The Accidental Ethnographer (2a)—Ocean and Isle

One year ago on Round and Square (31 May 2011)—The Death of Captain Cook.
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Accidental Ethnographer." (Coming Soon)
Click below for other posts from Ocean and Isle:

Isle 1            Isle  2            Isle 3           Isle 4            Isle 5            Isle 6            Isle 7

[a] Beach RF

I am scheduled to give a lecture on tomorrow at the Doylestown Historical Society, as part of Doylestown, Pennsylvania's big bicentennial celebration. The subject is the American explorer and evangelist William Edgar Geil (1865-1925). This is part of a larger project that I will be working on this summer in Doylestown with the help of Beloit College anthropology major Megan Nyquist '14. As I did a few weeks ago in preparation for another lecture (on another subject), I am going to spend the next few days posting some of Geil's own writings. This was enormously helpful to me the last time I tried it, and I think it is worth another try. 

[b] Hillside RF

William Edgar Geil was a world famous figure in his day, and the reasons he has been lost to history (from his death until now) are as interesting as the underpinnings of his fame. Here is a very brief overview. In a day before anthropology or Chinese (or African or Micronesian) studies had a toehold in world universities, William Edgar Geil traveled the world, took extensive notes, returned to Doylestown, and wrote books. Depending on how you count them, he wrote almost a dozen—many of them thick and substantial in ways that a turn of the (last) century reader would understand, even if many people today would not. He traveled across central Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century, spent a year in Australia and New Guinea, and then found an abiding love for the study of China (which is where I "met" him, in a manner of speaking). He traveled the length of the Great Wall, journeyed the Yangzi River from Shanghai into southeast Asia, visited all of China's provincial capitals, and is the only Westerner to have written a book about his travels to all five sacred mountains of China.

He wrote about it all, and he took pictures. The former is not without problem; the latter is easily his legacy. It is all a fascinating picture of an American abroad in a peculiarly resonant time in American history—from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the end of World War I. This series will grow as my research does, but let's get started with Geil's own words—a little from each of his published books.

 ***  ***

Today's entry doesn't have Geil's own words. What's up with that? It's all part of the plan. William Edgar Geil was happy to invoke the words of others in his larger cause. In this case, he relied upon his pastor from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It is telling, and it speaks to issues that go to the heart of Geil's world travels and educational mission. 

[c] Reef RF

Geil's second "big" book, Ocean and Isle, is his first foray into the material that anthropologists would study in earnest two decades later. But Ocean and Isle doesn't "read" like Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Coming of Age in Samoa, or Naven. This is partly because Geil lived in a different world—a different generation—than Bronislaw Malinowski, Margaret Mead, or Geoffry Bateson. That is not all of it, though. William Edgar Geil was a very different interpreter of culture, even though he was as well-traveled as any famous anthropologist. His pastor's introduction to his second big book gives some context to the complex life of travel and faith that Geil was crafting as he came of age in his thirties.

Ocean and Isle—The Author's 
Worldwide Tour of Observation
By His Pastor, John Howard Deming (1901)
One of the prominent features of the opening of the New Century is the increased interest in Foreign Missions. As an expression of the spirit of the times we call attention to the projected world-wide tour and circuit of all the chief missionary stations of Heathendom to be begun this month by the brilliant American Evangelist, Author, and Traveller, Wm. Edgar Geil, whose inspiring and successful work in many parts of our country is well known to the Christian public. The purpose of the tour is that of independent observation of the whole missionary field, in its actual condition, operations, modes of organizations, instruction, and efforts, its different peculiarities, its needs, its difficulties, its relations to existing forms of Heathen religion, to international and denominational policies, to political events, and what of encouragement or discouragement may exist in the great work of extending the gospel to the world, and especially to the neglected parts of Heathendom. A special object is to minister spiritual comfort and cheer everywhere, to all laborers in the field, as opportunity may offer; to visit schools, colleges, and institutions of sacred learning in connection with missionary operations, and report the results to the whole Christian church.

[d] Floral RF

The observations, made from a wholly independent standpoint, will be impartial, yet without prejudice to any denominational interests and activities. Independent of any ecclesiastical relations, and untrammelled by any favorite theories or considerations, one great aim of the tour is to give to the Christian public a truthful view of the whole situation of the foreign field, kindly suggesting whatever may be deemed advisable for the more energetic and successful prosecution of the work, and noting whatever may be regarded as impeding it, so seeking to arouse a more ardent interest and united effort in the rapid evangelization of the world.

The competency of this self-denying and brave evangelist for the task undertaken is beyond question. His able and attractive work on "Patmos" (the result of a previous tour of observation), guarantees the value and success of the correspondence. The entire course of travel has been carefully mapped out, and is expected to occupy over three years. Very naturally we may expect that as the observation is independent, many things will come to light not hitherto known to the Christian public—what the real value of statistics is, what the effect of the commercial war-spirit and policy of the Christian world powers is upon the heathen, in how far they are responsible for impressing a false idea of the Christianity, and to what extent their influence has been for good, what the present attitude of the competing heathen religions towards the cause of missions, what the real reasons of the Mohammedan success, now that it has to so great an extent used other means than the sword for its propagation, outstripping in many regions the Christian progress; and what the decided anti-Christian forces which the missionary has to meet.

A tour of visit so unique and rate—the first of its kind—cannot fail to be welcomed by every missionary on the field. This unique journey, so full of Christian heart, energy, activity, and prayerful consecration, and deep sympathy, must be greatly blessed to all concerned in the mission work, at home and abroad. The observation will be made not alone in reference to Protestant missions, but Roman Catholic as well. We have only words of encouragement for Mr. Geil. He holds a ready pen, and in addition to his general observations we may expect many a graphic sketch of local coloring and incident, full of interest to all his readers. We invoke God's blessing upon him. 
                                                                 Doylestown, Pa., U.S.A
                                                                                     May 2, A.D. 1901

[e] Interest RF

Click below for other posts from Ocean and Isle:

Isle 1            Isle  2            Isle 3           Isle 4            Isle 5            Isle 6            Isle 7 

 

Notes
William Edgar Geil, Ocean and Isle (Melbourne: Wm. T. Pater & Company, 1902), 1-3.

Bibliography

Geil, William Edgar. Ocean and Isle. Melbourne: Wm. T. Pater & Company, 1902.

The Accidental Ethnographer (1b)—The Isle That Is Called Patmos: A Meditation

One year ago on Round and Square (30 May 2011)—Le Tour de la France: The Attentions of Mère Etienne.
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Accidental Ethnographer." (Coming Soon)

[a] Up... RF

I am scheduled to give a lecture on Friday at the Doylestown Historical Society, as part of Doylestown, Pennsylvania's big bicentennial celebration. The subject is the American explorer and evangelist William Edgar Geil (1865-1925). This is part of a larger project that I will be working on this summer in Doylestown with the help of Beloit College anthropology major Megan Nyquist '14. As I did a few weeks ago in preparation for another lecture (on another subject), I am going to spend the next few days posting some of Geil's own writings. This was enormously helpful to me the last time I tried it, and I think it is worth another try. 

[b] Substantial RF

William Edgar Geil was a world famous figure in his day, and the reasons he has been lost to history (from his death until now) are as interesting as the underpinnings of his fame. Here is a very brief overview. In a day before anthropology or Chinese (or African or Micronesian) studies had a toehold in world universities, William Edgar Geil traveled the world, took extensive notes, returned to Doylestown, and wrote books. Depending on how you count them, he wrote almost a dozen—many of them thick and substantial in ways that a turn of the (last) century reader would understand, even if many people today would not. He traveled across central Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century, spent a year in Australia and New Guinea, and then found an abiding love for the study of China (which is where I "met" him, in a manner of speaking). He traveled the length of the Great Wall, journeyed the Yangzi River from Shanghai into southeast Asia, visited all of China's provincial capitals, and is the only Westerner to have written a book about his travels to all five sacred mountains of China.

He wrote about it all, and he took pictures. The former is not without problem; the latter is easily his legacy. It is all a fascinating picture of an American abroad in a peculiarly resonant time in American history—from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the end of World War I. This series will grow as my research does, but let's get started with Geil's own words—a little from each of his published books.

 ***  ***

William Edgar Geil was an evangelist from start-to-finish, and the "accidental ethnographer" tag should never be read, for him, in an agnostic fashion. Geil studied the world, but he was not ambivalent about faith. Geil never wavered in his commitment to the church and book that shaped his life from early on. He traveled to other locals, took notes, and wrote books. Throughout the process—and especially in his writings—he wove themes from Testaments, old and new. Instead of just asserting it (and it is clear in the 7,000 pages of his notes and dozen books), I want to show it at work in his first major book. This is the last chapter of The Isle That Was Called Patmos.

The Isle That Was Called Patmos—A Meditation
William Edgar Geil (1897)
St. Christodouos sought out Patmos and built his vast monastery that he might have a place for holy meditation. And do you hold it unwise in me if I give the brief record written the same night on that lone island in the Icarian Sea when, stealing away from friend and entertainers, I sought out at 9 P.M. the highest point on the monastery of St. John? "He whom Jesus loved" had often enjoyed a moonlight night on that brown isle. And this is what I wrote on that fair and long-to-be-remembered night.

[c] Mayhap RF

There is time for meditation. There is at my right the merry laughter of children, probably having a last romp on a housetop ere to bed. To my left is the barking of dogs; some belated traveler has stirred them up and mayhap is sorry. They bark at little provocation, I have discovered.

The moon is in its first quarter, but large and bright. Ah! now all is still. The happy children are perchance tucked in their beds and fast asleep. The dogs have ceased to bark. The five windmills, which rather wildly swing their white-sail arms all day, are quiet now. On the round, stone-paved threshing-floor the flail has ceased to fall; the weary worker dreams of rest. The potteries do not smoke, and on the shore the salt works are deserted. Toward the east all is dark, save two islands shining by reflected light. Farther east by north is the circle of the sites of the seven churches of Asia, and farther north is Armenia with its terrible tales of the misrule of the Turk. Dark is the east, and even in the sky above the horizon for a long way there is not star whose light is not lost in gloom. It reminds me of a view on a moonless night from the pyramids in the land of the Nile, when the sands of Sahara are deepening the gloom off the Red Sea.

How different toward the west! The moonlight on the Ægean makes a lane of light; the rippling waters give the path a likeness to the highway of some visitant from heaven. Paved with its silver sheen it reaches from the Patmos shore away over the sea to where the heavens join the waters, and leads the imagination onward to the streets of gold that seem to lie beyond. Off toward the west, too, along this track of silver, lies my native land, hope of the nations, hope of the world. The light is in the west.

[d] Harbor RF

I look again, gathering the while my extra coat about me; for although July is only half gone, a stiff, cool breeze comes off the waters and up the mountain side. Northwest I behold a flash of light, and then again all is gloom; again a light, and again darkness. Yes; far-off over there the flash of warning comes across the rolling billows, telling the sailor of the half-submerged reef or the dread rocky headland, bidding him beware of the place where the wild waves dash up against the mighty rocks only to be flung off, and falling back in mad, foaming fury, to hurry once again to the attack. That same light at the same time may fling along the waters the news of a safe harbor, and near by a cottage on the shore, where a bright fire and beaming faces, food and sweetest kisses, await the father coming home from the sea.

The Holy Bible has the warning, telling a fearful tale of those who have not heeded its red flash and dashed themselves against the rocks. It tells out the warning, so that all who sail life's seas may know what awaits them if the helm be not quickly put hard aport and their craft headed for the open sea.

But like the light on yonder foam-girded rock, this same Bible tells of home and happiness to heaven. He who was the last to see Jesus face to face, this John of Patmos, the youngest and oldest of the apostles, has told us of a city and of gold. Sacred spot this island is, for it was here the sacred volume was completed. The words which Jesus spake on Calvary, "It is finished," referring to the works of redemption, were perchance spoken in heaven concerning the Scripture when the exiled apostle wrote, "Amen!" Alone on the white roof of the ancient building I knelt to pray.

THE LAST OF THE THREE

"Jesus taketh with him Peter and James and John."

[e] John RF

Three times "in the volume of the book it is written" that the Master took Peter, James, and John with him. Each reference save one names John, the last of the apostles, last. 

The First Time. We find these three with Jesus in the house of the "little daughter." He initiates them into the circle of his close companionship by having them present at his first resurrection service. Blessed privilege, that of seeing the beautiful twelve-year old maiden, at the Prince's bidding, return to gladden the hearts of her mourning, loving parents. Tremendous miracle! Great power-displaying scene! Christ's word is now know to have authority in other worlds and spirit lands! 

The Second Time. The mountain of prayer becomes the mountain of glory. This height is usually named the mount of Transfiguration. Here the "three" of earth see "three" of heaven. The Law was there, the Prophet was there, the Fulfillment of both was there, the Christ! Again the evidence is at hand that he has an operative authority, and communication with other spheres and other times than those in which he then was. 

The Third Time. The three are in the garden of the Olive Press. This middle garden; this one lying between the garden of Eden and the garden of Joseph of Arimathea; this one lying midway between the garden of Paradise and the garden of the Blessed, has a glory all its own. In all the gardens of the past Satan had admission. The battle which began in the first garden finally ended in the last, and Christ was victorious. Ah! now we are in the sacred precincts of the last twenty-four hours of his life, on the hither side of the seal of the Caesars. At the beginning, the "threes" were prominent, and also at the close. At the baptismal service in the Jordan the Trinity was present; then came the three temptations; three scriptures were used by Satan; three were quoted by our lord.[2]

[f] ...Down RF

Notes
William Edgar Geil, The Isle That Is Called Patmos (Philadelphia: A.J. Rowland, 1897),185-188

Bibliography

Geil, William Edgar. The Isle That Is Called Patmos. Philadelphia: A.J. Rowland, 1897.

The Accidental Ethnographer (1a)—The Isle That Is Called Patmos

One year ago on Round and Square (29 May 2011)—Hurtin' Country: I Wonder How Far (It is Over You)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Accidental Ethnographer." (Coming Soon)

[a] Calling Patmos RF

I am scheduled to give a lecture on Friday at the Doylestown Historical Society, as part of Doylestown, Pennsylvania's big bicentennial celebration. The subject is the American explorer and evangelist William Edgar Geil (1865-1925). This is part of a larger project that I will be working on this summer in Doylestown with the help of Beloit College anthropology major Megan Nyquist '14. As I did a few weeks ago in preparation for another lecture (on another subject), I am going to spend the next few days posting some of Geil's own writings. This was enormously helpful to me the last time I tried it, and I think it is worth another try. 

[b] Travelin' RF

William Edgar Geil was a world famous figure in his day, and the reasons he has been lost to history (from his death until now) are as interesting as the underpinnings of his fame. Here is a very brief overview. In a day before anthropology or Chinese (or African or Micronesian) studies had a toehold in world universities, William Edgar Geil traveled the world, took extensive notes, returned to Doylestown, and wrote books. Depending on how you count them, he wrote almost a dozen—many of them thick and substantial in ways that a turn of the (last) century reader would understand, even if many people today would not. He traveled across central Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century, spent a year in Australia and New Guinea, and then found an abiding love for the study of China (which is where I "met" him, in a manner of speaking). He traveled the length of the Great Wall, journeyed the Yangzi River from Shanghai into southeast Asia, visited all of China's provincial capitals, and is the only Westerner to have written a book about his travels to all five sacred mountains of China.

He wrote about it all, and he took pictures. The former is not without problem; the latter is easily his legacy. It is all a fascinating picture of an American abroad in a peculiarly resonant time in American history—from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the end of World War I. This series will grow as my research does, but let's get started with Geil's own words—a little from each of his published books.

 ***  ***

[c] Early RF

William Edgar Geil had already had a pretty full career, it would seem, by the time he got the itch to travel abroad. I can't help but think that the Chicago World's Fair (the Columbian Exhibition of 1893) played a role, but something led him to stop focusing his observational and evangelical skills on the cities and towns of the American northeast. In the late-1880s Geil realized that he had a gift for oratory, and he sharpened his skills in the northeastern United States. He traveled to Trenton, Albany, Schenectady, and points within a several hundred mile radius of Doylestown. 

Then he started traveling, and it went deeply into his blood, his oratory, and—soon thereafter—his writing. His first full-length book deals with Patmos, and we will spend today's and tomorrow's posts giving a sense of his writing. I will have much to say about Geil, but let's soak in some of the early paragraphs of his earliest work.

The Isle That Is Called Patmos
William Edgar Geil (1897)
St. John saw Palestine, Epheseus, and Smyrna, before he lifted up his eyes and looked on the prison island of Patmos. Probably it was just eighteen centuries afterward, for it was Tuesday, July 14, that the writer, after having visited Mt. Nebo, in the Land of Moab; Hebron of water-skin and Abrahamic fame; the pools of Solomon and their myriads of green-backed bull-frogs; Bethlehem, the City of David; Jericho and Bethany; Mt. Calvary, without the city wall, with the old graves on its summit and a shepherd tending his sheep; Cana, Nazareth, and the beautiful Galilean Sea; Damascus, the oldest city on the planet, and the Lebanon railroad, with its cog-wheel device; the fair spot on the Beirut mountains where the magnificent Syrian gambling house is being erected; Rhodes, Cyprus, and Smyrna—took his way with Mr. McN—, an American missionary, as companion en route to St. John's place of banishement. After much deliberation as to whether I ought to tell the simple story of my journey, or use big words and arrange in more scientific forms the tale of my visit to Patmos, I have decided that, as the masses of the people are to be the readers of this book, my narrative shall be related simply, and in it shall be told the incidents of the journey. 

[d] Nearing RF

The clock pointed to 5 P.M., when we boarded a small Greek steamer lying by the wharf at Smyrna. There was nothing especially to brag about concerning this craft (except its filthy condition), but it must be recollected that only in most recent times has there been aught but a sailing vessel. Mr. J.T. Bent found no steamship going that way in 1887. The Marquis of Bute had steam, but it was his own beautiful private yacht. So we held ourselves thankful for steam craft of any kind. We left the wharf late, for our boat had a foul anchor which could not be heaved. In coming in she had cast her shank too far out, and an English ship's huge sheet anchor had fallen across our chain. After pulling and hauling and whistling and—well, I am glad to say I did not hear any swearing, which may have been due to religious scruples of the young captain, or to the fact that modern Greek was Greek to me—finally, after having shouted his order in English down a tube to the engineer's room, he let the chain go and headed out to sea.

[e] St. John RF

Now behold the "Crown of Ionia," "the flower of the Levant," "the queen city of the East." Smyrna is beautiful, lying from the water's edge up to the solitary cypress tree which, like a lone sentinel, keeps watch beside the grave of "the angel of the church at Smyrna," Polycarp. Fortunately we had provided a large basketful of excellent eatables, and getting hot water from the cook (?) we had tea. The boiling water and the whites of eyes appeared to me the only things clean aboard. Thence to the deck, and in conversation passed pleasantly and spiritedly the time...[1]

We were now in sight of Scala Nova, Asia Minor, the modern port of Ephesus. My friend retired, I remaining on deck to enjoy what of landscape might be seen at night; and what thoughts coursed through my brain! Here shall be a quotation from my note-book, written on the spot.

"At anchor, Scala Nova, Asia." 'Tis nearly 10 P.M. I have seen a hippopotamus lying with its back only above the water; so Bird Island lies like some huge monster, a dark mass against a moonless sky, and reminds me of those descriptive lines which the pen of might Milton traced on paper:
                                                                  In bulk as huge
                    As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
                    Titanian, or earth-born, what warred on Jove,
                    Birareus, or Typhon, whom the dew
                    By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
                    Leviathan, which God of all his works
                    Created hugest that swam the ocean stream:
                    Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
                    The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff
                    Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
                    With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
                    Moored by his side under the lea, while night
                    Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

[f] Echo RF

Thus Bird Island seems to sleep at night upon the summer sea. The ancient fortifications are hardly visible; only alight streak tells where they are. A gleam flashes from the dark bulk, a warning or an invitation across the waves. The village lies from the bay up against the mountain side. In an oil painting of even a prairie landscape, the sky line is half-way up the frame; but here it is in reality, the farther portion of the town being near the summit of the hill. The lights of the village seem to blend into the lights of the sky. It is not easy to tell where lamps end and stars begin; where earth ceases and sky towers onward, upward. Black spots come and go between the ship and the shore. The mountain side is growing darker as one by one the lights are extinguished, the people retiring for the night.

And thus the city is retiring from view, leaving, if all the candles be snuffed, but a black mass of mountain against a star-lit midsummer's night sky. It compels me to think that it was thus with the greatness and glory of Ephesus. How one by one its lights of commerce, culture, and religion disappeared, until now there is but the dark heap of ruins, black against the mountains of the past. The ship's whistle startles as with marvelous echo it rolls over the water to the shore, and then up the mountain, and then from hill to hill, finally dying away amid the wreck of the once fair Temple of Diana, causing one to meditate on how the proud city is now but an echo of a power and attraction once sufficient to call the merchandise and commerce or the world to her shore and ships.

One light continues bright and steady; it is in the lighthouse on Bird Island. The milky-way sweeps down to the middle of the village. A great rattle of chains; anchor up; helm hard a-port; we head for Samos, across the Ægean Sea to Patmos, taking much the same route that St. John must have taken. It was then the bewitching time of night; but being anxious to have an early look at "The isle that is called Patmos," I descended to the solitary first-class (?) cabin. Two berths were arranged, one above the other; thus two sides of the room were used for sleeping accommodations. After reading the first chapter of Revelation, and kneeling to thank God for blessings bestowed, I climbed into the upper shelflike bed.[2] 

Notes
William Edgar Geil, The Isle That Is Called Patmos (Philadelphia: A.J. Rowland, 1897), 3-5.

Geil, Patmos, 11-12. 

Bibliography

Geil, William Edgar. The Isle That Is Called Patmos. Philadelphia: A.J. Rowland, 1897.

[g] Transport RF

Primary Sources—Introduction (h) Language and Culture

One year ago on Round and Square (28 May 2011)—Le Tour de la France: Father's Last Words
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center 

Introduction (a)—Education and Enculturation          Introduction (b)—Traditional Education     

Introduction (c)—Contemporary Education               Introduction (d)—Hong Kong and Taiwan

Introduction (e)—Butterflies                                       Introduction (f)—K-12, c.1985
Introduction (g)—Impassioned Communities            Introduction (h)—History, Language, and Culture, c.1985

[22]

As my student sat in my office after class, she spoke of the texts we read. I thought of the texts my own teacher and I had read. We were three generations...and one elementary community. She said one more thing that day, though, and it goes even further to underline the impassioned community created by these texts. Remember that the curriculum changed in the late-1990s, and that the texts of the last decade or so have a much softer edge to them in terms of ideology, didacticism, and patriotic fervor. Some Republic of China citizens of a certain age have even sniffed that those little green books were far more challenging than the linguistic and cultural pabulum put forth for young folks today. 

Add caption

If that sounds familiar, it should. Versions of that story have been repeated every generation since Grog first scoffed that—unlike children "today"—his generation had to eat raw mastodon meat, hunks of flesh torn from the bone. Of course, they walked uphill both ways (often barefoot and in the snow), eating mastodon jerky and sharpening their spears. His was a world that those pampered children could not imagine. The little junior Grogs rolled their eyes and poked at the embers, dreaming of ways to roll across the landscape faster than Uncle Grog would ever know.

Yes, the "kids these days" theme has been around for a while. Still, this was someone twenty years my junior speaking to me as though we were elementary school classmates. I had sensed, back on that early summer day in 1985, that I had stumbled onto something important—something that would forever change the way I thought about language and culture. As I read (and read...and read), I knew that this was big. It was not until that day in 2005, though—when my student from Taiwan finished our discussion of elementary school texts with a final, flourishing sentence—that I was certain. Something bigger than grade school was bottled in those texts. They contained the linkages that connected people, society, and passion, and polity. 

"We read the real books," she concluded. "It's just not the same anymore."

***  ***

This series will explore the books that bound at least three generations of readers together on a little land mass on the Strait of Taiwan.

[23]

We have covered a lot of territory in this introduction, so let's review. To my mind, it can all be summarized in a few words. Let's start with these:

                                                                 Language

                                                                 History

                                                                 Culture

[b] Path RF

Those words, and the themes embedded in them, have dominated my teaching and research for the last twenty-seven years. There are a few pivot points in my career that led me into a lifetime of studying these matters, not the least being my decision at Carleton to double-major in history and anthropology, and to study Chinese. There were a few. That day in 1985 was surely another of them, as I have tried to show and not just tell in this introductory essay.

In fact, I have a bone to pick with language programs that fail to integrate cultural and historical matters in a deep, resonating way. Most don't. When I speak of "culture," I definitely do not mean the kind that is often added on as an extra in language class—tea ceremony reenactments in second-year Japanese or a beer house in introductory German. I mean culture in the messy, picky, ideological, didactic, and particular way that people learn their own—and, eventually, other—cultures. I mean elementary education in the broadest sense, and it requires that we review two more terms:
                                                                Enculturation
                                                                Acculturation

Remember the very beginning of this introductory essay? We started with the idea that has come full circle. Children learn language, history, and culture in a way that is fundamentally different from the experience of the second- (or third-) language learner. Most grow up in the protective womb of family, speech, and lived experience. Written words abound in many societies, but they are, for the most part, a closed book until the schooling process begins. They are most definitely not a blank slate when they start school, though. They know the cultural and natural world around them in ways that foreign language learners may never comprehend. There is nothing "baby"-like in the vocabulary and even grammatical advantage that a five-year-old possesses, and the smug fourth-year college language student would do well to reflect, and show a little bit of humility.

[c] Salt/fresh RF

The five-year-old, you see, is already well on her way to enculturation, to learning the ins-and-outs of the society around her. Anthropologists have tended to make a distinction between "enculturation" and "acculturation"—the latter referring to learning other cultures—but I find it to be mostly superfluous. There are no lines between "cultures." They function much like Atlantic saltwater easing and oozing into the Chesapeake Bay. By the time you put your canoe onto the Potomac, you have transitioned, but you didn't know exactly when. Learning "culture" is like that. I'd like to call it all "acculturation."

No matter. The themes of this series revolve around learning how to learn in a distinct historical (c.1985—a phrase I will repeat endlessly), cultural (Republic of China on Taiwan), and linguistic (Mandarin Chinese taught to children through the medium of primary school textbooks). As every beginning student of anthropology knows, language is culture and culture is language. What that student is taught less often (and this remains a problem in anthropology) is that it is all fundamentally historical. This series will consider all of those elements, and show in detail what it is/was to negotiate the 276-step path of primary education. In Taiwan, c. 1985, with implications for past, present, and future.

[d] Historical RF

[24]

Each post will contain the traditional character Chinese text, a simplified text version (with an explanation for why it is included), and an English translation. In other words, readers who wish only to read the English will get a good sense of what is contained in the text. This should be illuminating in its own right for readers interested in primary education.

Stick with it. Really.

From there, each post will have three sets of "notes." The first will deal with history and culture. These are written for all readers, and give context to the reading. The second set of notes focus on translation. English readers will be able to understand most of this material, even though it will begin to veer into Chinese language territory. Finally, there is a section for language notes. These are addressed to language learners.

In short, this series is not about language instruction. Let's be clear about that. If you want to learn Chinese, get a teacher, focus on pronunciation, and then study all of the time for a decade. This series is meant to be an anthropological trek through the subtropical tangles of language, history, and culture at a peculiarly fascinating time in Chinese history. Have you heard that before? I hope so.

That is the theme of this series in Primary Sources. We have a long trip ahead, so shine your boots, pack your toothbrush, and sharpen your #2 pencils. Let's get started.

Click here to start your first day of school (in Taiwan, c.1985).

[e] Steps RF

Primary Sources—Introduction (g) Impassioned Communities

One year ago on Round and Square (27 May 2011)—Le Tour de la France: Respite on the Road 
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center 

Introduction (a)—Education and Enculturation          Introduction (b)—Traditional Education     
Introduction (c)—Contemporary Education               Introduction (d)—Hong Kong and Taiwan

Introduction (e)—Butterflies                                       Introduction (f)—K-12, c.1985
Introduction (g)—Impassioned Communities            Introduction (h)—History, Language, and Culture, c.1985

[19]

I had found the breadcrumbs, and my path back to elementary education began at that moment. I reached for the pile, and pulled out—by chance—the slender book covering the language arts for the first semester of third grade. The cover of that text is featured at the top of this post. I noticed the little social triad on the cover. I pondered the expressions on every face, including the dog's. 

[a] Rural community RF

I opened the book, paging through all twenty-four texts and the eight sets of reviews (one review after each three-text set). Now I was in a different world. Even things I regarded as familiar seemed tinged with difference. Here was Chiang Kai-shek scolding a Japanese military school teacher who criticized China; there was Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb. The stories were just didactic enough to make me blink and read passages over. A few were so ideologically skewed, to my mind, that I wondered how they could possibly be used in third grade classrooms. 

Why on earth would children donate piggy banks to buy warheads?

But there they were, along with Republic of China flags, rural sunsets, kittens, goats, and puppies. I was hooked. I started to sense what the store clerk had been saying that afternoon. These texts were the foundation of education for every student in Taiwan. They were shared by a growing generation born in the 1970s and going to elementary school in the mid-1980s. Every little third grader walking to school tomorrow morning would know what I was reading. It was an elementary community, and an imagined one, at that. Third graders from Kaohsiung, Taipei, Taichung, and Keelung memorized (and were tested on) the same texts, just as were all of the students in rural schools dotting the island from tip to tip. Further, it was an elementary community in a Durkheimian (and Lévi-Straussian) sense. There was something basic—foundational—about what was going on here.

[b] Tip RF

They were even more than that, though. Many of these texts were shared by several generations. I know this because my interests have always been historical as well as anthropological, and I felt that I was exploring another world in this sea of texts. It has been said that "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." I soon understood that although these books represented just a slice of time—I had purchased the 1985 school year version of them all—there were extraordinary hints of both past and future in them.

[20]

In fact, the 1985 texts forming the core of this "Primary Sources" series all have extraordinary connections with the texts used a decade or more earlier on Taiwan. In turn, they would be used for another decade after that before giving way to a very different kind of textbook in the late-1990s. In other words, these little green 國語課本 books created a bond between readers that forged almost instant familiarity between children and adults of very different ages.

How would I know that? Easy. I lived it. I read the literary and communal passion in "their" eyes.

[c] Luminosity RF

Beginning with that day, I became a part of that bonded educational community. Little did I know it then, but it began a few years earlier, in an intensive first-year Chinese summer course at the University of British Columbia, My teacher, Roberto Ong, started the process. One day in class, while imploring us to study with far more effort than we might have thought possible, he reminisced about an elementary school text he had read thirty years before. He told of a primary school reader with a story of Thomas Edison and his indefatigable work on the light bulb. The way Professor Ong told it, it was a story of darkness turning into light amidst perseverance. His normal composure was punctuated by this mnemonic bulb, illuminating while we watched and listened. It seemed like a minor soliloquy at the time—an elementary school flashback by a teacher in his late-thirties, making him seem all the more ancient to his "young" college-age charges. 

And there I was, at the kitchen table, almost choking on Oolong leaves as I read my teacher's story—detail for detail in the third-grade reader.

     有一次,  有人問他, 在那麼多發明品當中, 他最滿意
     的是哪一件. 他回答說: "電燈." 再問他為甚麼, 他說, 
     有了電燈, 世界就不再有黑暗了.

          Someone once asked [Edison] which of his inventions gave him the most
          satisfaction. He answered: "the light bulb." When asked to clarify, he said
          that with the light bulb the world need no longer have darkness.

[d] Cultural light RF

[21]

There's more. The community spirit worked the other way, too. Twenty years after my first encounter with primary textual culture, I chatted after class with one of my students. I knew she had grown up in Taiwan. She stayed after class to talk, and I was surprised by how animated she was that afternoon. She told me that she had listened to my classroom story about studying culture from "the bottom up"—an early version of the themes in this series. In the process, I had explained how formative these K-6 texts were in my developing understanding of Chinese culture, generally, and life on Taiwan, specifically. In particular, I had told about the linkage forged with my teacher in the land of third-grade Edison.

"We read the same books!," she enthused. "I read the story about Thomas Edison, too!" 

In that moment, I realized that I shared a core educational experience with a teacher twenty years older than me...and a student twenty years younger. My teacher had presumably read the text in 1960. My student read it in 1990. They were both eight years old. I read it in 1985, even though I was twenty-something and careening through a rapid-fire K-12 education over the course of eighteen months. We were the fragments of an impassioned community spanning three or more decades of lived—and read—experience.

Notes
[1] Guomin xiaoxue guoyu keben [國民小學國語課本], 1985, 3a, 56.

[e] Natural light RF

NEXT

History, Language, and Culture, c. 1985

We wrap up the long introduction to this series (its heft is well in keeping with the 276 texts that will follow) by finishing the story told by my student about the little green books. We will then conclude with an overview of the posts we'll confront in "Primary Sources."

Primary Sources—Introduction (f) K-12, c. 1985

One year ago on Round and Square (26 May 2011)—Le Tour de la France: The Journey Begins
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center 

Introduction (a)—Education and Enculturation          Introduction (b)—Traditional Education     

Introduction (c)—Contemporary Education               Introduction (d)—Hong Kong and Taiwan

Introduction (e)—Butterflies                                       Introduction (f)—K-12, c.1985
Introduction (g)—Impassioned Communities            Introduction (h)—History, Language, and Culture, c.1985

[16]

Back in the apartment, I set the bags of books on a table. I made myself a little pot of Oolong tea, fed the parakeet, prepared a little bowl of pistachios, and settled in for a few hours of exploring. Sometimes you just know that you are in a moment you will remember for a long, long time. This was one of them. As I pulled the neatly wrapped books out of the bags (the clerk had organized them by grade level, packed them in wrapping paper, and tied each with a handy little cellophane knot), I arranged them in stacks on the table. After twenty minutes of knot-cutting, unwrapping, and arranging, the books formed a miniature Taipei landscape in a day before truly towering buildings came along. Twelve-plus years of education lay before me. Where should I start?

[a] Helper RF

I reached for the high school history texts. 

I couldn't help myself, and temporarily tuned out the advice I had heard in the bookstore an hour before. In minutes I was immersed in books entitled 歷史. I paged through Chinese history and world history—early and late. Names such as 秦始皇帝 (the first emperor of Qin) and 明太祖 (the first emperor of Ming) vied with 圖坦卡蒙 (Tutankhamen) and 哥倫布 (Columbus). To be sure, the language looked like a bit of a challenge. At the very least, I saw, I would have to learn a few hundred—and more likely a few thousand—more characters, as well as ten times that many vocabulary items. 

I approached the matter with the respect it deserved, yet I could not help but sense that (despite the challenges of fairly advanced language) this was familiar territory. I had just spent the better part of a history major in college thinking about these matters, and (despite the language issues) this didn't seem to be terribly difficult terrain in a conceptual sense. The names, dates, and terms were dense, but they were hardly new. This wasn't Foucault, I thought to myself. If I were embarking on an archaeological dig toward knowledge, I would be looking mostly at shrapnel I had seen before.

[b] Port RF

[17]

You see, even then I had begun to consider these books in the spirit of an anthropologist visiting a territory for the first time. I wanted to soak it all in—to remember how it felt in those early moments of cultural contact. I remembered what Jim Fisher, the anthropologist at Carleton who taught me anthropological theory and mentored me in Asian Studies, had told me before I left my Midwestern home for Taiwan. He stressed that I needed to take my early experiences seriously. The first impressions—even ephemeral glimpses—contained within them a conceptual power that we would do well to ponder. He reminded me of a passage in Claude Lévi-Strauss's literary-ethnographic masterpiece, Tristes Tropiques.

          These lengthy and superfluous cogitations are leading up to the fact that
          one morning, in February 1934, I arrived in Marseilles in order to tak ship 
          for Santos. Later there were to be many other departures, and all of them
          have blended together in my memory, which has retained only a few 
          distinct recollections...

          These ships called at many ports. Indeed, the first week of the trip was
          spent almost entirely ashore, while the cargo was being loaded or 
          unloaded, and we sailed during the night. Each morning, on awakening,
          we found ourselves docked in a new port: Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, 
          Alicante, Malaga, and sometimes Cadiz; or again, Algiers, Oran and 
          Gibralter, before the longest stretch leading to Casablanca, and lastly to 
          Dakar...It was the opposite of a voyage. More than a means of transport,
          the ship seemed to us to be a dwelling-place and a home, in front of which 
          the revolving stage of the world would halt some new setting every morning.[1] 

[c] Culture call RF

That is how I felt before my stack of books. The whirling energy of a new city and island had only—there, in the summer of 1985—begun to seem familiar to me. The fieldnotes that I wrote at that time were starting to reflect just that, and not the least in their growing infrequency. A flurry of powerful first impressions had given way to a flawed veneer of ostensible understanding. I sensed right then that I was missing an opportunity, and I remembered the next passage in Lévi-Strauss's account.

          However, the anthropological approach was still so foreign to me that I did 
          not think of taking advantage of these opportunities. I have learned since
          then what a useful training in observation such short glimpses of a town, an
          area or a culture can provide and how—because of the intense concentration
          forced upon one by the brevity of the stay—one may even grasp certain 
          features which, in other circumstances, may have long remained hidden.[2]

[d] Familiar RF

[18] 

To my mind, the stacks of books on the table were so many ports on a sea voyage, and I was determined to take advantage of the opportunity to explore the textual ports on my own anthropological journey. And like the ports Lévi-Strauss mentions, some are a little more resistant to an individual's understanding than others. Barcelona isn't Dakar, after all. While I suspected that many of the texts contained treasures hidden from my understanding, I was seeing in them history of the kind I studied in high school—names, dates, and loose, ideological linkages between them. So, if the strained Lévi-Straussian analogy held in those moments, my "ship" was rolling into port, up I-94 and on to Fargo...but not through the narrow fjords on my way to Oslo. Or Hakodate.

It all seemed like I had been there before. Something was wrong. I got up, paced, checked on the parakeet, looked out the window, sipped my tea, and ate a few pistachios. I had seen this movie before. I thought it over, and then decided. 

Postponing my entry into high school, I reached for the little green books. At last I understood: that's where I needed to start.

Notes
[1] Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques [Translated by John and Doreen Weightman] (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), 61-62.

[2] Tristes Tropiques, 62. 

Bibliography

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.

[e] Green book time RF

NEXT
Elementary Communities
Even then, I had a strong suspicion about where this was all going. In time, I would discover just as many riches in those seemingly stale history texts, but that would lie many months in the future. Instead, I went to grade school, learned aspects of language, history, and culture that I doubt I could have learned in other ways, and found a community that lasts to this day.