On Saturday afternoon, my wife was moving a bucket of water on the balcony (not wise), and lost her hold on it. Some of it fell down into the alley, where members of a family were outside with some of their clothes in a sink. We couldn’t see clearly what had happened, but about a minute later a very angry man belonging to the family was hitting the buzzer for our apartment.
I let him up, and he pretty much exploded in my face with a torrent of Chinese the moment I opened the door (and really, I didn’t blame him). I managed to get most of what he said (which was pretty obvious, stuff along the lines of ‘There we were washing our clothes and this water came down’, ‘There were a lot of people down there’, and ‘The water fell on our heads’), but explaining to him that it was an accident was unfortunately totally beyond me. I told him I understood what had happened, and that I was sorry, the bucket had fallen (the closest I could get to ‘It was an accident’), inserting these apologetic phrases whenever he took a breath.
I called for my wife to come and apologize to him personally, which she did, and that seemed to be particularly satisfying to him, as he nodded, grunted, and promptly left. I shut the door feeling slightly ill. I was very upset, not the least because we’ve never had any problems with neighbours in our almost five years here, no matter where we’ve lived, but also because I had been unable to communicate effectively that the entire business was an accident.
Given the pearls of wisdom regarding Taiwanese culture which I’ve read here on Forumosa, I expected that the man was going to return to his family to curse us all out as ignorant foreigners with no respect for other people who wantonly cast their liquid detritus into the public thoroughfare without so much as a care for any other human being, and to sound the warcry for an inter-generational vendetta against us which would continue until our seed was destroyed utterly from off the face of the earth.
I saw in my mind’s eye a vision of the next week, filled with antique aunties shaking fists and cursing as we walked past their alley, old uncles spitting when they saw us, and railing accusations from the man of the hour himself. Knowing from Forumosa what these Taiwanese are like, I expected excrement in our mailbox, and the theft of our scooter, even though we don’t have a scooter (I wouldn’t put it past them to buy us a scooter just so they can steal it from us, that’s how devious and vindictive they are).
I remained upset about it for the rest of the day, and my wife and I talked it over a couple of times. Then my wife had the brilliant idea of going to apologize with a box of fruit, since she reckoned she could tell which building they lived in (we would walk down the alley and look for the sink, then knock on the door next to it). So we purchased a large and attractive gift box of fruit from our local fruit selling merchant, found the door, and knocked on it a few times.
Of course, we should have known it would never be that easy. The following all took place in Chinese:
Aunty’s voice: Who’s there?
Me: [oh great, now what?] Two foreigners. [an utterly stupid thing to say, I realised immediately after, but she didn’t know us from a bar of soap anyway]
Aunty: Who’s there?
Me: Uh, two foreigners. [I couldn’t think of anything else to say]
[Some shuffling and creaking ensued behind the door, which was then opened by an old woman who looked at us suspiciously. She was accompanied by another old woman standing cautiously off to the side.]
Me: This afternoon our bucket of water fell, so we want to give you this. [proffering box of fruit]
Old woman: [interrupting me as I finished my sentence] Oh! Oh yes, I know. [the rest was only partly comprehensible, but she was smiling now, and seemed to be saying that it was ok, it was only a little water, and it was just that they were washing at the time.]
Me (and my wife): We’re very sorry, please take this. [the fruit again]
Old woman: Oh no, no need, no need! [the other old woman took up the same mantra. A very small child had appeared from somewhere, and was now peering at us with interest, from somewhere around knee height. The child, however, took no active part in the proceedings, and did not respond verbally to any of our apologies.]
Me: No, really, please do, we’re very sorry. [I thought the ‘sorry’ stuff couldn’t be overdone.]
[At this point the man appeared, though looking far more calm than he had earlier that day.]
Me: [catching his eye] Please, take this. [still the fruit] We’re sorry. [it was a good line, and I was sticking to it]
Man: [looking somewhat taken aback] Oh no, no need.
Me: Really, do.
Man: [very conciliatory] I understand, it’s ok. [I liked him more like this]
At this point the two old women and the man were all concerted in their efforts to assure us it was all ok, and were insistently waving away the fruit, and there were some smiles and nods of peace all around, so we took our leave.
I actually felt a lot better after this, for reasons most people can probably understand. I don’t pretend to know anything about the mysterious animal which is Chinese culture, and even less about my own Taiwanese neighbours, but it seems we had taken the correct choice of action and ‘shown willing’. I slept well that night, sure in the knowledge we had averted the apocalypse. If we haven’t, please don’t disillusion me just yet.
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