音樂旅行

A Female Painter from Seattle (Home of North America’s only rainforest)

- - Interview with Iris A. Scott

北美雨林來的女畫家  Iris（英文版）

Tr. by Larry Kuo

June 29, 2009

I was sitting in the shade with some friends, enjoying the magnificent view of the sea in front of us while waiting for service of our lunch to be served. This is an open-air restaurant hidden in Chai Mountain, Kaohsiung. We had just driven all the way along the beautiful coast to the restaurant when the asphalt beneath was almost melted in the scorching heat of summer.

With the heat of the sun and the steam of the soup, we all perspired heavily as soon as we started to taste the chicken meal. We each ordered big smoothies to get some relief from the scorching summer heat.

There were no other customers beside us.   Then there arrived a western girl. She took a seat facing the sea; her curly brown hair flew about in the wind. I soon noticed her earrings. They were of abstract figures, something like a piece taken from a painting of Picasso. And her colorful handbag, nothing but an art, was right on the table. So unique she was! Not good at socializing with people, still I decided, after several sipping of my mango smoothie, to say hello to her with all my courage.

Her name is Iris. She is a painter just recently arrived in Taiwan from Seattle about one month ago. Now she lives right in the Chai Mountain area.

What brought this female artist all the way to Taiwan? How did she find the place to live in Chai Mountain? (I think it’s a blessing that one can live in this mountain. She must have done a lot good things in her previous life.)

To satisfy my own curiosity and to introduce her to my blog readers, I made an appointment with her for an interview. As timid as I am, I needed someone to accompany me. So I called Larry, a friend of mine, to go with me. He is currently a postgraduate student of Translation and Interpretation. It made me feel more comfortable to be accompanied by someone like Larry who has seen the world.

July 4, 2009

We made it 10:30 in the morning right in the same restaurant in Chi mountain. As Larry reminded me repeatedly to bring my recorder, I was preoccupied by the thought of not being late, for punctuality is important to westerners. But it rained hard in the morning. What I only wished was not to be stocked in the traffic in town. Fortunately we arrived early at about 10 o’clock. The coffee shop and restaurant was not yet open. Larry and I counted the raindrops dripping down from the eaves while we waited for Iris.

“Westerners seldom are late.” I murmured. It was already 10:50, and the rain never stopped.

Suddenly a car rushing down from the mountain track brought Iris to the restaurant. The driver, an old gentleman, tried to explain to me with his influent English.... I was confused and asked him, “Why don’t you speak Chinese?”

He laughed, for he thought I was a foreigner. Finally I understood what happened, in Chinese: Iris was not able to ride her scooter in mountain because of the heavy rain, so she tried hard to send text messages to me asking me to pick her up. But my lousy cell phone failed to catch any signal on the remote area. So what Iris could do was stand on the sidewalk in the rain waiting for help. The old gentleman was just driving up to Chi mountain with his friends. He saw Iris in the rain, picked her up, and took her to the coffee shop.

I didn’t expect the interview would start like this. A rainy day, a nice stranger, a free ride.

This episode might have given Iris an impression of how friendly Taiwanese are, which she has known quite well already, as later we heard in the interview.

Now we, the three of us, were sitting comfortably at the coffee table facing the sea, ready to have our interview. The rain just stopped. The music was in the air through a big speaker nearby the table. Iris was so kind to suggest we move to a quieter corner to have better quality of recording.

OK. Here is the interview.

“What brought you to Taiwan?” The interview was started with a trite question.

Nothing creative in the question. Iris replied after a short pause: “I was just graduated from school. And I thought I had to think about what I am going to do. And then..., I flew to Taiwan.”

“What? So simple?”

Looking at the disbelieving faces of Larry and I, Iris smiled and added that she really didn’t think too much when she happened to find Taiwan on a tour book. She just came.

It was probably fate, Iris said, that right after she booked the airplane ticket and got her visa she found out her neighbor happened to be a Taiwanese American. After making friends with her neighbor across the yard, she told the lady her plan to move to Taiwan. What a fate! The Taiwanese moved to Seattle, while the Seattle dweller moved to Taiwan!

“What was your first impression about Taiwan? Did it differ greatly from what you imagined?” My second question.

Iris became excited as she told us her wonderful impression about Taiwan. The people here are all happy, as you can feel, and are friendly towards foreigners. She had no problem making friends here, especially female friends. All the girls she’s met kindly ask her if she needs any help. They even invited her to their homes and said that she can stay in their house as long as she likes, for no reason. It’s hard to image that an American would invite a stranger to live in his or her house. But, that is what Taiwanese are! So friendly!

“But here people who can talk to you in English are those who have higher education, and relatively higher income. That maybe the reason why these guys look happy.” I reminded her.

Iris explained that the language barrier limits the people she contacts. So she is now studying Chinese. Maybe a couple months later she can talk to some old people or farmers here. She told us with her smile that she can already recognize around 30-40 Chinese charters. However, she also comments that her impression about Taiwanese might not alter too much, for happiness does not necessarily correlate to income. One can just be happy without much money. It’s how much one wants that counts.

Speaking about happiness, I told iris that I have some European friends. They are curious about the differences between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese besides political aspects. The farmers in Mainland China are mostly very poor, while there are actually no farmers in Hong Kong and Singapore. It’s only in Taiwan can you find wealthy and happy Chinese farmers.

“Right. So I must work hard to study Chinese in order to chat with those happy farmers in Taiwan.” Iris laughed.

Next question. “Why Kaohsiung, instead of Taipei?”

Iris shook her head, saying that she doesn’t know either. What she only knew before she came was there are four big cities in Taiwan (Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung). She simply picked one of them randomly.

“What did you feel about Kaohsiung as you arrived here?”

Coming from a North American rainforest near Seattle, Iris feels Kaohsiung is a big city. Everything is very convenient here, but the air pollution is way too serious downtown. She felt sick at times until she visited Chi mountain where the air quality is high and the scenery is beautiful. With her love of the ocean views, Iris decided to move to Chi mountain when she learned there was an apartment to rent.

“Did you experience any cultural shock in Taiwan?”

Iris said originally she expected more cultural shock, but it turned out much less. For the ways of living of Taiwanese are actually not too much differ from those of Americans.

“Much of the lifestyle in Taiwan has already been Americanized.” Larry commented, referring to the McDonalds and KFCs you can find almost everywhere in Taiwan. “And Subway.” I Added.

“But I don’t usually eat at Subway,” the same feeling from Iris and all the foreigners in Taiwan, “the Subways here are too expensive.” She would rather to know where she can find luxurious and inexpensive salad. She made a “big bowl” in the air with her hands.

Iris and her students.

Having lived in the U.S., I know how easily one can purchase well-prepared packed vegetables in their supermarkets, which are ready to eat at home with some dressings you like. I told Iris it’s difficult to find such convenient vegetable salad in Taiwan, but I recommend that she buy the packed salad at the 7-11 convenient store, NT$38 for one serving with 12 different vegetables. Iris said she would like to try. She also told us she is a vegetarian, who can live on vegetable salads. However, it’s not yet popular in Taiwan to eat vegetable salads.

“What are other tourist spots you have ever been in Taiwan?”

“Ken-ting,” Iris frowned, “but I don’t like it. There are too many people there.”

Wow, Iris feels the same as me. I don’t like Ken-ting, either. Yet I strongly recommended Iris go to the east coast of Taiwan, where the beautiful Pacific Ocean is much more beautiful than you can see in Kaohsiung. But soon I realized I should not say so. How can I say the sea around Kaohsiung is not blue enough, even though it’s a fact? I quickly corrected by saying that the sea you see from Chi mountain is very blue, too. (Fortunately my nose didn’t become longer.)

“What are your plans for the days you stay in Taiwan?”

Currently living on teaching English, Iris still hope she can live on her paintings even if she has to sell them on the street. After all, she is a painter. She said it would be even better if she can get the opportunity to do the murals.

I told her that I once traveled in Tibet and met an art student from Beijing many years. In the spring, 2007, we met again in an exhibition in Shanghai. His major in the Beijing Academy of the Arts was exactly “Mural.” With the large territory of the Mainland China, there is also a large market for mural in China. In Taiwan, however, there is not any college where you can find a “Mural Department.” Moreover, it’s extremely difficult, I am afraid, to make a living on making murals in Taiwan. (But a French named Olivier Ferieux does make his living in Taipei by selling his paintings in street. He even published his painting album, Les Petits Imprevus de La Rue Hang-kou. I really like his style and the humor revealing in his paintings, so I bought several of his albums as gifts for my friends.) Iris was much encouraged by my words that it is not impossible to make a living in Taiwan by being a street artist.

But I reminded Iris that Kaohsiung is an industrial city which used to be called a “Cultural Desert,” where it may be not that easy to live on arts here. Larry corrected me by saying that the “Cultural Desert” nickname was a long-time history and the Kaohsiung today is much different from what it was decades ago. Nevertheless, Iris told us, optimistically, that Kaohsiung City Government has a mural project for the small town in Chai Mountain. Maybe there is a chance for her to be involved in the project. (This reminds me a mural village, Chemainus, on the Vancouver Island of Canada, where murals of various styles turn a previously boring village into a tourist attraction. How wonderful it would be if the Chai Mountain village in Kaohsiung also develop into such a mural village! The project can start from Iris, whose hometown is not far from Chemainus, anyway. I hope some officials in the city government can see this and consider seriously the project of making Chai Moutain a mural village.)

Iris and her painting.

While the “Chai Mountain Mural Village” is a beautiful dream, dreams alone can not feed one to live. What Iris faces is practical problems in the real word. Thanks to her low demand for a living, besides foods she really has little material needs. But her Taiwanese friends are all quite enthusiastic in finding her students who want to learn English. After saying this, Iris didn’t forget to claim, “I am an adult already. But My Taiwanese friends take so good care of me as if I were a little girl.” Larry and I laughed on hearing this. Yes, this is exactly Taiwanese!

As we chat happily, there came two students of Iris. A young couple drove a long way to come to Chai Mountain to have their English tutor class by iris. So we had to end the interview. Iris wanted to pay for the drink, but I told her we seldom “go Dutch” in Taiwan when we eat out with our friends. We take turns to pay for the whole bill. And Iris is our gust today, so she needed not to pay. Iris was surprised. The way Taiwanese treat our guests seemed a happy cultural shock to Iris!

Iris responded with a Chinese “Hsieh-hsieh!” As we complimented her Chinese speaking, she showed us her flash cards for Chinese characters. Larry and I both opened our eyes widely and were speechless. She memorizes Chinese characters through self-drawing pictures! We were amazed as appreciating her flash cards one by one. But for her students waiting aside, we would have spent half an hour on those cards. I believed Iris’s English class must be very interesting, too. How I wished myself suddenly became an English idiot so that I could join her class...

Iris is showing us her flash cards for memorizing Chinese characters and the ideas behind.

On her left wrist there is an artistic amethyst bangle.

After Iris was gone, Larry and I were still very excited, because her Chinese learning cards were too interesting to forget; way too impressive. We, two old farts, continued to stay there and chat, feeling satisfied with this interview. We were so excited in chatting with each other that I totally forgot to turn the recording machine off till it went dead. All today's recording is in vein. What a careless mistake on my part....and disappointment to Larry's, since he still reminded me to bring the recording machine last night. Iris also suggested us to move to a quiet sitting place to get a better recording.

I can only depend on Larry's scratch notes and some of my collectable memories to finish this article, to make it even worse, Larry only wrote down notes about my questions. He didn't take any notes while talking to Iris himself. His questions, therefore, won't be in this article. Too bad....

Next time, if you see a girl from Seattle, selling her paintings in the street of Kaohsiung, don’t forget to say Hello to her. It’s easy for you to recognize her by her comfortable and charming poise.

These are Iris' paintings.

The colors and shades of her paintings creat a mysterious tone, a unique, attractive atomosphere.

Teemed with sapphire raindrops and emerald leaves,

these pictures take us to the rainforest where she comes from.

(I like the blue-green dog very much.)