Fieldnotes From History (20)—Autumn Breeze

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] Evening breeze RF

Part of an occasional Round and Square series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987—some nicely-stated and some embarrassing. Although the series began with my assumption that the entries can stand alone, I have found that separate comments and notes might help readers understand a world that is now, well, history. These are always separate from the original fieldnote.

Comment

There is nothing special about this or the "weather" notes that follow. For me (and the reason I am bothering to post them), they represent something much more important than "data." After a flurry of initial activity in May 1985 (only some of which is posted in this series), I got busy. Life became routine. The anthropologist just looking for research results will miss the point of including this little series of fieldnote entries. I regard them as some of the most important writing I did in 1985, and it has (almost) nothing to do with what I wrote. 

[b] Busy RF

I wrote. Again. And that is the whole point. If you have ever kept a journal or a blog, and then lapsed, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, fieldnotes are like that, too. We get busy. We think; we analyze. We forget to write. Starting the process over is difficult, and often feels artificial, just like these notes. I am grateful that I got going again, though, because I would not have remembered many of the insights that followed through 1986 and 1987. 

Nonetheless, I went from June through October 1985 with very little fieldnote writing. Teachers need to talk more about these matters in anthropology classes. I have a friend who lived with guilt almost to the day she turned in her doctoral dissertation. It turns out that she had stopped taking notes after the first month (sound familiar?), and was embarrassed that she had not worked like a "real" anthropologist. Suffice it to say that we'll look at these matters closely as this topic continues on Round and Square.

Note
—Most rice cookers no longer have "inner" and "outer" pots. In the old days (1985 was just about the turning point in Taiwan), one would pour water into the outer pot to heat the rice and water in the inner pot. I still have my 1985 Datong Brand inner/outer rice cooker, but I have not seen many of them since the "one pot technological revolution." Word has it that rice used to be made on stoves, but I can't even imagine such a thing. (Yes, I am joking).

Related Fieldnotes: 1   2   3   4   5

2 November 1985

Taipei   (2 of 5) 
Last week we experienced the first extended break in the hot weather in six months. Up until then, the temperature hovered between 27-34C (80-94F). Every day was bright, hot, and muggy. Every night was dark, hot, and muggy. The air temperature here is not extreme during the summer months, but the humidity makes the whole island feel like the inner pot of a rice cooker. Taipei is a particularly hot, dirty model. The basin it is set in locks the filthy air over the city, and the surrounding mountains don’t let the cooling sea breezes through. I resisted the temptation to use the air conditioner much this summer. The savings were great, but so was the suffering. 

Recently however, the influence of several “Mongolian cold fronts” broke the hot spell and snuffed out the butt-end of summer. The Taiwanese autumn I have yearned for is beginning. On Halloween, I raised my tea cup in toast to celebrate the first time—seemingly day or night—the mercury had dipped below 80F in months.

Related Fieldnotes: 1   2   3   4   5

[c] Cooling RF