Taiwan

Yesterday I got yelled at by an eight year old and we avoided an international incident. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to politics, especially not world politics, mostly because it just makes me angry, but I suppose there are certain sensitivities in the world that I should pay attention to. This is what I have learned: China is very sensitive about Taiwan.

I guess the deal with Taiwan is that when China became communist, the socialists went to Taiwan. Taiwan would prefer to be its own country, but is not under threat of war from China. The US has a treaty with Taiwan, that if they ever wish to secede, we will support them.

We often refer to the Valles Marineris as the “Grand Canyon” of Mars. We usually will demonstrate how large it is by overlaying an outline of the United States on a scale image of Mars to show that it stretches from California to New York. We thought it would be a wonderful idea to do the same thing for China for this exhibition because the mainland of China is roughly the same width as the US. So we drew this outline and used it in several images for our displays.

We has 60,000 posters printed up for people to take home that have a wonderful graphic of the Mars Rover on the front and on the back several facts about Mars and our education programs. Also on the back is this image of the Valles Marineris with an outline of the mainland of China.

The first indication that something might be wrong came during a lecture Phil was giving at Tsinghua University on Friday. He put up this image on the screen and from the back of the room someone shouted: “Where’s Taiwan?” Oops.

At first we thought it was a joke, that people were annoyed, but just thought we were dumb Americans or that it was like leaving off Hawaii or something like that. We noted it when we went out to drinks that night, but then shrugged it off.

Then on Saturday the exhibit opened. We were worried that it might not be ready on time. When we wet to the exhibit hall on Friday, there was still a lot of work to do and the designer wanted us to leave to not be in the way. We couldn’t unpack any of our boxes or set anything us except to make sure the computer displays worked so I sat in the back and put together Lego Mars Exploration Rovers. The exhibit looks quite nice actually, especially since they got it up in less than 48 hours. There is a large Mars globe, probably about 2 meters in diameter in the middle that rotates. It is surrounded by a platform on which are displayed the different instruments we have on Mars. In one corner of the room we have a screen that is looping the MER NOVA special and the CGI launch film. The opposite corner has a screen with the scrolling THEMIS satellite images. There are also two displays, one with Earth rocks and one with meteorites. There are several outreach activities planned and we have local high school students running them.

Our exhibit proved to be quite popular. Several thousand people came through. The high school age girls surprised me the most with their genuine interest in Mars exploration. Their English is very good and asked many very good questions and wanted to be showed and ‘instructed’ on everything. A lot of people who came through had no idea that we even have two rovers at Mars. One man didn’t even know that Mars was a planet that revolved around the same sun we do. At first I thought it was a language barrier, but when he asked me if Mars was a planet like earth or a star and then, “what does it go around?” I realized that I had to explain that there were nine planets in the solar system all going around the sun. He was shocked. I was shocked that someone in China could be educated enough to know enough English to ask the question, but not at all educated in science…But then like I said, I don’t know anything about politics.

So I am standing there being filmed by some Chinese TV station answering questions to grade school kids, when this boy comes up to me and says” “excuse me, but you did not put Taiwan on this picture” pointing to the posters that we are handing out. To which, somewhat expecting this from the previous days activities “Yes, I know, we made a mistake, I am sorry.” The kid replies, “You need to take these away”. I don’t quite know how to reply, “I’m really sorry, we will try to fix them”

“I am very offended”

“I am really sorry, we made a mistake, you are welcome to take one anyways”

“I will not. I do not want it, I demand you throw them all away.”

“Um, well, we’re not going to throw them away, I am really sorry you are offended, it was a mistake. I’m sorry”

At this point the boy storms off toward Phil and Jon Fink who is ASU’s Vice President in charge of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The boy then demanded that we throw them away, and started crying. He then said if we did not he would “Go to the media”.

So the posters were removed, and we have 59,000 posters that we have to figure out what to do with. All because an eight year old was offended. I guess we have changed the image and are having another 10,000 printed. It seems like a colossal waste, but we are avoiding international incident. The interesting thing is that the high school age kids seemed unfazed. They were puzzled as to why we took the posters away. When I tried to explain, they replied: “Well, just fix it.” Unfortunately it is not that easy.

Other than that the exhibit seems to be going very well. I talked with many people who were very interested and when language got in the way I grabbed a high school kid to translate.

I learned a few key phrases: “Wo ting bu dong” means “I don’t understand”, “Mars” is pronounced “Ho-shi” or “Wo-see” depending on who you ask and “Meteorite” is pronounced “yun-shur”.

The most colorful expression I have learned is “Wo shi sha gua” which means, “I am a stupid melon-head” just for kicks. Oh, and an expletive you can use when you are frustrated is “ta-man-di” which literally translates to “his mother”.

Yiping and I went to the hotel for massages last night. Oh they felt so good. It was quite unlike any massage I have experienced before, not in the massage part, but in the environment. When we got off the elevator we were greeted by two young Chinese girls wearing Adidas tennis outfits: short black shirt/short things and a white polo shirt. They were followed by and older woman, very well dressed, who negotiated our rooms, prices and service. I very much felt like we were in a brothel. We were escorted into a room with twenty or so lounge chairs, many of which had old men in silk robes having their corns removed. Yiping shook here head and told the woman we wanted our own room. So we were shown into another room that had only three of the chairs. The chairs were reclined into beds and we removed our shoes and belts, but were otherwise fully clothed. They turned on the TV to Korean soap operas and a really bad Karaoke show and offered us tea. The girls talked to each other through almost the whole thing. It was very odd, but I didn’t really care because even though this girl was small, she had wonderful pressure. I was so relaxed that I didn’t care that the singer on the TV sounded like William Hung and gladly accepted when she offered an extra 30 minutes fro 90 more Yuan. The whole thing, 75-minute massage plus tea, came to 275Y, which is roughly $35. I think I may do it again before I leave. I slept very well last night.