Halloween: Taiwan Style

Of the American holidays there are few that I regard with less interest than Halloween. That is to say when I lived in America I was more excited to see Columbus Day on the calendar than I was Halloween. There are various reasons for this, but the main one is that Halloween isn't celebrating or commemorating anything. The irony of my apathy of course is that for some reason, those who are in authority at the school we work at regard Halloween as something very important.

Does Taiwan celebrate Halloween? No. But Hess Language school does. Why? It isn't clear except that the "holiday" has an attachment to the United States and the myth is that it is in fact a very important holiday state-side. So, instead of dedicating just one evening to the Halloween "tradition" (whatever that may be for you) we were required to teach on it for a week. That's right, one week of English teaching on ghosts, monsters, bats, skeletons, and whatever else will fit appropriately on a Kindergarten flashcard--culminated by an event (replacing classes) on Friday--the actual day of Halloween.

It is important to point out, that I have particularly strong feelings about these events because I had to plan the big event for the whole Kindergarten on Friday. In hindsight, this sounds like more than it was because, the duties of running the event fell on all the English teachers and not just me.

The week of Halloween was a blur of language games, the Halloween Song (which song is that you may be wondering...), and overly elaborate craft projects geared towards decorating the hallways with the kids' artwork. All of these things went off without a hitch and the event day arrived.

Without too much needless detail the event was to last for two and a half hours. The opening of the day would be a "fashion show" of all the kids in their costumes, followed by trick or treating and games. The children arrived that morning decked out in whatever their parents could buy or make (most of them...some didn't have any costume) and Halloween was on.

This is Winnie...part of my (Luke's) Kangaroo class.

This is Kelly...part of Katie's Rabbit class and yes she is a little unicorn!
The costume show was more amusing for the teachers than the students. There were too many of us crammed in a tiny hallway, but it was a good time all the same.


Things moved forward from there rather smoothly. But the day wouldn't have been right without some true Taiwan moments:

An example was the Trick or Treating. This was supposed to take place at 3 different businesses just down the block from the school. One of the Chinese teachers assured me that this would only take each class about ten minutes and so everyone would have plenty of time for the games. So we set out in the hot early morning sun (90 plus degrees and 90 plus humidity) toward our first stop: Starbucks.

For this to be a true Taiwan experience there had to be something unusually dangerous going on. In this case, the building next to ours was being remodeled. In Taiwan they don't use cones, or ropes or anything you would normally find in the U.S. Instead they like to use a "walk at your own risk through a construction site" policy.
Excuse me while I move my tractor off the road (which I was blocking) and off the sidewalk (as the kids were walking toward it) and into this recently destroyed area.

Don't mind the broken bricks...shards of rocks and metal spikes...
Yay we made it 100 hundred feet to Starbucks!

Another major distinctive of Taiwan is the real lack of places to walk. If it is just Katie and I making our way to 7-11 that is one thing. We can watch for scooters (they drive on the sidewalks, through covered markets or anywhere they can fit) for just the two of us...but watching for almost 60 little kids was a bit stressful.

Oh yeah...another tractor actually tearing up the road. They stopped for a minute to watch us as we walked by...

So ten minutes took forty-five, but it was worth it. The children loved Trick or Treating and just looking awesome in their costumes.


At the end of the day we were exhausted but we felt like the event as a whole was a success. There was merriment, much candy, and laughs all around. So that being said...happy halloween from Taiwan!