooter to brave the bloodshed and carnage that is morning rush hour traffic in Taiwan. Fearlessly, I threaded my way through the melee of motorbikes, cars, buses, taxis, cyclists, pedestrians and temple celebrations to reach my morning kindergarten class.
In all this flurry of activity my two months were soon up and my work permit had not yet materialised. Upon questioning my new employers, it would seem that there had been an unavoidable delay and they advised me to seek out the Chief of Police in the Foreign Affairs Department and ask for a two-month extension.
‘But what should I tell him?’ I asked. ‘I’m not supposed to be working for you yet.’
‘Don’t worry. Your work permit is, uh, in the works,’ they soothed. Together we concocted a tale to bamboozle the bureaucrat and I dutifully presented my case to him the next day.
‘I am here visiting my cousin,’ I explain, ‘and am waiting for him to finish teaching before we take a tour of your fascinating country’.
‘This cousin … what is his name?’
‘Uuh, Scott, he lives in the house in which I am staying.’ So far, so good I think.
‘This Scott … how is he related to you?’
‘He’s my mother’s cousin, twice removed,’ I shoot back, beginning to enjoy this little banter.
‘Then, why has he an American passport and you, uh, don’t?’ Momentarily stymied, I recover. ‘His family moved there when he was a child.’
‘Then why are your family names not the same?’
I was becoming aware that my story was wearing a little thin. Mr Chen must have come to the same conclusion as he wryly stamped a two-week extension into my passport and sent me on my way.
I made my way to kindergarten the next morning with the unnerving suspicion that I was being followed by the immigration police. Morning break was spent in the bathroom so as to avoid any imminent raid. Later, after several cunning detours designed to throw any clandestine pursuers off the scent, I managed to make it home, undetected and undeported. Congratulating myself on my evasive tactics, I walked into the lounge, only to find it redecorated … in wall-to-wall blue serge!
Nodding and smiling in a violent panic, I recognised the familiar faces of regulation immobility that had greeted me at my visit to the local police station the previous day. Before I had time to compose my stricken features, close my gaping mouth and scrabble for a suitably nonchalant opener, from the far end of the room, cast into shadow by my sun-drunk eyes, a familiar voice penetrated my reeling brain. It was my old friend, the police chief, and he greeted me warmly.
An exchange of pleasantries followed. He inquired if I was satisfied with my extension. I expressed the regret that my time in his extraordinary country could not be longer. He heartily welcomed me to try again and proceeded to initiate an inspection of passports. At this point, the only thing I had going for me was that my erstwhile cousin was not home to compound my guilt. Seizing the opportunity, I retreated upstairs to chain-smoke and eavesdrop on events from the top of the stairs. Passers-by offered updates on the proceedings. ‘Andy’s off to the police station ‘cos his visa isn’t valid.’
‘They’re asking about “your cousin”.’
As I stubbed out my seventh consecutive cigarette, amidst unintelligible Chinese and the low mutter of conversation from downstairs, I perceived the tone was lightening. There were laughs, an offer of coffee and then, suddenly, eerily, fantastically, came the sound of voices raised in song. The entire local branch of the Foreign Affairs Police was giving an enthusiastic rendition of ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ in my living room.
I should perhaps have taken this at face value and surmised that the danger was over, but for some reason it threw me into further agitation. Singing bureaucrats are a rarity in my long and mostly unsatisfactory experience of them and I didn’t like this turn of events in the slightest. That was it. My Peking duck was cooked. The handcuffs would be on and they’d be leading me out to my departing plane as I bravely whistled, ‘It’s a long way back to Jo’burg,’ to the tune of Tipperary.
Reality rarely seems to live up to my imagination. The police, it turned out, weren’t there in zealous pursuit of my illegal ass, but merely responding to a complaint from our neighbor about the noisy goings-on in the foreigners’ house. Things were settled amicably enough after we all dutifully signed our names to a document, drawn up by the police, promising that we would keep the noise down in future. We signed, the neighbors signed, the edict went up on our living room wall and the police departed satisfied.
I returned to work that night with renewed vigor. Drunk on the heady fumes of freedom, I bounded around the classroom in high good humor. All at once, the door opened and two Chinese men in suits entered and started snapping photographs. So convinced was I that all was now well and that the danger had passed, I cut a dashing pose next to the blackboard and smiled for the cameras.
Two beats later, I realised the implications of what had just happened … men in suits; photographic evidence of me brandishing chalk – the tool of my all too obvious trade. I slipped out to make hurried inquiries about the identity of the men. After assurances that it was merely the local contingent of the Fire Safety Regulatory Committee making their routine rounds, I chided myself for paranoia and returned to class with a spring in my step.
The rumours started surfacing the next day. It was not the Fire Committee but the Tax Office who had Kodak-colour proof of my guilt. Panic set in, took hold and steered my course for the next few days. My nerves were shot. I had whiplash from compulsively looking over my shoulder and insomnia from lying awake at night, convinced that I’d be dragged from my bed by uniformed men in heavy boots. The only thing to be done was to throw myself on the mercy of my employers and beg to be relieved from teaching until my work permit showed up. Lie low, I reckoned and let the dust settle.
Ma Baker had other ideas.
The next few weeks unfolded themselves into a John le Carre novel: Telephonic warnings from Daisy about the imminent arrival of a letter from her lawyer suing me for breach of contract, rumors of Daisy’s cozy relationship with my old pal, the chief of police, and repeated refusals from my erstwhile employers to pay me the money they owed me.
Getting into the spirit of the thing, I held clandestine meetings with Chinese friends who had friends in high places, concocted sting operations with my housemates and plotted extortion in my sleep.
By now my visa was about to expire, I was almost broke and I was due a trip to Hong Kong with no work permit in sight and no guarantee of receiving a return visa to Taiwan, once I left the country. My paranoia persisted – ominous murmurs in my head that perhaps Daisy’s police cronies might foil my visa application in Hong Kong. I boarded my plane, resigned to the inevitable – penniless and paperless in that neon city of money with my return ticket home the only way to avoid becoming a street sweeper and even then, I’d probably need a work permit.
Steeling myself to face the inevitable refusal from the Taiwanese consulate in Hong Kong, I went in and prepared to grovel before the powers-that-be for a new tourist visa. But once again my imagination proved to be too much for reality. This time I got it right.
Six months after touchdown in Taipei I was finally legal and able to teach with the signed, stamped and sealed approval of the Taiwanese government. I’d graduated from the Iranian cell and now had a sunny little room with a balcony that opened out onto the neighbor’s washing. The feud with the neighbors had subsided into guarded civility and I was ensconced with a menagerie of household pests and six men, earning lots of money and helping raise a little hell. I’m home now where I don’t have to grapple with work permits or fumble with red tape. But this tale I fear is not yet done. I’ve come home with an American boyfriend whose tourist visa is up in three weeks. He’s going in to Home Affairs next week to ask for an extension. No doubt there’ll be a story or two in that.