April 3, 2009

The call came at 10 a.m. and I remember it well because I was in the middle of making some fresh marzipan. Had to wipe my hands before looking for the special cell phone reserved for occasions like this.

The guy was talking about the beach and I knew immediately he wasn't joking. Hell, if I wanted jokes, I read the Taipei Times editorial page. He wasn't the type to joke with. Gave me a time and didn't care if it was my wedding day.

I drove off in my Mercedes, and one hour later I was crossing the border. Twenty minutes further, I reached the place. Flat lands, a ditch, a narrow road, a low wire, a bicycle path, and one line of dunes. The beach was on the other side of the dune, but you couldn't tell if you were down by the road. It was just land, agricultural land. Nobody there, just one house in the distance. Some old guy with a cap on was cycling by, another guy in a track suit was jogging closer. It had to be him. He had the hood of his suit pulled tightly over his head. After all it was April, and in Europe that's still almost like winter.

'Do you follow Taiwan?' he told me when he halted right in front of me. Told me, not asked me. The hell I was still following Taiwan. I was busy with nuclear weapons, animal liberation, carbon emissions, Guantanamo, waterboarding. As if any of the local radicals cared about Taiwan.

'Keep an eye on it. We need you up and ready to go within a couple of months. So read about it, it's called the Internet, rehash your Taiwanese.'

'Chinese,' I said. 'Mandarin Chinese.' I never knew any Taiwanese. Wasn't fashionable at the time.

A rough young guy passed by on a bike, on the road for cars. He probably thought we were drug dealers, or gay lovers meeting in a place like this.

'Who?' I asked.

I knew it was the wrong question at the wrong time. He gave me one dumb look and jogged on past me without a word. I looked at him running away. There wasn't a car anywhere, except mine. Time to go home and get ready to uproot my life again. Someone else would take care of the European radical fringe.

Europe 2009

I'm on my way out of Taiwan now, so I can quit moaning about the Taipei Times and about AIT. Let's go back to where this sorry adventure started. Not that I am sorry about it, I should be proud, but I'm not allowed to be because of the constrictions of the environment, and the place I'm in.

Let's go back two years, to March 2009.

Here I am, living in a small European country. Fitting in as well as a wealthy not-quite-young but not-quite-middle-aged American can. Of course, I tried to learn the local language, but there's always an accent left. One of the reasons I got the job was my talent for languages. I could understand the locals as long as they didn't veer too far into dialect.

Anyway, I wasn't there for language studies. Infiltration was my hidden agenda. Publicly, I was a concerned American at the time we got a new president and you didn't have to pretend you were Canadian if you were really American. In Taiwan, when you say you're Canadian, people think of drug-dealing English teachers. In Europe, they think of an improved version of Americans.

So I was a local activist for more cycling paths, fewer cars, even if I drove a Mercedes myself, but the locals didn't find that a contradiction in terms. I was a good citizen, pretending to favor environmental and other soft-left causes. That was in my adopted hometown.

But I could travel to other parts of the country and adopt a rawer image. A health nut, a stark opponent of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and animal exploitation for corporate greed. Of course, I took care to leave the Mercedes on the other part of town, inside an underground garage. I plotted the activists' illegal entry into nuclear power plants and NATO military bases. And I plotted their arrest as well. That was all part of the job.

My home life was pretty simple. No confusing women things, maybe my neighbors even thought I was gay, I don't know. A bit of gardening, which helped me getting rougher hands, useful with the eco crowd. Lots of Internet stuff, but hey, I was an American geek, right. I never paid much attention to news from Taiwan, or from anywhere else but the US and my adopted European home country. That all changed in April 2009.