最後一天 (The Last Day)

When my father got drafted back in the early 70s, he ended up getting a big send off, complete with the neighborhood chief (里長) presenting him with his draft orders and commending him for his upcoming sacrifice. He then entered the navy, and according to him, proceeded to spend his first six weeks getting violently seasick, while on patrol in the waters between Taiwan, Kinmen, and Matsu.

When my draft orders came down a few weeks ago, I got a pink form letter from the district office shoved into my mailbox, telling me to come pick up my marching orders. Not quite the glorious warrior sendoff of yesteryear, but hey I'll take it.

When I first arrived back in Taiwan, the three month university research job I took on seemed like a placeholder before basic training. Now, I'm sad to be leaving. There seems to be so much more good work to do than I have time for, even though everyone tells me I've accomplished more than enough already. No doubt, the three month deadline helped with my productivity level. One new peer reviewed paper out, one more under review, and more in the pipeline.

Three months go by fast when you keep yourself occupied. But all too soon, I'm turning in my final report, tying up loose ends on campus, firing off my final emails, and making a promise to return after my service term is up. Maybe this academia thing is for me after all. Maybe they'll send me to do science when I go in…

But if its something that I know I like doing, than that wouldn't be a sacrifice, would it?

On my last day as a civilian in 2011, I decided to make the most of my freedom by wandering around aimlessly. Through the ornate lobby of the Grand Hotel built in the style of an ancient Chinese palace, where the Chiangs used to entertain (and presumably, spy on) foreign guests, now filled with tourists.

Then out into the bright sunlight, into the hills up narrow staircases and boardwalks built by generations of locals, hidden underneath the green forest canopy overlooking the city below. Past terraced badminton courts, pavilions, and shacks with older couples singing karaoke.Then along a narrow road in the hills lined by bamboo forests, past abandoned army posts, and graves dating from the reigns of 道光, 光緒, and 昭和.

Back down from the hills into the city, and a small Buddhist temple where I am (gently) reprimanded by a nun for unknowingly standing on the tomb of a great monk.

And finally, into a shiny shopping mall with hipster kids wearing horn rimmed glasses without lenses.

It's amazing what you can find when you have no idea where you're going.

第二類組 (Type 2)

"Hurry up, they've already started drawing straws!"

Another day at the Shilin District Office. Another step in the process of getting drafted. The 10th floor auditorium of the district office is packed with thongs of young men and their anxious looking parents. The middle aged ladies running the Department of Compulsory Military Service who were at the medical exam weeks ago are all there again. But for the first time, I see military personnel manning the check-in desk - an army lieutenant colonel along with a bunch of NCOs, and a couple of MPs.

Like anyone would try to make a break for it at this stage.

Taiwan has had a military draft going since the 1950s, back when the Cold War was still hot. Today, China's invasion threats have gone from the human waves of yesteryear to a ballistic missile buildup, while Taiwan has gone from dictatorship to democracy. One problem hasn't changed though - how do you distribute all the draftees fairly among the service branches? Lots of people want to get into the air force (considered an easy assignment), and few want to end up in the marines (at one point, marine boot camp graduation involved swimming from Kinmen to China and returning with a severed PLA ear... or so the rumor mill goes).

The solution that was settled upon has become a rite of passage for Taiwanese males - drawing straws. Even with the introduction of civilian alternative service for folks who can't pass the physical, the practice still continues. Everyone gets a service branch, no one can complain about favoritism. This year, the ratio for the general pool is fairly typical: 75% Army, 8% Navy, 8% Marines, and 9% Air Force.

"But, I was told to come in at 11AM."

"Are you doing alternative service?"

"No, I'm classified as Type 2."

But as you might expect, the military in Taiwan has its own needs in terms of personnel qualifications. In the U.S., incoming enlisted personnel take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) exam to determine their level of competency. Taiwan deals with this problem by loading the dice for draftees with certain qualifications...

There are three separate pools as far as drawing straws is concerned. Type 1 is the maritime group (100% Navy), Type 2 is the aviation group (70% Air Force, 20% Army, 10% Navy), Type 3 is the general pool. Draftees are distributed by occupation or college degree: merchant seamen, maritime academy graduates, maritime engineers, and oceanographers go under Type 1. Type 2 includes commercial pilots, aviation mechanics, aerospace and aeronautical engineers, atmospheric and space scientists, meteorologists, and plasma physicists. Everyone else is Type 3.

"Oh, there are only 4 of you this time. Have a seat and we'll call you once the general pool is done."

I walk into the auditorium where the process is playing out for the general pool. The middle aged ladies of the district office sit at a long table at the front. A large clear plastic box sits in the middle of the table with a hole in the top. A draftee thrusts his hand into the box, pulls out a straw, and hands it to a lady with a microphone behind the box.

"Number 141, Army."

The young man is silent as the straw is removed from the remaining pool, and the next draftee moves up for his turn. There are 141 Army straws out of the 188 total for the general pool today.

"Number 142, Army."

"Number 143, Army."

"Number 144, Marines"

The marine-to-be grimaces, while a palpable sense of relief spreads throughout the line of draftees behind him. One less Marine straw.

A middle aged lady walks over after overhearing my earlier conversation:

"What's this Type 2 thing you said you were in?"

"Oh, the aviation group."

"Wait, so you're all Air Force? How did you get into that?"

"No no no... we just have a higher chance of drawing an Air Force straw. I studied aerospace engineering so-"

"My son studied accounting, why isn't he in this?"

"Well they should already know his degree-"

"Wait what? I didn't know about this. I told them he studied accounting..."

I had a thing for space and aviation as a kid, like most kids do. Unlike most kids, I never grew out of it and choose to study astrophysics in college (instead of pre-med or computer science), and aerospace engineering in grad school. The typical reaction I got from people in Taiwan upon learning of this was "Aerospace engineering? Who needs that in Taiwan?". Guess I've got the answer to that now...

"Type 2 draftees, report!"

A middle aged man with greying hair takes the mike at the front - the supervisor. The 188 draftees in the general pool are finally done. My turn now, along with the two other draftees in the group who actually showed up.

The supervisor gathers us around the box.

"Congratulations, you are all in the aviation group. No matter which service branch you end up drawing, your work will be related to aircraft!"

The three of us stare at each other, uncertain what to say. I've heard of Air Force draftees who ended up in air defense units, which were characterized as "the Army, but with surface to air missiles."

The supervisor opens a sealed brown envelope, containing three smaller sealed brown envelopes. He tears open the envelopes one by one to reveal identical looking small plastic tubes, each containing a rolled up piece of paper. The straws. He counts them out by service branch: 7 Air Force, 2 Army, 1 Navy. He hands me the microphone and points to the label on the big envelope:

"Read this please to confirm the contents are correct."

I pick up the microphone and hope my Taiwan accent is back...

"7 Air Force, 2 Army, 1 Navy."

"Sign your name and ID number on the envelope please, then have a seat."

He places the straws in the box, shakes up the contents, and hands the mike off to one of the ladies, who calls out our names and numbers, one by one. I'm last in line. The first guy draws Air Force. The second guy draws Navy.

I walk up and hand over my registration form and ID, and thrust my hand into the box. I hand the straw to the lady with the mike, who pulls the paper out of the tube...

"Number 4, Air Force."

The lady writes my name on the slip, stamps it with my seal, then hands me the receipt.

"Congratulations. We'll notify you 10 days before the start of basic training with further instructions."

The army guys at the check-in desk are gone now. The father of one of the other airmen-to-be walks over.

"Don't worry about it, it'll be a good experience. Say, where are you from?"

"Jiantan."

"Jiantan? Interesting. You look so tall that I almost thought you were a foreigner."

"Oh. Heh. Well, you know us kids these days."

"Yes, I would have taken you for American-born, except that you haven't done anything with your hair."

"Next". *stamp*

"I've finished my studies in the U.S. and just returned the other day-"

"Ah? Please speak to the lady in the next window, she specializes in such cases. Please pardon the inconvenience."

For being what is probably the most dreaded section of the Shilin (士林) District Office, the civil servants at Department of Compulsory Military Service (兵役課) are unfailingly polite. Probably comes from being yelled at a lot by angry parents waving foreign passports. That and Shilin being the epicenter of expat residents in Taipei, what with the Taipei American School, the Tianmu neighborhood and all...

"Yes? How may I help you?"

The lady stares at me over a pile of what looks like files on all the other draft age males from Taipei's north side. Future comrades. Or whatever the preferred term is today. I take a deep breath and hope that 24 hours has been sufficient time for the American accent in my Mandarin to dissipate (remember... non-rhoticity! Just like Boston).

"Hi! I just finished school in the U.S. and arrived back in the country yesterday. I haven't been drafted yet and I'd like to report in to get the ball rolling-"

"- He wants to know how long he has before basic training since he has a job now."

Standing behind me, my mother can't help but interject even after promising me that she'd let me handle things on her own. I survived on my own abroad for the last 12 years but apparently old habits die hard. (Must get used to Taiwan family values again... the Italians are mama's boys and thrive just as well...)

"May I see your I.D. and any diplomas validated by our diplomatic personnel?"

I hand over my I.D. and a plastic folder containing photocopies of documents with TECO validation seals that cost me $30 apiece for the original documents and $15 apiece for Chinese translations that I had to do myself. Thank you Ministry of Foreign Affairs...

The lady taps a few things on her keyboard, gets up, then returns with a folder with my name on it.

"Engineering degree... current I.D. number checks out... wait a minute-" (Ha... another kid who finally ran out of education deferments)

She flips over to the backside of my Taiwan I.D. and frowns.

"Place of Birth: United States. Doesn't this make you an American?"

"Well yes, but my family moved here when I was a kid and had me naturalized to make the immigration paperwork easier and I was under the impression that I'm still required to serve..."

She stares. The unspoken "Sure we don't let you relinquish your citizenship till you've served but shouldn't you have just entered on your American passport and pretended you had ex-pat status so you'd be exempt from this? Everybody does it."- seems to hang in the air. It only lasts a few seconds.

"Read and sign this please." (you can read right?)

She whips out a legal statement.

"I _________ affirm that I am a dual citizen of the Republic of China and __________ . I do not claim and have no intention of claiming expatriate status and understand that I am subject to military conscription as a military age male."

I sign, wondering if she isn't planning to send me to the psych ward at NTU.

"You'll hear from us in a few weeks for your physical at Yang-Ming Hospital. If everything checks out, you'll come back to draw straws to decide your service branch, and can expect to ship out sometime in late March or early April."

A few weeks later a notice comes in the mail to pick up the physical exam forms at the District Office. "Please report to the specified hospital at the specified date and time along with two 1" photos, your I.D., a ballpoint pen, and this form."

Yang-Ming Hospital is a large building covered with pink bathroom tile in a nice neighborhood in Tianmu. I arrive on an overcast afternoon of the sort that characterizes Taipei in the winter.

The physical exam center is a separate building located to the rear of the main hospital building. I am surprised by the complete lack of military personnel. The check-in desks are staffed by middle aged women who might as well have been the mothers of all the young men milling around. The doctors are all civilians normally attached to the hospital. If it wasn't for the large number of young men from all around the north side of Taipei walking around accompanied by anxious parents, it would probably be another ordinary working day. One of the doctors chats loudly with his colleagues:

"... and what do you mean healthy? How many of these kids do you think are going to whip out medical files claiming missing limbs, allergies, and esoteric diseases they found on PubMed? How many of the rest are going to whip out foreign passports, here on the north side? And can you blame them when even the president's daughter hides behind an American passport? In my day if you had flat feet they'd tell you to stuff tissue on the soles of your shoes..."

As if on cue, several of the examinees gestured frantically at the middle aged lady overseeing the check-ins... "Excuse me, I'm not sure why I was told to come here, I have a foreign passport and lived abroad...". Interestingly, after the former (fluent Chinese-speaking) group had departed, quite a few other individuals of mixed ethnicity were still standing around with the rest of us. So much for blood thicker than water.

At the check-in desk, I'm handed a four page questionnaire. "Are you feeling healthy and well today?" "Have you been depressed lately?" "Are you angry at your parents?" "Do you have a driver's license?" After answering to what I suppose was the satisfaction of the proctor, I'm handed a physical exam form, my background file from the District Office, and a black tote bag containing a pair of gym shorts and plastic flip flops.

After changing, I was led with the other examinees into a wing with several rooms, each containing nurses and doctors to perform a particular examination. At the end of each examination, the responsible doctor would write the results on the exam form, and stamp the particular section. Everything was systematic and assembly line-like with draftees lined up quietly at each station. There was little talk amongst the draftees as we wound our way from station to station. Blood pressure, dental, EKG, height and weight, vision, blood, urine, chest X-ray...

Some tests were simple. Hearing:

"Do you have hearing problems?"

"No."

"Next." *stamp*

Psych:

"Have you ever felt like killing yourself?"

"No."

"Have you ever seen a psychologist before?"

"I'm talking to one right now."

"Next." *stamp*

Finally, the part you always hear about. I find myself standing before a panel of one female and two male urologists in lab coats, wearing surgical masks. A screen bisects the room, ending right before the doctors so that they can see behind it. The other draftees in line behind me look on. One of the male doctors slips on a pair of latex gloves and comes in for a closer hands on examination.

"Please step behind the screen and drop your pants."

Despite spending the last six years studying in the town that gave birth to the Naked Pumpkin Run, I really don't find the lack of clothing to be a liberating experience in this sort of setting.

Satisfied that I do indeed possess functioning male genitalia, the doctor nods and tells me to pull my pants back up and moves on to the next question on the list...

"Now, have you ever had a hernia?"

"No."

"Next." *stamp*

The entire exam takes about half an hour, after which I find myself in front of the check-out desk, again staffed by middle aged ladies who might have been my friends' mothers.

"There's nothing immediately disqualifying, so we're just waiting on the blood and urine results. You'll hear from us again in about a month. Go out and have fun."

Continued on Part II: 第二類組 (Type 2)