Fieldnotes From History (19)—Settling In

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

[a] Autumn 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

[b] Reading RF

A long northern Taiwan summer rushed by like a galloping colt glimpsed through a crack in the fence (this is an old Chinese phrase for the swift passage of time). I remember taking notes (lost, I guess), but spent most of my time reading, jotting, and thinking. Not the least, I was suffering from never-ending heat. I worked at a computer company by day, spoke Mandarin all day long (one of the benefits of the job), and studied classical and "modern" Chinese by night and weekend. 

These notes mark my "return" to something like fieldnote writing, and also reflect something very common to everyone doing fieldwork of any kind—routine. We get so busy with life that we fail to "live it twice" through writing. Yes, I know all of the arguments against this approach to life and learning. I am clearly an old-schooler, firmly positioned on the need to jot side of the equation. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of 

                                                  Living........Living and Writing

I think we can agree on one thing: We don't talk enough about these matters when training young anthropologists.

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The five small fieldnotes, all from November 1985, were among the most significant things I accomplished in two years of study in Taiwan. As you will see, this has almost nothing to do with what I wrote. Mired in routine (even as I learned more and more), I failed to jot down much of anything for many months. These dull, little scratchings got me going again, and that is the moral of the story. This will become clear if you click on the "related fieldnotes" links, below.

Note
—"Studying Chinese" meant reading the Four Books (四書), a foundation in classical thought that has stayed with me to this day. It also meant, before bed, reading lessons in the Ministry of Education's K-12 "Mandarin Language Arts" (國語) books. I will have much more to say about both of these in a new topic on Round and Square dealing with those texts and what they can teach us. It is called "Primary Sources," and can be found on the right side of the home page.

Related Fieldnotes: 1   2   3   4   5

2 November 1985

Taipei   (1 of 5)
The weather has cooled, by twenty or thirty degrees, from summer’s muggy hell. I am wearing long-sleeved shirts, if not sweaters these days. I am eating rice, vegetables, and soy sauce. I am drinking tea. I am studying Chinese. I chant the lines from the Great Learning (大學), and do my best with the strange, "literary" syntax and loaded meanings of characters. After that, I wash it all down, so to speak, with primary school readers (probably the most important thing I have ever studied).

I am working five days a week for pay, and around the clock for myself. All the while the daily heartbeat of life in Taipei thumps on. Seventy-two beats a minute. Nothing at all particularly feels like “the field.” It’s just life and work. They never told us about this in anthropology class. I sometimes wish I were homesick or miserable—something that would make me feel like this was really different. Instead, it's just plain old life.

Related Fieldnotes: 1   2   3   4   5

[c] Fruits RF