The Zodiac Schmodiac Story Cycle

The Ghost Who Tried to Love Me

What makes someone believe? I could just ask you if you believe in ghosts, but that is just a question. Most people will roll their eyes and laugh. The answer they give isn't important, that laugh tells you exactly what they think of your question. Do you believe in snow? Another roll of the eyes. Ask a bedoin in the middle of the desert if he believes in snow and you might get the same response as the one I got asking about ghosts. (And vice versa.) Just because you haven't seen it before doesn't mean it doesn't exist, OK? Don't put a wall around your mind or you'll be stuck all alone inside.

My name is Hank. Ghosts have become an everyday part of my life, even though a few years ago I didn't believe either. It sounds sappy or naive, but again, that's because you haven't seen what I've seen. I grew up on a farm in New York state and was going to go back and work with my family after university, but my parents encouraged me to go and explore my roots before I settled down to a life of tractors and seeds. Our family is ethnically Chinese, which doesn't mean that we actually speak or eat Chinese, but that we look Chinese. I had a distant cousin who was working in Taiwan as an English teacher and my parents told me I should go over and do the same thing for a few years. I suppose they were hoping I could go to the other side of the world and sow my wild oats so I could come back and farm for the rest of my life, I don't know. Maybe they really wanted to learn about my heritage, whatever that means. I went, though, and I'm still in Taiwan. It turns out that teaching conversation classes is a lot easier than harvesting grain or running cattle, and I like life here. My Chinese has never taken off though. One of the hard things about living in a Chinese country if you are an ABC (American-born Chinese) is the prejudice. Oh, you're Chinese but you don't speak any Chinese, how interesting. (Roll of the eyes.) Hope you enjoy your vacation here. I usually don't want to spend the energy to tell people I've been here for 15 years, they aren't interested in a Chinese they don't consider to be Chinese. 

No matter how "in touch" I get with my "roots," I still act like an American. Want me to believe in your silly traditions? Fat chance John Chinaman, show me the evidence and I'll show you my belief. I'm a realist, like most Americans are when it comes to folk traditions and strange customs. Taiwanese people think they see ghosts everywhere, and maybe my doubt is what got me a meeting with the creepy one in the first place. Every year during the seventh month of the lunar calendar (sometime in late August) Taiwanese celebrate ghost month. To them it is a chance to offer sarcifices to ghosts so that the ghosts will leave them alone for another year. To me it always seemed like a great chance to sell lots of "gold paper" for burning as offerings. It's just a racket set up by the traditional vendors to pick up their profits during a slow time of the year, right? Ask your normal Taiwanese on the street and they'll tell you they burn the gold papers and offer food because they think they probably should, not because they think it really does anything. Some really believe the customs work but not most. But even though most people tell you the money and the sacrifices don't do anything they still believe in ghosts. 

I'd been teaching English for a few years when I first talked to a student about this. We were having a conversation class and I asked who believed in ghosts. Everyone raised their hand. I laughed and asked if they were serious. They laughed and seemed embarrassed, but the ones who would talk about it said they believed in ghosts, they had a distant relative who had seen one once, and then they would tell an urban legend, at least that's what it seemed like to me. It made for a fun conversation class, but I knew they couldn't be serious. 

The next class I asked if anyone had actually seen a ghost before. One girl in the back of the class raised her had, looking pretty timid. She told us that when she was in university she lived in a small house with three other students. They were in the same department but came from different areas in Taiwan. Not long after they started living together she would wake in the night and hear the sound of running water. (She was a light sleeper.) Every time it was the tap by the washing machine. She just assumed one of her roommates had been washing clothes and forgot to turn the faucet off. The next day she would mention it but none of the girls admitted to washing clothes the night before. No big deal, just make sure you turn off the water, and they would go on with their lives. A few months later she woke up when the TV turned on. They had a really old TV set with a dial to change channels and a button that had to be pushed in hard to get the TV to go on. When she'd go out to see who was watching TV no one would be in the room. Once or twice when this happened one of her roommates would come out to see why the TV was on as well, but they never saw who had turned it on.