Adventures in the Land of Singing Garbage Trucks

by Adam Tervort

  The last time we moved we ended up recycling quite a bit of stuff, and I was surprised to discover why those folks go through the less than glamorous process of collecting recyclables: you get pretty good money for the stuff! We took over a truckload of old toys, empty cardboard boxes, old clothes, and some old computer equipment and made $40. I was amazed. Someone paid me money for my trash. Compare this to my parents, who have to pay money to get someone to take their trash away merely once per week, and extra if they want their recyclables taken. What a racket that is. Pay someone money for something that they can turn around and sell. Sounds like a good business model to me.

  There are other aspects to Chinese institutional cleanliness that seem unusual to Westerners, like taking showers in the evening rather than in the morning. My Chinese friends always laugh at me when I tell them that I shower in the morning. "Isn't it hard to get to sleep if you're all sticky?" they ask. I reply that I feel sticky most of the time in Taiwan, and if I took a shower whenever I felt sticky I would end up looking like a giant shriveled prune because I'd be in the shower all day long. In the heart of summer I do usually take two (and sometimes three) showers per day. Showering before bed really is very comfortable. The problem I have is that I sweat as I sleep as well so I still have to shower in the morning regardless of whether I did at night or not. Since we're so keen on recycling we should save water as well, right?

  Not long after my wife and I were married I discovered that this cleanliness did not extend into all areas, at least not the way it had happened in my mother's house. As a we had to have the food cleared off the table and into the fridge directly after a meal. It didn't really matter which type of food it was, it went into the fridge because we didn't want it to spoil. My wife was not nearly so worried about food spoiling if it didn't go directly into the fridge. Sometimes leftovers never even went into the fridge! Gasp! What would my mother think? It turns out that my wife learned the sacred art of saving refrigerator space from her mother who is an expert at timing refrigeration in order to cram as much food as is humanly possible into a fridge much smaller than what you probably have at home. Thus default is not into the fridge; it is on the counter until that leftover’s fate has been decided. That doesn't mean you have to eat it, it may just mean it gets thrown own tomorrow morning rather than out of the fridge uneaten next week.

  Chinese women have a much different with relationship with food than most Western people do. My mother-in-law raises all kinds of vegetables on the roof or her five story townhouse. People here don't have yards, land costs far too much for that, people live in tall houses rather than large houses. On the roof there are all kinds of plants, most of which are liable to be dinner any night of the week. She also raises chickens. And she kills chickens. By herself. I tried to help her once, being the dutiful son-in-law that I am, but she told me to go away after I almost barfed on the chicken she was slaughtering. Thus ended my days as a chicken killer. She also makes her own preserves (hot peppers and a kind of salty tofu), her own wine, her own rendered cooking fat, and grows enough bean sprouts to make a vegan convention swoon. The majority of the food that touches her hands every day was either grown or otherwise prepared by her hands. I thought this kind of thing only existed in the 19th century, but she does it all in the middle of a city of nearly 400,000 people with no arable land at her disposal. Amazing.

  Chapter 10 - Farewell, and thanks for all the chicken feet

  The rest of my time in Taiwan as a missionary was different from that of a normal missionary. I was pulled off the street and ended up in an office doing administrative work. For some missionaries, especially those who have to stay on the street, this sounds like some great achievement but it wasn't. I just happened to be the guy who was stuck in an office for 11 months. The Mission President gets to choose an office staff to help him out, two assistants, a secretary, an operations assistant, a record keeper, and a financial assistant. I was one of the A.P.s, Assistants to the President.

  Being an AP had some advantages. I got to eat a lot of western food with the President and his wife. I got to drive a car while the other missionaries rode bikes. I had air conditioning in the summer. I got to travel a lot. I saw more of Taiwan during those eleven months than I have in the seven other years I've lived here. I met all of the VIPs who visited and got to spend time with them. I spent 10 months as companions with Elder He who is still one of my best friends. We got to see a master at work while working with our President, who had been a very successful CEO in Australia, and I learned how to plan and be effective in carrying out plans.

  There were also some hard things. When a problem came up in the middle of the night, I had to go and fix it. When someone was sick in the hospital I visited, when a missionary wanted to go home I had to take them to the airport. Because I had only been in Taiwan for nine months when I became AP, most of the missionaries in the mission had more experience than I did, so teaching them was not easy. I didn't like working with numbers and statistics but that was a big part of my day every day.

  Instead of days going by, time started to be measured in six week blocks. Every six weeks new missionaries came on island and old missionaries went home. The first week was training meetings for leaders and making sure the new missionaries were settled in. The second week was training meetings for all of the missionaries. The third week was interviews with all of the missionaries. The fourth and fifth week was going out to different parts of the mission to train missionaries in the field. The sixth week was deciding transfers, preparing to ship out the missionaries going home, and then picking up the new missionaries and starting all over again. I went through so many cycles in the office that all of the sudden I only had two left and then I would be the one shipping out. Yikes.

  Elder He and I begged the Mission President to let us leave the office before we "died," the term we used for going home. He finally agreed, sending me to Taoyuan for my last three months and Elder He to Yonghe six weeks later. The hardest part of leaving the office? All of the sudden I had to put my money where my mouth was. I spent 11 months training others how to be a missionary, now I was one again. In a lot of ways it was like being in a sales job, however crude that may sound. We weren't selling anything, but it felt like we were. It is amazing to see how many of the missionaries with me in Taiwan have ended up in sales in the years since we returned from Taiwan. A much higher percentage went that way than happens in the normal population. And why not? We had two years of rejections and learning how to cold call under our belts, the transition wasn't hard to make. Now you know why so many Mormons turn out to be successful businessmen and motivational speakers. We serve missions.

  Things did go well in those last three months. I trained again, an outstanding guy named Elder Yue. We were successful, and I made a lot of friends. In my last week I was petrified because I knew exactly what was coming. I'd done this many times before, each time thinking how lucky was that I got to stop at the airport security door, but this time I would really be dying, not just watching some other poor schmucks march off to their death. It wasn't fair.

  Another wrench was thrown into the works. Elder Yue had an attack of depression. I don't know what else to call it besides an attack; it came on suddenly and was like nothing I had ever seen. He seemed fine and upbeat when I left on Tuesday to visit another missionary, and when I returned on Wednesday night he was different. Surly isn't the right word, and neither is despondent. He just seemed to have lost his light, his eyes went from alive to dead and he wanted nothing to do with me or being a missionary. I was terrified, and called the Mission President to ask for help.

  "He may have depression, Elder Tervort, you'll have to take him to see the doctor."

  To that point I had never known anyone with depression, and probably like a lot of people thought that it wasn't really what people made it out to be. Let's be honest, shall we? I thought that if a man had depression it was because he wasn't tough. But Elder Yue was tough. He had walked his way onto t
he BYU soccer team, no mean feat, and he could cycle circles around me on a bike. He could crouch in a Chinese squat for an hour, which sent me howling after about five minutes. He was tough, dedicated, and the change in him remarkable. Terrible and remarkable. He had lost all motivation in one day.

  Shilin was quite a ways away, and it took us most of the day to get there, find the doctor, have the examination, get the medicine, and then start to head home. Elder Yue seemed really relieved, not what I thought he would feel.

  "At least I know why I feel so terrible now, no matter how bad it is, at least I know." And he started to slowly improve. Eight months later I was back in Taiwan and went to find him. He was back to normal, full of energy. It was amazing.

  Elder Yue taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. One day we had taken the bus to Taipei to go to a meeting and were running a little late. We had to get across to the subway station and hope we made it just as the subway came in. As I got to the door of the bus station I looked back to see if he was following me and he wasn't there. I turned back and found him in front of a man in a wheelchair, buying a pack of gum. I was ready to kill him. Not only was he wasting time and making us late, he didn't even like to chew gum.

  "What in the world are you doing? You don't chew gum."

  He said, "I wasn't buying it for the gum, I was doing this because he looks like he needs someone to help him. He wouldn't take a donation, so I'm buying you a pack of gum."

  Now the wheelchair-bound gum salesman is a common sight in Taipei. Panhandling is illegal, so some people sell "charity products" which are just normal things like gum and candy but are sold for an inflated price. This way you buy it knowing that your money is going to charity and they aren't breaking the law.

  His response cut me. Wasn't I a missionary trying to teach people about Jesus? Hadn't Jesus spent his time helping the poor in just the way Elder Yue was? I have never forgotten what he said, "I wasn't buying it for the gum." A lot of the things I do in my life now, I do for the same reason. Since then I have tried to keep an eye out for people I can help in little ways like this. Sometimes people tell me I'm naive when I give change to a guy by the road, once a woman even stopped me and told me that the guy I’d given change to was just faking his disability. I told her I appreciated her concern, but I still wanted him to have my change. She didn't understand but he seemed to, and his smile meant an awful lot to me.

  One day four years ago I was waiting for a bus in a long line of people. The bus I wanted needed exactly $53 NT and the driver didn't give change. I had my money out in my hand so I could count out exact change. A very dirty lady came up and took the money out of my hand without a word, just a smile, and then walked away. I shrugged and went to the window of the bus office to get more change and when I got back in line was almost attacked. Three high school students, an engineer, and a Buddhist nun all asked me the same thing: why did I let the lady take my money? I wasn't sure how to make the whole story short, so I said that she seemed like she needed it more than I did. The students and the man seemed satisfied that I was crazy but harmless and turned back to get on the bus, but the nun really let me have it. She asked me again why I let the woman take my money. I told her again that she looked like she needed it. The nun said that it was wrong for the woman to take my money, why would I just stand there and let it happen? What could I say? "I didn't do it for her. I did it for the idea of helping someone who needs it." At that point the nun either ran out of English or decided that I was a lost cause and so we all got on the bus.

  I don't tell you this because I think I am an outstanding person or because I want to make a social statement about helping the poor. Elder Yue changed me that day just by buying a pack of gum for the right reason. When I give money or food to someone I hope I’m doing it for the right reason. It's because I want to be like that depressed but determined soccer player buying gum in a bus station and the stoic Messiah helping the poor in the dust of Israel. I do it for the same reasons they did.

  ~~~

  I had two other life-changing experiences that I want to share. They are both religious, so if you aren't interested feel free to skip to the next chapter, there's lots of good food and romance waiting there. This will only take a little while then I'll catch up with you.

  A lot of people say that Mormons aren't Christians. I can't speak for all Mormons, of course, but I can tell you that I am a Christian, I have felt the love of Jesus Christ in my life and I know that he is my Savior. The first experience I want to tell you about happened during those 4:30 mornings in Taidong. Some days getting up and facing the flashcards got to be too much, so I would read my scriptures first. One cold morning I had started to read the New Testament again and was in the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 8. Jesus has finished teaching the Sermon on the Mount and was going back down the mountain followed by a huge group of people. A leper came to Jesus and worshipped him, and said "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean" (verse 2). Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, touched this unclean leper, and as he touched him said "I will; be thou clean." And he was.

  As I read this I was so sad. Why couldn't I have been born when Jesus was on the earth? Why did I have to read about these miracles? I wanted to be there, I wanted him to touch me. I wanted to be clean. I wanted to be healed just like that leper was healed. Why couldn't I have been there to be healed together with him? I started to pray, asking God why I wasn't able to see Jesus, why I had to be me, at this time, in a cold, lonely room reading about miracles that I would never get to see. I wanted to be clean too. All of the sudden I remembered the leper's words, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." I cried them out in my heart, and then I felt different. The coldness of the room didn't touch me; I was warm just like I was being hugged. I wasn't alone, because I felt like Jesus was right there with me. And I felt clean, just as if Christ had come and said to me "I will, be thou clean." My heart was changed. I was clean. No one saw it and no one even knew what had happened, but I did. Whenever I am at my lowest I pray and I can still feel that embrace, warm and comforting, telling me that I am not alone, He is there with me.

  A year later I was a different missionary, AP, riding in the mission SUV on some errand or another. My companion Elder Wei was driving and we were listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing "I Believe in Christ." It is a beautiful hymn. Hymns are something that I learned to appreciate as a missionary, just as I had learned to appreciate meetings. It was all I had to listen to, and I was grateful for it even if it was a stuffy choir full of old people singing a hymn I had heard ten thousand times before. It was still music. We were driving along and I was feeling great. That particular version of the hymn has an interlude with the man who wrote the lyrics reading the second and third verses. When he read "I believe in Christ," in my heart I said "I believe in Christ, too." I was serious, but not expecting anything to happen. Something did, I was struck with a strong feeling that not only was what I had said true but that I knew it now in a different way than I did before. It was like the words in my heart were suddenly changed from "I believe in Christ because I think all of this is true" to "I believe in Christ, and I know that all of this is true. I've just been told by a power beyond my own that it's true. Christ is true, I know it now in a way I didn't before." The world continued to turn, the song continued to play, Elder Wei was placidly piloting our vessel to our home port, but all of the sudden I knew a great truth. Christ lives.

  ~~~

  I learned a lot of other stuff on my mission, those great things that put hair on your chest like work ethic and perseverance, how to get along with people different from you and how to be successful at a monumental task like learning Chinese. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I didn't want to go home. I was just getting really good at being a missionary. They killed me on a Monday. I took all of my stuff, alone, to the mission office. I was debriefed and interviewed, reissued my passport, told that I had most of the day to myself to do any last minute shopping. I had t
o be back in time for dinner and a movie. I was terrified. Missionaries only watch cheesy church movies; we were going to watch Star Wars. It was a kind of shock treatment to get us to understand that this part of our life was over, that it was time to adjust back to being a normal person. I enjoyed watching the movie in spite of myself.

  We weighed our luggage that night, a collection of dying fellows off to the gallows. We would resurrect on the other side of the date line, civilian again. I was going back to my scholarships, jazz music, and a full life that was waiting to be picked back up. I would have stayed for another two years if they had asked me too. My mom would just have had to cry, I would have stayed but no one asked me to. At least I got to die with my best friend, Elder He. He was going back to the family farm in Idaho, with harvest time just around the corner. His family was really excited he would be home to help. I would actually be able to see him because my family would be driving to Utah to visit relatives and I'd take one of the cars up and spend a day on the farm with him. If you have to die, you might as well do it together with a friend.

  24 hours later I was home.

  Chapter 11 - How will I survive without chicken feet?

  Because of the vagaries of the International Date Line, I arrived at the Kansas City airport just about the time I left Taipei. My family was there to give me a hero's welcome as I emerged, dazed and rumpled. The first thing that happened after hugs was that my brother that I didn't know at all, Benjamin, was thrown in my arms and he started to bawl. I don't blame him. I had been in that suit for a long time and I probably smelled like Taiwan. It seemed strange that the circle had closed, I was there at the airport I had left two years before.